Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 205, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1910 — Authors [ARTICLE]

Authors

By Annie Hinrichsen

y “Your office boy told me to send my name through three clerks and two stenographers. I dropped him into the'waste basket and came In.” “Good for you, Manning. I’m mighty glad to see you.” The editor extended his hand across the desk to his visitor. “Do you know Miss Greyford, the editor of the new magazine. Miss Greyford, this is Arthur Manning, you’ve read his stuff?” “It’s Miss Greyford I’ve come to see.” Manning stumbled his announcement in the tone of a determined but abashed schoolboy. He was a big, broad-shouldered young man with the jaw of a pugilist and the eyes of a gentle child. “And why do you wish to see me?” Miss Greyford’s voice was glacial. From her face faded the animation and the rosy color, and the soft curve of her lips had become rigid lines. “To talk to you about —to see you— Miss Greyfbrd picked up some proof sheets and began to read them. The young man stared at the proof sheets, then he turned to the editor. “She isn’t a bit glad to see me, is she?” he asked whimsically. “How’s the market, Manning?" asked the editor; “Selling lots of your stuff?” “Oh, I guess so." Mr. Manning’s voice was gloomy. “All I write.” That was a good story of yours that was published in our last issue,” said the editor; “as good a one as you have ever written." “Like it?” The proof sheets were lowered from before Miss Greyford’s face. “I think it is the poorest story we have ever published,” she said. Manning’s face brightened. “Did you?” he asked eagerly. “I’m glad you took the trouble to read it; that means a lot to me.” “The plot was weak, hackneyed, amateurish—the man and the girl and the summer at the farmhouse. Man returns, to city, misunderstandings, girl stays at home and rakes the hay and milks the cows.” (< This girl didn’t,” he snapped. Her father kept three automobiles and a houseful of servants, and he had sent his daughter to college and to Europe and everywhere else. The man who loved her learned that sweet simplicity was trained coquetry. All he received for his summer in the country was a damaged heart, several disillusions and a smashed pride."

“Was all that In the story? . I don’t remember—” It was in the facts that went before the story. There was a story of yours in the same number—a splendid tale, thb best in literary finish I have ever read, and it was about a man and a girl and a summer at a farmhouse. But your story was cruel and untrue and bitterly cynical. I read it and telephoned this office for your address. Some one said ‘Carlinton.’ I knew you had moved away from Carlinton, but I took the first train down there.” Miss Greyford’s face relaxed Into a delighted smile. “You did?” she laughed. “I hoped you would—l mean— What did you find there’’’ “What did I find?” he repeated disgustedly. “At the station there was a sheep too dried and withered to be sdld for mutton, so they use him for a station agent. He “lowed as how he didn’t know’ whether you were there or not and informed me that the whole town had gone to a barbecue and there wasn’t a horse to be found. I walked—walked three miles on an August day. When I reached the Greyford place I was fold that the family had been gone a year. I pushed back to town and learned that the next train would not be along until the next day, that there was no hotel, and that the town pump was the place to wash.” Miss Greyford returned to hdr proof sheets. “This morning,” went on Manning, “I read the announcement of a new magazine published by the Atwood Publishing company. Miss Margaret Greyford was to be the editor of the' new venture. So I came here to find her.” Miss Greyford read on'. Manning sighed deeply. "f 8 she often like this?” he asked the editor. “Is ft her habit to have moments of inattention, to go a thousand miles away, leaving a fellow with his mouth open, his say unsaid?” “You might say your speech to me,” suggested the editor. “Miss Greyford doesn’t seem Interested.” “Do you think she will listen?” he Asked hopefully. “If I thought she would —’’ “Go on.” said the editor sympathetically. “I’ll listen.” “Well, once upon a time there were a man and a girl and a summer at a farmhouse —rural atmosphere for a background—local color and all that sort cf thing.” “Dust and mosquitoes?” asked the editor. “Nothing of the kind when the girl was there. Where she was there were flowers land moonlit evenings. The fellow took a good look at the surroundings and at the girl and then settled down for a period of Arcadian bliss. It was an epoch in his life.” “It seems to me,” remarked the

editor, “that I’ve read that somewhere. You’re not offering it as original matter, are you?" “You read it in the last issue of your magazine—in my story,” retorted the author. “Then suddenly he was jolted out of his little rosy cloud of joy. The girl, the center of this pastoral, a reincarnation and an amalgamation »of, all the spirits, goddesses, and heroines who have typified the simple, rural life, this girl—well, when I think of the force with which I struck solid earth—- “ And thereupon our hero took upon himself a large-sized, long-enduring grouch. At last all his wrath and hurt pride and —and real loneliness—for a man who has lost the one dearest girl on earth is a desperately lonely creature—culminated in one grand, literary effort. He unburdened his soul and told the world all about bls trouble. “In the same number of the magazine in which his story was published there was a story by the girl, a story of the Arcadian idyl from her point of view. For the first time the thought came to the man that he might have misunderstood the girl and that he might have seemed to her a guilty, heartless wretch. Immediately he telephoned the publishing office and some cruel person with a woman’s voles' told him the girl’s address was Carlington. You know what I received down there. This morning I learned that she was here in the city with the Atwood company and I broke the speed laws getting here. You observe the chilling frost I’m receiving? “Do you think she has been listening to my story?” Under the raillery there was a deep note of earnestness. "I want her to let me tell her the heartache I have carried with me these many months—to ask her”— There was a silence in the room. The editor broke in.

“The day Miss Greyford read your manuscript,” he said, “she left the office. She was • gone two days. When she returned her face was thin and white and tired, but I thought her eyes were bright and happy. She brought me a story, the result of her two days’ absence, and asked me to print it in the same number In which we should print yours. Of course,” he added, “I took it for granted that she had an excellent reason for her request.” With two steps Manning crossed the room. He caught her hands and drew them and the screening proof sheets from before her face. “Did you write that story and publish it in the same number with mine in order to show me that I had been all wrong in thinking you did not love me? Did you do it to show me that you had suffered? Did you? Cold, proud, little girt, answer me?" There was a sound of a closing door. The editor had left the room. “I saw the opportunity for a story. My work is my only Interest—” “It isn’t. It can’t be. You’re not built that way. You have a heart and a soul and you are starving them on a sawdust diet of ambition. You wrote that story out of a hurt and weary heart—” “No,” she said a little later, with her Ups near his ear. “I pounded it out on a typewriter.”