Part 9

Throughout the remainder of the afternoon, while he gave directions to the series of sub-editors who came deferentially into his presence, an obscure worry persisted at the back of his consciousness. Of course--he had to confess it--he had neglected her of late. How long was it since he had been home? Only a month--or five weeks? The foreground of his brain, working at full pressure on the problems continuously submitted to it for instant decision, failed to solve the question--relegated it to be worried over by that independent consciousness at the back of his mind. It was a long time, anyway! Of course she understood. It was the paper--the paper to which he was the slave--which, practically, he never quitted (he had a bedroom in the building)--the paper of which he personally read every item that was printed and an enormous quantity of copy which was not--the paper which was his pride, his joy, his one interest in life! Of course, she understood--but it was rough on her. Poor old Betty! He thought of her strange voice, and winced with remorse. She had been brooding over no letter that morning. If only she would have gone to dinner with him! He felt that he could have explained things, put everything straight. But she had an appointment! What appointment? With whom? He put a thought out of his mind, and the thought peeped persistently over the barrier. Impossible, of course! Preposterous! Docile little Betty? Besides--who could there be? His vanity was scornful of the idea.

Nevertheless, as he worked, an impulse kept rising in him, ever more powerfully, an impulse to go home--to go home at once. He fidgeted as he beat back the disturbing desire, had to concentrate himself fiercely upon his task. Suddenly, as though the obscure subconsciousness, which was, after all, his real self, had come to a decision in which his brain had no part, he surrendered. He was surprised at himself as he sharply pressed the bell-button upon his desk. His secretary appeared.

“Tell Mr. Thompson to see the paper through to-night. Get me a taxi at once!”

The well-disciplined secretary barely succeeded in veiling his astonishment.

“Very good, sir.--And if we get that cable from Yokohama----?”

He bit his lip in an unwonted hesitation. Upon the contents of a cable expected that evening from Yokohama he would have to decide the policy of his paper, and upon the policy of his paper, as outlined in the leader which would be published in the morning, depended to a large extent the direction of the current of popular opinion--the current which would set in a few days toward peace or war. To-night, if ever, he ought to remain at his post, but the dominant impulse which had swept over him would take no denial. He felt like a traitor to his professional code as he replied:

“I may be back. If I am not, ring me up. You will find me at home.”

His straight stare at the secretary challenged and browbeat the bewilderment in that young man’s eyes.

“Very good, sir,” he said, submissively, and departed.

A few minutes later he found himself speeding homeward in a taxi that, despite the reckless audacity of the liberally subsidized driver, could not go fast enough. The momentary halts imposed by cross-traffic seemed interminably prolonged delays. Of course he was a fool, he told himself--but his impatience increased with every second, set his fingers drumming upon the unread evening newspaper on his knee. At last! The taxi swung into the pavement in front of the tall block of flats where he had his city home. He jumped out with the feverish alacrity of a man who hastens to avert disaster, almost ran to the elevator.

Another moment and he was fitting his key into the latch. He swung the door open--was confronted by Betty in hat and furs, apparently just on the point of departure. She shrank back at his entrance, went white.

“Jack!”

The tone of her voice reëchoed in him like an alarm-bell. He looked sharply at her.

“Where are you going?”

She stared at him, white to the lips, evidently unable to answer. He repeated the question in a level voice from which, by an effort of will, he banished the wild suspicion which suddenly surged up in him.

“Where are you going, Betty?”

She laughed, a trifle hysterically.

“You are taking a great interest in my doings all at once, Jack! I’m going out, of course.--I told you I had an appointment.”

His eyes met hers, held them till they dropped and she went suddenly red. He opened the door of an adjoining room, gestured her to enter, followed her.

They stood and faced each other in a silence that seemed to ring with the menace of near event. He was the first to break it.

“Now perhaps you will tell me where you are going, Betty?” He held his voice on a note of politeness, but it was nevertheless sternly compelling.

Her eyes sought the carpet. Her bosom heaved deeply through a long moment where there was no sound save the suddenly perceived loud ticking of the clock upon the mantelpiece. Then, on the wave of a resolve, she lifted her head, confronted him proudly.

“I am going to leave you, Jack!” It was evident that she had to fight to keep her voice from breaking. “I--I have had enough of it!”

His ejaculation was characteristic.

“My dear!--You must be mad!”

An answering anger came into her eyes.

“Mad or not--I mean it!”

“Leave Maisie?” he cried incredulously.

She smiled at him, more in control of herself now than he.

“No. I am taking Maisie with me,” she said with deliberate calmness.

“But you can’t! I will not allow it!”

“Perhaps you propose to sit here all day and watch her?” she asked, with biting sarcasm. Then, with a sudden change of tone, indignation flamed up in her. “What is she to you?--Is she any more to you than I am?--Do you see her from one month’s end to another?--Do you ask after her? Do you write to her? Do you take the faintest interest in her?--No!--Once you leave this flat and go to your hateful paper, you forget her as utterly as you do me!” Her eyes blazed at him. “Maisie and I are all the world to each other, Jack! And we will not be separated! We go together!”

The violence of this outburst from the woman whose docility he had so long accepted as naturally as he did that of his staff upon the _Rostrum_ shocked him profoundly. At the same time, a blinding passion of jealousy surged up in him.

“You shall not go!”

“I shall!” There was no mistaking the determination in her voice. “The moment your back is turned!”

The room seemed to reel about him. The hitherto so solid foundations of his existence had broken up suddenly beneath him. He could not have suspected so great a capacity for emotion in himself. He pressed his hand against his brow, closed his eyes tight in the sickening shock.

“Who is it?” he asked hoarsely. “The man?--His name?”

Her eyes seemed to be probing the depth of his wound as they looked into his, but they showed no compassion.

“I cannot tell you.” Her tone was unshakably firm.

There was again a silence, in which he fought for mastery over himself. He looked at her in uncomprehending despair.

“Betty! Betty, tell me why?--For God’s sake, tell me why!--You used to love me. Tell me why you’ve changed!”

She evidently was also fighting to keep his emotion from communicating itself to her. He thought, as he waited for her answer, that her head never looked more nobly beautiful.

“Do you remember, Jack? Ten years ago?--Ten years to-day?--You said to me: ‘You cannot live without love!’ You were right.” A sob, that almost escaped its check, came into her voice. “I cannot live without love.”

He looked for yet another moment upon the sad dignity of her face, upon the quivering, sensitive mouth, upon the eyes that brimmed with tears--then, with an impulsive movement, he sprang forward, seized her two hands in his. The tears were in his eyes also, and in his voice.

“Oh, Betty, Betty darling! I remember! And I said ‘I love you! I love you! Trust yourself to it whatever happens!’--Oh, Betty! Is it too late? Is it too late?”

Her eyes looked deeply into his, incredulous at first of his sincerity, then softening in a wonderful certitude, she let herself go into his enfolding arms, her mouth drawn wistfully close to his, yet still, for a moment, withheld. All pride went out of her suddenly. She implored, like a soul that has an unbelievable chance of life.

“Oh, Jack! You do love me?--You love me still!--Oh, Jack, Jack!”

She buried her head upon his shoulder, her body shaking with sobs.

He caressed her, soothingly.

“My dear! My beloved! My dear, dear Betty! Of course I love you! You and Maisie are all I have in the world--and it’s mostly you!--Oh, I know I’ve been a fool! I’ve thought only of my selfish ambition. But, dear, try me again! I’ll be so much kinder to you, so much more thoughtful.--And we’ll forget all this. Never remember it. I won’t even ask you the man’s name.”

She half-raised her head from his shoulder, swallowed tearfully.

“There--there wasn’t any man!” she said, and broke down again into a passion of sobs that would not cease.

* * * * * *

As he expected, the young man was waiting for him. Maisie was waiting also, standing very tall and rigid by the window, in all the dignity of youth measuring swords with the parental generation. He thought, as he came into the centre of the room, how like her mother she was--her mother twenty years ago, when she had faced _her_ father. He nearly smiled at the remembrance, checked himself with a thought of the matter in hand. This, of course, was quite different!

The young man rose to meet him. They shook hands with the amount of stiffness proper to the occasion. He found himself suddenly wishing that Betty were here, after all. He had been hasty in telling her to keep out of the way. She could handle Maisie more tactfully than he could. Very reasonable woman, Betty--she had seen his point of view at once. These thoughts passed swiftly through his mind as he invited the young man to a chair, seated himself. There was an awkward silence.

He and the young man broke it at the same instant.

“You wanted to speak to me----?”

“I think you understand, sir----”

Both stopped likewise at the same instant to make way for the other, and both failed to recommence.

Maisie stepped forward impatiently, stood between them, towering superbly.

“I don’t see why you want all this icy ceremony, both of you,” she said scornfully. She turned to her father. “Jim wants to marry me, Father--and I want to marry Jim. And that’s all there is to it!”

“Indeed!” He raised his eyebrows in mild sarcasm. “I wonder you thought it necessary to inform me of such a trifling matter.”

“We thought it better to tell you.” Maisie was cheerfully unscathed.

“Much obliged, I am sure. I’m very interested. I expect you will both of you want to marry lots more people before you’ve finished. I shall always be willing to lend a sympathetic ear when you care to tell me of the latest.”

“Father!” broke out Maisie indignantly. He felt that he had scored. “This is serious!”

“It always is,” he said philosophically. “And you, young man? I suppose you are burning to add your testimony of the solemnity of this occasion to Maisie’s?” He felt that if he could only keep it up on this tone he was safe. Maisie was apt to be so damnably stubborn and unmanageable once he failed to maintain superiority. As for the young man--well, of course, he was only a young man. He could soon manage _him_!

This young man, however, was no whit abashed.

“I am, sir,” he said, confidently. “Maisie and I are made for each other!” he added, uttering the banality as though it were now for the first time new-minted for the lovers’ lexicon.

“Really?--It is a happy chance, for certainly Maisie’s mother and myself omitted to take you into account when we----”

“Father!”

“--named her at the baptismal font,” he continued, equably. He had scored again.

The young man was impervious.

“Perhaps there are higher Powers than you, sir?” he ventured, with polite deference.

“--Even if you are the editor of the _Daily Rostrum_!” added Maisie viciously.

He resettled himself in his chair under this lively counter-attack.

“Well, let us drop these witticisms,” he said with some asperity. “Come to business. Let’s hear your case, if you have one.”

“Certainly, sir. I ask your permission to marry Maisie.”

“I appreciate the courtesy. What is your income?”

The young man hesitated.

“Well--at present, sir----”

“Nothing, I suppose?” He was still keeping his end up, was well-satisfied with the tartness of that question. He nearly smiled as he watched the young man wriggle.

“I must confess, sir--but I have qualifications--and I am ambitious!”

“All young men are ambitious,” he replied, oracularly. “Let us hear the qualifications!”

“I graduated with honours at my university----”

“Pooh! So did the man who sells my paper at the corner of the street!”

“--and I have great hopes of getting a good job.”

“Indeed!--Where?”

“On your paper, sir!”

He was staggered by the young man’s impudence.

“My compliments!--But, as I unfortunately fail to share those hopes, I must regretfully refuse the permission you ask for!”

He had only just managed to keep his temper.

Maisie sailed forward to the attack.

“But, Father, you have often told me that when you married Mother you were only a graduate with your first job on the _Rostrum_! We don’t mind struggling--we should _like_ to struggle--just as you did!”

“Things were different then. That was a long time ago. In this year of nineteen forty-two life is much more difficult than when your mother and I were young.”

“It only seems so to you because you have got old. It isn’t difficult to us young people!” said Maisie, smilingly positive.

He winced under the unconscious cruelty of this remark.

“Perhaps you will allow my experience to be the best judge,” he said, snappily. “In any case, I refuse my permission! The idea is ridiculous!--I do not think there is any more I need say, young man,” he concluded, making a movement to rise from his chair.

Maisie pinned him down to it, both arms around him, kneeling at his side, her face--Betty’s young face!--looking up to him in winsome appeal.

“Father!” she said, and her voice was full of soft cajolery, “if any one took Mother away from you, wouldn’t you feel it dreadfully?” He had a sudden little flitting vision of a crisis ten years back. “Would life be worth anything to you?--I mean it seriously.” She paused for a reply he refused to give. “Well, Father--that’s just what life will be like to Jim if you take me away from him!”

“I don’t see the necessity of the parallel,” he countered, feebly.

“Oh, yes, you do. And Father!--If any one took you away from Mother?--What would life be like to her?--You know! _Just a dreary blank!_--And that’s what my life will be like if you send Jim away from me!”

“But----” he began.

She put her hand over his mouth, a deliciously soft young hand, with a faint fragrance that reminded him----

“No!” she continued, inexorably. “Listen to me! I haven’t finished. If any one took you from Mother, and she knew where to find you--what would she do? You know! She would go to you, whatever was in the way!--And, Father, that’s what I should do!--Father!” she said, and her tone was full of solemn warning, “would you like to think of your darling little Maisie starving somewhere in a top back room--and hating you, _hating you_!” her voice suddenly became almost genuinely vicious, “because you wouldn’t give her husband a chance to earn his living? Would you like to sit day after day, not knowing where she was, wondering all sorts of things--with Mother sitting on the chair opposite and not daring to say a word--day after day, and year after year, and never hear from her any more?--And all because you were a stubborn, foolish old man who had forgotten what real love was!”

“But, Maisie----” he did not himself know what he was going to say.

She snuggled up close to him, looked up into his face.

“Dadsie!” she said, and the voice was the voice of the child Maisie who had so often looked up from his knee with just that irresistible smile which had brought strange tears to his eyes then as it did now--sudden tears he could not quite keep back. “Dadsie!” she said once more and her tone went straight to his heart. “You do love your little Maisie, don’t you? And you want to make her happy--all her life you have wanted to make her happy and you’re going to make her happy now. You are going to give her Jim, her man--like you are Mother’s man--a chance to make good. You are going to give us both a chance to make good together--like you and Mother have made good together. You are still going to be Maisie’s dear, good, kind, generous father whom she will always love--aren’t you, Dadsie?”

The young man stood up.

“Sir,” he said, “I’ve lost my father. And if I could choose another one--I should like it to be you!”

The older man warmed suddenly at the unmistakable sincerity of his tone. He was a good lad, after all--very like himself, he thought--twenty years ago!

“Dadsie!” implored Maisie, her arms still about him. “Dadsie!--Say yes!--Just think it’s Mother and you starting for the first time!”

Something broke down in him--almost the barrier against unmanliness. He blew his nose quickly and his smile had a twist in it as he looked into Maisie’s eyes.

“That’s not fair!” he said. “But you’ve won. You shall have your chance.--You can start to-morrow, young man, but, mind--to work!” He stood up, went to the door.

“Betty!” he called as he opened it.

She stood there--smiling at him. He guessed suddenly that she had been there all the while.

“Well?” she said, her eyes happy.

He glanced round to where the two young lovers had stood. But they had vanished together into the garden.

“I’ve been an old fool, my dear!” he said, smiling.

“You’ve been an old dear!” she replied, putting an arm about him and coming with him into the room. “You couldn’t have made me a better birthday present!” Her eyes, also, were full of tears.

“Forty to-day!” he said, “and it only seems like yesterday since you and I----”

“And you still love me?” she queried, in a tone that had no doubt, looking up into his face.

“I still love you,” he replied, happily positive. “Just as I did then!”

Arms about each other, he led her in front of the big mirror over the fireplace and they smiled at the reflected picture of their union.

“She called me an old man,” he said, a little ruefully, patting his hair before the mirror. “I’m getting a bit gray, too.” He looked at her. “But you, dear, you haven’t got a gray hair--and in my eyes you are just as beautiful as ever!”

She shook her head slowly at him in delight.

“And you are just as handsome!”

He smiled down upon her.

“Maisie accused me of being too old to remember what true love was,” he said. “Do you think so, dear?--Have we forgotten?”

“Darling!” she whispered, as she snuggled close against him.

They kissed, believing that their kiss was just the kiss of twenty years ago. It wasn’t. It was a symbol of infinitely more.

* * * * * *

He sat tapping his foot impatiently on the carpet of the ante-room to the council-chamber of the _Daily Rostrum_. Behind the closed door a meeting of the chief proprietors was in secret deliberation. He glanced at his watch, his dignity fretting at this unwonted exclusion, an unacknowledged anxiety unsettling his nerves. He knew himself to be on the threshold of a new epoch. An enterprising, young-blooded syndicate was acquiring the _Daily Rostrum_, was even then in conclave with the old proprietors, agreeing upon the final terms. They had sent for him--had asked him (oh, most courteously!) to give them yet five minutes.

But he was resentful of those five minutes. Young Henry Vancoutter (not so very young now, though--he must be forty!--Let me see--twenty years----), the chief proprietor, ought to have treated him with more consideration. He deserved better than to be left cooling his heels while the destinies of his paper--_his_ paper, for he if any one had made it, had lived for it for forty years, had been its unchallenged autocrat for thirty--were in the balance. The old man would never have done it, he thought, resentful of this rising generation. Never once was old Vancoutter lacking in the respect due to him, the prince of editors who had made his property one of the most valuable in the journalistic world.

He wondered what the future would bring. Doubtless the policy of the paper would be changed--that was only natural, of course. They must go ahead with the times (he nerved himself for an effort that he felt would be a tax upon his strength). Yes--perhaps they had fallen a bit behind of late. The circulation was not what it was--not half what it had been fifteen years ago. They had made rather a virtue of being a trifle old-fashioned, appealing to conservative instincts. Not in the old days, certainly--but for the last twenty years. And undoubtedly they had suffered from it. He must look up the side-lines a bit--the radio-service to private subscribers, for example. He drifted on to a vague calculation of the initial cost for the service of wirelessed cinema-pictures of current events, mingled with advertisements, with which their go-ahead rival the _Lightning News_ was making so great success with hotels and flat communities. His jaw set. He would beat them on their own ground. He would show the world that the editor of the _Rostrum_ was still alive, was still a power.

Yes--he was not done yet. He could not--no one could--conceive the _Rostrum_ without him. He was the paper itself. There was not the faintest possibility of his being replaced. It was unthinkable as practical near politics, as unimaginable as death itself. Such a day was, thank God, still remote. Old proprietors or new, there was no question that he was the indispensable editor. But he would have to put his shoulder to the wheel.

He wondered what Betty would think of the changes. Poor old Betty! She was getting very frail, but (he thought, cheerfully) considering that she was sixty to-day she was a wonderful woman. He glanced at his watch again, fidgeted with impatience. She would be waiting for him in the car outside--very nice of the old dear to come down for him every day as she had done for now, let me see, was it five or six years past? Ever since he had had his illness. Dear old Betty! He warmed himself with the thought of the splendid fur coat he was going to buy her as a birthday present that afternoon.

The door opened suddenly. Young Vancoutter uttered his name with a smile, murmured an apology, beckoned him in.

He entered, glanced round upon the familiar faces and the new ones gathered on each side of the long table. The new looked up at him with interest, the old bent over blotting-pads on which they scribbled idly. He seated himself.

Vancoutter spoke in his familiar crisp tones.