Tales of the City Room/A Romance of the City Room
A ROMANCE OF THE
CITY ROOM
A ROMANCE OF THE CITY ROOM.
MISS BANCROFT raised her eyes from her work and turned them absently upon the small messenger who had stopped at her desk. They were beautiful eyes—"like no other eyes in the world," one infatuated young reporter had solemnly affirmed; but to-night they were tired and rather sad. Miss Bancroft had had a trying day. She had pursued an elusive news "story" the length and breadth of the city until late at night before finding it. She had been thrown into contact with a great many disagreeable persons. Moreover, she had had the depressing experience of seeing the individual who knew most about the story walk cheerfully away with a man reporter, ostensibly to have a drink, but in reality, she was sure, to give that youth exclusive information for a rival newspaper.
As she wrote her story to-night in the city room of "The Searchlight," she reflected gloomily that "The Globe" would probably come out the next morning with a "beat" on the same subject which would bring her before the city editor for explanations that she could not give and for a possible reprimand that she was in no mood to accept. She took from the boy the package and note he offered her, both of which, she noticed, bore her full name plainly printed on the typewriter. As there was no time to examine them she placed them carelessly on one side of her desk, among a mass of accumulated mail, and returned to her work philosophically determined to make the most of the material she had secured.
Her pen flew steadily over the paper for an hour, and sheet after sheet was added to the pile of "copy" at her right hand, wherein her story was told in the clear, concise fashion for which she was noted. When the last word had been written she glanced at the clock over the night city editor's desk. It was after twelve. There was no sound in the room but the clatter of typewriters, the scratching of the swift pens of her associates, and the shuffling feet of office boys who filed in and out with messages and copy. In the pitiless glare of the electric light the faces round her looked worn and haggard. She sent her story to the night city editor's desk, and leaning back in her chair in the moment of relaxation after a mental strain, sympathized with herself and her fellow-workers with the intensity of overtired nerves. Was it all worth while? she asked herself wearily, as she had asked many times before. She thought of the home down South, which she had left so hopefully three years ago to seek her fortune. As she closed her eyes she could see every feature of the old house nestled so cosily in its setting of blossoming shrubs. Again she heard the sighing of the night wind among the pines and the sleepy call of birds to one another. She could almost smell the perfume of the roses that climbed over the verandas and looked in at the windows of her own little room. In fancy she saw that room, its walls covered with the pictures she loved, the dwarf book case filled with her favorite books, the desk at which she had written her first ambitious "literary" efforts, the small white bed where she had slept such deep, untroubled sleep in those peaceful days that seemed a thousand years ago. Perhaps her mother slept there to-night, dreaming of her "little girl" all alone in far-away New York. A great wave of homesickness swept over the newspaper woman as she came back with a shock to the present.
At his official desk, the night city editor was scowling over some telegrams which had been placed before him. Herforth, the star reporter, had finished a page "special" and was executing a small and quiet jig beside his chair by way of "restoring his circulation," as he put it. Several others were collecting and paging the scattered leaves of their copy, preparatory to handing it in, while a number of less fortunate reporters worked on hurriedly with an occasional anxious glance at the clock. Over the whole room hung the tense atmosphere of a newspaper office late at night. In the nervous depression of the moment Miss Bancroft forgot the brighter side of her work, of which she was keenly appreciative in her normal frame of mind. Her dark head drooped wearily, and her gloom deepened, as she mechanically arranged her papers and began to search vaguely for the key of her desk. She had forgotten the messenger's package and note, both of which stared up at her with mute reproach as her eyes fell thoughtlessly upon them.
She lifted the package from its resting-place and untied the string with listless ringers. As she tore off the wrapping-paper and raised the lid of the long box, she uttered a little exclamation of delight which made Randall, at the next desk, look up from his work with a sympathetic smile. Carefully tucked away under waxed paper, and resting on a bed of moss and ferns, were exquisite red roses, whose breath seemed like a greeting from the southern land to which her homesick soul had but now turned. The reporter buried her face in their dewy fragrance, while her eyes for a moment grew dim. It was very sweet to realize that some one had been thinking of her and planning this pleasure for her to-night of all nights. She looked for the card which should have accompanied the flowers, but found none either among the roses or in the box. The latter she now observed lacked the usual imprint of the florist. There was absolutely nothing on it to show whence or from whom it had come. The note was still unopened, and to this she turned. A thick sheet of creamy paper, typewritten on both sides, fell from the envelope as she cut the edges. It bore neither date nor signature, but the printed words stood out boldly on the white page, and these were clear enough. Miss Bancroft crossed her feet comfortably, leaned back in her chair, and began to read.
Miss Bancroft experienced a revival of interest in life. She read the letter again, seeking vainly for some clew which might lead to discovery of the writer. Her thoughts swept quickly around the circle of her friends and associates on "The Searchlight." Assuredly one of these was the man. One by one she called them up in mental review, dismissing some quickly, others more doubtfully, but all finally. She glanced again at the bowed heads of the men around her. It was impossible to picture any of them as the author of the letter she held in her hand. Several of them had loved her and had told her so, with the engaging frankness of their kind. Many of the others were happily married or engaged, or in love with "sweet girls" whose photographs they had exhibited to her with pride. A few were too cold or too ambitious, she thought, to care for any one. The barrier of which her unknown friend wrote was a tangible one. It concealed him well.
Miss Bancroft took the note and flowers home with her that night and fell asleep with the fragrance of the roses filling her rooms. It greeted her again as she awoke refreshed and ready to take up the work of the day in her usual blithe spirit. The morning sun, pouring through her open windows, fell lovingly on the great roses which some one had lavished on her. She speculated over them pleasantly as she dressed, but after she reached the office its rush and swirl banished them and the sender from her mind.
She had almost forgotten both when the second letter came exactly a week later. The long box and the creamy envelope lay side by side on her desk as she entered " The Searchlight's" city room late Friday night, and she broke into a gay smile even over these prosaic things. It made Randall, sitting next to her, speculate long and moodily as to the giver. There was no uncertainty about her facts on this occasion, and she plunged into her story with a vigor and evident zest which made the muscles in the lips of the night city editor relax perceptibly as he observed her. When he glanced at her again two hours later she had finished her story and was lifting a mass of dewy red roses from the long box, whereupon the night city editor looked wise and thought he understood the situation, but did not in the least.
The second letter, written on the typewriter like the first, was a little longer than its predecessor. Miss Bancroft read and re-read it slowly.
There was a puzzled look in Miss Bancroft's brown eyes as she laid the letter down. She speculated over it on her way home that night, and the next day, to her dismay, she discovered that the mystery was making her self-conscious. She found herself looking with suspicious eyes at her good friends on "The Searchlight." The frank and warm camaraderie of her associates, which had been so pleasant a feature of her journalistic life, seemed to her now, in some spots, the cloak of a deeper affection. She tried to analyze the feeling back of the courtesies that were shown her, and the invariable good fellowship with which she was treated.
She was, however, too well poised to permit this condition to last. As successive Fridays came, always bringing their red roses and their odd concomitant, a typewritten letter which breathed the most delicate tenderness, her interest in the unknown sender grew deeper and softer. All unconsciously, perhaps, her hidden correspondent was laying bare his soul to the woman he loved. It was a noble and upright soul, she recognized. The whole world might have read the simple, manly letters in which week after week he poured out his heart to her. Nor were they wholly sentimental letters. The Shadow was consistent in his resolve to ask for nothing while giving all. When she had learned to acquiesce in his incognito and ceased marvelling at his complete knowledge of her and her life, she discovered, as the months went by, that the strong personality behind these weekly letters had become one of the most powerful influences in her career. The Shadow's point of view was unique. His letters were sometimes long, sometimes short, always interesting. He touched lightly on many subjects, and she was the gainer. He commented on the style of her stories. He criticised her English, and gave her a list of books for reference and study. He praised her work freely, where there was ground for praise, and criticised sharply and discriminatingly where censure was demanded. He suggested and advised as only a loyal friend could, and beneath it all was an undercurrent of deep, unselfish tenderness that touched her heart. The sweet unspoiled nature of the woman responded to this as the flowers he brought her responded to her care of them. Unconsciously, as time passed, she grew to lean on him, to watch for his letters, to rely on his judgment, to act in important matters as she believed that he would have her act. The atmosphere of his sturdy devotion was as real and as sweet to her as the perfume of his roses.
"Don't be too pathetic in your pathetic tales," he wrote her once. "Let your readers shed their own tears;" and the memory of the terse comment was a fixed one, which strengthened her work materially.
"You are looking pale," he said another time. "Take a few days off and go to Avondale. It is only two hours from New York, but it's plunged in the profoundest slumber. It's the ideal spot for tired brains and nerves. All around it are hills, which shut out the big bustling world. In it are quaint old-fashioned houses, and men and women not less old-fashioned and equally quaint. Over the peaceful little river that flows through the town are rustic bridges, where you can sit and dream, or fish if you care to (you 'll never catch anything), and look at the willows waving in the summer breeze and the cows standing knee-deep in the clover-fields. The air is full of the perfume of old-fashioned flowers that grow in every garden. You will find bowls of them in your room at night, and the room itself will smell of lavender. Go there, take Lubbock's 'Pleasures of Life' with you,—and forget for forty-eight hours that there is a newspaper in the world."
The letter came to her one hot Friday night in August. The next morning she took the train for Avondale, where she spent two ideally restful days. She found the little town exactly as he had pictured it, and as she strolled along its quiet streets she wondered how the Shadow had come to know it, and when he had been there last. For a moment, the idea lingered with her that, perhaps, after all, they were to meet. It had been more than a year since the first box of roses had come to her as the one bright episode of a depressing day. But if he had ever been in Avondale, he had apparently come and gone as mysteriously as he seemed to do everything else. She made no secret of her own identity or work, but the "quaint men and women" who eyed her with such artless curiosity gratified her with no reminiscences, and had evidently never before seen a representative of a great modern newspaper. Helen Bancroft went cheerily back to her work and her rôle as the inspiration of a shadow, and if the thought occurred to her that the rôle was a trifle unsatisfactory because of the steadfast obscurity of that shadow, she stifled it as one would check disloyal thought of a friend. The conviction had already come to her woman's soul that what he desired was best. She seemed to herself to be living in two worlds—one, the rushing, practical planet on which she worked by day; the other, a peaceful, happy sphere wherein he dwelt, and whither his letters sometimes transported her.
For more than two years the letters and the red roses came with unbroken regularity. When at last a certain Friday evening arrived and they did not, Miss Bancroft stared at the top of her unvisited desk as if some perplexing phenomenon had taken place. She would have been scarcely less surprised at the failure of a physical law than by this lack of fidelity—she could not call it forgetfulness or indifference—on the part of the Shadow. The face of the world seemed changed to her as she went home that night, and the sudden realization of what this meant made her heart contract. Perhaps he was only testing her—proving to her at last what a factor in her life he had come to be. But she rejected this thought at once; she did not know his name or face, but she knew the man too well to think self-love could thus claim him, even for a moment. Perhaps all was not well with him. There had been a persistent minor note in his recent letters, bravely as he had tried to stifle it. Last week's roses, almost withered now, looked sadly up at her as she entered her apartment. She had kept the flowers, of late, until the next box came to replace them. To-night, as she watered the grateful roses, her imagination saw in their droop and languor the mute symbol of the passing from her life of something of whose full sweetness she was just beginning to be conscious.
The days went on, and brought no sign from the Shadow. They all seemed alike to the young reporter, who kept her sad reflections in her own heart and gave no outward sign. She felt her friend drifting from her, perhaps through a misapprehension which she had no power to correct. It was as much beyond her to reach or affect him as if he lived in truth in another world which he had shared with her, but from which she was now shut out. She missed his flowers, she missed his letters; above all, she missed the sense of companionship and protecting tenderness which had enveloped her so mysteriously and so long.
She was recalling these things one cold night in February when she wearily entered her apartment. On the hearth, in her cosey study, a bright fire burned cheerily. The attentive maid had drawn up to it her favorite easy-chair and had placed her slippers near the warm glow. She sank into the chair with a sigh of satisfaction, brushing the snow from her jacket, and recklessly exposing the soles of her little boots to the heat as she settled her feet on the fender. The sudden blaze that had greeted her had died down, and the room was almost in shadow. As her eyes wandered listlessly over her books and pictures they fell on something oddly familiar. Was that great vase on the table, which had held the Shadow's offering for so long, again full of fresh red roses? Miss Bancroft rubbed her eyes and looked more closely. Had she fallen asleep and was she dreaming of the roses that had filled it so constantly until three months ago? The perfume of the flowers seemed very real. They were there—"the beautiful darlings!" she whispered, as she went to them and laid her face against them. To her excited fancy they seemed to laugh up at her. "Here we are again," they said. "It's all right,—everything is unchanged;" and the whole world was brighter for the assurance. She lit the gas hastily and rang the bell. There had been no letter with the flowers, the little maid told her. They had come without a card about four that afternoon, and she had taken them out of the box and put them in water as she knew Mademoiselle would have wished. The box? But yes, here it is—a large and ornate affair, with the name of a famous florist on its cover in gold letters. This unusual feature surprised and temporarily disturbed Miss Bancroft. Never before had the Shadow sent her such a clew. Surely, if she wished, it would be comparatively easy to trace him now. She dismissed the idea from her mind for the present. He was still her friend, and all was well with him. He had sent her the roses to tell her so. That was enough.
She dressed for dinner in high spirits, putting on her best gown in honor of this spiritual caller, and singing a favorite song which was in harmony with her mood. The little maid smiled to hear again the blithe notes that had been silent of late.
"For the spring, the spring is coming,
'Tis good-by to ice and snow,
Yes, I know it, for the swallows
Have come back to tell me so,"
sang the soft contralto voice. Spring had already come in her heart for the roses told her so.
Herforth called on her after dinner, formally arrayed in his evening clothes, and with a startling chrysanthemum in his button hole. His first words lowered Miss Bancroft's spirits.
"Got the roses, I see," he said, nodding toward the blooming jacqueminots in the vase on the table.
"Did—did you send them?" faltered the girl. She was conscious of a sinking sensation, as if something were falling away from her.
"Only in a way," said Herforth at once. "I acted as an agent." He had dropped into an easy-chair, and as he spoke he regarded her rather curiously with his sleepy blue eyes.
"Do you remember Hatfeld?" he went on. "Awfully good-looking chap, with light hair and dark eyes. Reserved, but I found him one of the most charming fellows I ever met when I came to know him. Nobody on the paper knew him well except me. Was n't at the office much except at night, and then did his work in a little room off the night editor's sanctum. I liked him and dined with him a lot, and he used to let me talk about you most of the time. Well, he was consumptive, poor fellow. Did n't tell me anything about it until three months ago, when he went to Algiers for his health. The night before he sailed we dined together, and went afterwards to my room to smoke. Am I boring you with all this."
"Go on, please," said Miss Bancroft, in a low tone.
She was standing at the window looking out at the snow, which was falling heavily. The sudden question evidently startled her, for she shivered slightly as she turned toward the young man and then glanced away again.
"We talked a good deal," continued Herforth, animatedly, "and I tried to brace him up as well as I could. Prophesied that he'd come back in six months perfectly well—and all that sort of thing. It had no effect on him, but he was awfully cool and plucky about his condition. He told me that his father and mother had both died of consumption, and that the doctors had given him no hope. He said that was why he had never married. He would not make the woman he loved wretched and hand down a legacy of physical ill to his children. And then he said something that will interest you."
Herforth had been speaking rather lightly, but if she had noticed it Miss Bancroft would have known that beneath the careless tone lay a warm sympathy for his friend. She did not notice it. She was not thinking: of Herforth just then. His few words had brought before her very vividly the farewell scene he was describing. She saw the two men together, and while the face of one was hidden from her she could see in his attitude the despair against which he had so bravely fought. She left the window and sat down in a low chair, her face a little in the shadow. Herforth went on slowly and more seriously.
"Just before we parted, Hatfeld turned to me and said: 'I'm going to have them cable you when it's all over, old man—not that I want to depress you, but because I want you to do something for me. Don't ask me why or anything about it. But when you receive that cablegram, I want you to send a box of red roses to Miss Bancroft."
Herforth paused a moment and poked the fire with creditable considerateness. His voice had become a trifle unsteady. Though he could not have analyzed it, for he knew they had never met, there was something in Miss Bancroft's manner as she listened which moved him strangely. She looked at him and opened her lips, but closed them again without speaking. The expression in her beautiful eyes made Herforth turn his own away.
"I got the cablegram this morning," he said softly.