The Red Book Magazine/Volume 15/Number 5/The Sob Sister's Man

by Earl Derr Biggers

The Sob Sister's Man

BY EARL DERR BIGGERS

Author of “The Cruel Town,” etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY ARTHUR WILLIAM BROWN

EVEN to this day I remember Percy Myers as the man who had no chin. A number of years have passed since he grew the scraggly, pitiful beard that should have concealed from the world Nature's warning to those who might look to him for manliness or courage, but I still see him as I knew him first—weak, swimming eyes, delicate nose, cupid's bow mouth, and a chin that was never a feature, but only an unimportant incident in the make-up of his face.

Myers drifted into newspaper life from a little New England college, whither he had been sent by the admiring parents who had first handicapped him with the name of Percy. When he chose a small college Percy made a fatal mistake. In a big university he might have bluffed his weak way to a diploma and “the fellowship of educated men,” but at the little institution it took a wary faculty less than two years to size him up and throw him out into a world that had no need of him. He had once written to his mother that the rush and glamor of newspaper life called him, so he drifted down to the city to inform an unsympathetic editor of the same siren voice that summoned.

It is an unfortunate conclusion that the real method in Percy's newspaper madness lay in the fact that the work of the men of the press offers excellent opportunity for dallying with the grape. From the first, Percy dallied. The real business of the day, in his eyes, came in the evening, when the last editions were on the street, and the convivial spirits of the sheet gathered at the glittering cafés—to drink their dinners down. It is a ceremony that stretches far into the night, and Percy was invariably the last into a cab.

At the office, where Percy would appear in the morning, red-eyed and weary, anywhere from an hour to four hours late, he was regarded as a harmless idiot who might do something unexpectedly good if nothing good was expected of him. Sent out to get facts, Percy often got them. Not always, but often. However, the management in those days was genial and bibulous, itself, and Percy stayed on in a glow of good fellowship. Nobody trusted him—his chin was warning enough—and when the big stories broke he was pushed into a corner; but he was worth keeping, to gather information on the Longshore men's picnic or the Eighth Ward ball: and he gathered it faithfully—whenever he didn't bluff on it.

Now and again I caught Percy clipping one of his uninspired stories from the paper, and he confessed that he sent them occasionally to his mother. He would add, shamefacedly, that she “liked to read his stuff.” His “stuff?” was a collection of cheap little facts any schoolboy could have gathered, and I wondered, sometimes if 1n Percy's tobacco-heart there was not a faint longing to do something some day that would really be worth the perusal of the one person who followed his work. I think there was, too, for one day into his addled brain something like an inspiration crept, and he did a half-column of “filler,” that the city editor sneered at, but printed. Percy waited feverishly that forenoon for the first edition to come up from the press room, and he had an envelope already addressed in his hand

I should like to paint that picture in lasting colors of Percy clipping his stories for the delectation of the one at home, since it must have been the last lonely link that bound him to decency. Among the men of the office he was regarded as a more or less pitiful joke. The first of the week they consorted with him for their own amusement: towards the last they avoided him studiously. For Percy could by no effort stretch his small Saturday pay over seven days, and regularly each Thursday he struck the rocks. Many a pitiful lie he circulated in order to corner enough quarters to bridge the gulf till pay day. When certain of those who had advanced life-saving silver expressed a desire for its return, Percy would pat them on the back and assure them that their money was safe, as he had them down on his list. Then he would take out a soiled notebook and show them the list; and they would note with falling hopes that they were down on page 12, and that no names at the beginning were scratched off.

So Percy drifted weakly on to his finish, lost, hopeless, bleary, dulling constantly with fancy colored liqueurs in cute little glasses the three or four candle-power brain a mysterous Providence had bestowed upon him. Even the office boy knew that he was beyond recall, and insulted him regularly with no fear of punishment. Percy must have drawn as much as twelve dollars a week at that time, and we all knew that as long as he lasted he could draw no more. He was twenty-two years old, and the book of Hope seemed forever closed to him.

And then Minnavieve Markham cast her violet eyes upon him.

I believe the real fact was, that, lost for a word, she looked up one day from the drivel she was writing, and her eyes fell upon Percy, sitting useless in a corner. From that moment he must have known that he belonged to her.

Minnavieve's real name was Mary O'Brien, which she wisely had no desire to see printed over her stories. She was one of the lachrymose band of “sob sisters,” as they are called in newspaper offices. The sob sister puts into dripping words the inner emotions of her soul—for the readers of the penny press. She interviews the actress about her gowns and the murderer about his Art, and she overflows an equal quantity of purple adjectives at sight of a blind man's dog or a noted English suffragette. Miss Markham—for the sake of the O'Briens let us preserve the disguise—was an accomplished sob sister, and Billy Ransom said that her articles sounded like rain falling upon twelve inches of snow.

Minnavieve was little, quick, and determined, and probably the thought of escape never came to Percy save as an idle dream.

The first the rest of us knew of the affair was one Monday morning when Percy crept toward the city editor and asked for two first-night theatre tickets. All the city editor's friends must have been out of town, for Percy's wish was gratified, and the next day he bashfully handed in a review of the play that showed Minnavieve Markham's hand in every line.

A few days later Minnavieve was sent to witness a big historical pageant. There were to be history and romance and uniforms all mixed together, and she was to sit in Row Z and indulge in all sorts of picturesque emotions at the sight. She did not sit there alone with her emotions. For Percy borrowed fifteen cents from Ransom, bought a clean collar, and allowed her to take him by the hand and lead him off into fairyland.

Shortly afterwards he confided to one of the boys in the office that Minnavieve was a “remarkable little woman,” and that she was doing “great stuff.” The crowd hooted when Percy's words were carried to them. With a big, red-blooded horror they recoiled from the ego and the drivel that Minnavieve indulged in, in full view of the world. One or two claimed to be glad that at last she had made her selection—adding that they had been a bit nervous in Miss Markham's earlier days.

But none of us need have feared capture from Minnavieve, I thought. Some how I was sure she wanted Percy, from the first. The rest of us were what we were—finished—with the stamp of good or bad upon us. And Percy was still wet clay, susceptible of being molded to the day his weak existence ended.

Almost at once the signs of Minnavieve's molding appeared. Percy began to shun the polished café tables above which he had drunk his cheap soul into oblivion. The jolly good fellows missed him, and commented upon his capture. They spoke scornfully of the sob sister who had robbed them of him, and said they would swear she wrote mushy poetry in private, and dreamed of the day when she should be crowned queen of a ginger-ale Bohemia.

Percy's poor little chin trembled sometimes when they taunted him with his subjection, but he kept in his new path faithfully. We were all working in those days on a paper called The Star, whose brief stay in this vale of tears is still remembered feelingly by those who drew its munificent salaries. It came noisily, it tempted us away from our old positions with offers of gleaming gold. And then suddenly it passed, and left us wondering—and wishing.

The crash resounded on a Monday morning. Percy was sitting thoughtfully at his typewriter, hammering out a story.

“Say, Billy,” he inquired suddenly, “how is it you spell 'equilibrium?'”

“Well,” began Ranson, “my own private way of—”

He was interrupted by the city editor, a brisk, sprightly gentleman who had an abrupt manner and a biting tongue.

“See here, Myers,” said that dignitary, coming up suddenly, “you needn't finish that story.”

“But why not?” Percy protested. “It's a good—”

“Because,” said the city editor, “there is no longer any Star to write for. The paper suspended an hour ago.”

We all sat stunned for a moment, but it was upon Percy that the blow seemed to fall hardest. His face twitched in fear, and his eyes were the eyes of a man who sees no money awaiting him at the end of the week. As soon as the rest of us got our breaths we rushed off to the telephone booths to try and cajole our old jobs back. When we came out Percy was still sitting there like a man scheduled never to smile again.

In a few minutes Miss Markham came in, and she was greeted by a chorus of woe that apprised her of the trouble which had fallen upon the house. She only smiled in a bitter way she had.

“I knew it early this morning,” she said calmly, “so I stopped at The Press on the way down. I go back to the old job this noon. Just came in to get the things out of my desk.”

As she paused before her typewriter her eyes fell upon Percy, sitting gloomily before his unfinished story in the attitude in which the news had surprised him. For a moment she studied him, and there was pity, and, I think, a little contempt, in her glance. Then she went over and spoke to him.

The rest of the office was on its hilarious way out to drown its sorrows at a nearby fount, and Ransom and I were going over to The Press—which had magnanimously agreed to take us back that noon. As we were passing out, Percy ran over and borrowed a dollar from us.

“What's to become of him?” I asked thoughtfully, as we went down the stairs.

“Oh, he'll be taken care of, all right,” said Billy, smiling. “A dollar is the price of a marriage license in this state.”

Billy was right. That dark morning Minnavieve actually took the bewildered Percy by the hand and led him over to the City Hall, where he spent his borrowed dollar to be united to her in the holy bonds of matrimony. The next evening Percy came drifting into the Press office and told us about it. Minnavieve was sitting not far away, and she glanced at him occasionally with an air of proud proprietorship.

“She's a good little woman,” he told us over and over. “She'll make me a good wife.”

We thought it more likely she would make him a good husband—but kept it to ourselves. Billy congratulated him warmly.

“But for a newly married man,” he said, “that two days' beard is unbecoming. For Heaven's sake, get a shave.”

Percy blushed.

“I'm—I'm growing a beard,” he said. It was Minnavieve's scheme for hiding that terribly unsatisfactory chin.

Immediately after her arrival on The Press Minnavieve began bombarding Hayes, the city editor, for a place for Percy. Hayes was big, red-faced, profane, and he said he had no place on his sheet for spineless infants. Then he found out that Minnavieve had married Percy, and apologized, and ended—to cover his embarrassment, perhaps—by admitting Percy into the fold.

So Percy came to us, meek, anxious, but happy. The Press was a morning paper,so no evening drinking bouts tempted Percy now; but he seemed not to miss them at all. Every now and then he cornered one of us and told us all about the remarkable wife he had captured.

Poor Percy, he really thought that he had been the captor.

There came a weak night when he nearly fell from grace. Minnavieve had gone home early, and a bunch of us left the office together. Percy was along. At a corner where the lights of a once favored café gleamed, someone taunted him, and dared him to enter. His chin must have trembled, though Minnavieve's inspiration hid it from our sight. He stammered and flushed a moment, then accompanied the crowd inside. His drink was poured, and in his hand, when a new look came into his eyes and, pushing it aside, he turned abruptly and went out into the street. Billy and I followed, and joined him on the sidewalk.

“She asked me to bring home two pounds of butter,” he told us. “I just remembered it. I'm afraid it's too late now. Wouldn't any place be open now, would there, boys?”

It was her custom, it appeared, to get a midnight lunch for them over a chafing dish. Percy described it to us. He remarked on how high the price of butter was. An outrage, he declared. He swaggered, and talked like a hardened householder. We smiled at one another over his head as we passed the street lamps.

He tried to picture to us the three-room heaven had made of an ordinary flat, and urged us to call at once and be convinced. We pleaded prior engagements—an unlikely plea at that hour. After he had left us and dodged into the darkness we discussed his heaven as it really must be. Ibsen and welsh rarebits, emotion and hairpins, scattered all about, we wagered. Red curtains on the windows and framed verses from the Rubaiyat, decorating the walls. We shuddered, and told one another that Percy had been always lost, for so it seemed to us—lost at the outset in the allurements of rainbow liqueurs; lost even more hopelessly, now, in the clutches of his frowsy priestess of purple emotion.

This opinion was strengthened on the memorable evening when we called upon them unexpectedly. It was their day off, and Billy and I were going back to the office early, having slipped away from the dull high-brow lecture that Billy was reporting, and I was loafing at, after one good look at the black-coated human who was due to talk. Billy suggested that we drop in on the Percy-and-Minnavieve establishment, and I wanted to know just how Percy lived—the truth, horrible as it must be. And it was quite horrible enough.

We climbed to the fourth floor of their flat house and knocked. Minnavieve's voice promptly called “Come in,” and we pushed open the door.

It was Minnavieve we beheld first. She was quite unforgettable. Her hair was undone and hung about her shoulders in the true emotional style. Some Japanese madman had dreamed her kimona—after a night with the saki. We fancied we smelled Russian cigarets—and Percy had always professed to hate them.

Minnavieve took her feet down from the radiator while we apologized for the unexpectedness of our call. She said it was all right—“one was always welcome in Bohemia,” she put it—and held up her book.

“I'm reading Nietzsche,” she said. “Don't you think he's lovely? I do, and so does Percy.”

Our attention was thus directed to Percy for the first time. He sat not far away in restless proximity to an atrocious “cozy corner.” Wrapped about him was something intended to be a dressing gown, over which gay poppies that matched those of the wall paper ran riot. On his feet were embroidered slippers! And he held in his lap a big volume which I recognized at a glance—for Minnavieve had shown it to me at the office long ago.

It was an ungainly scrap book, and it contained clippings of all the twaddle she had written for the press.

Our hearts went out to him there, deep in his embroidered existence, branded and penned forever. There was an odor of cheap perfume in the room, and we knew that henceforth that odor must be inseparable from his life. Imagine, if you can, a worse hell for a man than his—surrounded by primroses and poppies, reading the book of his wife's sticky soul-sobs, as she had penned them for the great public to gloat over.

We looked at Percy; in wonder that he did not scream out in rebellion—but he gazed back at us with the placid expression of a calf. Actually, he seemed 1appy. Minnavieve ranted on about Nietzsche—neither of us had ever heard of the gentleman before—and read us passages from his work. Every now and then she said something rather clever, which we knew she would put into print on the morrow.

So we sat for an hour, the unwilling witnesses of Percy's cruel but unconscious humiliation. And when Minnavieve had filled us with ego and rant and gush, she proposed a rarebit, and Percy got everything from the cupboard and stood holding it for her, in the attitude of the boy page who assists the famous magician. When we came away they posed arm in arm in the door, and she urged us to come back whenever we could, while Percy tried in vain to edge in a word of second to her invitation.

Out under the stars we breathed in great draughts of pure air, and looked at one another.

“Where,” said Billy, “do they concoct dressing-sacks like the one he wore?”

“Over where Nietzsche lives, probably,” I said.

Billy sighed.

“Poor Percy,” he muttered. “Poor Percy. He's nothing more than a tidy on one of the chairs of her flat.”

 

Two weeks later the great water-front fire burst into the headlines. It was featured in all the papers as a “two-million dollar blaze.” Several lives were lost, and a number of men showed of what they were made—but in this generation everything—success or failure, achievement or calamity—is measured by money. So, if you are to be properly impressed, you must remember that this was a two-million-dollar-blaze.

It was a sizzling night at the end of a blistering day. The poor of the city were panting on fire escapes and on the grass of the parks, while everybody else panted with more dignity inside. Ransom and I were alone in the city room, discussing the administration, the weather, baseball; the weather again—and so on. Suddenly the little alarm bell above our heads rasped out its fire call. At the same moment a telephone bell rang, and I went to roast in the booth.

”For Heaven's sake,” the voice of Burkett, our water-front reporter, came over the wire, “the whole harbor's on fire. Wake up, you fellows.”

I went over and, smiling sweetly into old Hayes' red, perspiring face, threw my bomb. He leaped like a madman and ran for the managing editor and an “Extra.” Then he came panting back and urged Billy and me into action.

“Get a launch,” he shouted. “Hire the first thing in sight.” And we started out.

I have said that Billy and I were alone in the city room. So we were, practically, but Percy Myers was dawdling in a corner over something unimportant. Now he came running out, pulling on the gay little coat, of the suit Minnavieve had selected for him,

“I'm going too,” he cried.

Hayes, big, mighty, and in action, gazed for a moment into Percy's pale eyes.

“You keep out of the way. D'ye hear?” he snarled.

We were already on the stairs, and after us we heard the patter of Percy's footsteps. He had deliberately disobeyed orders, and he was offensively important about it when he joined us in the street. All the way to the harbor he trotted along by our side, wishing that “she” were with us.

“She'd do great stuff on a thing like this,” he puffed. “It always did take something big to inspire her.”

Minnavieve was at the moment sitting amid the palms of a big up-town hotel, watching for her chance to leap out and interview a noted English novelist. Percy was for calling her up, but we throttled his suggestion. We said we wanted no purple emotions rocking the boat with us. She would, we knew, have shallow fits all over the place, and get in the way generally. Percy was enough of an encumbrance in himself, and if we had not been in such a hurry we would surely have paused to spank him and send him back to the office.

Billy knew a man who had a launch to rent, and we routed him out from his den over a Sailors' Reading Room. Even then we could see the red of the fire flashing in the sky. But it was not until we ran down to the pier and leaped into the launch that the full glory of that two-million-dollar-blaze burst upon us. On the other side of the harbor's black waters the world seemed to be in flames. Long, lean tongues leaped savagely up into the heavens, and the old, dry warehouses and piers crackled, and sizzled, and burst into stars, like a town fireworks celebration on the Fourth of July. And in the black of the waters the whole red display lay reflected beautifully.

We made our way through the tooting, noisy, excited craft that rushed aimlessly about the harbor, and came quickly opposite the point on the shore to which the blaze had advanced. Billy Ransom had been a water-front man in his day, and knew that blazing shore-line by heart. He took a bunch of copy paper from his pocket and began to note down the buildings and piers that the flames were licking out of existence. We had swept a little away from the other craft and were passing a turn of the burning shore—when we suddenly beheld a thing that made us gasp.

Moored to a blazing pier there was a fisherman's lonely little dory, and as we slipped past it something that had been huddled up in the stern stood up and screamed. We heard its scream above the crackle of the flames and the chug-chug of our engine, and as it stood silhouetted against that awful wall of fire, we saw that it was a small and terrified boy. How he got there we did not know, and we do not know yet, but he must have climbed out over the stringers to sleep through the night, near the cooling swish of the harbor waters, and wakened to find himself moored to a pier of living flame that cooked his innermost soul.

“Put in—closer,” Billy shouted, and the old man who was running our launch nodded and turned her part way about. A terrible blast of heat that swept into our very minds and dulled them, rolled out toward us over the waters. The old man hastily reversed and we backed off a few feet. We called to him again to put in toward the shore, but made no protest when he seemed not to hear us. Some fifteen feet lay between us and that kid.

“Swim for it,” we shouted.

He seemed to hear us finally, for he stood up again in that fierce heat and leaped over the side. The crimson water jumped high like liquid flame. For a moment he splashed about, and we thought he was sinking, but finally he managed to grasp the side of his boat nearest to us, and hung there, protected by the dory from the heat. We knew then that he could not swim and we sat looking at him while our skins seemed to crackle, and our brains sought vainly to resume work.

Then a funny thing happened. From somewhere in the shadow Percy Myers came creeping out, and pausing at our side, stripped off his little coat. For a moment he stood there, ridiculous, narrow-shouldered, biceps-less, weak; and we knew, somehow, that his chin trembled under that preposterous beard. Billy said afterwards that when he saw Percy posing in that crimson spot light he thought of the boy who stood on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled.

Only a second he posed, however, and the next he leaped into the red water and swam straight toward that burning hell. Every now and then he ducked his head under the water to cool it. He reached the boy's side and gripped his collar with one little white fist, and swam back with him to the launch.

We took our hero and his charge aboard and puffed our way back out of the circle of heat. Then we sort of “took stock”—stock of all our opinions and beliefs and judgments. Percy looked scared and limp and dripping and, altogether, very funny. We might have laughed, but we didn't—for we remembered that the impulse to do what Percy had done had come to neither of us until he was very nearly back to the launch—with the boy in tow.

We delivered the kid, singed, soaked, terrified still, to a waiting ambulance further down the shore, and Billy continued solemnly his collecting of data on the blaze. As we chugged swiftly about the harbor Percy sat in the stern-sheets and shivered. In a half hour we ran across Burkett, got all the stuff he had not sent in by telephone, and received from him Hayes' telephoned order to come in and write what we had.

And then, as we turned our backs on that blazing string of water-front sheds, Percy crawled down to us and told us why he had done it. Anyone could have guessed.

She adored heroes. With all the red fervor of her shallow soul she worshipped “big, strong men,” who thought nothing of leaping into danger for others. She had interviewed a lot of those fellows—to their horror, no doubt—and had always come away with heaps of warm thoughts searing her gelatine brain.

“You know it if you read her stuff,” Percy told us. “She's simply wild about men who have done things—who have risked a lot for others—and I—well, I was never that sort—exactly. Sometimes at night I used to look over her book of clippings—” which made me think of the embroidered slippers and poppy-decked dressing-gown—“and read what she thought of big men who had done things. And then I would feel pretty cheap because I had never done anything worthy of a clever girl like her.”

Trembling, little, spineless, afraid—and a hero! Again we might have laughed, and again we let the chance go by.

We were back in the office, grinding out our story, when Minnavieve came in to report an interview that had escaped—and saw Percy. Billy had told the boys something of Percy's conduct, and they were gathered in a group about him, fighting for the details, when she came in. Percy only shook his head when she questioned him, and claimed to have done nothing—nothing at all—in the approved manner of the heroes he had read about.

Minnavieve came over to us.

“What did he do?” she asked.

“What did he do?” repeated Billy. “He jumped into the harbor and swam straight into a heat that would have cooked an egg, and pulled a scared, roasting little kid back to the launch.”

Minnavieve's eyes flashed, and she gave a little cry. Then she walked straight to Percy, put her arms round his neck, and kissed him.

Hayes stormed profanely toward us.

“Are you fellows writing that story for a weekly?” he roared.

“Mr. Hayes,” said Minnavieve, suddenly, “I want to write an interview with the hero of the fire.”

“Sure. Can you get it to-night?” Hayes. “Where is he?”

Minnavieve pointed.

“He's Percy,” she said. Percy blushed.

Hayes gave one look and then burst into a roar of laugher that seemed to shake the building. It was not nice of him. He leered into Percy's face, and gurgled. I hoped fervently that Percy would rise up and plant his small white fist somewhere on the red expanse of Hayes' face. But Percy stood meekly. He was finished with brave deeds for the evening.

“I guess not,” said Hayes. “It wouldn't do,” he added, more soberly, “to boost one of our own men like that.”

We all knew, of course, that the interview Minnavieve suggested would have been in very poor taste, but somehow we were all sorry nevertheless.

“See here, Percy,” said Billy kindly, “you've done enough for the paper for one night. Why don't you go home now and change those clothes?”

Minnavieve took him in charge at these words, and led him out on their way to the flat. Before the door closed upon him, Percy smiled back at us over his shoulder.

We returned to our story—but we thought of the flat, and of Minnavieve.

Nietzsche, poppies, rant, and rarebits made us pause.

Billy looked up with the expression of a man who does not understand.

“She's as shallow,” he said, “as the slush on the sidewalks in March—that reminds you so much of her stuff.”

And then we were silent, wondering, for we knew that out of quite hopeless material this flaming sob sister had molded something that wanted to be a man.