A circle in the sand

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Chapter I 'HE office boy stood beside David

X Temple’s desk, a slip of paper on which a name was written in his hand. He knew better than to interrupt the editor when his pen was racing in that aggressive way, so he stood rumpling the bit of pink paper with grimy fingers while speculatively regarding a fly running unmeaning races from a cloudy map of the United States to the big ink bottle occupying the centre of a very untidy desk.

The day was breathless and humid. From the earliest hours the sun’s rays had swept the streets like destroying glances from a malevolent eye. The dusty, ink-spattered offices of the New York “ Citizen ” were stifling. Beyond the open windows could be seen sunbaked roofs, spires, and chimneys swathed in a hot mist. Every man in the editorial rooms was in his shirtsleeves. Some had discarded moist collars. All were working hard.

David Temple laid down his pen and glanced over the hastily written page, his expression determined.

“ That’ll make them hum,” he said, and without looking up he touched the bell, at the same instant becoming aware of the boy beside him.

‘‘ Here you are. Take this down, Pete, just as fast as you can. Eh? Some one to see me? All right. Tell him to wait. Come back at once.”

He picked up the paper, the kind in use in the office, bearing the directions :

“Name . State business.” “ Anne

Garrick” was written in lead pencil upon it. The latter request was unheeded.

David laid it down, lit a cigar, and went over to the window. It was a still, maddening day; the horses toiled between their shafts; the springs of life moved wearily even on Park row. He looked at his watch. It was half-past four. At six he was due at The Players to dine with an actor, who, by means of a haunting voice and a pair of fine eyes, enjoyed an income that equalled the Vice-President’s. He had promised to go to a dance on board a yacht anchored in the Sound. He began to wish he could escape the latter and instead find his way to the hammock on his roof-top, where he could smoke under the stars. At thirty-six, with hair whitening, he was getting past dances.

“ The young lady ” — commenced Pete timidly at his elbow.

“Oh, there is a lady! I’d forgotten. Show her in,” and he slipped on the alpaca coat lying across the chair.

The swinging door was pushed back, and Anne Garrick came toward him. She seemed, in the first inattentive glance, tall, slenderly made, her face showing marks of care or illness, yet pretty enough to be interesting. Her eyes were long, very bright, yet soft, and they were a deep brown like her hair. Her gown was of mourning cloth and she wore a black sailor hat.

David drew a chair forward for her and, seating himself opposite, let his great shoulders rest easily, while he regarded her, as was his fashion, through half-veiled eyes.

“ Miss Garrick?” he said, glancing at the slip. “ What can I do for you ? You’ll pardon me if I tell you at once that I have a dinner engagement at six and have only a few moments to spare.”

This was said with one of David’s confidential smiles.

“ I sha’n’t keep you long,” she said, leaning forward, “ Dr. Ericsson, my uncle, sent me to you.”

‘‘ Oh, yes. How is he? I’ve not seen him for a month.”

“ He’s very well, thank you.”

“ So you come on business from him ? ”

and David breathed freely. Do you knoWj Miss Garrick, I was afraid you were here as an applicant for work on the paper?”

So I am,” she said, her eyes amused. Is it quite useless? ”

^^You mean you really want newspaper work ? ” and his tone was almost reproachful.

I reall}^ do. I want it more than anything else in the world. Indeed, I want nothing else,” she said earnestly.

You have some illusions about it, perhaps ? ”

I don’t think so, and I must work.” The words were spoken lightly, but with an urgent note. David was interested. His fingers fell from the fob he had been twisting in regard for the passing moments. He noticed the line of impatience between her straight brows, the intensity in the bend of her mouth, the paleness of her worn yet youthful face, her intent attitude.

He had met many women demanding just such martial struggles in the battle of existence. Here was another. What should he say to her — the old objections, the old warnings? He was disinclined for the task more for some reason now than ever before. But the “Citizen” did not want women among its workers. That was one of his father’s prejudices which he had never set aside.

He returned to the argument, but his tone was still persuasive. This surprised himself, yet he felt it was because Miss Garrick came from Dr. Ericsson, and his liking for the old Swedish physician was a very deep one. He would not admit to himself that there was another reason — the youth, the charm, of this woman making the plea he had rejected so often.

“ The work is terribly hard. Miss Garrick, and really,” he said, as if making an admission almost against his will, “ I don’t regard the newspaper as a field for women.”

“ Don’t you ? Why not ? ”

“ Oh, it’s a blistering atmosphere.

and women were never meant to find nourishment in hard facts. I advise you to do something else — write a book, or teach, or anything.’’

Oh, Mr. Temple,” she said with sudden earnestness, I don’t feel that way about it! I want to be a journalist.”

David felt a desire to know her a little better — to hear her views and then dismiss them successfully. He had still fifteen minutes to spare. He began to think she was very pretty.

Have you ever been on a paper “ No, although I’ve written a great deal,” she said, while watching him intently. I thought I might get something to do regularly — some position. I know I’d sueceed. I wish you’d try me.”

No — I can’t,” he said, almost brusquely, and I hope you’ll change your mind and try something else. Besides, I haven’t anything I eould offer you, nothing a woman could do — much too difficult. You take my advice and try something else.”

“I think I know what you mean” — and she stood up. “You think this work hardly feminine ” —

He nodded. She looked disappointed, but unconvinced.

“ And you’re afraid of encouraging incompetence.”

“ Oh, no, really, I ” —

“Yes, I think you are. Well, I’ll tell you just the way I feel about it. I must be a journalist ” —

“ Why must you ? ”

“ Because I know I’m fitted for it, and the life attracts me. I might have preferred to be a painter or a musician, but we are not allowed to select our talents.” She smiled and moved a step away. “ If you can’t employ me there’s nothing more to be said about it, and I’m sorry for having detained you. But — somebody else will employ me. I’ve only been in New York a month, and you’re the first editor I’ve seen. This will explain why Dr. Ericsson suggested my coming to you. I showed it to him.”

She drew a letter from her pocket and handed it to David. He was surprised to see the heading of the Citizen ’’ on the sheet, his own handwriting beneath it. It was written to a man named Robert Heron, and directed to a small Rhode Island town.

You know Heron? ” he asked quickly.

^^Yes. You like his work, it seems.”

Very much,” he said, in a mystified voice. I don’t as a rule seek ^ specials’ outside, but his were so trenchant, so brilliantly phrased, so exactly what we wanted, I couldn’t help, you see, writing to ask the cause of his long silence. Most of his work, of whatever sort, has commanded attention here. Now, there’s a man,” said David enthusiastically and in the final tone which closes an argument, “ I sometimes wish had the ambition and spirit of the woman of to-day. He’s wasting his time in a small place doing desultory work ; a dreamer, I dare say an idler too. We need men like lO him here. I wish you’d tell him so,” he smiled.

Anne’s eyes were perversely girlish as she said simply:

“ I’m Robert Heron, Mr. Temple.”

Chapter II

T he advent of a woman in the editorial rooms of the “ Citizen ” was no longer the latest topic there. Anne had been one of the staff for a fortnight.

She had come with a reputation already made, which she must continue to sustain. Every nerve had been strained to do this, and she had succeeded. All other impressions had been lost sight of in this one purpose. The rush and pressure of life around her, the strange scenes and faces, the new routine, seemed the fabric of a dreamworld where she was the intensely vital figure.

Although her working hours were short, the continued effort and oppressive heat had given her face a wan touch. But she felt no fatigue. On the con-

II trary she was aware of the satisfaction arising from fulfilment. This niche in the dusty, metallic world where a great newspaper was made was the only thing she had craved. To prove herself worthy of its possession was the single aim of her life. David Temple had hesitated to engage her because she was a woman. He had told her she would soon weary. She must prove his prophecy false. This was the impetus that made her bold. The result was gratifying.

Matters of social and moral importance started out vividly during the terrible summer weather. The handling of some of these was assigned to Anne. It would seem that David Temple had decided to take her cruelly at her word and treat her as a man, or as if he had wished to force an evidence of affright or weakness from her. He was mistaken. Anne was a soldier’s daughter. Best of all, she was confident of her right to be there. Robert Heron had never done better work than came from her pen during that fortnight.

When she had defended her position and won, there came a lull, and without seeming to watch she absorbed a knowledge of the people around her and noticed what events and colorings go to make up existence in a newspaper office.

There was the sentimental reporter, who furtively read and re-read femininelooking letters and sighed over stock reports; the silent man with the scarred face, who smoked strong cigars; the society editor, whose smile was as well oiled as his russet boots; the baby-faced reporter, who betted on everything and matched ” on the smallest provocation; the fretful critic with the perpetual cold in the head, who banged the door as if to insinuate his exit was final, and who always returned in a rush for something forgotten; the artist lounging with an exalted look to his feet, who drew inspiration from Egyptian cigarettes; Pete, the office boy, with terrible worldly knowledge in his pale eyes and the savoir faire of a veteran clubman in his manner, who grew confidential with her and tried to interest her in the intricacies of baseball; and David Temple, the editor-in-chief, who, unlike many of his compeers, worked hard, bringing with him an assurance of well-bred ease and a capability for exertion and endurance.

Her surroundings were so strange that Anne often wondered if it were indeed she who was there, the lonely girl who in the well-stocked library of a silent country house had written most of the historical and descriptive “ specials” which had commanded attention.

While the clatter of the presses and the unaccustomed tread of life were in her ears she would close her eyes and summon a vision of a different scene and time: A hollow at the foot of a hill where a great pool lay, and willow branches like green lengths of dishevelled hair trailed in the water; a girl — herself, the Anne Garrick who was dead never to rise again — lying at full length under the trees, her cheek upon an open book, the fragrance of a lost land around her, the whir of unseen wings, the fireflies in the blackness under the cedars or flashing like uneasy eyes from the confusion of lush grass, the sound of water pushing its way through twisted weeds with a coquettish whimper like silk rubbed on silk.

Some snatch of a street song, the exciting news of the last murder, or the clangor of Trinity’s bell would frighten these imaginings, and despite her pagan love of nature she would return to work, happy that the last two years of solitude and reverie were over.

David talked to her very little and never about anything save work. She watched him and found him curiously interesting. Other men were more or less of a familiar type, but David Temple was individual. A nascent force marked his lightest action. To be near him was like coming within the radius of a powerful electric current.

She had always liked clean-shaved men. They seemed a degree farther i6 from the idea of the ancestral monkey than their bewhiskered brothers. David was clean-shaved, spare of flesh, strongly built. There was unity in his simple name, stern face, searching gray eyes, and the practical surroundings in which he worked. Back of his desk the bound volumes of the “ Citizen ” for a generation were sombrely heaped. Electric wires and buildings of granite were visible beyond the window near which he sat. The man and his mission were melodic.

Anne was slowly drawing on her gloves one evening when the reporter with the scarred face laid down his cigar and asked a question of nobody in particular.

“ Any of you fellows know where Donald Sefain has hidden himself this time ? ”

The name attracted her, and she found herself waiting for the reply.

“ Oh, Lord, it’s too warm to think of Sefain’s vagaries! He’s probably trying tenement-house life again with some of his slum friends while a penny remains. When he’s broke he’ll come back and work for another spurt,” the society editor replied with fine unconcern.

“Fool! Flinging himself away! He won’t last long.”

“ D’ you know what I’d do if I were in Temple’s place and had such a precious bundle of shiftlessness and surliness for a so-called brother” —

“ H’m! There isn’t much doubt about what you’d do.”

“Kick him out.” And the society editor fingered his imperial tenderly.

“ I think he hates Temple more every day,” said Jack Braidley, the reporter who “ matched.” “ He’s an idea he’s one too many in the world, I fancy.”

The words were hardly spoken when the door opened and a man came in. From the hush greeting his entrance Anne knew it was Donald Sefain. She looked at him attentively.

There were unmistakable marks of vagabondism about him — his dusty i8 clothes, churlish manner, long, untidy hair. He was of moderate height and slender build, he carried his shoulders poorly, and his eyes were sunken. But for all this his dark, foreign face, sneering, secretive, defiant, was startlingly handsome as he stood in the red wash tones of the sunset pouring through the dusty windows.

He looked at Anne with some surprise in his glance, his expression questioning; then he became indifferent, nodded curtly to the men, and sat down at a corner desk. From his attitude one would have supposed he was sketching or writing. As she passed him to the door she saw his fingers were motionless, his open eyes introspective.

While the room contained a dozen men, it was evident Donald Sefain would be left alone with his musings. He had withdrawn from the others as if from habit. Even before she had passed into the hall they seemed to have forgotten his existence.

Chapter III

T hree miles lay between the offices of the “ Citizen” and the trio of rooms Anne had rented and furnished during the six weeks of her residence in New York. They were in a low red-brick house separated from the street by a patch of grass and iron palings. The neighborhood had Washington square for its nucleus, the only part of the money-making town preserving the mossy tone of Knickerbocker days, where occasional low doorsteps and spindle-legged banisters keep the costumes and manners of the century’s infancy clear in the memory.

Anne loved the queer street, the venerable church opposite, with its unfashionable parishioners and sweet-tongued bell, the amethyst light stealing across 19 the landscape of roofs, the fret of trains flashing past in aerial passage not far off and leaving a plume of vapor behind, the passing of many people along the pavements reaching into smoky perspective.

These impressions were a ripening contact, helping to wake her to newer perceptions of life, making her realize that she stood unsupported in a crowded, struggling place.

She had the exhilarating sensations, of a daring and capable swimmer who plunges into deep water where only his own skill can keep him afloat.

Her eyes were shining, her color high, as she hurried up the narrow stairway and entered the sitting-room. An old man was standing by one of the windows and turned expectantly as she came in. It was Dr. Ericsson. He looked at her with cool, friendly scrutiny.

“ I’ve been waiting for you again. There’s something witching about you, Anne,” he said helplessly. “ You’ve quite spoiled me for solitude. Every dinner I have away from you is like sawdust.’’

Anne laid her arm lightly around his shoulder. She was a little the taller. There was something charmingly audacious in her young face and protecting attitude contrasted with his gray hair and sixty odd years. She had the impetuosity and assurance of a fresh runner who fears nothing on the long, mysterious race just begun. He had the half-defeated expression of one approaching with lagging steps the end, and who thinks little even of the winning of that race which nevertheless must be run in one fashion or another.

I never knew a man so eager for compliments,” she said, her lips curling in playful scorn. “ Shall I fib, and say every meal is lonely without you? Not a bit of it! I come home so hungry, uncle dear, and the man at the corner sends in such good chops! I put on a blouse and dream over my coffee, while Nora in the kitchen sings Irish melodies in an adorable voice and with a creamlike brogue.”

She laid her finger under his chin and looked into his eyes.

“ But when you do come, you dear, cynical creature, I shelve dreams gladly and don’t care a pin for Nora’s songs. Satisfied ? ”

She hurried away to change her gown, and Dr. Ericsson was left alone in the dusk. He listened in a dreamy' way to the maid crossing and recrossing the rug-covered floor. His arms hung by his sides, his eyes were fastened on a trail of smoke diminishing in the sunset.

Thirty years before, then a young Swede newly arrived in America for a bout with fortune, he had married the sister of Anne’s mother. They had settled in New York, and by degrees he became successful and rich. His wife was a beauty, his children’s future bright, and life went well. But trouble came. His children, with the exception of Olga, the youngest, died during school days ; his fortune, entrusted to false friends, went to help their speculations and was lost. Now, in old age, he was a physician of reputation, but poor, possessing a fashionably inclined wife, whose weekly letters from Paris, where she had elected to live when Olga’s school days in Switzerland were over, were wearying longings for the vanished wealth. His daughter was almost a stranger to him. She had gone away a child: she was now a woman of twenty; what sort of a woman, evolved by her mother’s worldliness and a false system of education, he hesitated to consider. His life was spent in the depleted family mansion on Waverly place, with one old servant, amid furniture masked in gray holland and portraits of his lost children blinking through gauze sheetings. Only his patients and friends had prevented him from becoming like the piano in the corner, which had almost forgotten how to vibrate.

But he knew what a home might be since Anne came to New York. He was very fond of her, wholly in sympathy with her. His gaze wandered to a shadowy pastel on the wall before him, where her deep eyes were touched by the sunset’s fire. It seemed to tell him much. Hers had been a stern, starved girlhood up to the present year. After college days and between the ages of twenty and twenty-three she had been chained to the bedside of an invalid father, her life a strain when it was not stagnation, unused energy fretting her heart, what should have been the sunniest period of her life drifting by in shadow.

When her father died, she had found herself wholly orphaned and free to plan her future according to her tastes. She had a small income, a thorough education, and the talent of being able to write with splendor and force of whatever she felt deeply. The controlled yearnings for freedom had grown into one desire, and she had gratified it. The old home was rented, and like a young David entering the camp of the Philistines she had come to New York. Three things she had determined on — to live alone, work, fill her days with impressions of life, fling away books and study men and women.

When the maid appeared with candles Anne followed her, a bowl of roses in her hands. The newspaper woman in severe, collared gown was gone, and in her place was an exquisite creature akin to the flowers and the starry lights. Her shoulders and arms gleamed through a gauzy black bodice. A modish knot showed the fine abundance of her hair. One rose was fastened at her bosom, where it flamed in splendid warmth.

Dr. Ericsson looked at her critically. She was more than pretty: she was imperfectly lovely, or, rather, beautiful without fulfilling conventional canons. During quiet moments her face was serene and alluring: the dark hair upon the pale brow like banded velvet, the liquid brown eyes poetically thoughtful, the mouth appealing. Softness, strength, and color wdre all there. But in action and expression lay her strongest charm. When the lips smiled, when the eyes lightened, and the small, delicate hands as restless as a Frenchwoman’s emphasized her words, Anne was irresistible.

“ I am going to give you a summer dinner,” she said, her fingers lingering among the roses.

“ Nothing but roses.? ”

“ You’d be near Nirvana if that could satisfy you. Nora, bring the soup,” she added, in a purposely practical tone, as she seated herself.

They were like children together. Anne listened attentively as she led the old man on to philosophize of life as he saw it. She told him of her newspaper work, its newness, its delight; of the novel she had commenced, and how sometimes she rose at dead of night to make a note of an idea or a phrase; of all her faiths, dreams, and prejudices. To him she was piteously youthful. To her he was old, wise, and weary. He had settled all with destiny. She was buckling on her armor. It seemed that the heart he had lost throbbed in her bosom; he longed that the impossible might be made possible and she might keep it forever so — valiant, free, happy.

“I suppose you know David Temple very well by this time ? ” he asked.

You’d be surprised if you knew how seldom he has spoken to me,” she said, resting familiarly on her elbow. “ He sometimes seems a marvellously constructed machine instead of a man. He works so hard. He seems able to attend to twenty things at once.”

“Yes; to lead is in his blood.”

“ That’s it,” she nodded. “ If he’d been born in a forest in tribal days they’d have made him chief. Or can’t you fancy him a pirate, or a stupendous criminal with a horde of cringing followers, or a cardinal with an eye to pierce a conscience and subjugate a king, or a general like Napoleon, gazing indifferently over the fields of the dead? Do you know,” she said, in an awed, childish way, “I like him?”

“ All women like him,” snapped Dr. Ericsson.

“ Do they ? ”

‘‘ It’s a feminine instinct which nothing can kill, to like the man who dominates you — and who can do without you.”

“ Well, go on,” she said, leaning closer.

“Women and their affairs,” said Dr. Ericsson, lighting a cigar, “ engage David Temple’s thoughts very little. He is not intolerant, he is simply indifferent, although most masculine in the gentleness coming from a consciousness of his own strength. It seems to me as if a woman could never fill his manysided life. There are men born with the love of women in their being, and it grows with their growth. To possess it too strenuously weakens a character and often perverts what should be a reverence into a taste. To possess it with a separateness from the other interests of life suggests the lack of some vital, spiritual fibre. I’ve felt this with David. If he ever marries it will be because his intellect suggests it as wise, or because his physical nature is enslaved. The two will scarcely blend.”

“Yes, he suggests all you say. By the way, tell me about Donald Sefain — his stepbrother.”

“ Oh, have you seen him? ”

“ This afternoon. His face haunted me all the way home.”

“I see you have Vaudel’s ‘Desert Monk’ on your shelf. You’ve read it? The pictures are Donald Sefain’s. Fine, aren’t they? I half believe he made them just to show what he could do, and then from ‘ cussedness ’ flung down his pen. He’s done no serious work since.”

“ Do tell me about him,” and Anne, leaving the table, wheeled a low arm-chair to Dr. Ericsson’s knee.

“ It’s a bit of a story. Can you reach me a match? Thank you, my dear. This is very cosey.” He sat back and half closed his eyes. ‘‘ When David Temple was about fifteen his father, as hard and stern a man as ever lived, married a Frenchwoman, a widow with a boy of six. Some people know and a great many suspect there never was a Mr. Sefain, and the boy Donald was as surely John Temple’s son as David, for whom he’d have cut out his eyes, he loved him so. Well, Mrs. Sefain was a beautiful woman, an adventuress with the manners of a duchess. I never saw her in a brocade dress without thinking how well she’d look on one of those little pompadour fans, all covered with roses and things. Donald is the picture of her. I think his eyes and smile — the latter too rare, God help him ! — would glorify a plain face into beauty. After five years of the most absolutely perfect marital misery Donald’s mother died, and he was left in old John Temple’s care. It was a hard fate.”

“Why? He didn’t like him? ”

“ Like him ? He hated him as only an intolerant, conscientious man can hate. Donald was a constant reproach to him and a reminder of his married unhappiness. He never let David be friends with him, never. You see, Donald hadn’t a fair chance. He was a lonely little soul.”

“ Why didn’t he set his teeth and make something of himself ? ” said Anne, with the defiance of a champion.

“ Ah, that’s what he should have done, exactly ! But he didn’t. Instead, at twenty, after leaving John Temple’s house, he went from bad to worse. His face to-day bears scars of the odds against him. He’s a failure. I tried to get near him, but he wouldn’t let me be his friend. It is one of his perversities to affect the poor and mingle with the unfortunate. Anything prosperous inspires a morbid dislike in him; all that’s deformed, shunned, all that lies in shadow, finds favor in his sight. He’s a strange and silent creature, drinking feverishly.

cultivating his worst instincts, finding an unreasonable satisfaction in offering himself as a sacrifice to the discontent instilled into him through the circumstances of his life.”

‘‘ I don’t understand why he’s on the ‘Citizen’ with David Temple.”

“ Oh, he simply does work for that as well as a few other papers 1 He’s brimful of talent. David employs him as he would a stranger, and pays him for what work he turns in. He’s seldom in the office.”

The clock struck nine, and Dr. Ericsson started up.

“Good heavens! And a sick man not a mile off is waiting for me! ”

He got into his coat, kissed her, and hurried away.

She carried the bowl of roses from the table to the mantel and stood for a moment with her hands upon them, a look of disquietude in her eyes. She was thinking of Donald Sefain.