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Read Ebook: Common Cause: A Novel of the War in America by Adams Samuel Hopkins Brown Arthur William Illustrator
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Ebook has 4068 lines and 110912 words, and 82 pages
"What boy?" Her voice was cool and liquid and endearing, and just a bit lazily indifferent, with a strange hint--never anything more--of accent.
"The boy who stood in the first row of the balcony."
"That was not a boy."
"No?"
"You! You're much too tall."
"If you thought me a boy I should seem much shorter," she returned composedly.
"Do you mind telling me how you came to stand up as you did?"
"I always do when they play my national anthem. Do not you?"
The "do not you" gave the young man the clue to her speech, to the slightly exotic quality of it. It was less the accent than the clear precision of her use of words, without the slur or contraction of common usage. The charm of her soft and rather deep voice saved it from any taint of the pedantic.
"No," said he.
"Ah? But perhaps you are not an American."
"What else should I be?"
She shrugged her shoulders slightly.
"Nor do I," put in Magnus Laurens, "I'm ashamed to say."
"At all events, you did it this time. It was very nice in you. Usually I feel quite lonely. And once they were going to arrest me for it."
"Where was that?" asked Jeremy Robson stealthily reaching for his folded square of scratch paper.
"In Germany. When I was at school there. Are you going to put all this in the paper?"
"Would you mind?"
"I suppose I ought to mind. It is very forward and unmaidenly, is it not, to permit one's self to be dragged into print?"
"It is," said Magnus Laurens, his shrewd eyes twinkling, "and about one hundred and one maidens out of every hundred just love it, according to my observations."
"I do not think that I should object," said Miss Ames calmly. "In fact I should be curious to see what you would say about me."
That was Jeremy Robson's first intimation of her unique frankness of attitude toward herself as toward all other persons and things.
"We are on our way to the hotel where Mrs. Laurens is waiting for us," explained the water-power dictator. "Why not walk along with us while you conclude the interview?"
"I have n't much more to ask Miss Ames," said the reporter, complying, "except what started her on her patriotic habit."
"What, for instance?"
"The whole affair," she said vaguely. "It seemed to me strange. What are so many German subjects doing over here?"
"Those aren't German subjects, my dear," said Mr. Laurens. "They're American citizens, mostly."
"Certainly," said the reporter. "And good ones."
"I should think they would better be called good Germans. One cannot imagine that sort of thing occurring in a German city. I mean if the case were reversed, and Americans wanted to hold such a meeting."
"No? What would happen?"
"Verboten. L?se-majest?. Anti-imperialismus. Something dreadful of that sort."
"They aren't as broad-minded in such things as we are," observed Mr. Laurens, in a tone which, caused young Jeremy Robson to glance at him curiously and then become thoughtful.
"Did you notice that fat and glossy person on the stage, the one who had just made that speech--what was his name? Bausch, I think--did you notice his patronizing grin when you got up, Mr. Laurens? As if he felt a calm superiority to your second-rate patriotism."
"What a malicious young person!" said Laurens. "There's really no harm in Bausch that can't be blown off like froth from beer."
"Good luck to you and it, then," said Magnus Laurens cordially. "I'd like to see some one in this town at this time point out that, after all, America is America."
"Would you?" said the girl. "Walk around to the next block and I will show you what I saw this morning as I passed."
They followed her around the corner and stopped before a tiny shop with a giant's boot swinging in front of it. The legend over the door read:
Boot & Shoe Infirmary Eli Wade, Surgeon
Across the window was stretched a brand-new American flag, and beneath it a second legend, roughly inked on packing-paper and secured to the glass with cobbler's wax:
The Flag of Our Country. It stands alone.
Two beribboned, bespangled, bebadged German Federates passed near them, and paused.
"Pfui!" said the second contemptuously, "'s machts nichts. Matters noding!"
Jeremy Robson took off his hat and made his adieus. "You've given me something to think about," he said, apportioning his acknowledgment impartially, though his eyes were on the strange and alluring face of Marcia Ames. "Good-bye, and thank you."
"If you're grateful for being made to think," returned Magnus Laurens, good-humoredly, "there's hope for you as a reporter yet. That's a good-looking boy," he added to his companion, as the young man turned away.
"Good-looking?" she repeated, with a rising inflection that controverted the opinion.
"Oh, not a young Adonis. But there's something under that thatch of hair of his or I'm no guesser. Grit, and purpose, and, I think, honesty. I hope he does n't make hash of us in his paper."
Allowing himself an hour and a half, the reporter turned out in that time what he firmly believed to be "a pippin of a story." After delivering the final page to an approving copy-reader he washed up, got his coat and hat and started for the door. In the hallway he came upon Senator Martin Embree, just closing a conversation with Farley, the editor-in-chief.
"No politics in this, you know," the Senator was saying, in his sunny voice.
"I understand," said Farley. "If there were--"
"We'd probably be on opposite sides as usual. This is simply a case of not stirring up useless ill-feeling."
"Quite right. And we're much obliged to you. As long as The Guardian won't touch it, you can rely on us."
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