More Than a Story.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 128, 26 November 1904, Page 10

More Than a Story.

The telegraph editor sat in his little coop on the third floor of the News Building. There was the constant click of the telegraph instruments at either side of him, where sat the Associated Press and special wire operators so near that when the sheets came out of the typewriters he could reach over and "take them. Messenger boys kept running in, sometimes three in a bunch, sometimes ten minutes, apart, threw down yellow- envelopes, on his desk, and unceremoniously shoved their books on of his copy with -the*, peremptory adjuration "Sign.'-' To one fyifised to the place it would have seemed, a mild pandemonium, ' forbiddfng concentration of effort, but the telegraph editor sat there totally unaffected by the turmoil, sorting out the stories as they came over the two wires or were brought in by messenger, discarding, cutting, and editing. A green man would have been utterly distracted by the Way copy piled up on his desk, all" in thd course of the night to be jammed into thirteen columns of print, but it was routine to him. It didn't even keep him busy all the time. He occasionally eat back in his chair for a moment's relaxation, and the pleasant way in which he swore at the cockroaches as they climbed in and out of his paste-pot told £he operators old Ben was in & pleasant mood that night. ' ' , "Got anything you can force fora slug sinjgle, Ben? Something that will stand page one?" It was Carroll, the news editor, who had charge of the make-up of the paper. "I'm shy one first page flash and the first edition goes in twenty minutes," he added.. "Bulletin here ; wreck on the B-L. and W. near Anderson ; passenger train ; several people reported killed. That's not much, though, and you know what usually happens to those bulletins." "Yes, I know," answered Carroll, "but if it doesn't stand up we can kill 'it in the next edition. Force a head on it now, anyhow," Carroll started for the composing-room to make up for the fiist, aud old Ben, with the four-line bulletin before him, wrote a five-deck head with the celerity born of long practice, pa&lcd the little bulletin on a -sheet of paper, drew the two lines through it that mean "double 1 lead," pUt head and story ip the copy i pipe, and it was ' uT ihp composing-room almost as sopii as Carroll. It was one o'clock in the morning, now, and the best of the news was in. Messenger boys were fifteen or twenty minutes apart, the special wire worked only at intervals, and while the A.P. operator

kept pounding along as industriously as he had at seven ifi the evening, the stuff that came out of his typewriter was mostly the kind the telegraph editor looked at and threw on "the floor. Wuen the last forme of the first edition had gone into the stereotyping room Carroll came back upstairs. "Anything doing with that wreck?" he asked. "No; but there's time yet," replied Ben. "We can wait till two o'clock, and if it doesn't make good then I'll raise on one of those Washington stories." It would probably be slack with Carroll for half an. hour now, and he sat down on- one end of the telegraph editor's desk. "How does it seem to be a single man again, Ben?" he asked. "It doesn't seem, and, thank God, this is the end of it. The -wife and the babies will be home to-morrow." "Ben, I believe yours is a case of real domestication, and five years ago 1 wouldn't have thought it possible." Old Ben reached back in his desk, back of the paste-pot, and took out a photograph. He handed it to Carroll. "They're pretty kids," commented the news editor. "How old is the biggest one now, Ben?" "He's almost four, and the little chap's two years and three months. I want to tell you, Carroll," and the telegraph editor banged his fist on the desk for emphasis, "that when you go home and meet gents like these it makes a man of you. If it wasn't for these fellows and their mother I wouldn't even be respectable!" Carroll got down off the desk and handed back the picture. . The A.P. man pulled a new sheet out of his typewriter. Ben picked it up. "Guess that slug single can stand," he said. "New bulletin says make the first one regu'ir, and make the number of deaths read sixteen; story coming." "Story's coming now," called the operator. Carroll went over by the operator and watched the story as it turned up line by line out of the typewriter. "This is the best story of the night, Ben," he cried, enthusiastically, when a dozen lines had come into view. "Train jumps the track, catches fire " 'TLots of trains do that, Carroll. If a train should stay On the track, catch fire and burn while running forty miles an hour, now THAT would be a story." "Yes, but listen,"' interrupted Carroll, and he read : " 'In the third coach the rescuers came upon the burned body of a woman. She was lying prone in tlie aisle of the car, and when they lifted the body up -two little children were found beneath her. They were dead, but evidently from suffocation. Their bodies had been protected from the flames by that of the mother, who had given her own life in the futile endeavour to save her children.' " "It's a good feature," admitted Ben. "Sort of braces up the yarn." "It's human interest,'" returned Carroll, and that always makes a good story. '"Feed the thing out as fast as you get it and raise the head to a double-column. Play the feature. Something on the 'Gave Her Life for Her Children's Sake' idea." Carroll had got as far as the door of the telegraph coop, then he stopped and suddenly turned around. "Sar Ben," he said, "did you ever think that this story, and every one of them, means something to somebody? Means more than just something they read in the paper?" Ben looked up from the first sheet of the substitute story which the A.P. man had handed him. , "Don't know that it ever struck me just that way," he said, "but everybody's got to die some time, and leave relatives to mourn, and' ,this is a rattling good story." ' "' Without any, further comment Carroll went out. The ' story ' ran for another sheet and partof a third; Ben kept dropping it down, the pipe almost in paragraphs. "Now ask those ignoramuses on the other end of that wire for the death list." said Ben to the operator when the story had come. 'Tell them,! can "dream those nice little human interest details, but I can't dream the names-. Tell them it's after 2 o'clock in the morning, and ask them if they think this is a weekly,'-' he added, with considerable heat. Having thus stirred up the sending end of the press wire, he wrotV on a sheet of paper, "Turn rule after first paragraph, Anderson wreck for list of dead to come," and sent it down the pipe. It was a waiting game, now. The te]£graph instrument still clicked, and there was the steady pound of the typewriter, but nothing came over the wire but digests of department reports from Washington and other stuff similarly dead. "Ben !" It was Carroll yelling up the copy pipe from the composing-room, three floors below. "Tell the A.P, we've got to have that death list. Quick, too !" The renewed demand for the death list had hardl-" been made over the wire w"hen the operator announced : "They're going to start it now." It doesn't take long, to get sixteen names, even with a partial list of addresses and a catal&gue of injuries. The instant he got the la&t name the operator tore the sheet' from the machine, threw it to Ben, then put a new sheet in his typewriter, and was ready when the telegraph instrument .began, clicking off dry rot from" Washington, •Beginning right in the middle of a sentence, where it had left off when the break was made to send the death list. Ben seized the sheet as it fell on his desk, wrote the h,ead line, "Death lifct. insert Anderson wreck," and so you could hardly see the pencil travel, put in the paragraph marks at the head of the first three names on the list, and drew the two lines und^r them, indicating that the names were to be set in caps. He put in the fourth paragraph mark just as quickly, then the pencil dropped, his hand palsied on the shee.t of copy before him, and when it convulsively contracted there was a wrinkled piece of paper in his- grasp. His head fell forward on the table. "Ben! Ben!" It was Carroll again at the pipe. "Where IS that death list? Only four minutes to go. I've GOT to have ft!" No answer. "Bell!" •>- - , T . The operator turned around now. He saw Ben forward on his desk^his head in his arms. The telegraph editor breathed, but for that he might lie dead. The operator went to the pipeJ "Mr. Carroll," he called. "The" list is here, but something's tlie- matter with Ben. You'd better come tree" Up the stairs came Carroll, three at a bound, and burst into the telegraph room. He gave just one glance at Ben. Where's that list?" he cried to the operator. "He's got it." Carroll pulled the crumpled sheet from the, now relaxed fingers. Where the fourth paragraph sign was marked he read : "MRS. BENJAMIN SAUNDERS and two children " He didn't need to read the rest, and he didn't stop to, but, with the death list m his hand, bolted for the stairs. — Lynn D. Follett, in Leslie's Magazine.

"A musician out of work, are you?" said the* Housekeeper:,; "well, you'll find a few cords- 'in the woodshed. Suppose you favour me with an obligate" "Pardon the pronunciation, madam," replied the bright tramp, "but Chopin is not popular with me.

The Self -bidden Guest. Lady Featherstone enjoyed, not unjustly, the reputation of being one of the most eclectic hostesses in London, and had for some years occupied that position in society to which her birth, her wealth, her accomplishments, and, last but not least, her undoubted beauty entitled her. At Lady Featherstone's house — at j Her little social assemblies, her soirees, her occasional dinner parties^ — one might be sure of meeting only those people upon whom the cachet of unquestioned breeding had been set. A woman herself of unerring taste, of the most delicate ethical discrimination, and of a fastidious fancy, she was never able to tolerate in others the least deflection from her own high standard of criticism and culture. She was clever enough to admire clever people, yet not stupid enough to pass for being clever herself; she was a widow with two young daughters, a large income, and, as it seemed, a considerable capacity for enjoying it; and people said — those people who always "say things'" — that the fact of this large income ceasing on her re-marriage explained the other fact of Lady Featherstone remaining a widow. To give up several thousands a year, an assured position in society, and her liberty would be much to expect <.! a woman in return for the questionable advantage of a second husband. So people said. They knew that Lady Featherstone had made a brilliant marriage at an early age ; that she was enviable because she was rich, and happy because she was enviable. But, oddly enough, Lady Featherstone was- not always happy ; and on a particular afternoon in January she sat alone in her drawingroom, with a look of singular sadness upon her beautiful face; her chin rested on her hand, her gray eyes were bent wistfully on the fire, and now and again she sighed softly to herself, as though a mood of memories were on her. She sat alone. Perhaps this consciousness — this consciousness that she was "alone" — had omething to do with the stirring of , those secret emotions which a retrospect of the past will often evoke ; perhaps it was this retrospect itself that made the consciousness more acute; but, at least; the burden of solitude seemed to weigh heavily on her souL Her children were too young to be companions to her — too young tor fill quite that void in the , heart of a woman of thirty-five, which looks for some other and fuller source of repletion ; her friends — bul a woman's friends, what are they? Yet it was not usual for Lady Featherstone' to indulge a morbid train of fancies, and on this very evening, the evening Of one of her large dinner parties, it seemed curious that hex thoughts should have carried her into so me.ancholy a groove, that the faint, far-off chord of early memories should have been suddenly struck by the sound of a French name^ — the name of a stranger, the name of one of her guest's, the Count de Serillac, whom the French Ambassador was bringing with him to her dinner party. Except that he was a distinguished diplomatist, Lady Featherstone knew nothing of M. de Serillac and cared less ; but that he was a Frenchman awal^^i in her heart the eudden memory of auumer — a compatriot — a Frenchman, poor and obscure, but of noble bearing and an exquisite manner, tender and gallant, hand- . some and debonair, who once had loved her. Once, fifteen years ago, when she was twenty, and he had been her — draw- i ing-master ! He had loved her, this - French artist with the earnest; 1 face and the inexpressible air of .nobility so oddly at variance with the. nature of his casing ' — he had loved her, this drawing-master; and yet what in another similarly situated would have seemed the acme of arrogance, in him seemed but the assertion of a natural prerogative, carrying with it nothing bizarre, nothing presumptuous, nothing inappropriate. He had loved her, and she had loved him ; so there was but one thing to do, and the drawingmaster did it — he went from her presence for ever, for he was a gentleman. Only this he had said on parting : "Mademoiselle, I go, but I leave my heart here — with you. Treat it as you will, Mademoiselle, keep- it or cast it away, think of me or forget me, but remember that, if ever the day comes when I may return to you, I shah return ; and then, Mademoiselle — then, if it is in your power to bestow what it may be in my power to ask, I shall demand of you the happiness which only you can give me. I live now for that day — for that day alone !" And, with tears in her eyes, she had pleaded, girl-like, that he should -not leave her, and for reply, he had taken her hand very tenderly and pressed it to his lips. "Mademoiselle," he had murmured, '1 must ! Farewell !" M. Grebsonier never returned, and four years afterwaids Miss Maxwell married. Lord Featherstone, a man of considerable social attainments and some political influence, who had !allen desperately in love with the beautiful girl whom he had met at a country house. So, in course of time, Gressonier was forgotten, and the one romantic episode of Lad> Featherstone's early life lay buried deep down in the dim recesses of a woman & memory. I Her reverie was -suddenly interrupted j by a ring at the front door bell. I Lady Feutherstone started, for she was not expecting visitors — nor, as a rule, did i visit oi s arrive so late^ — and, rising abruptly, looked with a woman's instinct into the large mirror above the mantelpiece. The reflection of her image showed nothing en mal — not a tress of hair disarranged, not a ribbon awry, no trace of disorder in feature or dress^ — the image, indeed, of a very beautiful woman, clothed with the perfection of simplicity that made her seem scarce moire than a young gin stiJ. Half-smiling, with a satisfied consciousness of this fact, she sat down again as the servant entered the room and handed her a card on the salver. Lady Featherstone glanced at the card, and suddenly her face turned pale. She looked at the servant interrogatively. "A gentleman, you say — to see me?" "Yes, your Ladyship." It was not customary for Lady Featherstone to question her servants on the subject of a visitor's appearance, but she could not at this instant forbear from asking, "What kind of a gentleman?" "A tall gentleman, your Ladyship," the servant answered ; "elderly, with gray hair — a foreign gentleman, I think, your Ladyship." Lady Featherstone glanced again at the card in her hand — "Paul Greesonier." Unconsciously her pulses quickened, the colour returned to her cheeks, her breath came oddly fast. What did it mean? What could it mean? Paul Gressonier! The man who had loved her fifteen years ago and left her ; the man whose name but five minutes since had crossed her thoughts— whose face had risen bo strangely vivid out of the mists of long departed years, whose voice had rung but now upon her fancy with half-forgotten echoes of her girlhood's days — Gressonier! It must be some mistake, some singular illusion, or else some curious coincidence — no more. The servant coughed apologetically. "I told the gentleman," your Ladyship," he went on, "that your Ladyship was not receiving and could not see visitors at this hour, but he wouldn't take no re- , fusal. 'Take up my card,' said he, 'to

Lady Featherstone, and say I wish to see her particular.' Does your Ladyship desire me to say that you are indisposed?" he enquired, gravely. "No !" said Lady Featherstone, speaking with sudden effort. "Show the gentleman up." There was little time in which to adjust her mental attitude to an adequate conception of the emotional possibilities that this quite unexpected incident seemed likely to create. It had happened with so complete a suddenness that tho effect of it upon Lady Featherstone's mind was considerably lessened by the difficulty of reducing the utterly improbable to the practically existent, the abstract to the actual, in the brief space of ; two minutes. ' There was, in short, a strong sense of unreality still upon her when the door again opened and the visitor was ushered into her presence. A gentleman, tall, with, grizzled moustache, strong, aquiline features, keen, earnest eyes and gray hair brushed back from a high, wide forehead, entered, took a- step forward, paused, then silently bowed. A sharp surprise, a certain disappointment', a"troubled gladness, a singular embarrassment — all these sentiments were fused into the consciousness that before her stood, at last, after long years, the lover of her youth ; and Lady Featherstone's eyes dropped before the gaze of M. Gressonier. Fifteen years had changed him from a young to a middle-aged man — a man handsome still, but in whose appearance seemed manifest the buffets of adverse fortune. His clothes were habby — so shabby that, when he had divested himself in the hall below of his rich fur coat, the footman had looked at him askance, half doubting the propriety of conducting such an ill-dreased person into the presence of his mistress, and marvelling not a little at the strange discrepancy between the stranger's costly, sable lined overcoat and the threadbare garments underneath it; for thej were threadbare and ill-fitting; his boots were even jatchcu, liki coiiar irayed, his necktie a mere cheap ribbon. Yet even the disadvantages of such attire were unable to conceal in the wearer a certain aspect of dignity, a nobility of bearing which seemed natural to him and independent of' all extraneous aids. "M. Gressonier!" said Lady Featherstone, after a brief, awkward silence, and he^d out her hand. "Lady Featheistone — ah t Madame, permit me!" With grave reverence, M. Gressonier raised the outsti etched hand to his lips. "Madame," he murmured, "it is long — so long — sinee i last time!" Lady Featherstone withdrew her hand somewhat hastily ; her cheeks "were suddenly cnmsKra; what magic was there in a voice that could set her heart beating so at the first musical vibration of its tones? Yes, it was the voice of her girlhood's daj s ; the same low, tender, passionate, pleading voice that fifteen years ago h t ;d thrilled her, stolen its way into her heart, lingered so long after in her memory, and now again was sounding in her ears — the voice of the man she had loved. N "Then, Madame," went on Gressonier, still with his eyes upon her face — "fifteen years, is it not, the last time? — then I said, one day, perhaps, I would come back. Madame, I have come ; J am here. Alas, you find me changed, but you — you, Madame, are the same, more beautiful — no older — than the girl whose face has lived treasured in my heart and memory, so fresh, so radiant, so vivante, day and night since that last time, Madame — fifteen yeais ago, is it not?" "Ylj," was all Lady Featherstone could find to say in that moment of supreme emotional retrospect;' "yes, "fit'teen" years ago, M. Gressonier, I think. It is a long time, trolly, she added, . with an , odd little laugh, "and, you see, 'I am no longer a girl, young and romantic, but a woman — a widow with children. People change, M. Gressoniei\ Old feelings change." "Ah, Madame — you say?" broke in the Frenchman, pleadingly. "No, no ; it is not so ! The love oi a man's liie changes not. But yet, it is true^ — a young girl soon forgets." "Not soon," she corrected. "You went away. iTou, did not return. " I married — as all girls in society must do. "I never expected to see you again, M. Gressonier. Surely you do not wish to reproach nus — after all these years !" She gave another little laugh, endeavouring to place their interview ,upon a more commonsenße and conventional footing. The teusion of this high level of sentiment oppressed her as somethii» bizarre — almost theatrical; and yet her heart responded like a sensitive instrument to the touch of a musician, to every word, to every tone of M. Gressonier. He perceived her embarrassment, anQ, with quick adroitne.v&, adapted his attitude to her unspoken wish. "Let me explain," he said. "I to reproach you? No! I went from you — for there was no other course open. Then, when I would have returned, I heard you were married. Madame,' I learnt but a week ago thai you were a widow — - and I am here ! But why ? To see you once again, to hear your voice, to feel — it may be tor the last time, Madame — the pressuie of your fingers upon minel And, Madame, for something elbe — to learn -^lieiher the heart of the maiden can remain true for fifteen years. Regard me, .Madame! 1 am not young. I am poor — «ilas, your eyes are eloquent ; they tell me much. It is true. I am a poor, shabby old man. I should not Wave come. You have forgotten all — all. , It is well. I will leave you, for I have I -learnt what I wished to learn." [ He turned to go. Then a sudden veil seemed lifted from Lady Featherstone's eyes. She saw before her no longer an ill-dressed, middle-aged man, sunk, as it seemed, in poverty and failure, but the handsome, gallant lover of her youth, the man who had loved her so long and faithfully, whom once she had loved — ah, whom in her heart she had never ceased to love — whom she loved still! Yes, the truth came on her in that instant with the thrill of an electric shock— she loved him still. With a quicß, shy gesture, she turned to the shabby figure and held out both her hands. "Do not leave me," she said simply. "I love you !" M. Gressonier turned, too, and a light leaped into his eyes. He became suddenly erect, he looked ten years younger, he seized her extended hands and carried them agAin and again to his lips. "Ah, Madame," he murmured, "it is too much. My love — my own true love!" "If I many you," said Lady Featherstone, a few minutes later, "I lose all my money — you know that, Paul?" "Money !" — he stretched out his hands, deprecatingly. "What of it? It is not your money — no, it is you yourself that I want, that 1 have wanted, ah, so long!" Then he looked at her with a ■Hidden anxiety. "But you?" he added. 'It i& a great sacrifice! I am so poor. You no not love me well enough to give up you., money?" Lady Featherstone sighed. It was a gret sacrifice, certainly. But she loved him. After all, so long aa they had enough to live upon She turned her soft eyes upon Gressonier's face. "Yes," she said, "I will give up everything for you!" There was a curious smile upon Gressonier's face as he drew her towards him and kissed her reverently upon the forehead. "Mon ange!" he whispered. "Mon ange! . . " . Mon ange!" The sudden striking of the little clock

on the mantelpiece awoke Lady Featherstone the next instant to a rude consciousness of the realities of life once more, and she recollected that in two hours she would have to receive her guests. "I — I am giving a dinner party tonight," she began, and then stopped, in some confusion, glancing at M. Gressonier's clothes. He noticed the glance, and the smile on his lips flickered oddlj. "Ab," lib said, "a dinner party? That is so nice. I will come, too, is it not?" "Of course," said Lady Featherstone, bravely ; "if you wish it " "But," added M. Gressonier, a sudden expression of doubt crossing his features, "my — my clothes. I fear— I — it is in effect that I hav£ not any dress clothes," lie ptammered. "But if I may come — just as I am" "There will be some distinguished guests," faltered Lady Featherstone. "The French Ambassador is coming, and the Count de Serillac" ■ "Ah.,, the French Ambassador and De Serillac; ma cherie," said Gressonier, "that is bonne , chance. To meet two such men— what pleasure! Then I may come?" •Lady Featherstone drew a deep breath. "As you are?" she enquired, nervously. Gressonier drew back as though he had been stung. "Madame— you— you are not ashamed of me?" "Ah, Paul !" ehe murmured. "Then — as I am?" "Yes," said Lady Featberstone. It was not without certain qualms of anxiety that Lady Featherstone awaited the arrival of her guests two hours later; her courage faltered not a little at the prospect of the effect likely to be produced upon the rest of the company by the,, appearance of one of their number clothed not only in morning dress, but in very shabby morning dress; and she wondered in what possible way she could condone what might not unreasonably be construed into an offence against good taste and the respect due to her other guests. Why did Paul Gressonier insist iupon being present under such circumstances? He had 1 never, in the early days of their acquaintance, shown himself deficient either 1 in breeding or in a 1 knowledge of the usages of society, so that there seemed the less excuse for his present strange want of tact. The drawing room was already half full of guests, when the footman, throwing open the door, announced "His Excellency the French Ambassador and the Count de Serillac." Lady Featherstone turned as the two gentlemen entered the room, took a step forward, then paused. M. Chambord advanced with, a bow and a smile. But Lady Featherstone scarcely noticed the Ambassador. Her colour went and came, her heart beat violently, her eyes remained fixed with a bewildered wonder upon the Count de Serillac — clad in faultless evening dress, the Order of the Grand Cr6ss of the Legion of Honour upon his breast, a smile upon his handsome face. "M. Gressonier!" she stammered. "No, Madame," he answered, bowing over her hand ; "but your most humble, your most admiring, your most devoted slave — Paul de Serillac! Do you think," he whispered in her ear, "that I should really have come to you like that — a poor, broken down man— and asked you to marry me — I? No r no, mon ange — it was to try you ; a little ruse, that is all. And you would have sacrificed everything for me! You would even have sacrificed your pride! You were willing for me to come here — even in rags — and disgrace you before the French Ambassador and the Count de Serillac, is it not? Ah, dear one, but I am not a poor man — no, lam rich. You shall sacrifice nothing for me — not even your pride of name, for Serillac, too, that is a good name in France ;' yes, a good rime for my dear one to bear!" "So, Lady Featherstone," said the Ambassador, smiling, "I see that you and M. de Serillac are not, after all, total strangers? You have met before?" De Serillac placed his hand on the Ambassador's shoulder with a good-na-tured lawgh'. "Forgive me, my friend," he said. "I have already the honour of Lady Featheistone's acquaintance. We have met before. "And now that we have met again, I do not intend that Lady Featherstone shall ever part from me — no, not any morel" — Emeric Huline Beaman, in the Sketch.