CHAPTER XXII
PATRIOTS
Worthington's Old Home Week is a gay, gaudy, and profitable institution. During the six days of its course the city habitually maintains the atmosphere of a three-ringed circus, the bustle of a county fair, and the business ethics of the Bowery. Allured by widespread advertising and encouraged by special rates on the railroads, the countryside for a radius of one hundred miles pours its inhabitants into the local metropolis, their pockets filled with greased dollars. Upon them Worthington lavishes its left-over and shelf-cluttering merchandise, at fifty per cent more than its value, amidst general rejoicings. As Festus Willard once put it, "There is a sound of revelry by night and larceny by day." But then Mr. Willard, being a manufacturer and not a retailer, lacks the subtler sympathy which makes lovely the spirit of Old Home hospitality.
This year the celebration was to outdo itself. Because of the centennial feature, no less a person than the President of the United States, who had spent a year of his boyhood at a local school, was pledged to attend. In itself this meant a record crowd. Crops had been good locally and the toil-worn agriculturist had surplus money wherewith to purchase phonographs, gold teeth, crayon enlargements of self and family, home instruction outfits for hand-painting sofa cushions, and similar prime necessities of farm life. To transform his static savings into dynamic assets for itself was Worthington's basic purpose in holding its gala week. And now this beneficent plan was threatened by one individual, and he young, inexperienced, and a new Worthingtonian, Mr. Harrington Surtaine. This unforeseen cloud upon the horizon of peace, prosperity, and happiness rose into the ken of Dr. Surtaine the day after the appearance of the sewing-girl editorial.
Dr. Surtaine hadn't liked that editorial. With his customary air of long-suffering good nature he had told Hal so over his home-made apple pie and rich milk, at the cheap and clean little luncheon place which he patronized. Hal had no defense or excuse to offer. Indeed, his reference to the topic was of the most casual order and was immediately followed by this disconcerting question:
"What about the Rookeries epidemic, Dad?"
"Epidemic? There's no epidemic, Boyee."
"Well, there's something. People are dying down there faster than they ought to. It's spread beyond the Rookeries now."
This was no news to the big doctor. But it was news to him that Hal knew it.
"How do you know?" he asked.
"I've been down there and ran right upon it."
The father's affection and alarm outleapt his caution at this. "You better keep away from there, Boyee," he warned anxiously.
"If there's no epidemic, why should I keep away?"
"There's always a lot of infection down in those tenements," said Dr. Surtaine lamely.
"Dad, when you made your report for the 'Clarion' did you tell us all you knew?"
"All except some medical technicalities," said the Doctor, who never told a lie when a half-lie would serve.
"I've just had a talk with the health officer, Dr. Merritt."
"Merritt's an alarmist."
"He's alarmed this time, certainly."
"What does he think it is?"
"It?" said Hal, a trifle maliciously. "The epidemic?"
"Epidemic's a big word. The sickness."
"How can he tell? He's had no chance to see the cases. They still mysteriously disappear before he can get to them. By the way, your Dr. De Vito seems to have a hand in that."
"Hal, I wish you'd get over your trick of seeing a mystery in everything," said his father with a mild and tempered melancholy. "It's a queer slant to your brain."
"There's a queer slant to this business of the Rookeries somewhere, but I don't think it's in my brain. Merritt says the Mayor is holding him off, and he believes that Tip O'Farrell, agent for the Rookeries, has got the Mayor's ear. He wants to force the issue by quarantining the whole locality."
"And advertise to the world that there's some sort of contagion there!" cried Dr. Surtaine in dismay.
"Well, if there is—"
"Think of Old Home Week," adjured his father.
"The whole thing would be stamped out long before then."
"But not the panic and the fear of it. Hal, I do hope you aren't going to take this up in the 'Clarion.'"
"Not at present. There isn't enough to go on. But we're going to watch, and if things get any worse I intend to do something. So much I've promised Merritt."
The result of this conversation was that Dr. Surtaine called a special meeting of the Committee on Arrangements for Old Home Week. In conformity with the laws of its genus, the committee was made up of the representative business men of the city, with a clergyman or two for compliment to the Church, and most of the newspaper owners or editors, to enlist the "services of the press."
Its chairman was thoroughly typical of the mental and ethical attitude of the committee. He felt comfortably assured that as he thought upon any question of local public import, so would they think. Nevertheless, he didn't intend to tell them all he knew. Such was not the purpose of the meeting. Its real purpose, not to put too fine a point on it, was to intimidate the newspapers, lest, if the "Clarion" broke the politic silence, others might follow; and, as a secondary step, to furnish funds for the handling of the Rookeries situation. Since Dr. Surtaine designed to reveal as little as possible to his colleagues, he naturally began his speech with the statement that he would be perfectly frank with them.
"There's more sickness than there ought to be in the Rookeries district," he proceeded. "It isn't dangerous, but it may prove obstinate. Some sort of malarious affection, apparently. Perhaps it may be necessary to do some cleaning up down there. In that case, money may be needed."
"How much?" somebody asked.
"Five thousand dollars ought to do it."
"That's a considerable sum," another pointed out.
"And this is a serious matter," retorted the chairman. "Many of us remember the disastrous effect that rumors of smallpox had on Old Home Week, some years back. We can't afford to have anything of that sort this time. An epidemic scare might ruin the whole show."
Now, an epidemic to these hard-headed business men was something that kept people away from their stores. And the rumor of an epidemic might accomplish that as thoroughly as the epidemic itself. Therefore, without questioning too far, they were quite willing to spend money to avert such disaster. The sum suggested was voted into the hands of a committee of three to be appointed by the chair.
"In the mean time," continued Dr. Surtaine, "I think we should go on record to the effect that any newspaper which shall publish or any individual who shall circulate any report calculated to inspire distrust or alarm is hostile to the best interests of the city."
"Well, what newspaper is likely to do that?" demanded Leroy Vane, of the "Banner."
"If it's any it'll be the 'Clarion,'" growled Colonel Parker, editor of the "Telegram."
"The newspaper business in this town is going to the dogs since the 'Clarion' changed hands," said Carney Ford, of the "Press," savagely. "Nobody can tell what they're going to do next over there. They're keeping the decent papers on the jump all the time, with their yellowness and scarehead muckraking."
"A big sensational story about an epidemic would be great meat for the 'Clarion,'" said Vane. "What does it care for the best interests of the town?"
"As an editor," observed Dr. Surtaine blandly, "my son don't appear to be over-popular with his confrères."
"Why should he be?" cried Parker. "He's forever publishing stuff that we've always let alone. Then the public wants to know why we don't get the news. Get it? Of course we get it. But we don't always want to print it. There's such a thing as a gentleman's understanding in the newspaper business."
"So I've heard," replied the chairman. "Well, gentlemen, the boy's young. Give him time."
"I'll give him six months, not longer, to go on the way he's been going," said John M. Gibbs, with a vicious snap of his teeth.
"Does the 'Clarion' really intend to publish anything about an epidemic?" asked Stickler, of the Hotel Stickler.
"Nothing is decided yet, so far as I know. But I may safely say that there's a probability of their getting up some kind of a sensational story."
"Can't you control your own son?" asked some one bluntly.
"Understand this, if you please, gentlemen. Over the Worthington 'Clarion' I have no control whatsoever."
"Well, there's where the danger lies," said Vane. "If the 'Clarion' comes out with a big story, the rest of us have got to publish something to save our face."
"What's to be done, then?" cried Stickler. "This means a big loss to the hotel business."
"To all of us," amended the chairman. "My suggestion is that our special committee be empowered to wait upon the editor of the 'Clarion' and talk the matter over with him."
Embodied in the form of a motion this was passed, and the chair appointed as that committee three merchants, all of whom were members of the Publication Committee of the Retail Union; and, as such, exercised the most powerful advertising control in Worthington. Dr. Surtaine still pinned his hopes to the dollar and its editorial potency.
Unofficially and privately these men invited to go with them to the "Clarion" office Elias M. Pierce, who had not been at the meeting. At first he angrily refused. He wished to meet that young whelp Surtaine nowhere but in a court of law, he announced. But after Bertram Hollenbeck, of the Emporium, the chairman of the subcommittee, had outlined his plan, Pierce took a night to think it over, and in the morning accepted the invitation with a grim smile.
Forewarned by his father, who had begged that he consider carefully and with due regard to his own future the proposals to be set before him, Hal was ready to receive the deputation in form. Pierce's presence surprised him. He greeted all four men with equally punctilious politeness, however, and gave courteous attention while Hollenbeck spoke for his colleagues. The merchant explained the purpose of the visit; set forth the importance to the city of the centennial Old Home Week, and urged the inadvisability of any sensationalism which might alarm the public.
"We have sufficient assurance that there's nothing dangerous in the present situation," he said.
"I haven't," said Hal. "If I had, there would be nothing further to be said. The 'Clarion' is not seeking to manufacture a sensation."
"What is the 'Clarion' seeking to do?" asked Stensland, another of the committee.
"Discover and print the news."
"Well, it isn't news until it's printed," Hollenbeck pointed out comfortably. "And what's the use of printing that sort of thing, anyway? It does a lot of people a lot of harm; but I don't see how it can possibly do any one any good."
"Oh, put things straight," said Stensland. "Here, Mr. Editor; you've stirred up a lot of trouble and lost a lot of advertising by it. Now, you start an epidemic scare and kill off the biggest retail business of the year, and you won't find an advertiser in town to stand by you. Is that plain?"
"Plain coercion," said Hal.
"Call it what you like," began the apostle of frankness, when Hollenbeck cut in on him.
"No use getting excited," he said. "Let's hear Mr. Surtaine's views. What do you think ought to be done about the Rookeries?"
In anticipation of some such question Hal had been in consultation with Dr. Elliot and the health officer that morning.
"Open up the Rookeries to the health authorities and to private physicians other than Dr. De Vito. Call Tip O'Farrell's blockade off. Clean out and disinfect the tenements. If necessary, quarantine every building that's suspected."
"Why, what do you think the disease is?" cried Hollenbeck, taken aback by the positiveness of Hal's speech.
"Do you tell me. You've come here to give directions."
"Something in the nature of malaria," said Hollenbeck, recovering himself. "So there's no call for extreme measures. The Old Home Week Committee will look after the cleaning-up. As for quarantine, that would be a confession. And we want to do the thing as quietly as possible."
"You've come to the wrong shop to buy quiet," said Hal mildly.
"Now listen to me." Elias M. Pierce sat forward in his chair and fixed his stony gaze on Hal's face. "This is what you'll do with the 'Clarion.' You'll agree here and now to print nothing about this alleged epidemic."
Hal turned upon him a silent but benign regard. The recollection of that contained smile lent an acid edge to the magnate's next speech.
"You will further promise," continued Pierce, "to quit all your muckraking of the business interests and business men of this town."
Still Hal smiled.
"And you will publish to-morrow a full retraction of the article about my daughter and an ample apology for the attack upon me."
The editorial expression did not change.
"On those conditions," Pierce concluded, "I will withdraw the criminal proceedings against you, but not the civil suit. The indictment will be handed down to-morrow."
"I'm ready for it."
"Are you ready for this? We have two unbiased witnesses—unbiased, mind you—who will swear that the accident was Miss Cleary's own fault. And—" there was the hint of an evil smile on the thin lips, as they released the final words very slowly—"and Miss Cleary's own affidavit to that effect."
For the moment the words seemed a jumble to Hal. Meaning, dire and disastrous, informed them, as he repeated them to himself. Providentially his telephone rang, giving him an excuse to go out. He hurried over to McGuire Ellis.
"I'm afraid it's right, Boss," said the associate editor, after hearing Hal's report.
"But how can it be? I saw the whole thing."
"E.M. Pierce is rich. The nurse is poor. That is, she has been poor. Lately I've had a man keeping tabs on her. Since leaving the hospital, she's moved into an expensive flat, and has splurged out into good clothes. Whence the wherewithal?"
"Bribery!"
"Without a doubt."
"Then Pierce has got us."
"It looks so," admitted Ellis sorrowfully.
"But we can't give in," groaned Hal. "It means the end of the 'Clarion.' What is there to do?"
"Play for time," advised the other. "Go back there with a stiff upper lip and tell 'em you won't be bulldozed or hurried. Then we'll have a council."
"Suppose they demand an answer."
"Refuse. See here, Hal. I know Pierce. He'd never give up his revenge, for any good he could do to the cause of the city by holding off the 'Clarion' on this Old Home Week business if there weren't something else. Pierce isn't built that way. That bargain offer is mighty suspicious. There's a weak spot in his case somewhere. Hold him off, and we'll hunt for it."
None could have guessed, from the young editor's bearing, on his return, that he knew himself to be facing a crucial situation. With the utmost nonchalance he insisted that he must have time for consideration. Influenced by Pierce, who was sure he had Hal beaten, the committee insisted on an immediate reply to their ultimatum.
"You go up against this bunch," advised Stensland, "and it's dollars to doughnuts the receiver'll have your 'Clarion' inside of six months."
Hal leaned indolently against the door. "Speaking of dollars and doughnuts," he said, "I'd like to tell you gentlemen a little story. You all know who Babson is, the biggest stock-market advertiser in the country. Well, Babson's vanity is to be a great man outside of his own line. He owns a big country place down East, near the old town of Singatuck; one of the oldest towns on the coast. Babson is as new as Singatuck is old. The people didn't care much about his patronizing ways. Nevertheless, he kept doing things to 'brace the town up,' as he put it. The town needed it. It was about bankrupt. The fire department was a joke, the waterworks a farce, and the town hall a ruin. Babson thought this gave him a chance to put his name on the map. So he said to his local factotum, 'You go down to the meeting of the selectmen next week, shake a bagful of dollars in front of those old doughnuts, and make 'em this proposition: I'll give five thousand dollars to the fire department, establish a water system, rebuild the town hall, pay off the town debt and put ten thousand dollars into the treasury if they'll change the name of the town from Singatuck to Babson.'
"The factotum went to the meeting and presented the proposition. Now Singatuck is proud of its age and character with a local pride that is quite beyond the Babson dollars or the Babson type of imagination. His proposition aroused no debate. There was a long silence. Then an old moss-farmer who hadn't had money enough to buy himself a new tooth for twenty years arose and said: 'I move you, Mister Chairman, that this body thank Mr. Babson kindly for his offer and tell him to go to hell.'
"The motion was carried unanimously, and the meeting proceeded to the consideration of other business. I cite this, gentlemen, merely as evidence that the disparity between the dollar and the doughnut isn't as great as some suppose."
The third member of the committee, who had thus far spoken no word, peered curiously at Hal from above a hooked nose. He was Mintz, of Sheffler and Mintz.
"Do I get you righd?" he observed mildly; "you're telling us to go where the selectmen sent Misder Babson."
"Plumb," replied Hal, with his most amiable expression. "So far as any immediate decision is concerned."
"Less ged oud," said Mr. Mintz to his colleagues. They got out. Mintz was last to go. He came over to Hal.
"I lyg your story," he said. "I lyg to see a feller stand up for his bizniz against the vorlt. I'm a Jew. I hope you lose—but—goot luck!"
He held out his hand. Hal took it. "Mr. Mintz, I'm glad to know you," said he earnestly.
Nothing now remained for the committee to do but to expend their allotted fund to the best purpose. Their notion of the proper method was typically commercial. They thought to buy off an epidemic. Many times this has been tried. Never yet has it succeeded. It embodies one of the most dangerous of popular hygienic fallacies, that the dollar can overtake and swallow the germ.
CHAPTER XXIII
CREEPING FLAME
For sheer uncertainty an epidemic is comparable only to fire on shipboard. The wisest expert can but guess at the time or place of its catastrophic explosion. It may thrust forth here and there a tongue of threat, only to subside and smoulder again. Sometimes it "sulks" for so protracted a period that danger seems to be over. Then, without warning, comes swift disaster with panic in its train.
But one man in all Worthington knew, early, the true nature of the disease which quietly crept among the Rookeries licking up human life, and he was well trained in keeping his own counsel. In this crisis, whatever Dr. Surtaine may have lacked in scrupulosity of method, his intentions were good. He honestly believed that he was doing well by his city in veiling the nature of the contagion. Scientifically he knew little about it save in the most general way; and his happy optimism bolstered the belief that if only secrecy could be preserved and the fair repute of the city for sound health saved, the trouble would presently die out of itself. He looked to his committee to manage the secrecy. Unfortunately this particular form of trouble hasn't the habit of dying out quietly and of itself. It has to be fought and slain in the open.
As Dr. Surtaine's committee hadn't the faintest notion of how to handle their five-thousand-dollar appropriation, they naturally consulted the Honorable Tip O'Farrell, agent for and boss of the Rookeries. And as the Honorable Tip had a very definite and even eager notion of what might be done with that amount of ready cash, he naturally volunteered to handle the fund to the best advantage, which seemed quite reasonable, since he was familiar with the situation. Therefore the disposition of the money was left to him. Do not, however, oh high-minded and honorable reader, be too ready to suppose that this was the end of the five thousand dollars, so far as the Rookeries are concerned. Politicians of the O'Farrell type may not be meticulous on points of finance. But they are quite likely to be human. Tip O'Farrell had seen recently more misery than even his toughened sensibilities could uncomplainingly endure. Some of the fund may have gone into the disburser's pocket. A much greater portion of it, I am prepared to affirm, was distributed in those intimate and effective forms of beneficence which, skillfully enough managed, almost lose the taint of charity. O'Farrell was tactful and he knew his people. Many cases over which organized philanthropy would have blundered sorely, were handled with a discretion little short of inspired. Much wretchedness was relieved; much suffering and perhaps some lives saved.
The main issue, nevertheless, was untouched. The epidemic continued to spread beneath the surface of silence. O'Farrell wasn't interested in that side of it. He didn't even know what was the matter. What money he expended on that phase of the difficulty was laid out in perfecting his system of guards, so that unauthorized doctors couldn't get in, or unauthorized news leak out. Also he continued to carry on an irregular but costly traffic in dead bodies. Meantime, the Special Committee of the Old Home Week Organization, thus comfortably relieved of responsibility and the appropriation, could now devote itself single-mindedly to worrying over the "Clarion."
According to Elias M. Pierce, no mean judge of men, there was nothing to worry about in that direction. That snake, he considered, was scotched. It might take time for said snake, who was a young snake with a head full of poison (his uncomplimentary metaphor referred, I need hardly state, to Mr. Harrington Surtaine), to come to his serpentine senses; but in the end he must realize that he was caught. The committee wasn't so smugly satisfied. Time was going on and there was no word, one way or the other, from the "Clarion" office.
Inside that office more was stirring than the head of it knew about. On a warmish day, McGuire Ellis, seated at his open window, had permitted the bland air of early June to lull him to a nap, which was rudely interrupted by the intrusion of a harsh point amongst his waistcoat buttons. Stumbling hastily to his feet he confronted Dr. Miles Elliot.
"Wassamatter?" he demanded, in the thick tones of interrupted sleep. "What are you poking me in the ribs for?"
"McBurney's point," observed the visitor agreeably. "Now, if you had appendicitis, you'd have yelped. You haven't got appendicitis."
"Much obliged," grumped Mr. Ellis. "Couldn't you tell me that without a cane?"
"I spoke to you twice, but all you replied was 'Hoong!' As I speak only the Mandarin dialect of Chinese—"
"Sit down," said Ellis, "and tell me what you're doing in this den of vice and crime."
"Vice and crime is correct," confirmed the physician. "You're still curing cancer, consumption, corns, colds, and cramps in print, for blood money. I've come to report."
McGuire Ellis stared. "What on?"
"The Rookeries epidemic."
"Quick work," the journalist congratulated him sarcastically. "The assignment is only a little over two months old."
"Well, I might have guessed, any time in those two months, but I wanted to make certain."
"Are you certain?"
"Reasonably."
"What is it?"
"Typhus."
"What's that? Something like typhoid?"
"It bears about the same relation to typhoid," said the Doctor, eyeing the other with solemnity, "as housemaid's knee does to sunstroke."
"Well, don't get funny with me. I don't appreciate it. Is it very serious?"
"Not more so than cholera," answered the Doctor gravely.
"Hey! Then why aren't we all dead?"
"Because it doesn't spread so rapidly. Not at first, anyway."
"How does it spread? Come on! Open up!"
"Probably by vermin. It's rare in this country. There was a small epidemic in New York in the early nineties. It was discovered early and confined to one tenement. There were sixty-three people in the tenement when they clapped on the quarantine. Thirty-two of 'em came out feet first. The only outside case was a reporter who got in and wrote a descriptive article. He died a week later."
"Sounds as if this little affair of the Rookeries might be some story."
"It is. There may have been fifty deaths to date; or maybe a hundred. We don't know."
Ellis sat back in his chair with a bump. "Who's 'we'?"
"Dr. Merritt and myself."
"The Health Bureau is on, then. What's Merritt going to do about it?"
"What can he do?"
"Give out the whole thing, and quarantine the district."
"The Mayor will remove him the instant he opens his mouth, and kill any quarantine. Merritt will be discredited in all the papers—unless the 'Clarion' backs him. Will it?"
Ellis dropped his head in his hand. "I don't know," he said finally.
"Not running an honest paper this week?" sneered the physician lightly. "By the way, where's Young Hopeful?"
"See here, Dr. Elliot," said Ellis. "You're a good old scout. If you hadn't poked me in the stomach I believe I'd tell you something."
"Try it," encouraged the other.
"All right. Here it is. They've put it up to Hal Surtaine pretty stiff, this gang of perfectly honorable business men, leading citizens, pillars of the church, porch-climbers, and pickpockets who run the city. I guess you know who I mean."
Dr. Elliot permitted himself a reserved grin.
"All right. They've got him in a clove hitch. At least it looks so. And one of the conditions for letting up on him is that he suppresses all news of the epidemic. Then they'll have the 'Clarion' right where they've got every other local paper."
"Nice town, Worthington," observed Dr. Elliot, with easy but apparently irrelevant affability.
But McGuire Ellis went red. "It's easy enough for you to sit there and be righteous," he said. "But get this straight. If the young Boss plays straight and tells 'em all to go to hell, it'll be a close call of life or death for the paper."
"And if he doesn't?"
"Easy going. Advertising'll roll in on us. Money'll come so fast we can't dodge it. Are you so blame sure what you'd do in those conditions?"
"Mac," said the brusque physician, for the first time using the familiar name: "between man and man, now: what about the boy?"
From the ancient loyalty of his race sprang McGuire Ellis's swift word, "My hand in the fire for any that loves him."
"But—stanch, do you think?" persisted the other.
"I hope it."
"Well, I wish it was you owned the 'Clarion.'"
"Do you, now? I don't. How do I know what I'd do?"
"Human lives, Mac: human lives, on this issue."
"Who else knows it's typhus, Doc?"
"Nobody but Merritt and me. You bound me in confidence, you know."
"Good man!"
"There's one other ought to know, though."
"Who's that?"
"Norman Hale."
"The Reverend Norman's all right. We could do with a few more ministers like him around the place. But why, in particular, should he know?"
"For one thing, he suspects, anyway. Then, he's down in the slums there most of the time, and he could help us. Besides, he's got some rights of safety himself. He's out in the reception room now, under guard of that man-eating office boy of yours."
"All right, if you say so."
Accordingly the Reverend Norman Hale was summoned, sworn to confidence, and informed. He received the news with a quiver of his long, gaunt features. "I was afraid it was something like that," he said. "What's to be done?"
"I'll tell you my plan," said Ellis, who had been doing some rapid thinking. "I'll put the best man in the office on the story, and give him a week on it if necessary. How soon is the epidemic likely to break, Doctor?"
"God knows," said the physician gravely.
"Well, we'll hurry him as much as we can. Our reporter will work independently. No one else on the staff will know what he's doing. I'll expect you two and Dr. Merritt to give him every help. I'll handle the story myself, at this end. And I'll see that it's set up in type by our foreman, whom I can trust to keep quiet. Therefore, only six people will know about it. I think we can keep the secret. Then, when I've got it all in shape, two pages of it, maybe, with all the facts, I'll pull a proof and hit the Boss right between the eyes with it. That'll fetch him, I think."
The others signified their approval. "But can't we do something in the mean time?" asked Dr. Elliot. "A little cleaning-up, maybe? Who owns that pest-hole?"
"Any number of people," said the clergyman. "It's very complicated, what with ground leases, agencies, and trusteeships. I dare say some of the owners don't even know that the property belongs to them."
"One of the things we might find out," said Ellis. "Might be interesting to publish."
"I'll send you a full statement of what I got about the burials in Canadaga County," promised Dr. Elliot. "Coming along, Mr. Hale?"
"No. I want to speak to Mr. Ellis about another matter." The clergyman waited until the physician had left and then said, "It's about Milly Neal."
"Well, what about her?"
"I thought you could tell me. Or perhaps Mr. Surtaine."
Remembering that encounter outside of the road house weeks before, Ellis experienced a throb of misgiving.
"Why Mr. Surtaine?" he demanded.
"Because he's her employer."
Ellis gazed hard at the young minister. He met a straight and clear regard which reassured him.
"He isn't, now," said he.
"She's left?"
"Yes."
"That's bad," worried the clergyman, half to himself.
"Bad for the paper. 'Kitty the Cutie' was a feature."
"Why did she leave?"
"Just quit. Sent in word about ten days ago that she was through. No explanation."
"Mr. Ellis, I'm interested in Milly Neal," said the minister, after some hesitation. "She's helped me quite a bit with our club down here. There's a lot in that girl. But there's a queer, un-get-at-able streak, too. Do you know a man named Veltman?"
"Max? Yes. He's foreman of our composing-room."
"She's been with him a great deal lately."
"Why not? They're old friends. No harm in Veltman."
"He's a married man."
"That so! I never knew that. Well, 'Kitty the Cutie' ought to be keen enough to take care of herself."
"There's the difficulty. She doesn't seem to want to take care of herself. She's lost interest in the club. For a time she was drinking heavily at some of the all-night places. And this news of her quitting here is worst of all. She seemed so enthusiastic about the work."
"Her job's open for her if she wants to come back."
"Good! I'm glad to hear that. It gives me something to work on."
"By the way," said McGuire Ellis, "how do you like the paper?" Sooner or later he put this question to every one with whom he came in contact. What he found out in this way helped to make him the journalistic expert he was.
"Pretty well," hesitated the other.
"What's wrong with it?" inquired Ellis.
"Well, frankly, some of your advertising."
"We're the most independent paper in this town on advertising," stated Ellis with conviction.
"I know you dropped the Sewing Aid Society advertisement," admitted Hale. "But you've got others as bad. Yes, worse."
"Show 'em to me."
Leaning forward to the paper on Ellis's desk, the visitor indicated the "copy" of Relief Pills. Ellis's brow puckered.
"You're the second man to kick on that," he said. "The other was a doctor."
"It's a bad business, Mr. Ellis. It's the devil's own work. Isn't it hard enough for girls to keep straight, with all the temptations around them, without promising them immunity from the natural results of immorality?"
"Those pills won't do the trick," blurted Ellis.
"They won't?" cried the other in surprise.
"So doctors tell me."
"Then the promise is all the worse," said the clergyman hotly, "for being a lie."
"Well, I have troubles enough over the news part of the paper, without censoring the ads. When an advertiser tries to control news or editorial policy, I step in. Otherwise, I keep out. There's my platform."
Hale nodded. "Let me know how I can help on the epidemic matter," said he, and took his leave.
"The trouble with really good people," mused McGuire Ellis, "is that they always expect other people to be as good as they are. And that's expensive," sighed the philosopher, turning back to his desk.
While Ellis and his specially detailed reporter were working out the story of the Rookeries epidemic in the light of Dr. Elliot's information, Hal Surtaine, floundering blindly, sought a solution to his problem, which was the problem of his newspaper. Indeed, it meant, as far as he could judge, the end of the "Clarion" in a few months, should he decide to defy Elias M. Pierce. Against the testimony of the injured nurse, he could scarcely hope to defend the libel suits successfully. Even though the assessed damages were not heavy enough to wreck him, the loss of prestige incident to defeat would be disastrous. Moreover, there was the chance of imprisonment or a heavy fine on the criminal charge. Furthermore, if he decided to print the account of the epidemic (always supposing that he could discover what it really was), practically every local advertiser would desert him in high dudgeon over the consequent ruin of the centennial celebration. Was it better to publish an honest paper for the few months and die fighting, or compromise for the sake of life, and do what good he might through the agency of a bound, controlled, and tremulous journalistic policy?
For the first time, now that the crisis was upon him, he realized to the full how profoundly the "Clarion" had become part of his life. At the outset, only the tool of a casual though fascinating profession, later, the lever of an expanding and increasing power, the paper had insensibly intertwined with every fiber of his ambition. To a degree that startled him he had come to think, feel, and hope in terms of this thought-machine which he owned, which owned him. It had taken on for him a character; his own, yet more than his own and greater. For it spoke, not of his spirit alone, but with a composite voice; sometimes confused, inarticulate, only semi-expressive; again as with the tongues of prophecy. His ship was beginning to find herself; to evolve, from the anarchic clamor of loose effort, a harmony and a personality.
With the thought came a warm glow of loyalty to his fellow workers; to the men who, knowing more than he knew, had yet accepted his ideals so eagerly and stood to them so loyally; to the spirit that had flashed to meet his own at that first "Talk-It-Over" breakfast, and had never since flagged; to Ellis, the harsh, dogged, uncouth evangel, preaching his strange mission of honor; to Wayne, patient, silent, laborious, dependable; to young Denton, a "gentleman unafraid," facing the threats of E.M. Pierce; even to portly Shearson, struggling against such dismal odds for his poor little principle of journalism—to make the paper pay. How could he, their leader, recant his doctrine before these men?
Yet—and the qualifying thought dashed cold upon his enthusiasm—what did the alternative imply for them? The almost certain loss of their places. To be thrown into the street, a whole officeful of them, seeking jobs which didn't exist, on the collapse of the "Clarion." Could he do that to them? Did he not, at least, owe them a living? Some had come to the "Clarion" from other papers, even from other cities, attracted by its enterprise, by its "ginger," by the rumor of a fresh and higher standard in journalism. What of them? For himself he had only reputation, ethical standard, the intangible matter of existence to consider. For them it might be hunger and want. Here, indeed, was a conflicting ideal.
His mind reverted to the things he had been able to get done, in the few months of his editorial tenure; the success of some of his campaigns, the educational effect of them even where they had failed of their definite object, as had the fight for the Consumers' League. One article had put the chief gambler of the city on the defensive to an extent which seriously crippled his business. Another had killed forever the vilest den in town, a saloon back-room where vicious women gathered in young boys and taught them to snuff cocaine, and had led to an anti-cocaine ordinance, which the saloon element, who instinctively resented any species of "reform" as a threat against business, opposed. Whereupon, Hal, in an editorial on the prohibition movement, had tartly pointed out that where the saloons were openly vaunting themselves disdainful of public decency, the public was in immediate process of wiping out the saloons. Which citation of fact caused a cold chill to permeate the spines of the liquor interests, and led the large, sleek leader of that clan to make a surpassingly polite and friendly call upon Hal, who, rather to his surprise, found that he liked the man very much. They had parted, indeed, on hearty terms and the understanding that there would be no further objection to the "coke-law" from the saloon keepers. There wasn't. The liquor men kept faith.
Though aiming at independence in politics, the "Clarion" had been drawn into a number of local political fights, and more than once had gone wrong in advocating an apparently useful measure only to find itself serving some hidden politician's selfish ends. These same politicians, Hal came in time to learn, were not all bad, even the worst of them. The toughest and crookedest of the grafting aldermen felt a genuine interest and pride in his vice-sodden ward, and when the "Clarion" had helped to abate a notorious nuisance there, dropped in to see the editor.
"Mr. Surtaine," said he, chewing his cigar with some violence, "you and me ain't got much in common. You think I'm a grafter, and I think you're a lily-finger. But I came to thank you just the same for helping us out over there."
"Glad to help you out when I can," said Hal, with his disarming smile: "or to fight you when I have to."
"Shake," said the heeler. "I guess we'll average down into pretty good enemies. Lemme know whenever I can do you a turn."
Then there was the electric light fight. Since the memory of man Worthington had paid the most exorbitant gas rate in the State. The "Clarion" set out to inquire why. So insistent was its thirst for information that the "Banner" and the "Telegram" took up the cudgels for the public-spirited corporation which paid ten per cent dividends by overcharging the local public. Thereupon the "Clarion" pointed out that the president of the gas company was the second largest stockholder in the "Telegram," and that the local editorial writer of the "Banner" derived, for some unexplained reason, a small but steady income in the form of salary, from the gas company. This exposure was regarded as distinctly "not clubby" by the newspaper fraternity in general: but the public rather enjoyed it, and made such a fuss over it that a legislative investigation was ordered. Meantime, by one of those curious by-products of the journalistic output, the local university preserved to itself the services of its popular professor of political economy, who was about to be discharged for lèse majesté, in that he had held up as an unsavory instance of corporate control, the Worthington Gas Company, several of whose considerable stockholders were members of the institution's board of trustees. The "Clarion" made loud and lamentable noises about this, and the board reconsidered hastily. Louder and much more lamentable were the noises made by the president of the university, the Reverend Dr. Knight, a little brother of one of the richest and greatest of the national corporations, in denunciation of the "Clarion": so much so, indeed, that they were published abroad, thereby giving the paper much extensive free advertising.
Pleasant memories, these, to Hal. Not always pleasant, perhaps, but at least vividly interesting, the widely varying types with whom his profession had brought him into contact: McGuire Ellis, "Tip" O'Farrell, the Reverend Norman Hale, Dr. Merritt, Elias M.—
The mechanism of thought checked with a wrench. Pierce had it in his power to put an end to all this. He must purchase the right to continue, and at Pierce's own price. But was the price so severe? After all, he could contrive to do much; to carry on many of his causes; to help build up a better and cleaner Worthington; to preserve a moiety of his power, at the sacrifice of part of his independence; and at the same time his paper would make money, be successful, take its place among the recognized business enterprises of the town. As for the Rookeries epidemic upon which all this turned, what did he really know of it, anyway? Very likely it had been exaggerated. Probably it would die out of itself. If lives were endangered, that was the common chance of a slum.
Then, of a sudden, memory struck at his heart with the thrust of a more vital, more personal, dread. For one day, wandering about in the stricken territory, he had seen Esmé Elliot entering a tenement doorway.
CHAPTER XXIV
A FAILURE IN TACTICS
Miss Eleanor Stanley Maxwell Elliot, home from her wanderings, stretched her hammock and herself in it between two trees in a rose-sweet nook at Greenvale, and gave herself up to a reckoning of assets and liabilities. Decidedly the balance was on the wrong side. Miss Esmé could not dodge the unseemly conclusion that she was far from pleased with herself. This was perhaps a salutary frame of mind, but not a pleasant one. If possible, she was even less pleased with the world in which she lived. And this was neither salutary nor pleasant. Furthermore, it was unique in her experience. Hitherto she had been accustomed to a universe made to her order and conducted on much the same principle. Now it no longer ran with oiled smoothness.
Her trip on the Pierce yacht had been much less restful than she had anticipated. For this she blamed that sturdy knight of the law, Mr. William Douglas. Mr. Douglas's offense was that he had inveigled her into an engagement. (I am employing her own term descriptive of the transaction.) It was a crime of brief duration and swift penalty. The relation had endured just four weeks. Possibly its tenure of life might have been longer had not the young-middle-aged lawyer accepted, quite naturally, an invitation to join the cruise of the Pierce family and his fiancée. The lawyer's super-respectful attitude toward his principal client disgusted Esmé. She called it servile.
For contrast she had the memory of another who had not been servile, even to his dearest hope. There were more personal contrasts of memory, too; subtler, more poignant, that flushed in her blood and made the mere presence of her lover repellent to her. The status became unbearable. Esmé ended it. In plain English, she jilted the highly eligible Mr. William Douglas. To herself she made the defense that he was not what she had thought, that he had changed. This was unjust. He had not changed in the least; he probably never would change from being the private-secretary type of lawyer. Toward her, in his time of trial, he behaved not ill. Justifiably, he protested against her decision. Finding her immovable, he accepted the prevailing Worthingtonian theory of Miss Elliot's royal prerogative as regards the male sex, and returned, miserably enough, to his home and his practice.
Another difficulty had arisen to make distasteful the Pierce hospitality. Kathleen Pierce, in a fit of depression foreign to her usually blithe and easy-going nature, had become confidential and had blurted out certain truths which threw a new and, to Esmé, disconcerting light upon the episode of the motor accident. In her first appeal to Esmé, it now appeared, the girl had been decidedly less than frank. Therefore, in her own judgment of Hal and the "Clarion," Esmé had been decidedly less than just. In her resentment, Esmé had almost quarreled with her friend. Common honesty, she pointed out, required a statement to Harrington Surtaine upon the point. Would Kathleen write such a letter? No! Kathleen would not. In fact, Kathleen would be d-a-m-n-e-d, darned, if she would. Very well; then it remained only (this rather loftily) for Esmé herself to explain to Mr. Surtaine. Later, she decided to explain by word of mouth. This would involve her return to Worthington, which she had come to long for. She had become sensible of a species of homesickness.
In some ill-defined way Harrington Surtaine was involved in that nostalgia. Not that she had any desire to see him! But she felt a certain justifiable curiosity—she was satisfied that it was justifiable—to know what he was doing with the "Clarion," since her established sphere of influence had ceased to be influential. Was he really as unyielding in other tests of principle as he had shown himself with her? Already she had altered her attitude to the extent of admitting that it was principle, even though mistaken. Esmé had been subscribing to the "Clarion," and studying it; also she had written, withal rather guardedly, to sundry people who might throw light on the subject; to her uncle, to Dr. Hugh Merritt, her old and loyal friend largely by virtue of being one of the few young men of the place who never had been in love with her (he had other preoccupations), to young Denton the reporter, who was a sort of cousin, and to Mrs. Festus Willard, who, alone of the correspondents, suspected the underlying motive. From these sundry informants she garnered diverse opinions; the sum and substance of which was that, on the whole, Hal was fighting the good fight and with some success. Thereupon Esmé hated him harder than before—and with considerably more difficulty.
On a late May day she had slipped quietly back into Worthington. That small portion of the populace which constituted Worthington society was ready to welcome her joyously. But she had no wish to be joyously welcomed. She didn't feel particularly joyous, herself. And society meant going to places where she would undoubtedly meet Will Douglas and would probably not meet Hal Surtaine. Esmé confessed to herself that Douglas was rather on her conscience, a fact which, in itself, marked some change of nature in the Great American Pumess. She decided that society was a bore. For refuge she turned to her interest in the slums, where the Reverend Norman Hale, for whom she had a healthy, honest respect and liking, was, so she learned, finding his hands rather more than full. Always an enthusiast in her pursuits, she now threw herself into this to the total exclusion of all other interests.
To herself she explained this on the theory that she needed something to occupy her mind. Something else she really meant, for Mr. Harrington Surtaine was now occupying it to an inexcusable extent. She wished very much to see Harrington Surtaine, and, for the first time in her life, she feared what she wished. What she had so loftily announced to Kathleen Pierce as her unalterable determination toward the editor of the "Clarion" wasn't as easy to perform as to promise. Yet, the explanation of the partial error, into which the self-excusatory Miss Pierce had led her, was certainly due him, according to her notions of fair play. If she sent for him to come, he would, she shrewdly judged, decline. The alternative was to beard him in his office. In the strengthening and self-revealing solitude of her garden, this glowing summer day, Esmé sat trying to make up her mind. A daring brown thrasher, his wings a fair match for the ruddy-golden glow in the girl's eyes, hopped into her haunt, and twittered his counsel of courage.
"I'll do it NOW," said Esmé, and the bird, with a triumphant chirp of congratulation, swooped off to tell the news to the world of wings and flowers.
To the consequent interview there was no witness. So it may best be chronicled in the report made by the interviewer to her friend Mrs. Festus Willard, who, in the cool seclusion of her sewing-room, was overwhelmed by a rush of Esmé to the heart, as she put it. Not having been apprised of Miss Elliot's conflicting emotions since her departure, Mrs. Willard's mind was as a page blank for impressions when her visitor burst in upon her, pirouetted around the room, appropriated the softest corner of the divan, and announced spiritedly:
"You needn't ask me where I've been, for I won't tell you; or what I've been doing, for it's my own affair; anyway, you wouldn't be interested. And if you insist on knowing, I've been revisiting the pale glimpses of the moon—at three o'clock P.M."
"What do you mean, moon?" inquired Mrs. Willard, unconsciously falling into a pit of slang.
"The moon we all cry for and don't get. In this case a haughty young editor."
"You've been to see Hal Surtaine," deduced Mrs. Willard.
"You have guessed it—with considerable aid and assistance."
"What for?"
"On a matter of journalistic import," said Miss Elliot solemnly.
"But you don't cry for Hal Surtaine," objected her friend, reverting to the lunar metaphor.
"Don't I? I'd have cried—I'd have burst into a perfect storm of tears—for him—or you—or anybody who so much as pointed a finger at me, I was so scared."
"Scared? You! I don't believe it."
"I don't believe it myself—now," confessed Esmé, candidly. "But it felt most extremely like it at the time."
"You know I don't at all approve of—"
"Of me. I know you don't, Jinny. Neither does he."
"What did you do to him?"
"Me? I cooed at him like a dove of peace.
"But he was very stiff and proud He said, 'You needn't talk so loud,'"
chanted Miss Esmé mellifluously.
"He didn't!"
"Well, if he didn't, he meant it. He wanted to know what the big, big D-e-v, dev, I was doing there, anyway."
"Norrie Elliot! Tell me the truth."
"Very well," said Miss Elliot, aggrieved. "You report the conversation, then, since you won't accept my version."
"If you would give me a start—"
"Just what he wouldn't do for me," interrupted Esmé. "I went in there to explain something and he pointed the finger of scorn at me and accused me of frequenting low and disreputable localities."
"Norrie!"
"Well," replied the girl brazenly, "he said he'd seen me about the Rookeries district; and if that isn't a low—"
"Had he?"
"Nothing more probable, though I didn't happen to see him there."
"What were you doing there?"
"Precisely what he wanted to know. He said it rather as if he owned the place. So I explained in words of one syllable that I went there to pick edelweiss from the fire escapes. Jinny, dear, you don't know how hard it is to crowd 'edelweiss' into one syllable until you've tried. It splutters."
"So do you," said the indignant Mrs. Willard. "You do worse; you gibber. If you weren't just the prettiest thing that Heaven ever made, some one would have slain you long ago for your sins."
"Pretty, yourself," retorted Esmé. "My real charm lies in my rigid adherence to the spirit of truth. Your young friend Mr. Surtaine scorned my floral jest. He indicated that I ought not to be about the tenements. He said there was a great deal of sickness there. That was why I was there, I explained politely. Then he said that the sickness might be contagious, and he muttered something about an epidemic and then looked as if he wished he hadn't."
"I've heard some talk of sickness in the Rookeries. Ought you to be going there?" asked the other anxiously.
"Mr. Surtaine thinks not. Quite severely. And in elderly tones. Naturally I asked him what kind of an epidemic it was. He said he didn't know, but he was sure the place was dangerous, and he was surprised that Uncle Guardy hadn't warned me. Uncle Guardy had, but I don't do everything I'm warned about. So then I asked young Mr. Editor why, as he knew there was a dangerous epidemic about, he should warn little me privately instead of warning the big public, publicly."
"Meddlesome child! Can you never learn to keep your hands off?"
"I was spurring him to his editorial duties.
"But he was very proud and stiff ... He said that he would tell me, if—"
lilted Miss Esmé, rising to do a pas seul upon the Willards' priceless Anatolian rug.
"Sit down," commanded her hostess. "If—what?"
"If nothing. Just if. That's the end of the song. Don't you know your Lewis Carroll?
"I sent a message to the fish, I told them, 'This is what I wish.' The little fishes of the sea, They sent an answer—"
"I don't want to know about the fish," disclaimed Mrs. Willard vehemently. "I want to know what happened between you and Hal Surtaine."
"And you the Vice-President of the Poetry Club!" reproached Esmé. "Very well. He was very proud and—Oh, I said that before. But he really was, this time. He said, 'Our last discussion of the policy of the "Clarion" closed that topic between us.' Somebody called him away before I could think of anything mean and superior enough to answer, and when he came back—always supposing he isn't still hiding in the cellar—I was no longer present."
"Then you didn't give him the message you went for."
"No. Didn't I say I was scared?"
Mrs. Willard excused herself, ostensibly to speak to a maid; in reality to speak to a telephone. On her return she made a frontal attack:—
"Norrie, what made you break your engagement to Will Douglas?"
"Why? Don't you approve?"
"Did you break it for the same reason that drove you into it?"
"What reason do you think drove me into it?"
"Hal Surtaine."
"He didn't!" she denied furiously.
"And you didn't break it because of him?"
"No! I broke it because I don't want to get married," cried the girl in a rush of words. "Not to Will Douglas. Or to—to anybody. Why should I? I don't want to—I won't," she continued, half laughing, half sobbing, "go and have to bother about running a house and have a lot of babies and lose my pretty figure—and get fat—and dowdy—and slow-poky—and old. Look at Molly Vane: twins already. She's a horrible example. Why do people always have to have children—"
She stopped, abruptly, herself stricken at the stricken look in the other's face. "Oh, Jinny, darling Jinny," she gasped; "I forgot! Your baby. Your little, dead baby! I'm a fool; a poor little silly fool, chattering of realities that I know nothing about."
"You will know some day, my dear," said the other woman, smiling valiantly. "Don't deny the greatest reality of all, when it comes. Are you sure you're not denying it now?"
The sunbeams crept and sparkled, like light upon ruffled waters, across Esmé's obstinately shaken head.
"Perhaps you couldn't help hurting him. But be sure you aren't hurting yourself, too."
"That's the worst of it," said the girl, with one of her sudden accesses of sweet candor. "I needn't have hurt him at all. I was stupid." She paused in her revelation. "But he was stupider," she declared vindictively; "so it serves him right."
"How was he stupider?"
"He thought," said Esmé with sorrowful solemnity, "that I was just as bad as I seemed. He ought to have known me better."
The older woman bent and laid a cheek against the sunny hair. "And weren't you just as bad as you seemed?"
"Worse! Anyway, I'm afraid so," said the confessional voice, rather muffled in tone. "But I—I just got led into it. Oh, Jinny, I'm not awfully happy."
Mrs. Willard's head went up and she cocked an attentive ear, like an expectant robin. "Some one outside," said she. "I'll be back in a moment. You sit there and think it over."
Esmé curled back on the divan. A minute later she heard the curtains part at the end of the dim room, and glanced up with a smile, to face, not Jeannette Willard, but Hal Surtaine.
"You 'phoned for me, Lady Jinny," he began: and then, with a start, "Esmé! I—I didn't expect to find you here."
"Nor I to see you," she said, with a calmness that belied her beating heart. "Sit down, please. I have something to tell you. It's what I really came to the office to say."
"Yes?"
"About Kathleen Pierce."
Hal frowned. "Do you think there can be any use—"
"Please," she begged, with uplifted eyes of entreaty. "She—she didn't tell me the truth about that interview with your reporter. It was true; but she made me think it wasn't. She confessed to me, and she feels very badly. So do I. I believed that you had deliberately made that up, about her saying that she didn't turn back because she wanted to catch a train. I believed, too, that the editorial was written after our—our talk. I'm sorry."
Hal stood above her, looking rather stern, and a little old and worn, she thought.
"If that is an apology, it is accepted," he said with surface politeness.
To him she was, in that moment, a light-minded woman apologizing for the petty misdeed, and paying no heed to the graver wrong that she had done him. Jeannette Willard could have set him right in a word; could have shown him what the girl felt, unavowedly to herself but with underlying conviction, that for so great an offense no apology could suffice; nothing short of complete surrender. But Mrs. Willard was not there to help out. She was waiting hopefully, outside.
"And that is all?" he said, after a pause, with just a shade of contempt in his voice.
"All," she said lightly, "unless you choose to tell me how the 'Clarion' is getting on."
"As well as could be expected. We pay high for our principles. But thus far we've held to them. You should read the paper."
"I do."
"To expect your approval would be too much, I suppose."
"No. In many ways I like it. In fact, I think I'll renew my subscription."
It was innocently said, without thought of the old playful bargain between them, which had terminated with the mailing of the withered arbutus. But to Hal it seemed merely a brazen essay in coquetry; an attempt to reconstitute the former relation, for her amusement.
"The subscription lists are closed, on the old terms," he said crisply.
"Oh, you couldn't have thought I meant that!" she whispered; but he was already halfway down the room, on the echo of his "Good-afternoon, Miss Elliot."
As before, he turned at the door. And he carried with him, to muse over in the depths of his outraged heart once more, the mystery of that still and desperate smile. Any woman could have solved it for him. Any, except, possibly, Esmé Elliot.
"It didn't come out as I hoped, Festus," said the sorrowful little Mrs. Willard to her husband that evening. "I don't know that Hal will ever believe in her again. How can he be so—so stupidly unforgiving!"
"Always the man's fault, of course," said her big husband comfortably.
"No. She's to blame. But it's the fault of men in general that Norrie is what she is; the men of this town, I mean. No man has ever been a man with Norrie Elliot."
"What have they been?"
"Mice. It's a tradition of the place. They lie down in rows for her to trample on. So of course she tramples on them."
"Well, I never trampled on mice myself," observed Festus Willard. "It sounds like uncertain footing. But I'll bet you five pounds of your favorite candy against one of your very best kisses, that if she undertakes to make a footpath of Hal Surtaine she'll get her feet hurt."
"Or her heart," said his wife. "And, oh, Festus dear, it's such a real, warm, dear heart, under all the spoiled-childness of her."