"Sail next week," the doctor continued, blandly, but fixing his eyes steadily on Long"s face.
"I don"t know that I can accept----"
The older man waved his hand hastily.
"You can from me. I have been your father for a good many years."
There was a pause. Then Long blushed slowly. "I don"t know that I can," he said at length. "Why are you so anxious to get rid of me?" It was the doctor"s turn for silence.
"If you don"t go now, you will not be likely to go for a long time."
His eyes kept firmly on the young man"s face.
"And if I have a reason to stay here?"
"There can be no reason stronger than your success."
"But there is--at least," he paused, awkwardly--"I feel there is, I hope there is."
"Do you know why I have backed you so persistently?"
"You have been awfully kind!"
"It was not altogether on your father"s account," the doctor interrupted him. "I might have put you in some business and left you to fight your own way. That kind of experience we all know makes men, the successful men, who are tried and found capable of bearing strains. I have saved you so far from that struggle. Why?
"Because," continued the doctor authoritatively, "there are some men who care more to do some one thing, who love one object, more than they care for success, for fame, for pleasure. If they are defeated, if they never have the chance to do that one thing--perhaps the world is no poorer--there are plenty to take their places, but they are capable of misery, real misery, such as no common failure ever brings to the common man. They may be foolish; they may be idle and be drawn aside and think they are happier in doing what comes along, but that is never true. They are wretched. Such men can never love, except as an interlude. Do you understand me?"
The doctor paused at this sharp interrogation; Long"s eyes had followed him wonderingly during his long monologue.
"So you thought----" he stammered.
"That you were made in that way," nodded the doctor; "an undomesticated animal."
Long sat brooding over this idea. The doctor went on in his low, swift tones.
"You have the hunger and the thirst for that work over there. You would play with a woman and then put her out of your heart into the street, or try to tame yourself. Which would be worse."
"And if I am not so sure that I am built like that? Suppose I am willing to make the sacrifice, if you call it that?"
The doctor"s tone became neutral again.
"You refer to a possible interest in my daughter."
Long"s face slowly flushed under the word "possible."
"Yes! at least, perhaps--I have never put it to myself exactly--indeed why do you ask?"
"May I ask how far that interest has gone?"
The younger man half rose from his chair.
"If it had _gone_ at all," he said, hotly, "you would have known it."
"Yes," the doctor knitted his eyebrows, "that"s all right. Don"t feel disturbed. If I didn"t consider you to be a gentleman in a more intensive sense of the word than is usual, I shouldn"t be talking to you like this. Have a cigar." There was another long pause. The doctor debated quickly with himself what course to take. When he resumed, he used his rough weapon.
"You ought to know that my daughter will have very little in case of my death."--This time the young man rose entirely from his seat. The doctor smiled and waved him back. "And nothing until my death, which won"t come while you are a young man. The world reports me well to do, and I am, but I am taxed by society heavily. I mean I have large demands on my income, and aside from certain properties that must be left in trust for other people and a modest provision for my wife and child, there isn"t likely to be much. I tell you all this, partly because I like you, and partly because I think it is only fair. I don"t think you are after money. But you must realize now that money will make a great difference in your career."
When Long moved hastily, the doctor smiled.
"I don"t say that you should hunt a fortune, but you should keep out of the way of attractive women without fortune."
This time he gave Long an opportunity to vent his feelings. When he had finished, he began again quietly.
"What you say is singularly like what I said myself about nineteen years ago. I think I will tell you the story," and he proceeded coldly to give him an outline of his life. Long listened respectfully. At the close he said, "But the cases are not similar, exactly."
"No two human cases ever are, but the theme is the same. You might arrange a different compromise; it would be a compromise."
"Your difficulties were enormous! Why need I plan for such misfortunes?"
"You mean the outside affairs, the money? That might be arranged of course. There would remain my daughter, a subject which I can discuss with precision. She is in fair health, and while I live to look after her she will probably continue so. Her nerves are morbid, her egotism is excessive, her restlessness is abnormal. She is rather a brilliant girl, I think, and to me a very dear one. But her career needs to be guided, or some decided smash will come."
"You have no confidence in me?"
"The greatest. It is not her welfare only which I am considering, but yours. Besides, if she were normal or dull, not an exacting young American, yet she would be a woman. And as such her interests must be opposed to yours forever. Should you marry her, I would be forced to agree with her and oppose you wherever you stepped beyond conventionality."
Suddenly Long turned on his tormentor with a bold question.
"Your marriage you would not consider a failure, even under worse conditions?"
The doctor winced at this thrust, which he considered legitimate.
He had had his moments of doubt even in the thick of his loyalty to his wife and child when this question had tormented him. Miasmatic moments that come to firm men also, and make them dizzy with the thought of the mere waywardness of life. Had he been any better or wiser than Roper Ellwell? When the test of a vital pa.s.sion had come he had acted like any other inconsiderate, purposeless young man, like any one with a chaotic will-less past!
But this temptation he had mastered, as he had mastered almost all the elements of his fate.
"That kind of a question can never be answered fairly. No one has the complete data. No! I can honestly say _no_. Yet it has altered my life profoundly, that I can say."
"Then why are you so pessimistic for me?"
"Because," the doctor replied, slowly, "such a marriage as mine has been, such a marriage as yours would be, is a career in itself. Beyond that _nothing_--understand, _nothing_."
"Love is a great career!"
"It is; but there is hardly a man I have ever known who could embrace it, and that only, for a lifetime. You could not, I think, and you would be miserable. It is a humble career though it is rich. The man who wins does not devote his life to an exacting pa.s.sion for a neurotic woman. You are the man to win: go in."
The doctor rose.
"Now I must leave you to see a patient who has been waiting.
Think--you don"t love her, poor child; what do you know of love? You are putting your mind in order for love, and it will come quickly enough."