Chapter XXXII

A barrier formed by his own imagination kept McGinity and Pat apart for some time following the solution and wind-up of the Martian mystery; the barrier of riches, which so often prevents the "poor but honest" young man from popping the question to a girl he considers far beyond his reach by reason of her social rank and money. He felt, as I learned afterwards, that the honorable thing to do, as far as Pat was concerned, was to fade out of the picture.

It was an open secret in the family by this time that he and Pat were desperately in love. After all they had gone through together, things were bound to end like this. As soon as we learned that McGinity was suffering from a severe attack of conscientious scruples, we held several family councils; whispering together, we decided that nothing would suit us better than to have the young reporter as our nephew.

Jane was coldly enthusiastic, at first. But one could not blame her. Family pride is a mighty powerful instinct. All her life she had been a stout-hearted defender of the social impregnability of the Royces, regarding her world, or their world, as divided into Royces on the one hand, and the near relatives and close friends of the Royces on the other.

McGinity of course had no social credentials, but his father had been a college chum of Pat's father, and undoubtedly he had saved Pat's life when the late Mr. Zzyx, alias Peter, went on his rampage of death and destruction. "We owe him something," I argued; and so did Henry, who couldn't say enough now in praise of the reporter.

Besides, he came from a family of great antiquity. When I finally proved to Jane, through "Barker's Peerage," that one of his ancient, Scottish forebears had played a leading part in the crusade of taking Robert Bruce's heart to Jerusalem, the ice suddenly broke, and she began to express herself as charmed in having found him so charming.

And so we decided to take the high hand, so far as we dared; and we were about to summon Pat to a family conference, and tell her that she would hear something now that would surprise her, and so forth ... when, luckily for us, Pat took matters in her own hand. As she described her feelings to me afterwards, she realized that unless a miracle intervened the being who meant more to her than all the world would be lost; and the knowledge seemed suddenly to clarify her mind, and her course of duty to save an endangered love became quite clear.

I wish I had space in which to tell, in full, the story of Pat's curing McGinity's attack of conscientious scruples against marrying a rich girl, and how she finally challenged him on common ground, for it was very romantic business; this alone would fill a large volume.

With fine courage, Pat set about to do a little newspaper writing on her own, with a definite purpose in view. A close study of McGinity's clever articles, and his remarkable technique of condensation and brevity, so necessary in newspaper reporting, provided exactly the sort of inspiration that she needed. She had the background of a splendid education, she was an inveterate reader of action stories, and was also very observing. Reading the early specimens of her work, neatly but laboriously typed, I was amazed to find that she showed real talent in dramatizing the commonplace things in life.

Her first serious article was founded on several visits she had made at the wretched homes of the very poor, calling on expectant mothers, in company with a nurse from the Rivington Street Settlement, on the governing board of which Henry had become an important factor. Under the pseudonym of Nora Nolan, and using the house address of a girl friend, she submitted the sketch to the City Editor of the New York Daily Recorder.

To her great surprise and joy, the article was accepted, and she received a check for fifteen dollars, the first money she had ever earned in her life. Realizing that she had been lucky, she made a quick follow-up with an account of conditions in the House of Detention for Women, of which I happened to be a member of the visiting board. This brought another and larger check, and a polite note from the City Editor, asking her to call on him at the Recorder office.

Then the incredible thing happened. As Nora Nolan, she got a job on the Recorder, and was assigned to write daily signed articles, at space rates; brief word pictures of the inside workings of the various city institutions. Her earnings now, at the least, would amount to forty dollars a week. She was given part-time use of a desk and typewriter, which she shared with an oldish, pleasant-mannered woman, who conducted a column for housewives.

What happened after this had all the accessories of fiction. The first day on her job, late in the afternoon, she was seated at her desk, in a far corner of the general news-room, nervously picking at the keys of a dilapidated typewriter, and trying to bring order out of the chaos of notes, taken at random during an inspection of the Children's Clearing Bureau. Conscious of the curious, covert glances of a dozen or so men and women reporters working in the room, she began to feel terribly embarrassed and nervous; she couldn't concentrate on her notes. But she kept picking away. Then suddenly she became conscious of another and closer gaze. She looked up, and met McGinity's amazed and inquiring eyes. Something seemed to fill her throat; she tried to swallow but the lump would not go down.

Then suddenly her courage returned, for she had caught in his glance something contemptuous. She held out a small hand, and he took it for an instant and released it.

"I hope you're well, Bob," she said. "I haven't seen you for several weeks. At least, you might say you're glad to see me."

"I congratulate you," he said, a little sternly.

"Oh, that's nice," she rejoined. "I feel that I have you to thank for what I'm doing now."

"I have done nothing," he said.

"Oh, but you have, Bob!" she replied. "You've been my inspiration. Otherwise, how could I have turned to newspaper writing practically over-night? I never knew it was in me, really, to do reporting. I've only written a few insignificant things, but your City Editor liked them, and he's given me regular employment. Isn't it wonderful that--"

"That what?" he interrupted, sourly.

"That I'm not so useless, after all," she answered.

"A bit rough on the girl reporter that has to work for her living," he said, with quiet bitterness, "There's lots of 'em, right now, looking for work. But just a lark for the girl with money, who can use her social position to land a job."

"Most undignified and unnecessary," said Pat, with a disdainful note in her voice. "But it just doesn't happen to apply in my case."

McGinity, with a little twinge of remorse, coughed awkwardly, and was about to mutter something, when he saw the City Editor moving towards them.

"Sorry, Miss Nolan," said the City Editor, eyeing McGinity a little suspiciously, "but I want to remind you that all copy must be turned in by seven o'clock. Tomorrow we go to press an hour earlier, so please have your copy in, on the Domestic Relations Court, promptly at six." Then he turned to McGinity. "Miss Nolan--Nora Nolan--is our latest recruit, Mac, if you haven't been properly introduced. No doubt you've read her two recent signed articles? Pretty good, don't you think?"

McGinity smiled bitterly. Before he could speak, Pat smiled up at the City Editor, and said: "Mr. McGinity and I have met before, but he doesn't know me by my pen name, Nora Nolan. He's a bit surprised, and I don't wonder at it."

The City Editor grinned. "I quite expected to find that it wasn't your real name," he said. "But it was your descriptive talent, Miss Nolan, that attracted me, and your nose for finding news in the most ordinary things. That's why I gave you the chance."

"Thanks," Pat murmured, smiling, and the City Editor walked away. Then she looked at McGinity, and said: "Awful sorry, Bob, and all that, but I must get on with my story."

McGinity went red and felt a fool. He seated himself at a vacant desk, opposite to hers, lit a cigarette, and watched her work.

Her notes a blur, Pat thought: "Bob's terribly angry with me. He's making me awfully unhappy." Then her mind went off on a new tack. "Suppose he doesn't really love me? Perhaps I've made a terrible mistake. Oh, dear! But I shall always love him--dear Bob! I shall go on loving him with the gift of love ungiven, always in my heart, always beautiful, like a shrine of dreams...."

She sprang up suddenly, and said, aloud: "Oh, I can't bear this room! It's so stuffy and noisy!"

Instantly McGinity was up, and looking at her across the desk. He looked into her eyes steadily, where he fancied he caught a glimpse of tears.

"Pat," he said, gently, and a little inarticulately, as though he was ashamed of himself, "may I ask you a bold question?"

"If you like, certainly," sighed Pat.

"Will you go to dinner with me?"

"Thank you, Bob," she replied; and sat down, and finished her article.

I learned of all this afterwards, of course, but where they dined, and what was said there, I have no personal knowledge. I can only guess. Afterwards they went to a popular cinema, where the lights are so conveniently dim.

About ten, Pat called up, and announced she would be home around eleven, which quieted our growing apprehension and anxiety. In the same breath, rather tremulous, she said: "Bob's bringing me home."

I had Jane turn off the bright lights in the lower part of the house. She lit the candles in the drawing room and hall, while I poked up the fire, and pulled up our softest and deepest chair, which was quite big enough for two. Henry, to my amazement, brought in some autumnal flowers he had gathered the day before from his garden at the castle, and arranged them in a vase on the mantelpiece.

We were of course much intrigued, and indulged in much speculation until they arrived. Schweizer admitted them, and then discreetly disappeared. Leaning over the railing at the head of the stairs, I contrived to remain so absolutely still that not a creak betrayed that I was looking on, and listening in, in spite of a twinge of conscience. But it was a moment so fateful and momentous in Pat's life that I felt I had the right to share it with her.

I could hardly believe my eyes and ears. In the dim candlelight, in the hall, McGinity's first act was to wrap her tenderly about with his warm young arms, and press her lips to his.

Then Pat spoke, softly and sweetly. "When did you first love me, Bob?"

A question well put, I thought. Something every woman wants to know.

"From the first moment I saw you," McGinity breathed passionately. "But I made myself so wretchedly unhappy," he went on, "believing that I'd no right to love you. But, somehow, seeing you at the typewriter like that, in the stuffy and cluttered news-room, it came to me that I had been most selfish and wrong. I realized that you had made your interests common with mine. It was a challenge and a declaration. I feel now that I've the right to love you, and to ask you to be my wife...."

And the next thing that I knew was that I was dancing lightly up and down the upper hall, in the exaltation and excitement of this wonderful thing that had happened to Pat, to the surprise and perhaps disapproval of the proud and stiff Royces, male and female, who looked down from its walls. While Henry, smiles wreathing his face when I told him, murmured: "Don't be such a colossal ass, Livingston!"

In a surprisingly short time, Pat and McGinity were married. A quiet, informal wedding in our Washington Square house, in December, but rather noisily emblazoned by the newspapers, which dearly love a romance, especially when it's coupled with high adventure. A fortnight's honeymoon in Bermuda, and McGinity returned with his bride, to find a considerable boost in salary, and the offer of an important sub-editorship, awaiting him at the Daily Recorder office.

Pat does all her writing at home now, still under the pen name of Nora Nolan, with rather amazing success, while McGinity continues at his favorite newspaper employment.

This brings me up to date about things.

One day, late in June, as I was returning from an inspection of Henry's garden of herbs, at the rear of the castle, Mamie Sparks, our colored laundress, called to me from the door of the servants' wing. Staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed, she pointed at the peaked observatory tower, with its sliding glass roof, which now houses the happily married couple--where they can gaze up at the moon and stars, while their hearts chant paeans of praise and thanks to their particularly beloved and lucky star, Mars.

"Marse Livingston! Look!" Mamie exclaimed.

I looked, and saw a large, long-legged bird perched on the roof of Mr. and Mrs. McGinity's tower bedroom. Then I turned to Mamie, and said: "What d'you suppose it is?"

Mamie chuckled, and when she chuckled, every part of her body seemed to synchronize. "Why, man alive!" she said; "dat's a stork. Dat's certainly a good omen for our sweet Patricia, only it done come a little ahead of time."

"It looks like a crane," I ventured.

"Nosah, nosah!" Mamie countered. "No crane ain't nevah roostin' up dat high, Marse Livingston."

The strange bird flew away, and Mamie, still chuckling, returned to her work.

The true significance of the visit of that long-legged, foretokening bird that had perched itself on the tower roof of Pat's bedroom did not come to me until that evening, as I stood on the terrace, enjoying my after-dinner cigar. At first, I had regarded Mamie's prophetic suggestion with only startled incredulity. Now, after having talked the matter over with Jane, the thunder of the coming event seemed to crack in my brain.

Pat's going to have a baby! My heart was overfilled with joy. I looked proudly at the old castle that her child would some day own. Moved by my deep happiness, I gazed up at the beautiful, star-studded night sky. My gaze rested upon Mars, sparkling like a Burma ruby, and it occurred to me that what was going to happen to Pat, viewed scientifically, was more wonderful by far than a radio message or even a rocket from Mars. And yet these little physical and spiritual manifestations of a tiny soul being planted in a woman's body do not matter; they have become too commonplace.