A PARTNERSHIP
All the adjectives in the social register were exhausted by the daily
papers in describing Mrs. Festus Willard's dance. Without following them
into that verbal borderland wherein "recherché" vies with "exclusive,"
and "chic" disputes precedence with "distingué," it is sufficient for
the purposes of this narrative to chronicle the fact that the pick of
Worthington society was there, and not much else. Also, if I may borrow
from the Society Editor's convenient phrase-book, "Among those present"
was Mr. Harrington Surtaine.
For reasons connected with his new venture, Hal had come late. He was
standing near the doorway wondering by what path to attain to an
unidentified hostess, when Miss Esmé Elliot, at the moment engaged with
that very hostess on some matter of feminine strategy with which we have
no concern, spied him.
"Who is the young Greek godling, hopelessly lost in the impenetrable
depths of your drawing-room?" she propounded suddenly.
"Who? What? Where?" queried Mrs. Willard, thus abruptly recalled to her
duties.
"Yonder by the doorway, looking as if he didn't know a soul."
"It's some stranger," said the hostess, trying to peer around an
intervening palm. "I must go and speak to him."
"Wait. Festus has got him."
For the host, a powerful, high-colored man in his early forties, with a
slight limp, had noticed the newcomer and was now introducing himself.
Miss Elliot watched the process with interest.
"Jinny," she announced presently, "I want that to play with."
The stranger turned a little, so that his full face was shown. "It's Hal
Surtaine!" exclaimed Mrs. Willard.
"I don't care who it is. It looks nice. Please, mayn't I have it to play
with?"
"Will you promise not to break it? It used to be a particular pet of
mine."
"When?"
"Oh, years ago. When you were in your cradle."
"Where?"
"On the St. Lawrence. Several summers. He was my boy-knight, and
chaperon, and protector. Such a dear, chivalrous boy!"
"Was he in love with you?" demanded Miss Elliot with lively interest.
"Of course he wasn't. He was a boy of fifteen, and I a mature young
woman of twenty-one."
"He _was_ in love with you," accused the girl, noting a brightness in
her friend's color.
"There was a sort of knightly devotion," admitted the other demurely.
"There always is, isn't there, in a boy of that age, for a woman years
older?"
"And you didn't know him at first?"
"It's ten years since I've set eyes on him. He doesn't even know that I
am the Mrs. Festus Willard who is giving this party."
"Festus is looking around for you. They'll be over here in a minute. No!
Don't get up yet. I want you to do something for me."
"What is it, Norrie?"
"I'm not going to feel well, about supper-time."
"Why not?"
"Would _you_ feel well if you'd been in to dinner three times in the
last week with Will Douglas, and then had to go in to supper with him,
too?"
"But I thought you and Will--"
"I'm tired of having people think," said Miss Elliot plaintively. "Too
much Douglas! Yes; I shall be quite indisposed, about one dance before
supper."
"I'll send you home."
"No, you won't, Jinny, dear. Because I shall suddenly recover, about two
minutes before the oysters arrive."
"Norrie!"
"Truly I shall. Quite miraculously. And you're to see that the young
Greek godling doesn't get any other partner for supper--"
"Esmé!!"
"--because I'm sure he'd rather have me," she concluded superbly.
"Eleanor Stanley Maxwell Elliot!"
"Oh, you may call me _all_ my names. I'm accustomed to abuse from you.
But you'll arrange it, _dear_ Jinny, won't you!"
"Did you ever fail of anything when you put on that wheedling face and
tone?"
"Never," said Miss Elliot with composure, but giving her friend a little
hug. "Here they come. I fly. Bring him to me later."
Piloted by Festus Willard, Hal crossed the floor, and beheld, moving to
meet him with outstretched hands, a little woman with an elfin face and
the smile of a happy child.
"Have you forgotten me, Hal?"
"Lady Jeannette!" he cried, the old boyhood name springing to his lips.
"What are you doing here?"
"Didn't Festus tell you?" She looked fondly up at her big husband. "I
didn't know that the surprise would last up to the final moment."
"It's the very best surprise that has happened to me in Worthington,"
declared Hal emphatically.
"We're quite prepared to adopt you, Surtaine," said Willard pleasantly.
"Jinny has never ceased to wonder why she heard nothing from you in
reply to her note telling of our engagement."
"Never got it," said Hal promptly. "And I've wondered why she dropped me
so unaccountably. It's rather luck for me, you know," he added, smiling,
"to find friends ready-made in a strange town."
"Oh, you'll make friends enough," declared Mrs. Willard. "The present
matter is to make acquaintances. Come and dance this dance out with me
and then I'll take you about and introduce you. Are you as good a dancer
as you used to be?"
Hal was, and something more. And in his hostess he had one of the best
partners in Worthington. Cleverly she had judged that the "Boston" with
her, if he were proficient, would be the strongest recommendation to the
buds of the place. And, indeed, before they had gone twice about the
floor, many curious and interested eyes were turned upon them. Not the
least interested were those of Miss Elliot, who privately decided, over
a full and overflowing programme, that she would advance her recovery to
one dance before the supper announcement.
"You're going to be a social success, Hal," whispered his partner. "I
feel it. And _where_ did you learn that delightful swing after the dip?"
"Picked it up on shipboard. But I shan't have much time for gayeties.
You see, I've become a workingman."
"Tell me about it to-morrow. You're to dine with us; quite _en famille_.
You _must_ like Festus, Hal."
"I should think that would be easy."
"It is. He is just the finest, cleanest, straightest human being in the
world," she said soberly. "Now, come away and meet a million people."
So late was it that most of the girls had no vacancies on their
programmes. But Jeannette Willard was both a diplomat and a bit of a
despot, socially, and several of the young eligibles relinquished, with
surprisingly good grace, so Hal felt, their partners, in favor of the
newcomer. He did not then know the tradition of Worthington's best set,
that hospitality to a stranger well vouched for should be the common
concern of all. Very pleasant and warming he found this atmosphere,
after his years abroad, with its happy, well-bred frankness, its open
comradeship, and obvious, "first-name" intimacies. But though every one
he met seemed ready to extend to him, as a friend of the Willards, a
ready welcome, he could not but feel himself an outsider, and at the
conclusion of a dance he drew back into a side passage, to watch for a
time.
Borne on a draught of air from some invisibly opening door behind him
there came to his nostrils the fairy-spice of the arbutus-scent. He
turned quickly, and saw her almost at his shoulder, the girl of the
lustrous face. Behind her was Festus Willard.
"Ah, there you are, Surtaine," he said. "I've been looking for you to
present you to Miss Elliot. Esmé, this is Mr. Harrington Surtaine."
She neither bowed nor moved in acknowledgment of Hal's greeting, but
looked at him with still, questioning eyes. The springtide hue of the
wild flower at her breast was matched in her cheek. Her head was held
high, bringing out the pure and lovely line of chin and throat. To Hal
it seemed that he had never seen anything so beautiful and desirable.
"Is it a bet?" Festus Willard's quiet voice was full of amusement. "Have
you laid a wager as to which will keep silent longest?"
At this, Hal recovered himself, though stumblingly.
"'Fain would I speak,'" he paraphrased, "'but that I fear to--to--to--'"
"Stutter," suggested Willard, with solicitous helpfulness. The girl
broke into a little trill of mirth, too liquid for laughter; being
rather the sound of a brooklet chuckling musically over its private
delectations.
"If I could have a dance with you," suggested Hal, "I'm sure it would
help my aphasia."
"I'm afraid," she began dubiously, "that--No; here's one just before
supper. If you haven't that--"
"No: I haven't," said Hal hastily. "It's awfully good of you--and lucky
for me."
"I'll be with Mrs. Willard," said the girl, nodding him a cheerful
farewell.
Just what or who his partners for the next few dances were, Hal could
not by any effort recall the next day. He was conscious, on the floor,
only of an occasional glimpse of her, a fugitive savor of the wildwood
fragrance, and then she had disappeared.
Later, as he returned from a talk with Festus Willard outside, he became
aware of the challenge of deep-hued, velvety eyes, regarding him with a
somewhat petulant expression, and recognized his acquaintance of the
motor car and the railroad terminal.
"You'd forgotten me," accused Miss Kathleen Pierce, pouting, as he came
to greet her.
Hal's disclaimer had sufficient diplomatic warmth to banish her
displeasure. She introduced to him as Dr. Merritt a striking-looking,
gray-haired young man, who had come up at the same time with an
anticipatory expression. This promptly vanished when she said
offhandedly to him:
"You've had three dances with me already, Hugh. I'm going to give this
one to Mr. Surtaine if he wants it."
"Of course I want it," said Hal.
"Not that you deserve it," she went on. "You should have come around
earlier. I'm not in the habit of giving dances this late in the
evening."
"How could I break through the solid phalanx of supplicating admirers?"
"At least, you might have tried. I want to try that new step I saw you
doing with Mrs. Willard. And I always get what I want."
"Unfortunate young lady!"
"Why unfortunate?"
"To have nothing seem unattainable. Life must pall on you terribly."
"Indeed, it doesn't. I like being a spoiled child, don't you? Don't you
think it's fun having everything you want to buy, and having a leading
citizen for a father?"
"Is your father a leading citizen?" asked Hal, amused.
"Of course. So's yours. Neither of them quite knows which is the most
leading. Dr. Surtaine is the most popular, but I suppose Pop is the most
influential. Between the two of them they pretty much run this little
old burg. Of course," she added with careless insolence, "Pop has got it
all over Dr. Surtaine socially.
"I humbly feel that I am addressing local royalty," said Hal, smiling
sardonically.
"Who? Me? Oh, I'm only the irresponsible child of wealth and power. Dr.
Merritt called me that once--before I got him tamed." Turning to look at
the gray young man who stood not far off, and noting the quiet force and
competence of the face, Hal hazarded a guess to himself that the very
frank young barbarian with whom he was talking was none too modest in
her estimate of her own capacities. "Mrs. Willard is our local queen,"
she continued. "And Esmé Elliot is the princess. Have you met Esmé yet?"
"Yes."
"Then, of course, nobody else has a chance--so long as you're the newest
toy. Still, you might find a spare hour between-times to come and call
on us. Come on; let's dance."
"Pert" was the mildest term to which Hal reduced his characterization of
Miss Pierce, by the time the one-step ended. Nevertheless, he admitted
to himself that he had been amused. His one chief concern now, however,
was the engagement with Miss Elliot.
When finally his number came around, he found her calmly explaining to a
well-favored young fellow with a pained expression that he must have
made a mistake about the number, while Mrs. Willard regarded her with
mingled amusement and disfavor.
"Don't expect me to dance," she said as Hal approached. "I've twisted my
foot."
"I'm sorry," said he blankly.
"Let's find a quiet place where we can sit. And then you may get me some
supper."
His face lighted up. Esmé Elliot remarked to herself that she had seldom
seen a more pleasing specimen of the youth of the species.
"This is rather like a fairy-gift," he began eagerly, as they made their
way to a nook under the stairway, specially adapted to two people of
hermit tastes. "I shouldn't have dared to expect such good fortune."
"You'll find me quite a fairy-godmother if you're good. Besides," she
added with calm audacity, "I wanted you to myself."
"Why?" he asked, amused and intrigued.
"Curiosity. My besetting sin. You're a phenomenon."
"An ambiguous term. It may mean merely a freak."
"A new young man in Worthington," she informed him, "is a phenomenon, a
social phenomenon. Of course he may be a freak, also," she added
judicially.
"Newness is a charm that soon wears off."
"Then you're going to settle down here?"
"Yes. I've joined the laboring classes."
"What kind of labor?"
"Journalism. I've just started in, to-day."
"Really! Which paper?"
"The 'Clarion.'"
Her expressive face changed. "Oh," she said, a little blankly.
"You don't like the 'Clarion'?"
"I almost never see it. So I don't know. And you're going to begin at
the bottom? That's quite brave of you."
"No; I'm going to begin at the top. That's braver. Anyway, it's more
reckless. I've bought the paper."
"Have you! I hadn't heard of it."
"Nobody's heard of it yet. No outsider. You're the first."
"How delightful!" She leaned closer and looked into his face with
shining eyes. "Tell me more. What are you going to do with it?"
"Learn something about it, first."
"It's rather yellow, isn't it?"
"Putting it mildly, yes. That's one of the things I want to change."
"Oh, I wish I owned a newspaper!"
"Do you? Why?"
"For the power of it. To say what you please and make thousands listen."
The pink in her cheeks deepened. "There's nothing in the world like the
thrill of that sense of power. It's the one reason why I'd be almost
willing to be a man."
"Perhaps you wouldn't need to be. Couldn't you exert the power without
actually owning the newspaper?"
"How?"
"By exercising your potent influence upon the obliging proprietor," he
suggested smiling.
There came a dancing light in her eyes. "Do you think I'd make a good
Goddess-Outside-the-Machine, to the 'Daily Clarion'?"
"Charming! For a two-cent stamp--no, for a spray of your arbutus, I'll
sell you an editorial sphere of influence."
"Generous!" she cried. "What would my duties be?"
"To advise the editor and proprietor on all possible points," he
laughed.
"And my privileges?"
"The right of a queen over a slave."
"We move fast," she said. Her fingers went to the cluster of
delicate-hued bells in her bodice. But it was a false gesture. Esmé
Elliot was far too practiced in her chosen game to compromise herself to
comment by allowing a man whom she had just met to display her favor in
his coat.
"Am I to have my price?" His voice was eager now. She looked very lovely
and childlike, with her head drooping, consideringly, above the flowers.
"Give me a little time," she said. "To undertake a partnership on five
minutes' notice--that isn't business, is it?"
"Nor is this--wholly," he said, quite low.
Esmé straightened up. "I'm starved," she said lightly. "Are you not
going to get me any supper?"
After his return she held the talk to more impersonal topics, advising
him, with an adorable assumption of protectiveness, whom he was to meet
and dance with, and what men were best worth his while. At parting, she
gave him her hand.
"I will let you know," she said, "about the--the sphere of influence."
Hal danced several more numbers, with more politeness than enjoyment,
then sought out his hostess to say good-night.
"I'll see you to-morrow, then," she said: "and you shall tell me all
your news."
"You're awfully good to me, Lady Jeannette," said he gratefully.
"Without you I'd be a lost soul in this town."
"Most people are good to you, I fancy, Hal," said she, looking him over
with approval. "As for being a lost soul, you don't look it. In fact
you look like a very well-found soul, indeed."
"It _is_ rather a cheerful world to live in," said Hal with apparent
irrelevance.
"I hope they haven't spoiled you," she said anxiously. "Are you vain,
Hal? No: you don't look it."
"What on earth should I be vain about? I've never done anything in the
world."
"No? Yet you've improved. You've solidified. What have you been doing to
yourself? Not falling in love?"
"Not that, certainly," he replied, smiling. "Nothing much but
traveling."
"How did you like Esmé Elliot?" she asked abruptly.
"Quite attractive," said Hal in a flat tone.
"Quite attractive, indeed!" repeated his friend indignantly. "In all
your travelings, I don't believe you've ever seen any one else half as
lovely and lovable."
"Local pride carries you far, Lady Jeannette," laughed Hal.
"And I _had_ intended to have her here to dine to-morrow; but as you're
so indifferent--"
"Oh, don't leave her out on my account," said Hal magnanimously.
"I believe you're more than half in love with her already."
"Well, you ought to be a good judge unless you've wholly forgotten the
old days," retorted Hal audaciously.
Jeannette Willard laughed up at him. "Don't try to flirt with a
middle-aged lady who is most old-fashionedly in love with her husband,"
she advised. "Keep your bravo speeches for Esmé! She's used to them."
"Rather goes in for that sort of thing, doesn't she?"
"You mean flirtation? Someone's been talking to you about her," said
Mrs. Willard quickly. "What did they say?"
"Nothing in particular. I just gathered the impression."
"Don't jump to any conclusions about Esmé," advised his friend. "Most
men think her a desperate flirt. She does like attention and admiration.
What woman doesn't? And Esmé is very much a woman."
"Evidently!"
"If she seems heartless, it's because she doesn't understand. She enjoys
her own power without comprehending it. Esmé has never been really
interested in any man. If she had ever been hurt, herself, she would be
more careful about hurting others. Yet the very men who have been
hardest hit remain her loyal friends."
"A tribute to her strategy."
"A finer quality than that. It is her own loyalty, I think, that makes
others loyal to her. But the men here aren't up to her standard. She is
complex, and she is ambitious, without knowing it. Fine and clean as our
Worthington boys are, there isn't one of them who could appeal to the
imagination and idealism of a girl like Esmé Elliot. For Esmé, under all
that lightness, is an idealist; the idealist who hasn't found her
ideal."
"And therefore hasn't found herself."
She flashed a glance of inquiry and appraisal at him. "That's rather
subtle of you," she said. "I hope you don't know _too_ much about women,
Hal."
"Not I! Just a shot in the dark."
"I said there wasn't a man here up to her standard. That isn't quite
true. There is one,--you met him to-night,--but he has troubles of his
own, elsewhere," she added, smiling. "I had hoped--but there has always
been a friendship too strong for the other kind of sentiment between him
and Esmé."
"For a guess, that might be Dr. Merritt," said Hal.
"How did you know?" she cried.
"I didn't. Only, he seems, at a glance, different and of a broader gauge
than the others."
"You're a judge of men, at least. As for Esmé, I suppose she'll marry
some man much older than herself. Heaven grant he's the right one! For
when she gives, she will give royally, and if the man does not meet her
on her own plane--well, there will be tragedy enough for two!"
"Deep waters," said Hal. The talk had changed to a graver tone.
"Deep and dangerous. Shipwreck for the wrong adventurer. But El Dorado
for the right. Such a golden El Dorado, Hal! The man I want for Esmé
Elliot must have in him something of woman for understanding, and
something of genius for guidance, and, I'm afraid, something of the
angel for patience, and he must be, with all this, wholly a man."
"A pretty large order, Lady Jeannette. Well, I've had my warning.
Good-night."
"Perhaps it wasn't so much warning as counsel," she returned, a little
wistfully. "How poor Esmé's ears must be burning. There she goes now.
What a picture! Come early to-morrow."
Hal's last impression of the ballroom, as he turned away, was summed up
in one glance from Esmé Elliot's lustrous eyes, as they met his across
her partner's shoulder, smiling him a farewell and a remembrance of
their friendly pact.
"Honey-Jinny," said Mrs. Willard's husband, after the last guest had
gone; "I don't understand about young Surtaine. Where did he get it?"
"Get what, dear? One might suppose he was a corrupt politician."
"One might suppose he might be anything crooked or wrong, knowing his
old, black quack of a father. But he seems to be clean stuff all
through. He looks it. He acts it. He carries himself like it. And he
talks it. I had a little confab with him out in the smoking-room, and I
tell you, Jinny-wife, I believe he's a real youngster."
"Well, he had a mother, you know."
"Did he? What about her?"
"She was an old friend of my mother's. Dr. Surtaine eloped with her out
of her father's country place in Midvale. He was an itinerant peddler of
some cure-all then. She was a gently born and bred girl, but a mere
child, unworldly and very romantic, and she was carried away by the
man's personal beauty and magnetism."
"I can't imagine it in a girl of any sort of family."
"Mother has told me that he had a personal force that was almost
hypnotic. There must have been something else to him, too, for they say
that Hal's mother died, as desperately in love as she had been when she
ran away with him, and that he was almost crushed by her loss and never
wholly got over it. He transferred his devotion to the child, who was
only three years old when the mother died. When Hal was a mere child my
mother saw him once taking in dollars at a country fair booth,--just
think of it, dearest,--and she said he was the picture of his
girl-mother then. Later, when Professor Certain, as he called himself
then, got rich, he gave Hal the best of education. But he never let him
have anything to do with the Ellersleys--that was Mrs. Surtaine's name.
All the family are dead now."
"Well, there must be some good in the old boy," admitted Willard. "But I
don't happen to like him. I do like the boy. Blood does tell, Jinny. But
if he's really as much of an Ellersley as he looks, there's a bitter
enlightenment before him when he comes to see Dr. Surtaine as he really
is."
Meantime Hal, home at a reasonable hour, in the interest of his new
profession, had taken with him the pleasantest impressions of the
Willards' hospitality. He slept soundly and awoke in buoyant spirits for
the dawning enterprise. On the breakfast table he found, in front of his
plate, a bunchy envelope addressed in a small, strong, unfamiliar hand.
Within was no written word; only a spray of the trailing arbutus, still
unwithered of its fairy-pink, still eloquent, in its wayward, woodland
fragrance, of her who had worn it the night before.