Part 53 (1/2)
As the intimacy grew, Hal found himself looking forward to these swift-winged little visits. They made a welcome break in the detailed drudgery; added to the day a glint of color, bright like the ripple of half-hidden flame that crowned Milly's head. Once Veltman, intruding on their talk, had glared blackly and, withdrawing, had waited for the girl in the hallway outside from whence, as she left, Hal could hear the foreman's deep voice in anger and her clear replies tauntingly stimulating his chagrin.
Having neglected the Willards for several days, Hal received a telephone message, about a month after Esme Elliot's departure, asking him to stop in. He found Mrs. Willard waiting him in the conservatory. His old friend looked up as he entered, with a smile which did not hide the trouble in her eyes.
”Aren't you a lily-of-the-field!” admired the visitor, contemplating her green and white costume.
”It's the Vanes' dance. Not going?”
”Not asked. Besides, I'm a workingman these days.”
”So one might infer from your neglect of your friends. Hal, I've had a letter from Esme Elliot.”
”Any message?” he asked lightly, but with startled blood.
There was no answering lightness in her tones. ”Yes. One I hate to give.
Hal, she's engaged herself to Will Douglas. It must have been by letter, for she wasn't engaged when she left. 'Tell Hal Surtaine' she says in her letter to me.”
”Thank you, Lady Jinny,” said Hal.
The diminutive lady looked at him and then looked away, and suddenly a righteous flush rose on her cheeks.
”I'm fond of Esme,” she declared. ”One can't help but be. She compels it. But where men are concerned she seems to have no sense of her power to hurt. I could _kill_ her for making me her messenger. Hal, boy,” she rose, slipping an arm through his caressingly, ”I do hope you're not badly hurt.”
”I'll get over it, Lady Jinny. There's the job, you know.”
He started for the office. Then, abruptly, as he went, ”the job” seemed purposeless. Unrealized, hope had still persisted in his heart--the hope that, by some possible turn of circ.u.mstance, the shattered ideal of Esme Elliot would be revivified. The blighting of his love for her had been no more bitter, perhaps less so, than the realization which she had compelled in him of her lightness and unworthiness. Still, he had wanted her, longed for her, hoped for her. Now that hope was gone. There seemed nothing left to work for, no adequate good beyond the striving. He looked with dulled vision out upon blank days. With a sudden weakening of fiber he turned into a hotel and telephoned McGuire Ellis that he wouldn't be at the office that evening. To the other's anxious query was he ill, he replied that he was tired out and was going home to bed.
Meantime, far across the map at a famous Florida hostelry, the Great American Pumess, in the first flush and pride of her engagement which all commentators agree upon as characteristic of maidenhood's vital resolution, lay curled up in a little fluffy coil of misery and tears, repeating between sobs, ”I hate him! I _hate_ him!” Meaning her _fiance_, Mr. William Douglas, with whom her mind and emotions should properly have been concerned? Not so, perspicacious reader. Meaning Mr.
Harrington Surtaine.
Upon _his_ small portion of the map, that gentleman wooed sleep in vain for hours. Presently he arose from his tossed bed, dressed quietly, slipped out of the big door and walked with long, swinging steps down to the ”Clarion” Building. There it stood, a plexus of energies, in the midst of darkness and sleep. Eye-like, its windows peered vigilantly out into the city. A door opened to emit a voice that bawled across the way some profane demand for haste in the delivery of ”that grub”; and through the shaft of light Hal could see brisk figures moving, and hear the roar and thrill of the press sealing its irrevocable message.
Again he felt, with a pride so profound that its roots struck down into the depths of humility, his own responsibility to all that straining life and energy and endeavor. He, the small atom, alone in the night, _was_ the ”Clarion.” Those men, the fighting fellows.h.i.+p of the office, were rus.h.i.+ng and toiling and coordinating their powers to carry out some ideal still dimly inchoate in his brain. What mattered his little pangs?
There was a man's test to meet, and the man within him stretched spiritual muscles for the trial.
”If I could only be sure what's right,” he said within himself, voicing the doubt of every high-minded adventurer upon unbeaten paths. Sharply, and, as it seemed to him, incongruously, he wondered that he had never learned to pray; not knowing that, in the unfinished phrase he had uttered true prayer. A chill breeze swept down upon him. Looking up into the jeweled heavens he recalled from the far distance of memory, the prayer of a great and simple soul,--
”Make thou my spirit pure and clear As are the frosty skies.”
Hal set out for home, ready now for a few hours' sleep. At a blind corner he all but collided with a man and a woman, walking at high speed. The woman half turned, flinging him a quick and silvery ”Good-evening.” It was Milly Neal. The man with her was Max Veltman.
CHAPTER XIX
DONNYBROOK
Worthington began to find the ”Clarion” amusing. It blared a new note.
Common matter of everyday acceptance which no other paper in town had ever considered as news, became, when trumpeted from between the rampant roosters, vital with interest. And whithersoever it directed the public attention, some highly respectable private privilege winced and snarled.
Worthington did not particularly love the ”Clarion” for the enemies it made. But it read it.
Now, a newspaper makes its enemies overnight. Friends take months or years in the making. Hence the ”Clarion,” whilst rapidly broadening its circle of readers, owed its success to the curiosity rather than to the confidence which it inspired. Meantime the effect upon its advertising income was disastrous. If credence could be placed in the lamenting Shearson, wherever it attacked an abuse, whether by denunciation or ridicule, it lost an advertiser. Moreover the public, not yet ready to credit any journal with honest intentions, was inclined to regard the ”Clarion” as ”a chronic kicker.” The ”Banner's” gibing suggestion of a reversal of the editorial motto between the triumphant birds to read ”With malice toward all,” stuck.