Samuel Hopkins Adams - The Clarion

S >> Samuel Hopkins Adams >> The Clarion

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28

Evidences of that formidable person's hostilities became increasingly
manifest from day to day. One morning a fire marshal dropped casually in
upon the "Clarion" office, looked the premises over, and called the
owner's attention to several minor and unsuspected violations of the
law, the adjustment of which would involve no small inconvenience and
several hundred dollars outlay. By a curious coincidence, later in the
day, a factory inspector happened around,--a newspaper office being,
legally, within the definition of a factory,--and served a summons on
McGuire Ellis as publisher, for permitting smoking in the city room.
From time immemorial every edition of every newspaper in the United
States of America has evolved out of rolling clouds of tobacco smoke:
but the "Clarion" alone, apparently, had come within the purview of the
law. Subsequently, Hal learned, to his amusement, that all the other
newspaper offices were placarded with notices of the law in Yiddish, so
that none might be unduly disturbed thereby! To give point to the
discrimination, down on the street, a zealous policeman arrested one of
the "Clarion's" bulk-paper handlers for obstructing the sidewalk.

"Pierce's political pull is certainly working," observed Ellis, "but
it's coarse work."

Finer was to come. Two libel suits mushroomed into view in as many days,
provoked, as it were, out of conscious nothing; unimportant but
harassing: one, brought by a ne'er-do-well who had broken a leg while
engaged in a drunken prank months before, the other the outcome of a
paragraph on a little, semi-fraudulent charity.

"I'll bet that eminent legal light, Mr. William Douglas, could tell
something about these," said Ellis, "though his name doesn't appeal on
the papers."

"We'll print these, too,--and we'll tell the reason for them," said Hal.

But on this last point his assistant dissuaded him. The efficient
argument was that it would look like whining, and the one thing which a
newspaper must not do was to lament its own ill-treatment.

On top of the libel suits came a letter from the Midland National Bank,
stating with perfect courtesy that, under its present organization, a
complicated account like that of the "Clarion" was inconvenient to
handle; wherefore the bank was reluctantly obliged to request its
withdrawal.

"Bottling us up financially," remarked Ellis. "I expected this, before."

"There are other banks than the Midland that'll be glad of our
business," replied Hal.

"Probably not."

"No? Then they're curious institutions."

"There isn't one of 'em in which Elias M. Pierce isn't a controlling
factor. Ask your father."

On the following day when Dr. Surtaine, who had been out of town for
several days, dropped in at the office, Hal had a memorandum ready on
the point. The old quack eased himself into a chair with his fine air
of ample leisure, creating for himself a fragrant halo of cigar smoke.

"Well, Boyee." The tone was a mingling of warm affection and
semi-humorous reproach. "You went and did it to Elias M., didn't you?"

"Yes, sir. We went and did it."

The Doctor shook his head, looking at the other through narrowing eyes.
"And it's worrying you. You're not looking right."

"Oh, I'm well enough: a little sleeplessness, that's all."

He did not deem it necessary to tell his father that upon his white
nights the unforgettable face of Esme Elliot had gleamed persistently
from out the darkness, banishing rest.

"Suppose you let me do some of the worrying, Boyee."

"Haven't you enough troubles in your own business, Dad?" smiled Hal.

"Machinery, son. Automatic, at that. Runs itself and turns out the
dollars, regular, for breakfast. Very different from the newspaper
game."

"I _should_ like your advice."

"On the take-it-or-leave-it principle, I suppose," answered Dr.
Surtaine, with entire good humor. "In the Pierce matter you left it. How
do you like the results?"

"Not very much."

Dr. Surtaine spread out upturned hands, in dumb, oracular illustration
of his own sagacity.

"But I'd do the same thing over again if it came up for decision."

"That's exactly what you mustn't do, Hal. Banging around the shop like
that, cracking people on the knuckles may give you a temporary feeling
of power and importance" (Hal flushed boyishly), "but it don't pay. Now,
if I get you out of this scrape, I want you to go more carefully."

"How are you going to get me out of it?"

"Square it with E.M. Pierce. He's a good friend of mine."

"Do you really like Mr. Pierce, Dad?"

"Hm! Ah--er--well, Boyee, as for that, that's another tail on a cat. In
a business way, I meant."

"In a business way he's trying to be a pretty efficient enemy of mine.
How would you like it if he undertook to interfere with Certina?"

By perceptible inches Dr. Surtaine's chest rounded in slow expansion.
"Legislatures and government bureaus have tried that. They never got
away with it yet. Elias Pierce is a pretty big man in this town, but I
guess he knows enough to keep hands and tongue off me."

"If not off your line of business," amended Ellis. "Did you see his
interview in the 'Telegram'?"

He tossed over a copy of the paper folded to a column wherein Mr.
Pierce, with more temper than tact, had possessed himself of his
adversary's editorial text, "Heredity," and proceeded to perform a
variant thereon.

"If this young whippersnapper," Mr. Pierce had said, "this fledgling
thug of journalism, had stopped to think of the source of his unearned
money, perhaps he wouldn't talk so glibly about heredity."

Thence the interview pursued a course of indirect reflection upon the
matter and method of the patent medicine trade, as exemplified in
Certina and its allied industries. The top button of Dr. Surtaine's
glossy morning coat, as he read, seemed in danger of flying off into
infinite space. His powerful hands opened and closed slowly. Leaning
forward he reached for the telephone, but checked himself.

"Mr. Pierce seems to have let go both barrels at once," he said with a
strong effort of control.

"Pretty little exhibition of temper, isn't it?" said Hal, smiling.

"Temper's expensive. Perhaps we'll teach Elias M. Pierce that lesson
before we're through. You remember it, too, next time you start in on a
muckraking jag."

"Our muckraking, as you call it, isn't a question of temper, Dad," said
Hal earnestly. "It's a question of policy. What the 'Clarion' is doing,
is done because we're trying to be a newspaper. We've got to stick to
that. I've given my word."

"Who to?"

"To the men on the staff."

"What's more," put in McGuire Ellis, turning at the door on his way out
to see a caller, "the fellows have got hold of the idea. That's what
gives the 'Clarion' the go it's got. We're all rowing one stroke."

"And the captain can't very well quit in mid-race." Hal took up the
other's metaphor, as the door closed behind him. "So you see, Dad, I've
got to see it through, no matter what it costs me."

The father's rich voice dropped to a murmur. "Hasn't it cost you
something more than money, already, Boyee? I understand Miss Esme is a
pretty warm friend of Pierce's girl."

Hal winced.

"All right, Boyee. I don't want to pry. But lots of things come quietly
to the old man's ear. You've got a right to your secrets."

"It isn't any secret, Dad. In fact, it isn't anything any more," said
Hal, smiling wanly. "Yes, the price was pretty high. I don't think any
other will ever be so high."

Dr. Surtaine heaved his bulk out of the chair and laid a heavy arm
across his son's shoulder.

"Boyee, you and I don't agree on a lot of things. We're going to keep on
not agreeing about a lot of things. You think I'm an old fogy with
low-brow standards. I think you've got a touch of that prevalent disease
of youth, fool-in-the-head. But, I guess, as father and son, pal and
pal, we're pretty well suited,--eh?"

"Yes," said Hal. There was that in the monosyllable which wholly
contented the older man.

"Go ahead with your 'Clarion,' Boyee. Blow your fool head off. Deave us
all deaf. Play any tune you want, and pay yourself for your piping. I
won't interfere--any more'n I can help, being an old meddler by taste.
Blood's thicker than water, they say. I guess it's thicker than
printer's ink, too. Remember this, right or wrong, win or lose, Boyee,
I'm with you."

CHAPTER XVIII

MILLY

All Hal's days now seemed filled with Pierce. Pierce's friends,
dependents, employees, associates wrote in, denouncing the "Clarion,"
canceling subscriptions, withdrawing advertisements. Pierce's club, the
Huron, compelled the abandonment of Mr. Harrington Surtaine's candidacy.
Pierce's clergyman bewailed the low and vindictive tone of modern
journalism. The Pierce newspapers kept harassing the "Clarion"; the
Pierce banks evinced their financial disapproval; the Pierce lawyers
diligently sought new causes of offense against the foe; while Pierce's
mayor persecuted the newspaper office with further petty enforcements
and exactions. Pierce's daughter, however, fled the town. With her went
Miss Esme Elliot. According to the society columns, including that of
the "Clarion," they were bound for a restful voyage on the Pierce yacht.

From time to time Editor Surtaine retaliated upon the foe, employing the
news of the slow progress of Miss Cleary, the nurse, to maintain
interest in the topic. Protests invariably followed, sometimes from
sources which puzzled the "Clarion." One of the protestants was Hugh
Merritt, the young health officer of the city, who expressed his views
to McGuire Ellis one day.

"No," Ellis reported to his employer, on the interview, "he didn't
exactly ask that we let up entirely. But he seemed to think we were
going too strong. I couldn't quite get his reasons, except that he
thought it was a terrible thing for the Pierce girl, and she so young.
Queer thing from Merritt. They don't make 'em any straighter than he
is."

Alone of the lot of protests, that of Mrs. Festus Willard gained a
response from Hal.

"You're treating her very harshly, Hal."

"We're giving the facts, Lady Jinny."

"_Are_ they the facts? _All_ the facts?"

"So far as human eyes could see them."

"Men's eyes don't see very far where a woman is concerned. She's very
young and headstrong, and, Hal, she hasn't had much chance, you know.
She's Elias Pierce's daughter."

"Thus having every chance, one would suppose."

"Every chance of having everything. Very little chance of being
anything."

There was a pause. Then: "Very well, Hal, I know I can trust you to do
what you believe right, at least. That's a good deal. Festus tells me to
let you alone. He says that you must fight your own fight in your own
way. That's the whole principle of salvation in Festus's creed."

"Not a bad one," said Hal. "I'm not particularly liking to do this, you
know, Lady Jinny."

"So I can understand. Have you heard anything from Esme Elliot since she
left?"

"No."

"You mustn't drop out of the set, Hal," said the little woman anxiously.
"You've made good so quickly. And our crowd doesn't take up with the
first comer, you know."

Since Esme Elliot had passed out of his life, as he told himself, Hal
found no incentive to social amusements. Hence he scarcely noticed a
slow but widening ostracism which shut him out from house after house,
under the pressure of the Pierce influence. But Mrs. Festus Willard had
perceived and resented it. That any one for whom she had stood sponsor
should fail socially in Worthington was both irritating and incredible
to her. Hence she made more of Hal than she might otherwise have found
time to do, and he was much with her and Festus Willard, deriving, on
the one hand, recreation and amusement from her sparkling
_camaraderie_, and on the other, support and encouragement from her
husband's strong, outspoken, and ruggedly honest common sense. Neither
of them fully approved of his attack on Kathleen Pierce, whom they
understood better than he did. But they both--and more particularly
Festus Willard--appreciated the courage and honor of the "Clarion's" new
standards.

Except for an occasional dinner at their house, and a more frequent hour
late in the afternoon or early in the evening, with one or both of them,
Hal saw almost nothing of the people into whose social environment he
had so readily slipped. Because of his exclusion, there prospered the
more naturally a casual but swiftly developing intimacy which had sprung
up between himself and Milly Neal.

It began with her coming to Hal for his counsel about her copy. From the
first she assumed an attitude of unquestioning confidence in his wisdom
and taste. This flattered the pedagogue which is inherent in all of us.
He was wise enough to see promptly that he must be delicately careful in
his criticism, since here he was dealing out not opinion, but gospel.
Poised and self-confident the girl was in her attitude toward herself:
the natural consequence of early success and responsibility. But about
her writing she exhibited an almost morbid timidity lest it be thought
"vulgar" or "common" by the editor-in-chief; and once McGuire Ellis felt
called upon to warn Hal that he was "taking all the gimp out of the
'Kitty the Cutie' stuff by trying to sewing-circularize it." Of
literature the girl knew scarcely anything; but she had an eager
ambition for better standards, and one day asked Hal to advise her in
her reading.

Not without misgivings he tried her with Stevenson's "Virginibus
Puerisque" and was delighted with the swiftness and eagerness of her
appreciation. Then he introduced her by careful selection to the poets,
beginning with Tennyson, through Wordsworth, to Browning, and thence to
the golden-voiced singers of the sonnet, and all of it she drank in with
a wistful and wondering delight. Soon her visits came to be of almost
daily occurrence. She would dart in of an evening, to claim or return a
book, and sit perched on the corner of the big work-table, like a
little, flashing, friendly bird; always exquisitely neat, always vividly
pretty and vividly alive. Sometimes the talk wandered from the status of
instructor and instructed, and touched upon the progress of the
"Clarion," the view which Milly's little world took of it, possible ways
of making it more interesting to the women readers to whom the "Cutie"
column was supposed to cater particularly. More than once the more
personal note was touched, and the girl spoke of her coming to the
Certina factory, a raw slip of a country creature tied up in calico, and
of Dr. Surtaine's kindness and watchfulness over her.

"He wanted to do well by me because of the old man--my father, I mean,"
she caught herself up, blushing. "They knew each other when I was a
kid."

"Where?" asked Hal.

"Oh, out east of here," she answered evasively.

Again she said to him once, "What I like about the 'Clarion' is that
it's trying to do something for _folks_. That's all the religion I could
ever get into my head: that human beings are mostly worth treating
decently. That counts for more than all your laws and rules and church
regulations. I don't like rules much," she added, twinkling up at him.
"I always want to kick 'em over, just as I always want to break through
the police lines at a fire."

"But rules and police lines are necessary for keeping life orderly,"
said Hal.

"I suppose so. But I don't know that I like things too orderly. My
teacher called me a lawless little demon, once, and I guess I still am.
Suppose I should break all the rules of the office? Would you fire me?"
And before he could answer she was up and had flashed away.

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 circumstance, 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 fellowship of the office,
were rushing 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.

But there were compensations. The blatant cocks had occasional
opportunity for crowing. With no small justification did they shrill
their triumph over the Midland & Big Muddy Railroad. The "Mid and Mud"
had declared war upon the "Clarion," following the paper's statement of
the true cause of the Walkersville wreck, as suggested by Marchmont, the
reporter, at the breakfast. Marchmont himself had been banished from
the railroad offices. All sources of regular news were closed to him.
Therefore, backed by the "Clarion," he proceeded to open up a line of
irregular news which stirred the town. For years the "Mid and Mud" had
given to Worthington a passenger service so bad that no community less
enslaved to a _laissez-faire_ policy would have endured it. Through
trains drifted in anywhere from one to four hours late. Local trains,
drawn by wheezy, tin-pot locomotives of outworn pattern, arrived and
departed with such casualness as to render schedules a joke, and not
infrequently "bogged down" between stations until some antediluvian
engine could be resuscitated and sent out to the rescue. The day coaches
were of the old, dangerous, wooden type. The Pullman service was utterly
unreliable, and the station in which the traveling populace of
Worthington spent much of its time, a draft-ridden barn. Yet Worthington
suffered all this because it was accustomed to it and lacked any means
of making protest vocal.

Then the "Clarion" started in publishing its "Yesterday's Time-Table of
the Midland & Big Muddy R.R. Co." to this general effect:

Day Express Due 10 A.M. Arrived 11.43 A.M. Late 1 hour 43 min.
Noon Local Due 12 A.M. Arrived 2.10 P.M. Late 2 hrs. 10 min.
Sunrise Limited Due 3 P.M. Arrived 3.27 P.M. Late 0 hrs. 27 min.

And so on. From time to time there would appear, underneath, a special
item, of which the following is an example:

"The Eastern States Through Express of the Midland & Big Muddy Railroad
arrived and departed on time yesterday. When asked for an explanation of
this phenomenon, the officials declined to be interviewed."

Against this "persecution," the "Mid and Mud" authorities at first
maintained a sullen silence. The "Clarion" then went into statistics. It
gave the number of passengers arriving and departing on each delayed
train, estimated the value of their time, and constructed tables of the
money value of time lost in this way to the city of Worthington, per
day, per month, and per year. The figures were not the less inspiring of
thought, for being highly amusing.

People began to take an interest. They brought or sent in personal
experiences. A commercial traveler, on the 7.50 train (arriving at
10.01, that day), having lost a big order through missing an
appointment, told the "Clarion" about it. A contractor's agent, gazing
from the windows of the stalled "Limited" out upon "fresh woods and
pastures new" twenty miles short of Worthington, what time he should
have been at a committee meeting of the Council, forfeited a $10,000
contract and rushed violently into "Clarion" print, breathing slaughter
and law-suits. Judge Abner Halloway and family, arriving at the New York
pier in a speeding taxi from the Eastern Express (five hours late out of
Worthington), just in time to see the Lusitania take his forwarded
baggage for a pleasant outing in Europe, hired a stenographer (male) to
tell the "Clarion" what he thought of the matter, in words of seven
syllables. Professor Beeton Trachs, the globe-trotting lecturer, who
arrived via the "M. and M." for an eight o'clock appearance, at 9.54,
gave the "Clarion" an interview proper to the occasion of having to
abjure a $200 guaranty, wherein the mildest and most judicial opinion
expressed by Professor Trachs was that crawling through a tropical
jungle on all fours was speed, and being hurtled down a mountain on the
bosom of a landslide, comfort, compared to travel on the "Mid and Mud."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28