The Red Cross Girl. Richard Harding Davis
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her in—getting up a story for the Sunday supplement.”
Sam shook his head, nodded, and again moved on; but he was not yet to escape. “And, instead of your fooling her,” exclaimed Holworthy incredulously, “she was having fun, with you!”
With difficulty Sam smiled.
“So it would seem,” he said.
“She certainly made an awfully funny story of it!” exclaimed Holworthy admiringly. “I thought she was making it up—she must have made some of it up. She said you asked her to take a day off in New York. That isn't so is it?”
“Yes, that's so.”
“By Jove!” cried Holworthy—“and that you invited her to see the moving-picture shows?”
Sam, conscious of the dearly bought front row seats in his pocket, smiled pleasantly.
“Did she say I said that—or you?” he asked
“She did.”
“Well, then, I must have said it.”
Holworthy roared with amusement.
“And that you invited her to feed peanuts to the monkeys at the Zoo?”
Sam avoided the little man's prying eyes.
“Yes; I said that too.”
“And I thought she was making it up!” exclaimed Holworthy. “We did laugh. You must see the fun of it yourself.”
Lest Sam should fail to do so he proceeded to elaborate.
“You must see the fun in a man trying to make a date with Anita Flagg—just as if she were nobody!”
“I don't think,” said Sam, “that was my idea.” He waved his stick at a passing taxi. “I'm late,” he said. He abandoned Hollis on the sidewalk, chuckling and grinning with delight, and unconscious of the mischief he had made.
An hour later at the office, when Sam was waiting for an assignment, the telephone boy hurried to him, his eyes lit with excitement.
“You're wanted on the 'phone,” he commanded. His voice dropped to an awed whisper. “Miss Anita Flagg wants to speak to you!”
The blood ran leaping to Sam's heart and face. Then he remembered that this was not Sister Anne who wanted to speak to him, but a woman he had never met.
“Say you can't find me,” he directed. The boy gasped, fled, and returned precipitately.
“The lady says she wants your telephone number—says she must have it.”
“Tell her you don't know it; tell her it's against the rules—and hang up.”
Ten minutes later the telephone boy, in the strictest confidence, had informed every member of the local staff that Anita Flagg—the rich, the beautiful, the daring, the original of the Red Cross story of that morning—had twice called up Sam Ward and by that young man had been thrown down—and thrown hard!
That night Elliott, the managing editor, sent for Sam; and when Sam entered his office he found also there Walsh, the foreign editor, with whom he was acquainted only by sight.
Elliott introduced them and told Sam to be seated.
“Ward,” he began abruptly, “I'm sorry to lose you, but you've got to go. It's on account of that story of this morning.”
Sam made no sign, but he was deeply hurt. From a paper he had served so loyally this seemed scurvy treatment. It struck him also that, considering the spirit in which the story had been written, it was causing him more kinds of trouble than was quite fair. The loss of position did not disturb him. In the last month too many managing editors had tried to steal him from the REPUBLIC for him to feel anxious as to the future. So he accepted his dismissal calmly, and could say without resentment:
“Last night I thought you liked the story, sir?
“I did,” returned Elliott; “I liked it so much that I'm sending you to a bigger place, where you can get bigger stories. We want you to act as our special correspondent in London. Mr. Walsh will explain the work; and if you'll go you'll sail next Wednesday.”
After his talk with the foreign editor Sam again walked home on air. He could not believe it was real—that it was actually to him it had happened; for hereafter he was to witness the march of great events, to come in contact with men of international interests. Instead of reporting what was of concern only from the Battery to Forty-seventh Street, he would now tell New York what was of interest in Europe and the British Empire, and so to the whole world. There was one drawback only to his happiness—there was no one with whom he might divide it. He wanted to celebrate his good fortune; he wanted to share it with some one who would understand how much it meant to him, who would really care. Had Sister Anne lived, she would have understood; and he would have laid himself and his new position at her feet and begged her to accept them—begged her to run away with him to this tremendous and terrifying capital of the world, and start the new life together.
Among all the women he knew, there was none to take her place. Certainly Anita Flagg could not take her place. Not because she was rich, not because she had jeered at him and made him a laughing-stock, not because his admiration—and he blushed when he remembered how openly, how ingenuously he had shown it to her—meant nothing; but because the girl he thought she was, the girl he had made dreams about and wanted to marry without a moment's notice, would have seen that what he offered, ridiculous as it was when offered to Anita Flagg, was not ridiculous when offered sincerely to a tired, nerve-worn, overworked nurse in a hospital. It was because Anita Flagg had not seen that that she could not now make up to him for the girl he had lost, even though she herself had inspired that girl and for a day given her existence.
Had he known it, the Anita Flagg of his imagining was just as unlike and as unfair to the real girl as it was possible for two people to be. His Anita Flagg he had created out of the things he had read of her in impertinent Sunday supplements and from the impression he had been given of her by the little ass, Holworthy. She was not at all like that. Ever since she had come of age she had been beset by sycophants and flatterers, both old and young, both men and girls, and by men who wanted her money and by men who wanted her. And it was because she got the motives of the latter two confused that she was so often hurt and said sharp, bitter things that made her appear hard and heartless.
As a matter of fact, in approaching her in the belief that he was addressing an entirely different person, Sam had got nearer to the real Anita Flagg than had any other man. And so—when on arriving at the office the next morning, which was a Friday, he received a telegram reading, “Arriving to-morrow nine-thirty from Greenwich; the day cannot begin too soon; don't forget you promised to meet me. Anita Flagg “—he was able to reply: “Extremely sorry; but promise made to a different person, who unfortunately has since died!”'
When Anita Flagg read this telegram there leaped to her lovely eyes tears that sprang from self-pity and wounded feelings. She turned miserably, appealingly to Helen Page.
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