The Clarion

CHAPTER XXXV

TEM­PERED MET­AL

Mon­day's news­pa­pers star­tled Hal Sur­taine. De­spite the sym­pa­thet­ic at­ti­tude ex­pressed af­ter the ri­ot by the oth­er news­pa­per men, he had not count­ed up­on the unan­imous vig­or with which the lo­cal press took up the cud­gels for the “Clar­ion.” That po­tent and pro­found guild-​fel­low­ship of news­pa­per­dom, which, when once aroused, over­rides all in­di­vid­ual ri­val­ry and jeal­ousy, had nev­er be­fore come in­to the young ed­itor's ex­pe­ri­ence.

To his fel­low ed­itors the is­sue was quite clear. Here was an at­tack, not up­on one news­pa­per alone, but up­on the prin­ci­ple of jour­nal­is­tic in­de­pen­dence. Lit­tle as the “Ban­ner,” the “Press,” the “Tele­gram,” and their like had prac­ticed in­de­pen­dence of thought or writ­ing, they could both ad­mire and up­hold it in an­oth­er. Their sup­port was as gen­uine as it was gen­er­ous. The po­lice de­part­ment, and, in­deed, the whole city ad­min­is­tra­tion of Wor­thing­ton, came in for scathing and uni­ver­sal de­nun­ci­ation, in that they had failed to pro­tect the “Clar­ion” against the mob's ad­vance.

The evening pa­pers got out spe­cial bul­letins on McGuire El­lis. None too hope­ful they were, for the fight­ing jour­nal­ist, af­ter a brief ral­ly, had sunk in­to a con­di­tion where life was the mer­est flick­er. Al­ways a pic­turesque and well-​liked per­son­al­ity, El­lis now be­came a species of pop­ular hero. Sym­pa­thy cen­tral­ized on him, and through him at­tached tem­porar­ily to the “Clar­ion” it­self, which he now typ­ified in the pub­lic imag­ina­tion. His con­di­tion, in­deed, was just so much sen­ti­men­tal cap­ital to the pa­per, as the Hon­or­able E.M. Pierce sav­age­ly put it to William Dou­glas. Nev­er­the­less, the two called at the hos­pi­tal to make po­lite in­quiries, as did scores of their fel­low lead­ing cit­izens. El­lis, strick­en down, was serv­ing his em­ploy­er well.

Not that Hal knew this, nor, had he known it, would have cared. Sick at heart, he wait­ed about the hos­pi­tal re­cep­tion room for such mea­ger hopes as the sur­geons could give him, un­til an ur­gent sum­mons com­pelled him to go to the of­fice. Wayne had tele­phoned for him half a dozen times, fi­nal­ly leav­ing a mes­sage that he must see him on a point in the ten­ement-​own­er­ship sto­ry, to be run on the mor­row.

Wayne, at the mo­ment of Hal's ar­rival, was out­side the rail talk­ing to a vis­itor. On the copy-​book be­side his desk was stuck an il­lus­tra­tion proof, in­vert­ed. Idly Hal turned it, and stood fac­ing his fi­nal and worst or­deal of prin­ci­ple. The half-​tone pic­ture, love­ly, suave, al­lur­ing, smiled up in­to his eyes from above its cap­tion:--

“_Miss Es­mé El­liot, So­ci­ety Belle and Own­er of No. 9 Sadler's Shacks, Known as the Pest-​Egg.”_

“You've seen it,” said Wayne's voice at his el­bow.

“Yes.”

“Well; it was that I want­ed to ask you about.”

“Ask it,” said Hal, dry-​lipped.

“I knew you were a--a friend of Miss El­liot's. We can kill it out yet. It--it isn't ab­so­lute­ly nec­es­sary to the sto­ry,” he added, pity­ing­ly.

He turned and looked away from a face that had grown swift­ly old un­der his eyes. In Hal's heart there was a chok­ing rush of mem­ories: the con­quer­ing love­li­ness of Es­mé; her sweet and loy­al wom­an­li­ness and com­rade­ship of the night be­fore; the half-​promise in her tones as she had bid him come to her; the warm pres­sure of her arms fend­ing him from the sight of his friend's blood; and, far back, her voice say­ing so con­fi­dent­ly, “I'd trust you,” in an­swer to her own sup­posi­ti­tious test as to what he would do if a news is­sue came up, in­volv­ing her hap­pi­ness.

Blot­ting these out came an­oth­er pic­ture, a swathed head, qui­et up­on a pil­low. In that mo­ment Hal knew that he was for­ev­er done with sup­pres­sions and eva­sions. Nev­er­the­less, he in­tend­ed to be as fair to Es­mé as he would have been to any oth­er per­son un­der at­tack.

“You're sure of the facts?” he asked Wayne.

“Cer­tain.”

“How long has she owned it?”

“Oh, years. It's one of those com­pli­cat­ed trustee­ships.”

Hope sprang up in Hal's soul. “Per­haps she doesn't know about it.”

“Isn't she moral­ly bound to know? We've as­sumed moral re­spon­si­bil­ity in the oth­er trustee­ships. Of course, if you want to make a dif­fer­ence--” Wayne, again whol­ly the jour­nal­ist, jeal­ous for the stan­dards of his craft, await­ed his chief's de­ci­sion.

“No. Have you sent a man to see her?”

“Yes. She's away.”

“Away? Im­pos­si­ble!”

“That's what they said at the house. The re­porter got the no­tion that there was some­thing queer about her go­ing. Scared out, per­haps.”

Hal thought of the proud, frank eyes, and dis­missed that hy­poth­esis. What­ev­er Es­mé's re­spon­si­bil­ity, he did not be­lieve that she would shirk the onus of it.

“Dr. El­liot?” he en­quired.

“Re­fused all in­for­ma­tion and told the re­porter to go to the dev­il.”

Hal sighed. “Run the sto­ry,” he said.

“And the pic­ture?”

“And the pic­ture.”

Go­ing out he left di­rec­tions with the tele­phone girl to try to get Miss El­liot and tell her that it would be im­pos­si­ble for him to call that day.

“She will un­der­stand when she sees the pa­per in the morn­ing,” he thought. “Or think she un­der­stands,” he amend­ed rue­ful­ly.

The tele­phone girl did not get Miss El­liot, for good and suf­fi­cient rea­sons, but suc­ceed­ed in ex­tract­ing a promise from the maid­en cousin at Green­vale that the mes­sage would be trans­mit­ted.

Through the day and far in­to the night Hal worked un­spar­ing­ly, find­ing time some­how to vis­it or call up the hos­pi­tal ev­ery hour. At mid­night they told him that El­lis was bare­ly hold­ing his own. Hal put the “Clar­ion” to bed that night, be­fore go­ing to the Sur­taine man­sion, hope­less of sleep, yet, nev­er­the­less, so worn out that he sank in­to in­stant slum­ber as soon as he had drawn the sheets over him. On his way to the of­fice in the morn­ing, he ran full up­on Dr. El­liot. For a mo­ment Hal thought that the ex-​of­fi­cer meant to strike him with the cane which he raised. It sank.

“You mis­er­able hound!” said Dr. El­liot.

Hal stood, silent.

“What have you to say for your­self?”

“Noth­ing.”

“My niece came to your of­fice to save your rag of a sheet. I shot down a poor crazy dev­il in your de­fense. And this is how you re­pay us.”

Hal faced him, stead­fast, wretched, de­ter­mined up­on on­ly one thing: to en­dure what­ev­er he might say or do.

“Do you know who's re­al­ly re­spon­si­ble for that ten­ement? An­swer me!”

“No.”

“I! I! I!” shout­ed the in­fu­ri­at­ed man.

“You? The records show--”

“Damn the records, sir! The prop­er­ty was trusteed years ago. I should have looked af­ter it, but I nev­er even thought of its be­ing what it is. And my niece didn't know till this morn­ing that she owned it.”

“Why didn't you say so to our re­porter, then?” cried Hal ea­ger­ly. “Let us print a state­ment from you, from her--”

“In your sheet? If you so much as pub­lish her name again--By Heav­ens, I wish it were the old days, I'd call you out and kill you.”

“Dr. El­liot,” said Hal qui­et­ly, “did you think I want­ed to print that about Es­mé?”

“Want­ed to? Of course you want­ed to. You didn't have to, did you?”

“Yes.”

“What com­pelled you?” de­mand­ed the oth­er.

“You won't un­der­stand, but I'll tell you. The 'Clar­ion' com­pelled me. It was news.”

“News! To black­guard a young girl, ig­no­rant of the very thing you've held her up to shame for! The pow­er of the press! A pow­er to smirch the names of de­cent peo­ple. And do you know where my girl is now, on this day when your sheet is smear­ing her name all over the town?” de­mand­ed the physi­cian, his voice shak­ing with wrath and grief. “Do you know that--you who know ev­ery­body's busi­ness?”

Chill fear took hold up­on Hal. “No,” he said.

“In quar­an­tine for ty­phus. Here! Keep off me!”

For Hal, strick­en with his first ex­pe­ri­ence of that black, de­scend­ing mist which is just short of un­con­scious­ness, had clutched at the oth­er's shoul­der to steady him­self.

“Where?” he gasped.

“I won't tell you,” re­tort­ed the Doc­tor vi­cious­ly. “You might make an­oth­er ar­ti­cle out of that, of the kind you en­joy so much.”

But this was too ghast­ly a joke. Hal straight­ened, and lift­ed his head to an eye-​lev­el with his de­nounc­er. “En­joy!” he said, in a low tone. “You may guess how much when I tell you that I've loved Es­mé with ev­ery drop of my blood since the first time I ev­er spoke with her.”

The Doc­tor's grim re­gard soft­ened a lit­tle. “If I tell you, you won't pub­lish it? Or give it away? Or try to com­mu­ni­cate with her? I won't have her pestered.”

“My word of hon­or.”

“She's at the ty­phus hos­pi­tal.”

“And she's got ty­phus?” groaned Hal.

“No. Who said she had it? She's been ex­posed to it.”

Hard­ly was the last word out of his mouth when he was alone. Hal had made a dash for a taxi. “Health Bu­reau,” he cried.

By good for­tune he found Dr. Mer­ritt in.

“You've got Es­mé El­liot at the ty­phus hos­pi­tal,” he said breath­less­ly.

“Yes. In the iso­la­tion ward.”

“Why?”

“She's been ex­posed. She car­ried a child, in con­vul­sions, in­to the hos­pi­tal. The child de­vel­oped ty­phus late Sat­ur­day night; must have been in­fect­ed at the time. As soon as I knew, I sent for her, and she came like the brave girl she is, yes­ter­day morn­ing.”

“Will she get the fever?”

“God for­bid! Ev­ery pre­cau­tion has been tak­en.”

“Mer­ritt, that's an aw­ful place for a girl like Miss El­liot. Get her out.”

“Don't ask me! I've got to treat all ex­posed cas­es alike.”

“But, Mer­ritt,” plead­ed Hal, “in this case an ex­cep­tion can't in­jure any one. She can be com­plete­ly quar­an­tined at home. You told Wayne you owed the 'Clar­ion' and me a big debt. I wouldn't ask it if it were any­thing else; but--”

“Would you do it your­self?” said the young health of­fi­cer steadi­ly. “Have you done it in your pa­per?”

“But this may be her life,” ar­gued the ad­vo­cate des­per­ate­ly. “Think! If it were your sis­ter, or--or the wom­an you cared for.”

Dr. Mer­ritt's fine mouth quiv­ered and set. “Kath­leen Pierce is quar­an­tined with Es­mé,” he said qui­et­ly.

The pair looked each oth­er through the eyes in­to the soul and knew one an­oth­er for men.

“You're right, Mer­ritt,” said Hal. “I'm sor­ry I asked.”

“I'll keep you post­ed,” said the of­fi­cial, as his vis­itor turned away.

Mean­time, Es­mé had vol­un­teered as an emer­gen­cy nurse, and been glad­ly ac­cept­ed. In the in­ter­vals of her new du­ties she had re­ceived from her dis­tract­ed cousin, who had been call­ing up ev­ery half-​hour to find out whether she “had it yet,” Hal's mes­sage that he would not be able to see her that day, and, not hav­ing seen the “Clar­ion,” was at a loss to un­der­stand it.

Chance, by all the tru­ly ro­man­tic, is sup­posed to be a sort of mat­ri­mo­ni­al agen­cy, con­cerned chiefly in bring­ing lovers to­geth­er. In the rougher realm of ac­tu­al­ity it op­er­ates quite as of­ten, per­haps, to keep them apart. Cer­tain­ly it was no friend to Es­mé El­liot on this day. For when lat­er she learned from her guardian of his at­tack up­on Hal (though he took the lib­er­ty of edit­ing out the _fi­nale_ of the en­counter as he re­lat­ed it), she tried five sep­arate times to reach Hal by 'phone, and each time Chance, the Frus­tra­tor, saw to it that Hal was en­gaged. The in­fer­ence, to Es­mé's per­turbed heart, was ob­vi­ous; he did not wish to speak to her. And to a wom­an of her spir­it there was but one course. She would dis­miss him from her mind. Which she did, ev­ery night, con­sci­en­tious­ly, for many weary days.