been?” Her eyes were ablaze and her voice trembled with anger.
“I wrote it,” he said.
He did not dare to look at her for a few seconds. Then, with a flimsy
mask of pretended calmness only the more clearly revealing self-contempt
and cowardice, he faced her amazed eyes, her pale cheeks, her parted
lips--and dropped his gaze to the floor.
“You?” she whispered. “You?”
“Yes, I.”
She sat so still that he reached over and touched her hand. It was cold.
She shivered and drew it away. They were silent for a long time--several
minutes. She was looking at his face. It was old and sad and
feeble--pitiful, contemptible. She had never seen those lines of
weakness about his mouth before. She had never before noted that his
features had lost the expression of exalted character, the light of free
and independent manhood which made her look again the first time she saw
him. When had the man she loved departed? When had the new man come? How
long had she been giving herself to a stranger--and _such_ a stranger?
“Yes--I,” he repeated. “I have come over to your side.” He laughed and
she shivered again. “Well--what do you think?”
“Think?--I?--Oh, I think----”
She burst into tears, flung herself down at his feet and buried her head
in his lap.
“I think nothing,” she sobbed, “except that I--I love you.”
He fell to smoothing her hair, slowly, gently, patronisingly. His face
was composed and he was looking down at her trembling head and agitated
shoulders with an absent-minded smile. How easily this once
dreaded crisis had passed! How he had overestimated her! How he had
underestimated himself!
His glance and his thoughts soon fastened upon the copy of his newspaper
which she had thrown aside--_his_ newspaper indeed, his creation and his
creature, the epitome of his intellect and character, of his strength
and his weakness. Half a million circulation daily, three quarters of a
million on Sunday--how mighty as a direct influence upon the people! Its
clearness and vigour, its intelligence, its truth-like sophistry--how
mighty as an indirect influence upon the minds of other editors and of
public men! “Power--Success,” he repeated to himself in an exaltation of
vanity and arrogance.
Marian lifted her head and, turning, put it against his knee. She
reached out for his hand. He began to speak at once in a low persuasive
voice:
“Trust me, dear, can’t you? You do not--have not been reading the paper
until recently. You are not interested in politics. There have been many
changes in the few last years. And I too have changed. I am no longer
without responsibilities. They have sobered me, have given me
an appreciation of property, stability, conservatism. Youth is
enthusiastic, theoretical. I have--”
“Ah, but I do trust you,” she interrupted eagerly, fearful lest his
explanations would make it the more difficult for her to convince
herself of what she felt she must believe if life were to go on. “And
you--I don’t want you to excite yourself. You must be quiet--must get
well.”
Each avoided meeting the other’s eyes as she arranged the pillows for
him before leaving him alone to rest.
The longer she juggled with her discovery the less appalling it seemed.
His line of action fitted too closely to her own ambitions of social
distinction, social leadership. If he had been her lover, the shock
would have killed love and set up contempt in its stead. But he was
not her lover, had not been for years; and to find that her husband was
doing a husband’s duty, was winning position and power for himself and
therefore for his wife--that was a disclosure with mitigating aspects at
least. Besides, might she not be in part mistaken? Surely any course so
satisfactory in its results could not be wholly wrong, might perhaps be
the right in an unexpected, unaccustomed form.
XXVIII.
SUCCESS.
French had made a portrait of the new American ambassador to the Court
of St. James and it was shown at the spring exhibition of the Royal
Academy. The ambassador and his wife wished to see how it had been
hung, but they did not wish to be seen. So they chose an early hour of
a chill, rainy May morning to drive in a hansom from their place in Park
Lane to Burlington House.
They found the portrait in Room VI, on the line, in a corner, but where
it had the benefit of such light as there was. When they entered no one
was there; but, as they were standing close to the picture, admiring
the energy and simplicity of the strokes of the master’s brush, a crowd
swept in and enclosed them.
“Let us go,” Howard said in a low tone.
Just then a man, almost at his shoulder because of the pressure of those
behind, said: “Wonderful, isn’t it? I’ve never seen a better example of
his work. He had a subject that suited him perfectly.”
“No, let us stay,” Marian whispered in reply to her husband. “They can’t
see our faces and I’d like to hear.”
“Yes, it is superb,” came the answer to the man behind them in a voice
unmistakably American. “Now, tell me, Saverhill, what sort of a person
would you say the ambassador is from that picture? You don’t know him?”
“Never heard of him until I read of his appointment,” replied the first
voice.
“I’ve heard of him often enough,” came in the American voice. “But I’ve
never seen him.”
“You know him now,” resumed the Englishman, “inside as well as out.
French always paints what he sees and always sees what he’s painting.”
“Well, what is it?”
“Let us go,” whispered Marian. But Howard did not heed her.
“I see--a fallen man. He was evidently a real man once; but he sold
himself.”
“Yes? Where does it show?”
“He’s got a good mind, this fellow-countryman of yours. There are the
eyes of a thinker and a doer. Nothing could have kept him down. His face
is almost as relentless as Kitchener’s and fully as aggressive, except
that it shows intellect, and Kitchener’s doesn’t. Now note the corners
of his eyes, Marshall, and his mouth and nostrils and chin, and you’ll
see why he sold himself, and the--the consequences.”
Howard and Marian, fascinated, compelled, looked where the unknown
requested.
“I think I see what you mean,” came in Marshall’s voice, laughingly.
“But go on.”
“Ah, there it all is--hypocrisy, vanity, lack of principle, and,
plainest of all, weakness. It’s a common enough type among your
successful men. The man himself is the fixed market price for a certain
kind of success. But, according to French, this ambassador of yours
seems to know what he has paid; and the knowledge doesn’t make him more
content with his bargain. He has more brains than vanity; therefore he’s
an unhappy hypocrite instead of a happy self-deceiver.”
Howard and Marian shrunk together with their heads close in the effort
to make sure of concealing their faces. She was suffering for herself,
but more acutely for him. She knew, as if she were looking into his
mind, his frightful humiliation. “Hereafter,” she thought, “whenever any
one looks at him he will feel the thought behind the look.”
“How nearly did I come to him?” asked Saverhill.
Howard started and Marian caught the rail for support.
“A centre-shot,” replied Marshall, “if the people who know him and have
talked to me about him tell the truth.”
“Oh, they’re ‘on to’ him, as you say, over there, are they?”
“No, not everybody. Only his friends and the few who are on the inside.
There’s an ugly story going about privately as to how he got the
ambassadorship. They say he was bought with it. But--he’s admired and
envied even by a good many who know or suspect that he’s only an article
of commerce. He’s got the cash and he’s got position; and his paper
gives him tremendous power. Then too, as you say, all about him there
are men like himself. The only punishment he’s likely to get is the
penalty of having to live with himself.”
“A good, round price if French is not mistaken,” replied Saverhill.
The two men passed on. Howard and Marian looked guiltily about, then
slipped away in the opposite direction. He helped her into the waiting
hansom. As they were driven homeward she cast a stealthy side-glance at
him.
“Yes,” she thought, “the portrait is a portrait of his face; and his
face is a portrait of himself.”
He caught her glance in the little mirror in the side of the
hansom--caught it and read it. And he began to hate her, this instrument
to his punishment, this constant remembrancer of his downfall.