CHAPTER XXVIII.
A FORCED ADVANCE.
IT was the talk of the Sunday office that Emily was being “frozen out.” The women said it was her own fault—her looks had at last failed to give her a “pull.” The men said it was some underhand scheme of Gammell’s—what was more likely in the case of an attractive but thoroughly business-like woman such as Emily and such a man as Gammell, oriental in his ideas on women and of infinite capacity for meanness. Both the men and the women reached their conclusions by ways of prejudice; the men came nearer to the truth, which was that Gammell was bent upon punishing Emily, and that Emily, discouraged and suffering under a sense of injustice, was aiding him to justify himself to his superiors. The mere sight of her irritated him now. Success had developed his natural instinct to tyranny, and she represented rebellion intrenched and defiant within his very gates. One day he found Stilson waiting in his office to look over and revise his Sunday schedule. He hated Stilson because Stilson was his superior officer, and each week—in the interest of the reputation of the paper—was compelled to veto the too audacious, too “yellow” projects of the sensational Gammell.
That day at sight of Stilson he with difficulty concealed his hate. He had just passed one of his enemies—Emily in a new dress and new hat, in every way a painful reminder of his discomfiture. And now here was his other enemy lying in wait, as he instinctively felt, to veto an article in which he took especial pride.
Stilson was not covert in his aversions. Diplomatic with no one, he rasped upon Gammell’s highly-strung nerves like a screech in the ear of a neurotic. The wrangle began quietly enough in an exchange of veiled sarcasms and angry looks—contemptuous from Stilson, venomous from Gammell. But the double strain of Emily and Stilson was too strong for Gammell’s discretion. From stealthy sneers, he passed to open thrusts. Stilson, as tyrannical as Gammell, if that side of his nature was roused, grew calm with rage and presently in an arrogant tone ordered Gammell to “throw away that vicious stuff, and let me hear no more about it.”
“It is a pity, my dear sir,” he went on, “that you should waste your talents. Why roll in the muck? Why can’t you learn not to weary me with this weekly inspection of insanity?”
Gammell’s eyes became pale green, his cheeks an unhealthy bluish gray. He cast about desperately for a weapon with which to strike and strike home. Emily was in his mind and, while he had not the faintest notion that Stilson cared for her or she for him, he remembered Stilson’s emphatic compliments on her work. “Perhaps if I were supplied with a more capable staff, we might get together articles that would be intelligent as well as striking. But what can I do, handicapped by such a staff, by such useless ornamentals as—well, as your Miss Bromfield.”
“That reminds me.” Stilson recovered his outward self-control at once. “I notice she has little in the magazine nowadays. Instead of exhausting yourself on such character-destroying stuff as this,” with a disdainful gesture toward the rejected article, “you might be arranging for features such as she used to do and do very well.”
“She’s not of the slightest use here any longer.” Gammell shrugged his shoulders and lifted his eyebrows. “She’s of no use to the paper. And as the present Sunday editor doesn’t happen to fancy her, why, she’s of no use at all—now.”
With a movement so swift that Gammell had no time to resist or even to understand, Stilson whirled him from his chair, and flung him upon the floor as if he were some insect that had shown sudden venom and must be crushed under the heel without delay.
“Don’t kill me!” screamed Gammell, in a frenzy of physical fear, as he looked up at Stilson’s face ablaze with the homicidal mania. “For God’s sake, Stilson, don’t murder me!”
The door opened and several frightened faces appeared there. Stilson, distracted from his purpose, turned on the intruders. “Close that door!” he commanded. “Back to your work!” and he thrust the door into its frame. “Now, get up!” he said to Gammell. “You are one of those vile creatures that are brought into the world—I don’t know how, but I’m sure without the interposition of a mother. Get up and brush yourself. And hereafter see that you keep your foul mind from your lips and eyes.”
He stalked away, his footsteps ringing through the silent Sunday room where all were bending over their work in the effort to obliterate themselves. Within an hour the story of “the fight” was racing up and down Park Row and in and out of every newspaper office. But no one could explain it. And to this day Emily does not know why Gammell gave her late that afternoon the best assignment she had had in three months.
In the following week she received a letter from Burnham, general manager of Trescott, Anderson and Company, the publishers in Twenty-third Street. It was an invitation to call “at your earliest convenience in reference to a matter which we hope will interest you.” She went in the morning on her way downtown. Mr. Burnham was most polite—a twitching little man, inclined to be silly in his embarrassment, talking rapidly and catching his breath between sentences.
“We are making several changes in the conduct of our magazines,” said he. “We wish to get some young blood—newspaper blood, in fact, into them. We wish to make them less—less prosy, more—more up-to-date. No—not ‘yellow’—by no means—nothing like that. Still, we feel that we ought to be a little—yes—livelier.”
“Closer to the news—to current events and subjects?” suggested Emily.
“Yes,—precisely—you catch my meaning at once.” Mr. Burnham was looking at her as if she were a genius. He was of those men who are dazzled when they discover a gleam of intelligence in a beautiful woman. “Now, we wish to get you to help us with our World of Women. Mrs. Parrott is the editor, as you perhaps know. She’s been with us—yes—twenty-three years, eighteen years in her present position. And after making some inquiries, we decided to invite you to join the staff as assistant to Mrs. Parrott.”
“I know the magazine,” said Emily, “and I think I see the directions in which the improvements you suggest could be made. But I’m not dissatisfied with my present position. Of course—if—well—” She looked at Mr. Burnham with an ingenuous expression that hid the business guile beneath—“Of course, I couldn’t refuse an opportunity to better myself.”
“We—that is—” Mr. Burnham looked miserable and plucked wildly at his closely-trimmed gray and black beard. “May I ask what—what financial arrangement would be agreeable to you?”
“The offer must come from you, mustn’t it?” said Emily, who had not been earning her own living without learning first principles.
“Yes—of course—naturally.” Mr. Burnham held himself rigid in his chair, as if it required sheer force to restrain him from leaping forth and away. “Might I ask—what you are—what—what—return for your services the Democrat makes?”
“Sixty-five dollars a week,” said Emily. “But my position there is less exacting than it would be here. I have practically no editorial responsibility. And editorial responsibility means gray hair.”
“Yes—certainly—you would expect compensation for gray hair—dear me, no—I beg your pardon. What were we saying? Yes—we could hardly afford to pay so much as that—at the start, you know. I should say sixty would be quite the very best. But your hours would be shorter—and you would have the utmost freedom about writing articles, stories, and so forth. And of course you’d be paid extra for what you wrote which proved acceptable to us. Then too, it’s a higher class of work—the magazines, you know—gives one character and standing.”
“Oh—work is work,” said Emily. “And I doubt if a magazine could give me character. I fear I’d have to continue to rely on myself for that.”
“Oh—I beg your pardon. I’m very stupid to-day—I didn’t mean——”
As he hesitated and looked imploringly at her, she said good-humouredly, “To suggest that my standing and not the standing of your magazine, was what you were trying to help?”
They laughed, they became friendly and he had difficulty in keeping his mind upon business. He presently insisted upon sending for Mrs. Parrott—a stout, motherly person with several chins that descended through a white neck-cloth into a vast bosom quivering behind the dam of a high, old-fashioned corset. Emily noted that she was evidently of those women who exaggerate their natural sweetness into a pose of “womanly” sentiment and benevolence. She spoke the precise English of those who have heard a great deal of the other kind and dread a lapse into it. She was amusingly a “literary person,” full of the nasty-nice phrases current among those literary folk who take themselves seriously as custodians of An Art and A Language. Emily’s manner and dress impressed her deeply, and she soon brought in—not without labour—the names of several fashionable New Yorkers with whom she asserted acquaintance and insinuated intimacy. Emily’s eyes twinkled at this exhibition of insecurity in one who but the moment before was preening herself as a high priestess at the highest altar.
In the hour she spent in the editorial offices of Trescott, Anderson and Company, Emily was depressed by what seemed to her an atmosphere of dulness, of staleness, of conventionality, of remoteness from the life of the day. “They live in a sort of cellar,” she thought. “I don’t believe I could endure being cut off from fresh air.” After pretending to herself elaborately to argue the matter, she decided that she would not make the change.
But her real reason, as she was finally compelled to admit to herself, was Stilson. Not to see him, not to feel that he was near, not to be in daily contact with his life—it was unthinkable. She knew that she was so unbusiness-like in this respect that, if the Democrat cut her salary in half, she would still stay on. “I’m only a woman after all,” she said to herself. “A man wouldn’t do as I’m doing—perhaps.” She did not in the least care. She was not ashamed of her weakness. She was even admitting nowadays a liking for the idea that Stilson could and would rule her. And she was not at all sure that the reason for this revolutionary liking was the reason she gave herself—that he would not ask her to do anything until he was sure she was willing to do it.
Two days after she wrote her refusal, Stilson sent for her. At first glance she saw that he was a bearer of evil tidings. And in the next she saw what the evil tidings were—that he had penetrated her secret and his own self-deception, and was remorseful, aroused, determined to put himself out of her life.
“You have refused your offer from Burnham?” He drew down his brows and set his jaw, as if he expected a struggle.
“Yes—I prefer to stay here. I have reasons.” She felt reckless. She was eager for an opportunity to discuss these “reasons.”
“You must accept.”
“I?—Must?” She flushed and put her face up haughtily.
“Yes—I ask it. The position will soon be an advancement. And you cannot stay here.”
“How do you know about this offer—so much about it?”
“I got it for you when—when I found that you must go.”
She looked defiance. She saw an answering look of suffering and appeal.
“Why?” she said, in a low voice. “Why?”
“For two reasons,” he replied. “I may tell you only one—Gammell. He will find a way to injure you. I know it. It would be folly for you to stay.”
“And the other reason?”
He did not answer, but continued to look steadily at her.
“I—I—understand,” she murmured at last, her look falling before his, and the colour coming into her face, “I will go.”
“Thank you.” He bowed with a courtesy that suggested the South in the days before the war. He walked beside her to the elevator. His shoulders were drooped as if under a heavy burden. His face was white and old, and its deep lines were like scars.
“Down, ten!” he called into the elevator-shaft as the car shot past on the up-trip. Soon the descending car stopped and the iron door swung back with a bang.
The door closed, she saw him gazing at her; and that look through the bars of the elevator door, haunted her. She had seen it in his face once before, though not so strongly,—when she said good-bye to him as she was going away to Paris. But where else had she seen it? Weeks afterward, when she was talking to Mrs. Parrott of something very different, there suddenly leaped to the surface of her mind a memory—the public square in a mountain town, a man dead upon the stones, another near him, dying and turning his face toward the shelter whence he had come; and in his face the look of farewell to the woman.
“What is it, dear? Are you ill this morning?” asked Mrs. Parrott.
“Not—not very,” answered Emily brokenly, and she vanished into her office and closed its door.