The Beauty and the Bolshevist.
by Alice Duer Miller.
CHAPTER I
The editor of that much-abused New York daily, _Liberty_, pushed back his editorial typewriter and opened one letter in the pile which the office-boy--no respecter of persons--had just laid upon the desk while whistling a piercing tune between his teeth.
The letter said:
DEAR BEN,--I hate to think what your feelings will be on learning that I am engaged to be married to a daughter of the capitalistic cla.s.s. Try to overcome your prejudices, however, and judge Eugenia as an individual and not as a member of a cla.s.s. She has very liberal ideas, reads your paper, and is content to go with me to Monroe College and lead the life of an instructor"s wife. You will be glad to know that Mr. Cord disapproves as much as you do, and will not give his daughter a cent, so that our life will be as hard on the physical side as you in your most affectionate moments could desire. Mr.
Cord is under the impression that lack of an income will cool my ardor. You see he could not think worse of me if he were my own brother.
Yours,
DAVID.
The fine face of the editor darkened. It was the face of an idealist--the deep-set, slowly changing eyes, the high cheek bones, but the mouth closed firmly, almost obstinately, and contradicted the rest of the face with a touch of aggressiveness, just as in Lincoln"s face the dreamer was contradicted by the shrewd, practical mouth. He crossed his arms above the elbow so that one long hand dangled on one side of his knees and one on the other--a favorite pose of his--and sat thinking.
The editor was often called a Bolshevist--as who is not in these days?
For language is given us not only to conceal thought, but often to prevent it, and every now and then when the problems of the world become too complex and too vital, some one stops all thought on a subject by inventing a tag, like "witch" in the seventeenth century, or "Bolshevist" in the twentieth.
Ben Moreton was not a Bolshevist; indeed, he had written several editorials to show that, in his opinion, their doctrines were not sound, but of course the people who denounced him never thought of reading his paper. He was a socialist, a believer in government ownership, and, however equably he attempted to examine any dispute between capital and labor, he always found for labor. He was much denounced by ultraconservatives, and perhaps their instinct was sound, for he was educated, determined, and possessed of a personality that attached people warmly, so that he was more dangerous than those whose doctrines were more militant. He was not wholly trusted by the extreme radicals. His views were not consistently agreeable to either group.
For instance, he believed that the conscientious objectors were really conscientious, a creed for which many people thought he ought to be deported. On the other hand, he doubted that Wall Street had started the war for its own purposes, a skepticism which made some of his friends think him just fit for a bomb.
The great problem of his life was how to hold together a body of liberals so that they could be effective. This problem was going to be immensely complicated by the marriage of his brother with the daughter of a conspicuous capitalist like William Cord.
He pushed the buzzer on his desk and wrote out the following telegram:
David Moreton, Care William Cord, Newport, R.I.
Am taking boat Newport to-night. Meet me.
Ben.
No one answered his buzzer, but presently a boy came in collecting copy, and Moreton said to him:
"Here, get this sent, and ask Klein to come here. He"s in the composing room."
And presently Mr. Klein entered, in the characteristic dress of the newspaper man--namely, shirt sleeves and a green shade over his eyes.
"Look here, Ben!" he exclaimed in some excitement. "Here"s a thousand-dollar check just come in for the strike fund. How"s that for the second day?"
"Good enough," said Ben, who would ordinarily have put in a good hour rejoicing over such unexpected good fortune, but whose mind was now on other things. "I have to go out of town to-night. You"ll be here, won"t you, to lock the presses? And, see here, Leo, what is the matter with our book page?"
"Pretty rotten page," replied Klein.
"I should say it was--all about taxes and strikes and economic crises.
I told Green never to touch those things in the book reviews.
Our readers get all they want of that from us in the news and the editorials--hotter, better stuff, too. I"ve told him not to touch "em in the book page, and he runs nothing else. He ought to be beautiful--ought to talk about fairies, and poetry, and twelfth-century art. What"s the matter with him?"
"He doesn"t know anything," said Klein. "That"s his trouble. He"s clever, but he doesn"t know much. I guess he only began to read books a couple years ago. They excite him too much. He wouldn"t read a fairy story. He"d think he was wasting time."
"Get some one to help him out."
"Who"d I get?"
"Look about. I"ve got to go home and pack a bag. Ask Miss c.o.x what time that Newport boat leaves."
"Newport! Great heavens, Ben! What is this? A little week-end?"
"A little weak brother, Leo."
"David in trouble again?"
Moreton nodded. "He thinks he"s going to marry William Cord"s daughter."
Klein, who was Ben"s friend as well as his a.s.sistant, blanched at the name.
"Cord"s daughter!" he exclaimed, and if he had said Jack-the-ripper"s, he could not have expressed more horror. "Now isn"t it queer," he went on, musingly, "that David, brought up as he has been, can see anything to attract him in a girl like that?"
Ben was tidying his desk preparatory to departure--that is to say, he was pushing all the papers far enough back to enable him to close the roller top, and he answered, absently:
"Oh, I suppose they"re all pretty much the same--girls."
"Why, what do you mean?" said Leo, reproachfully. "How can a girl who"s been brought up to be a parasite--to display the wealth of her father and husband, and has never done a useful thing since she was born--Why, a woman was telling me the other day--I got caught in a block in the subway and she was next me--awfully interesting, she was.
She sewed in one of these fashionable dressmaking establishments--and the things she told me about what those women spend on their clothes--underclothes and furs and everything. Now there must be something wrong with a woman who can spend money on those things when she knows the agony of poverty right around her. You can"t compare that sort of woman with a self-respecting, self-supporting girl--"
At this moment the door opened and Miss c.o.x entered. She wore a short-sleeved, low-neck, pink-satin blouse, a white-satin skirt, open-work stockings, and slippers so high in the heels that her ankles turned inward. Her hair was treated with henna and piled untidily on the top of her head. She was exactly what Klein had described--a self-respecting, self-supporting girl, but, on a superficial acquaintance, men of Cord"s group would have thought quite as badly of her as Klein did of fashionable women. They would have been mistaken.
Miss c.o.x supported her mother, and, though only seventeen, denied herself all forms of enjoyment except dress and an occasional movie.
She was conscientious, hard-working, accurate, and virtuous. She loved Ben, whom she regarded as wise, beautiful, and generous, but she would have died rather than have him or anyone know it.
She undulated into the room, dropped one hip lower than the other, placed her hand upon it and said, with a good deal of enunciation:
"Oh, Mr. Moreton, the Newport boat leaves at five-thirty."
"Thank you very much, Miss c.o.x," said Ben, gravely, and she went out again.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Mr. Moreton, the Newport boat leaves at five-thirty"]
"It would be a terrible thing for Dave to make a marriage like that,"
Klein went on as soon as she had gone, "getting mixed up with those fellows. And it would be bad for you, Ben--"
"I don"t mean to get mixed up with them," said Ben.
"No, I mean having Dave do it. It would kill the paper; it would endanger your whole position; and as for leadership, you could never hope--"
"Now, look here, Leo. You don"t think I can stop my brother"s marrying because it might be a poor connection for me? The point is that it wouldn"t be good for Dave--to be a poorly tolerated hanger-on. That"s why I"m going hot-foot to Newport. And while I"m away do try to do something about the book page. Get me a culture-hound--get one of these Pater specialists from Harvard. Or," he added, with sudden inspiration when his hand was already on the door, "get a woman--she"d have a sense of beauty and would know how to jolly Green into agreeing with her." And with this the editor was gone.