A FAILURE IN TACTICS
Miss Eleanor Stanley Maxwell Elliot, home from her wanderings, stretchedher hammock and herself in it between two trees in a rose-sweet nook atGreenvale, and gave herself up to a reckoning of assets and liabilities.Decidedly the balance was on the wrong side. Miss Esm?could not dodgethe unseemly conclusion that she was far from pleased with herself. Thiswas perhaps a salutary frame of mind, but not a pleasant one. Ifpossible, she was even less pleased with the world in which she lived.And this was neither salutary nor pleasant. Furthermore, it was uniquein her experience. Hitherto she had been accustomed to a universe madeto her order and conducted on much the same principle. Now it no longerran with oiled smoothness.
Her trip on the Pierce yacht had been much less restful than she hadanticipated. For this she blamed that sturdy knight of the law, Mr.William Douglas. Mr. Douglas's offense was that he had inveigled herinto an engagement. (I am employing her own term descriptive of thetransaction.) It was a crime of brief duration and swift penalty. Therelation had endured just four weeks. Possibly its tenure of life mighthave been longer had not the young-middle-aged lawyer accepted, quitenaturally, an invitation to join the cruise of the Pierce family andhis fianc閑. The lawyer's super-respectful attitude toward hisprincipal client disgusted Esm? 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 themere presence of her lover repellent to her. The status becameunbearable. Esm?ended it. In plain English, she jilted the highlyeligible Mr. William Douglas. To herself she made the defense that hewas not what she had thought, that he had changed. This was unjust. Hehad not changed in the least; he probably never would change from beingthe 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 theoryof Miss Elliot's royal prerogative as regards the male sex, andreturned, miserably enough, to his home and his practice.
Another difficulty had arisen to make distasteful the Piercehospitality. Kathleen Pierce, in a fit of depression foreign to herusually blithe and easy-going nature, had become confidential and hadblurted out certain truths which threw a new and, to Esm? disconcertinglight upon the episode of the motor accident. In her first appeal toEsm? it now appeared, the girl had been decidedly less than frank.Therefore, in her own judgment of Hal and the "Clarion," Esm?had beendecidedly less than just. In her resentment, Esm?had almost quarreledwith her friend. Common honesty, she pointed out, required a statementto Harrington Surtaine upon the point. Would Kathleen write such aletter? 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 ratherloftily) for Esm?herself to explain to Mr. Surtaine. Later, she decidedto explain by word of mouth. This would involve her return toWorthington, which she had come to long for. She had become sensible ofa species of homesickness.
In some ill-defined way Harrington Surtaine was involved in thatnostalgia. Not that she had any desire to see him! But she felt acertain justifiable curiosity--she was satisfied that it wasjustifiable--to know what he was doing with the "Clarion," since herestablished sphere of influence had ceased to be influential. Was hereally as unyielding in other tests of principle as he had shown himselfwith her? Already she had altered her attitude to the extent ofadmitting that it was principle, even though mistaken. Esm?had beensubscribing to the "Clarion," and studying it; also she had written,withal rather guardedly, to sundry people who might throw light on thesubject; to her uncle, to Dr. Hugh Merritt, her old and loyal friendlargely by virtue of being one of the few young men of the place whonever had been in love with her (he had other preoccupations), to youngDenton the reporter, who was a sort of cousin, and to Mrs. FestusWillard, who, alone of the correspondents, suspected the underlyingmotive. From these sundry informants she garnered diverse opinions; thesum and substance of which was that, on the whole, Hal was fighting thegood fight and with some success. Thereupon Esm?hated him harder thanbefore--and with considerably more difficulty.
On a late May day she had slipped quietly back into Worthington. Thatsmall portion of the populace which constituted Worthington society wasready to welcome her joyously. But she had no wish to be joyouslywelcomed. She didn't feel particularly joyous, herself. And societymeant going to places where she would undoubtedly meet Will Douglas andwould probably not meet Hal Surtaine. Esm?confessed to herself thatDouglas was rather on her conscience, a fact which, in itself, markedsome change of nature in the Great American Pumess. She decided thatsociety was a bore. For refuge she turned to her interest in the slums,where the Reverend Norman Hale, for whom she had a healthy, honestrespect and liking, was, so she learned, finding his hands rather morethan full. Always an enthusiast in her pursuits, she now threw herselfinto this to the total exclusion of all other interests.
To herself she explained this on the theory that she needed somethingto occupy her mind. Something else she really meant, for Mr.Harrington Surtaine was now occupying it to an inexcusable extent. Shewished very much to see Harrington Surtaine, and, for the first time inher life, she feared what she wished. What she had so loftily announcedto Kathleen Pierce as her unalterable determination toward the editor ofthe "Clarion" wasn't as easy to perform as to promise. Yet, theexplanation of the partial error, into which the self-excusatory MissPierce had led her, was certainly due him, according to her notions offair play. If she sent for him to come, he would, she shrewdly judged,decline. The alternative was to beard him in his office. In thestrengthening and self-revealing solitude of her garden, this glowingsummer day, Esm?sat trying to make up her mind. A daring brownthrasher, his wings a fair match for the ruddy-golden glow in the girl'seyes, hopped into her haunt, and twittered his counsel of courage.
"I'll do it NOW," said Esm? and the bird, with a triumphant chirp ofcongratulation, swooped off to tell the news to the world of wings andflowers.
To the consequent interview there was no witness. So it may best bechronicled in the report made by the interviewer to her friend Mrs.Festus Willard, who, in the cool seclusion of her sewing-room, wasoverwhelmed by a rush of Esm?to the heart, as she put it. Not havingbeen apprised of Miss Elliot's conflicting emotions since her departure,Mrs. Willard's mind was as a page blank for impressions when her visitorburst in upon her, pirouetted around the room, appropriated the softestcorner of the divan, and announced spiritedly:
"You needn't ask me where I've been, for I won't tell you; or what I'vebeen 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 ofthe moon--at three o'clock P.M."
"What do you mean, moon?" inquired Mrs. Willard, unconsciously fallinginto a pit of slang.
"The moon we all cry for and don't get. In this case a haughty youngeditor."
"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 tothe lunar metaphor.
"Don't I? I'd have cried--I'd have burst into a perfect storm oftears--for him--or you--or anybody who so much as pointed a finger atme, I was so scared."
"Scared? You! I don't believe it."
"I don't believe it myself--now," confessed Esm? candidly. "But it feltmost 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 Esm?mellifluously.
"He didn't!"
"Well, if he didn't, he meant it. He wanted to know what the big, bigD-e-v, dev, I was doing there, anyway."
"Norrie Elliot! Tell me the truth."
"Very well," said Miss Elliot, aggrieved. "You report theconversation, then, since you won't accept my version."
"If you would give me a start--"
"Just what he wouldn't do for me," interrupted Esm? "I went in thereto explain something and he pointed the finger of scorn at me andaccused me of frequenting low and disreputable localities."
"Norrie!"
"Well," replied the girl brazenly, "he said he'd seen me about theRookeries 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 theplace. So I explained in words of one syllable that I went there to pickedelweiss from the fire escapes. Jinny, dear, you don't know how hard itis to crowd 'edelweiss' into one syllable until you've tried. Itsplutters."
"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 onewould have slain you long ago for your sins."
"Pretty, yourself," retorted Esm? "My real charm lies in my rigidadherence to the spirit of truth. Your young friend Mr. Surtaine scornedmy 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 wasthere, I explained politely. Then he said that the sickness might becontagious, and he muttered something about an epidemic and then lookedas if he wished he hadn't."
"I've heard some talk of sickness in the Rookeries. Ought you to begoing 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'tknow, but he was sure the place was dangerous, and he was surprised thatUncle Guardy hadn't warned me. Uncle Guardy had, but I don't doeverything I'm warned about. So then I asked young Mr. Editor why, as heknew there was a dangerous epidemic about, he should warn little meprivately 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 Esm? rising to do a pas seul upon the Willards' pricelessAnatolian rug.
"Sit down," commanded her hostess. "If--what?"
"If nothing. Just if. That's the end of the song. Don't you know yourLewis 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. Willardvehemently. "I want to know what happened between you and Hal Surtaine."
"And you the Vice-President of the Poetry Club!" reproached Esm? "Verywell. 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 couldthink of anything mean and superior enough to answer, and when he cameback--always supposing he isn't still hiding in the cellar--I was nolonger 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 realityto 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 ina 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 babiesand lose my pretty figure--and get fat--and dowdy--and slow-poky--andold. Look at Molly Vane: twins already. She's a horrible example. Why dopeople always have to have children--"
She stopped, abruptly, herself stricken at the stricken look in theother's face. "Oh, Jinny, darling Jinny," she gasped; "I forgot! Yourbaby. 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, smilingvaliantly. "Don't deny the greatest reality of all, when it comes. Areyou sure you're not denying it now?"
The sunbeams crept and sparkled, like light upon ruffled waters, acrossEsm?s obstinately shaken head.
"Perhaps you couldn't help hurting him. But be sure you aren't hurtingyourself, too."
"That's the worst of it," said the girl, with one of her sudden accessesof sweet candor. "I needn't have hurt him at all. I was stupid." Shepaused in her revelation. "But he was stupider," she declaredvindictively; "so it serves him right."
"How was he stupider?"
"He thought," said Esm?with sorrowful solemnity, "that I was just asbad as I seemed. He ought to have known me better."
The older woman bent and laid a cheek against the sunny hair. "Andweren't you just as bad as you seemed?"
"Worse! Anyway, I'm afraid so," said the confessional voice, rathermuffled in tone. "But I--I just got led into it. Oh, Jinny, I'm notawfully happy."
Mrs. Willard's head went up and she cocked an attentive ear, like anexpectant robin. "Some one outside," said she. "I'll be back in amoment. You sit there and think it over."
Esm?curled back on the divan. A minute later she heard the curtainspart 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,"Esm? I--I didn't expect to find you here."
"Nor I to see you," she said, with a calmness that belied her beatingheart. "Sit down, please. I have something to tell you. It's what Ireally 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'ttell 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 verybadly. So do I. I believed that you had deliberately made that up, abouther saying that she didn't turn back because she wanted to catch atrain. I believed, too, that the editorial was written after our--ourtalk. 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 surfacepoliteness.
To him she was, in that moment, a light-minded woman apologizing for thepetty misdeed, and paying no heed to the graver wrong that she had donehim. Jeannette Willard could have set him right in a word; could haveshown him what the girl felt, unavowedly to herself but with underlyingconviction, that for so great an offense no apology could suffice;nothing short of complete surrender. But Mrs. Willard was not there tohelp out. She was waiting hopefully, outside.
"And that is all?" he said, after a pause, with just a shade of contemptin 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 thusfar 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 mysubscription."
It was innocently said, without thought of the old playful bargainbetween them, which had terminated with the mailing of the witheredarbutus. But to Hal it seemed merely a brazen essay in coquetry; anattempt 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 wasalready halfway down the room, on the echo of his "Good-afternoon, MissElliot."
As before, he turned at the door. And he carried with him, to muse overin the depths of his outraged heart once more, the mystery of that stilland desperate smile. Any woman could have solved it for him. Any,except, possibly, Esm?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 everbelieve 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 iswhat she is; the men of this town, I mean. No man has ever been a manwith Norrie Elliot."
"What have they been?"
"Mice. It's a tradition of the place. They lie down in rows for her totrample on. So of course she tramples on them."
"Well, I never trampled on mice myself," observed Festus Willard. "Itsounds like uncertain footing. But I'll bet you five pounds of yourfavorite candy against one of your very best kisses, that if sheundertakes 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."