NEWSREEL XXX 7 страница

She felt pretty miserable on the train sitting in the
stuffy parlorcar looking out at towns and fields and sign-
boards. Getting back to the office the next morning was
like getting home.

It was exciting in New York. The sinking of the Lusi-
tania had made everybody feel that America's going into
the war was only a question of months. There were many
flags up on Fifth Avenue. Janey thought a great deal
about the war. She had a letter from Joe from Scotland
that held been torpedoed on the steamer Marchioness and

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that they'd been ten hours in an open boat in a snow-
storm off Pentland Firth with the current carrying them
out to sea, but that they'd landed and he was feeling fine
and that the crew had gotten bonuses and that he was
making big money anyway. When she'd read the letter
she went in to see J. Ward with a telegram that had just
come from Colorado and told him about her brother being
torpedoed and he was very much interested. He talked
about being patriotic and saving civilization and the his-
toric beauties of Rheims cathedral. He said he was ready
to do his duty when the time came, and that he thought
America's entering the war was only a question of months.

A very welldressed woman came often to see J. Ward.
Janey looked enviously at her lovely complexion and her
neat dresses, not ostentatious but very chic, and her mani-
cured nails and her tiny feet. One day the door swung
open so that she could hear her and J. Ward talking
familiarly together. "But, J.W., my darling," she was say-
ing, "this office is a fright. It's the way they used to have
their offices in Chicago in the early eighties." He was
laughing. "Well, Eleanor, why don't you redecorate it
for me? Only the work would have to be done without
interfering with business. I can't move, not with the press
of important business just now."

Janey felt quite indignant about it. The office was lovely
the way it was, quite distinctive, everybody said so. She
wondered who this woman was who was putting ideas into
J. Ward's head. Next day when she had to make out a
check for two hundred and fifty dollars on account to
Stoddard and Hutchins, Interior Decorators, she almost
spoke her mind, but after all it was hardly her business.
After that Miss Stoddard seemed to be around the office
all the time. The work was done at night so that every
morning when Janey came in, she found something
changed. It was all being done over in black and white
with curtains and upholstery of a funny claret-color. Janey

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didn't like it at all but Gladys said it was in the modern
style and very interesting. Mr. Robbins refused to have
his private cubbyhole touched and he and J. Ward almost
had words about it, but in the end he had his own way
and the rumor went round that J. Ward had had to in-
crease his salary to keep him from going to another
agency.

Labor Day Janey moved. She was sorry to leave the
s but she'd met a middleaged woman named
Eliza Tingley who worked for a lawyer on the same floor
as J. Ward's office. Eliza Tingley was a Baltimorean, had
passed a bar examination herself and Janey said to herself
that she was a woman of the world. She and her twin
brother, who was a certified accountant, had taken a floor
of a house on West 23rd Street in the Chelsea district and
they asked Janey to come in with them. It meant being
free from the subway and Janey felt that the little walk
over to Fifth Avenue every morning would do her good.
The minute she'd seen Eliza Tingley in the lunchcounter
downstairs she'd taken a fancy to her. Things at the Ting-
leys were free and easy and Janey felt at home there.
Sometimes they had a drink in the evening. Eliza was a
good cook and they'd take a long time over dinner and
play a couple of rubbers of threehanded bridge before
going to bed. Saturday night they'd almost always go to
the theater. Eddy Tingley would get the seats at a cut-
rate agency he knew. They subscribed to The Literary Di-
gest and to The Century and The Ladies' Home Journal
and Sundays they had roast chicken or duck and read the
magazine section of The New York Times.

The Tingleys had a good many friends and they liked
Janey and included her in everything and she felt that
she was living the way she'd like to live. It was exciting
too that winter with rumors of war all the time. They
had a big map of Europe hung up on the livingroom wall
and marked the positions of the Allied armies with little

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flags. They were heart and soul for the Allies and names
like Verdun or Chemin des Dames started little shivers
running down their spines. Eliza wanted to travel and
made Janey tell her over and over again every detail of
her trip to Mexico; they began to plan a trip abroad to-
gether when the war was over and Janey began to save
money for it. When Alice wrote from Washington that
maybe she would pull up stakes in Washington and go
down to New York, Janey wrote saying that it was so
hard for a girl to get a job in New York just at present
and that maybe it wasn't such a good idea.

All that fall J. Ward's face looked white and drawn.
He got in the habit of coming into the office Sunday after-
noons and Janey was only too glad to run around there
after dinner to help him out. They'd talk over the events
of the week in the office and J. Ward would dictate a lot
of private letters to her and tell her she was a treasure
and leave her there typing away happily. Janey was wor-
ried too. Although new accounts came in all the time the
firm wasn't in a very good financial condition. J. Ward
had made some unfortunate plunges in the Street and was
having a hard time holding things together. He was
anxious to buy out the large interest still held by old Mrs.
Staple and talked of notes his wife had gotten hold of and
that he was afraid his wife would use unwisely. Janey
could see that his wife was a disagreeable peevish woman
trying to use her mother's money as a means of keeping
a hold on J. Ward. She never said anything to the
Tingleys about J. Ward personally, but she talked a
great deal about the business and they agreed with her
that the work was so interesting. She was looking forward
to this Christmas because J. Ward had hinted that he
would give her a raise.

A rainy Sunday afternoon she was typing off a confi-
dential letter to Judge Planet inclosing a pamphlet from
a detective agency describing the activities of labor agi-

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tators among the Colorado miners, and J. Ward was
walking up and down in front of the desk staring with
bent brows at the polished toes of his shoes when there
was a knock on the outer office door. "I wonder who that
could be?" said J. Ward. There was something puzzled
and nervous about the way he spoke. "It may be Mr.
Robbins forgotten his key," said Janey. She went to see.
When she opened the door Mrs. Moorehouse brushed
past her. She wore a wet slicker and carried an umbrella,
her face was pale and her nostrils were twitching. Janey
closed the door gently and went to her own desk and sat
down. She was worried. She took up a pencil and started
drawing scrolls round the edge of a piece of typewriter
paper. She couldn't help hearing what was going on in
J. Ward's private office. Mrs. Moorehouse had shot in
slamming the groundglass door behind her. "Ward, I
can't stand it . . . I won't stand it another minute," she
was screaming at the top of her voice. Janey's heart started
beating very fast. She heard J. Ward's voice low and con-
ciliatory, then Mrs. Moorehouse's. "I won't be treated
like that, I tell you. I'm not a child to be treated like
that . . . You're taking advantage of my condition. My
health won't stand being treated like that."

"Now look here, Gertrude, on my honor as a gentle-
man," J. Ward was saying. "There's nothing in it, Ger-
trude. You lie there in bed imagining things and you
shouldn't break in like this. I'm a very busy man. I have
important transactions that demand my complete atten-
tion."

Of course it's outrageous, Janey was saying to herself.
"You'd still be in Pittsburgh working for Bessemer
Products, Ward, if it wasn't for me and you know it . . .
You may despise me but you don't despise dad's money
. . . but I'm through, I tell you. I'm going to start
divorce . . .""But, Gertrude, you know very well there's
no other woman in my life.""How about this woman

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you're seen round with all the time . . . what's her
name . . . Stoddard? You see, I know more than you
think . . . I'm not the kind of woman you think I am,
Ward. You can't make a fool of me, do you hear?"

Mrs. Moorehouse's voice rose into a rasping shriek.
Then she seemed to break down and Janey could hear her
sobbing. "Now, Gertrude," came Ward's voice soothingly,
"you've gotten yourself all wrought up over nothing . . .
Eleanor Stoddard and I have had a few business deal-
ings . . . She's a bright woman and I find her stimulat-
ing . . . intellectually, you understand . . . We've oc-
casionally eaten dinner together, usually with mutual
friends, and that's absolutely . . ." Then his voice sunk
so low that Janey couldn't hear what he was saying. She
began to think she ought to slip out. She didn't know
what to do.

She'd half gotten to her feet when Mrs. Moorehouse's
voice soared to a hysterical shriek again. "Oh, you're cold
as a fish . . . You're just a fish. I'd like you better if it
was true, if you were having an affair with her . . . But
I don't care; I won't be used as a tool to use dad's money."
The door of the private office opened and Mrs. Moore-
house came out, gave Janey a bitter glare as if she sus-
pected her relations with J. Ward too, and went out.
Janey sat down at her desk again trying to look uncon-
cerned. Inside the private office she could hear J. Ward
striding up and down with a heavy step. When he called
her his voice sounded weak:
"Miss Williams."

She got up and went into the private office with her
pencil and pad in one hand. J. Ward started to dictate as
if nothing had happened but half way through a letter to
the president of the Ansonia Carbide Corporation he sud-
denly said, "Oh, hell," and gave the wastebasket a kick
that sent it spinning against the wall.

"Excuse me, Miss Williams; I'm very much worried

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.. Miss Williams, I'm sure I can trust you not to men-
tion it to a soul . . . You understand, my wife is not quite
herself; she's been ill . . . the last baby . . . you know
those things sometimes happen to women."

Janey looked up at him. Tears had started into her eyes.
"Oh, Mr. Moorehouse, how can you think I'd not under-
stand? . . . Oh, it must be dreadful for you, and this is
a great work and so interesting." She couldn't say any
more. Her lips couldn't form any words. "Miss Wil-
liams," J. Ward was saying, "I . . . er . . . appreciate
. . . er." Then he picked up the wastepaper basket. Janey
jumped up and helped him pick up the crumpled papers
and trash that had scattered over the floor. His face was
flushed from stooping. "Grave responsibilities . . . Irre-
sponsible woman may do a hell of a lot of damage, you
understand." Janey nodded and nodded. "Well, where
were we? Let's finish up and get out of here."

They set the wastebasket under the desk and started in
on the letters again.

All the way home to Chelsea, picking her way through
the slush and pools of water on the streets, Janey was
thinking of what she'd liked to have said to J. Ward to
make him understand that everybody in the office would
stand by him whatever happened.

When she got in the apartment, Eliza Tingley said a
man had called her up. "Sounded like a rather rough
type; wouldn't give his name; just said to say Joe had
called up and that he'd call up again." Janey felt Eliza's
eyes on her inquisitively.

"That's my brother Joe, I guess . . . He's a . . . he's
in the merchant marine."

Some friends of the Tingleys came in, they had two
tables of bridge and were having a very jolly evening
when the telephone rang again, and it was Joe. Janey felt
herself blushing as she talked to him. She couldn't ask
him up and still she wanted to see him. The others were

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calling to her to play her hand. He said he had just got
in and that he had some presents for her and he'd been
clear out to Flatbush and that the yids there had told him
she lived in Chelsea now and he was in the cigar store at
the corner of Eighth Avenue. The others were calling to
her to play her hand. She found herself saying that she
was very busy doing some work and wouldn't he meet her
at five tomorrow at the office building where she worked.
She asked him again how he was and he said, "Fine," but
he sounded disappointed. When she went back to her table
they all kidded her about the boyfriend and she laughed
and blushed, but inside she felt mean because she hadn't
asked him to come up.

Next evening it snowed. When she stepped out of the
elevator crowded to the doors at five o'clock she looked
eagerly round the vestibule. Joe wasn't there. As she was
saying goodnight to Gladys she saw him through the
door. He was standing outside with his hands deep in the
pockets of a blue peajacket. Big blobs of snowflakes spun
round his face that looked lined and red and weather-
beaten.

"Hello, Joe," she said.

"Hello, Janey."

"When did you get in?

"A couple a days ago."

"Are you in good shape, Joe? How do you feel?

"I gotta rotten head today . . . Got stinkin' last night."

" Joe, I was so sorry about last night but there were
a lot of people there and I wanted to see you alone so we
could talk."

Joe grunted.

"That's awright, Janey . . . Gee, you're lookin' swell.
If any of the guys saw me with you they'd think I'd
picked up somethin' pretty swell awright."

Janey felt uncomfortable. Joe had on heavy work-
shoes and there were splatters of gray paint on his trouser-

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legs. He had a package wrapped in newspaper under his
arm.

"Let's go eat somewheres . . . Jez, I'm sorry I'm not
rigged up better. We lost all our duffle, see, when we was
torpedoed."

"Were you torpedoed again?"

Joe laughed, "Sure, right off Cape Race. It's a great
life . . . Well, that's strike two . . . I brought along
your shawl though, by God if I didn't . . . I know
where we'll eat; we'll eat at Lüchow's."

"Isn't Fourteenth Street a little . . ."

"Naw, they got a room for ladies . . . Janey, you
don't think I'd take you to a dump wasn't all on the up
an' up?"

Crossing Union Square a seedylooking young man in a
red sweater said, "Hi, Joe." Joe dropped back of Janey
for a minute and he and the young man talked with their
heads together. Then Joe slipped a bill in his hand, said,
"So long, Tex," and ran after Janey who was walking
along feeling a little uncomfortable. She didn't like Four-
teenth Street after dark. "Who was that, Joe?""Some
damn AB or other. I knew him down New Orleans . . .
I call him Tex. I don't know what his name is . . . He's
down on his uppers.""Were you down in New Orleans?"
Joe nodded. "Took a load a molasses out on the Henry
B. Higginbotham. . . Piginbottom we called her. Well,
she's layin' easy now on the bottom awright . . . on the
bottom of the Grand Banks."

When they went in the restaurant the headwaiter
looked at them sharply and put them at a table in the
corner of a little inside room. Joe ordered a big meal and
some beer, but Janey didn't like beer so he had to drink
hers too. After Janey had told him all the news about the
family and how she liked her job and expected a raise
Christmas and was so happy living with the Tingleys who
were so lovely to her, there didn't seem to be much to say.

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Joe had bought tickets to the Hippodrome but they had
plenty of time before that started. They sat silent over
their coffee and Joe puffed at a cigar. Janey finally said
it was a shame the weather was so mean and that it must
be terrible for the poor soldiers in the trenches and she
thought the Huns were just too barbarous and the Lusi-
tania and how silly the Ford peace ship idea was. Joe
laughed in the funny abrupt way he had of laughing now,
and said: "Pity the poor sailors out at sea on a night like
this." He got up to get another cigar.

Janey thought what a shame it was he'd had his neck
shaved when he had a haircut; his neck was red and had
little wrinkles in it and she thought of the rough life he
must be leading and when he came back she asked him
why he didn't get a different job. "You mean in a ship-
yard? They're making big money in shipyards, but hell,
Janey, I'd rather knock around . . . It's all for the expe-
rience, as the feller said when they blew his block off."
"No, but there are boys not half so bright as you are with
nice clean jobs right in my office and a future to look
forward to."

"All my future's behind me," said Joe with a laugh.
"Might go down to Perth Amboy get a job in a munitions
factory, but I rather be blowed up in the open, see?"

Janey went on to talk about the war and how she wished
we were in it to save civilization and poor little helpless
Belgium. "Can that stuff, Janey," said Joe. He made a
cutting gesture with his big red hand above the tablecloth.
"You people don't understand it, see . . . The whole
damn war's crooked from start to finish. Why don't they
torpedo any French Line boats? Because the Frogs have
it all set with the Jerries, see, that if the Jerries leave their
boats alone they won't shell the German factories back of
the front. What we wanta do 's sit back and sell 'em
munitions and let 'em blow 'emselves to hell. An' those
babies are makin' big money in Bordeaux and Toulouse or

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Marseilles while their own kin are shootin' daylight into
each other at the front, and it's the same thing with the
limeys . . . I'm tellin' ye, Janey, this war's crooked, like
every other goddam thing."

Janey started to cry. "Well, you needn't curse and swear
all the time.""I'm sorry, sister," said Joe humbly, "but
I'm just a bum an' that's about the size of it an' not fit
to associate with a nicedressed girl like you.""No, I didn't
mean that," said Janey, wiping her eyes.

"Gee, but I forgot to show you the shawl." He un-
wrapped the paper package. Two Spanish shawls spilled
out on the table, one of black lace and the other green silk
embroidered with big flowers. "Oh, Joe, you oughtn't to
give me both of them . . . You ought to give one to your
best girl.""The kinda girls I go with ain't fit to have
things like that . . . I bought those for you, Janey."
Janey thought the shawls were lovely and decided she'd
give one of them to Eliza Tingley.

They went to the Hippodrome but they didn't have a
very good time. Janey didn't like shows like that much
and Joe kept falling asleep. When they came out of the
theater it was bitterly cold. Gritty snow was driving hard
down Sixth Avenue almost wiping the "L" out of sight.
Joe took her home in a taxi and left her at her door with
an abrupt, "So long, Janey." She stood a moment on the
step with her key in her hand and watched him walking
west towards Tenth Avenue and the wharves, with his
head sunk in his peajacket.

That winter the flags flew every day on Fifth Avenue.
Janey read the paper eagerly at breakfast; at the office
there was talk of German spies and submarines and atroci-
ties and propaganda. One morning a French military mis-
sion came to call on J. Ward, handsome pale officers with
blue uniforms and red trousers and decorations. The
youngest of them was on crutches. They'd all of them

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been severely wounded at the front. When they'd left,
Janey and Gladys almost had words because Gladys said
officers were a lot of lazy loafers and she'd rather see a
mission of private soldiers. Janey wondered if she oughtn't
to tell J. Ward about Gladys's pro-Germanism, whether
it mightn't be her patriotic duty. The s might be
spies; weren't they going under an assumed name? Benny
was a socialist or worse, she knew that. She decided she'd
keep her eyes right open.

The same day G. H. Barrow came in. Janey was in the
private office with them all the time. They talked about
President Wilson and neutrality and the stockmarket and
the delay in transmission in the Lusitania note. G. H.
Barrow had had an interview with the president. He was
a member of a committee endeavoring to mediate between
the railroads and the Brotherhoods that were threatening
a strike. Janey liked him better than she had on the pri-
vate car coming up from Mexico, so that when he met her
in the hall just as he was leaving the office she was quite
glad to talk to him and when he asked her to come out to
dinner with him, she accepted and felt very devilish.

All the time G. H. Barrow was in New York he took
Janey out to dinner and the theater. Janey had a good
time and she could always kid him about Queenie if he
tried to get too friendly going home in a taxi. He couldn't
make out where she'd found out about Queenie and he
told her the whole story and how the woman kept hound-
ing him for money, but he said that now he was divorced
from his wife and there was nothing she could do. After
making Janey swear she'd never tell a soul, he explained
that through a legal technicality he'd been married to two
women at the same time and that Queenie was one of
them and that now he'd divorced them both, and there
was nothing on earth Queenie could do but the news-
papers were always looking for dirt and particularly liked

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to get something on a liberal like himself devoted to the
cause of labor. Then he talked about the art of life and
said American women didn't understand the art of life; at
least women like Queenie didn't. Janey felt very sorry for
him but when he asked her to marry him she laughed and
said she really would have to consult counsel before reply-
ing. He told her all about his life and how poor he'd been
as a boy and then about jobs as stationagent and freight-
agent and conductor and the enthusiasm with which he'd
gone into work for the Brotherhood and how his muck-
raking articles on conditions in the railroads had made hint
a name and money so that all his old associates felt he'd
sold out, but that, so help me, it wasn't true. Janey went
home and told the Tingleys all about the proposal, only
she was careful not to say anything about Queenie or
bigamy, and they all laughed and joked about it and it
made Janey feel good to have been proposed to by such
an important man and she wondered why it was such in-
teresting men always fell for her and regretted they
always had that dissipated look, but she didn't know
whether she wanted to marry G. H. Barrow or not.

At the office next morning, she looked him up in Who's
Who and there he was, Barrow, George Henry, publicist
. . . but she didn't think she could ever love him. At the
office that day J. Ward looked very worried and sick and
Janey felt so sorry for him and quite forgot about G. H.
Barrow. She was called into a private conference J. Ward
was having with Mr. Robbins and an Irish lawyer named
O'Grady, and they said did she mind if they rented a safe
deposit box in her name to keep certain securities in and
started a private account for her at the Bankers Trust.
They were forming a new corporation. There were busi-
ness reasons why something of the sort might become
imperative. Mr. Robbins and J. Ward would own more
than half the stock of a new concern and would work for

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it on a salary basis. Mr. Robbins looked very worried and
a little drunk and kept lighting cigarettes and forgetting
them on the edge of the desk and kept saying, "You know
very well, J. W., that anything you do is O.K. by me."
J. Ward explained to Janey that she'd be an officer of the
new corporation but of course would in no way be per-
sonally liable. It came out that old Mrs. Staple was suing
J. Ward to recover a large sum of money and that his wife
had started divorce proceedings in Pennsylvania and that
she was refusing to let him go home to see the children
and that he was living at the McAlpin.

"Gertrude's lost her mind," said Mr. Robbins genially.
Then he slapped J. Ward on the back. "Looks like the fat
was in the fire now," he roared. "Well, I'm goin' out to
lunch; a man must eat . . . and drink . . . even if he's
a putative bankrupt." J. Ward scowled and said nothing
and Janey thought it was in very bad taste to talk like that
and so loud too.

When she went home that evening she told the Ting-
leys that she was going to be a director of the new cor-
poration and they thought it was wonderful that she was
getting ahead so fast and that she really ought to ask for
a raise even if business was in a depressed state. Janey
smiled, and said, "All in good time." On the way home
she had stopped in the telegraph office on Twentythird
Street and wired G. H. Barrow, who had gone up to
Washington: LET'S JUST BE FRIENDS.

Eddy Tingley brought out a bottle of sherry and at
dinner he and Eliza drank a toast, "To the new execu-
tive," and Janey blushed crimson and was very pleased.
Afterwards they played a rubber of dummy bridge.

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THE CAMERA EYE (26)

the garden was crowded and outside Madison Square
was full of cops that made everybody move on and the
bombsquad all turned out

we couldn't get a seat so we ran up the stairs to the top
gallery and looked down through the blue air at the faces
thick as gravel and above them on the speakers' stand tiny
black figures and a man was speaking and whenever he said
war there were hisses and whenever he said Russia there
was clapping on account of the revolution I didn't know
who was speaking somebody said Max Eastman and some-
body said another guy but we clapped and yelled for the
revolution and hissed for Morgan and the capitalist war
and there was a dick looking into our faces as if he was
trying to remember them