Magnus Laurens had already gone. By good fortune, young Jeremy Robson caught a glimpse of his square and powerful figure, emerging from the crowd and going down a side street. A girl in a riding-habit was with him. In the bearing of her slender body, in the poise of the little head with its tight-packed strands of tawny hair, Jeremy Robson caught a hint of a subtle and innate quality, something gallant and proud and challenging. He overtook them.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Laurens. My name is Robson. I’m a reporter for The Record. Could I have a word with you?”
The water-power magnate turned upon him a face of mingled annoyance and amusement.
“This is what I get for making a spectacle of myself, I take it,” he grumbled. “What do you want to know? Why I did it?”
“No. That’s plain enough. Who was the boy in the balcony?”
“Boy?” repeated Mr. Laurens in surprise.
“Yes. The kid that stood up when they began ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ Do you know him?”
“Let me refer that question to Miss Marcia Ames. She was right at the spot, in the balcony. Miss Ames, Mr. Robson.”
Jeremy bowed and found himself looking into two large, young, and extremely self-possessed grayish eyes, frank and happy eyes on the surface, but with inscrutable lights and depths beneath. For the rest, his hasty impression recorded an alert, intelligent, and delicately slanted face, and an almost disconcertingly direct regard. The skin was of that translucent brown-over-pink which the sun god bestows only upon his tried and true acolytes.
“Do you know the boy, Miss Ames?”
“What boy?” Her voice was cool and liquid and endearing, and just a bit lazily indifferent, with a strange hint—never anything more—of accent.
“The boy who stood in the first row of the balcony.”
“That was not a boy.”
“No?”
“That was I.”
“You! You’re much too tall.”
“If you thought me a boy I would seem much shorter,” she returned composedly.
“Do you mind telling me how you came to stand up as you did?”
“I always do when they play my national anthem. Do not you?”
The “do not you” gave the young man the clue to her speech, to the slightly exotic quality of it. It was less the accent than the clear precision of her use of words, without the slur or contraction of common usage. The charm of her soft and rather deep voice saved it from any taint of the pedantic.
“No,” said he.
“Ah? But perhaps you are not an American.”
“What else should I be?”
She shrugged her shoulders slightly.
“Nor do I,” put in Magnus Laurens, “I’m ashamed to say.”
“At all events, you did it this time. It was very nice in you. Usually I feel quite lonely. And once they were going to arrest me for it.”
“Where was that?” asked Jeremy Robson, stealthily reaching for his folded square of scratch paper.
“In Germany. When I was at school there. Are you going to put all this in the paper?”
“Would you mind?”
“I suppose I ought to mind. It is very forward and unmaidenly, is it not, to permit one’s self to be dragged into print?”
“It is,” said Magnus Laurens, his shrewd eyes twinkling, “and about one hundred and one maidens out of every hundred just love it, according to my observations.”
“I do not think that I should object,” said Miss Ames calmly. “In fact I should be curious to see what you would say about me.”
That was Jeremy Robson’s first intimation of her unique frankness of attitude toward herself as toward all other persons and things.
“We are on our way to the hotel where Mrs. Laurens is waiting for us,” explained the water-power dictator. “Why not walk along with us while you conclude the interview?”
“I haven’t much more to ask Miss Ames,” said the reporter, complying, “except what started her on her patriotic habit.”
“My father was an army officer,” she explained. “While he was alive we always stood up together. Now I could no more sit through ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ than you would wear your hat in church. But I really do not see anything to write about in that. There was much, surely, more interesting at the meeting.”
“What, for instance?”
“The whole affair,” she said vaguely. “It seemed to me strange. What are so many German subjects doing over here?”
“Those aren’t German subjects, my dear,” said Mr. Laurens. “They’re American citizens, mostly.”
“Surely not!” exclaimed the girl. “The German flags, and the pictures of the Emperor, and all the talk about the German spirit, and—and ‘Deutschland über alles.’ From Americans?”
“Certainly,” said the reporter. “And good ones.”
“I should think they would better be called good Germans. One cannot imagine that sort of thing occurring in a German city. I mean if the case were reversed, and Americans wanted to hold such a meeting.”
“No? What would happen?”
“Verboten. Lèse-majesté. Anti-imperialismus. Something dreadful of that sort.”
“They aren’t as broad-minded in such things as we are,” observed Mr. Laurens, in a tone which caused young Jeremy Robson to glance at him curiously and then become thoughtful.
“Did you notice that fat and glossy person on the stage, the one who had just made that speech—what was his name? Bausch,5 I think—did you notice his patronizing grin when you got up, Mr. Laurens? As if he felt a calm superiority to your second-rate patriotism.”
“What a malicious young person!” said Laurens. “There’s really no harm in Bausch that can’t be blown off like froth from beer.”
“I suppose there is a story in all that,” ruminated young Jeremy Robson: “if I had the sense to see it. Maybe it would take a historian’s mind instead of a reporter’s to see it right. But I think I can get some of it into my ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ story.”
“Good luck to you and it, then,” said Magnus Laurens cordially. “I’d like to see someone in this town at this time point out that, after all, America is America.”
“Would you?” said the girl. “Walk around to the next block and I will show you what I saw this morning as I passed.”
They followed her around the corner and stopped before a tiny shop with a giant’s boot swinging in front of it. The legend over the door read:
Boot & Shoe Infirmary
Eli Wade, Surgeon
Across the window was stretched a brand-new American flag, and beneath it a second legend, roughly inked on packing-paper and secured to the glass with cobbler’s wax:
The Flag of Our Country. It stands alone.
Two beribboned, bespangled, bebadged German Federates passed near them, and paused.
“That is the man who refused to decorate with our colors,” said one, in German.
“Pfui!” said the second contemptuously, “’s machts nichts. Matters nodding!”
Jeremy Robson took off his hat and made his adieus. “You’ve given me something to think about,” he said, apportioning his acknowledgement impartially, though his eyes were on the strange and alluring face of Marcia Ames. “Good-bye, and thank you.”
“If you’re grateful for being made to think,” returned Magnus Laurens, good humoredly, “there’s hope for you as a reporter yet. That’s a good-looking boy,” he added to his companion, as the young man turned away.
“Good-looking?” she repeated, with a rising inflection that controverted the opinion.
“Oh, not a young Adonis. But there’s something under that thatch of hair of his or I’m no guesser. Grit, and purpose, and, I think, honesty. I hope he doesn’t make hash of us in his paper.”
Allowing himself an hour and a half, the reporter turned out in that time what he firmly believed to be “a pippin of a story.” After delivering the final page to an approving copy-reader he washed up, got his coat
and hat and started for the door. In the hallway he came upon Senator Martin Embree, just closing a conversation with Farley, the editor-in-chief.
“No politics in this, you know,” the Senator was saying, in his sunny voice.
“I understand,” said Farley. “If there were—”
“We’d probably be on opposite sides as usual. This is simply a case of not stirring up useless ill-feeling.”
“Quite right. And we’re much obliged to you. As long as The Guardian won’t touch it, you can rely on us.”
“I was sure I could.” The Senator turned and came face to face with the reporter. “Hello, Mr. Robson,” he said with his enveloping smile, and Jeremy went on feeling that the world was a more friendly place, for having encountered that expression of human good-will.
He descended into Fenchester’s main street. For the day, it might have been a foreign city. It was all aflutter with streamers inscribed “Wilkommen” followed by sundry German tags. German speech crossed German speech in the humming air. German faces, moist, heavy-hued, good-humored, were lifted to the insignia of the various Bunds, Vereins, Gesellschafts, and Kranzes, all pledged to the fostering and maintenance of a tenacious and irreconcilable foreign culture in the carelessly hospitable land which they had adopted as their own. Over streets, residences, stores, public buildings waved the banners of imperial Germany.
Far above it all, from the dome of the capitol, floated the Stars and Stripes. The flag represented a formality. It meant nothing in particular to anybody, except that the Legislature was then in session. Weaving in the languid air, it seemed remote, lonely, occluded from the jovial fellowship of the swarming Teuton colors. For the time, at least, it had been put aside from men’s minds. It was an alien in the land whose sons had died for it, and would again die for it in a day drawing inevitably nearer.
2
The pippin1 of a story never ripened into print. Young Mr. Robson’s formal report of the meeting, a staid bit of journalism, appeared in full. But not a word of that brilliant pen-picture which he had so affectionately worked out. With a flaccid hope that there might have been a mistake somewhere, its author perused the columns of The Record a second time. Nothing! Perhaps, whispered hope, they had held it over. Being of the “sketch” order, it was good at any time. Daring greatly, he invaded the editorial sanctum where the proof-hooks hang. On the second he found his work of art. Upon the margin was rubber-stamped a single word:
“Killed.”
Young Jeremy Robson felt as if that lethal monosyllable had been simultaneously imprinted upon his journalistic ambitions. Like salt to the smart of his professional hurt came another thought. What would Miss Marcia Ames think of him when she opened the paper and found nothing of the promised article there? Would there be disappointment in the depths of those disturbing eyes? Or—more probable and intolerable supposition—laughter at the expense of the young cockerel of a reporter who had crowed so confidently about what he was going to do? Happily for the reporter’s immediate future, Mr. Farley had departed. For, were that mild, editorial gentleman still available for the purpose, young Jeremy Robson had straightway bearded him in his lair, demanded an explanation, denounced him as a soggy-souled Philistine, thrown his job in his teeth, and if he had exhibited symptoms of being “snooty” (the word is of young Mr. Robson’s off-duty hours, and he must be responsible therefor), bunged him one in the eye.
At which critical point young Mr. Robson came to and laughed at himself, albeit somewhat ruefully. It was his saving grace that already he had learned to laugh at himself. Many an equally high-spirited youngster has gone to the devil, because he let the devil get in his laugh first.
“Souvenir of a lost masterpiece,” observed Jeremy, folding the galley for accommodation to his pocket. He decided to take his medicine; to say no word of the matter to anyone, though he would mightily have liked to know why the story was killed.
His resolution of silence was abandoned as the result of a meeting with Andrew Galpin on the following morning. The Guardian man accosted him:
“Didn’t see your ‘Star-Spangled’ story, Bo.”
“No.”
“What became of it?”
“Killed. What became of yours?”
“Didn’t write any.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a reporter; that’s why. Why queer your paper by writing American stuff on a German day!”
“Think that’s why my stuff was killed?” asked Robson, impressed.
“Ay-ah,” assented Galpin. “What did you think?”
“I thought perhaps it wasn’t good enough.”
“Bunk!” said the downright Galpin. “You didn’t think it at all.”
“Well, I didn’t,” admitted his junior, reddening. “I read it over in proof. I think it’s dam’ good.”
“That’s the talk! Got a proof with you?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s see.” Galpin leaned against a convenient railing, and proceeded to absorb, rather than read, the two-thirds column, with the practiced swiftness of his craft. “Ay-ah. You’re right,” he corroborated. “It is dam’ good.”
“But not good enough for The Record.”
“Too good. It’s got too much guts.”
Jeremy Robson repeated the rugged Saxon word in a tone of uncomprehending inquiry.
“Too American,” expounded the other. “Too much ‘This-is-our-country-and-don’t-you-forget-it’ in it.”
“Show me one line where—”
“It’s between the lines. You couldn’t keep it out with barbed wire. You’re no reporter,” said Andrew Galpin severely. “What d’ you think you’re writing for The Record? Poetry?”
“Look here!” said the bewildered Robson. “You just said it was good and now—”
“And now I’m telling you it’s rotten. Punk! As newspaper work, for The Record. Or any other paper hereabouts on this great and glorious German day. Why, it’d spoil the breakfast beer of every good and superior citizen of German birth and extraction that read it.”
“Then they aren’t any sort of Americans if they can’t stand that!”
“‘Bah’ said Mary’s little lamb to Mary,” observed Mr. Galpin impolitely. “Who said they were Americans? Did you hear much American at that meeting? Did you catch any loud and frenzied cheering for the red, white, and blue, or get your eyesight overcrowded with photographs of the American eagle? Did you mistake the picture of the gent with the wild-boar whiskerines for a new photo of His Excellency, the President of the United States? Did you—”
“Oh, cut it!” said the exasperated Robson.
“Ay-ay,” grunted Galpin, and studied the younger man. “Sore?” he inquired carelessly.
“A little, I guess.”
“Like to kick a hole in The Record shop, and walk haughtily out through it?”
“That’s the way I felt yesterday.”
“Want a job on The Guardian?”
“Could you get me on?”
“I can take you on. Beginning Monday, I’m city editor. I could use one guy that can write.” He glanced again at the killed proof, before folding it to return to its owner.
A thought struck the reporter. “Will you print this?”
“Lord; no!”
“The Guardian wouldn’t be any more independent or any less timid about this than The Record?”
“Not a bit.”
“Then why do you advise me to change?”
“I don’t.”
“But you offered—”
“Stop right there while you’re still on the track. I offered. I didn’t advise. If you’re in this business to write what you want, and to hell with the public, I’ve got just one piece of advice for you. Turn millionaire and get a paper of your own.”
Jeremy flushed. “I may do it yet. Not the millionaire part, but the other.”
“Give me a job, then,” said the other good-humoredly, “as you won’t take one from me. If you should want it, it’s twenty a
week to start. Not bad for a town of 70,000, Bo.”
“The Record’s promised me better. I guess I’ll stay.”
“Ay-ah.” Galpin accepted the decision indifferently. “Well, I guess you’ll get somewhere sometime if you don’t go bucking your head against stone walls. But don’t waste your poetic style on patriotic kids who stand nobly up in galleries for the honor of the flag.”
“That kid was a girl.”
“So I noticed in your story. Think I know her.”
“Do you?” cried the other eagerly.
“Only as far as business requires. She’s going to make newspaper copy one of these days.”
“How’s that?”
“Only girl intercollegiate athlete in America,” replied Galpin in the manner of a headline. “Trying for the golf team, and from what I hear, liable to make it.”
“At Old Central?” asked Robson, using the local name for the State University of Centralia, on the outskirts of Fenchester.
“Ay-ah,” assented Galpin. “She’s a special. Lives down on Montgomery Street with old Miss Pritchard.”
His companion made a mental note of it.
“Weren’t you a golf-sharp in Kirk College?”
“Captained the team.”
“Well, if you really want to write a story about Miss Marcia Ames, watch out for the team trials next month. The Record ’ll print that all right. Ay-ah,” he added reflectively. “And there’ll be no spiking of the story by Mart Embree, either.”
“Senator Embree?” said Robson, surprised. “Where does he come in?”
“Didn’t happen to see him around The Record office before you went to press yesterday, did you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Ay-ah. Thought he might ’a’ dropped in. He made a call on The Guardian too.”
“What for?”
“Dove-o’-peace mission. Wanted to make sure that nothing would get in about the ‘Star-Spangled’ business to stir up ill-feeling.”
Common Cause Page 4