Nothing roused Pete"s spirit like feeling a tremor in his own soul, and so he now answered with great firmness:
"I cannot give you an answer to-day _or_ to-morrow."
"It"s all off, then, all off," said Honaton, moving to the door.
"When do the Chinese boats sail, Mr. Honaton?" said Pete, with the innocence of manner that an employee should use when putting his superior in a hole.
"I don"t see what difference that makes to you, Wayne, if you"re not taking them," said Honaton, as if he were triumphantly concealing the fact that he didn"t know.
"Don"t feel you have to wait, Jack, if you"re in a hurry," said his partner, and when the other had slid out of the office Benson turned to Wayne and went on: "You wouldn"t have to go until a week from Sat.u.r.day.
You would have to get off then, and we should have to know in time to find some one else in case you don"t care for it."
Pete asked for three days, and presently left the office.
He had a friend, one of his mother"s reformed drunkards, who as janitor lived on the top floor of a tall building. He and his wife offered Wayne the hospitality of their balcony, and now and then, in moments like this, he availed himself of it. Not, indeed, that there had ever been a moment quite like this; for he knew that he was facing the most important decision he had ever been forced to make.
In the elevator he met the janitor"s cat Susan going home after an afternoon visit to the restaurant on the sixteenth floor. The elevator boy loved to tell how she never made a mistake in the floor.
"Do you think she"d get off at the fifteenth or the seventeenth? Not she.
Sometimes she puts her nose out and smells at the other floors, but she won"t get off until I stop at the right one. Sometimes she has to ride up and down three or four times before any one wants the sixteenth. Eh, Susan?" he added in caressing tones; but Susan was watching the floors flash past and paid no attention until, arrived at the top, she and Pete stepped off together.
It was a cool, clear day, for the wind was from the north, but on the southern balcony the sun was warm. Pete sat down in the kitchen-chair set for him, tilted back, and looked out over the Statue of Liberty, which stood like a stunted baby, to the blue Narrows. He saw one thing clearly, and that was that he would not go if Mathilde would not go with him.
He envied people who could make up their minds by thinking. At least sometimes he envied them and sometimes he thought they lied. He could only think _about_ a subject and wait for the unknown G.o.ds to bring him a decision. And this is what he now did, with his eyes fixed on the towers and tanks and tenements, on the pale winter sky, and, when he got up and leaned his elbows on the parapet, on the crowds that looked like a flood of purple insects in the streets.
He thought of Mathilde"s youth and his own untried capacities for success, of poverty and children, of the probable opposition of Mathilde"s family and of a strange, sinister, disintegrating power he felt or suspected in Mrs. Farron. He felt that it was a terrible risk to ask a young girl to take and that it was almost an insult to be afraid to ask her to take it. That was what his mother had always said about these cherished, protected creatures: they were not prepared to meet any strain in life. He knew he would not have hesitated to ask a girl differently brought up. Ought he to ask Mathilde or ought he not even to hesitate about asking her? In his own future he had confidence. He had an unusual power of getting his facts together so that they meant something. In a small way his work was recognized. A report of his had some weight. He felt certain that if on his return he wanted another position he could get it unless he made a terrible fiasco in China. Should he consult any one? He knew beforehand what they would all think about it. Mr. Lanley would think that it was sheer impertinence to want to marry his granddaughter on less than fifteen thousand dollars a year; Mrs. Farron would think that there were lots of equally agreeable young men in the world who would not take a girl to China; and his mother, whom he could not help considering the wisest of the three, would think that Mathilde lacked discipline and strength of will for such an adventure. And on this he found he made up his mind. "After all," he said to himself as he put the chair back against the wall, "everything else would be failure, and this may be success."
It was the afternoon that Farron was brought back from the hospital, and he and Mathilde were sure of having the drawing-room to themselves. He told her the situation slowly and with a great deal of detail, chronologically, introducing the Chinese trip at the very end. But she did not at once understand.
"O Pete, you would not go away from me!" she said. "I could not face that."
"Couldn"t you? Remember that everything you say is going to be used against you."
"Would you be willing to go, Pete?"
"Only if you will go with me."
"Oh!" she clasped her hands to her breast, shrinking back to look at him. So that was what he had meant, this stranger whom she had known for such a short time. As she looked she half expected that he would smile, and say it was all a joke; but his eyes were steadily and seriously fixed on hers. It was very queer, she thought. Their meeting, their first kiss, their engagement, had all seemed so inevitable, so natural, there had not been a hint of doubt or decision about it; but now all of a sudden she found herself faced by a situation in which it was impossible to say yes or no.
"It would be wonderful, of course," she said, after a minute, but her tone showed she was not considering it as a possibility.
Wayne"s heart sank; he saw that he had thought it possible that he would not allow her to go, but that he had never seriously faced the chance of her refusing.
"Mathilde," he said, "it"s far and sudden, and we shall be poor, and I can"t promise that I shall succeed more than other fellows; and yet against all that--"
She looked at him.
"You don"t think I care for those things? I don"t care if you succeed or fail, or live all your life in Siam."
"What is it, then?"
"Pete, it"s my mother. She would never consent."
Wayne was aware of this, but, then, as he pointed out to Mathilde with great care, Mrs. Farron could not bear for her daughter the pain of separation.
"Separation!" cried the girl, "But you just said you would not go if I did not."
"If you put your mother before me, mayn"t I put my profession before you?"
"My dear, don"t speak in that tone."
"Why, Mathilde," he said, and he sprang up and stood looking down at her from a little distance, "this is the real test. We have thought we loved each other--"
"Thought!" she interrupted.
"But to get engaged with no immediate prospect of marriage, with all our families and friends grouped about, that doesn"t mean such a lot, does it?"
"It does to me," she answered almost proudly.
"Now, one of us has to sacrifice something. I want to go on this expedition. I want to succeed. That may be egotism or legitimate ambition. I don"t know, but I want to go. I think I mean to go. Ought I to give it up because you are afraid of your mother?"
"It"s love, not fear, Pete."
"You love me, too, you say."
"I feel an obligation to her."
"And, good Heavens! do you feel none to me?"
"No, no. I love you too much to feel an obligation to you."
"But you love your mother _and_ feel an obligation to her. Why, Mathilde, that feeling of obligation _is_ love--love in its most serious form.
That"s what you don"t feel for me. That"s why you won"t go."
"I haven"t said I wouldn"t go."
"You never even thought of going."
"I have, I do. But how can I help hesitating? You must know I want to go."
"I see very little sign of it," he murmured. The interview had not gone as he intended. He had not meant, he never imagined, that he would attempt to urge and coerce her; but her very detachment seemed to set a fire burning within him.
"I think," he said with an effort to sound friendly, "that I had better go and let you think this over by yourself."
He was actually moving to the door when she sprang up and put her arms about him.
"Weren"t you even going to kiss me, Pete?"
He stooped, and touched her cheek with his lips.