Chapter V (4)

“The essence of merchandising,” said Sanford (he smote the arm of his chair, and leaned forward in emphasis), “and by merchandising I mean of course in the modern sense, merchandising on a big scale, is nothing but Confidence. Confidence, an impalpable thing, a state of mind. Now, sir, what is it that upbuilds circulation? It is Public Confidence. The assurance on the part of the public that the newspaper is reliable. It is a secret and inviolable conviction on the part of the reader that the integrity and enterprise of the paper are beyond cavil, in other words, unimpeachable. In order to create the Will-to-Purchase on the part of the prospect, in order to beget that desirable state of mind, there must be a state of mind in the paper itself. Note that word _Mind_. Now what is the Mind of the paper? I always ask every newspaper owner who consults me, what is the Mind of his paper?”

Without waiting for Mr. Birdlip to be embarrassed by his inability to answer this question, the ecstatic Sanford continued:

“The Mind of the paper is, of course, the Editorial Department. How subtle, how delicate, how momentous, is that function of commenting on the great affairs of the world! As I said in an address to a Rotary club recently, of what use to have all the mechanical perfections ever invented unless your editors are the right men? Walter Whitman, the efficiency engineer, said: 'Produce great persons: the rest follows.' That is the kind of production that counts most. Get great personalities for your editors, and watch the circulation rise. Of course the right kind of editors must be very highly paid.”

This was a strange doctrine to Mr. Birdlip, who never read the editorial page of his own paper, and secretly wondered how the editors found so much to write about.

“The great error that so many newspaper owners make,” said Sanford, sonorously, “is to think of their product as they would of any other article of commerce which is turned out day by day, in standardized units, from a factory. A newspaper is not standardized. It is born anew every issue. It is not a manufacturing routine that puts it together: it is a human organism, built up out of human brains. Every unit is different. It depends not primarily on machinery but on human personalities. I cannot understand why it is that newspaper owners yearn for the finest and most modern presses, and yet are often content to staff their journals with second-rate men.”

“I agree with you,” said Mr. Birdlip. “It is all a question of getting the right man. That is one reason why I am so fond of travelling; I always meet up with new ideas. Now, sir (I am sorry I do not know your name, for your face is rather familiar; I think I must have met you at some Rotary club), you seem to me a man of forceful and aggressive character. You are the kind of man I should like to have on the _Lens_, I heard you mention the paper to your secretary awhile back; you must be interested in it.”

Sanford was perfectly cool. “I might consider it,” he said.

“I think you would find the _Lens_ a pleasant paper to work on,” said Mr. Birdlip. “I flatter myself that the staff is a capable one, for the most part.”

“I should insist on being given a free hand,” said Sanford. “Perhaps the position of circulation manager----?”

“Let me think a moment,” said Mr. Birdlip. “I suppose I ought to visit with my editor-in-chief before firing any one to make room for you. But I must say I like the way you talk, straight from the shoulder, like that Dr. Cranium, you know. That's the sort of stuff we need.”

“Right!” cried Sanford. “If you always talk straight from the shoulder, you'll never talk through your hat.”

Mr. Birdlip relished this impromptu aphorism. “Well, now, let me see,” he said, pondering. “The editor-in-chief, the managing editor, the editorial writers--they're all pretty good men.”

“Of course I shouldn't care for a merely routine position,” said Sanford. “The only position I would consider would be one in which I could really build up circulation for you.” He was wondering inwardly whether to stand out for a ten thousand salary.

“Quite so,” said Mr. Birdlip. “I think I have it. How would you care to run a column? 'Straight From the Shoulder'--wouldn't that be a fine title?”

“Fine!” said Sanford, but not without a secret shudder. Still, he thought, gold can assuage anything; and he reflected on the rich, sedentary, and care-free life of a syndicated philosopher.

“Very well,” said the owner. “I've been looking around for a man with both feet on the ground----”

(“Both feet on the pay envelope is my idea,” said Sanford to himself.)

“And I think you're just the man I want. There's only one place in the paper I can think of that really needs a change. There's a fellow on the staff called Sanford, runs a kind of column, terrible stuff. I don't think he amounts to much. Now why couldn't you take his job?”

Sanford has never forgiven his brother-in-law for that curious strangled sound he emitted.

THE CLIMACTERIC

MR. EUSTACE VEAL was a manufacturer of cuspidors. His beautiful factory was one of the finest of its kind, equipped with complete automatic sprinklers, wire-glass windows, cafeteria on the top floor, pensions for superannuated employees, rosewood directors' dining room, mottoes from Orison Swett Marden on the weekly pay envelopes, and a clever young man in tortoise-shell spectacles hired at eighty dollars a week to write the house-organ (which was called _El Cuspidorado_).

Mr. Veal lived in the exclusive and clean-shaven suburb of Mandrake Park, where he had built a stucco mansion with Venetian blinds, a croquet lawn with a revolving spray on it on hot days, and a mansard butler. Here Mrs. Veal and the two Veal girls, Dora and Petunia, led the blameless life of the _embonpoint_ classes. The electric lights in the bedrooms were turned on promptly at ten o'clock every night, except on the sixteen winter evenings when the Veals occupied their box at the opera. During “Rigoletto” or “Pagliacci” the uncomplaining Mr. Veal would sit in silence with his head against the thick red velvet curtain at the back of the box, thinking up new ways to get an order for ten thousand nickel-plated seamless number 13's from the Pullman Company.

Mr. Veal, hampered as he was by the restrictions of success, was still full of the enjoyment of life. He had written a little brochure on “The Cuspidor: Its Use and Abuse Since the Times of the Pharaohs,” which was very well spoken of in the trade. A morocco-bound copy lay on the console table in Mrs. Veal's salon. It was he who invented the papier-maché spittoon, and the collapsible paper “companion” for travelling salesmen. It was he who had presented a solid silver spittoon de luxe to the King of Siam when that worthy visited the United States. And it was his idea, too, to name the beautiful shining brass model, especially recommended for hotel lobbies, El Cuspidorado. This was a stroke of imaginative genius, and several rival manufacturers wept because they had not thought of it first.

The spittoon magnate's habits were regular and sane. He rose by alarm clock at seven. He bathed, shaved, brushed his teeth with the vertical motion recommended by the toothbrush advertisers, breakfasted on cereal and cream and poached eggs, with one cup of strong coffee; walked leisurely to the station, bought a paper, and caught the 8.13 train. He avoided the other men who wanted him to sit with them, took the fifth chair on the left-hand side of the smoking car, and just as the train started he lit his first cigar. His commutation ticket was always ready for the conductor to punch. He never kept others waiting, just as he hated to be kept waiting himself. After his ticket had been punched and put back into an alligator-hide pocketbook, he opened the paper and studied it faithfully until the train got to the terminal.

At the factory Mr. Veal's routine was equally well-ordered and uniform. At nine o'clock he reached his private office, greeted his secretary, and ran over the morning mail, which had been opened and lay on his desk. Then he went through his dictation, which was carefully (even if not grammatically) accomplished. The sales reports for the preceding day were brought to him. Then he discussed any matters requiring attention with his department heads, calling them in one by one. At a quarter after twelve he walked up to the Manufacturers' Club for lunch, after which he played one game of pool.

He was back at the office by half-past two, and gave his passionate and devoted attention to the salivary needs of the nation until five o'clock. He caught the 5.23 train back to Mandrake Park, sitting on the right-hand side of the smoker where the setting sun would not dazzle on his newspaper.

But one day, about the time of the March equinox, when young ladies put furry pussywillows on their typewriter desks, and bank tellers crack the shells of spring jokes through the brass railings, Mr. Veal's behaviour was so peculiar as to cause anxiety among his associates.

He had ridden on the train as usual, without showing any abnormal symptoms. But when he was next observed, walking down Vincent Street, there was a red spot on his cheekbones and his expression was savage. He entered a haberdasher's shop and asked to see some neckties. When the clerk put out a tray of silk scarves in rich, sober colours, such as are commonly worn by successful and middle-aged merchants, Mr. Veal swore and dashed them aside.

“Good Lord!” he cried, “I'm not going to a funeral! Things like that are worn by Civil War veterans. What do you think I am, seventy years old? Give me something with some snap to it!”

And he chose a lemon-tinted cravat with vorticist patterns of brown and purple. He tore off the dark gray tie he had on and substituted the gaudy new one.

At the next corner he passed a shoe-shop. He hesitated a moment at the plate-glass window, then he entered and glared at the brisk young puppet who came forward with a smirk. He displayed his elastic-sided boots of the floorwalker type (which he had worn for years on account of his corns) and asked to have them removed. When they were off his feet he threw them to the other end of the long, narrow room. “I want some russet shoes with cloth tops,” he said. “And some silk socks to match, the kind the men wear in the magazine ads.”

When he left the shop, his feet might have been taken for those of Charley Chaplin, or of an assistant advertising manager of a department store.

*****

Mr. Veal reached his office nearly two hours late, and one of his office boys was instantly discharged for asking him whom he wanted to see. Indeed, in a new suit of violent black-and-white checks, and with a crush hat of velvety substance, he was almost unrecognizable. As he passed through the filing department a hush fell over the young ladies there. His secretary, looking nervously from her corner outside the private office, felt a tingling _scherzo_ run up and down the keyboard of her spine. Never before had she seen Mr. Veal wear flowers in his buttonhole, and as he swung the door of his office behind him, she sniffed the vibrating air. In the rich wake of cigar-fragrance always exhaled by her employer her sharp nostrils detected a new tang--the sweet scent of mignonette. Heavens! Was Mr. Veal using perfume?

Miss Stafford was an acute young woman. She had long been waiting the adroit moment to push her employer for a raise, which was indeed due her. She determined that this was the psychological day. When the sign of the Ram is ascendant in the zodiac, let employers tremble. This is when even the most faithful and long-enduring wage-earner dreams seditiously of a fatter manila envelope. Miss Stafford's typewriter had sung like a zither for a number of years, she had orchestrated many curious harmonies on it, and now she had reached the point where she was almost as indispensable to the business as Mr. Veal himself. She was carrying what the efficiency dopesters call the peak load.

The buzzer buzzed, and Miss Stafford hastened to the private office, nerving herself to throw cantilevers across the Rubicon.

To her surprise, Mr. Veal, instead of sitting glowering over the morning mail, was standing by the window, throwing a paper-weight in the air and failing to catch it. The sunlight blazing through the large windows seemed to surround his emphatic clothes with a prismatic fringe. To her amazement, instead of the customary brief and reserved greeting, he said:

“Hullo, Miss Stafford. Great weather, eh? Sorry I'm late, but I just couldn't keep my schedule this morning. Went out to buy myself some golf clubs. I think I'd better take up the game, don't you?”

He made a swing at an imaginary golf ball, and slipped on the polished floor, nearly falling down. He recovered himself.

“Here's some flowers for you,” he said, taking a bunch of daffodils from the desk. “Daffy-down-dillies, as the poets call 'em. Lovely flowers, hey? Now comes in the sweet of the year. What ho!”

He advanced toward her, and for one extraordinary moment she thought he was about to chuck her under the chin.

“Ask Mr. Foster to come in,” he said.

“Mr. Veal,” she said, nervously, “there's just one thing--I wanted to ask you about, my salary, don't you think, er, I think, it seems to me about time I had a raise. I've been here----”

“Bless my soul,” he said. “I never thought of it. Why, of course, you're right. Miss Stafford, how old would you say I am?”

Miss Stafford knew perfectly well that he was fifty-five, but she had learned the cunning of all women who have to manage men, whether those men be husbands, employers, or ticket scalpers.

“Why, Mr. Veal, in a good light and in your new suit, I should say about thirty-nine.”

“What are you getting now, Miss Stafford?”

“Thirty dollars.”

“Tell Mr. Mason to double it.”

The feminine mind moves in rapid zigzags, and Miss Stafford's first conscious and coherent thought was of a certain woollen sports suit she had seen in a window on Vincent Street marked $50.00.

“And by the way,” said Mr. Veal, “when you see Mr. Mason, tell him I've got a new motto for next week's pay envelopes. Here it is; I found it in the paper this morning. I don't know who wrote it--better have him credit it to Orison Swett Marden.”

He handed her a slip of paper, on which he had copied out:

Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;

For in my youth I never did apply

Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood:

Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo

The means of weakness and debility.

--Orison Swett Marden (?)

“Before you call Mr. Foster,” said the secretary, “Mr. Schmaltz of the Pullman Company is here to see you; he arrived just before you came in. He says he wants to place a large order for the cuspidorados.”

“Send him in,” said Mr. Veal, chuckling. “Hello, Schmaltz,” he cried, as the customer entered. “How's this for weather?”

“Great stuff!” said Schmaltz. “Makes us old fellows feel almost young again, doesn't it?”

Mr. Veal's face grew dark. He aged ten years in the instant. He pointed morosely to a chair.

“Mr. Veal,” said the other, “we want to place an order for ten thousand of the cuspidorados. Can you give us the old price?”

“I can _not_,” said Mr. Veal, shortly. “Materials have gone to the sky. I can't give you the--the old price. I'll give you a young price, a very young one indeed, based on the present state of the market. Eighteen and a quarter cents is the best I can do.”

Mr. Schmaltz raised racial hands. “Heavens!” he said, “you used to let us have them for fourteen and a half. Why, in the old days----”

Mr. Veal pounded the desk with his fist.

“If you use that world _old_ again, I'll assassinate you with a dish of ham!” he roared. “Great pigs' knuckles, what do you think this is, a home for the aged?”

*****

After Mr. Schmaltz had gone Mr. Veal sent for Foster, the foreman of the manufacturing department.

“Well,” he said, “how about those machines?”

“Mr. Veal,” said Foster, “we'll have to replace at least six of those Victor stampers. They're so old they simply can't do the work. You know when one of those machines is over five years old----”

Mr. Veal was pointing to the door.

“Get out!” he said.

At lunch-time Mr. Veal went up to the club as usual. Swinging up the street, in the bright sun and pellucid air, he felt quite cheerful, and stopped to buy himself a rhinoceros cane. In the dining room of the club he met Edwards, and they sat down together.

“Hello, old man,” said Edwards. “You're looking chipper for a veteran. Played any golf yet this year?”

“I don't play,” said Mr. Veal.

“Don't you? That's a mistake. It's the only game for us older fellows. Of course we can't score like the youngsters; but still we can get round and have a deal of fun----”

Mr. Veal clenched his fists. Spilling his soup, he leaped up and rushed from the room. He seized his coat and hat, forgetting the new cane, and fled to the nearest Turkish bath.

*****

And all because, when going downstairs in the railway terminal that morning, he had heard a man behind him say to another:

“There goes Veal! He's beginning to look old, isn't he?”

It was the first time in his life Mr. Veal had heard the damnable adjective applied to himself in earnest.

Wait until _your_ turn comes!

PUNCH AND JUDY

WHEN Judy Cronin first saw the topless towers of Manhattan rising into the lilac vagueness of a foggy winter morning she passed into a numb and frightened daze. Standing on the steerage deck of the _Celtic_, she peered tremulously at those fantastic impossible profiles of stone. Perhaps you don't know what it is to be thrown, ignorant and timid, into a place where everything is utterly strange--particularly a place as huge, violent, and hasty as New York. Judy, aged twenty-one, from a little village near Queenstown, was incapable of distinguishing, in the roaring voice of the city, that undertone of helpful kindness that is really there. On the same steamer came the widow of a famous Irish recusant and hungerstriker, and there were ten thousand people massed in West Street to cheer her. Judy heard the shouts of the crowd, and saw the lines of policemen on the pier. There was some of that quiet but menacing scuffling with which the various branches of the English-speaking world show their esteem for each other. Judy was not familiar with that definition of a patriot as one who makes trouble for his harmless fellow-citizens; but it looked as though she was blundering into some more of the tribulations they had had at home.

At last her sister Connie found her, sitting white and miserable on her very small trunk, clutching her imitation-silver coin-purse. Connie had been in New York for a couple of years, and it gave her a homesick throb to see that coin-purse--one of those little metal pocketbooks with slots to hold gold sovereigns and half-sovereigns. Father Daly had given it to Judy, years ago, but it had never had gold in the little sockets until Connie sent over the passage money to bring Judy to New York.

The city flashed by like a current-events film. Judy found herself in a friendly lodging-house in Brooklyn, kept by an Irishwoman who had been kind to Connie. Her sister then explained matters. Her own employers, with whom she had a position too good to abandon, had arranged to go South for the latter part of the winter. They had already delayed leaving so that Connie could meet her sister and get her settled. They had given Connie a few days' holiday for that purpose.

Therefore Judy must get a place as soon as possible. And that very afternoon the sisters (Judy still in a kind of dreadful dream) went to the office of a Brooklyn newspaper to insert an advertisement.

A great many people were watching the _Situations Wanted_ columns, and the next evening, at supper-time, Mrs. Leland called up the lodging-house number, which had been given in the ad. Connie went to the telephone. Mrs. Leland had a pleasant voice and “talked like gentry”, Connie said. She lived in Heathwood, Long Island, which is some twenty miles from town, and wanted a nurse to take care of two children. Connie agreed to take Judy out to Heathwood the next morning, to see if they could come to terms. Judy was inexperienced, but Mrs. Leland liked her looks. In short: by the time Judy had been in America three days, she was installed at Mrs. Leland's home in the country; and a few days later Connie had gone off to Florida.

Now Judy was really very fortunate in these random proceedings, for she had found a good home under an exceptionally kind and understanding mistress. And therefore perhaps it was unreasonable of her to be so unhappy. But no one has ever demonstrated that human affairs are much controlled by reason. Judy was dumbly and piteously miserable. She was homesick and lonely, and half-mad with strangeness. She was not really slow-witted; but the confusion of her spirits put her into a kind of black stupor. Everything was uncouth to her: steam heat, electric light, gas-stove, telephone--even the alarm clock in her bedroom. Not knowing how to turn off her radiator, and having the simple person's distrust of opening windows in a strange place, the first few nights she was sick with heat and suffocation. In her sleep she cried out indistinguishable words about being shot. In spite of Mrs. Leland's patient tuition, she made every possible kind of mistake. The children, with the quickness of youth, realized her inexperience and uncertainty, and played a thousand impish pranks. Mrs. Leland could see that the girl had been through distresses at home, and kept the evening papers, with their headlines about Ireland, out of sight. But one evening, in the kitchen, Judy came upon a Sunday rotogravure section with pictures of burnt streets in Cork. The look of the people in those photographs went through her heart. The men wearing caps, the women in shawls, something even in the shape of trouser legs and heavy shoes, reminded Judy how far she was from all that she understood. It's the little things you take for granted at home that come back to hurt you when you're away. That night, sitting in her bedroom next the nursery, she shook herself ill with sobs.

One who might have helped her greatly took pains to add to her bewilderment. Hattie, Mrs. Leland's coloured cook, a retainer of long standing, was sharply disgruntled at this new addition to the household. Jealousy was the root of Hattie's irritation, and it shot up a rapid foliage of poison ivy. The previous nurse, a bosom friend of Hattie's own race, had been discharged in December for incompetence. Moreover, Hattie had not forgotten poor naïve Judy's startled look when they first encountered. Judy had hardly seen a coloured person before, and was honestly alarmed. Hattie, though loyal to Mrs. Leland in her own primitive fashion, deeply resented this interloper. The invasion proved that Mrs. Leland was no longer entirely dependent on the particular clique of Heathwood coloured society in which Hattie moved. The cook's logic was narrow but rigorous. The sooner the intruder could be discouraged out of the house, the sooner the Black Hussars (as Heathwood ladies called the coloured colony on whom they largely relied for assistance) would resume undivided sway. Mrs. Leland had had a Polish girl as a stop-gap for a few days after the coloured nurse left; and observing the cook's demeanour toward this unfortunate, Mr. Leland had remarked that Hattie was working for a black Christmas.

So Hattie, who was sharp-tongued and very capable, hectored Judy whenever she entered the kitchen, and by all the black arts at her command (which were many) added to the girl's distress. Judy, in spite of her mistress's kindness, grew more and more wretched. As Mr. Leland said in private (pursuing the train of his previous pun), the maids were black and blue. Mrs. Leland, much goaded by domestic management and the care of a very small baby, began to wonder whether she had not added another child to look after rather than lightening her burdens. And then she saw that Judy was on the verge of nervous collapse. She tried to hearten the girl by giving her an extra holiday. Judy was given some money, packed off to the station in a taxi, and sent on her maiden trip to town in the hope that city sights and shop windows would revive her interest in life. Mrs. Flaherty, the lodging-house lady in Brooklyn, was telephoned to, and promised to send her small boy to meet the girl at the station.

It happened to be the eve of the genial Saint Valentine's Day. Shop windows were gay with pleasantly exaggerated symbols of his romantic power. Winter afternoons in the city are cruel to the unfortunate, for the throng of the streets the light and lure of the scene, make loneliness all the worse if there is trouble in your heart.

Judy sat in the waiting room of the Long Island terminal in Brooklyn, and tears were on her face. She had somehow missed Mrs. Flaherty's lad. Then she had tried to find her way to the lodging-house, but grew more and more frightened and bewildered as she strayed. Giving that up, she had gone into a movie, and there, for a while, she had been happy. The favourites of the screen are the true internationalists: they speak a language, crude though it often is, which is known from Brooklyn to Bombay. But then pictures were shown of scenes in Ireland. She came out with cold hands, and wandered vaguely along the streets until dusk. Finally, in despair, she groped back to the station at Flatbush Avenue, and sat forlornly on a bench, too weary and sorry even to ask how to get home.

With the unerring instinct of the stranger for choosing the wrong place, she had blundered into the downstairs station, by the train-gates, missing the waiting room above where departures are duly announced by orotund men in blue and silver. In that chilly cavern she sat, dumbly watching the press of homeward commuters laden with parcels and papers. Red signboards clattered up and down over the iron gates, and she puzzled doubtfully over such names as _Speonk_, and _Far Rockaway_. The last somehow recalled a nursery rhyme and made her feel even more lost and homesick. Occasionally, with a gentle groan and rumble, an electric train slid up to the railing and stared at her with two fierce hostile eyes. The soda fountain in the corner was doing a big business: timidly she went over, feeling cold, and asked for tea. To her amazement, there were no hot drinks to be had. The people, all gulping iced mixtures, stared at her curiously. Sure, this is a mad country, she thought. The clock telling the time was the only thing she could properly understand.

So it was the clock, at last, that brought her to startled action. It was getting late. A tall, good-looking fellow in a blue uniform came out of a room at the back of the station, carrying two lighted lanterns. He halted not far from where she was sitting, and compared his watch with the Western Union clock. Of all the hundreds she had seen, he was the first who looked easily questionable. With a sudden impulse Judy got up, clutching her coin-purse.

“If you please, where will I be after taking the train to Heathwood?” she said, nervously.

“Heathwood? The 6:18 makes Heathwood. Right over there, the gate's just opening. Change at Jamaica.”

He looked down at her, wondering but kindly. He was puzzled at the frightened way she was staring at his coat-collar; he could hardly have guessed that to wet eyes the embroidered letters had at first seemed to be _liar_. Her puny, pinched face was streaked with tears, the red knitted muffler made her pallor even whiter. The little imitation fur trimmings on her coat sleeves and collar were worn and shabby.

“Thank you,” she said, blindly, and started off for the wrong gate.

“Hey!” he called, and overtook her in a few long strides. “This way, miss. Got your ticket?”

In a sudden panic she opened her purse, and could not find it.

“Oh, surely I've lost it,” she cried. “Where's the booking office?”

“The booking office?” he said. “D'you mean the news-stand? Here you are.” He picked up the ticket, which she had dropped in her nervousness.

“That's all right,” he said, encouragingly. “This train, over here. I'm one of the crew. I'll see you get there. Don't worry.”

He escorted her through the gate, and found her a seat on the train, beside a stout commuter half buried in parcels.

“Now you stay right here,” he said. “I'll tell you when we get to Jamaica, and show you the Heathwood train.” He smiled genially, and left her.

Judy got out her wet handkerchief and wiped her face. As the train ran through the tunnel, she wished she had been on the inside of the seat, for the dark window would have been useful as a mirror. “He saw me crying,” she kept repeating to herself. The man beside her blanketed himself with a newspaper, and the pile of packages on his knees kept sliding over onto her lap, but she was oblivious. She was thinking of the tall man in blue with the queer cap. How kind he had been. The first real kindness she had met in all that nightmare afternoon.

Presently he came through the car. She could see him far down the aisle, leaning courteously over each seat. At first she thought he was just saying a friendly word to all the passengers. Sure, that's like him, she said to herself: he has a grand way with him. Then she saw that he was punching tickets with a silver clipper. Glory, it's the Guard himself, she thought. I wonder will he speak to me again?

The man beside her thrust an arm out from his mass of bundles and held a large oblong of red-striped cardboard across in front of her face. This reminded Judy of her own ticket, which was so different from her neighbour's that she worried for a moment lest it should not be valid. Here was her friend, bending above her with a smile.

“Everything all right?” he said. “The next stop's Jamaica. That's where you get off. Watch for me at this door, and I'll show you the Heath-wood train.” Click, click: the two tickets were punched, and he went on. Judy shut up her coin purse with a snap, and began to notice the hat worn by the lady in the seat in front.

At Jamaica she found him in the vestibule, his head overtopping the pushing crowd. “This way,” he said, and led her quickly across the platform. “Jack,” he said to the brakeman on the other train, “tell this lady when you get to Heathwood.”

“Well, Judy,” said Mrs. Leland when her nursemaid got back to the house. “How much better you look! Did you have a good time?”

“Oh, a grand time,” said Judy. Her face had a touch of colour and indeed even her awkward bog-trotting gait seemed lighter and more sprightly. “That's good,” said her mistress. “You'd better run down and get some supper before Hattie puts everything away. You can put Jack to bed after you've had something to eat.”

“Pretty late for supper,” grumbled Hattie, as Judy came into the kitchen. “Doan' you think I got nothing to do but wait on you?”

“I'll get my own supper,” said Judy, politely. “Don't you bother.”

“You've got a head on your shoulders,” said Hattie, banging some dishes on to the kitchen table. “Whyn't you use it and get back on time?”

“The black banshee's up in arms again,” said Judy to herself. “I'll hold my peace.”

“That's the trouble with foreigners,” growled Hattie. “They ain't got no sense. These Irish micks come over here, puttin' on airs, where nobody wants 'em.”

Judy's sallow cheek began to burn a darker tint.

“Ah, nabocklish!” she said. “There's somebody loves me, at any rate.”

She hurried through supper, and ran upstairs to put Jack to bed. The six-year-old was amusing himself by snapping open and shut something that gleamed in the lamplight.

“Here!” she said. “What are you doing with Judy's purse?”

Jack looked up in surprise. It was the first time that he had heard that note of command in the meek Judy's voice.

“I found it on your bureau,” he said.

“Well, leave it be, darlin'.” She took it from him. “Glory above, what's become of----?”

She fell on her knees on the floor and began searching.

“Ah, here, 'tis!” she cried, gladly. From the rug she picked up a tiny red cardboard heart, and replaced it carefully in one of the sockets of her purse.

“What is it?” said Jack, yawning.

“Sure, it's my Valentine!” said Judy. “It ain't many girls that gets a Valentine from a big handsome man like that the first time he sees them.”

I have often wondered how many of the Long Island trainmen use a heart-shaped punch.

REFERRED TO THE AUTHOR

YES, “Obedience” is a fine play. I'm glad they've revived it. Did you know that the first time it was produced, Morgan Edwards played the part of Dunbar? It's rather an odd story.

I never think of Edwards without remembering the dark, creaky stairs in that boarding-house on Seventy-third Street. That was where I first met him. We had a comical habit of always encountering on the stairs. We would pass with that rather ridiculous murmur and sidling obeisance of two people who don't know each other but want to be polite. I was interested in him at once. Even on the shadowy stairway I could see that he had a fine head, and there was something curiously attractive about his pale, preoccupied face. There was a touch of the unworldly about him, and a touch of the tragic, too. You know how you divine things about people. “He has troubles of his own” was the banal phrase that came into my mind. Also there was something queerly familiar about him. I wondered if I had seen Him before, or only imagined him. I was busy writing, at that time, and my mind was peopled with energetic phantoms. The thought struck me that perhaps he was someone I had invented for a story, but had never given life to. I wondered, was this pale and rather reproachful spectre going to haunt me until the tale was written? At any rate, whatever the story was, I had forgotten it.

One day, as I creaked up the first flight, I saw that he was standing at the head of the stairs, waiting for me to pass. A door was open behind him, and there was light enough to see him clearly. Tall, thin, beautifully shaven on a fine angular jaw that would not be easy to shave, I was surprised to see an air of sudden cheerfulness about him that was almost incongruous. Having thought of him only as a sort of melancholy hallucination living on a dingy stairway, it was quite startling to see him with his face lit up like a lyric poet's, a glow of mundane exhilaration in his eyes. For the first time in our meetings he looked as though to speak to him would not break in upon his secret thoughts. He was the kind of chap, you know, who usually looked as though he was busy thinking. I remember what I said because it was so inane. Some people don't like to cross on the stairs. I looked up as I came to the turn in the steps, and said, “Superstitious?” He smiled and said “No, I guess not!”

“Only in the literal sense, at this moment,” I said. An absurd remark, and a horrible pun which I regretted at once, for I thought I would have to explain it. Nothing more humiliating than having to explain a bad pun. But if I didn't explain it, it would seem rude. He looked puzzled, then his face lit up charmingly. “Superstitious--standing above you, eh? I never thought of the meaning before!”

I came up the last steps. “Pardon the vile pun,” I said. Then I knew where I had seen him before, and recognized him. “Aren't you Morgan Edwards?” I asked. “Yes,” he said.

“I thought so. I remember you in 'After Dinner'. I wrote the notice in the _Observer_ .”

“By Jove, did you? I _am_ glad to meet you. I think that was the nicest thing any one ever said.” His gaunt and pensive face showed a quick flash of that direct and honest friendliness which is so appealing. We found that we were both living on the fourth floor. For similar reasons, undoubtedly. I'm afraid he thought, at first, that I was a dramatic critic of standing. Afterward I explained that the “After Dinner” notice had been only a fluke. I was on the _Observer_ when the show was put on, and one of the dramatic men happened to be ill.

Wait a minute: give me a chance! I'll tell it exactly as it came to me, in snips and shreds. At first I didn't pay much attention. I had problems of my own that summer. You know what a fourth-floor hall bedroom is in hot weather. I had given up my newspaper job, and was trying to finish a novel. I couldn't work late at night, when it was cool, because if I kept my typewriter going after nine-thirty the old maid in the next room used to pound on the partition. I didn't get on very well with the work, and the money was running low. Every now and then I would meet Edwards in the hall. He looked ill and worried, and I used to think there was a touching pathos in his careful neatness. My own habits run the other way--my Palm Beach suit was a wreck, I remember--but Edwards was always immaculate. I could see--having made it my business to observe details--how cunningly he had mended his cuffs and soft collars. Poor devil! I used to see him going out about noon, with his cane and Panama hat. I dare say he scrubbed his hat with his toothbrush. Summer is a hard time for an actor who hasn't had a job all spring. Of course there are the pictures, and summer stock, but I gathered that he had been ill, and then had turned down several offers of that sort on account of something coming along that he had great hopes for. I remembered his really outstanding work in “After Dinner”, that satiric comedy that fell dead the winter before. Most of the critics gave it a good roasting, but knowing what I do now I expect the real trouble was poor direction. Fagan was the director, and what did he know of sophisticated comedy? As I say, I had reviewed the piece for the _Observer_, and had been greatly struck by Edwards's playing. Not a leading part, but exquisitely done.

But just at that time I was absorbed in my own not-too-successful affairs. For several years I had been saying to myself that I would do great stuff if I could only get away from the newspaper grind for a few months. And then, when I had saved up five hundred dollars, and buried myself there on Seventy-third Street to write, I couldn't seem to make any headway. I got half through the novel, and then saw that it was paltry stuff. It was flashy, spurious, and raw. One warm evening I was sitting at my window, smoking mournfully and watching some girls who were laughing and talking in a big apartment house that loomed over our lodgings like an ocean liner beside a tugboat. There was a tap at the door. Edwards asked if he could come in. I was surprised, and pleased. He kept very much to himself.

“Glad to see you,” I said. “Sit down and have a pipe.”

“I didn't want to intrude,” he said. “I just wanted to ask you something. You're a literary man. Do you know anything about Arthur Sampson?”

I had to confess that I had never heard the name. No one had, at that time, you remember.

“He's written a play,” Edwards said. “A perfectly lovely piece of work. I've got a part in it. By heaven, it seems too good to be true--after a summer like this: illness, the actors' strike, and all that--to get into something so fine. I've just read the whole script. I'm so keen about it, I'm eager to know who the author is. I thought perhaps you might know something about him.”

“I guess he's a new man,” I said. “What's the play called?”

“'Obedience.' You know, I've never had such a stroke of luck--it's as if the part had been written for me.”

“Splendid,” I said, and I was honestly pleased to hear of his good fortune. “Is it the lead?”

“Oh, no. Of course they want a big name for that. Brooks is the man. My part is only the foil--provides the contrast, you know--on the payroll as well as on the stage.” He laughed, a little cynically.

“Who's producing it?”

“Upton.”

“You don't mean to tell me Upton's got anything good?” I knew little enough about theatrical matters, but even outsiders know Upton's sort of producing, which mostly consists of musical shows where an atrocious libretto is pulled through by an opulent chorus and plenty of eccentric dancing. “A chorus that outstrips them all” was one of his favourite advertising slogans.

“That's why I was wondering about the author, Sampson. This must be his first, or he'd never have given it to Upton. Or is Upton going to turn over a new leaf?”

“The only leaves Upton is likely to turn over are figleaves,” I said, brutally. Upton's previous production had been called “The Figleaf Lady”.

“That's the amazing part of it,” said Edwards. “This thing is really exquisite. It is beautifully written: quiet, telling, nothing irrelevant, not a false note. What will happen to it in Upton's hands, God knows. But he seems enthusiastic. He's a likable cutthroat: let's hope for the best. You're busy--forgive me for breaking in.”

*****

Well, of course some of you have seen “Obedience” since that time, and you know that what Edwards told me was true. The play _was_ lovely; not even Upton could kill it altogether. It was Sampson's first. Have any of you read it in printed form? It reads as well as it plays. And the part that Edwards was cast for--Dunbar--is, to any competent spectator, the centre of the action. You remember the lead: the cold, hard, successful hypocrite; and then Dunbar, the blundering, kindly simpleton whose forlorn attempts to create happiness for all about him only succeed in bringing disaster to the one he loves best. It's a great picture of a fine mind and heart, a life of rich, generous possibilities, frittered and wasted and worn out by the needless petty obstinacies of destiny. And all the tragedy (this was the superb touch) because the wretched soul never had courage enough to be unkind. What was it St. Paul, or somebody, said about not being disobedient to the heavenly vision? Dunbar, in the play, was obedient enough, and his heavenly vision made his life a hell. It was the old question of conflicting loyalties. How are you going to solve that?

I suppose the tragic farce is the most perfect conception of man's mind--outside the higher mathematics, I dare say. Everyone knows Sampson's touch now, but it was new then. Some of his situations came pretty close to the nerve-roots. The pitiful absurdity of people in a crisis, exquisite human idiocy where one can't smile because grotesque tragedy is so close... those were the scenes that Upton's director thought needed “working up”. But I'm getting ahead of my story.

Well, now, let me see. I'd better be a little chronological. It must have been September, because I know I took Labour Day off and went to Long Beach for a swim. I had just about come to the conclusion that my novel was worthless, and that I'd better get a job of some sort. At the far end of the boardwalk, you remember, there's a quiet hotel where one gets away from the crowd, and where you see quite nice-looking people. After I'd had my swim, I thought I'd stroll up that way and have supper there. It's not a cheap place, but I had been living on lunch-counter food all summer, and I felt I owed myself a little extravagance. I was on my way along the boardwalk, enjoying the cool, strong whiff that comes off the ocean toward sunset, when I saw Edwards, on the other side of the promenade, walking with a girl. My eye caught his, and we raised our hats. I was going on, thinking that perhaps he wasn't so badly off as I had imagined, when to my surprise he ran after me. He looked very haggard and ill, and seemed embarrassed.

“Look here,” he said, “it's frightfully awkward: I must have had my pocket picked somehow. I've lost my railroad tickets and everything. Could you possibly lend me enough to get back to town? I've got a lady with me, too.”

I didn't need to count my money to know how much I had. It was just about five dollars, and, as you know, that doesn't go far at Long Beach. I told him how I stood. “I can give you enough for the railroad fares, and glad to,” I said. “But how about supper?”

“Oh, we're not hungry,” he said; “we had a big lunch.” I knew this was probably bravado, but I liked him for saying it. While I was feeling in my pocket for some bills, and wondering how to pass them over to him unobtrusively, he said, “I'd like to introduce you to Miss Cunningham. We're going to be married in the autumn.”

You may have seen Sylvia Cunningham? If so, you know how lovely she is. Not pretty but with the simple charm that beauty can't----

Well, that's trite! She'll never be a great actress, but in the rôle of Sylvia Cunningham she's perfect. I hate to call her slender--it's such an overworked word, but what other is there? Dark hair and clear, amberlucent brown eyes, and a slow, searching way of talking, as if she were really trying to put thought into speech. She, too, poor child, had had a bad summer, I guessed: there was a neat little mend in her glove. She was very friendly--I think Edwards must have told her about that _Observer_ notice. I saw that they were both much humiliated at their mishap, and I judged that genial frankness would carry off the situation best.

“Life among the artists!” I said. “What are our assets?”

“I've got seventeen cents,” said Edwards. It was a mark of fine breeding, I thought, that he did not insist upon saying how much it was that he had lost.

Miss Cunningham began to open her purse. “I have----”

“Nonsense!” I said. “What you have doesn't enter into the audit. In the vulgar phrase, your money's no good. I've got five dollars and a quarter. Now I suggest we go to Jamaica and get supper there, and then go back to town by trolley. It'll be an adventure.”

Well, that was what we did, and very jolly it was. You know how it is: artists and actors and manicure girls and newspapermen are accustomed to ups and downs of pocket; and when they have a misery in the right-hand trouser they make up for it in a spirit of genial comradeship. Jamaica is an entertaining place. In a little lunchroom, which I remembered from a time when I covered a story out that way, we had excellent ham and eggs, and a good talk.

As we sat in that little white-tiled restaurant, I couldn't help watching Edwards. I don't know how to make this plain to you, but our talk, which was cheerful enough, was the least important part of the occasion. Talk tells so little, anyway: most of it's a mere stumbling in an almost foreign tongue when it comes to expressing the inward pangs and certainties that make up life. I had a feeling, as I saw those two, that I was coming closer than ever before to something urgent and fundamental in the human riddle. I thought that I had never seen a man so completely in love. When he looked at her there was a sort of--well, a sort of possession upon him, an enthusiasm, in the true sense of that strange word. I thought to myself that Keats must have looked at Fanny Brawne in just that way. And--you know what writers are--I must confess that my observation of these two began to turn into “copy” in my mind. I was wondering whether they might not give me a hint for my stalled novel.

There are some engaged couples that make it a point of honour to be a bit off-hand and jocose when any one else is with them. Just to show, I suppose, how sure they are of each other. And somehow I had expected actors, to whom the outward gestures of passion are a mere professional accomplishment, to be a little blasé or polished in such matters. But there was a perfect candour and simplicity about them that touched me keenly. Their relation seemed a lovely thing. Too lovely, and too intense perhaps, to be entirely happy, I thought, for I could see in Edwards's face that his whole life and mind were wrapped up in it. I may have been fanciful, but at that time I was seeing the human panorama not for itself but as a reflection of my own amateurish scribblings. In my novel I had been working on the theory--not an original one, of course--that the essence of tragedy is fixing one's passion too deeply on anything in life. In other words, that happiness only comes to those who do not take life too seriously. Destiny, determined not to give up its secrets, always maims or destroys those who press it too closely. As we laughed and enjoyed ourselves over our meal, I was wondering whether Edwards, with his strange air of honourable sorrow, was a proof of my doctrine.

Of course we talked about the new play. Edwards had persuaded Upton to give Miss Cunningham a place in the cast, and she was radiant about it. Her eyes were like pansies as she spoke of it. I remember one thing she said:

“Isn't it wonderful? Morgan and I are together again. You know how much it means to us, for if the show has a run we can get married this winter.”

“This fall,” Edwards amended.

“Morgan's part is fine,” she went on, after a look at him that made even a hardened reporter feel that he had no right to be there. “It's really the big thing in the play for any one who can understand. It's just made for him.”

She was thoughtful a moment, and then added: “It's _too much_ made for him, that's the only trouble. You're living with him, Mr. Roberts. Don't let him take it too hard. He thinks of nothing else.”

I made some jocular remark, I forget what. Edwards was silent for a minute. Then he said: “If you knew how I've longed for a part like that--a part that I could really lose myself in.”

“I shouldn't care,” I said, “to lose myself in a part. Suppose I couldn't find myself again when the time came?”

He turned to me earnestly.