Through all my study of human misery, the thought of my little romance
flashed like swift sunshine. Some of the sadness faded out of Janet’s
face, and every day, I thought, the Lad’s lips were more firmly set in
his effort to win. I wondered what the outcome would be. If his chin had
not been so square and so determined, I should have doubted his victory.
Janet joined us in our expeditions. Then, as the weeks went on, the two
young Bohemians took long walks by themselves, while I stayed at home or
in my office,—for my Cause had a downtown office,—following them only
with my blessing.
I had grown very fond of both. It was well for them to be together.
Janet was waking up, as in a keen electric shock, under the influence of
the Lad’s resistless energy. “There is something contagious in his
vitality,” she said one day. “When you are with him, you feel that you
are face to face with immortal youth, and can never grow old.”
In their long conversations they passed, as was natural, from the
abstract to the personal. It was amusing to hear their encounters of
words. Every bitter remark that the girl made was met and worsted by the
strong logic and the strong hopefulness of her opponent.
She heard from him the history of his book. It was controversial. He was
waging a scientific battle with his dearest friend, the author of an
article that the Lad said was “all off.” It had served as the flinging
of a gauntlet, and the Lad had picked it up. The book was to be, he
said, not only a criticism of Rainforth, but the first setting forth of
his own theory, and the Lad felt that his future welfare depended on his
triumph.
“Not that I can come anywhere near Rainforth generally,” he said. “He’s
a genius. Yes, he’s the only genius I have ever known. I am simply a
pigmy by the side of him. But just here I know he is wrong, and I intend
to prove it. If I succeed, nobody will congratulate me so heartily as
he.”
As to me, he had talked of Janet and the book, to her he talked of the
book and Rainforth. They had been like David and Jonathan in college and
ever since. In argument they had fought many a glorious field. Now
Rainforth was winning honour in the West, and the Lad was watching every
step of his career with intense pride.
“You ought to see him,” cried the Lad. “He fairly towers above all the
people near him.”
There was a touch of novelty in the situation. That a hero-worshipper
should invite his hero to step down from the pedestal and do battle with
him seemed a dangerous proceeding. Yet I knew that if the hero came out
second-best, the worship would be no whit abated.
I fancied that Janet grew weary of hearing so much of Rainforth, but I
was not sure. She spoke less and less often of the Lad. In place of the
specific frankness with which he talked of her, she generalized; and
because her “humorous melancholy” was so little appreciated by him, she
spent it all on me.
She was talking one day of the elusiveness of life. We were always
seeming to catch a meaning in it, she said, first in one place, then in
another. In will-o’-the-wisp fashion it danced through religion, through
philosophy, through aspiration of every kind. We went from illusion to
illusion, from dream to dream. The gods (thus Janet named the hostile
powers whom she sometimes imagined behind the scenes), in order to amuse
themselves, had made this world as a great playground, where their
creatures, cobweb-blinded, played an endless game of blindman’s buff.
The last and most cruel illusion of all was love.
It was then that I knew that she had begun to care for the Lad.
In the early winter my work developed so as to demand all my time. In
consequence of the business depression, the suffering in the city had
increased tenfold. My experiences of the daytime haunted me at night. In
my dreams I climbed the dark stairways of the poor, and door after door
opened in my sleep upon scenes of misery that I could not help.
I had no time now to talk with my young friends, but the sight of them
comforted me. I found myself looking at Janet with the Lad’s eyes. I,
too, in watching her face, saw “a glory upon it, as upon the face of one
who feels a light round his hair.”