Books: Lifted Masks

S >> Susan Glaspell >> Lifted Masks

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"He's all right now," pursued the Senator, "but there's every chance
that Ludlow will see him before he casts his vote this afternoon,
and then--oh, I don't know!" and with a weary little flourish of his
hands the Senator stepped off.

Freckles McGrath sat wrapped in deep thought. The Kelley Bill was
coming up in the Senate that afternoon. If Senator Stacy voted for
it, it would pass. If he voted against it, it would fail. He would
vote for it if he didn't see Mr. Ludlow; he wouldn't vote for it if
he did. That was the situation, and the Governor's whole future,
Freckles felt, was at stake.

The bell rang sharply, and he was vaguely conscious then that it had
been ringing before. In the next half-hour he was very busy taking
down the members of the Legislature. Strangely enough, Senator Stacy
and the Governor went down the same trip, and Freckles beamed with
approbation when, he saw them walk out of the building together.

Stacy was one of the first of the senators to return. Freckles sized
him up keenly as he stepped into the elevator, and decided that he
was still firm. But there was a look about Senator Stacy's mouth
which suggested that there was no use in being too sure of him.
Freckles considered the advisability of bursting forth and telling
him how much better it would be to stick with the reform fellows;
but just as the boy got his courage screwed up to speaking point,
Senator Stacy got off.

About ten minutes later Freckles had the elevator on the ground
floor, and was sitting there reading a paper, when he heard a step
that made him prick up his ears. The next minute Mr. Ludlow turned
the corner. He was immaculately dressed, as usual, and his iron-grey
moustache seemed to stand out just a little more pompously than
ever. There was a sneering look in his eyes as he stepped into the
car. It seemed to be saying: "They thought they could beat me, did
they? Oh, they're easy, they are!"

Freckles McGrath slammed the door of the cage and started the car
up. He did not know what he was going to do, but he had an idea that
he did not want any other passenger. When half way between the
basement and the first floor, he stopped the elevator. He must have
time to think. If he took that man up to the Senate Chamber, he
would simply strike the death-blow to reform! And so he knelt and
pretended to be fixing something, and he thought fast and hard.

"Something broke?" asked an anxious voice.

Freckles looked around into Mr. Ludlow's face, and he saw that the
eminent lobbyist was nervous.

"Yes," he said calmly. "It's acting queer. Something's all out of
whack."

"Well, drop it to the basement and let me out," said Mr. Ludlow
sharply.

"Can't drop it," responded Freckles. "She's stuck."

Mr. Ludlow came and looked things over, but his knowledge did not
extend to the mechanism of elevators.

"Better call someone to come and take us out," he said nervously.

Freckles straightened himself up. A glitter had come into his small
grey eyes, and red spots were burning in his freckled cheeks.

"I think she'll run now," he said.

And she did run. Never in all its history had that State-house
elevator run as it ran then. It rushed past the first and second
floors like a thing let loose, with an utter abandonment that caused
the blood to forsake the eminent lobbyist's face.

"Stop it, boy!" he cried in alarm.

"Can't!" responded Freckles, his voice thick with terror. "Running
away!" he gasped.

"Will it--fall?" whispered the lobbyist.

"I--I think so!" blubbered Freckles.

The central portion of the State-house was very high. Above that
part of the building which was in use there was a long stretch
leading to the tower. The shaft had been built clear up, though
practically unused. Past floors used for store-rooms, past floors
used for nothing at all, they went--the man's face white, the boy
wailing out incoherent supplications. And then, within ten feet of
the top of the shaft, and within a foot of the top floor of the
building, the elevator came to a rickety stop. It wabbled back and
forth; it did strange and terrible things.

"She's falling!" panted Freckles. "Climb!"

And Henry Ludlow climbed. He got the door open, and he clambered up.
No sooner had the man's feet touched the solid floor than Freckles
reached up and slammed the door of the cage. Why he did that he was
not sure at the time. Later he felt that something had warned him
not to give his prisoner's voice a full sweep down the shaft.

Henry Ludlow was far from dull. As he saw the quick but even descent
of the car, he knew that he had been tricked. He would have been
more than human had there not burst from him furious and threatening
words. But what was the use? The car was going down--down--down, and
there he was, perhaps hundreds of feet above any one else in the
building--alone, tricked, beaten!

Of course he tried the door at the head of the winding stairway,
knowing full well that it would be locked. They always kept it
locked; he had heard one of the janitors asking for the keys to take
a party up just a few days before. Perhaps he could get out on top
of the building and make signals of distress. But the door leading
outside was locked also. There he was--helpless. And below--well,
below they were passing the Kelley Bill!

He rattled the grating of the elevator shaft. He made strange, loud
noises, knowing all the while he could not make himself heard. And
then at last, alone in the State-house attic, Henry Ludlow, eminent
lobbyist, sat down on a box and nursed his fury.

Below, Freckles McGrath, the youngest champion of reform in the
building, was putting on a bold front. He laughed and he talked and
he whistled. He took people up and down with as much nonchalance as
if he did not know that up at the top of that shaft angry eyes were
straining themselves for a glimpse of the car, and terrible curses
were descending, literally, upon his stubby red head.

It was a great afternoon at the State-house. Every one thronged to
the doors of the Senate Chamber, where they were putting through the
Kelley Bill. The speeches made in behalf of the measure were brief.
The great thing now was not to make speeches; it was to reach "S" on
roll-call before a man with iron-grey hair and an iron-grey
moustache could come in and say something to the fair-haired member
with the weak mouth who sat near the rear of the chamber.

Freckles was called away just as it went to a vote. When he came
back Senator Kelley was standing out in the corridor, and a great
crowd of men were standing around slapping him on the back. The
Governor himself was standing on the steps of the Senate Chamber;
his eyes were bright, and he was smiling.

Freckles turned his car back to the basement. He wanted to be all
alone for a minute, to dwell in solitude upon the fact that it was
he, Freckles McGrath, who had won this great victory for reform. It
was he, Freckles McGrath, who had assured the Governor's future.
Why, perhaps he had that afternoon made for himself a name which
would be handed down in the histories!

Freckles was a kind little boy, and he knew that an elegant
gentleman could not find the attic any too pleasant a place in which
to spend the afternoon, go he decided to go up and get Mr. Ludlow.
It took courage; but he had won his victory and this was no time for
faltering.

There was something gruesome about the long ascent. He thought of
stories he had read of lonely turrets in which men were beheaded,
and otherwise made away with. It seemed he would never come to the
top, and when at last he did it was to find two of the most
awful-looking eyes he had ever seen--eyes that looked as though
furies were going to escape from them--peering down upon him.

The sight of that car, moving smoothly and securely up to the top,
and the sight of that audacious little boy with the freckled face
and the bat-like eyes, that little boy who had played his game so
well, who had wrought such havoc, was too much for Henry Ludlow's
self-control. Words such as he had never used before, such as he
would not have supposed himself capable of using, burst from him.
But Freckles stood calmly gazing up at the infuriated lobbyist, and
just as Mr. Ludlow was saying, "I'll beat your head open, you little
brat!" he calmly reversed the handle and sent the car skimming
smoothly to realms below. He was followed by an angry yell, and then
by a loud request to return, but he heeded them not, and for some
time longer the car made its usual rounds between the basement and
the legislative chambers.

In just an hour Freckles tried it again. He sent the car to within
three feet of the attic floor, and then peered through the grating,
his face tied in a knot of interrogation. The eminent lobbyist stood
there gulping down wrath and pride, knowing well enough what was
expected of him.

"Oh--all right," he muttered at last, and with that much of an
understanding Freckles sent the car up, opened the door, and Henry
Ludlow stepped in.

No word was spoken between them until the light from the floor upon
which the Senate Chamber was situated came in view. Then Freckles
turned with a polite inquiry as to where the gentleman wished to get
off.

"You may take me down to the office of the Governor," said Mr.
Ludlow stonily, meaningly.

"Sure," said Freckles cheerfully. "Guess you'll find the Governor in
his office now. He's been in the Senate most of the afternoon,
watching 'em pass that Kelley Bill."

Mr. Ludlow's lips drew in tightly. He squared his shoulders, and his
silence was tremendous.

In just fifteen minutes Freckles was sent for from the executive
office.

"I demand his discharge!" Mr. Ludlow was saying as the elevator boy
entered.

"It happens you're not running this building," the Governor returned
with a good deal of acidity. "Though of course," he added with
dignity, "the matter will be carefully investigated."

The Governor was one great chuckle inside, and his heart was full of
admiration and gratitude; but would Freckles be equal to bluffing it
through? Would the boy have the finesse, the nice subtlety, the real
master hand, the situation demanded? If not, then--imp of salvation
though he was--in the interest of reform, Freckles would have to go.

It was a very innocent looking boy who stood before him and looked
inquiringly into his face.

"William," began the Governor--Freckles was pained at first, and
then remembered that officially he was William--"this gentleman has
made a very serious charge against you."

Freckles looked at Mr. Ludlow in a hurt way, and waited for the
Governor to proceed.

"He says," went on the chief executive, "that you deliberately took
him to the top of the building and wilfully left him there a
prisoner all afternoon. Did you do that?"

"Oh, sir," burst forth Freckles, "I did the very best I could to
save his life! I was willing to sacrifice mine for him. I--"

"You little liar!" broke in Ludlow.

The Governor held up his hand. "You had your chance. Let him have
his."

"You see, Governor," began Freckles, as if anxious to set right
a great wrong which had been done him, "the car is acting bad.
The engineer said only this morning it needed a going over. When
it took that awful shoot, I lost control of it. Maybe I'm to be
discharged for losing control of it, but not"--Freckles sniffled
pathetically---"but not for anything like what he says I done. Why
Governor," he went on, ramming his knuckles into his eyes, "I ain't
got nothing against him! What'd I take him to the attic for?"

"Of course not for money," sneered Mr. Ludlow.

The Governor turned on him sharply. "When you can bring any proof of
that, I'll be ready to hear it. Until you can, you'd better leave it
out of the question."

"Strange it should have happened this very afternoon," put in the
eminent lobbyist.

The Governor looked at him with open countenance. "You were
especially interested in something this afternoon? I thought you
told me you had no vital interest here this session."

There was nothing to be said. Mr. Ludlow said nothing.

"Now, William," pursued the Governor, fearful in his heart that this
would be Freckles' undoing, "why did you close the door of the shaft
before you started down?"

"Well, you see, sir," began Freckles, still tremulously, "I'm so
used to closin' doors. Closin' doors has become a kind of second
nature with me. I've been told about it so many times. And up there,
though I thought I was losin' my life, still I didn't neglect my
duty."

The Governor put his hand to his mouth and coughed.

"And why," he went on, more secure now, for a boy who could get out
of that could get out of anything, "why was it you didn't make some
immediate effort to get Mr. Ludlow down? Why didn't you notify
someone, or do something about it?"

"Why, I supposed, of course, he walked down by the stairs," cried
Freckles. "I never dreamed he'd want to trust the elevator after the
way she had acted."

"The door was locked," snarled the eminent lobbyist.

"Well, now, you see, I didn't know that," explained Freckles
expansively. "Late in the afternoon I took a run up just to test the
car--and there you were! I never was so surprised in my life. I
supposed, of course, sir, that you'd spent the afternoon in the
Senate, along with everybody else."

Once more the Governor put his hand to his mouth.

"Your case will come before the executive council at its next
meeting, William. And if anything like this should happen again, you
will be discharged on the spot." Freckles bowed. "You may go now."

When he was almost at the door the Governor called to him.

"Don't you think, William," he said--the Governor felt that he and
Freckles could afford to be generous--"that you should apologise to
the gentleman for the really grave inconvenience to which you have
been the means of subjecting him?"

Freckles' little grey eyes grew steely. He looked at Henry Ludlow,
and there was an ominous silence. Then light broke over his face.
"On behalf of the elevator," he said, "I apologise."

And a third time the Governor's hand was raised to his mouth.

The next week Freckles was wearing a signet ring; long and audibly
had he sighed for a ring of such kind and proportions. He was at
some pains in explaining to everyone to whom he showed it that it
had been sent him by "a friend up home."

V

FROM A TO Z

Thus had another ideal tumbled to the rubbish heap! She seemed to be
breathing the dust which the newly fallen had stirred up among its
longer dead fellows. Certainly she was breathing the dust from
somewhere.

During her senior year at the university, when people would ask:
"And what are you going to do when you leave school, Miss Willard?"
she would respond with anything that came to hand, secretly hugging
to her mind that idea of getting a position in a publishing house. Her
conception of her publishing house was finished about the same time
as her class-day gown. She was to have a roll-top desk--probably of
mahogany--and a big chair which whirled round like that in the office
of the under-graduate dean. She was to have a little office all by
herself, opening on a bigger office--the little one marked "Private."
There were to be beautiful rugs--the general effect not unlike the
library at the University Club--books and pictures and cultivated
gentlemen who spoke often of Greek tragedies and the Renaissance.
She was a little uncertain as to her duties, but had a general idea
about getting down between nine and ten, reading the morning paper,
cutting the latest magazine, and then "writing something."

Commencement was now four months past, and one of her professors had
indeed secured for her a position in a Chicago "publishing house."
This was her first morning and she was standing at the window
looking down into Dearborn Street while the man who was to have her
in charge was fixing a place for her to sit.

That the publishing house should be on Dearborn Street had been her
first blow, for she had long located her publishing house on that
beautiful stretch of Michigan Avenue which overlooked the lake. But
the real insult was that this publishing house, instead of having a
building, or at least a floor, all to itself, simply had a place
penned off in a bleak, dirty building such as one who had done work
in sociological research instinctively associated with a box
factory. And the thing which fairly trailed her visions in the dust
was that the partition penning them off did not extend to the
ceiling, and the adjoining room being occupied by a patent medicine
company, she was face to face with glaring endorsements of Dr.
Bunting's Famous Kidney and Bladder Cure. Taken all in all there
seemed little chance for Greek tragedies or the Renaissance.

The man who was "running things"--she buried her phraseology with
her dreams--wore a skull cap, and his moustache dragged down below
his chin. Just at present he was engaged in noisily pulling a most
unliterary pine table from a dark corner to a place near the window.
That accomplished, an ostentatious hunt ensued, resulting in the
triumphant flourish of a feather duster. Several knocks at the
table, and the dust of many months--perhaps likewise of many
dreams--ascended to a resting place on the endorsement of Dr.
Bunting's Kidney and Bladder Cure. He next produced a short,
straight-backed chair which she recognised as brother to the one
which used to stand behind their kitchen stove. He gave it a shake,
thus delicately indicating that she was receiving special favours in
this matter of an able-bodied chair, and then announced with brisk
satisfaction: "So! Now we are ready to begin." She murmured a "Thank
you," seated herself and her buried hopes in this chair which did
not whirl round, and leaned her arms upon a table which did not even
dream in mahogany.

In the _other_ publishing house, one pushed buttons and
uniformed menials appeared--noiselessly, quickly and deferentially.
At this moment a boy with sandy hair brushed straight back in a
manner either statesmanlike or clownlike--things were too involved
to know which--shuffled in with an armful of yellow paper which he
flopped down on the pine table. After a minute he returned with a
warbled "Take Me Back to New York Town" and a paste-pot. And upon
his third appearance he was practising gymnastics with a huge pair
of shears, which he finally presented, grinningly.

There was a long pause, broken only by the sonorous voice of Dr.
Bunting upbraiding someone for not having billed out that stuff to
Apple Grove, and then the sandy-haired boy appeared bearing a large
dictionary, followed by the man in the skull cap behind a dictionary
of equal unwieldiness. These were set down on either side of the
yellow paper, and he who was filling the position of cultivated
gentleman pulled up a chair, briskly.

"Has Professor Lee explained to you the nature of our work?" he
wanted to know.

"No," she replied, half grimly, a little humourously, and not far
from tearfully, "he didn't--explain."

"Then it is my pleasure to inform you," he began, blinking at her
importantly, "that we are engaged here in the making of a
dictionary."

"A _dic--?_" but she swallowed the gasp in the laugh coming up
to meet it, and of their union was born a saving cough.

"Quite an overpowering thought, is it not?" he agreed pleasantly.
"Now you see you have before you the two dictionaries you will use
most, and over in that case you will find other references. The main
thing"--his voice sank to an impressive whisper--"is _not_ to
infringe the copyright. The publisher was in yesterday and made a
little talk to the force, and he said that any one who handed in a
piece of copy infringing the copyright simply employed that means of
writing his own resignation. Neat way of putting it, was it not?"

"Yes, _wasn't_ it--neat?" she agreed, wildly.

She was conscious of a man's having stepped in behind her and taken
a seat at the table next hers. She heard him opening his dictionaries
and getting out his paper. Then the man in the skull cap had risen
and was saying genially: "Well, here is a piece of old Webster, your
first 'take'--no copyright on this, you see, but you must modernise
and expand. Don't miss any of the good words in either of these
dictionaries. Here you have dictionaries, copy-paper, paste, and
Professor Lee assures me you have brains--all the necessary
ingredients for successful lexicography. We are to have some rules
printed to-morrow, and in the meantime I trust I've made myself clear.
The main thing"--he bent down and spoke it solemnly--"is _not_ to
infringe the copyright." With a cheerful nod he was gone, and she heard
him saying to the man at the next table: "Mr. Clifford, I shall have
to ask you to be more careful about getting in promptly at eight."

She removed the cover from her paste-pot and dabbled a little on a
piece of paper. Then she tried the unwieldy shears on another piece
of paper. She then opened one of her dictionaries and read
studiously for fifteen minutes. That accomplished, she opened the
other dictionary and pursued it for twelve minutes. Then she took
the column of "old Webster," which had been handed her pasted on a
piece of yellow paper, and set about attempting to commit it to
memory. She looked up to be met with the statement that Mrs. Marjory
Van Luce De Vane, after spending years under the so-called best
surgeons of the country, had been cured in six weeks by Dr.
Bunting's Famous Kidney and Bladder Cure. She pushed the
dictionaries petulantly from her, and leaning her very red cheek
upon her hand, her hazel eyes blurred with tears of perplexity and
resentment, her mouth drawn in pathetic little lines of uncertainty,
looked over at the sprawling warehouse on the opposite side of
Dearborn Street. She was just considering the direct manner of
writing one's resignation--not knowing how to infringe the
copyright--when a voice said: "I beg pardon, but I wonder if I can
help you any?"

She had never heard a voice like that before. Or, _had_ she
heard it?--and where? She looked at him, a long, startled gaze.
Something made her think of the voice the prince used to have in
long-ago dreams. She looked into a face that was dark and thin
and--different. Two very dark eyes were looking at her kindly, and a
mouth which was a baffling combination of things to be loved and
things to be deplored was twitching a little, as though it would
like to join the eyes in a smile, if it dared.

Because he saw both how funny and how hard it was, she liked him. It
would have been quite different had he seen either one without the
other.

"You can tell me how _not_ to infringe the copyright," she
laughed. "I'm not sure that I know what a copyright is."

He laughed--a laugh which belonged with his voice. "Mr. Littletree
isn't as lucid as he thinks he is. I've been here a week or so, and
picked up a few things you might like to know."

He pulled his chair closer to her table then and gave her a lesson in
the making of copy. Edna Willard was never one-half so attractive as
when absorbed in a thing which someone was showing her how to do. Her
hazel eyes would widen and glisten with the joy of comprehending; her
cheeks would flush a deeper pink with the coming of new light, her
mouth would part in a child-like way it had forgotten to outgrow,
her head would nod gleefully in token that she understood, and she
had a way of pulling at her wavy hair and making it more wavy than
it had been before. The man at the next table was a long time in
explaining the making of a dictionary. He spoke in low tones, often
looking at the figure of the man in the skull cap, who was sitting
with his back to them, looking over copy. Once she cried, excitedly:
"Oh--I _see_!" and he warned, "S--h!" explaining, "Let him think
you got it all from him. It will give you a better stand-in." She
nodded, appreciatively, and felt very well acquainted with this kind
man whose voice made her think of something--called to something--she
did not just know what.

After that she became so absorbed in lexicography that when the men
began putting away their things it was hard to realise that the
morning had gone. It was a new and difficult game, the evasion of
the copyright furnishing the stimulus of a hazard.

The man at the next table had been watching her with an amused
admiration. Her child-like absorption, the way every emotion from
perplexity to satisfaction expressed itself in the poise of her head
and the pucker of her face, took him back over years emotionally
barren to the time when he too had those easily stirred enthusiasms
of youth. For the man at the next table was far from young now. His
mouth had never quite parted with boyishness, but there was more
white than black in his hair, and the lines about his mouth told
that time, as well as forces more aging than time, had laid heavy
hand upon him. But when he looked at the girl and told her with a
smile that it was time to stop work, it was a smile and a voice to
defy the most tell-tale face in all the world.

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