Читать книгу Jericho's Daughters - Paul Iselin Wellman - Страница 34

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But she was thinking. It had not escaped her that Wistart was by no means the only one affected if the Sentinel crowd got control of the Clarion. In her mind, which was acute enough, this realization suddenly deranged all perspectives, altered the proportions of all things.

The fat, oily, cologne-scented Ender brothers! Once they owned both newspapers they would be unassailably the lords of Jericho. She pictured Cox’s, Incorporated, independent, serene, dominant—and her own—suddenly finding itself without that serenity and independence, forced to pay a different kind of tribute and show a new kind of loyalty if it wished to prosper. And another consideration, purely feminine, entered. The Enders had wives—overdressed, overjeweled, and overfurred. In bad taste as they were, it was not too much to imagine that they would have social pretensions. Even Mrs. Wistart Wedge might find herself forced to accept the pushing, ill-bred creatures. The thought was an affront to everything in her fastidious nature.

Being “married to a newspaper,” in spite of her derision, suddenly meant something. Prestige, for one thing. And power. And protection ... from certain contingencies, like a painting for which she had posed on an irresponsible night and which seemed to haunt her.

Mrs. Wistart Wedge, with the Clarion at her beck, carried heavy guns, very heavy guns, socially and otherwise. What armament would Mrs. Wistart Wedge have without the poor old Clarion?

The thought stung her into rising.

“What do you intend to do?” she asked.

“What can I do?” he said. “They’ve got me in the wringer——”

“Surely you can do something! Not just sit there like a lump on a log and let them run over you without lifting a finger!”

Her metaphors were somewhat mixed but her meaning was clear and so was her indignation.

“Everything’s been done,” he said meekly. “I’ve tried every line—except——”

“Except what?”

“Except—you. You’re the only hope I’ve got left, Mary Agnes. Honey—oh, excuse me! I mean—if you could just arrange to lend me the hundred thousand dollars for the paper companies——”

“I lend you a hundred thousand? To throw it away like the rest?” She almost screeched it, and she began walking around, her silks swishing, her face blanching with anger. “You fool! You weak, blundering fool!”

All at once her pacing ceased, and she shot him a glance containing a new expression. Her anger faded, was replaced by something else, perhaps the dawning of an idea; and then an expression almost like elation grew in her face. She half chuckled with some thought of her own.

“Oh no, I’ll not lend you the money, Wistart!” she said. “By no means will I!”

Now she did laugh, a little sharp, almost gay, tinkling laugh. The Clarion assuredly was not going to the Ender brothers. Instead, she saw suddenly how the Clarion was going to enter a new existence.

For a moment the shadow of the dead Algeria Wedge seemed to stand in the room and Mary Agnes almost mocked at her. Algeria had been great in her world through the Clarion. Now another woman was going to stand in her stead. Hitherto Mary Agnes had kept her fingers out of the newspaper’s affairs. From this time forward she intended to have her fingers in those affairs very much indeed. An entire vista of new interests, new enterprises, new motives of life seemed to open before her, challenging and exciting.

“I’ll not lend you the money,” she said. “But I’ll furnish the one hundred thousand dollars to keep off the paper mill wolves——”

He gazed at her, almost incredulous, hope dawning.

“And for that I’m buying control of the Clarion!” she went on, her voice ringing. “You’ll make over exactly fifty-one per cent of the ownership to me!”

Hope suddenly fled from him. He felt trapped. This was not what he wanted. A loan, yes. But to have her invade, poison, dominate this last free corner of his life—no, not that!

He wanted to protest, to run from the room, to reject her and her pitiless proposal. He could not.