The Clarion

CHAPTER XXIV

A FAIL­URE IN TAC­TICS

Miss Eleanor Stan­ley Maxwell El­liot, home from her wan­der­ings, stretched her ham­mock and her­self in it be­tween two trees in a rose-​sweet nook at Green­vale, and gave her­self up to a reck­on­ing of as­sets and li­abil­ities. De­cid­ed­ly the bal­ance was on the wrong side. Miss Es­mé could not dodge the un­seem­ly con­clu­sion that she was far from pleased with her­self. This was per­haps a salu­tary frame of mind, but not a pleas­ant one. If pos­si­ble, she was even less pleased with the world in which she lived. And this was nei­ther salu­tary nor pleas­ant. Fur­ther­more, it was unique in her ex­pe­ri­ence. Hith­er­to she had been ac­cus­tomed to a uni­verse made to her or­der and con­duct­ed on much the same prin­ci­ple. Now it no longer ran with oiled smooth­ness.

Her trip on the Pierce yacht had been much less rest­ful than she had an­tic­ipat­ed. For this she blamed that stur­dy knight of the law, Mr. William Dou­glas. Mr. Dou­glas's of­fense was that he had in­vei­gled her in­to an en­gage­ment. (I am em­ploy­ing her own term de­scrip­tive of the trans­ac­tion.) It was a crime of brief du­ra­tion and swift penal­ty. The re­la­tion had en­dured just four weeks. Pos­si­bly its tenure of life might have been longer had not the young-​mid­dle-​aged lawyer ac­cept­ed, quite nat­ural­ly, an in­vi­ta­tion to join the cruise of the Pierce fam­ily and _his fi­ancée_. The lawyer's su­per-​re­spect­ful at­ti­tude to­ward his prin­ci­pal client dis­gust­ed Es­mé. She called it servile.

For con­trast she had the mem­ory of an­oth­er who had not been servile, even to his dear­est hope. There were more per­son­al con­trasts of mem­ory, too; sub­tler, more poignant, that flushed in her blood and made the mere pres­ence of her lover re­pel­lent to her. The sta­tus be­came un­bear­able. Es­mé end­ed it. In plain En­glish, she jilt­ed the high­ly el­igi­ble Mr. William Dou­glas. To her­self she made the de­fense that he was not what she had thought, that he had changed. This was un­just. He had not changed in the least; he prob­ably nev­er would change from be­ing the pri­vate-​sec­re­tary type of lawyer. To­ward her, in his time of tri­al, he be­haved not ill. Jus­ti­fi­ably, he protest­ed against her de­ci­sion. Find­ing her im­mov­able, he ac­cept­ed the pre­vail­ing Wor­thing­to­ni­an the­ory of Miss El­liot's roy­al pre­rog­ative as re­gards the male sex, and re­turned, mis­er­ably enough, to his home and his prac­tice.

An­oth­er dif­fi­cul­ty had arisen to make dis­taste­ful the Pierce hos­pi­tal­ity. Kath­leen Pierce, in a fit of de­pres­sion for­eign to her usu­al­ly blithe and easy-​go­ing na­ture, had be­come con­fi­den­tial and had blurt­ed out cer­tain truths which threw a new and, to Es­mé, dis­con­cert­ing light up­on the episode of the mo­tor ac­ci­dent. In her first ap­peal to Es­mé, it now ap­peared, the girl had been de­cid­ed­ly less than frank. There­fore, in her own judg­ment of Hal and the “Clar­ion,” Es­mé had been de­cid­ed­ly less than just. In her re­sent­ment, Es­mé had al­most quar­reled with her friend. Com­mon hon­esty, she point­ed out, re­quired a state­ment to Har­ring­ton Sur­taine up­on the point. Would Kath­leen write such a let­ter? No! Kath­leen would not. In fact, Kath­leen would be d-​a-​m-​n-​e-​d, darned, if she would. Very well; then it re­mained on­ly (this rather lofti­ly) for Es­mé her­self to ex­plain to Mr. Sur­taine. Lat­er, she de­cid­ed to ex­plain by word of mouth. This would in­volve her re­turn to Wor­thing­ton, which she had come to long for. She had be­come sen­si­ble of a species of home­sick­ness.

In some ill-​de­fined way Har­ring­ton Sur­taine was in­volved in that nos­tal­gia. Not that she had any de­sire to see him! But she felt a cer­tain jus­ti­fi­able cu­rios­ity--she was sat­is­fied that it was jus­ti­fi­able--to know what he was do­ing with the “Clar­ion,” since her es­tab­lished sphere of in­flu­ence had ceased to be in­flu­en­tial. Was he re­al­ly as un­yield­ing in oth­er tests of prin­ci­ple as he had shown him­self with her? Al­ready she had al­tered her at­ti­tude to the ex­tent of ad­mit­ting that it _was_ prin­ci­ple, even though mis­tak­en. Es­mé had been sub­scrib­ing to the “Clar­ion,” and study­ing it; al­so she had writ­ten, with­al rather guard­ed­ly, to sundry peo­ple who might throw light on the sub­ject; to her un­cle, to Dr. Hugh Mer­ritt, her old and loy­al friend large­ly by virtue of be­ing one of the few young men of the place who nev­er had been in love with her (he had oth­er pre­oc­cu­pa­tions), to young Den­ton the re­porter, who was a sort of cousin, and to Mrs. Fes­tus Willard, who, alone of the cor­re­spon­dents, sus­pect­ed the un­der­ly­ing mo­tive. From these sundry in­for­mants she gar­nered di­verse opin­ions; the sum and sub­stance of which was that, on the whole, Hal was fight­ing the good fight and with some suc­cess. There­upon Es­mé hat­ed him hard­er than be­fore--and with con­sid­er­ably more dif­fi­cul­ty.

On a late May day she had slipped qui­et­ly back in­to Wor­thing­ton. That small por­tion of the pop­ulace which con­sti­tut­ed Wor­thing­ton so­ci­ety was ready to wel­come her joy­ous­ly. But she had no wish to be joy­ous­ly wel­comed. She didn't feel par­tic­ular­ly joy­ous, her­self. And so­ci­ety meant go­ing to places where she would un­doubt­ed­ly meet Will Dou­glas and would prob­ably not meet Hal Sur­taine. Es­mé con­fessed to her­self that Dou­glas was rather on her con­science, a fact which, in it­self, marked some change of na­ture in the Great Amer­ican Pumess. She de­cid­ed that so­ci­ety was a bore. For refuge she turned to her in­ter­est in the slums, where the Rev­erend Nor­man Hale, for whom she had a healthy, hon­est re­spect and lik­ing, was, so she learned, find­ing his hands rather more than full. Al­ways an en­thu­si­ast in her pur­suits, she now threw her­self in­to this to the to­tal ex­clu­sion of all oth­er in­ter­ests.

To her­self she ex­plained this on the the­ory that she need­ed some­thing to oc­cu­py her mind. Some­thing _else_ she re­al­ly meant, for Mr. Har­ring­ton Sur­taine was now oc­cu­py­ing it to an in­ex­cus­able ex­tent. She wished very much to see Har­ring­ton Sur­taine, and, for the first time in her life, she feared what she wished. What she had so lofti­ly an­nounced to Kath­leen Pierce as her un­al­ter­able de­ter­mi­na­tion to­ward the ed­itor of the “Clar­ion” wasn't as easy to per­form as to promise. Yet, the ex­pla­na­tion of the par­tial er­ror, in­to which the self-​ex­cusato­ry Miss Pierce had led her, was cer­tain­ly due him, ac­cord­ing to her no­tions of fair play. If she sent for him to come, he would, she shrewd­ly judged, de­cline. The al­ter­na­tive was to beard him in his of­fice. In the strength­en­ing and self-​re­veal­ing soli­tude of her gar­den, this glow­ing sum­mer day, Es­mé sat try­ing to make up her mind. A dar­ing brown thrash­er, his wings a fair match for the rud­dy-​gold­en glow in the girl's eyes, hopped in­to her haunt, and twit­tered his coun­sel of courage.

“I'll do it NOW,” said Es­mé, and the bird, with a tri­umphant chirp of con­grat­ula­tion, swooped off to tell the news to the world of wings and flow­ers.

To the con­se­quent in­ter­view there was no wit­ness. So it may best be chron­icled in the re­port made by the in­ter­view­er to her friend Mrs. Fes­tus Willard, who, in the cool seclu­sion of her sewing-​room, was over­whelmed by a rush of Es­mé to the heart, as she put it. Not hav­ing been ap­prised of Miss El­liot's con­flict­ing emo­tions since her de­par­ture, Mrs. Willard's mind was as a page blank for im­pres­sions when her vis­itor burst in up­on her, pirou­et­ted around the room, ap­pro­pri­at­ed the soft­est cor­ner of the di­van, and an­nounced spirit­ed­ly:

“You needn't ask me where I've been, for I won't tell you; or what I've been do­ing, for it's my own af­fair; any­way, you wouldn't be in­ter­est­ed. And if you in­sist on know­ing, I've been re­vis­it­ing the pale glimpses of the moon--at three o'clock P.M.”

“What do you mean, moon?” in­quired Mrs. Willard, un­con­scious­ly falling in­to a pit of slang.

“The moon we all cry for and don't get. In this case a haughty young ed­itor.”

“You've been to see Hal Sur­taine,” de­duced Mrs. Willard.

“You have guessed it--with con­sid­er­able aid and as­sis­tance.”

“What for?”

“On a mat­ter of jour­nal­is­tic im­port,” said Miss El­liot solemn­ly.

“But you don't cry for Hal Sur­taine,” ob­ject­ed her friend, re­vert­ing to the lu­nar metaphor.

“Don't I? I'd have cried--I'd have burst in­to a per­fect storm of tears--for him--or you--or any­body who so much as point­ed a fin­ger at me, I was so scared.”

“Scared? You! I don't be­lieve it.”

“I don't be­lieve it my­self--now,” con­fessed Es­mé, can­did­ly. “But it felt most ex­treme­ly like it at the time.”

“You know I don't at all ap­prove of--”

“Of me. I know you don't, Jin­ny. Nei­ther does he.”

“What did you do to him?”

"Me? I cooed at him like a dove of peace.

“But he was very stiff and proud He said, 'You needn't talk so loud,'”

chant­ed Miss Es­mé mel­liflu­ous­ly.

“He didn't!”

“Well, if he didn't, he meant it. He want­ed to know what the big, big D-​e-​v, dev, I was do­ing there, any­way.”

“Nor­rie El­liot! Tell me the truth.”

“Very well,” said Miss El­liot, ag­grieved. “_You_ re­port the con­ver­sa­tion, then, since you won't ac­cept my ver­sion.”

“If you would give me a start--”

“Just what he wouldn't do for me,” in­ter­rupt­ed Es­mé. “I went in there to ex­plain some­thing and he point­ed the fin­ger of scorn at me and ac­cused me of fre­quent­ing low and dis­rep­utable lo­cal­ities.”

“Nor­rie!”

“Well,” replied the girl brazen­ly, “he said he'd seen me about the Rook­eries dis­trict; and if that isn't a low--”

“Had he?”

“Noth­ing more prob­able, though I didn't hap­pen to see him there.”

“What were you do­ing there?”

“Pre­cise­ly what he want­ed to know. He said it rather as if he owned the place. So I ex­plained in words of one syl­la­ble that I went there to pick edel­weiss from the fire es­capes. Jin­ny, dear, you don't know how hard it is to crowd 'edel­weiss' in­to one syl­la­ble un­til you've tried. It splut­ters.”

“So do you,” said the in­dig­nant Mrs. Willard. “You do worse; you gib­ber. If you weren't just the pret­ti­est thing that Heav­en ev­er made, some one would have slain you long ago for your sins.”

“Pret­ty, your­self,” re­tort­ed Es­mé. “My re­al charm lies in my rigid ad­her­ence to the spir­it of truth. Your young friend Mr. Sur­taine scorned my flo­ral jest. He in­di­cat­ed that I ought not to be about the ten­ements. He said there was a great deal of sick­ness there. That was why I was there, I ex­plained po­lite­ly. Then he said that the sick­ness might be con­ta­gious, and he mut­tered some­thing about an epi­dem­ic and then looked as if he wished he hadn't.”

“I've heard some talk of sick­ness in the Rook­eries. Ought you to be go­ing there?” asked the oth­er anx­ious­ly.

“Mr. Sur­taine thinks not. Quite severe­ly. And in el­der­ly tones. Nat­ural­ly I asked him what kind of an epi­dem­ic it was. He said he didn't know, but he was sure the place was dan­ger­ous, and he was sur­prised that Un­cle Guardy hadn't warned me. Un­cle Guardy _had_, but I don't do ev­ery­thing I'm warned about. So then I asked young Mr. Ed­itor why, as he knew there was a dan­ger­ous epi­dem­ic about, he should warn lit­tle me pri­vate­ly in­stead of warn­ing the big pub­lic, pub­licly.”

“Med­dle­some child! Can you nev­er learn to keep your hands off?”

"I was spurring him to his ed­ito­ri­al du­ties.

“But he was very proud and stiff ... He said that he would tell me, if--”

lilt­ed Miss Es­mé, ris­ing to do a _pas seul_ up­on the Willards' price­less Ana­to­lian rug.

“Sit down,” com­mand­ed her host­ess. “If--what?”

"If noth­ing. Just if. That's the end of the song. Don't you know your Lewis Car­roll?

“I sent a mes­sage to the fish, I told them, 'This is what I wish.' The lit­tle fish­es of the sea, They sent an an­swer--”

“I don't want to know about the fish,” dis­claimed Mrs. Willard ve­he­ment­ly. “I want to know what hap­pened be­tween you and Hal Sur­taine.”

“And you the Vice-​Pres­ident of the Po­et­ry Club!” re­proached Es­mé. “Very well. He was very proud and--Oh, I said that be­fore. But he re­al­ly was, this time. He said, 'Our last dis­cus­sion of the pol­icy of the ”Clar­ion“ closed that top­ic be­tween us.' Some­body called him away be­fore I could think of any­thing mean and su­pe­ri­or enough to an­swer, and when he came back--al­ways sup­pos­ing he isn't still hid­ing in the cel­lar--I was no longer present.”

“Then you didn't give him the mes­sage you went for.”

“No. Didn't I say I was scared?”

Mrs. Willard ex­cused her­self, os­ten­si­bly to speak to a maid; in re­al­ity to speak to a tele­phone. On her re­turn she made a frontal at­tack:--

“Nor­rie, what made you break your en­gage­ment to Will Dou­glas?”

“Why? Don't you ap­prove?”

“Did you break it for the same rea­son that drove you in­to it?”

“What rea­son do you think drove me in­to it?”

“Hal Sur­taine.”

“He didn't!” she de­nied fu­ri­ous­ly.

“And you didn't break it be­cause of him?”

“No! I broke it be­cause I don't want to get mar­ried,” cried the girl in a rush of words. “Not to Will Dou­glas. Or to--to any­body. Why should I? I don't want to--I won't,” she con­tin­ued, half laugh­ing, half sob­bing, “go and have to both­er about run­ning a house and have a lot of ba­bies and lose my pret­ty fig­ure--and get fat--and dowdy--and slow-​poky--and old. Look at Mol­ly Vane: twins al­ready. She's a hor­ri­ble ex­am­ple. Why do peo­ple al­ways have to have chil­dren--”

She stopped, abrupt­ly, her­self strick­en at the strick­en look in the oth­er's face. “Oh, Jin­ny, dar­ling Jin­ny,” she gasped; “I for­got! Your ba­by. Your lit­tle, dead ba­by! I'm a fool; a poor lit­tle sil­ly fool, chat­ter­ing of re­al­ities that I know noth­ing about.”

“You will know some day, my dear,” said the oth­er wom­an, smil­ing valiant­ly. “Don't de­ny the great­est re­al­ity of all, when it comes. Are you sure you're not deny­ing it now?”

The sun­beams crept and sparkled, like light up­on ruf­fled wa­ters, across Es­mé's ob­sti­nate­ly shak­en head.

“Per­haps you couldn't help hurt­ing him. But be sure you aren't hurt­ing your­self, too.”

“That's the worst of it,” said the girl, with one of her sud­den ac­cess­es of sweet can­dor. “I needn't have hurt him at all. I was stupid.” She paused in her rev­ela­tion. “But he was stupi­der,” she de­clared vin­dic­tive­ly; “so it serves him right.”

“How was he stupi­der?”

“He thought,” said Es­mé with sor­row­ful solem­ni­ty, “that I was just as bad as I seemed. He ought to have known me bet­ter.”

The old­er wom­an bent and laid a cheek against the sun­ny hair. “And weren't you just as bad as you seemed?”

“Worse! Any­way, I'm afraid so,” said the con­fes­sion­al voice, rather muf­fled in tone. “But I--I just got led in­to it. Oh, Jin­ny, I'm not aw­ful­ly hap­py.”

Mrs. Willard's head went up and she cocked an at­ten­tive ear, like an ex­pec­tant robin. “Some one out­side,” said she. “I'll be back in a mo­ment. You sit there and think it over.”

Es­mé curled back on the di­van. A minute lat­er she heard the cur­tains part at the end of the dim room, and glanced up with a smile, to face, not Jean­nette Willard, but Hal Sur­taine.

“You 'phoned for me, La­dy Jin­ny,” he be­gan: and then, with a start, “Es­mé! I--I didn't ex­pect to find you here.”

“Nor I to see you,” she said, with a calm­ness that be­lied her beat­ing heart. “Sit down, please. I have some­thing to tell you. It's what I re­al­ly came to the of­fice to say.”

“Yes?”

“About Kath­leen Pierce.”

Hal frowned. “Do you think there can be any use--”

“Please,” she begged, with up­lift­ed eyes of en­treaty. “She--she didn't tell me the truth about that in­ter­view with your re­porter. It was true; but she made me think it wasn't. She con­fessed to me, and she feels very bad­ly. So do I. I be­lieved that you had de­lib­er­ate­ly made that up, about her say­ing that she didn't turn back be­cause she want­ed to catch a train. I be­lieved, too, that the ed­ito­ri­al was writ­ten af­ter our--our talk. I'm sor­ry.”

Hal stood above her, look­ing rather stern, and a lit­tle old and worn, she thought.

“If that is an apol­ogy, it is ac­cept­ed,” he said with sur­face po­lite­ness.

To him she was, in that mo­ment, a light-​mind­ed wom­an apol­ogiz­ing for the pet­ty mis­deed, and pay­ing no heed to the graver wrong that she had done him. Jean­nette Willard could have set him right in a word; could have shown him what the girl felt, un­avowed­ly to her­self but with un­der­ly­ing con­vic­tion, that for so great an of­fense no apol­ogy could suf­fice; noth­ing short of com­plete sur­ren­der. But Mrs. Willard was not there to help out. She was wait­ing hope­ful­ly, out­side.

“And that is all?” he said, af­ter a pause, with just a shade of con­tempt in his voice.

“All,” she said light­ly, “un­less you choose to tell me how the 'Clar­ion' is get­ting on.”

“As well as could be ex­pect­ed. We pay high for our prin­ci­ples. But thus far we've held to them. You should read the pa­per.”

“I do.”

“To ex­pect your ap­proval would be too much, I sup­pose.”

“No. In many ways I like it. In fact, I think I'll re­new my sub­scrip­tion.”

It was in­no­cent­ly said, with­out thought of the old play­ful bar­gain be­tween them, which had ter­mi­nat­ed with the mail­ing of the with­ered ar­bu­tus. But to Hal it seemed mere­ly a brazen es­say in co­quetry; an at­tempt to re­con­sti­tute the for­mer re­la­tion, for her amuse­ment.

“The sub­scrip­tion lists are closed, on the old terms,” he said crisply.

“Oh, you couldn't have thought I meant that!” she whis­pered; but he was al­ready halfway down the room, on the echo of his “Good-​af­ter­noon, Miss El­liot.”

As be­fore, he turned at the door. And he car­ried with him, to muse over in the depths of his out­raged heart once more, the mys­tery of that still and des­per­ate smile. Any wom­an could have solved it for him. Any, ex­cept, pos­si­bly, Es­mé El­liot.

“It didn't come out as I hoped, Fes­tus,” said the sor­row­ful lit­tle Mrs. Willard to her hus­band that evening. “I don't know that Hal will ev­er be­lieve in her again. How can he be so--so stupid­ly un­for­giv­ing!”

“Al­ways the man's fault, of course,” said her big hus­band com­fort­ably.

“No. She's to blame. But it's the fault of men in gen­er­al that Nor­rie is what she is; the men of this town, I mean. No man has ev­er been a man with Nor­rie El­liot.”

“What have they been?”

“Mice. It's a tra­di­tion of the place. They lie down in rows for her to tram­ple on. So of course she tram­ples on them.”

“Well, I nev­er tram­pled on mice my­self,” ob­served Fes­tus Willard. “It sounds like un­cer­tain foot­ing. But I'll bet you five pounds of your fa­vorite can­dy against one of your very best kiss­es, that if she un­der­takes to make a foot­path of Hal Sur­taine she'll get her feet hurt.”

“Or her heart,” said his wife. “And, oh, Fes­tus dear, it's such a re­al, warm, dear heart, un­der all the spoiled-​child­ness of her.”