"Don"t you believe it!" he interrupted. "That man who was talking to you was Sam Ward. He"s the smartest newspaper man in New York; he was just leading you on. Do you suppose there"s a reporter in America who wouldn"t know you in the dark? Wait until you see the Sunday paper."
Sister Anne exclaimed indignantly.
"He did not know me!" she protested. "It quite upset him that I should be wasting my life measuring out medicines and making beds."
There was a shriek of disbelief and laughter.
"I told him," continued Sister Anne, "that I got forty dollars a month, and he said I could make more as a typewriter; and I said I preferred to be a manicurist."
"Oh, Anita!" protested the admiring chorus.
"And he was most indignant. He absolutely refused to allow me to be a manicurist. And he asked me to take a day off with him and let him show me New York. And he offered, as attractions, moving-picture shows and a drive on a Fifth Avenue bus, and feeding peanuts to the animals in the park. And if I insisted upon a chaperon I might bring one of the nurses.
We"re to meet at the soda-water fountain in the Grand Central Station.
He said, "The day cannot begin too soon.""
"Oh, Anita!" shrieked the chorus.
Lord Deptford, who as the newspapers had repeatedly informed the American public, had come to the Flaggs" country-place to try to marry Anita Flagg, was amused.
"What an awfully jolly rag!" he cried. "And what are you going to do about it?"
"Nothing," said Anita Flagg. "The reporters have been making me ridiculous for the last three years; now I have got back at one of them!
And," she added, "that"s all there is to that!"
That night, however, when the house party was making toward bed, Sister Anne stopped by the stairs and said to Lord Deptford: "I want to hear you call me Sister."
"Call you what?" exclaimed the young man. "I will tell you," he whispered, "what I"d like to call you!"
"You will not!" interrupted Anita. "Do as I tell you and say Sister once. Say it as though you meant it."
"But I don"t mean it," protested his lordship. "I"ve said already what I...."
"Never mind what you"ve said already," commanded Miss Flagg. "I"ve heard that from a lot of people. Say Sister just once."
His lordship frowned in embarra.s.sment.
"Sister!" he exclaimed. It sounded like the pop of a cork.
Anita Flagg laughed unkindly and her beautiful shoulders shivered as though she were cold.
"Not a bit like it, Deptford," she said. "Good-night."
Later Helen Page, who came to her room to ask her about a horse she was to ride in the morning, found her ready for bed but standing by the open window looking out toward the great city to the south.
When she turned Miss Page saw something in her eyes that caused that young woman to shriek with amazement.
"Anita!" she exclaimed. "You crying! What in Heaven"s name can make you cry?"
It was not a kind speech, nor did Miss Flagg receive it kindly. She turned upon the tactless intruder.
"Suppose," cried Anita fiercely, "a man thought you were worth forty dollars a month--honestly didn"t know!--honestly believed you were poor and worked for your living, and still said your smile was worth more than all of old man Flagg"s millions, not knowing they were YOUR millions. Suppose he didn"t ask any money of you, but just to take care of you, to slave for you--only wanted to keep your pretty hands from working, and your pretty eyes from seeing sickness and pain. Suppose you met that man among this rotten lot, what would you do? What wouldn"t you do?"
"Why, Anita!" exclaimed Miss Page.
"What would you do?" demanded Anita Flagg. "This is what you"d do: You"d go down on your knees to that man and say: "Take me away! Take me away from them, and pity me, and be sorry for me, and love me--and love me--and love me!"
"And why don"t you?" cried Helen Page.
"Because I"m as rotten as the rest of them!" cried Anita Flagg. "Because I"m a coward. And that"s why I"m crying. Haven"t I the right to cry?"
At the exact moment Miss Flagg was proclaiming herself a moral coward, in the local room of the REPUBLIC Collins, the copy editor, was editing Sam"s story" of the laying of the corner-stone. The copy editor"s cigar was tilted near his left eyebrow; his blue pencil, like a guillotine ready to fall upon the guilty word or paragraph, was suspended in mid-air; and continually, like a hawk preparing to strike, the blue pencil swooped and circled. But page after page fell softly to the desk and the blue pencil remained inactive. As he read, the voice of Collins rose in muttered e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns; and, as he continued to read, these explosions grew louder and more amazed. At last he could endure no more and, swinging swiftly in his revolving chair, his glance swept the office. "In the name of Mike!" he shouted. "What IS this?"
The reporters nearest him, busy with pencil and typewriters, frowned in impatient protest. Sam Ward, swinging his legs from the top of a table, was gazing at the ceiling, wrapped in dreams and tobacco smoke. Upon his clever, clean-cut features the expression was far-away and beatific. He came back to earth.
"What"s what?" Sam demanded.
At that moment Elliott, the managing editor, was pa.s.sing through the room his hands filled with freshly pulled proofs. He swung toward Collins quickly and s.n.a.t.c.hed up Sam"s copy. The story already was late--and it was important.
"What"s wrong?" he demanded. Over the room there fell a sudden hush.
"Read the opening paragraph," protested Collins. "It"s like that for a column! It"s all about a girl--about a Red Cross nurse. Not a word about Flagg or Lord Deptford. No speeches! No news! It"s not a news story at all. It"s an editorial, and an essay, and a spring poem. I don"t know what it is. And, what"s worse," wailed the copy editor defiantly and to the amazement of all, "it"s so darned good that you can"t touch it.
You"ve got to let it go or kill it."
The eyes of the managing editor, masked by his green paper shade, were racing over Sam"s written words. He thrust the first page back at Collins.
"Is it all like that?"
"There"s a column like that!"
"Run it just as it is," commanded the managing editor. "Use it for your introduction and get your story from the flimsy. And, in your head, cut out Flagg entirely. Call it "The Red Cross Girl." And play it up strong with pictures." He turned on Sam and eyed him curiously.
"What"s the idea, Ward?" he said. "This is a newspaper--not a magazine!"
The click of the typewriters was silent, the hectic rush of the pencils had ceased, and the staff, expectant, smiled cynically upon the star reporter. Sam shoved his hands into his trousers pockets and also smiled, but unhappily.
"I know it"s not news, Sir," he said; "but that"s the way I saw the story--outside on the lawn, the band playing, and the governor and the governor"s staff and the clergy burning incense to Flagg; and inside, this girl right on the job--taking care of the sick and wounded. It seemed to me that a million from a man that won"t miss a million didn"t stack up against what this girl was doing for these sick folks! What I wanted to say," continued Sam stoutly "was that the moving spirit of the hospital was not in the man who signed the checks, but in these women who do the work--the nurses, like the one I wrote about; the one you called "The Red Cross Girl.""
Collins, strong through many years of faithful service, backed by the traditions of the profession, snorted scornfully.
"But it"s not news!"
"It"s not news," said Elliott doubtfully; "but it"s the kind of story that made Frank O"Malley famous. It"s the kind of story that drives men out of this business into the arms of what Kipling calls "the illegitimate sister.""
It seldom is granted to a man on the same day to give his whole heart to a girl and to be patted on the back by his managing editor; and it was this combination, and not the drinks he dispensed to the staff in return for its congratulations, that sent Sam home walking on air. He loved his business, he was proud of his business; but never before had it served him so well. It had enabled him to tell the woman he loved, and incidentally a million other people, how deeply he honored her; how clearly he appreciated her power for good. No one would know he meant Sister Anne, save two people--Sister Anne and himself; but for her and for him that was as many as should know. In his story he had used real incidents of the day; he had described her as she pa.s.sed through the wards of the hospital, cheering and sympathetic; he had told of the little acts of consideration that endeared her to the sick people.
The next morning she would know that it was she of whom he had written; and between the lines she would read that the man who wrote them loved her. So he fell asleep, impatient for the morning. In the hotel at which he lived the REPUBLIC was always placed promptly outside his door; and, after many excursions into the hall, he at last found it. On the front page was his story, "The Red Cross Girl." It had the place of honor--right-hand column; but more conspicuous than the headlines of his own story was one of Redding"s, photographs. It was the one he had taken of Sister Anne when first she had approached them, in her uniform of mercy, advancing across the lawn, walking straight into the focus of the camera. There was no mistaking her for any other living woman; but beneath the picture, in bold, staring, uncompromising type, was a strange and grotesque legend.
"Daughter of Millionaire Flagg," it read, "in a New Role, Miss Anita Flagg as The Red Cross Girl."