Jennie Baxter, Journalist - Robert Barr (novels in english .TXT) 📗

in time for the eight o'clock express for Paris. Here is money to pay the bill and your fare. It is likely I shall join you at the station; but if I do not, go to our hotel in Paris and wait for me there. Say nothing of our destination to anyone, and answer no questions regarding me, should inquiries be made. Are you sure you understand?"

"Yes, my lady." A few moments later Jennie was in the cab, driving through the nearly deserted streets. She dismissed her vehicle at Charing Cross, walked down the Strand until she got another, then proceeded direct to the office of the _Daily Bugle_, whose upper windows formed a row of lights, all the more brilliant because of the intense darkness below.

She found the shorthand writers waiting for her. The editor met her at the door of the room reserved for her, and said, with visible anxiety on his brow, "Well, what success?"

"Complete success," she answered shortly.

"Good!" he replied emphatically. "Now I propose to read the typewritten sheets as they come from the machine, correct them for obvious clerical errors, and send them right away to the compositors. You can, perhaps, glance over the final proofs, which will be ready almost as soon as you have finished."

"Very well. Look closely to the spelling of proper names and verify titles. There won't be much time for me to go carefully over the last proofs."

"All right. You furnish the material, and I'll see that it's used to the best advantage."

Jennie entered the room, and there at a desk sat the waiting stenographer; over his head hung the bulb of an electric light, its green circular shade throwing the white rays directly down on his open notebook. The girl was once more in the working world, and its bracing air acted as a tonic to her overwrought nerves. All longings and regrets had been put off with the Paris-made gown which the maid at that moment was carefully packing away. The order of nature seemed reversed; the butterfly had abandoned its gorgeous wings of gauze, and was habited in the sombre working garb of the grub. With her hands clasped behind her, the girl paced up and down the room, pouring forth words, two hundred to the minute, and sometimes more. Silently one stenographer, tiptoeing in, replaced another, who as silently departed; and from the adjoining room, the subdued, nervous, rapid click, click, click of the typewriting machine invaded, without disturbing, her consciousness. Towards three o'clock the low drone of the rotaries in the cellar made itself felt rather than heard; the early edition for the country was being run off. Time was flying--danced away by nimble feet in the West End, worked away by nimble fingers in Fleet Street (well-named thoroughfare); play and work, work and play, each supplementing the other; the acts of the frivolous recorded by the industrious.

When a little more than three hours' dictating was finished, the voice of the girl, now as hoarse as formerly it had been musical, ceased; she dropped into a chair and rested her tired head on the deserted desk, closing her wearied eyes. She knew she had spoken between 15,000 and 20,000 words, a number almost equal in quantity to that contained in many a book which had made an author's fame and fortune. And all for the ephemeral reading of a day--of a forenoon, more likely--to be forgotten when the evening journals came out!

Shortly after the typewriter gave its final click the editor came in.

"I didn't like to disturb you while you were at work, and so I kept at my own task, which was no light one, and thus I appreciate the enormous strain that has rested on you. Your account is magnificent, Miss Baxter; just what I wanted, and never hoped to get."

"I am glad you liked it," said the girl, laughing somewhat dismally at the croaking sound of her own voice.

"I need not ask you if you were there, for no person but one who was present, and one who knew how to describe, could have produced such a vivid account of it all. How did you get in?"

"In where?" murmured Jennie drowsily. She found difficulty in keeping her mind on what he was saying.

"To the Duchess of Chiselhurst's ball."

"Oh, getting in was easy enough; it was the getting out that was the trouble."

"Like prison, eh?" suggested the editor. "Now, will you have a little wine, or something stronger?"

"No, no. All I need is rest."

"Then let me call a cab; I will see you home, if you will permit me."

"I am too tired to go home; I shall remain here until morning."

"Nonsense. You must go home and sleep for a week if you want to. Rouse up; I believe you are talking in your sleep now."

"I understand perfectly what you are saying and what I am doing. I have work that must be attended to at eight. Please leave orders that someone is to call me at seven and bring a cup of coffee and biscuits, or rolls, or anything that is to be had at that hour. And please don't trouble further. I am very thankful to you, but will express myself better later on."

With this the editor had to be content, and was shortly on his way to his own well-earned rest. To Jennie it seemed but a moment after he had gone, that the porter placed coffee and rolls on the desk beside her saying, "Seven o'clock, miss!"

The coffee refreshed the girl, and as she passed through the editorial rooms she noted their forlorn, dishevelled appearance, which all places show when seen at an unaccustomed hour, their time of activity and bustle past. The rooms were littered with torn papers; waste-baskets overflowing; looking silent, scrappy, and abandoned in the grey morning light which seemed intrusive, usurping the place of the usual artificial illumination, and betraying a bareness which the other concealed. Jennie recognized a relationship between her own up-all-night feeling and the spirit of the deserted rooms.

At the railway station she found her maid waiting for her, surrounded by luggage.

"Have you got your ticket?"

"Yes, my lady."

"I have changed my mind, and will not go to Paris just now. Ask a porter to put those trunks in the left-luggage office, and bring me the keys and the receipt."

When this was done and money matters had been adjusted between them, Jennie gave the girl five pounds more than was due to her, and saw her into the railway carriage, well pleased with the reward. A hansom brought Jennie to her flat, and so ended the exhausting episode of the Duchess of Chiselhurst's ball.

Yet an event, like a malady, leaves numerous consequences in its train, extending, who shall say, how far into the future? The first symptom of these consequences was a correspondence, and, as there is no reading more dreary than a series of letters, merely their substance is given here. When Jennie was herself again, she wrote a long letter to the Princess von Steinheimer, detailing the particulars of her impersonation, and begging pardon for what she had done, while giving her reasons for doing it; but, perhaps because it did not occur to her, she made not the slightest reference to Lord Donal Stirling. Two answers came to this--one a registered packet containing the diamonds which the Princess had previously offered to her; the other a letter from the Princess's own hand. The glitter of the diamonds showed Jennie that she had been speedily forgiven, and the letter corroborated this. In fact, the Princess upbraided her for not letting her into the secret earlier. "It is just the jolly kind of thing I should have delighted in," wrote her Highness. "And then, if I had known, I should not have sent that unlucky telegram. It serves you right for not taking me into your confidence, and I am glad you had a fright. Think of it coming in at that inopportune moment, just as telegrams do at a play! But, Jennie, are you sure you told me everything? A letter came from London the day before yours arrived, and it bewildered me dreadfully at first. Don Stirling, whom I used to know at Washington (a conceited young fellow he was then--I hope he has improved since), wrote to say that he had met a girl at the Duchess of Chiselhurst's ball who had a letter inviting the Princess von Steinheimer to the festivity. He thought at first she was the Princess (which is very complimentary to each of us), but found later that she wasn't. Now he wants to know, you know, and thinks, quite reasonably, that I must have some inkling who that girl was, and he begs me, by our old friendship, etc., etc., etc. He is a nice young man, if a trifle confident (these young diplomatists think they hold the reins of the universe in their hands), and I should like to oblige him, but I thought first I would hear what you had to say about it. I am to address him care of the Embassy at St. Petersburg; so I suppose he's stationed there now. By the way, how did he get your glove, or is that merely brag on his part? He says that it is the only clue he has, and he is going to trace you from that, it seems, if I do not tell him who you are and send him your address. Now, what am _I_ to say when I write to St. Petersburg?"

In reply to this, Jennie sent a somewhat incoherent letter, very different from her usual style of writing. She had not mentioned the young man in her former communication, she said, because she had been trying to forget the incident in which he was the central figure. In no circumstances could she meet him again, and she implored the Princess not to disclose her identity to him even by a hint. She explained the glove episode exactly as it happened; she was compelled to sacrifice the glove to release her hand. He had been very kind in helping her to escape from a false position, but it would be too humiliating for her ever to see him or speak with him again.

When this letter reached the Schloss at Meran, the Princess telegraphed to London, "Send me the other glove," and Jennie sent it. A few days later came a further communication from the Princess.

"I have puzzled our young man quite effectually, I think, clever as he imagines himself to be. I wrote him a semi-indignant letter to St. Petersburg, and said I thought all along he had not really recognized me at the ball, in spite of his protestations at first. Then I saw how easily he was deluded into the belief that I was some other woman, and so the temptation to cozen him further was irresistible. Am I not a good actress? I asked him. I went on to say, with some show of anger, that a quiet flirtation in the gallery was all very well in its way, but when it came to a young man rushing in a frenzy bare-headed into the street after a respectable married woman who had just got into her carriage and was about to drive away, it was too much altogether, and thus he came into possession of the glove. As the remaining glove was of no use to me, I had great pleasure in sending it to him, but warned him that if the story of the gloves ever came to the ears