The Great God Success Part 23

A WOMAN AND A WARNING.

On the evening of Howard's arrival at Newport, Mrs. Carnarvon was having a few people in to dine. He had just time to dress and so saw no one until he descended to the reception room.

"You are to take in Marian," said his hostess, going with him to where Miss Trevor was sitting, her back to the door and her attention apparently absorbed by the man facing her.

"Here's Mr. Howard, Marian," Mrs. Carnarvon interrupted. "Come with me, Willie. Your lady is over here and we're going in directly."

Marian saw that Howard was looking at her in the straight, frank fashion she remembered and liked so well. "I've come for you," he said.

"Yes, you are to take me in," she evaded, her look even lamer than her words.

"You know what I mean." He was smiling, his heart in his eyes, as if the dozen people were not about them.

"I see you have not changed," she laughed, answering his look in kind.

"Changed? I'm revolutionized. I was blind and now I see. I was paralyzed and behold, I walk. I was weak and lo, I am strong--strong enough for two, if necessary."

"Now, hasn't it occurred to you that I might possibly have something to say about my own fate?"

"You? Why, you had everything to say. I reasoned it all out with you.

You simply can't add anything to the case I made you make out for yourself when I talked it over with you. I made you protest very vigorously."

"Well, what did I say--that is, what did you make me say?"

"You said you were engaged--pledged to another--that you could not draw back without dishonour. And I answered that no engagement could bind you to become the wife of a man you did not love; that no moral code could hold you to such a sin; that no code of honour could command you to permit a man to degrade himself and you. Then you pleaded that you were not sure you liked my kind of a life, that you feared you wanted wealth and a great establishment and social leadership and--and all that."

"Did I?" Marian said with exaggerated astonishment.

"You did indeed. You were perfectly open with me. You let me see all that part of you which we try to keep concealed and fancy we are concealing--all that one really feels and wishes and thinks as distinguished from what one fancies he ought to feel and wish and think."

"I wonder that you cared, after a glance behind that curtain."

"Oh, but I like what is behind that curtain best of all. The very human things are there. They make me feel so at home."

Dinner was announced and it was not until the second course that he had a chance to resume. Then he began as if there had been no interval:

"You said--"

Marian laughed and looked at him--a flash of her luminous blue-green eyes--and was looking away again with her usual expression. "You needn't tell me the rest. It doesn't matter what I said. I've had you with me wherever I went. You never doubted my--my caring, did you?"

"No. I couldn't doubt you. If you were the sort of woman a man could doubt, you wouldn't be the sort of woman I could love. And you know it isn't vanity that makes me sure. I often wonder how you happened to care for such a--but I must not attack any one whom you like so well. No, I knew you cared by the same instinct that makes you know that I care for you."

"But why did you come?"

"Because I have won a position for myself, have enough to enable us to live without eternally fretting over money-matters. I feel that I have the right to come. And then I could not be interested to live on, without you; and I'm willing to face, willing to have you face, whatever may come to us through me. I know that you and I together----"

"Not now--don't--please." Marian was pale and she was obviously under a great strain. "You see, you knew all about this. But I didn't until you looked at me when Jessie brought you. It makes me--happy--I am so happy.

But I must--I can't control myself here." She leaned over as if her napkin had slipped to the floor. "I love you," she murmured.

It was Howard's turn to struggle for self-control. "I understand," he said, "why you wished me not to go on. You never said those words to me before--and----"

"Oh, yes I have--many and many a time."

"With your eyes, but not with your voice--at least not so that I could hear. And--well, it is not easy to look calm and only friendly when every nerve in one's body is vibrating like a violin string under the bow. Yes, let us talk of something else. I've never been acutely conscious of the presence of others when I've been with you. To-night I'm in great danger of forgetting them altogether."

"That would be so like you." Marian laughed, then raised her voice a little and went on. "Yes, your little restaurant in the Rue Louis le Grand was gone. There was a dressmaker in its place--Raudinitz. She made this. How do you like it?"

"It has the air of--of belonging to you."

Marian looked amused. Howard shrugged his shoulders. "All roads lead to Rome," he said.

Carnarvon hung about until the women went to bed, so Howard and Marian had no opportunity to be alone. As soon as he saw his last chance vanish, he went to his own room, to the solitude of its balcony in the shadow of the projecting facade with the moonlight flooding the rocks and the sea.

As he sat smoking, the recession came, the reaction from weeks of nervous tension. And with the ebb of the tide entered that Visitor who alone has the privilege of the innermost chamber where lives the man himself, unmasked of all vanity and show and pretense. The visit was not unexpected; for at every such crisis every one is certain of a call from this Visitor, this merciless critic, plain and rude of speech, rare and reluctant in praise, so mocking in our moments of elation, so cruelly frank about our follies and self-excuses when he comes in our moments of depression.

"So you are going to marry?" the Visitor said abruptly. "I thought you had made up your mind on that subject long ago."

"Love changes a man's point of view," Howard replied, timid and apologetic before this quiet, relentless other-self.

"But it doesn't change the facts of life, does it? It doesn't change character, does it?"

"I think so. For instance, it has changed me. It has made a man of me.

It has been the inspiration of the past year, strengthening me, making me ambitious, energetic. Have I not thought of her all the time, worked for her?"

"You have been uncommonly persistent--as you always are when you are thwarted." The Visitor wore a satirical smile. "But a spurt of inspiration is one thing. A wife--responsibility--fetters----"

"Not when one loves."

"That depends upon the kind of love--and the kind of woman--and the kind of man."

"Could there be any higher kind of love than ours?"

"Most romantic, most high-minded--quite idyllic." The Visitor's tone was gently mocking. "And I don't deny that you may go on loving each the other. But--how does she fit in with your scheme of life? What does she really know of or care about your ambitions? Why, you had so little confidence in her that you didn't dare to think of marrying her until you had an income which you once would have thought wealth--an income which, by the way, already begins to seem small to you."

"No, it wasn't lack of confidence in her," protested Howard. "It was lack of confidence in myself."

"True, that did have something to do with it, I grant you. And that reminds me--what has become of all your cowardice about responsibility?"

"Oh, I'm changed there."

"Are you sure? Are you not deceived by this sudden and maybe momentary streak of good luck in your affairs? You have fixed your ambition high--very high. You wish to make an honest and a useful and a distinguished career. You know you have weaknesses. I needn't remind you--need I--that you have had to fight those weaknesses? How could you have won thus far if you had been responsible for others instead of being alone, and certain that the consequences would fall upon yourself only? I want to see you continue to win. I don't want to see you dragged down by extravagance, by love for this woman, by ambition of the kind her friends approve. I don't want to see you--You were silent when Stokely insulted you!"

"Love--such love as mine--and for such a woman--and with such love in return--drag down? Impossible!"

"Not so--not exactly so, though I must say you are plausible. But don't forget that you and she are not starting out to make a career. Don't forget that she is already fixed--her tastes, habits, friendships, a.s.sociations, ideals already formed. Don't forget that your love is the only bond between you--and that it may drag you toward her mode of life instead of drawing her towards yours. Don't forget that your own a.s.sociations and temptations are becoming more and more difficult. I repeat, you cringed--yes, cringed--when Stokely insulted you. Why?"