"I"m so sorry. Forgive me." Mrs. Carnarvon"s voice had lost its wonted levity. "I saw that you were in trouble and followed. I knocked and I thought I heard you answer. What is it, Marie? May I ask? Can I do anything?"
Marian drew her down to the bed and buried her face in her lap. "Oh, I feel so unclean," she said. "It was--Teddy. Would you believe it, Jessie, Teddy! I looked on him as a brother. And he showed me that he was not my friend--that he didn"t even love me--that he--oh, I shall never forget the look in his eyes. He made me feel like a--like a _thing_."
Mrs. Carnarvon smothered a smile. "Of course Teddy"s a brute," she said.
"I thought you knew. He"s a domesticated brute, like most of the men and some of the women. You"ll have to get used to that."
By refusing to fall in with her mood, Mrs. Carnarvon had gone far toward curing it. Marian stopped sobbing and presently said:
"Oh, I know all that. But I didn"t expect it from Teddy--and toward me.
And--" she shuddered--"I was thinking, actually thinking of marrying him. I wish never to see him again. And he pretended to be my friend!"
"And he was, no doubt, until he got you on the brain in another way, in the way he calls love. There isn"t any love that has friendship in it."
"We must go away at once."
"Unless Teddy saves us the trouble by going first, as I suspect he will."
"Jessie, he hates me and--and--Mr. Howard."
"So you talked to him about Howard again, did you?" Mrs. Carnarvon was indignant. "You are old enough to know better, Marian. You carry frankness entirely too far. There is such a thing as truth running amuck."
"He said he would crush Howard. And I believe he really meant it."
"Teddy is a man who believes in revenges--or thinks he does. His father taught him to keep accounts in grievances, and no doubt he has opened an account with Howard. But don"t be disturbed about it. His father would have insisted on balancing the account. Teddy will just keep on hating, but won"t do anything. He"s not underhanded."
"He"s everything that is vile and low."
"You"re quite mistaken, my dear. He"s what they call a manly fellow--a little too masculine perhaps, but----"
A knock interrupted and Mrs. Carnarvon, answering it, took from the bell-boy a note for Marian who read it, then handed it to her. Mrs.
Carnarvon read: "I apologise for the way I said what I did this evening, not for what I said. Because you had forgotten yourself, had played the traitor and the cheat was, perhaps, no excuse for my rudeness. You have fallen under an evil influence. I hope no harm will come to you, for I can"t get over my feeling for you. But I have done my best and have not been able to save you. I am going away early in the morning.
"E. D."
"Melodramatic, isn"t it?" laughed Mrs. Carnarvon. "So he"s off. How furious Martha Fortescue and Ellen will be. But they"ll go in pursuit, and they"ll get him. A man is never so susceptible as when he"s broken-hearted. Well, I must go. Good-night, dear. Don"t mope and whine.
Take your punishment sensibly. You"ve learned something--if it"s only not to tell one man how much you love another."
"I think I"ll go abroad with Aunt Retta next month."
"A good idea--you"ll forget both these men. Good-night."
"Good-night," answered Marian dolefully, expecting to resume her thoughts of Danvers. But, instead, he straightway disappeared from her mind and she could think only of Howard. She was free now. The one barrier between him and her of which she had been really conscious was gone. And her heart began to ache with longing for him. Why had he not written? What was he doing? Did he really love her or was his pa.s.sion for her only a flash of a strong and swift imagination?
No, he loved her--she could not doubt that. But she could not understand his conduct. She felt that she ought to be very unhappy, yet she was not. The longer she thought of him and the more she weighed his words and looks, the stronger became her trust in him. "He loves me," she said. "He will come when he can. It may be even harder for him than for me."
And so, explanation failing--for she rejected every explanation that reflected upon him--she hid and excused him behind that familiar refuge of the doubting, mystery.
XIV.
THE NEWS-RECORD GETS A NEW EDITOR.
A few minutes after leaving Marian that last night at Mrs. Carnarvon"s, Howard was deep in a mood of self-contempt. He felt that he had faced the crisis like a coward. He despised the weakness which enfeebled him for effort to win her and at the same time made it impossible for him to thrust her from his mind.
In the working hours his will conquered with the aid of fixed habit and he was able to concentrate upon his editorials. But in his rooms, and especially after the lights were out, his imagination became master, deprived him of sleep and occasionally lifted him to a height of hope in order that it might dash him down the more cruelly upon the rocks of fact.
At last he was forced to face the situation--in his own evasive fashion.
It was impossible to go back. That loneliness which often threatened him after Alice"s death had become the permanent condition of his life. "I will work for her," he said. "Until I have made a place for her I dare not claim her. So much I will concede to my weakness. But when I have won a position which reasonably a.s.sures the future, I shall claim her--no matter what has happened in the meanwhile."
He would have smiled at this wild resolution had he been in a less distracted state of mind or had he been dealing with any other than a matter of love. But in the circ.u.mstances it gave him heart and set him to work with an energy and effectiveness which still further increased Mr. Malcolm"s esteem for him.
"Will you dine with me at the Union Club on Wednesday?" Mr. Malcolm asked one morning in mid-February. "Mr. Coulter and Mr. Stokely are coming. I want you to know them better."
Howard accepted and wondered that he took so little interest.
For Stokely and Coulter were the princ.i.p.al stockholders of the _News-Record_, and with Malcolm formed the triumvirate which directed it in all its departments. Mr. Malcolm held only a few shares of stock, but received what was in the newspaper-world an immense salary--thirty thousand a year. He was at once an able editor and an able diplomatist.
He knew how to make the plans of his two a.s.sociates conform to conditions of news and policy--when to let them use the paper, or, rather, when to use the paper himself for their personal interests; when and how to induce them to let the paper alone. Through a quarter of a century of changing ownerships Malcolm had persisted, chiefly because he had but one conviction--that the post of editor of the _News-Record_ exactly suited him and must remain his at any sacrifice of personal character.
Howard had met Stokely and Coulter. He liked Stokely who was owner of a few shares more than one-third; he disliked Coulter who owned just under one-half.
Stokely was a frank, coa.r.s.e, dollar-hunter, cheerfully unscrupulous in a large way, acute, caring not at all for principles of any kind, letting the paper alone most of the time because he was astute enough to know that in his ignorance of journalism he would surely injure it as a property.
Coulter was a hypocrite and a sn.o.b. Also he fancied he knew how to conduct a newspaper. He was as unscrupulous as Stokely but tried to mask it.
When Stokely wished the _News-Record_ to advocate a "job," or steal, or the election of some disreputable who would work in his interest, he told Malcolm precisely what he wanted and left the details of the stultification to his experienced adroitness. When Coulter wished to "poison the fountain of publicity," as Malcolm called the paper"s departures from honesty and right, he approached the subject by stealth, trying to convince Malcolm that the wrong was not really wrong, but was right unfortunately disguised.
He would take Malcolm into his confidence by slow and roundabout steps, thus multiplying his difficulties in discharging his "duty." If Coulter"s son had not been married to Malcolm"s daughter, it is probable that not even his complete subserviency would have enabled him to keep his place.
"If you had told me frankly what you wanted in the first place, Mr.
Coulter," he said after an exasperating episode in which Coulter"s Pharisaic sensitiveness had resulted in Malcolm"s having to "flop" the paper both editorially and in its news columns twice in three days, "we would not have made ourselves ridiculous and contemptible. The public is an a.s.s, but it is an a.s.s with a memory at least three days long. Your stealthiness has made the a.s.s bray at us instead of with and for us.
And that is dangerous when you consider that running a newspaper is like running a restaurant--you must please your customers every day afresh."
Coulter was further difficult because of his anxieties about social position for himself and his family. He was disturbed whenever the _News-Record_ published an item that might offend any of the people whose acquaintance he had gained with so much difficulty, and for whose good will he was willing to sacrifice even considerable money. Personally, but very privately, he edited the _News-Record"s_ "fashionable intelligence" columns on Sunday and made them an exhibit of his own sycophancy and sn.o.bbishness which excited the amused disgust of all who were in the secret.
Malcolm liked Howard, admired him, in a way envied his fearlessness, his earnestness for principles. For years he had had it in mind to retire and write a history of the Civil War period which had been his own period of greatest activity and most intimate acquaintance with the behind-the-scenes of statecraft. Howard"s energy, steady application, enthusiasm for journalism and intelligence both as to editorials and as to news made Malcolm look upon him as his natural successor.
"I think Howard is the man we want," he said to his two a.s.sociates when he was arranging the dinner. "He has new ideas--just what the paper needs. He is in touch with these recent developments. And above all he has judgment. He knows what not to print, where and how to print what ought to be printed. He is still young and is over-enthusiastic. He has limitations, but he knows them and he is eager and capable to learn."
It was a "shop" dinner, Howard doing most of the talking, led on by Malcolm. The main point was the "new journalism," as it was called, and how to adapt it to the _News-Record_ and the _News-Record_ to it.
Malcolm kept the conversation closely to news and news-ideas, fearing that, if editorial policies were brought in, Howard would make "breaks."
He soon saw that his a.s.sociates were much impressed with Howard, with his judgment, with his knowledge of the details of every important newspaper in the city, with his a.n.a.lysis of the good and bad points in each.
"I"ll drop you at your corner," said he to Howard at the end of the dinner. As they drove up the Avenue he began: "How would you like to be the editor of the _News-Record_? My place, I mean."
"I don"t understand," Howard answered, bewildered.