“That is well,” she said lightly. “Is that how you receive callers on business?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. I have come on business.”
“Where did you come from? I can’t quite believe it’s really you—here!”
“From Chicago. Buddy brought me.”
“Buddy Higman?”
“He came after me. He told me that you were in great trouble.”
“He told you that I was going to desert the ship.”
“Oh, no! Buddy is your loyal subject. The Boss can do no wrong.”
“The Boss has reached the point where he isn’t sure what’s wrong and what’s right.”
“I am not afraid of that.” There was an implication of pride and of proprietorship in the words which shook Jem’s hard hold upon himself.
“Were you coming here, anyway?”
“Later.”
“Then I should have seen you.” He seemed to be puzzling out some inner problem.
“I had thought you would have been in the army.”
“So I should, if I hadn’t been told that I’m a useless bit of wreckage.”
“Please! I know all about it. I have seen Mr. Galpin. Your war is here. If you had decided otherwise than you did I should—I should—”
“You’re trying to make it easy for me,” he accused.
“I should have come back to find another Jem from the one I have learned to believe in.”
“To believe in, Marcia? How’s that?”
“‘Seein’ ’s believin’,’” she laughed. “I once heard Buddy’s aunt give out that word of wisdom. I have been seeing The Guardian and reading it, and reading you in it, ever since the war.”
“More than me. Galpin and Cassius Kimball; yes, and old Eli Wade, and others that have helped keep me straight. We haven’t always gone straight, Marcia. There have been issues of The Guardian that I’d hate to have you see.”
“But I have seen them. All.”
“And you didn’t lose faith?”
“I never lost hope that—that you would be what I wanted you to be. Jem, Mr. Galpin says that the paper is losing.”
“It is.”
“Can you go on?”
“For a while?”
“Could you go on if you had more money?”
“For a while longer. There’d be a chance of our pulling through. But only a chance.”
“Will you take mine?”
“Great God! No!”
“Why not?”
“I tell you, it’s almost sure loss. There’s a new paper coming into the field—”
“You said just now that it was my doing that you—you stood straighter than you used. Did you mean The Guardian?”
“The Guardian. Myself. It’s the same thing.”
“Then does not that give me a right in the paper? A moral right?” she argued with bewitching earnestness.
“Granted. Put in anything you like but your money.”
“Jem! Please!” she pleaded. “Will you not take it if—”
“Not with any if.”
She rose and came to him around the corner of the table, and set her hand on his shoulder. Her eyes were steady, clear, courageous upon his, but her whole face flushed into a glorious shame and her voice shook and fluttered as she spoke again. “Not if—not even if—I go with it?”
“No,” said Jem. But his face was like that of one in a mortal struggle.
For a moment there was a flash of fear in her regard. “Jem! There is not—someone else?”
“How could there be?” he said simply.
“How could there be!” she repeated with a caressing contentment. “I knew there could not be.”
“There never could. How did you know?”
She stepped back from him. “By what I felt, myself.” She laughed a little tremulously. “I should have read it in The Guardian. Between the lines.”
“But—” he began. “There was—Miss Pritchard told me—”
“Yes,” she assented gravely. “There was. It was a formal betrothal. But when I saw him again I knew that I could not. It was no fault of his—nor mine. I remembered,” she said very low, “that night. That last night. On the bridge. Four years ago. My dear! Was it four years ago?”
Her eyes, her voice yearned to him, wooed him. Jem’s knuckles were white with the force of the grip wherewith he held to the table.
“Marcia!” he began.
“It made no difference,” she went on dreamily, “whether I was ever to see you again or not. I did not believe then that I ever should. But whether or not, there could be no one else. Some women are like that, Jem. ‘Once is forever, and once alone!’ I think a woman wrote that . . . And you have not even said I was welcome.”
“I daren’t!” he burst out. “I daren’t tell you what I feel—what I’m struggling against. Marcia, I’m down and out.”
“Does that matter?” she broke in proudly.
“It matters everything. I can’t take your money. I can’t ask you to marry me. There’s nothing ahead of me.”
“Mr. Galpin says that The Guardian is the one big, fighting energy—”
“Andy Galpin is a loyal fool. He’s the best and finest and stanchest friend ever a blunderer like me had. Poor devil! He’s put every cent he’s got into the fight—”
“And you will not let me put in my share?”
“Share? Don’t talk nonsense, Marcia. No.”
“Not even a little part?”
“Not a cent!”
“And you will not even marry me?”
“No,” groaned the sorely beset Jem.
“Very well. I think it very hard.” There was a palpable, even an exaggerated, droop to the tender and mobile lips; but in the depths of Marcia’s eyes twin devils of defiance and determination danced. “Good-night, Jem. No! You shall not take me downstairs.”
In the motor outside the scandalized Miss Letitia Pritchard, after a wait of an hour and five minutes, commented significantly and with a down-thrust inflection: “Well!”
“Well, Cousin Letty,” said Marcia demurely.
“Are you going to marry that young man, Marcia?”
“How can I? He has refused me.”
“Refused you!” gasped Miss Pritchard.
“Precisely. I am a blighted maiden.”
“Snumph!” sniffed Miss Pritchard. “Don’t you tell me!”
“Must you hear it from him to believe it?”
“Marcia Ames! I’ve watched that boy since you set your seal on him four years ago. I’ve seen him grow into a man, and fight his way wrong and right, and take his loss of you like a man and make a religion of it, and run his life by it, and if ever a chit of a girl ought to be proud of something too big and too good for her that she’s thrown away—Don’t you tell me, Marcia Ames! I—I don’t positively know what to say of such doings.”
The little electric, equally scandalized, suddenly lost its head, rushed upon an unoffending hydrant, sheered off, made as if to climb the front steps of the bank, performed an impossible curve, chased two horrified and incredulous citizens (who had never seen Miss Pritchard under the influence of liquor before, and so reported to their wives when they got home) up against a railing, and finally resumed the road with a sickening lurch, all of which may have been due to the fact that the usually self-contained Miss Marcia Ames had abruptly buried her face in Miss Pritchard’s shoulder, and clutched at her blindly.
“Say it again,” quavered Miss Ames, when the errant electric had squared away for home. “Say it again, Cousin Letty! I could not make him say it. And oh! how hard I tried.”
“Land sakes! Then you are going to marry him!” exclaimed Miss Pritchard.
“But he does not know it,” replied Marcia, suddenly demure.
36
Had anyone informed Governor Martin Embree that Miss Marcia Ames was again embellishing Fenchester society, he would have dismissed the matter as of no political moment. That is to say, of no impo
rtance whatsoever. Politics was now the exclusive and feverish preoccupation of “Smiling Mart” Embree’s days and nights, “Aut Senatus aut nullus” the motive guiding his every action. Miss Ames was not even a voter, having no residence in the State. Yet, by those devious ways in which women work and quite as unknown to herself as to Martin Embree, she was preparing a pitfall for the aspiring feet of Centralia’s most bounteous smiler.
Strange organizations were now coming to birth in every part of the State visited by “Smiling Mart.” They were self-assumed to be exuberantly patriotic and violently American, and their slogans were, “American Blood for American Soil,” “Our Army for Home Defense,” “America for America,” “One Soldier Here Worth a Hundred in Europe,” and the plausible like, the underlying purpose being to keep the American forces at home and thus out of the war until the Kaiser could successfully finish his job in Europe. Considering the super-quality of Americanism in the claims, the proportion of Teutonic names among the membership was striking. Open pacifists, covert pro-Germans, and political straddlers made up the strength of these bodies, while in the background warily lurked Martin Embree, moulding their activities to his own purposes of advancement. Deutschtum, bent but not broken, was become his chief political asset.
Presently these bodies merged into a State-wide and single entity, the Defenders of Our Land—“Our Land” ostensibly meaning the United States, though another interpretation might have been present in the minds of some of the participants. All was going prosperously with the enterprise; new members were flocking to its banner; the weak-minded and short-sighted were responding to its proselytizing methods, when, one day, the Fenchester Guardian, with that unparalleled and foul-minded brutality to be expected from a bloodthirsty jingo like young Robson (to paraphrase the impromptu but impassioned German of President Emil Bausch at the Deutscher Club), set the German flag above the platform of the organization, and below it the conjoined portraits of Governor Embree and Kaiser Wilhelm wreathed in the olive. Thereafter recruiting lessened.
Never before had Governor Embree so felt the need of reliable newspaper backing. Upon the rejection of his offer for The Guardian, A. M. Wymett had thrown all his energy into organizing the new paper for his backer, the Governor, and the sub-backers, Bausch, Wanser, Fliess, the Deutscher Club, and the German Societies of Centralia. Ostensibly it was to be loyal, as the Defenders of Our Land were loyal. “An American Newspaper for Americans” was to be its catch-line, and its main editorial precepts were to be the already somewhat blown-upon “Keep the Boys at Home” slogan, and “A Rich Man’s War.” Other than propaganda, its chief purpose, of course, was the election of Governor Embree to the vacancy in the Senate. As the Governor, perforce, was drawn by his all-excluding ambitions deeper and deeper into the pro-German campaign, newspaper upon newspaper had fallen away from him, some, like The Bellair Journal, from principle, others from fear of committing themselves too far. A powerful daily with a State-wide circulation was now absolutely essential to the success of his candidacy. The Fair Dealer was to supply the want.
As to circulation, that was arranged in advance. Max Verrall’s boast of twenty-five thousand, assured from the start, was no great exaggeration. Embree’s political agents had worked hard and well. Throughout the State the pro-Germans and pacifists were prepared to accept The Fair Dealer as their political mouthpiece from the day of its appearance. The difficulty, which now grilled the souls of Embree and Wymett, was the delay inevitable and unforeseeable attending the institution of a newspaper plant. Meantime The Guardian’s editorial page had become at once a beacon-fire for the patriotic elements and a searching, searing flame for the pan-Germanic scheme of which Embree was the local figurehead.
At length the path of the new daily seemed to be clear of reckonable difficulties. Wymett decided that it was safe to go ahead. Spacious announcements flared forth on the city’s hoardings, confirming what rumor had more accurately than usual presaged of The Fair Dealer’s principles and purposes, and setting July 5th as the date of publication. Thereupon, as at a signal, part of the remaining bottom proceeded to fall out of The Guardian’s advertising. Not only did the local situation develop a more disastrous decrease than had been looked for, but some two thousand dollars’ worth of products, manufactured in other parts of the State by German or pacifist concerns, decided that a morning paper was better suited to their needs than an evening.
With his final determination not to sell, Jeremy had shifted upon Andrew Galpin the entire financial responsibility for and conduct of the paper.
“Here’s the extent of my pile,” he had said, turning over a statement to his coadjutor. “You know where the paper stands and what it owes better than I do. Take charge. There’s a worry I make you a present of. I’m out of it. I prefer the editorial kind of nerve-strain, anyway. If you come to me with any unnecessary information, Andy, I’ll have Buddy fire you out.”
“Don’t you want to know anything about it?”
“You might tell me, from time to time, how long the patient has to live. But not too often, Andy. I don’t want to be distracted by—er—irrelevant details.”
So, on the day of The Fair Dealer’s announcement, Galpin approached his chief.
“We’ve slipped a couple of extra steps down the slide, Boss.”
“Is that all?”
“Ay-ah. But we aren’t so blame’ far from the bottom, you know.”
“Give us five more months, and we may get Mart Embree’s hide to cover our lamented remains with.”
“Five months! Not on the cards, Boss. Call it three.”
Jeremy sighed. “Don’t bother me with it now,” he said testily. “I’m busy. Didn’t I specially make you a present of that worry?”
Diplomacy was not Andrew Galpin’s strong point. Most injudiciously he conceived that now was the time to advance a project which he had held in reserve, awaiting such an opening.
“Boss,” he said, “there’s another buyer in the field for the paper.”
“Who’s the crook?”
“It isn’t a crook.”
“Who’s the fool, then?”
“I am.”
With a deliberation and accuracy worthy of a better action, the owner of The Guardian thrust his editorial pen in the glue-pot.
“Oh, you are, are you? And how much do you propose to pay for this valuable property?”
“Well—er—say fifty thousand. And assume the mortgage.”
“Fine! You’ve got the fifty thousand ready, I suppose? In your little leathern wallet?”
“It’s real money,” retorted the other, with a touch of resentment.
“Real, of course. But whose?”
“I’m not instructed to state.”
“Are you instructed to take me for a boob? Do you observe a blithe and vernal touch of green in my eye, Andy? When did Miss Ames put you up to this?”
“Well, it’s good money, ain’t it?” blurted the discomfited general manager.
“Too good. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“D’ you think I wanted to do it!” retorted his aide in outraged tones. “She made me. Did you ever try not to do something that little lady wanted you to do? It can’t be done,” asserted Mr. Andrew Galpin positively.
“Andy, as a self-excuser you’re—”
“Ay-ah! I know. But you’ve been running this paper like you thought she wanted it run over four years’ time and three thousand miles of ocean,” accused the other with unexpected vigor. “Have you or haven’t you?”
It was now the editor-in-chief’s turn to be disconcerted. “I’m busy,” he said. He reached for the implement of his trade. “Who the hell put that pen in that glue-pot!” he vociferated. Then, relieved by his little outburst, he added, “Tell her we’re not for sale”; and, after Galpin’s retreating back, he fired, “And tell her that as a secret negotiator you’re about as subtle as a street-piano.”
Rejection of her bid did not appear to surprise Miss Ames. Comin
g upon the proprietor of The Guardian on the street, some days later, by chance (or did she, as Miss Pritchard accused, cunningly plan the encounter?) she inquired if the price were not high enough.
“It’s no use, Marcia,” said Jem. “You can’t get in. I’m not going to let you commit financial suicide.”
Marcia was in teasing mood that day. “I should be hardened to disappointments and withered hopes, I suppose,” she sighed mockingly. “Jem?”
“Yes?”
“Will you walk along with me? Or do you think it compromising to be seen on the streets with the girl you have rejected?”
“Marcia,” groaned the tormented lover. “If you don’t stop that I’ll—I’ll grab you up right here and carry you off.”
“That would commit you fatally,” she reminded him. “By the way, are you never coming to see me again?”
“I’m all tied up with evening work, now.”
“Of course,” she assented with a gravity which, however, roused his suspicions. “Are you going to Madam Taylor’s tea?”
“I’m not on Madam Taylor’s list, since I called her a tax-dodger.”
“I cannot imagine her dodging anything; not even a taxi, let alone a tax. She is so dignified and positive and ‘sot.’ Will you come if I get you an invitation?”
“What for?”
Marcia’s delicate mouth drooped exaggeratedly. “If I must be a sister to you,” she murmured, “that is surely no reason why we should not meet occasionally.”
“Oh, I’ll come!” said Jem wildly. “I’d walk from here to New York just to see you in the street, and you know it.”
“Jem!” she said with a change of tone. Her fingers just touched his hand lightly. “It is a shame to tease you. But your Spartan rôle is such a temptation!”
Madam Taylor, though she adored Marcia, flatly declined to invite the editor of The Guardian. “That young mud-wasp” she termed him, and advised the girl to beware of his specious claims to fairness and rectitude. There would be plenty of other young men, far better worth meeting, at her tea than young Robson. It was not any other young man, however, whom the lovely Miss Ames selected for her special attention at the tea, but, vastly to his surprise and not a little to his gratification, Mr. Montrose Clark. There was nothing of the gallant about the public utilitarian; he was the highly correct head of a devoted family. But even in such, the aesthetic sense remains, and Mr. Clark was conscious of a distinct interest arising from his being selected for the special ministrations of the most attractive young woman in Fenchester. When she had duly hemmed him into the corner of an arbor with an impregnable fortification of Dresden and selected viands, he made the start himself.
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