Part 15 (1/2)
”Not unlikely. But since we're only dreaming why not dream more to our taste? Now as I look at your strong, clear, ambitious profile, I can dream of a career made by two working as one, working cheerfully day in and day out, fair and foul weather, working with the certainty of success as the crown.”
”But failure might come.”
”It couldn't. We wouldn't work for fame or for riches or for any outside thing. We would work to make ourselves wiser and better and more worthy each of the other and both of our great love.”
Again they were walking in silence.
”I am so sad,” Marian said at last. ”But I am so happy too. What has come over me? But--you will work on, won't you? And you will accomplish everything. Yes, I am sure you will.”
”Oh, I'll work--in my own way. And I'll get a good deal of what I want.
But not everything. You say you can't understand yourself. No more can I understand myself. I thought my purpose fixed. I knew that I had nothing to do with marrying and giving in marriage, so I kept away from danger.
And here, as miraculously as if a thunderbolt had dropped from this open winter sky, here is--you.”
They were in the Avenue again--”the awakening,” Howard said as the flood of carriages rolled about them.
”You will win,” she repeated, when they were almost at Forty-seventh Street. ”You will be famous.”
”Probably not. The price for fame may be too big.”
”The price? But you are willing to work?”
”Work--yes. But not to lie, not to cheat, not to exchange self-respect for self-contempt--at least, I think, I hope not.”
”But why should that be necessary?”
”It may not be if I am free--free to meet every situation as it arises, with no responsibility for others resting upon me in the decision. If I had a wife, how could I be free? I might be forced to sell myself--not for fame but for a bare living. Suppose choice between freedom with poverty and comfort with self-contempt were put squarely at me, and I a married man. She would decide, wouldn't she?”
”Yes, and if she were the right sort of a woman, decide instantly for self-respect.”
”Of course--if I asked her. But do you imagine that when a man loves a woman he lets her know?”
”It would be a crime not to let her know.”
”It would be a greater crime to put her to the test--if she were a woman brought up, say, as you have been.”
”How can you say that? How can you so overestimate the value of mere incidentals?”
”How can I? Because I have known poverty--have known what it was to look want in the face. Because I have seen women, brought up as you have been, crawling miserably about in the sloughs of poverty. Because I have seen the weaknesses of human nature and know that they exist in me--yes, and in you, for all your standing there so strong and arrogant and self-reliant. It is easy to talk of misery when one does not understand it. It is easy to be the martyr of an hour or a day. But to drag into a sordid and squalid martyrdom the woman one loves--well, the man does not live who would do it, if he knew what I know, had seen what I have seen.
No, love is a luxury of the rich and the poor and the steady-going. It is not for my kind, not for me.”
They were pausing at Mrs. Carnarvon's door.
”I shall not come in this afternoon,” he said. ”But to-morrow--if I don't come in to-day, don't you think it will be all right for me to come then?”
”I shall expect you,” she said.
The talk of those who had come in for tea seemed artificial and flat.
She soon went up-stairs, eager to be alone. Mechanically she went to her desk to write her customary daily letter to Danvers. She looked vacantly at the pen and paper, and then she remembered why she was sitting there.