The Great God Success Part 8

He laid his hand upon hers. She blushed deeply and lowered her head.

A tear dropped upon the front of her gown and hung glittering in the meshes of the white lace. She crept into his arms and buried her face upon his shoulder and sobbed. He had never seen her even look like tears before.

"We must be married," he repeated, patting her on the shoulder.

She shook her head in negation.

"Yes," he said firmly, mentally noting that this was the very first time he had ever caught her in a pretense.

"No." Her tone was as firm as his. She lifted her head and put her cheek against his. "It makes me very proud that you ask it. But--I--I do not----"

"Do not--what?"

"I do not want--I will not--risk losing you."

"But you won't lose me. You will have me more than ever."

"Some men--yes. But not you."

"And why not I, O Wisdom?"

"Because--because--do you think I have watched you all this time, without learning something about you? The way to keep you is to leave you free. I do not want your name. I do not want your friends I do not want to be respectable. I want--just you."

"But are we not as good as married now?"

"Yes--that's it. And I want it to keep on. I never cared for anybody until I saw you. I shall never care for anybody else. I never shall try.

I want you as long as I can have you. And then----"

"And then," Howard laughed or rather, pretended to laugh, "and then, 'Oh, dig me a grave both wide and deep, wide and deep.' How like twenty-years-old that is."

She seemed not to hear his jest and presently went on: "Do you remember the evening before I left, down there at Mrs. Sands's?"

"The night you proposed to me?" Howard said, pulling her ear.

She smiled faintly and continued: "I thought it all out that night. I intended to come back just as I did. I went deliberately. I----"

Howard put his hand over her lips.

"O, I am not going to tell anything,", said she, evading his fingers.

"Only this--that I understood you then, understood just why you would never marry. Not so clearly as I understand it now, but still I--understood. And you have been teaching me ever since, teaching me manners, teaching me how to read and think and talk. And more than all, you've taught me your way of looking at life."

Howard held her away from him and studied her face, surprise in his eyes. "Isn't it strange?" he said.

"Here I've been seeing you day after day all this time, have had a chance to know you better than I ever knew any one in my life, have had you very near to me day and night. And just now, as I look at you, I see the real you for the first time in two years."

"I have been wondering when you would look at me again," said Alice with a small, sly smile.

"Why, you are a woman grown. Where is the little girl I knew, the little girl who used to look up to me?"

"Oh, she's gone these two years. She proposed to you and, when you refused her, she--died."

"Yes--we must be married," Howard went on. "Why not? It is more convenient, let us say."

Alice shook her head and put her cheek against his again and clasped his fingers in hers. "No, my instinct is against it. Some day--perhaps.

But not now, not now. I want you. I want only you. We are together out here--out beyond the pale. Inside, others would come in and--and surely come between us. I want no others--none."

VII.

A LITTLE CANDLE GOES OUT.

Howard was now thirty years old. Park Row had long ceased talking of him as a "coming man." While his style of writing was steadily improving, he wrote with no fixed aim, wrote simply for the day, for the newspaper which dies with the day of its date. Some of his acquaintances wondered why a man of such ability should thus stand still. The less observant spoke of him as an impressive example of the "journalistic blight."

Those who looked deeper saw the truth--a dangerous facility, a perilous inertia, a fatal entanglement. Facility enabled him to earn a good living with ease, working as he chose. Inertia prevented him from seeking opportunities for advancement. Entanglement shut him off from the men and women of his own kind who would have thrust opportunities upon him and compelled him.

Howard himself saw this clearly in his occasional moods of self-criticism. But as he saw no remedy, he raged intermittently and briefly, and straightway relapsed. Vanity supplied him with many excuses and consolations. Was he not one of the best reporters in the profession? Where was there another, where indeed in any profession were there many of his age, making five thousand a year? Was he not always improving his mind? Was he not more and more careful in his personal habits? Was he not respected by all who knew him; looked upon as a successful man; regarded by those with whom he came in daily contact as a leader in the profession, a model for style, a marvel for facility and versatility and for the quant.i.ty of good "copy" he could turn out in a brief time? But with all the soothings of vanity he never could quite hide from himself that his life was a failure up to that moment.

"Why try to lie to myself?" he thought. "It's never a question of what one has done but always of what one could have and should have done.

I am thirty and I have been marking time for at least four years.

Preparing by study and reading? Yes, but not preparing for anything."

On the whole he was glad that Alice had refused to marry him. Her reason was valid. But there was another which he thought she did not see. He was deceived as to the depth of her insight because he did not watch her closely. He had no suspicion how many, many times, in their moments of demonstrativeness, she listened for those words which never came, listened and turned away to hide from him the disappointment in her eyes.

He did not love her--and she knew it. She did not inspire ambition in him--and she knew it. She simply kept him comfortable and contented.

She simply prevented his amatory instincts from gathering strength vigorously to renew that search which men and women keep up incessantly until they find what they seek. She knew this also but never permitted herself to see it clearly.

He was pleased with her but not proud of her. He was not exactly ashamed of his relation with her but--well, he never relaxed his precautions for keeping it conventionally concealed. He still had a room at his club and occupied it occasionally. He laughed at himself, despised himself in a--gentle, soothing way. But he excused himself to himself with earnestness despite his sarcasms at his own expense. And for the most of the time he was content--so well, so comfortably content that if his mind had not been so nervously active he would have taken on the form and look of settled middle-life.

There was just the one saving quality--his mental alertness. All his life he had had insatiable intellectual curiosity. It had kept him from wasting his time at play when he was a boy. It had kept him from plunging deeply into dissipation when youth was hot in his veins. It was now keeping him from the sluggard's fate.

On the last day of January--six weeks after his thirtieth birthday--he came home earlier than usual, as they were going to the theatre and were to dine at seven. He found Alice in bed and the doctor sitting beside her.

"You'll have to get some one else to go with you, I'm afraid," she said with good-humoured resignation, a trifle over-acted. "My cold is worse and the doctor says I must stay in bed."

"Nothing serious?" Howard asked anxiously, for her cheeks were flaming.

"Oh, no. Just the cold. And I am taking care of myself."

He accompanied the doctor to the door of the apartment. At the threshold the doctor whispered: "Make some excuse and come to my office. I wish to see you particularly."

He grew pale. "Don't let her see," urged the doctor. He went back to Alice, sick at heart. "I must go out and arrange for some one else to do the play for me," he said. "I shall spend the evening with you."

She protested, but faintly. He went to the doctor's office.

"She must go south at once," he began, after looking at Howard steadily and keenly. "Nothing can save her life. That may prolong it."