CHAPTER L

All love transports contain an element of the ridiculous, I presume, but to each how very important. I will pass mine over with what I have already said, save this: that each little variation in her costume, however slight, in her coiffure, or the way she looked or walked amid new surroundings, all seemed to re-emphasize the perfection that I had discovered and was so fortunate as to possess. She gave me her photograph, which I framed in silver and hung in my room. I begged for a lock of her hair, and finding a bit of blue ribbon that I knew belonged to her purloined that. She would not allow me to visit at Florissant, where she taught, being bashful about confessing this new relationship, but nevertheless, on several Sundays when she was at her home “up the State” I visited this glorious region, hallowed by her presence, and tried to decide for myself just where she lived and taught—her sacred rooms! A little later an exposition or State Fair was held in the enormous exposition building at Fourteenth and Olive streets, and here, when the Sousa concerts were first on, and later when the gay Veiled Prophets festivities began (a sort of Roman Harvest rejoicing, winding up with a great parade and ball), I saw more of her than ever before. It was during this time, in a letter, that she confessed that she loved me. Before this, however, seeing that I made no progress in any other way, being allowed no intimacy beyond an occasional stolen kiss, I had proposed to her and been accepted with a kind of morbid formalism. I had had to ask her in the most definite way and be formally accepted as her affianced husband. Thereafter I squandered my last cent to purchase a diamond ring at wholesale, secured through a friend on the Globe, and then indeed I felt myself set up in the world, as one who was destined to tread the conventional and peaceful ways of the majority.

Yet in Spite of my profound infatuation I was still able to see beauty in other women and be moved by it. The chemical attractions and repulsions which draw us away from one and to another are beginning to be more clearly understood in these days and to undermine our more formal notions of stability and order, but even at that time this variation in myself might have taught me to look with suspicion on my own emotions. I think I did imagine that I was a scoundrel in harboring lusts after other women, when I was so deeply involved with this one, but I told myself that I must be peculiarly afflicted in this way, that all men were not so, that I myself should and probably would hold myself in check eventually, etc.; all of which merely proves how disjointed and non-self-understanding can be the processes of the human mind. Not only do we fail to see ourselves as others see us but we have not the faintest conception of ourselves as we really are.

An incident which might have proved to me how shallow was the depth of my supposed feeling, and that it was nothing more than a strong sex-desire, was this: One night about twelve a telephone message to the Republic stated that on a branch extension of one of the car lines, about seven or eight miles from the city, a murder had just been committed. Three negroes entering a lone “Owl” car, which ran from the city terminus to a small village had shot and killed the conductor and fired on the motorman. A young girl who had been on board, the only passenger, had escaped by the front door and had not since been heard of—or so the telephone message stated. As I happened to be in the office at the time, the story was assigned to me.

By good luck I managed to catch a twelve o’clock theater car and arrived at the end of the line at twelve forty, where I learned that the body of the dead man had been transferred to his home at some point farther out, and that a posse of male residents of the region had already been organized and were now helping the police to search this country round for the negroes. When I asked about the girl who had been on board one of the men at the barn exclaimed: “Sure, she’s a wonder! You want to tell about her. She hunted up a house, borrowed a horse, and notified everybody along the route. She’s the one that first phoned the news.”

Here was a story indeed. Midnight, a murder, dark woods, lonely country. A girl flees from three murderous, drunken negroes, borrows a horse, and tells all the countryside. What more could a newspaper man want? I was all ears. Now if she were only good-looking!

I now realized that my first duty was not so much to see the body of the dead man and interview his wife, although that was an item not to be neglected, or the motorman who had escaped with his life, although he was here and told me all that had happened quite accurately, but this girl, this heroine, who, they said, was no more than seventeen or eighteen.

The car in which the murder had been committed was here in the barn. The blood-stains of the victim were still to be seen on the floor. I took this car, which was now carrying a group of detectives, a doctor and some other officials, to the dead man’s house, or to the house of the girl, I forget which. When I arrived there I discovered that a large comfortable residence some little distance beyond the home of the dead man was the scene of all news and activity, for here it was that the body of the conductor had been carried, and from here the girl had taken a horse and ridden far and wide to call others to her aid. When I hurried up to the door she had returned and was holding a sort of levee. The large livingroom was crowded, and in the center, under the flare of a hanging lamp, was this maiden, rather pretty, with her hair brushed straight back from her forehead, and her face alight with the intensity of her recent experiences and actions. I drew near and surveyed her over the shoulders of the others as she talked, finally getting close enough to engage her in direct conversation, as was my duty. She was very simple in manner and speech—not quite the dashing heroine I had imagined yet attractive enough. For my benefit, and possibly for the dozenth time, she narrated all that had befallen her from the time she boarded the car until she had leaped from the front step after the shot and hid in the wood, finding her way to this house eventually and borrowing a horse to notify others, because, for one thing, there was no telephone here, and for another there was no man at home at the time who could have gone for her. With a kind of naïf enthusiasm she explained to me that once the shot had been fired and the conductor had fallen face down in the car (he had come in to rebuke these boisterous blacks, who were addressing bold remarks to her), she was cold with fright, but that after she had left the car she felt calmer and determined to do something to aid in the capture of the murderers. Hiding behind bushes, she had seen the negroes dash out of the rear door of the car and run back along the track into the darkness, and had then hurried in the other direction, coming to this house and summoning aid.... It was a fine story, her ride in the darkness and how people rose to come out and help her. I made copious notes in my mind, took her name and address, visited the conductor’s wife, who was a little distance away, and then hurried to the nearest telephone to communicate my news.

During this conversation with the girl I made an impression on her. As we talked I had drawn quite close and my enthusiasm for her deed had drawn forth various approving smiles and exclamations. When I took her address I said I should like to know more of her, and she smiled and said: “Well, you can see me any time tomorrow.” This was Saturday night.

The Republic at this time had instituted what it called a “reward for heroism” medal to be given to whosoever should perform a truly heroic deed during the current year within the city or its immediate suburbs. Thinking over this girl’s deed as I went along, and wondering how I should proceed in the matter of retaining her interest, I thought of this medal and asked myself why it should not be given to her. She was certainly worthy of it. Plainly she was a hero, riding thus in the darkness and in the face of such a crime—and good-looking too!—and eighteen! After I had reached the office and written a most glowing account of all this for the late edition, I decided to speak to Wandell the next day, and did. He fell in with the idea at once.

“A fine idea,” he squeaked shrilly. “Bully—we’ll do that! You’ll have to go back, though, and see whether she’ll accept it. Sometimes these people won’t stand for all this notoriety stuff, you know. But if she does——By the way,” he asked quickly, “is she good-looking?”

“Sure,” I replied enthusiastically. “She’s very good-looking—a beauty, I think.”

“Well, if that’s the case all the better. She must be made to give you a picture. Don’t let her crawl out of that, even if you have to bring her down here or take her to a photographer. If she accepts I’ll order the medal tomorrow, and you can write the whole thing up. It’ll make a fine Sunday feature, eh? Dreiser’s girl hero! What!”

This medal idea was just the thing to take me back to her, the excuse I needed and one that ought to bring her close to me if anything could. For the time being, I had forgotten all about Miss W—— and her charms. She came into my mind, but it was so all-important for me to follow up this new interest—one that I could manage quite as well as not, along with the other. I dressed in my very best clothes the next morning, excluding the amazing coat, and sallied forth to find my heroine. After considerable difficulty I managed to place her in a very simple home on what had once been a farm. Her father, who opened the door, was a German of the most rigid and austere mien—a Lutheran, I think—her mother a simple and pleasant-looking fat hausfrau. In the garish noon light my heroine was neither so melodramatic nor so poignant as she had seemed the night before. There was something less alive and less delicate in her composition, mental and physical, and yet she was by no means dull. Perhaps she lacked the excitement and the crowd. She had a peculiar mouth, a little wide but sweet, and a most engaging smile. Incidentally, it now developed that she had a younger sister, darker, more graceful, almost more attractive than herself.

The two of them, as I soon found upon entering into conversation, offered that same problem in American life that so many children of foreign-born parents do. Although by no means poor, they were restless, if not unhappy, in their state. The old German father was one of those stern religionists and moralists who plainly had always held, or tried to hold, his two children in severest check. At the same time, as was obvious, this keen strident American life was calling to them as never had his fatherland to him. They were both intensely alive and eager for adventure. Never before, apparently, had they seen a reporter, never been so close to a really truly thrilling tragedy. And Gunda—that was my heroine’s name—had actually been a part of it—how, she could now scarcely think. Her parents were not at all stirred by her triumph or the publicity that attached to it. In spite of the fact that her father owned this property and was sufficiently well-placed to maintain her in school or idleness (American style), she was already a clerk in one of the great stores of the city, and her sister was also preparing to go to work, having just left school.

I cannot tell how, but in a few moments we three were engaged in a most ardent conversation. There was an old fire-place in this house with some blazing wood in it, and before this we sat and laughed and chattered, while I explained just what was wanted. Their mother and father did not even remain in the room. I could see that the younger sister was for urging Gunda on to any gayety or flirtation, and was herself eager to share in one. It ended by my suggesting that they both come down to dinner with me some evening—a suggestion which they welcomed with enthusiasm but explained that it would have to be done under the rose. Their father was so old-fashioned that he would not allow them to take up with any one so swiftly, would not even allow them to have any beaux in the house. But they could meet me, and stay in town all night with friends. Gunda laughed, and the younger sister clapped her hands for joy.

I made a most solemn statement of what was wanted to the parents, secured two photographs of Gunda, and departed, having arranged to see them the following Wednesday at seven at one of the prominent corners of the city.