MR. BURTON HIGMAN mounted the stairs of The Guardian office, dressed in his best suit of clothes. A powerfully inferential mind might have derived from his proud and important bearing that he had matters of moment on his mind; might further have deduced that he had been on a railway journey, from the presence of a cinder in his ear. He wore the air and expression, sanctified, as it were, all but martyr-like, as of one who, if he had not already died for his country, was at least prepared to. For young Mr. Higman had been performing that miracle, forever dear to dreaming boyhood; he had been saving the world. Such, at all events, was his own glorious interpretation of his enterprise.
The clock, pointing an accusing digit at V, was the only sign of life in the inner den. Buddy went to Mr. Galpin’s office. Empty also. So there was none to apprise him of the Boss’s final determination. A group of printers, scrubbed and clean, clumped down the stairs, still discussing the exciting rumor that somebody had bought out Robson; for every press-room is a clearing-house of gossip, technical and other.
“Hey, Buddy,” one of them hailed. “Got a new job yet?”
“Good-bye the easy snap,” added another. “The old Guardian’s sold again.”
“Much you know about it,” retorted Buddy, stoutly and scornfully.
But the statement struck a chill to his ardent soul. Could it be that he was too late? Surely the deal could n’t have been fixed up overnight!
On Mr. Higman’s official desk was a heap of mail which, in size, would have done credit to a correspondence school. It was Mr. Higman’s present professional duty, interrupted by his brief leave of absence, to sift out the anonymous communications, with special reference to those of a spicy and murderous character, and deliver them to his chief. To Jeremy’s journalistic instinct, it had occurred as a sprightly idea to make up a special page for publication of these epistolary efforts. It would be interesting to his readers, and would serve further to enlighten them as to the extent and virulence of local German sentiment. Perhaps, too, it would check the flood. So Mr. Higman sorted and divided and contributed marginal marks, and finally delivered a large packet upon the editorial desk for the Boss’s professional consideration, when he should return that evening, which, his young aide felt sure he would do, even though it was Saturday. Few, indeed, were the evenings that did not see a light in the den, close up to midnight.
Doctors’ protests to the contrary, notwithstanding, Jeremy came back to the office that evening, after a hasty dinner. Overwork might be bad for that second-rate and shop-worn heart of his. Loafing on the job would be a thousand times worse. That was one thing which his temper positively refused to endure. As he ran through the pile of letters, terminating in such suggestive and enticing signatures as “Vengeance,” “Outraged justice,” “Member of the Firing Squad,” “Old Scores,” or (with appropriate and blood-curdling commitments) those old familiars, “X,” “Y,” and “Z,” he realized that the threats were getting on his nerves. He was becoming bored, with an unendurable, deadly boredom, at their repetition. Nor could he deny to himself that they were affecting his actions, though in minor respects. For a week he had gone a block out of his way at night, not to avoid but to pass a certain unlighted alley-mouth wherein, so “Well-Wisher” and “Warned-in-Time,” two (or perhaps one) depressing correspondents had informed him, in feminine handwriting, lurked his intended murderers. Silly though it was to pay any heed, he had to do it. He had to prove to himself the futility of any such intimidation. In vain had Andrew Galpin tried to prevail upon him to carry a revolver. It was the common-sense, reasonable, unromantic thing to do. Jeremy would n’t do it. He would n’t even have one in his desk. But there were times in the long solitary evenings at the office when the unexplained creaking of floor-boards, or that elfin gunnery carried on by invisible sharpshooters in the woodwork of old buildings during nights of changing temperatures, produced sudden effects upon his handwriting which the two-fingered typist, Mr. Burton Higman, subsequently found disconcerting.
On this Saturday evening, he had set aside nearly enough epistolary blood-curdlers for his make-up, and was deleting certain anatomical references unsuited to fireside consumption from a rather illiterate but highly expressive letter, when he became aware that a draft from below was driving some papers along the hallway outside. A high wind off the lakes was making clamor through the street, but it had no business inside The Guardian building, and could n’t have got there unless some one had opened the front door. He listened for footsteps on the stairs. Nothing. He returned to his editing.
“Getting your throte cut some dark nigt is too Good for you,” his correspondent had written, and suggested, in unpolished terms, disagreeable and lethal substitutes of almost surgical technicality.
Jeremy was Bowdlerizing these, when he stopped and put down his pen. The floor-boards in the hallway were creaking intermittently but progressively. Through the noise of the wind he thought that he could catch fragments of a whispered colloquy. Then, quite plainly, there was a retreating tread, which, however, left something. What? An infernal machine? Infernal machines do not linger, striving and forcing themselves to the determining action; theirs is a simple and direct method. And Jeremy could feel, through the noisy darkness, the struggle of a will, agonizingly fighting for expression, through dread. Himself, he was not conscious of fear. But every nerve was tense. He sat looking at the door.
For what seemed an interminable time nothing happened. But the Something outside drew slowly, painfully nearer. The knob of his door moved, a thing suddenly inspired to life. Jeremy gathered himself. It turned. The door was drawn open swiftly. A blur came upon Jeremy’s vision. His heart bumped once in a thick, dull way, then swelled intolerably. He half rose, sat down again heavily. His eyes cleared and the clogged blood in his temples flowed again.
She stood framed against the stirring, whispering darkness beyond. Her breath came quick and light. She was white to the lips, and more lovely even than the dreams of her, cherished through all those aching years.
“Jem,” she said.
“Marcia!”
She made one eager step forward. A vagrant gust, ranging the darkness, caught the door and drove it savagely to, behind her. She threw a startled glance back. It was as if the impalpable fates had cut off the last chance of withdrawal.
“I have come back to you.” The sweet precision of her speech was the unforgotten same, blessedly unchanged in any intonation. But wonder held Jeremy speechless. He stood, his hands knuckling the desk, and devoured her with his eyes.
“Will you not speak to me?” she said, with a quick sorrowful little intake of the breath. “You frighten me. You look so strange. Have you been ill?”
At that he came forward and took her hand, and drew out a chair for her. “Not ill,” he heard himself say in a surprisingly commonplace voice. “Sit down.”
She shook her head gently. “I can look at you better, standing.”
Her candid eyes swept over him. She saw a face thinner and more drawn than she had remembered it; bitten into by stern lines about the mouth; the eyes tired but more thoughtful, and just over the temple nearest her a fleck of gray in the dark sweep of his hair. Involuntarily she put forth a swift hand and touched it.
“Oh, Jem!” she whispered with quivering lips.
He seemed to brace himself against her light touch. “That?” he said. “Oh, that is n’t anything.”
“How came it there?”
“Honest toil, I hope,” he returned cheerfully.
Her inventory was completed with a smile. “You are quite as carefully turned out as ever,” she commented.
“Habit.”
“Oh, no! Not habit alone. Character. And you stand as straight and square as you used.”
A curious expression came into the weary eyes. “Straighter,” he said. “That’s your doing, Marcia.”
“How mine?”
“It’s rather complicated and long. I don’t know that you’d understand.”
“Make me understand.”
“Give me time. This has been—well, startling. I think I’m a little dazzled and—and dizzy.”
And, indeed, Marcia Ames, as she stood there beneath the hard, revealing light of the overhead arc, was a vision to dazzle any man, and, taken on an empty heart, to make him dizzy. The years had fulfilled her; had added splendor to her compelling beauty without withdrawing that almost fantastically delicate and elusive challenge of youth. She seated herself, and Jem took his accustomed position behind the editorial table.
“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 is n’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 had n’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 did n’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—some one 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!Wasit 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 dare n’t!” he burst out. “I dare n’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 shallnottake 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.
HAD any one 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 importance 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 knowanythingabout 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 are n’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. Did n’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 is n’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,youare, 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 Iwantedto 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 have n’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. Coming 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.
“I surrender,” he announced with ponderous playfulness. “What do you want of me?”
“How unkind of you, Mr. Clark! I was about to try my craftiest wiles upon you,” returned Miss Ames regretfully.
“Then it’s a subscription. I withdraw the white flag. I’ll fight.”
“Please! That is exactly what I do not wish you to do. I wish you to make peace.”
“Have I a quarrel with you?”
“Not yet. With some friends of mine. With The Guardian.”
The public utilitarian’s expression changed; became more impersonal and observant. “Young Robson,” he remarked. “He’s been talking to you.”
“No. It was Mr. Galpin that told me about it.”
“You’re his emissary?”
“Oh, no! You must not suppose that. I come to you quite of my own accord.”
“Why this extreme interest in The Guardian, Miss Ames?”
“Because I—There is a reason for—Circumstances—”
“Over which you have no control,” suggested her vis-à-vis.
“Over which I have no control,” she accepted, and her hand went to her throat—(Mr. Montrose Clark, seeing the swift color pulse into her face, discarded Andrew Galpin from consideration and came back to Jeremy Robson and wondered whether that pernicious journalist knew how lucky he was), “have given me a—an interest, a responsibility—” Marcia Ames was experiencing unwonted difficulties in explaining what was perhaps not fundamentally clear to herself.
“I see,” answered the magnate mendaciously.
“If you saw as I see,” she retorted earnestly, “you would not be opposing and trying to ruin The Guardian.”
“But bless my soul, my dear young lady! That is precisely what The Guardian has been doing to me. You have n’t been reading it these few years past.”
“Oh, yes. Every day. I do not pretend to understand that part of it. But I do know this; that Mr. Rob—that The Guardian is making a fight single-handed for the Nation and the war, and is being beaten because those who should stand by it are not patriotic enough to forget old scores. Have you stopped to think of that, Mr. Clark?” The magnate shifted uncomfortably in his seat. To say that he had stopped to think of this would be untrue. Rather, the thought had essayed to stop him and force itself on his consideration with increasing pertinacity of late, and he had barely contrived to dodge it and go on about his lawful occasions. Now it challenged him in the clear regard of a very beautiful and very determined young woman.
“No. Yes,” said Montrose Clark, and left that for her to take her pick of. “One would n’t think you the kind to take such an interest in politics.”
“Is this politics—exactly?” she asked quietly.
Upon Montrose Clark’s chubby facial contours appeared a heightened color. “No; by thunder! It is n’t. Will you sit here, young lady, and keep out of sight of pursuers until I can catch and fetch Selden Dana?”
Marcia had not long to wait. The Judge was retrieved from a circle of the elderly, harmless, but influential, with whom he had been discussing cures. The two men sat and drank more tea than was good for them, while Marcia made her argument and plea. Then said Selden Dana to Montrose Clark, smiling: “Let’s buy out The Guardian and turn it over to her to run.”
“We might do worse,” conceded the magnate.
“It is not to be bought,” said Marcia.
“Haveyoutried?” the lawyer flashed at her. “You have,” he answered himself, marking the response in her face. “Well, Iamdashed!” He and Montrose Clark exchanged glances. “Business is business,” observed the lawyer with apparent irrelevance, but in the tone of one who strives to recall a wandering purpose.
“Quite so!” murmured Montrose Clark. “Quite so!” But there was a lack of conviction in his voice.
“Miss Ames,” said Dana, “I pride myself on being a judge of character. Sometimes I meet a problem that puzzles me. Why has n’t Jem Robson gone into uniform?”
“Do you think Mr. Robson is a slacker?” she shot back at him.
“Not if I read him right. That’s what puzzles me about his staying behind.”
“Did it not occur to you that he has a more important fight here than there?”
“It might occur to me,” admitted the lawyer. “But I don’t know that I’d care to have it occur to a son of mine.”
She gave him her flashing smile. “That is clever of you,” she said. “I like that! And now I will violate a confidence, but it must go no farther. The doctor would not pass Mr. Robson for active service. Mr. Galpin told me.”
“I never take an afternoon off,” sighed the lawyer, “but some obtrusive business crops up and ruins the day’s sport. Let’s go down to the office, Mr. Clark, and talk this over.”
One more bit of meddling with the irresponsible fates which rule men and newspapers was committed by Miss Ames that afternoon. Magnus Laurens, just off a train, came in late to the tea, and was straightway seized upon.
“Uncle Magnus! Where have you been, all these weeks and months?”
“Well, Marcia!” He took both her hands and looked down into her face. “What a sight you are! If you’re ever allowed to get away from America again, I’ll lose all faith in our young manhood....Where have I been? Here and there and everywhere. Organizing the State Council of Defense. Raising money. Trips to Washington. Letting family and business go to the bow-wows.”
“Are you in touch with Fenchester matters?”
“Hello! What’s this? You’re talking like a politician. After my vote?”
“Do you know that The Guardian has been making the fight almost alone here against the anti-war crowd?” Magnus Laurens rubbed his big, gray head perplexedly. “I’ve got to look into that situation. When Jeremy Robson went back on us—”
“Jeremy Robson never went back on you! At least, not since war was probable. And—and your company is choking The Guardian to death with a contract dishonestly made by Senator Embree’s man, Verrall.”
“The devil! I beg your pardon, Marcia. Where did you learn these interesting facts—if they are facts?”
“From Mr. Galpin.”
“Oh! Hardly a disinterested witness.”
“Uncle Magnus, I wish you to promise me just one thing.”
“Not so foolish! What is it?”
“I wish you to go to the Library this evening—no matter how busy you are—and go over the files of The Guardian since last March.”
“I’ll do that much,” he agreed.
“Then you will do more,” said Marcia contentedly. That first day’s confabulation between Marcia and Galpin, the scope of which its object, Jeremy Robson, little suspected, was bearing fruit.
LONG years unheard yet unforgotten, the voice of Edwin Garson, President Montrose Clark’s hand-perfected private secretary, warbled with a mellifluous intonation over the telephone wire into the surprised ear of The Guardian’s editor and owner.
“Hello! Hello?Hel-lo!... This Mr. Robson?... Office of the Fenchester Public Utilities. Mr. Montrose Clark wishes to see you.”
An unfortunate formula. It recalled the vivid past. One sweetly solemn thought in Jeremy’s mind was forthwith transmuted into one briefly pregnant speech which shocked the private secretary clean off the wire. Jeremy resumed his editorializing. His next interruption, to his incredulous astonishment, took the important form and presence of Mr. Montrose Clark himself. Mahomet had come to the mountain.
At Jeremy’s invitation Mr. Clark disposed his neat and pursy form upon the far edge of a chair impressively, yet with obvious reservations, as one disdaining to concede anything to comfort. Embarrassment might have been conjectured in one less august. His voice was as stiff as his posture as he began:
“I had my secretary telephone you, Mr. Robson.”
“I got your message.”
“And I your reply, which, as transmitted to me, was that I might go to the devil!”
“I think I mentioned the place, not the proprietor.”
“It does not signify. I am here”—there was no glimmer of light on the round red countenance to suggest an ulterior meaning—“I am here on a matter of business, in my capacity as acting president of the Drovers’ Bank in Mr. Warrington’s absence. As such, I have to inform you that we stand ready to make you a loan on favorable terms upon the security of The Guardian.”
“Wh-wh-why?” stammered Jeremy, taken wholly aback. “Do you consider the paper a sound risk now?”
“Sufficiently sound.”
“Up to what amount?”
“Any amount you need.”
Jeremy stared at him, unbelieving.
“No security I can furnish now is as good as that which you rejected before.”
“That may very well be true.”
“Yet your offer is still open?”
“It is.”
“Ah, yes!” said Jeremy, thinking slowly and carefully. “You’re assuming that, with the change in the local political situation, The Guardian is going to shift its principles. Well, Mr. Clark, if you expect that we’re going back one inch from the stand we’ve taken on public utilities, and the P.-U. Corporation in particular, you’re badly fooled. We’re just as much against you as if we were still for Governor Embree. I thought I had made that clear to Judge Dana.”
“I have proposed no bargain,” stated the magnate aridly. “I make an offer. No conditions are attached.”
“Then I’ve got to tell you frankly that we’re not doing very well.”
“So I am informed. What appears to be the trouble? Will the new paper cut into your circulation to an extent—”
“Newspapers do not live by circulation alone, Mr. Clark, but chiefly by advertising.”
“Certainly; certainly. Local merchants appear to be pretty well represented in your pages.”
“At reduced space—or worse. Take the case of Vogt, the florist, who has always been good for a hundred dollars a month with us. Perhaps you can point out Mr. Vogt’s present space in The Guardian.”
The visitor ran through the paper handed to him.
“I fail to find Mr. Vogt’s advertisement.”
“He’s out.”
“Why?”
“Because The Guardian has been ‘corrupted by British gold.’”
“Indeed! Did he express that theory to you personally?”
“He did. He also instructed me as to running my paper, and gave me the outlines of an editorial demanding that none of our soldiers be sent abroad to help in the war. When I said that I was n’t interested in pro-German strategy he said something else, in German, which unfortunately I understand a little; and then ‘Police!’”
“Police?” repeated Mr. Clark, with hopeful interest. “Why did he say that?”
“I suppose he thought I was going to throw him downstairs. I was n’t. I left him carefully on the top step.” Signs of perturbation appeared upon the visage of the little magnate. He rose. His projective eyes appeared no longer to feel at home in his face. They roved afar. “Police!” he murmured, and added “Ah!” in a curious, relishing tone. Suddenly he thrust out a pudgy hand, clawed at Jeremy’s unready fingers, murmured “Count on us, Mr. Robson, for anything we can do!”—and stalked out.
“Now, how do you account for him?” inquired Jeremy, referring the matter to Galpin, who had come in to announce another withdrawal.
“Oh, him!” Galpin turned the public utilitarian over in his mind, considering him on all sides. “Wants to use us to club the Governor, I reckon. Now that we’ve quit ‘Smiling Mart,’ plenty of our old enemies will be willing to play with us on the theory that there’ll be a change in policy.”
“They’ll have to make a better guess than that.”
“I guess you’re right, Boss,” sighed the other. “Even if we did borrow, it’d only be postponing the finish. Things won’t get any better for us while the war is on. And when the showdown comes where would The Guardian be if we were in for twenty thousand more?”
“In the hands of the Drovers’ Bank.”
“There or thereabouts. Well, I can’t just see us being editorial copy-boys for President Puff. Can you?”
“Not exactly! Yet, you know, Andy, he gave me almost the impression of being really for us.”
“Well, it’s possible, Boss; it’s just possible”—the other’s shrewd face was puckered in conjecture—“that he might consider this war thing more important than his own little interests. A man who thinks different from us on every other blooming subject under the sun might be every bit as real an American when it comes to the pinch. Ever think of that, Boss?”
“Not just that way.”
“Time enough to find out. Where the lion jumps, the jackal follows. See if Old Slippery Dana does n’t come round in the next few days.”
Come round Judge Dana did. That candid honesty of expression and demeanor which had aided him in pulling off some of his most dubious tricks was never more markedly in evidence than when he shook hands with Jeremy.
“Ever give any thought to the libel suits against you in the office of Dana & Dana?” he began.
“Some.”
“Bother you any?”
“I’m not losing sleep over them.”
“Now, I’ll admit candidly,” said the lawyer, “that a couple of ’em are no good. They’re dead. But there’s merit in Madam Taylor’s case. You went too far there. Your own lawyers will tell you that.”
“They have,” said Jeremy incautiously, and bit his lip.
“Well, in spite of that, I’ve come to tell you that we’ve advised our client to withdraw the action.”
“Have you?” said the editor warily. “Why?”
“Call it friendship.”
“On your part? For The Guardian?”
“We-ell; say it’s because I foresee that the paper is going to have plenty of troubles of its own without our adding to them.”
“You haven’t always been so solicitous as to The Guardian’s welfare.”
“Meaning that you would like to understand the reason for my present solicitude?”
“Timeo Danaos,’” quoted Jem. “I fear the Danas bearing gifts.”
The lawyer smiled his appreciation.
“I’ve given you the best reason I know.”
“Did Montrose Clark send you here?”
“You don’t like Mr. Clark much, do you?”
“Not particularly.”
“Nor me, either, perhaps?”
“I blush to say that I rather do.”
“But you don’t trust me.”
“Oh, come, Dana! What would you expect!”
“Just for relaxation of the mind, my young friend, what do you think of me?”
“Straight?”
“Straight.”
“I think you’re a slippery old legal crook,” returned Jeremy without hesitation.
“And I think you’re a flitter-witted young fool—ninety-nine times out of a hundred!”
“And the hundredth?”
“That’s what I’m looking at now. By God, you’re an American, anyway! Here, Jem,” he leaned across the table, extending a bony and argumentative forefinger; “if you and I were in the trenches, fighting shoulder to shoulder, it would n’t make a pickle’s worth of difference whether you were a sapheaded loon or not, or whether I was a crook or a thief or a murderer, or not. All we’d have to ask of each other would be that we were fighting in the same cause, and with the last drop of our blood, and to the finish! Am I right?”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Well, then! What’s this we’re up against right here in Fenchester? Are we fighting? Or playing tiddledy-winks?”
“There’s very little tiddledywinks in it, so far as The Guardian is concerned,” confessed Jeremy with a wry face.
“So far as any of us are concerned. It’s coming to the place where it’s a case of get together and stick together for us Americans. Seen Magnus Laurens since the Governor’s little soirée?”
“No,” answered Jem, flushing.
“Laurens thought you were in on Embree’s deal. Why don’t you put him right?”
“He can put himself right,” returned the editor shortly.
“Hardly that; but he can be put right. There are a lot of things that ought to be put right for you, my boy. Things that have been wrong for a long time.”
He leaned to Jeremy again, his long face alight with an eager and innocent candor.
“Jem, there’s no use fighting your friends. The people that can help you, the people that are the real Americans of your kind, you’ve always opposed. Come in with us now. There’s nothing that won’t be done for you and The Guardian. I’m going to talk plain talk. Isn’t it about time you made up your mind to be good?”
“How be good? What’s on the carpet now?”
“Why, this fight against the pacifists and pro-Germans.”
“You don’t have to tell me to be good for that. Something else is up.” He eyed the lawyer with a bitter grin. “I might have known you had something up your sleeve. What is it, the Blanket Franchise Bill again?”
“That’s a perfectly fair bill,” defended the visitor. “But for The Guardian, it would have gone through before. Now—”
“Now we’ll kill it again if it shows its crooked head. Tell Montrose Clark that from me. And tell him that I won’t need any loan from the Drovers’ Bank to do it.”
“Very well,” sighed the lawyer. “No hard feelings, my boy. Business is business.”
Reporting to his chief, Dana stated:
“He won’t dicker.”
“As I told you,” replied Montrose Clark in pompous self-appreciation of his own prophecy.
“Well, no harm in trying.... We can pass the Blanket Franchise Bill after The Guardian is dead.”
“How long can it last?”
“Not three months, according to what I can gather.” The president of the Fenchester Public Utilities Corporation began to puff up and grow red in the face and squirm in his seat. Finally it came out explosively: “Dana, I don’t want to pass the damned bill—at that price.”
“Neither do I.”
“You know, I—I almost like that young fool.”
“So do I.”
“Well, what are we going to do?”
“Pull him through whether he wants our help or not. We can fight him for the Franchise Bill after the war.”
“Go to it!” returned the president of the Fenchester Public Utilities Company with unwonted energy and slang.
As the first fruits of that confabulation between two of Jeremy Robson’s oldest enemies The Guardian received on the following day a contract from the P.-U. for advertising space amounting to sixteen hundred dollars a year. Jeremy reckoned that with grim satisfaction, as giving the paper a few days more of life. On the following morning there came a far more important help in the form of ‘a brief and characteristic note from Magnus Laurens, the pith of which was in these sentences:
I hope you will accept my sincere apologies. Enclosed find contract with the Oak Lodge Pulp Company, which, I have reason to believe, was made under a misapprehension as to quality of paper. Kindly make out new contract at three cents and three quarters if acceptable.
Andy Galpin’s philosophical estimate—“Every bit as real an American, when it comes to the pinch”—reverted to Jeremy’s mind. A sudden humility tempered his spirit. He felt that The Guardian was a pretty big thing and he a pretty small one. Well, in what time remained he would fight with a new vigor and for a broader ideal. It would not be long. Magnus Laurens’s generosity meant only a respite; perhaps two or three months extra of fighting the good fight. In the owner’s heart was no self-deception as to the inevitable outcome. Meantime the paper might yet beat Martin Embree and save Centralia from the disgrace of sending the chosen prophet of Deutschtum to the United States Senate.
And just for itself, how well worth fighting for and with to the finish was the battered, gallant old Guardian! Jeremy thought of his paper as a Captain might think of his ship staggering, unconquered but hopeless, through her last storm to her last port; thought of her with that sort of devotion, of passion. And the precious freight of hope and faith and belief that she carried, the loyal confidence of the simple, clean, honest people for whom he had made the paper!
Strange and unexpected accessions had come to that number; none stronger than the stubborn and violent jeweler, Bernard Stockmuller, who had abused Jeremy on the street after the first trouble with the Deutscher Club.
On the morning after the Constantia was sunk, with the first American naval victims, an event upon which Jeremy had poured out the hot fervency of his patriotism, his door was thrust open and the powerful form of the German burst in. His face was a dull, deep red. His eyes protruded. He was gasping.
Believing that he had to do with a man crazed by fury, Jeremy jumped to his feet and set himself. The expected rush followed, but ended in a stagger, a gulp, and a burst of unashamed tears.
“Dot bee-ewtiful tribude!” sobbed the emotional German. “Dot bee-ewtiful tribude dot you haf printed in your paper to our boys. To my boy!”
“Your boy? Why, Stockmuller, I did n’t know—”
“All the boy I got. My nephew, Henry. Him I brought up and put through the Ooniversity. He iss dead. He hass gone down in the Constantia. I am glad he iss dead so splendid! I am proud when I read what you have written. Und—und, Mr. Robson, I wand you should—I wand you should—”
“Go on, Stockmuller,” said Jeremy gently, as the other stopped with a pleading look. “Of course I’ll do it—whatever it is you want.”
“I wand you should take my ad back,” said Stockmuller as simply as a child.
“You bet I’ll take it back!”
“Mind! I dink you wass wrong, first off,” said the honest and obstinate German. “I dink Inkland made dis war. But my Henry, all the boy I got, if he iss only a nephew, iss dead for dis country. And now dis iss my country and my war!”
“All right, Stockmuller. Glad to have you with us,” was all that Jeremy, pretty well shaken by the other’s emotion, found to say. The visitor produced a large and ornate handkerchief, wherewith he openly wiped his swollen eyes.
“Also, dere is someding else,” he stated, lowering his voice. The editor looked his inquiry. “Monkey business with your printer-men.”
“Yes; I know something about that.”
“Do you know when they strike?”
“No. When?”
“The day before the new paper comes out.”
Jeremy whistled softly.
“Of course! That’s when they would, assuming that it’s a put-up job from outside. Where do you get your information?—if it’s a fair question.”
Stockmuller turned a painful red.
“I was on der Deutscher Club committee,” he said. “The segret committee. No more!”
“Who are the men in our press-room they’re working through?”
The visitor shook his head. “Weiss nicht,” he murmured.
“Never mind; I know! I’ll start something for ’em before they’re ready.”
Jem had now definitely fixed upon Nick Milliken, the white-haired, vehement Socialist, as the chief instigator of trouble upstairs. He no longer suspected Milliken of being in the underground employ of Montrose Clark and Dana. He believed him to be the agent of Bausch and the Deutscher Club committee. He sent for the man and discharged him. Milliken took his discharge, at first, in a spirit of incredulity.
“Me?” he said. “What have you got it in for me for?”
“You’re a trouble-maker. That’s enough.”
“Because I’m a Socialist? Look-a-here, Mr. Robson—”
“There’s no use in arguing, Milliken. I won’t have you around.”
“Give me a week,” said the other. “I can tell you some—”
“Not a day! Get your pay this noon.”
The man hesitated; then with a sardonic, but not particularly hostile grin he bade his employer good-day.
“Now for the strike!” said Jeremy to Andy Galpin.
But the strike did not come. Evidently the manipulators in the background would bide their own time.