About this time an incident occurred which was destined to produce a very decided effect upon his life. One afternoon in May he was walking slowly down Fifth Avenue on his way to Washington Square when he suddenly found himself face to face with old Tom Craik, who was at that moment coming out of one of the clubs. The old man was not as erect as he had been before his illness, but he was much less broken down than George had supposed. His keen eyes still peered curiously into the face of every passer, and he still set down his stick with a sharp, determined rap at every step. Before George could avoid the meeting, as he would instinctively have done had there been time, he was conscious of being under his relation’s inquiring glance. He was not sure that the latter recognised him, but he knew that a recognition was possible. Under the circumstances he could not do less than greet his father’s enemy, who was doubtless aware of his many inquiries during the period of danger. George lifted his hat civilly and would have passed on, but the old gentleman stopped him, to his great surprise, and held out a thin hand, tightly encased in a straw-coloured glove — he permitted himself certain exaggerations of dress which somehow were not altogether incongruous in his case.
“You are George Wood?” he asked. George was struck by the disagreeable nature of his voice and at the same time by the speaker’s evident intention to make it sound pleasantly.
“Yes, Mr. Craik,” the young man answered, still somewhat confused by the suddenness of the meeting.
“I am glad I have met you. It was kind of you to ask after me when I was down. I thank you. It showed a good heart.”
Tom Craik was sincere, and George looked in vain for the trace of a sneer on the parchment that covered the worn features, and listened without detecting the least modulation of irony in the tones of the cracked voice. He felt a sharp sting of remorse in his heart. What he had meant for something very like an insult had been misunderstood, had been kindly received, and now he was to be thanked for it.
“I hate you, and I asked because I wanted to be told that you were dead” — he could not say that, though the words were in his mind, and he could almost hear himself speaking them. A flush of shame rose to his face.
“It seemed natural to inquire,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation. It had seemed very natural to him, as he remembered.
“Did it? Well, I am glad it did, then. It would not have seemed so to every young man in your position. Good day — good day to you. Come and see me if you care to.”
Again the thin gloved hand grasped his, and George was left alone on the pavement, listening to the sharp rap of the stick on the stones as the old man walked rapidly away. He stood still for a moment, and then went on down the Avenue. The dry regular rapping of that stick was peculiarly disagreeable and he seemed to hear it long after he was out of earshot.
He was very much annoyed. More than that, he was sincerely distressed. Could he have guessed what had been the practical result of his inquiries during the illness, he would assuredly have even then turned and overtaken Tom Craik, and would have explained with savage frankness that he was no friend, but a bitter enemy who would have rejoiced to hear that death had followed and overtaken its victim. But since he could not dream of what had happened, it appeared to him that any explanation would be an act of perfectly gratuitous brutality. It was not likely that he should meet the old man often, and there would certainly be no necessity for any further exchange of civilities. He suffered all the more in his pride because he must henceforth accept the credit of having seemed kindly disposed.
Then he remembered how, at his second meeting with Constance Fearing, she had earnestly advised him not to do what had led to the present situation. It would have been different had he known her as he knew her now, had he loved her as he undoubtedly loved her to-day. But as things had been then, he hardly blamed himself for having been roused to opposition by his strong dislike of advice.
“I have received the reward of my iniquities,” he said, as he sat down in his accustomed seat and looked at her delicate face.
“What has happened to you?” she asked, raising her eyes with evident interest.
“Something very disagreeable. Do you like to hear confessions? And when you do, are you inclined to give absolution to your penitents?”
“What is it! What do you want to tell me?” Her face expressed some uneasiness.
“Do you remember, when I first came here — the second time, I should say — when Tom Craik was in such a bad way, and I hoped he would die? You know, I told you I would go and leave a card with inquiries, and you advised me not to. I went — in fact, I called several times.”
“You never told me. Why should you? It was foolish of me, too. It was none of my business.”
“I wish I had taken your advice. The old man got well again, but I have not seen him till to-day. Just now, as I walked here, he was coming out of his club, and I ran against him before I knew where I was. Do you know? He had taken my inquiries seriously. Thought I asked out of pure milk and water of human kindness, so to say — thanked me so nicely and asked me to go and see him! I felt like such a beast.”
Constance laughed and for some reason or other the high, musical ring of her laughter did not give George as much satisfaction as usual.
“What did you do?” she asked, a moment later.
“I hardly know. I could not tell him to his face that he had not appreciated my peculiar style of humour, that I loathed him as I loathe the plague, and that I had called to know whether the undertaker was in the house. I believe I said something civil — contemptibly civil, considering the circumstances — and he left me in front of the club feeling as if I had eaten something I did not like. I wish you had been there to get me out of the scrape with some more good advice!”
“I? Why should I — —”
“Because, after all, you got me into it, Miss Fearing,” George answered rather sadly. “So, perhaps, you would have known what to do this time.”
“I got you into the scrape?” Constance looked as much distressed as though it were really all her fault.
“Oh, no — I am not in earnest, exactly. Only, I have such an abominably contrary nature that I went to Tom Craik’s door just because you advised me not to — that is all. I had only seen you twice then — and — —” he stopped and looked fixedly at the young girl’s face.
“I knew I was wrong, even then,” Constance answered, with a faint blush. The colour was not the result of any present thought, nor of any suspicion of what George was about to say; it was due to her recollection of her conduct on that long remembered afternoon nearly four months earlier.
“No. I ought to have known that you were right. If you were to give me advice now — —”
“I would rather not,” interrupted the young girl.
“I would follow it, if you did,” said George, earnestly. “There is a great difference between that time and this.”
“Is there?”
“Yes. Do you not feel it?”
“I know you better than I did.”
“And I know you better — very much better.”
“I am glad that makes you more ready to follow sensible advice — —”
“Your advice, Miss Fearing. I did not mean — —”
“Mine, then, if you like it better. But I shall never offer you any more. I have offered you too much already, and I am sorry for it.”
“I would rather you gave me advice — than nothing,” said George in a lower voice.
“What else should I give you?” Her voice had a ring of surprise in it. She seemed startled.
“What you will never give, I am afraid — what I have little enough the right to ask.”
Constance laid down the work she held, and looked out of the window. There was a strange expression in her face, as though she were wavering between fear and satisfaction.
“Mr. Wood,” she said suddenly, “you are making love to me.”
“I know I am. I mean to,” he answered, with an odd ro
ughness, as the light flashed into his eyes. Then, all at once, his voice softened wonderfully. “I do it badly — forgive me — I never did it before. I should not be doing it now, if I could help myself — but I cannot. This once — this once only — Constance, I love you with all my heart.”
He was timid, and women, whether old or young, do not like timidity. It was not that he lacked either force or courage by nature, nor any of those qualities whereby women are won. But the life he had led had kept him younger than he believed himself to be, and his solitary existence had given his ideal of Constance the opportunity of developing more quickly than the reality. He loved her, it is true, but as yet in a peaceful, unruffled way, which partook more of boundless admiration than of passion. An older man would have recognised the difference in himself. The girl’s finer perceptions were aware of it without comprehending it in the least. Nevertheless it was an immense satisfaction to George to speak out the words which in his heart had so long been written as a motto about the shrine of his imagination.
Constance said nothing in answer, but rose, after a moment’s pause, and went and stood before the fireplace, now filled with ferns and plants, for the weather was already warm. She turned her back upon George and seemed to be looking at the things that stood on the chimney-piece. George rose, too, and came and stood beside her, trying to see her face.
“Are you angry?” he asked softly. “Have I offended you?”
“No, I am not angry,” she answered. “But — but — was there any use in saying it?”
“You do not love me at all? You do not care whether I come or go?”
She pitied him, for his disappointment was genuine, and she knew that he suffered something, though it might not be very much.
“I do not know what love is,” she said thoughtfully. “Yes — I care. I like to see you — I am interested in what you do — I should be sorry never to see you again — but I do not feel — what is it one should feel, when one loves?”
“Is there any one — any man — whom you like better than you like me?”
“No,” she answered with some hesitation, “I do not think there is.”
“And there is a chance that you may like me better still — that you may some day even love me?”
“Perhaps. I cannot tell. I have not known you very long.”
“It seems long to me — but you give me all I ask, more than I had a right to hope for. I thank you, with all my heart.”
“There is little to thank me for. Do you think I mean more than I say?” She turned her head and looked calmly into his eyes. “Do you think I am promising anything?”
“I would like to think so. But what could you promise me? You would not marry me, even if you loved me as I love you.”
“You are wrong. If I loved you, I would marry you — if I were sure that your love was real, too. But it is not. I am sure it is not. You make yourself think you love me — —”
The young man’s dark face seemed to grow darker still as she watched it. There was passion in it now, but of a kind other than loving. His over sensitive nature had already taken offence.
“Please do not go on, Miss Fearing,” he said, in a low voice that trembled angrily. “You have said enough already.”
Constance drew back in extreme surprise, and looked as though she had misunderstood him.
“Why — what have I said?” she asked.
“You know what you meant. You are cruel and unjust.”
There was a short pause, during which Constance seemed to be trying to grasp the situation, while George stood at the other end of the chimney-piece, staring at the pattern in the carpet. The girl’s first impulse was to leave the room, for his anger frightened and repelled her. But she was too sensible for that, and she thought she knew him too well to let such a scene pass without an explanation. She gathered all her courage and faced him again.
“Mr. Wood,” she said with a firmness he had never seen in her, “I give you my word that I meant nothing in the least unkind. It is you who are doing me an injustice. I have a right to know what you understood from my words.”
“What could you have meant?” he asked coldly. “You are, I believe, very rich. Every one knows that I am very poor. You say that I make myself think I love you — —”
“Good heavens!” cried Constance. “You do not mean to say that you thought that! But I never said it, I never meant it — I would not think it — —”
There was a little exaggeration in the last words. She had thought of it, and that recently, though not when she had spoken. It was enough, however. George believed her, and the cloud disappeared from his face. It was she who took his hand first, and the grasp was almost affectionate in its warmth.
“You will never think that of me?” he asked earnestly.
“Never — forgive me if any word of mine could have seemed to mean that I did.”
“Thank you,” he answered. “It is only my own folly, of course, and I am the one to be forgiven. Things may be different some day.”
“Yes,” assented Constance with a little hesitation, “some day.”
A moment later George left the house, feeling as a soldier does who has been under fire for the first time.
CHAPTER VII.
NOT LONG AFTER the events last chronicled, the Fearings left New York for the summer, and George was left to his own meditations, to the society of his father and to the stifling heat of the great city. He had seen Constance again more than once before she and her sister had left town, and he had parted from her on the best of terms. To tell the truth, since his sudden exhibition of violent temper, she had liked him even better than before. His genuine anger had to some extent dissipated the cloud of doubt which always seemed to her to hang about his motives. The doubt itself was not gone, for as it had a permanent cause in her own fortune it was of the sort not easily driven away.
As for George himself, he considered himself engaged, of course in a highly conditional way, to marry Miss Constance Fearing. She had repeated, at his urgent solicitation, what she had said when he had first declared himself, to wit, that if she ever loved him she would marry him, and that there was no one whom she at present preferred to him. More than this, he could not obtain from her, and in his calm moments, which were still numerous, he admitted that she was perfectly fair and just in her answer. He, on his part, had declared with great emphasis that, however she might love him, he would not marry her until he was independent of all financial difficulties, and had made himself a name. On the whole, nothing could have seemed more improbable than that the marriage could ever take place. The distance between writing second-rate reviews at ten dollars a column, and being one of the few successful writers of the day is really almost as great as it looks to the merest outsider. Moreover, a friendship of several months’ standing is generally speaking a bad foundation on which to build hopes of love. The very intimacy of intercourse forbids those surprises in which love chiefly delights. Friendly hands have taken the bandage from his eyes, and he has learned to see his way about with remarkable acuteness of perception.
Perhaps the most immediate and perceptible effect of the last few interviews with Constance was to be found in the work he turned out, and in the dissatisfaction it caused in quarters where it had formerly been considered excellent. It was beginning to be too good to serve its end, for the writer was beginning to feel that he could no longer efface his individuality and repress his own opinions as he had formerly done. He exceeded in his articles the prescribed length, he made vicious Latin quotations, and concocted savagely epigrammatic sentences, he inserted sharp remarks about prominent writers, where they were manifestly beside the purpose, besides being palpably unjust, there was a sting in almost every paragraph which did not contain a paradox, and, altogether, he made the literary editors who employed him very nervous.
“It won’t do, Mr. Wood,” one of them said. “The publishers don’t like it. Several have written to me. The paper can’t stand this kind of thing
. I suppose the fact is that you are getting too good for this work. Take my advice. Either go back to your old style, or write articles over your own name for the magazines. They like quotations and snap and fine writing — authors and publishers don’t, not a bit.”
“I have tried articles again and again,” George answered. “I cannot get them printed anywhere.”
“Well — you just go ahead and try again. You’ll get on if you stick to it. If you think you can write some of your old kind of notices, here’s a lot of books ready. But seriously, Mr. Wood, if you write any more like the last dozen or so, I can’t take them. I’m sorry, but I really can’t.”
“I’ll have one more shot,” said George, desperately, as he took up the books. He could not afford to lose the wretched pay he got for the work.
He soon saw that other managers of literary departments thought very much as this first specimen did.
“A little more moderation, Mr. Wood,” said a second, who was an elderly æsthetic personage. “I hate violence in all its forms. It is so fatiguing.”
“Very well,” said George submissively.
He went to another, the only one whom he knew rather intimately, a pale, hardworking, energetic young fellow, who had got all manner of distinctions at English and German universities, who had a real critical talent, and who had risen quickly to his present position by his innate superiority over all competitors in his own line. George liked him and admired him. His pay was not brilliant, for he was not on one of the largest papers, but he managed to support his mother and two young sisters on his earnings.
“Look here, Wood,” he said one morning, “this is not the way criticism is done. You are not a critic by nature. Some people are. I believe I am, and I always meant to be one. You do this sort of thing just as you would do any writing that did not interest you, and you do it fairly well, because you have had a good education, and you know a lot of things that ordinary people do not know. But it is not your strong point, and I do not believe it ever will be. Try something else. Write an article.”
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 498