Read Ebook: This marrying by Banning Margaret Culkin

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Ebook has 1467 lines and 67413 words, and 30 pages

"Now of course a thing like that would be a trial column. Might not work out at all. Couldn't be long-winded. And then, too, it isn't worth an awful lot. But a girl like you, living at home, doing it for experience and pin-money, would realize that we couldn't pay too much."

His little eyes bored through her as he tried to feel her out. Horatia felt suddenly disgusted.

"I'll think it over," she said, getting to her feet. "I'm not sure I could do just what you want, but I'll think it over. And come in in a day or so."

The man seemed a little anxious to keep her and vaguely worried lest he had said too much.

"Our little journal tries to tell the truth," was his parting comment and it followed Horatia sardonically down the stairs.

"You're not an adventure," thought Horatia, proceeding. "You're a nasty, open debauch. My chances are narrowing."

"I am sorry you found the office deserted. I am Langley, the editor. What can I do for you? If it's books, I don't buy books. If it's subscriptions, I can't afford it."

"It's a job," said Horatia.

"For me or you?" asked the man with a lazy smile. She liked his voice. It was well-bred. He was well-bred too and there was something vaguely familiar about his name.

"You've got one," she countered.

He smiled neither in assent nor dissent.

"And you want one?"

"On a newspaper."

"There are more substantial sheets than this one, you know."

He spoke pleasantly and Horatia felt suddenly expansive and ready to talk.

"I've been to them all. One won't have me, another wants me possibly to do society personals, and another wants me to run a spicy scandal column for them."

"So they would. But as fourth fiddle I've nothing much better to offer, I'm afraid. I don't need reporters, which I suppose is what you are hankering for, nearly as much as other ingredients for this paper."

"I'm sorry," said Horatia. "I'd like to work next to this view."

"That's why I took the office. I thought that too. But I can't put the things that view tells me across with the public."

"They would be pleasant things," said Horatia. She was interested and meant to find out as much as she could about this man and his queer paper. And she felt in him a willingness to prolong the conversation. To test it, she turned to go.

"Good morning," she said brightly. "Again I'm sorry."

"It's too bad. Will you give up the journalistic life now that the Big Four have offered you so infinitely less than nothing?"

"I suppose I'll have to."

"Have you done any of it yet? I beg your pardon for the question, which, not being a prospective employer, I haven't any right to ask. Don't answer if you don't like."

"I don't mind. I've done no work--of any kind. Just raw--out of college."

"University?"

She nodded and at the word the train of association became complete. Langley--of course--the 1905 Langley, who had been the big man in his day and left a train of college glory behind him that even yet was not obliterated by the hundreds of more recent graduates. He had begun the student government--but possibly it was not the same one. She was sure she hadn't better ask him.

"Isn't it odd," he was saying, "how many college graduates think they can reform the world just by getting on a newspaper? They think such foolish things--that papers are forums of opinions--that they can write things they want to write. My dear young lady, a newspaper is only a medium for advertisers, that is, if it's successful."

"But I know that," answered Horatia, "perfectly. I'm quite practical about it. And I don't want to reform the world. I want to live right in it. I'm not the least bit of a reformer. I rather like the world."

She looked so engagingly young and sweet and sensible that the man's face brightened--almost involuntarily, as if he did not want it to brighten.

"You're a romanticist, young lady."

"I started out this morning from an ugly stone house on a lovely hill to seek my fortune. There was only one trouble. No one put any obstacles in my way and no one knew I was going to seek it really. The people I told didn't understand. You're the first person who has begun to talk to me, so I told you. And I'm getting too expansive. But I feel much better."

"I wish I could give you a job, young adventurer," answered the man, a little irrelevantly. "You might bring back some of the enthusiasm I had when I was as young as you are. But I was more solemn."

"Oh, I can be solemn on occasion," said Horatia. She was having a tremendously good time, talking to this man who didn't know her name and to whom it was so easy to talk. And he too was warming to the conversation.

"You see, I haven't much of a newspaper. Three of us run it and we don't do our own printing. There is one man who had hopes as I did. There is another who drinks too much--when he writes well--and writes badly when he drinks too little. We started out to make a newspaper which would not muck-rake, you know, but tell the truth about things. And we find, dear young lady, that nobody wants us. Even you wouldn't want a job from us."

"I truly think I would," said Horatia. "Don't you want a woman's department? I really would enjoy doing society personals for a paper with a purpose."

He laughed uproariously and she noticed how young he could look.

"Will you come to lunch and talk it over? I'll tell you all about it--hopes and failures, young lady adventurer."

"If I can pay for my own lunch."

He bowed, then added with a twinkle:

"Of course we aren't absolutely down to bedrock. I could pay for your lunch."

"But it's easier for me to beg for a job if I'm paying for my own. My name is Horatia Grant, Mr. Langley."

"Miss Grant," said Langley, holding the door open, "no matter who pays for it, I am going to enjoy my lunch."

It was an amazingly pleasant lunch. Horatia was not too sophisticated in this matter of eating with men in public restaurants and under the flattering charm of Jim Langley's interest and attention she sparkled with excitement and response. She liked him. She liked his easy careless manners and his half-mocking, half-kind indulgence towards her remarks and the real amusement in his smile and the skill he showed in ordering food. And Langley across from her, along with his faint note of self-mockery, showed that he enjoyed himself too, for Horatia's face was young and her mind was clear and above all she did not seem tired but fresh and vigorous. He asked her about herself, subtly keeping the conversation on her, and she told him of the house on the hill and her married sister and her aunt and uncle and the neighbors.

"They are kind, you know," she finished, "but they are so simple that they all call me intellectual and set me apart as queer."

"And you aren't queer at all," said Langley, "you're a perfect product of what the nice cleanliness of West Park would produce with a college education superimposed on it. Why don't you leave things alone, young lady? Your realities may be stupid but they are clean and straight. Why do you want to get tangled up and wrinkled up? Wouldn't the West Park High School perhaps be a better solution than the newspaper? Or a good husband?"

She smiled at him.

"But we have to live in it just the same," argued Horatia.

"You might enter a convent." At which they both laughed, for it was so absurd to think of Horatia in a convent.

"Your people will probably object to your taking a job on my paper," said Langley at length; "maybe you will when you hear more about me. I can't pay you enough to make it worth your while financially. But perhaps if you want to come and will take the work I can give you and try to increase our circulation, I can find a desk for you anyway." And having committed himself, the editor looked as if he were calling himself a fool in his thoughts.

"I'll work for anything you'll pay me," said Horatia, "and I don't think anyone can frighten me away from your paper, Mr. Langley. When can I come?"

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