Reel Life (Sep 1913 - Mar 1914)

33 A Christmas Story By IRVING CRUMP Forced ajar by a swirling draught of cold air from the street, the door at the end of the long, dark hallway in the Sun office stood partly open as if admitting begrudgingly the right of this girl in fox furs to enter the sanctum. Such displays of hospitality were rare indeed from the old door, for usually it was closed and guarded by a truculent office boy and few got by who did not wear, so to speak, their passport on their sleeve. Yet Marion Bendall — or j\Iarion Clifford, as the Sun's readers knew her best — hardly seemed to fit in the paper-strewn, smoke-filled editorial room. There was nothing that suggested her occupation about the neatly tailored black suit and mass of tawney fox furs that were heaped about her shoulders and fell over the front of her jacket to merge with a muft" of similar color. Nor was the wistful face and tired brown eyes that looked out between the furs and the broad brim of her hat exacth^ what one would e.xpect in those who are supposed to be constantly digging into other people's affairs, to spread them before the world in glaring headlines and unsympathetic type. Nevertheless, the girl in fox furs was a member of the Sun's staff. ^Moreover, she was generally conceded to be the best woman writer in New York and the Sun had been congratulating itself ever since the night (nearly two months before) when she pushed boldly past the inhospitable door and told the city editor that she intended to return to newspaper work after nearly a year's absence from the game. Though there were half a dozen coatless, and in some cases, vestless rewrite men and reporters in the room, no one paid any particular attention to her as she entered and walked toward the line of mail boxes on the wall. Austin, the city editor, looked up from his work absently and immediately bent to his task again. Old Hancock, the bewhiskered czar of the copy desk, gave her a fleeting glance, his mind still on the screaming headline he was planning, and one telegraph machine, a little shriller in tone than the rest opened up a fusillade of dots and dashes which could be heard above the general clatter that came tumbling through the doorway of the telegraph room. For a moment the girl hesitated before the line of mail boxes. Then stretching upward on her dainty toes, she reached three letters in one of the compartments. Although two were addressed in a decidedly feminine hand and looked really worth while, the third, clothed in a crisp yellow envelope and appearing \ery businessy, with its typed address, seemed to hold the most interest for her. Indeed, at sight of it she became quite animated and a look of eager expectancj^ crept into her melancholy eyes as she threw off her furs and hurried across the room to her own flat-topped desk. With a quick, rfeTvous motion she withdrew a hatpin and ripped open the envelope. Hastily drawing forth the letter she unfolded it, disregarding a long yellov\^ slip, obviously a check, that fluttered to the floor. A moment she paused to read the single typewritten line : Mrs. Marion Bendall: Merr} Christmas. James R. Bendall. Instantly the look of hope and expectancy changed to an expression of lonesome sadness. Then, as she reread the line again, color flushed her face. "Oh, the sarcasm," she muttered, as she tore the letter into tiny pieces and let them sift between her fingers to the floor." "The irony of it !" Then she discovered the check and picking it up she folded it neatly. A bundle of similar checks she drew from her purse and unsnapping the rubber band that bound them together, put the last in place, pausing only a moment to count them. And as she put them away she mused : "Eight weeks. It seems more like eight years." Half heartedly she turned her attention to one of the other letters, all unconscious of the fact that Hogan. a rewrite man, and Monroe, one of the outside men, were watching her through the haze of tobacco smoke. "Peculiar girl." said Hogan as he adjusted a fresh sheet of paper in his typewriter. "Peculiar, but she can write like the dickens. I used to meet her occasionally when she was on the Journal. Comes of a mighty good New England family down Cambridge way. Reversal of circumstances or something like that and she had to get into the newspaper game. She sure can write though Dropped out of sight about a year ago. I heard she married one of the men on the Journal. Don't remember his name. L.ast I heard of her 'liil she popped in here a few weeks ago. Wonder if he died or what." "Why don't you ask?" suggested Monroe, lighting a black cigar and fixing his coat preparatory to a venture into the night. "Well — ah — wouldn't it be rather indelicate, to say the least?" asked Hogan, with a smile. But the remark was lost on ^lonroe. He was one of those newspaepr men who never realized the existence of the word "indelicate." Perhaps that was one of the reasons why he was considered the best "news-getter" in the shop. By half past seven activities in the Sun's editorial rooms were at fever pitch. A score of typewriters were rattling out stories for the early country edition, and six men were hunched over the semi-circular copy desk digging the flaws out of page after page of copy heaped beforethem by the ever active copy boys. ^Marion Clifford was hard at it with the rest. Her lonesomeness cast aside for the time, she was busy writing one of those "Brief Essays About the Town" that were attracting so much attention among Sun readers, when a copy boy interrupted her with a message that "Boss" Austin had an assignment for her. "This is Christmas Eve, Miss Clifford, and the city is giving its poor a treat in the form of a Christmas tree up in Madison Square," said the city editor, with a trace of sarcasm in his voice. "Of course, we have men there to handle the story about the ceremony and all that, but I want )"ou to go up and dig out a real story. You know, one with a lot of human interest in it. A Christmas story that will make New York eat breakfast with tears in its eyes to-morrow morning." "All right. I saw the tree this afternoon when they were decorating it. It's a wonderful old spruce and it looks sadly out of place there in the Square surrounded by big skyscrapers," she said, as she turned toward her desk again. The cold wind was driving powdery flakes from the darkness overhead when Marion Clifford arrived on the outskirts of the th rong that crow'ded about the tall, light-bedecked spruce m the centre of the park. It w-as a heterogeneous gathering of New Yorkers ; tired but enthusiastic shop girls, tenement mothers with shivering, but none the less joyful children, men and women from the east and west of town, and from the theatre district a few blocks north ; just such a crowd as Marion Clifford would delight in being a part of any other night but this. Though the wind was sharp and the snow crystals cutting, no one seemed to care. All were imbued with the spirit of Christmas and the girl in fox furs could feel the throb of emotion that swayed the vast crowd as a hundred children, grouped on a stand at the base of the giant fir, burst forth into an old English Christmas carol.