The Carleton Case Part 15

"I'm very glad," Carleton said cordially, "that you take such a sensible view of it. It isn't the easiest thing for a man in your position to do; I appreciate that. And of course we have one other thing to consider.

It's hardly probable that Rose is going to take the same view of all this that we do--at least, not with any great enthusiasm. She's very fond of you, Vaughan, as is only right and natural. But all women in the world, where their lovers are concerned, are hopelessly and by nature entirely selfish and jealous, to a degree, of anything that keeps the man in the case away from them, jealous even of so worthy a thing as a man's life work; and a man's life work, after all, as you must realize now as perhaps never before, is a terribly important thing. So you will have to do your best to try to make her see the common sense side of all this. And that you'll do, I'm sure."

To Vaughan it appeared as if he found himself suddenly involved, really against his will; arrayed on the same side with Henry Carleton to fight the battle of stern common sense, without having any very clear idea of how he had happened to get there. "Do you mean," he asked, "that you think I ought not to see her at all?"

Henry Carleton's success had been too great to permit of the slightest risk of endangering it. "Oh, by no means," he made haste to answer. "Run out and see her whenever you feel like it--say once a month or so. But to come as an ordinary friend, and not as an accepted suitor, I think perhaps would be the wiser way. That commends itself to you also, I have no doubt."

Vaughan's expression was that of a man to whom nothing now mattered.

"Oh, yes," he answered wearily, "that commends itself to me. That strikes me as very sensible indeed."

The complete discouragement in his tone caused Carleton to eye him keenly. "One other thing," he said, hastening to shift the topic with unusual abruptness, "about the book. I don't want you to feel in the least cast down. We'll find a publisher yet; I'm confident of it. And this next time, let's start fair and square. Give me the ma.n.u.script, and let me try negotiations in my own way. I think I may almost promise that you'll not find yourself disappointed."

The expression on Vaughan's face did not seem to indicate that he by any means shared Carleton's confidence. "We can't do worse," he said, perhaps a little ungraciously. "If you think there's any good in going ahead, why, all right. My confidence is gone. I'll send the great work over to you to-morrow; and you can send it off on its travels again, or burn it. I don't know which would be the more sensible of the two."

Henry Carleton shook his head reprovingly. "Oh, come now," he protested, "don't insult yourself that way. We'll show them yet." He extended a benevolent hand as he spoke. Some one had once described Carleton's method of getting rid of his callers as imperceptible, but inevitable.

"And run out and see Rose soon," he added kindly, "have a good long talk with her, and fully explain your side of the case. She won't fail to grasp it, I'm sure. She's n.o.body's fool, if her own father does say so."

Somehow Vaughan found himself outside the office, outside the building itself, walking along the street in a kind of maze, before his ordinary powers of intellect again a.s.serted themselves. Curiously enough, for one who had agreed so readily and so entirely with everything that Henry Carleton had proposed, he now appeared to be actuated by a certain feeling of resentment against that worthiest of men. "Confound him," he muttered disrespectfully. "How on earth does he manage it? He can turn me around like a weatherc.o.c.k. I never make such a fool of myself as I do when I talk with him. I never saw such a man. I can think of twenty things now that I might have said, but when I needed them, I'll be hanged if I could lay a finger on one. And if I had, I don't doubt but what the next minute he'd have shown me where I was wrong. He's always right. That's the puzzle about him. He's so fair and just about things; you can't dispute him; and yet, for all it seems like such an idiotic thing to say, he's right, and you know all the time he's wrong. Confound the man. He's one too many for me."

His talk with Rose came an evening or so later on the broad piazza at The Birches. For half an hour Vaughan had sought vainly to bring himself to make a beginning, with his attention in the meantime miserably distracted from all that Rose Carleton had to say, finding it indeed hard to a.s.sent with any great degree of pleasure to plans for a future which he now felt was for ever barred to him. So noticeable and so unlike himself did his inattention finally become that the girl stopped short in something she was saying to turn his face toward hers, scrutinizing it as though she sought to read the trouble there. "What's gone wrong, Arthur?" she asked, "nothing that I've done to displease you?"

Vaughan's answer to the latter part of the question was not made in words. And then, as he again raised his head, at last he made his explanation. "It's this, dear," he said. "I happened to go in to see your father the other day about the book--to bother him with more bad news--and he began to talk, apropos of that, about ourselves. He was very pleasant--very fair--I must acknowledge that--but--he thinks that for a man with no more prospects than I have, that I have no right to hold you to anything like an engagement; that it isn't fair to you; and all that. I suppose, though he was too polite to put it in just that way, the implication would be that I ought never to have spoken to you at all. And so--I didn't see, for the life of me, just what there was for me to say. He asked me if I didn't agree with him--it was an awkward question, sort of a 'you'll be d.a.m.ned if you don't; you'll be d.a.m.ned if you do' sort of affair--and between being a fool or appearing to be a knave, I chose the role that seems to come so easily to me always; I chose to be the fool, and stammered out that I supposed I did. And now I don't know what to do; in a way I've given him my word not to visit you as if we were engaged; in a way it seems as if he were right, too; and yet--" the unfinished sentence was eloquent of all his doubt and misery.

He might have been prepared for almost any answer other than the girl's laugh of real amus.e.m.e.nt. And on the instant, wrought up and perplexed as he was, the surprise of it made him draw himself up with offended dignity. Reading his mood with all a woman's skill, the girl drew closer to him, and raised her face to his. "Kiss me," she cried imperiously, and when, with a rather ill-grace, he had complied, "There," she said, "that's better; don't imagine you can get rid of me as easily as you think. My affections aren't to be trifled with like that, I'll have you know."

Half vexed still, yet with a feeling of immense relief, he gazed at her with a certain pathos of indecision. "Then you don't think--" he began.

She broke in upon him. "My dear," she said, "I'm going to lecture you. I might tell you, of course, if I wanted to, that you were perfection, possessing no faults whatever; but it wouldn't be true. You've got them, just as everybody else in the world has. And your greatest fault of all is lack of confidence in yourself. You're too willing to take everybody else's opinion in place of your own. That's what you've done now. And on the other hand, my father, who's one of the best men that ever lived, I believe--every daughter has that privilege of belief about her father--my father isn't without his faults, either. And his besetting one is to think that because he's made a success of so many things, that that gives him a sort of divine right to run everybody else's affairs for them, too. In just one word, speaking of course with the greatest respect, he's a good deal of an autocrat. And so, when I laughed just now, it was because I was thinking, when it came to an argument, what possible chance you, with your modesty, could have had against him, with all his certainty of being right. And the funny thing--the thing neither of you seemed to think of--" she added audaciously, "is that I've got very distinct ideas of my own on most subjects, and especially about the merits of the man I'm going to marry. Oh, Arthur, please--now it's all rumpled--well, anything's better than having you with that 'farewell-for-ever' look on your face. So, you see, I refuse to release you; with the greatest respect, as I say, for my father's judgment on almost every other subject under the sun."

Vaughan, as he properly should have been, appeared vastly cheered. He drew a long breath; then as quickly again looked troubled. "But about coming out here," he objected. "I don't want to be a sneak. And I've agreed not to come; only once a month, that is, and I believe," he added a little ruefully, "I undertook the contract of persuading you to a.s.sent to the change of program. So now there are new difficulties. If I report your insubordination, not to say rebellion, to your father, there'll be trouble all around, and if I lie about it, and report entire success, your father will be delighted, but he'll be the only one. You're so clever, I guess I'll have to leave things to you. You're bound to get me into trouble; you've got to get me out again."

"Now," the girl returned, "you're showing your true brilliancy. And from what I know of my father, I think we will--what's the word they use in the melodramas--dissemble. That's it. We'll dissemble. You just tell my father that you talked with me, and that I very sensibly agreed with him. That will put his mind at rest. Poor father. He has so many things he's busy about I should never forgive myself if I caused him one worry more. Yes, I think that will be very satisfactory. The best way for every one."

Vaughan did not appear greatly to relish her plans. "Satisfactory," he echoed. "Seeing you once a month. Well, if you think that's clever, I must say--"

"Seeing you _here_," the girl interrupted. "There's a vast difference in that. This isn't the only place in the world. Really, Arthur, for a young man of your inventiveness--"

She paused, her eyes alight with tender merriment. At last he seemed to comprehend. "Oh, yes," he nodded, "I see. In town, I suppose, but then there's always somebody sees you, and then your father hears about it--"

"Stupid," she flashed at him. "Aren't there better places than walking down the Avenue, or going around to picture galleries? What's the fun in that? Isn't there a river not so far away? Aren't there woods all about us romantic enough even for you? That's all easy to arrange. It'll be quite fun working it all out. But the main thing to manage, Arthur--"

her tone suddenly altered--"is that nothing shall ever come between us.

To try to keep apart two people who really love each other as we do, just because of anything like money, or fame, why, really, my dear, that's nothing short of a crime."

He nodded, yet a little grimly. "In theory, dear, you're quite right,"

he answered. "But how about the practice? Money! Fame! We can talk about them all we choose as little things, when we haven't them, and the grapes, perhaps, are a little sour, but how they count, after all. Poor Love! Love wasn't made for a practical world. His bow and arrow is effectual enough, when there's no fiercer game abroad than the hearts of girls and boys, but how can he fight against real warriors--shields of gold and trumpets of bra.s.s. Poor Love! Who could blame him for running away?"

She took his hand with a gesture almost maternal. "My dear, my dear,"

she said, "you mustn't talk like that. It's sacrilege, almost. If he were the true G.o.d of love, he wouldn't fly. And his darts would pierce the golden shield, and put the trumpets to rout. You, Arthur, a lover of all things beautiful, to dream of deserting, of arraying yourself on the side of Mammon."

She spoke lightly, but with a real meaning behind her words. He seemed, however, to be unconvinced, for when he replied it was with a bitterness that startled her. "I don't care," he said, "I've missed it somehow.

I've made an awful failure of things. Look at me! Making no bluffs, as lots of men do, keeping back nothing, I'm earning a little over a thousand dollars a year. And other men--cla.s.smates--yes, confound it, and men who came out of college five years later than I did--and worse than that, men who never went to college at all--they can make money; good money, lots of them; a few, big money, even; and here I am, trying to publish a book that never will be published; and which, if it should be, n.o.body'd ever read. Oh, the world's pretty near right, after all; nearer right than we think; I'm labeled at just about my face value: a thousand dollars a year."

She laid her hand lightly on his lips. "No, no," she cried, "you don't understand. You've been brooding over this so long you've lost all sense of proportion between money and other things. I'll tell you what I think. I think making money's only a knack. I believe some men are born with it, and others aren't. Look at the men who start with a pack of rags on their back, and die worth millions. It's in them; it's no credit to them; maybe the reverse. No one man can be everything. Some men can build railroads, but I couldn't imagine you doing anything like that if you tried your honest best for a hundred years. No, my dear, because money seems to you to be the thing you need the most just now, you've been so envious of the men who are able to make it quickly that you've forgotten all that you have to be thankful for; something that very few men have granted to them at all, even a hundredth part of what you possess--and that's the precious perception of the artist; the power to see things which the ordinary man can never see. You'll succeed, I know you will, but even if you never should--by the world's standards, I mean--you ought never to repine. Read your Browning again, dear; even I can appreciate that. 'One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, never doubted clouds would break'--how can any man turn faint heart after that? The truth, dear, that's everything, after all."

Very humbly and very reverently he stooped and kissed her. "You're right, Rose," he said, "and I've been wrong. Forgive me. But you know yourself--sometimes it's hard; sometimes the world's standards grip you so that you can't keep to your own. But I've been wrong, and I admit it most humbly. You've a very wise little head on your shoulders, dear, and I thank you for setting me right. I won't go backsliding again in a hurry, I'll promise you."

There was a long silence. Then at last abruptly Vaughan spoke, "Rose,"

he said, "what you've just been saying has reminded me of something I wanted to ask you about. It's a hypothetical case, that a friend of mine put to me; simple enough, seemingly, yet hard for me to decide. What would you say to this? Suppose some friend of yours had done something for which there was no possible excuse; committed a crime, we'll say.

Suppose you had it in your power to condemn him, by telling something that you knew, or, by keeping silent, could clear him for ever. What is your duty?"

The girl did not hesitate. "To tell what I know, friend or no friend,"

she answered.

Vaughan nodded. "That's what I supposed you'd say," he rejoined. "Now go a step further. Suppose it were I that had done the wrong. Would you tell then?"

The girl's answer came as direct as before. "You," she cried, "never; never in the world. I couldn't. Any one but you."

Vaughan's laugh had little of mirth in it. "And yet," he said, "if we are worshippers of the truth, which it is so easy to prate of and so hard to live, where is the logical distinction? Why should a little matter of personal liking for anybody stand in your way?"

The girl was silent. Then, unwillingly enough, "No, I suppose you're right," she said. "But it wouldn't be logic that would decide me. I _couldn't_ expose you, that would be all. I'd acknowledge to myself the wrong I was doing, but I'd go ahead with it just the same. Perhaps that's because I'm a woman, and trust too much to intuition. If I were a man, I don't know. As you say, there's no question of the real right and wrong of it. One should speak, regardless of everything else. And making it a question of degree does put the whole thing in a terribly unsatisfactory light. A stranger I wouldn't hesitate about. You, I could never betray, though I knew I was doing wrong. Midway between, all grades of hatred, liking, love. No, it isn't satisfactory, is it? Oh, I don't know how to answer, Arthur. But we've only a few minutes left, dear. Let's not spoil it by being too grave. I'm glad that it's only a hypothetical question, at any rate. Not an actual one."

"Yes," Vaughan answered, "I'm glad too."

CHAPTER XIV

THE QUEST OF TRUTH

"And broader and brighter The Gleam flying onward, Wed to the melody, Sang thro' the world;

After it, follow it, Follow the Gleam."

_Tennyson._

It was nine o'clock on a cold, bleak evening in late December. A bitter, stinging, northwest wind raged unopposed up and down the length of the pa.s.sive, shivering, all but deserted Avenue; buffeting the few unfortunate stragglers still out-of-doors, making shrill music among the chimney-tops, shouting and storming at fast-closed doors, and tracing every moment deeper and deeper its bold, yet delicate design on rattling window and frost-embroidered pane.

A pleasant thing, indeed, on this wild night, to turn indoors to some place where comfort lay; and for a moment to glance at the little room where Professor Emerson sat alone among his books, reading peacefully, and with such absorption, that to the tumult without he paid no heed.

His venerable, white-bearded figure lay for the greater part almost wholly in shadow, and the light of the study lamp, shining full upon his features, brought out in vivid contrast the strong and well-etched outline of his face. It was a face n.o.ble and sensitive, with a certain clear-cut delicacy of line; pale as if hewn from the very marble, and yet as if lighted by the cold, clear fire of the spirit within, so fine, so keen, so intellectual still, that one must needs peer more closely to discover the network of tiny, almost imperceptible wrinkles; one must needs note more carefully the trembling of the thin, blue-veined hand that held the book, to realize that the professor, alert and active for so many long years, was but a professor emeritus now; and that one was gazing on a man feeble, infirm and old.

Peacefully he sat there, and indeed, in that quiet room, on an ear far quicker and readier than his own the fury of the gale would scarce have struck disturbingly. Blow the wind as it might around the cas.e.m.e.nt, rug and curtain and tapestry laughed it to scorn; whistle as it would down the chimney, the mounting warmth of the crackling flame met and repulsed it at every turn. Verily the little room, restful and serene, the scholar's orderly abode, seemed a sanctuary alike from the storms of nature and from the storms of the world.

Presently, through the stillness of the house, a bell pealed sharply. To the old man, however, it must have sounded but faintly, for at once, with but a momentary half glance upward from his book, he fell to reading again. Nor was his servant's knock on the study door enough. It was only when he had entered the room, and had approached respectfully almost to within arm's length, that the professor at last gave heed.

"Mr. Vaughan, sir," said the man, "wishes to know if you could see him for a little while."