In the door the footman pronounced loudly a name, at the sound of which Darvid's step quickened. At last the man had returned—the envoy, the agent, the hound had come hack! Beyond doubt he brings favoring news, otherwise he would have no cause to come. Hence, that colossal business; that immense arena of toil and struggle, through which an enormous vein of gold runs, may belong to Darvid. How timely this is! The business will freshen him; snatch him out of the evil dreams into which he has fallen for some time past. Indeed, all these exaltations, all these elements of feeling, which have risen in him with such power, are an unwholesome and nervous dream, out of which he must shake himself and return to clear, sober, sound reality.
CHAPTER XI
A rather long series of days had passed when Darvid entered his clear, brightly lighted study, after winning one of the very greatest triumphs of his life. In the antechamber he had thrown into the hands of a footman, not his fur, but a somewhat light overcoat; for that day, which for him had been lucky, was succeeded by a warm, spring evening. Whoever might have seen him when he was leaving the lofty threshold of the highest dignitary in that city must have said to himself: "Happy man!" Though he had grown evidently thin during recent days; gladness and pride were beaming from his smile; from his eyes; from his serene forehead. He possessed now that for which he had striven long in vain: he held in his hand the colossal enterprise; before him was a broad arena for iron toil and a great vein, of gold. It is true, that while making ready for that moment of triumph, he had spent days and nights like a Benedictine over piles of books and documents, calculating, combining, covering many folios of paper with arguments and figures. He had toiled immensely, thinking of nothing save the toil; and now, when he stood at his object as a conqueror, all people said: he is happy! He had received a multitude of congratulations already; in the eyes of men he had read much admiration. He had just returned from a meeting where, by accurate and fluent speech, he had convinced and won over a numerous assembly of men of uncommon keenness and significance. Thus had he passed the day; now, in the middle of the evening, he returned to his house; and when he had given the servant in attendance the brief command: "Receive no one!" he asked:
"Where is the little dog?"
After that he dropped into a deep armchair near the round table, and had the face, for a while, of a man who is waking from sleep. For a number of days he had been so buried in thought over this weighty enterprise, and that day from early morning he had been so absorbed by the feeling of that victory which he had won, that he had had no time to think of any other thing; now, after a long time, in the first moment of inactivity which had fallen to him, he felt as if waking from sleep, and he was brought to thinking by the question:
"Well? What is it for?"
Just this question was to him at that moment reality, while every other thing was accomplished by the power of habit. He had toiled, calculated, triumphed, just as a round body rolls over an inclined plane by the force of acquired motion. Under this surface-life, which had been the one which he had led so long exclusively, was now another one which seized a continually increasing area; this new life, a mystery to every other man, had become for him more tangible than the entire visible universe. Out of it was growing an irresistible, importunate riddle, enclosed in the brief words: What for?
These two brief words kept returning to his mind during every moment of rest, so that hours of noise and movement seemed to him a dream, and only those two words—unceasingly recurrent—the one true reality over which there was reason to be anxious.
Why had he taken on his head and hands this new burden of toil, which was greater than all the others? Why, in general, this climbing a sky-touching ladder with exertion of all his strength of nerve and brain? To what kind of heaven could he climb upon that ladder? New profits, ever-increasing wealth? But he had ceased to desire these! Although that seemed marvellous to the man himself, he had ceased really. Why? Did he own little? He was the possessor of enormously much. He had never been of those who make a golden chariot so as to sit in it with Bacchantes and with Bacchus. But pride? He laughed. Yes, pride, but that was before he had known, intimately, those giants who sit in various corners of the earth. He knows them now; he knows what they can do; and he knows his own power. Why toil? What for? But his worth; that worth which people esteem so immensely that they almost cast themselves at his feet, or do they cast themselves before his golden chariot? For, if that chariot were to shoot away from under him, would he retain the title of modern Cid, Titan, superhuman? It was wonderful with what clearness he saw then Maryan, sitting in that chair, and how distinctly he heard his voice inquiring: "What is the object of your toil, father? The object; the object? That decides everything. What was the object? Of course, not this world's salvation!" He laughed again. What cause was there for long thought here! His object had been to win new profits continually; to gain ever-increasing wealth; and now, since he had ceased to desire these, the question was—what for? But the genius of that Maryan with his questions! He had gone down so deeply into his father's being that those questions remained there and continued their inquisitorial labor. A beautiful and genial fellow! A young prince; almost a sage. But what does that signify if—he lacks something? What is it that he lacks, and so lacks that he is as if he had nothing? What is it that he lacks?
With a slow movement, in which weariness was evident, Darvid turned his head toward the desk, which was lighted abundantly with tapers burning on lofty candlesticks. What did those candlesticks bring to his mind? Ah, yes, he remembers! On a time he gave one of them, in the inner drawing-room, to Cara, so that the candle burning in it might light the way to her. He remembers how her slender arm bent beneath its weight when her small hand took it, and how beautifully the flame of the candle was reflected in the dark pupils gazing at him with such—with such what? With such exaltation! But how wonderful, how intense was his happiness when that child lived and loved him as she did! That was his only happiness! Then, holding the light in the heavy candlestick straight on before her rosy face, she went on into the darkness.