Helen in the Editor's Chair

Ruthe S. Wheeler

Helen in the Editor's Chair

CHAPTER I

The Weekly Herald

Thursday!

Press day!

Helen Blair anxiously watched the clock on the wall of the assembly room. Five more minutes and school would be dismissed for the day. How those minutes dragged. She moved her books impatiently.

Finally the dismissal bell sounded. Helen straightened the books in her desk and, with the 162 others in the large assembly of the Rolfe High School, rose and marched down to the cloak room. She was glad that school was over for, to her, Thursday was the big day of the week.

Press day!

What magic lay in those two words.

By supper time the Rolfe Herald would be in every home in town and, when families sat down to their evening meal, they would have the paper beside them.

Helen’s father, Hugh Blair, was the editor and publisher of the Herald. Her brother, Tom, a junior in high school, wrote part of the news and operated the Linotype, while Helen helped in the office every night after school and on Saturdays.

On Thursday her work comprised folding the papers as they came off the clanking press. Her arms ached long before her task was done, but she prided herself on the neatness of the stacks of papers that grew as she worked.

“Aren’t you going to stay for the final sophomore debate tryouts?” asked Margaret Stevens. Margaret, daughter of the only doctor in Rolfe, lived across the street from the Blairs.

“Not this afternoon,” smiled Helen, “this is press day.”

“I’d forgotten,” laughed Margaret. “All right, hurry along and get your hands covered with ink.”

“Come over after supper and tell me about the tryouts,” said Helen.

“I will,” promised Margaret as she turned to the classroom where the tryouts were to be held.

The air was warm and Helen, with her spring coat over her arm, hurried from the high school building and started down the long hill that led to the main street.

Rolfe was a pretty midwestern village tucked away among the hills bordering Lake Dubar, a long, narrow body of water that attracted summer visitors from hundreds of miles away.

The main street, built along a valley that opened out on the lake shore, was a broad, graveled street, flanked by a miscellaneous collection of stores and shops. Some of them were of weather-beaten red brick, others were of frame and a few of them, harking back to pioneer days, had false fronts. In the afternoon sun, it presented a quiet, friendly scene.

Helen reached the foot of the school house hill and turned on to the main street. On the right of the street and just two blocks from the lake shore stood the one-story frame structure housing the postoffice and her father’s printing plant. The postoffice occupied the front half of the building and the Herald office was the rear.

Helen walked down the alleyway between the postoffice and the Temple furniture store. She heard the noise of the press before she reached the office and knew that her father had started the afternoon run.

The Herald, an eight page paper, used four pages of ready print and four pages of home print. Each week’s supply of paper was shipped from Cranston, where four pages filled with prepared news and pictures, were printed. The other four, carrying local advertisements and news of Rolfe and vicinity were printed on the aged press in the Herald office.

Helen hurried up the three steps leading to the editorial office. Its one unwashed window shut out the sunlight, and the office lay in a semi-shadow. Unable to see clearly after the brightness of the sunlight, she did not see her father at his desk when she entered the office.

“Hello, Dad,” she called as she took off her tam and sailed it along the counter where it finally came to rest against a stack of freshly printed Heralds.

Her father did not answer and Helen was on the point of going on into the composing room when she turned toward him. His head still rested on his arms and he gave no sign of having heard her.

Concerned over his silence, she hurried to his desk.

“Dad, Dad!” she cried. “What’s the matter! Answer me!”

Her father’s head moved and he looked up at her. His face was pale and there were dark hollows under his eyes.

“I’m all right, Helen,” he said, but the usual smile was missing. “Just felt a little faint and came in here to take a few minutes rest. I’ll be all right shortly. You go on and help Tom. I’ll be with you in a while.”

“But if you don’t feel well, Dad, you’d better go home and rest,” insisted Helen. “You know Tom and I can finish getting out the paper. Now you run along and don’t worry about things at the office.”

She reached for his hat and coat hanging on a hook at one side of the desk. He remonstrated at the prospect of going home with the work only half done, but Helen was adamant and her father finally gave in.

“Perhaps it will be best,” he agreed as he walked slowly toward the door.

Helen watched him descend the steps; then saw him reach the street and turn toward home.

She was startled by the expression she had just seen on her father’s face. He had never been particularly robust and now he looked as though something had come upon him which was crushing his mind and body. Illness, worry and apprehension had carved lines in his face that afternoon.

Helen went into the composing room where the Linotype, the rows of type cases, the makeup tables, the job press and the newspaper press were located. At the back end of the room was the large press, moving steadily back and forth as Tom, perched on a high stool, fed sheets of paper into one end. From the other came the freshly printed papers of that week’s edition of the Herald.

“Shut off the press,” called Helen, shouting to make herself heard above the noise of the working machinery.

“What say?” cried Tom.

“Shut it off,” his sister replied.

Tom scowled as he reached for the clutch to stop the press. He liked nothing better than running the press and when he had it well under way, usually printed the whole edition without a stop unless the paper became clogged or he had to readjust the ink rollers.

“What’s the idea?” he demanded. “I’m trying to get through so I can play some baseball before dark.”

“Dad’s sick,” explained Helen, “and I made him go home. Do you know what’s the matter?”

“Gosh, no,” said Tom as he climbed down from his stool. “He wasn’t feeling very well when I came down from school and said he was going in the office to rest, but I didn’t know he felt that badly.”

“Well, he did,” replied Helen, “and I’m worried about him.”

“We always take him more or less for granted. He goes on year after year working in the office, getting enough together to make us all comfortable and hoping that he can send us to college some day. We help him when we can, but he plugs away day after day and I’ve noticed lately that he hasn’t been very perky. Mother has been worried, too. I can tell from the way she acts when Dad comes home at night. She’s always asking him how he feels and urging him to get to bed early. I tell you, Tom, something’s wrong with Dad and we’ve got to find out and help him.”

“Let’s go get Doctor Stevens right now,” said the impetuous Tom, and he reached to shut off the motor of the press.

“Not now,” said Helen. “If Dad thought we weren’t getting the paper out on time he’d worry all the more. We’ll finish the paper and then have Doctor Stevens come over this evening. We can fix it so he’ll just drop in for a social call.”

“Good idea,” said Tom as he climbed back on his stool and threw in the clutch.

The press started its steady clanking and Helen picked up a pile of papers and spread them out on one of the makeup stones. Her father had printed two of the pages of home news during the morning and these sheets were stacked in a pile in one corner. She arranged two piles of papers on the makeup table, one pile which her father had printed and one of papers which were coming off the press as fast as Tom could keep it rolling.

Helen put on a heavy, blue-denim apron to protect her school dress and went to work. With nimble hands she put the sheets of paper together, folded them with a quick motion and slid the completed paper off the table and onto a box placed close by for that purpose.

The press, of unknown vintage, moved slowly and when Helen started at the same time as Tom she could fold the papers as rapidly as they were printed. But that day Tom, who had managed to be excused half an hour early, had too much of a start and when he finished the press run Helen still had several hundred papers to fold.

Tom stopped the press, shut off the motor, raised the ink rollers and then pulled the forms off the press and carried them to the other makeup table. After washing the ink off the type with a gasoline-soaked rag, he gathered an armful of papers Helen had folded and carried them into the editorial office. There he got out the long galleys which held the names of the subscribers. He inked each galley, placed it in the mailing machine, and then fed the papers into the mailer. They came out with the name of a subscriber printed at the top of each paper.

The young Blairs worked silently, hastening to complete their respective tasks so they could hurry home. Tom had forgotten his plans to play baseball and all thought of the outcome of the debate tryouts had left Helen’s mind. There was one thought uppermost in their minds. What was the matter with their father?

CHAPTER II

Startling News

The last paper folded, Helen removed the heavy apron and washed her hands at the sink behind the press. When she entered the editorial office Tom was putting the last of the papers through the mailer. They gathered them up, placed them in a large sack and carried them into the postoffice.

“We won’t stop to sweep out tonight,” said Helen. “Let’s lock up and then see Doctor Stevens on our way home. He’s usually in his office at this time.”

Tom agreed and, after putting away the mailing machine, locked the back door, closed the windows in the shop and announced that he was ready to go.

Helen locked the front door and they walked down main street toward the white, one-story building which housed the office of Doctor Stevens, the town’s only physician.

Tom was tall and slender with wavy, brown hair and brown eyes that were always alive with interest. Helen came scarcely above his shoulder, but she was five feet two of concentrated energy. She had left her tam at the office and the afternoon sun touched her blond hair with gold. Her eyes were the same clear blue as her mother’s and the rosy hue in her cheeks gave hint of her vitality.

They entered Doctor Stevens’ waiting room and found the genial physician reading a medical journal.

“Hello, Helen! How are you Tom?” He boomed in his deep voice.

“We’re fine, Doctor Stevens,” replied Helen, “but we’re worried about Dad.”

“Why, what’s the matter with your father?” asked the doctor, adjusting his glasses.

“Dad wasn’t feeling very well when I came down from school at three-thirty,” said Tom, “and when I started the afternoon press run, he went into the office to rest a while. When Helen came in a little after four, Dad looked pretty rocky and she made him go home.”

“How did he look when you talked with him?” Doctor Stevens asked Helen.

“Awfully tired and mighty worried,” replied Helen. “It was his eyes more than anything else. He’s afraid of something and it has worried him until he is positively ill.”

“And haven’t you any idea what it could be?” asked the doctor.

“I’ve been thinking about it ever since Dad went home,” said Helen, “and I don’t know of a single thing that would worry him that much.”

“Neither do I,” added Tom.

“What we’d like to have you do,” went on Helen, “is to drop in after supper. Make it look like a little social visit and it will give you a good excuse to give Dad the once over. We’ll be ever so much relieved if you will.”

“Of course I will,” the doctor assured them. “You’re probably worrying about some little thing and the more you think about it, the larger it grows. Possibly a little touch of stomach trouble. What have you been trying to cook, lately?” he asked Helen.

“Couldn’t be my cooking,” she replied. “I haven’t done any for a week and you know that Mother’s good cooking would never make anyone ill.”

“I’ll come over about seven-thirty,” promised Doctor Stevens, “and don’t you two worry yourselves over this. Your father will be all right in a day or two.”

Helen and Tom thanked Doctor Stevens and continued on their way home. They went back past the postoffice and the Herald and down toward the lake, whose waters reflected the rays of the setting sun in varied hues.

A block from the lake shore they turned to their right into a tree-shaded street and climbed a gentle hill. Their home stood on a knoll overlooking the lake. It was an old-fashioned house that had started out as a three room cottage. Additions had been made until it rambled away in several directions. It boasted no definite style of architecture, but had a hominess that few houses possess. From the long, open front porch, there was an unobstructed view down the lake, which stretched away in the distance, its far reaches hidden in the coming twilight. A speed boat, being loaded with the afternoon mail for the summer resorts down the lake, was sputtering at the big pier at the foot of main street. A bundle of Heralds was placed on the boat and then it whisked away down the lake, a curving streak of white marking its passage.

Helen found her mother in the kitchen preparing their evening meal.

Mrs. Blair, at forty-five, was a handsome woman. Her hair had decided touches of gray but her face still held the peachbloom of youth and she looked more like an older sister than a mother. She had been a teacher in the high school at Rolfe when Hugh Blair had come to edit the country paper. The teacher and the editor had fallen in love and she had given up teaching and married him.

“How’s Dad?” Helen asked.

“He doesn’t feel very well,” her mother replied and Helen could see lines of worry around her mother’s eyes.

“Don’t worry, Mother,” she counselled. “Dad has been working too hard this year. In two more weeks school will be over and Tom and I can do most of the work on the paper. You two can plan on a fine trip and a real rest this summer.”

“I hope so,” said Mrs. Blair, “for your father certainly needs a change of some kind.”

Helen helped her mother with the preparations for supper, setting the table and carrying the food from the kitchen to the dining room where broad windows opened out on the porch.

Tom, who had been upstairs washing the last of the ink from his hands, entered the kitchen.

“Supper about ready?” he asked. “I’m mighty hungry tonight.”

“All ready,” smiled his mother. “I’ll call your father.”

Helen turned on the lights in the dining room and they waited for their father to come from his bedroom. They could hear low voices for several minutes and finally Mrs. Blair returned to the dining room.

“We’ll go ahead and eat,” she managed to smile. “Your father doesn’t feel like supper right now.”

Tom started to say something, but Helen shook her head and they sat down and started their evening meal.

Mrs. Blair, usually gay and interested in the activities of the day, had little to say, but Helen talked of school and the activities and plans of the sophomore class.

“We’re going to have a picnic down the lake next Monday,” she said.

“That’s nothing,” said Tom, who was president of the junior class. “We’re giving the seniors the finest banquet they’ve ever had.”

Whereupon they fell into a heated argument over the merits of the sophomores and juniors, a question which had been debated all year without a definite decision. Sometimes Tom considered himself the victor while on other occasions Helen had the best of the argument.

Supper over, Helen helped her mother clear the table and wash the dishes. It was seven-thirty before they had finished their work in the kitchen and Mrs. Blair was on her way to her husband’s room when Doctor Stevens, bag in hand, walked in.

A neighbor for many years, the genial doctor did not stop to knock.

“Haven’t been in for weeks,” he said, “so thought I’d drop over and chin with Hugh for a while.”

“Hugh isn’t feeling very well,” said Mrs. Blair. “He came home from the office this afternoon and didn’t want anything for supper.”

“Let me have a look at him,” said Doctor Stevens. “Suppose his stomach is out of whack or something like that.”

Tom and Helen, standing in the dining room, watched Doctor Stevens and their mother go down the hall to their father’s bedroom.

The next half hour was one of the longest in their young lives. Tom tried to read the continued story in the Herald, while Helen fussed at first one thing and then another.

The door of their father’s room finally opened and Doctor Stevens summoned them.

Neither Tom nor Helen would ever forget the scene in their father’s bedroom that night. Their mother, seated at the far side of the bed, looked at them through tear-dimmed eyes.

Their father, reclining on the bed, looked taller than ever, and the lines of pain which Helen had noticed in his face that afternoon had deepened. His hands were moving nervously and his eyes were bright with fever.

“Sit down,” said Doctor Stevens as he took a chair beside Hugh Blair’s bed.

Tom was about to ask his father how he felt, when Doctor Stevens spoke again.

“We might as well face this thing together,” he said. “I’ll tell you now that it is going to be something of a fight for all of you, but unless I’m mistaken, the Blairs are all real fighters.”

“What’s the matter Doctor Stevens?” Helen’s voice was low and strained.

“Your father must take a thorough rest,” he said. “He will have to go to some southwestern state for a number of months. Perhaps it will only take six months, but it may be longer.”

“But I can’t be away that long,” protested Hugh Blair. “I must think of my family, of the Herald.”

“Your family must think of you now,” said Doctor Stevens firmly. “That’s why I wanted to talk this over with Tom and Helen.”

“Just what is wrong, Dad?” asked Tom.

Doctor Stevens answered the question.

“Lung trouble,” he said quietly. “Your father has spent too many years bent over his desk in that dark cubbyhole of his – too many years without a vacation. Now he’s got to give that up and devote a number of months to building up his body again.”

Helen felt the blood racing through her body. Her throat went dry and her head ached. She had realized only that afternoon that her father wasn’t well but she had not been prepared for Doctor Stevens’ announcement.

The doctor was talking again.

“I blame myself partly,” he was telling Hugh Blair. “You worked yourself into this almost under my eyes, and I never dreamed what was happening. Too close to you, I guess.”

“When do you think Hugh should start for the southwest?” asked Helen’s mother.

“Just as soon as we can arrange things,” replied Doctor Stevens. “This is Thursday. I’d like to have him on the way by Saturday night. Every day counts.”

“That’s impossible,” protested Hugh Blair, half rising from his bed. “I don’t see how I can possibly afford it. Think of the expense of a trip down there, of living there. What about the Herald? What about my family?”

A plan had been forming in Helen’s mind from the time Doctor Stevens had said her father must go to a different climate.

“Everything will be all right, Dad,” she said. “There isn’t a reason in the world why you shouldn’t go. Tom and I are capable of running the Herald and with what you’ve saved toward our college educations, you can make the trip and stay as long as you want to.”

“But I couldn’t think of using your college money,” protested her father, “even if you and Tom could run the Herald.”

“Helen’s got the right idea,” said Doctor Stevens. “Your health must come above everything else right now. I’m sure those youngsters can run the Herald. Maybe they’ll do an even better job than you,” he added with a twinkle in his eyes.

“We can run the paper in fine shape, Dad,” said Tom. “If you hired someone from outside to come in and take charge it would eat up all the profits. If Helen and I run the Herald, we’ll have every cent we make for you and mother.”

Mrs. Blair, who had been silent during the discussion, spoke.

“Hugh,” she said, “Tom and Helen are right. I know how you dislike using their college money, but it is right that you should. I am sure that they can manage the Herald.”

Thus it was arranged that Tom and Helen were to take charge of the Herald. They talked with the superintendent of schools the next day and he agreed to excuse them from half their classes for the remaining weeks of school with the provision that they must pass all of their final examinations.

Friday and Saturday passed all too quickly. Helen busied herself collecting the current accounts and Tom spent part of the time at the office doing job work and the remainder at home helping with the packing.

Saturday noon Tom went to the bank and withdrew the $1,275 their father had placed in their college account. The only money left was $112 in the Herald account, just enough to take care of running expenses of the paper.

Hugh Blair owned his home and his paper, was proud of his family and his host of friends, but of actual worldly wealth he had little.

Doctor Stevens drove them to the Junction thirty miles away where Hugh Blair was to take the Southwestern limited. There was little conversation during the drive.

The limited was at the junction when they arrived and goodbyes were brief.

Hugh Blair said a few words to his wife, who managed to smile through her tears. Then he turned to Tom and Helen.

“Take good care of the Herald,” he told them, as he gave them a goodbye hug.

“We will Dad and you take good care of yourself,” they called as he climbed into the Pullman.

Cries of “boooo-ard,” sounded along the train. The porters swung their footstools up into the vestibules, the whistle sounded two short, sharp blasts, and the limited rolled away from the station.

Tom, Helen and their mother stood on the platform until the train disappeared behind a hill.

When they turned toward home, Tom and Helen faced the biggest responsibility of their young lives. It was up to them to continue the publication of the Herald, to supply the money to keep their home going and to build up a reserve which their father could call upon if he was forced to use all the money from their college fund.

CHAPTER III

In the Editor’s Chair

Sunday morning found Tom and Helen Blair entering a new era in their lives. While their father sped toward the southwest in quest of renewed health, they planned how they could develop the Herald.

Their mother was silent through breakfast and several times they saw her eyes dim with tears.

“Don’t worry, Mother,” said Helen. “We’ll manage all right and Dad is going to pull through in fine shape. Why, he’ll be back with us by Christmas time.”

“I wish I could be as optimistic as you are, Helen,” said Mrs. Blair.

“You’ll feel better in a few more hours,” said Tom. “It’s the suddenness of it all. Now we’ve got to buckle down and make the Herald keep on paying dividends.”

Tom and Helen helped their mother clear away the breakfast dishes and then dressed for Sunday school. Mrs. Blair taught a class of ten-to-twelve-year-old girls. Tom and Helen were in the upper classes.

The Methodist church they attended was a red brick structure, the first brick building built in Rolfe, and it was covered with English ivy that threatened even to hide the windows. The morning was warm and restful and they enjoyed the walk from home to church.

The minister was out of town on his vacation and there were no church services. After Sunday school the Blairs walked down to the postoffice. The large mail box which was rented for the Herald was filled with papers, circulars and letters.