Part 58 (1/2)
With that rankling in his brain, Hal Surtaine sat and pondered in his private study at home. His musings arraigned before him for judgment and contrast the two women who had so stormily wrought upon his new life.
Esme Elliot had played with his love, had exploited it, made of it a tinsel ornament for vanity, sought, through it, to corrupt him from the hard-won honor of his calling. She had given him her lips for a lure; she had played, soul and body, the petty cheat with a high and enn.o.bling pa.s.sion. Yet, because she played within the rules by the world's measure, there was no stain upon her honor. By that same measure, what of Milly Neal? In her was no trickery of s.e.x; only the ungrudging, wide-armed offer of all her womanhood, reckless of aught else but love.
Debating within himself the phrase, ”an honest woman,” Hal laughed aloud. His laughter lacked much of being mirthful, and something of being just. For he had reckoned two daughters of Eve by the same standard, which is perhaps the oldest and most disastrous error hereditary to all the sons of Adam.
CHAPTER XXI
THE POWER OF PRINT
Hal paid thirty-two thousand dollars for the new press. It was a delicate giant of mechanism, able not only to act, but also to think with stupendous accuracy and swiftness; lacking only articulate speech to be wholly superhuman. But in signing the check for it, Hal, for the first time in his luxurious life experienced a financial qualm. Always before there had been an inexhaustible source wherefrom to draw. Now that he had issued his declaration of pecuniary independence, he began to appreciate the perishable nature of money. He came back from his week's journey to New York feeling distinctly poorer.
Moreover there was an uncomfortable paradox connected with his purchase.
That he should be put to so severe an expenditure merely for the purpose of incurring an increased current expense, struck him as a rather sardonic joke. Yet so it was. Circulation does not mean direct profit to a newspaper. On the contrary, it implies loss in many cases. For some weeks it had been costing the ”Clarion,” to print the extra papers necessitated by the increased demand, more than the money received from their sale. Until the status of the journal should justify a higher advertising charge, every added paper sold would involve a loss. True, an augmented circulation logically commands a higher advertising rate; it is thus that a newspaper reaps its harvest; and soon Hal hoped to be able to raise his advertising rate from fifteen to twenty-five cents a line. At that return his books would show a profit on a normal volume of advertising. Meantime he performed an act of involuntary philanthropy with every increase of issue, Nevertheless, Hal felt for his mechanical giant something of the new-toy thrill. To him it was a symbol of productive power. It made appeal to his imagination, typifying the reborn ”Clarion.” He saw it as a master-loom weaving fresh patterns, day by day, into the fabric of the city's life and thought. That all might view the process, he had it mounted high from the bas.e.m.e.nt, behind a broad plate-gla.s.s show window set in the front wall, a highly unstrategic position, as McGuire Ellis pointed out.
”Suppose,” said he, ”a horse runs wild and makes a dive through that window? Or a couple of b.u.ms get shooting at each other, and a stray bullet comes whiffling through the gla.s.s and catches young Mr. Press in his delikit insides. We're out of business for a week, maybe, mending him up.”
Shearson, however, was in favor of it. It suggested prosperity and aroused public interest. On Hal's return from New York, the fat and melancholious advertising manager had exhibited a somewhat mollified pessimism.
”The Boston Store is coming back,” he visited Hal's sanctum to announce.
”Why, that's John M. Gibbs's store, isn't it?”
”Sure.”
”And he's E.M. Pierce's brother-in-law. I thought he'd stick by his family in fighting the 'Clarion.'”
”Family is all right, but Grinder Gibbs is for business first and everything else afterwards. Our rates look good to him, with the circulation we're showing. And he knows we bring results. He's been using us on the quiet for a little side issue of his own.”
”What's that?”
”Some sewing-girls' employment thing. It's in the 'Cla.s.sified'
department. Don't amount to much; but it's proved to him that the 'Clarion' ad does the business. I've been on his trail for two weeks. So the store starts in Sunday with half-pages. They say Pierce is crazy mad.”
”No wonder.”
”The best of it is that now the Retail Union won't fight us, as a body, for taking up the Consumers' League fight. They can't very well, with their second biggest store using the 'Clarion's' columns.”
McGuire Ellis, too, was feeling quite cheerful over the matter.
”It shows that you can be independent and get away with it,” he declared, ”if you get out an interesting enough paper. By the way, that's a hot little story 'Kitty the Cutie' turned in on the Breen girl's suicide.”
”It was only attempted suicide, wasn't it?”
”The first time. She had a second trial at it day before yesterday and turned the trick. You'll find Neal's copy on your desk. I held it for you.”
From out of a waiting heap of mail, proof, and ma.n.u.script, Hal selected the sheets covered with Milly Neal's neat business chirography. She had written her account briefly and with restraint, building her ”story”
around the girl's letter. It set forth the tragedy of a petty swindle.
The scheme was as simple as it was cruel. A concern calling itself ”The Sewing Aid a.s.sociation” advertised for sewing-women, offering from ten to fifteen dollars a week to workers; experience not necessary. Maggie Breen answered the advertis.e.m.e.nt. The manager explained to her that the job was making children's underclothing from pattern. She would be required to come daily to the factory and sew on a machine which she would purchase from the company, the price, thirty dollars, being reckoned as her first three weeks' wages. To all this, duly set forth in a specious contract, the girl affixed her signature.