CHAPTER XV.
“You look tired, Mr. Stoughton. You have been working too hard.”
Thus said Mrs. Percy-Bartlett to Richard, as her brown eyes rested questioningly on his pale countenance. When a woman frankly comments on a man’s appearance to his face it is evident that her friendship for him is on a very firm basis.
“Perhaps so,” returned Richard, smiling gratefully. “I sometimes get very tired of pouring water through a sieve; of rolling a stone to the top of a hill every day to find it at the bottom the next morning.”
She bent toward him, and looked up into his face earnestly.
“But it must be a glorious privilege, Mr. Stoughton, to feel that what you write is read by thousands and tens of thousands of people; that you are an important part of that great force in modern life, the daily press.”
“In one sense,” he returned thoughtfully, “it is a satisfaction to know that you are addressing a large audience—an audience that is powerless to hiss you off the stage if it is not pleased with your words. But at its best my editorial work is both ephemeral and anonymous.”
She smiled at him sympathizingly.
“I know what is in your mind,” she exclaimed. “You desire the recognition and applause of the public. But that is sure to come to you in time. You have great talents, Mr. Stoughton; and—pardon me for saying so—you are young, and can afford to wait.”
They were silent for a time, proof positive that their friendship had made great progress. It is not so much what people say to each other as what they conceal from each other, that marks the status of their intercourse. A long silence between a man and woman seated alone together is very eloquent; and its significance is in direct ratio to their mental alertness. There is no dynamic repression in the silence of a stick and a stone; but when the gods on Olympus cease to speak, the earth trembles with apprehension.
“Do you know,” remarked Richard at length, “that I have lost something of the ambition that inspired me some months ago? Perhaps I have grown weary of work, or this great city has had a depressing effect upon my aspirations. Whatever may be the reason, however, I find that I no longer build the castles in the air that I raised with so much enthusiasm not long ago. Why is it, do you think?”
He glanced at her searchingly; and, as their eyes met, her cheeks lost something of their color.
“Ambition may sleep, but it never dies, Mr. Stoughton. You are suffering from the reaction of your sudden and remarkable success.”
“My success!” he exclaimed. “Yes; I have won one great and gratifying success since I came to New York; and only one.”
“And that is?” she asked softly, and with averted eyes.
“I have made you my friend,” he said, bending toward her until the perfume of her luxuriant hair thrilled him with vague ecstasy, and the smile on her lips seemed almost a caress.
Suddenly she looked up at him, and in her eyes lay a troubled and beseeching gleam.
“And the price of my friendship—are you willing to pay it?” she asked gently.
“Of course I am!” he exclaimed. “No sacrifice on my part is too great to make in such a cause. Bargains like this one are made in heaven, are they not?”
She glanced at him with an expression in her eyes that told him he had wounded her. Without a word she arose and walked into the music-room, and he followed her with a repentant look in his face. Seating herself at the piano, she played softly some of the Lenten music she had heard at the afternoon service.
The prayer of a heart-broken world breathed in the sobbing chords. Then the movement changed, and the harmony seemed to promise rest and peace to the weary sons of men. The spirit of the penitential season had been crystallized in sound, and touched the heart as though a voice had whispered from another world.
The music died away, as if the infinite had taken to its breast the tired soul of one who cried aloud, then passed away in peace; and she turned and looked into the face of the youth at her side.
“Is it not restful?” she asked gently. “How wonderful it is that music should so change our mood and aspirations.”
“And you forgive me?” he asked penitently.
She laughed almost gayly.
“Is it not a habit I’ve fallen into? I am always granting you pardon, am I not? Do you remember, the very first time I met you you were obliged to ask forgiveness for what you said. How many times since then I’ve pardoned you I can hardly say. You have been very rebellious.”
“How could I be otherwise?” he exclaimed, his eyes avoiding hers. “Does the prisoner feel less impatient because of his chains. It is so difficult, is it not, to be civilized?”
“I hardly understand you, Mr. Stoughton,” she said, trying hard to speak very coldly.
“Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth,”
he quoted.
“How thoroughly Tennyson gives expression to the revolt of youth against the shackles that civilization, so called, has thrown around it! I think I know, to my cost, how he felt when he wrote certain lines in ‘Locksley Hall.’”
Richard took a few steps up and down the room, and then threw himself into a chair and looked steadfastly at Mrs. Percy-Bartlett. Her face had lost its color, and there were dark shadows beneath her eyes, while a smile of sadness, perhaps of regret, hovered round her mouth.
“I have something to say to you,” she remarked, after a moment’s silence, her voice low and firm. “You must sit where you are and listen to me attentively. Will you promise me to weigh my words carefully and—and—not misunderstand me?”
He saw that she was essaying a difficult task, and he said gently,—
“I promise; go on.”
“Then,” she continued, smiling at him gratefully, “I want to say frankly that I have taken a great deal of pleasure in our friendship. It is hardly necessary, however, to tell you that. I think I have proved it to you in many ways. But the time has come when it rests with you as to what the future shall hold for us. If you are willing to be a true and unselfish friend to me,—to be ‘civilized’ in the highest sense of the word,—we can go on as we have gone before. But if—if your chains fret you too much, or if there is the slightest danger that you will ever break them, then it is better that we should part. It is so easy for a man to misunderstand a woman—therefore, I am frank with you. Are you not grateful? Don’t you thank me?” There was a note of pleading in her voice.
Richard arose, and moved restlessly up and down the room a moment. Civilization decreed that he should remain seated and suppress all evidences of emotion; but there is a strong vein of savagery in youth, and Richard Stoughton was very young.
“‘They also serve who only stand and wait!’” he exclaimed irrelevantly.
Mrs. Percy-Bartlett laughed outright.
“The quotation does you credit in one way, Mr. Stoughton, even if it doesn’t seem to be very àpropos.”
“Perhaps not,” he acknowledged, reseating himself. “But somehow it has relieved the situation. At least, let it indicate that I accept your ultimatum.”
“If I knew you well enough,” commented Mrs. Percy-Bartlett smilingly, “I should say that that sounded rather cross. I hate to think that I have formulated an ultimatum. That seems unwomanly, does it not?”
“I hardly know,” he said musingly. “It is hard to tell in these days what is womanly and what is not. A few years ago we would have said that it was unwomanly for a girl to stand before a miscellaneous audience and make a political speech. No one would dare to take that ground now.”
Mrs. Percy-Bartlett smiled sympathizingly.
“I am sure,” she said, “that you don’t approve of the effort of woman to break away from the old restrictions.”
“Not altogether,” he answered frankly. “I have a strong vein of New England conservatism in my make-up. It revolts against many of the end-of-the-century ideas that are making such progress in this city.”
And so they talked on for a time, in a vein that proved the thorough efficacy of Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s ultimatum.
“It is so much better,” she said, as she arose to give him her hand at parting, “it is so much better to talk about the ‘new woman’ than—than”—
“Than the old Adam,” he added. “Yes, I agree with you—for the sake of friendship.”
“And you are my friend,” she cried impulsively, while he still held her hand, suddenly grown cold.
“Yes,” he murmured in a muffled tone, bending and kissing the slender fingers in his grasp.
She stood at the entrance to the music-room until she heard the hall-door close. Then she turned, and seated herself at the piano. It was here that Percy-Bartlett found her, idly weaving strange melodies as the night grew old.
“You look pale and tired, dear,” he said gently, as he bent and kissed her colorless cheek. “I did not think that you would wait up.”
“Is it late?” she asked wearily. “I had lost all track of time.”
“I shall be very glad,” remarked her husband, seating himself and lighting a cigar, “when my affairs and the nation’s are so arranged that I won’t be obliged to talk business at night. Has no one been in, Harriet?”
“Yes,” she answered in a careless tone, and striking a few soft chords on the instrument; “Mr. Stoughton called, and stayed an hour or so.”
Percy-Bartlett flicked the ashes from his cigar impatiently. He was silent for some time, firmly suppressing any feeling of annoyance that her words had caused.
“You find the boy interesting?” he asked coldly.
She looked at him calmly an instant, and then said indifferently,—
“Well—I prefer him to solitude, at least.”
Then she arose and said “good-night,” leaving Percy-Bartlett to such comfort as he could derive from his thoughts and his tobacco.