"If your firm can't supply it, I can," she answered."It seems strange that you won't grant my first request of you, merely because of a little money.""It isn't a little money," he objected, catching manlike at the practical question."You don't realize what an amount a clump of pine like this stands for.Just in saw logs, before it is made into lumber, it will be worth about thirty thousand dollars,--of course there's the expense of logging to pay out of that," he added, out of his accurate business conservatism, "but there's ten thousand dollars' profit in it."The girl, exasperated by cold details at such a time, blazed out.
"I never heard anything so ridiculous in my life!" she cried.
"Either you are not at all the man I thought you, or you have some better reason than you have given.Tell me, Harry; tell me at once.
You don't know what you are doing."
"The firm needs it, Hilda," said Thorpe, "in order to succeed.If we do not cut this pine, we may fail."In that he stated his religion.The duty of success was to him one of the loftiest of abstractions, for it measured the degree of a man's efficiency in the station to which God had called him.The money, as such, was nothing to him.
Unfortunately the girl had learned a different language.She knew nothing of the hardships, the struggles, the delight of winning for the sake of victory rather than the sake of spoils.To her, success meant getting a lot of money.The name by which Thorpe labelled his most sacred principle, to her represented something base and sordid.
She had more money herself than she knew.It hurt her to the soul that the condition of a small money-making machine, as she considered the lumber firm, should be weighed even for an instant against her love.It was a great deal Thorpe's fault that she so saw the firm.
He might easily have shown her the great forces and principles for which it stood.
"If I were a man," she said, and her voice was tense, "if I were a man and loved a woman, I would be ready to give up everything for her.My riches, my pride, my life, my honor, my soul even,--they would be as nothing, as less than nothing to me,--if I loved.Harry, don't let me think I am mistaken.Let this miserable firm of yours fail, if fail it must for lack of my poor little temple of dreams,"she held out her hands with a tender gesture of appeal.The affair had gone beyond the preservation of a few trees.It had become the question of an ideal.Gradually, in spite of herself, the conviction was forcing itself upon her that the man she had loved was no different from the rest; that the greed of the dollar had corrupted him too.By the mere yielding to her wishes, she wanted to prove the suspicion wrong.
Now the strange part of the whole situation was, that in two words Thorpe could have cleared it.If he had explained that he needed the ten thousand dollars to help pay a note given to save from ruin a foolish friend, he would have supplied to the affair just the higher motive the girl's clear spirituality demanded.Then she would have shared enthusiastically in the sacrifice, and been the more loving and repentant from her momentary doubt.All she needed was that the man should prove himself actuated by a noble, instead of a sordid, motive.The young man did not say the two words, because in all honesty he thought them unimportant.It seemed to him quite natural that he should go on Wallace Carpenter's note.
That fact altered not a bit the main necessity of success.It was a man's duty to make the best of himself,--it was Thorpe's duty to prove himself supremely efficient in his chosen calling; the mere coincidence that his partner's troubles worked along the same lines meant nothing to the logic of the situation.In stating baldly that he needed the money to assure the firm's existence, he imagined he had adduced the strongest possible reason for his attitude.If the girl was not influenced by that, the case was hopeless.
It was the difference of training rather than the difference of ideas.Both clung to unselfishness as the highest reason for human action; but each expressed the thought in a manner incomprehensible to the other.
"I cannot, Hilda," he answered steadily.
"You sell me for ten thousand dollars! I cannot believe it! Harry!
Harry! Must I put it to you as a choice? Don't you love me enough to spare me that?"He did not reply.As long as it remained a dilemma, he would not reply.He was in the right.
"Do you need the money more than you do me? more than you do love?"she begged, her soul in her eyes; for she was begging also for herself."Think, Harry; it is the last chance!"Once more he was face to face with a vital decision.To his surprise he discovered in his mind no doubt as to what the answer should be.He experienced no conflict of mind; no hesitation;for the moment, no regret.During all his woods life he had been following diligently the trail he had blazed for his conduct.Now his feet carried him unconsciously to the same end.There was no other way out.In the winter of his trouble the clipped trees alone guided him, and at the end of them he found his decision.It is in crises of this sort, when a little reflection or consideration would do wonders to prevent a catastrophe, that all the forgotten deeds, decisions, principles, and thoughts of a man's past life combine solidly into the walls of fatality, so that in spite of himself he finds he must act in accordance with them.In answer to Hilda's question he merely inclined his head.
"I have seen a vision," said she simply, and lowered her head to conceal her eyes.Then she looked at him again."There can be nothing better than love," she said.
"Yes, one thing," said Thorpe, "the duty of success."The man had stated his creed; the woman hers.The one is born perfect enough for love; the other must work, must attain the completeness of a fulfilled function, must succeed, to deserve it.
