McGUIRE ELLIS WAKES UP
On implication of the Highest Authority we have it that the leopard
cannot change his spots. The Great American Pumess is a feline of
another stripe. Stress of experience and emotion has been known to
modify sensibly her predatory characteristics. In the very beautiful
specimen of the genus which, from time to time, we have had occasion to
study in these pages, there had taken place, in a few short months, an
alteration so considerable as to be almost revolutionary.
Many factors had contributed to the result. No woman of inherent
fineness can live close to human suffering, as Esmé had lived in her
slum work, without losing something of that centripetal self-concern
which is the blemish of the present-day American girl. Constant
association with such men as Hugh Merritt and Norman Hale, men who saw
in her not a beautiful and worshipful maiden, but a useful agency in the
work which made up their lives, gave her a new angle from which to
consider herself. Then, too, her brief engagement to Will Douglas had
sobered her. For Douglas, whatever his lack of independence and
manliness in his professional relations, had endured the jilting with
quiet dignity. But he had suffered sharply, for he had been genuinely in
love with Esmé. She felt his pain the more in that there was the same
tooth gnawing at her own heart, though she would not acknowledge it to
herself. And this taught her humility and consideration. The Pumess was
not become a Saint, by any means. She still walked, a lovely peril to
every susceptible male heart. But she no longer thirsted with
unquenchable ardor for conquests.
Meek though a reformed pumess may be, there are limits to meekness.
When Miss Eleanor Stanley Maxwell Elliot woke up to find herself
pilloried as an enemy to society, in the very paper which she had tried
to save, she experienced mingled emotions shot through with fiery
streaks of wrath. Presently these simmered down to a residue of angry
amazement and curiosity. If you have been accustomed all your life to
regard yourself as an empress of absolute dominance over slavish
masculinity, and are suddenly subjected to a violent slap across the
face from the hand of the most highly favored slave, some allowance is
due you of outraged sensibilities. Chiefly, however Esmé wondered WHY.
WHY, in large capitals, and with an intensely ascendant inflection.
Her first impulse had been to telephone Hal a withering message. More
deliberate thought suggested the wisdom of making sure of her ground,
first. The result was a shock. From her still infuriated guardian she
had learned that, technically, she was the owner, with full moral
responsibility for the "Pest-Egg." The information came like a dash of
extremely cold water, which no pumess, reformed or otherwise, likes.
Miss Elliot sat her down to a thoughtful consideration of the "Clarion."
She found she was in good company. Several other bright and shining
lights of the local firmament, social, financial, and commercial, shared
the photographic notoriety. Slowly it was borne in upon her open mind
that she had not been singled out for reprehension; that she was simply
a part of the news, as Hal regarded news--no, as the "Clarion" regarded
news. That Hal would deliberately have let this happen, she declined to
believe. Unconsciously she clung to her belief in the natural
inviolability of her privilege. It must have been a mistake. Hal would
tell her so when he saw her. Yet if that were so, why had he sent word,
the day after, that he couldn't keep his appointment? Would he come at
all, now?
Doubt upon this point was ended when Dr. Elliot, admitted on the
strength of his profession to the typhus ward, and still exhibiting
mottlings of wrath on his square face, had repeated his somewhat
censored account of his encounter with "that puppy." Esmé haughtily
advised her dear Uncle Guardy that the "puppy" was her friend. Uncle
Guardy acidulously counseled his beloved Esmé not to be every species of
a mildly qualified idiot at one and the same time. Esmé elevated her
nose in the air and marched out of the room to telephone Hal Surtaine
forthwith. What she intended to telephone him (very distantly, of
course) was that her uncle had no authority to speak for her, that she
was quite capable of speaking for herself, and that she was ready to
hear any explanation tending to mitigate his crime--not in those words
precisely, but in a tone perfectly indicative of her meaning.
Furthermore, that the matter on which she had wished to speak to him was
a business matter, and that she would expect him to keep the broken
appointment later. None of which was ever transmitted. Fate, playing the
rôle of Miching Mallecho, prevented once again. Hal was out.
In the course of time, Esmé's quarantine (a little accelerated, though
not at any risk of public safety) was lifted and she returned to the
world. The battle of hygiene _vs_. infection was now at its height. Esmé
threw herself into the work, heart and soul. For weeks she did not set
eyes on Hal Surtaine, except as they might pass on the street. Twice she
narrowly missed him at the hospital where she found time to make an
occasional visit to Ellis. A quick and lively friendship had sprung up
between the spoiled beauty and the old soldier of the print-columns, and
from him, as soon as he was convalescent, she learned something of the
deeper meanings of the "Clarion" fight and of the higher standards which
had cost its owner so dear.
"I suppose," he said, "the hardest thing he ever had to do in his life
was to print your picture."
"Did he _have_ to print it?"
"Didn't he? It was news."
"And that's your god, isn't it, Mr. Mac?" said his visitor, smiling.
"It's only a small name for Truth. Good men have died for that."
"Or killed others for their ideal of it."
"Miss Esmé," said the invalid, "Hal Surtaine has had to face two tests.
He had to show up his own father in his paper."
"Yes. I read it. But I've only begun to understand it since our talks."
"And he had to print that about you. Wayne told me he almost killed the
story himself to save Hal. 'I couldn't bear to look at the boy's face
when he told me to run it,' Wayne said. And he's no sentimentalist.
Newspapermen generally ain't."
"_Aren't_ you?" said Esmé, with a catch in her breath. "I should think
you were, pretty much, at the 'Clarion' office."
From that day she knew that she must talk it out with Hal. Yet at every
thought of that encounter, her maidenhood shrank, affrighted, with a
sweet and tremulous fear. Inevitable as was the end, it might have been
long postponed had it not been for a word that Ellis let drop the day
when he left the hospital. Mrs. Festus Willard, out of friendship for
Hal, had insisted that the convalescent should come to her house until
his strength was quite returned, instead of returning to his small and
stuffy hotel quarters, and Esmé had come in her car to transfer him. It
was the day after the Talk-It-Over Breakfast at which Hal had announced
the prospective fall of the "Clarion."
"I'll be glad to get back to the office," said Ellis to Esmé. "They
certainly need me."
"You aren't fit yet," protested the girl.
"Fitter than the Boss. He's worrying himself sick."
"Isn't everything all right?"
"All wrong! It's this cussed Pierce libel case that's taking the heart
out of him."
"Oh!" cried Esmé, on a note of utter dismay. "Why didn't you tell me,
Mr. Mac?"
"Tell you? What do you know about it?"
"Lots! Everything." She fell into silent thoughtfulness. "I supposed
that you had heard from Mr. Pierce, or his lawyer, at the office. I
_must_ see Hal--Mr. Surtaine--now. Does he still come to see you?"
"Everyday."
"Send word to him to be at the Willards' at two to-morrow. And--and,
please, Mr. Mac, don't tell him why."
"Now, what kind of a little game is this?" began Ellis, teasingly. "Am I
an amateur Cupid, or what's my cue?" He looked into the girl's face and
saw tears in the great brown eyes. "Hello!" he said with a change of
voice. "What's wrong, Esmé? I'm sorry."
"Oh, _I'm_ wrong!" she cried. "I ought to have spoken long ago. No, no!
I'm all right now!" She smiled gloriously through her tears. "Here we
are. You'll be sure that he's there?"
"Fear not, but lean on Dollinger
And he will fetch you through"--
quoted the other in oratorical assurance, and turned to Mrs. Willard's
greeting.
At one-thirty on the following day, Mr. McGuire Ellis was where he
shouldn't have been, asleep in a curtained alcove window-seat of the big
Willard library. At one minute past two he was where he should have been
still less; that is, in the same place and condition. Now Mr. Ellis is
not only the readiest hair-trigger sleeper known to history, but he is
also one of the most profound and persistent. Entrances and exits
disturb him not, nor does the human voice penetrate to the region of
his dreams. To everything short of earthquake, explosion, or physical
contact, his slumber is immune. Therefore he took no note when Miss Esmé
Elliot came in, nor when, a moment later, Mr. Harrington Surtaine
arrived, unannounced. Nor, since he was thoroughly shut in by the
draperies, was either of them aware of his presence.
Esmé rose slowly to her feet as Hal entered. She had planned a
leading-up to her subject, but at sight of him she was startled out of
any greeting, even.
"Oh, how thin you look, and tired!" she exclaimed.
"Strenuous days, these," he answered. "I didn't expect to see you here.
Where's Ellis?"
"Upstairs. Don't go. I want to speak to you. Sit down there."
At her direction Hal drew up a chair. She took the corner of the lounge
near by and regarded him silently from under puckered brows.
"Is it about Ellis?" said Hal, alarmed at her hesitation.
"No. It is about Mr. Pierce. There won't be any libel suit."
"What!"
"No." She shook her head in reassurance of his evident incredulity.
"You've nothing to worry about, there."
"How can you know?"
"From Kathie."
"Did her father tell her?"
"She told her father. There's a dreadful quarrel."
"I don't understand at all."
"Kathie absolutely refuses to testify for her father. She says that the
accident was her own fault, and if there's a trial she will tell the
truth."
Before she had finished, Hal was on his feet. Her heart smote her as she
saw the gray worry pass from his face and his shoulders square as from
the relief of a burden lifted, "Has it lain so heavy on your mind?" she
asked pitifully.
"If you knew!" He walked half the length of the long room, then turned
abruptly. "You did that," he said. "You persuaded her."
"No. I didn't, indeed."
The eager light faded in his face. "Of course not. Why should you
after--Do you mind telling me how it happened?"
"It isn't my secret. But--but she has come to care very much for some
one, and it is his influence."
"Wonderful!" He laughed boyishly. "I want to go out and run around and
howl. Would you mind joining me in the college yell? Does Mac know?"
"Nobody knows but you."
"That's why Pierce kept postponing. And I, living under the shadow of
this! How can I thank you!"
"Don't thank me," she said with an effort. "I--I've known it for weeks.
I meant to tell you long ago, but I thought you'd have learned it before
now--and--and it was made hard for me."
"Was that what you had to tell me about the paper, when you asked me to
come to see you?"
She nodded.
"But how could I come?" he burst out. "I suppose there's no use--I must
go and tell Mac about this."
"Wait," she said.
He stopped, gazing at her doubtfully.
"I'm tearing down the tenement at Number 9."
"Tearing it down?"
"As a confession that--that you were right. But I didn't know I owned
it. Truly I didn't. You'll believe that, won't you?"
"Of course," he cried eagerly. "I did know it, but too late."
"If you'd known in time would you have--"
"Left that out of the paper?" he finished, all the life gone from his
voice. "No, Esmé. I couldn't have done that. But I could have said in
the paper that you didn't know."
"I thought so," she said very quietly.
He misinterpreted this. "I can't lie to you, Esmé," he said with a sad
sincerity. "I've lived with lies too long. I can't do it, not for any
hope of happiness. Do I seem false and disloyal to you? Sometimes I do
to myself. I can't help it. All a man can do is to follow his own light.
Or a woman either, I suppose. And your light and mine are worlds apart."
Again, with a stab of memory, he saw that desperate smile on her lips.
Then she spoke with the clear courage of her new-found womanliness.
"There is no light for me where you are not."
He took a swift step toward her. And at the call, sweetly and
straightly, she came to meet his arms and lips.
"Poor boy!" she said, a few minutes later, pushing a lock of hair from
his forehead. "I've let you carry that burden when a word from me would
have lifted it."
"Has there ever been such a thing as unhappiness in the world,
sweetheart?" he said. "I can't remember it. So I don't believe it."
"I'm afraid I've cost you more than I can ever repay you for," she said.
"Hal, tell me I've been a little beast!--Oh, no! That's no way to tell
it. Aren't you sorry, sir, that you ever saw this room?"
"Finest example of interior architecture I know of. Exact replica of the
plumb center of Paradise."
"It's where all your troubles began. You first met me here in this very
room."
"Oh, no! My troubles began from the minute I set eyes on you, that day
at the station."
"Don't contradict me." She laid an admonitory finger on his lips, then,
catching at his hand, gently drew him with her. "Right in that very
window-seat there--" She whisked the hangings aside, and brushed McGuire
Ellis's nose in so doing.
"Hoong!" snorted McGuire Ellis.
"Oh!" cried Esmé. "Were you there all the time? We--I--didn't know--Have
you been asleep?"
"I have been just that," replied the dormant one, yawning.
"I hope we haven't disturbed--" began Esmé in the same breath with Hal's
awkward "Sorry we waked you up, Mac."
"Don't be--" Ellis checked his familiar growl, looked with growing
suspicion from Esmé's flushed loveliness to Hal's self conscious
confusion, leaped to his feet, gathered the pair into a sudden, violent,
impartial embrace, and roared out:--
"Go ahead! _Be_ young! You can only be it once in a lifetime."
XXXVIII
THE CONVERT
Old Home Week passed in a burst of glory and profit. True to its
troublous type, the "Clarion" had interfered with the profit, in two
brief, lively, and effective campaigns. It had published a roster of
hotels which, after agreeing not to raise rates for the week, had
reverted to the old, tried and true principle of "all the traffic can
bear," with comparative tables, thereby causing great distress of mind
and pocket among the piratical. Backed by the Consumers' League, it had
again taken up the cudgels for the store employees, demanding that they
receive pay for overtime during the celebration and winning a partial
victory. No little rancor was, of course, stirred up among the
advertisers. The usual threats were made. But the business interests of
Worthington had begun to learn that threatening the "Clarion" was a
futile procedure, while advertisers were coming to a realization of the
fact that they couldn't afford to stay out of so strong a medium, even
at increased rates.
The raise in the advertising schedule had been partly Esmé Elliot's
doing. As a condition of her engagement to Hal, she demanded a
resumption of the old partnership. Entered into lightly, it soon became
of serious moment, for the girl had a natural gift for affairs. When she
learned that on the basis of circulation the "Clarion" would be
justified in increasing its advertising card by forty per cent, but
dared not do so because of the narrow margin upon which it was working,
she insisted upon the measure, supporting her argument with a
considerable sum of money of her own. Hal revolted at this, but she
pleaded so sweetly that he finally consented to regard it as a reserve
fund. It was never called for. The turn of the tide had come for the
paper. It lost few old advertisers and put on new ones. It was a
success.
No one was more delighted than Dr. Surtaine. Forgetting his own
prophecies of disaster he exalted Hal to the skies as a chip of the old
block, an inheritor of his own genius for business.
"Knew all along he had the stuff in him," he would declare buoyantly.
"Look at the 'Clarion' now! Most independent, you-be-damned sheet in the
country. And what about the chaps that were going to put it out of
business? Eating out of its hand!"
Of Esmé the old quack was quite as proud as of Hal. To him she embodied
and typified, in its extreme form, those things which all his money
could not buy. That she disliked the Certina business and made no secret
of the fact did not in the least interfere with a genuine liking between
herself and its proprietor. Dr. Surtaine could not discuss Certina with
Hal: there were too many wounds still open between them. But with Esmé
he could, and often did. Her attitude struck him as nicely philosophic
and impersonal, if a bit disdainful. And in these days he had to talk to
some one, for he was swollen with a great and glorious purpose.
He announced it one resplendent fall day, having gone out to Greenvale
with that particular object in view, at an hour when he was sure that
Hal would be at the office.
"Esmé, I'm going to make you a wedding present of Certina," he said.
"Never take it, Doctor," she replied, smiling up at him in friendly
recognition of what had come to be a subject of stock joke between them.
"I'm serious. I'm going to make you a wedding present of the Certina
business. I guess there aren't many brides get a gift of half a million
a year. Too bad I can't give it out to the newspapers, but it wouldn't
do."
"What on earth do you mean?" cried the astonished girl. "I couldn't take
it. Hal wouldn't let me."
"I'm going to give it up, for you. You think it ain't genteel and
high-toned, don't you?"
"I think it isn't honest."
"Not discussing business principles, to-day," retorted the Doctor
good-humoredly. "It's a question of taste now. You're ashamed of the
proprietary medicine game, aren't you, my dear?"
Esmé laughed. Embarrassment with Dr. Surtaine was impossible. He was too
childlike. "A little," she confessed.
"You'd be glad if I quit it."
"Of course I would. I suppose you can afford it."
As if responding to the touch of a concealed spring, the Surtaine chest
protruded. "You find me something I can't afford, and I'll buy it!" he
declared. "But this won't even cost me anything in the long run. Esmé,
did I ever tell you my creed?"
"'Certina Cures,'" suggested the girl mischievously.
"That's for business. I mean for everyday life. My creed is to let
Providence take care of folks in general while I look after me and
mine."
"It's practical, at least, if not altruistic."
"Me, and mine," repeated the charlatan. "Do you get that 'and mine'?
That means the employees of the Certina factory. Now, if I quit making
Certina, what about them? Shall I turn them out on the street?"
"I hadn't thought of that," admitted the girl blankly.
"Business can be altruistic as well as practical, you see," he observed.
"Well, I've worked out a scheme to take care of that. Been working on it
for months. Certina is going to die painlessly. And I'm going to preach
its funeral oration at the factory on Monday. Will you come, and make
Hal come, too?"
In vain did Esmé employ her most winning arts of persuasion to get more
from the wily charlatan. He enjoyed being teased, but he was obdurate.
Accordingly she promised for herself and Hal.
But Hal was not as easily persuaded. He shrank from the thought of ever
again setting foot in the Certina premises. Only Esmé's most artful
pleading that he should not so sorely disappoint his father finally won
him over.
At the Certina "shop," on the appointed day, the fiancés were ushered in
with unaccustomed formality. They found gathered in the magnificent
executive offices all the heads of departments of the vast concern, a
quiet, expectant crowd. There were no outsiders other than Hal and Esmé.
Dr. Surtaine, glossy, grave, a figure to fill the eye roundly, sat at
his glass-topped table facing his audience. Above him hung Old Lame-Boy,
eternally hobbling amidst his fervid implications.
Waving the newcomers to seats directly in front of him, the presiding
genius lifted a benign hand for silence.
"My friends," he said, in his unctuous, rolling voice, "I have an
important announcement to make. The Certina business is finished."
There was a silence of stunned surprise as the speaker paused to enjoy
his effect.
"Certina," he pursued, "has been the great triumph of my career. I might
almost say it has been my career. But it has not been my life, my
friends. The whole is greater than the part: the creator is greater than
the thing he creates. They say, 'Surtaine of Certina.' It should be,
'Certina of Surtaine.' There's more to come of Surtaine."
His voice dropped to the old, pleading, confidential tone of the
itinerant; as if he were beguiling them now to accept the philosophy
which he was to set forth.
"What is life, my dear friends? Life is a paper-chase. We rush from one
thing to another, Little Daisy Happiness just one jump ahead of us and
Old Man Death grabbing at our coat-tails. Well, before he catches hold
of mine,"--the splendid bulk and vitality of the man gave refutation to
the hint of pathos in the voice,--"I want to run my race out so that my
children and my children's children can point to me and say, 'One
crowded hour of glorious life is worth a cycle of Cathay.'"
With a superb gesture he indicated Hal and Esmé, who, he observed with
gratification, seemed quite overcome with emotion.
"That is why, my friends, I am withdrawing certina, and turning to fresh
fields; if I may say so, fields of more genteel endeavor. Certina has
made millions. It could still make millions. I could sell out for
millions to-day. But, in the words of the sweet singer, I come to bury
it, not to praise it. Certina has done its grand work. The day of
medicine is almost over. Interfering laws are being passed. The public
is getting suspicious of drugs. Whether this is just or unjust is not
the question which I am considering. I've always wanted my business to
be high-class. You can't run a high-class business when the public is on
to you.
"Don't think, any of you, that I'm going to retire and leave you in the
lurch. No. I'm looking ahead, for you as well as for me. What's the
newest thing in science? Foods! Specific foods, to build up the system.
That's the big thing of the future here in America. We're a tired
nation, a nerve-wracked nation, a brain-fagged nation. Suppose a man
could say to the public, 'Get as tired as you like. Work to your limit.
Play to your limit. Go the pace. When you're worn out, come to us and
we'll repair the waste for a few dollars. We've got a food--no drugs, no
medicines--that builds up brain and nerve as good as new. The greatest
authorities in the world agree on it.' Is there any limit to the
business that food could do?
"Well, I've got it! And I've got the backing for it. Mr. Belford Couch
will tell you of our testimonials. Tell 'em the whole thing, Bel: we're
all one family here."
"I've been huntin' in Europe," said Certina Charley, rising, in accents
of pardonable pride: "and I've got the hottest bunch of signed stuff
ever. You all know how hard it is to get any medical testimonials here.
They're all afraid, except a few down-and-outers. Well, there's none of
that in Europe. They'll stand for any kind of advertising, so long as
it's published only in the United States--provided they get their price.
And it ain't such an awful price either. _I got the Emperor's own
physician for one thousand five hundred dollars cash_. And a line of
court doctors and swell university professors anywhere from one thousand
dollars way down to one hundred. It's the biggest testimonial stunt ever
pulled."
"And every mother's son of 'em," put in Dr. Surtaine, "staking a
high-toned scientific reputation that the one sure, unfailing, reliable
upbuilder for brain-workers, nervous folks, tired-out, or broken-down
folks of any kind at all is"--here Dr. Surtaine paused, looked about his
entranced audience, and delivered himself of his climax in a voice of
thunder:
"CEREBREAD!"
The word passed from mouth to mouth, in accents of experimentation,
admiration, and acceptance.
"Cere, from cerebellum, the brain, and bread the universal food. I doped
it out myself, and as soon as I hit on it I shipped Belford Couch
straight to Europe to get the backing. I wouldn't take a million for
that name, to-day.
"See what you can do with a proposition of that sort! It hasn't got any
drugs in it, so we won't have to label it under the law. It ain't
medical; so the most particular newspaper and magazines won't kick on
the advertising. Yet, with the copy I'm getting up on it, we can put it
over to cure more troubles than Certina ever thought of curing. Only we
won't use the word 'cure,' of course. All we have to do is to ram it
into the public that all its troubles are nervous and brain troubles.
'Cerebread' restores the brain and rebuilds the nerves, and there you
are, as good as new. Is that some plan? Or isn't it!"
There was a ripple of applausive comment.
"What's in it?" inquired Lauder, the factory superintendent.
"Millions in it, my boy," cried the other jubilantly. "We'll be
manufacturing by New Year's."
"That's the point. _What'll_ we be manufacturing?"
"By crikey! That reminds me. Haven't settled that yet. Might as well do
it right now," said the presiding genius of the place with Olympian
decision. "Dr. De Vito, what's the newest wrinkle in brain-food?"
"Brain-food?" hesitated the little physician. "Something new?"
"Yes, yes!" cried the charlatan impatiently. "What's the fad now? It
used to be phosphorus."
"Ye-es. Phosphorus, maybe. Maybe some kind of hypophosphite, eh?"
"Sounds all right. Could you get up a preparation of it that looks tasty
and tastes good?"
"Sure. Easy."
"Fine! I'll send you down the advertising copy, so you'll have that to
go by. And now, gentlemen, we're the Cerebread factory from now on. Keep
all your help; we'll need 'em. Go on with Certina till we're sold out;
but no more advertising on it. And, all of you, from now on, think,
dream, and _live_ Cerebread. Meeting's adjourned."
The staff filed out, chattering excitedly. "He'll put it over."--"You
can't beat the Chief."--"Is'n't he a wonder!"--"Cerebread; it's a great
name to advertise."--"No come-back to it, either. Nobody can kick on a
_food_."--"It's a sure-enough classy proposition, with those swell
European names to it!"--"Wish he'd let us in on the stock."
Success was in the air. It centered in and beamed from the happy eyes
of the reformed enthusiast, as, crossing over the room with hands
extended to Esmé and Hal, he cried in a burst of generous emotion:
"It was you two that converted me."
THE END