JUDITH'S GIFT TO HER EDITOR
Drawings by Wilson Dexter
AND so this," said the editor with a disgusted shrug as Judith stood her dripping umbrella in the rack, "is the best Puget Sound can do for Christmas weather! Ugh!"
"Christmas," came back Judith, busy with her damp gloves, "is a matter of the heart, not of the weather."
"Yes?" with a cynical but willing-to-be-informed lifting of the brows.
"I passed little boys racing through the rain with arms full of holly, whose faces shone with Christmas spirit."
"But they were little boys," with the emphasis on the "little."
"My mother is chirruping about the house over her wreaths and mysterious parcels; and Sam is full of it, planning gifts for his girl. He's a big boy,—as big as you."
"But not so old and wise."
"Not so old—no."
"Score one, Princess!" The very good looking editor smiled quizzically at his small, alert reporter, who now stood by his desk, her gray rain cap pushed back exposing unruly curls, her wet cape tossed jauntily over her shoulder, a flaring red silk tie beneath her small, pointed chin the one note of color to relieve the drabness of the rainy day costume. He smiled; but there was wistfulness in his face, a tone of yearning back of the bantering. "No one is making a gift for me, Princess. Won't you make me a little Christmas gift so I shall be in it tomorrow too?"
Judith looked quickly away. The undertone touched into life something that lay deep buried, something that, throbbing back, sent color to her cheeks, and softness to her eyes.
"Indeed I will," she answered, trying to make her voice light, "if I can think of anything that will really please you."
"Oh, one isn't supposed to be pleased with a Christmas present, Princess. Of course I don't expect to like the thing; but I shall like the thought. Isn't that the prescribed point of view?"
"I don't give that kind," Judith retorted, lifting her independent little chin in the air, at the same time opening her notebook. "If I give you anything at all, you will like it."
He smiled again, and continued to contemplate her so deliberately that the young girl, embarrassed, prompted him, "You left word for me to report the moment I came in."
YES." He drew forward his green eyeshade, the lines in his strong old-young face settled, and he became all the editor, a personality with which no employee took liberties. "It's about Helen Wor—Mrs. Sloane."
Judith sat down quickly and leaned toward him. Fresh trouble for Helen? What could it be? The whole town had been shocked a month earlier when Helen Worthington, a beautiful and popular society girl, married, unknown to her family, Dan Sloane, a common, ignorant miner who had returned from Alaska reputedly with vast wealth. The man had been a two weeks' laughingstock of the town, buying huge diamonds and fantastic clothes, throwing handfuls of nuggets into crowds, and otherwise making a sensational display of his money. How Helen, protected on every hand, had met the man in the first place, how she had brought herself to marry him, and why, had kept the tongues buzzing ever since. A year earlier she had been engaged to a dashing army officer; but the engagement had been broken.
Helen had not confided in Judith, though the girls were lifelong friends: but Judith had been sure the fault was neither Helen's nor the young man's. And then her editor had been seen with the beautiful society girl to an extent that caused their names to be frequently linked in gossipy guessing. Judith came to believe that Helen cared; at least sufficiently to consider him. He was uncommonly good looking in a strong, massive, masculine way,—oh, he had his "points"!—but he was not rich. Judith believed that Helen's mad act had followed her parents' opposition to this second love. Helen had a strain of Spanish blood. She was good hearted; but impulsive and hot tempered. Mrs. Worthington, long in poor health, had died of the shock, and Worthington had not become reconciled to his daughter.
Helen had gone with the man she had married to a hunter's lodge in a great timber belt some miles from town. His parents lived on the place, and there were workmen. Sloane was known to be given to sprees, at which times he was ugly. Everyone shuddered at the unprotected state the girl's folly had brought her to, shuddered—and speculated on how long it would last.
"Late yesterday afternoon came the dénouement," the editor spoke dryly. "Sloane was drowned."
Judith waited, lips apart, eyes strained, for the editor to go on, while there raced through her mind, "Now Helen can marry whom she pleases!" The tumult raised within her own schooled and controlled being startled her as much as did the news.
"The senior Sloanes, it appears," went on the editor in his crisp, informative way, "are rather a bad lot, intent on getting the son's money. They came in late last night with the body. They talked freely and brutally of their son's widow. They claim that the two had quarreled violently, that she was with him when he was drowned, that she stood on the bank—by her own confession—and watched him struggle and go down without making the slightest attempt to assist him. They say that timber cutters were less than twenty feet away, and would have heard an outcry from her; they say that if his will leaves everything to her, it will be the last necessary bit of evidence against her. To make matters worse, Mr. Worthington has been declared bankrupt. It seems he has been on the verge of a break for over a year. This—ah—makes some things plain—apparently." His voice was very dry.
"And I am to—"
"We've got to handle it. 'The Union' will take the senior Sloanes' side and make the most of it,—the moneyed class on the backs of the poor, and so on. If you can get a straight, coherent story from Hel—Mrs. Sloane of the whole day's doings and an account of the drowning that will explain, convincingly, her attitude—well, it's the only course left."
"Where is Helen?"
"At the ranch. She has seen no one. I sent Henson out last night; but he telephoned an hour ago that it was useless to stay any longer. Three other reporters were there; but they were all leaving. You must get into her room and make her realize the importance to her of giving you a straight, reasonable story. You see that quarrel—and then the old folks say that Sloane had not been home all night. I admit it looks bad; but I don't believe—"
"Nor I." Judith rose. "How do I go?"
He gave her instructions; then, queerly for him, he put out his hand. It was a compact,—she was to clear Helen!
MONTHS before, when Judith had finally made up her mind that her editor really did love
Helen, she had trampled underfoot the dreaming young self that cried out for romance. She had tried to live impersonally since, and for her work. She was learning to write; she was forging suffering into art; she was putting strength into her characterizations, actuality into her descriptions, an ache into her "sob" stories. She was fast losing her schoolgirl prettiness of expression, and gaining a style that gripped. And at the same time she was carving out a character of her own. Something real had been forming under the surface girlishness and softness; something vital had begun to grow out of pain and experience. The dreaming, joyous young thing who had insisted a year earlier on being allowed to become a newspaper woman was becoming a woman.
Now, as she hurried toward the boat, she went back over the years. She and Helen had been devoted playmates before her father died, when her own future as a brilliant society girl beckoned as hopefully as did Helen's. They had been devoted schoolmates at the old academy where Latoona's "best girls" were educated. And then their ways had parted. Helen had entered upon a life of gaiety with a world of men at her feet; Judith had become an earner. And for her there had been but one man—and Helen had made that one man all but an impossibility—and then she had married—and the one man had no longer seemed quite altogether impossible. But now Helen was free: she was to be back in their lives again!
She, Judith, was actually hurrying through the rain to focus all her painfully acquired insight into life and motives, all her painfully acquired power as a writer, on Helen's case, that she might come back—unblemished. A sudden new intense hatred for Helen flared up in Judith like a tongue of flame.
She went aboard the small tramp steamboat that carried groceries around the Puget Sound waterfront, and being chilled tried the cabin; but the air was suffocating. She went outside, and finding a seat near the rail, gazed across the waste of gray water to the rim of somber fir trees, eternally motionless. Somewhere in that solemn forest was Helen, alone with her story.
She could see that Helen was awake; but the poor girl gave no sign.
THE boat had chugged along for several hours when the purser touched her shoulder. She rose and crossed a narrow plank to a rudely improvised dock. No
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