Part 34

To take her gaze from his face and to avoid seeing her look of loving trust, he put his arms round her. "I don't deserve you," he said--one of those empty pretenses of confession that yet give the human soul a sense of truthfulness.

"You'd not say that if you knew how happy you make me," murmured she.

The welcome sound of a step in the hall give him his release. When he was in the street, he wiped his hot face with his handkerchief. "And I thought I had no moral sense left!" he reflected--not the first man, in this climax day of the triumph of selfish philosophies, to be astonished by the discovery that the dead hands of heredity and tradition have a power that can successfully defy reason.

He started to walk back home, on impulse took a passing taxi and went to his club. It was the Federal. They said of it that no man who amounted to anything in New York could be elected a member, because any man on his way up could not but offend one or more of the important persons in control. Most of its members were nominated at birth or in childhood and elected as soon as they were twenty-one. Norman was elected after he became a man of consequence. He regarded it as one of the signal triumphs of his career; and beyond question it was proof of his power, of the eagerness of important men, despite their jealousy, to please him and to be in a position to get the benefit of his brains should need arise. Norman's whole career, like every career great and small, in the arena of action, was a derision of the ancient moralities, a demonstration of the value of fear as an aid to success. Even his friends--and he had as many as he cared to have--had been drawn to him by the desire to placate him, to stand well where there was danger in standing ill.

Until dinner time he stood at the club bar, drinking one cocktail after another with that supreme indifference to consequences to health which made his fellow men gape and wonder--and cost an occasional imitator health, and perhaps life. Nor did the powerful liquor have the least effect upon him, apparently. Possibly he was in a better humor, but not noticeably so. He dined at the club and spent the evening at bridge, winning several hundred dollars. He enjoyed the consideration he received at that club, for his fellow members being men of both social and financial consequence, their conspicuous respect for him was a concentrated essence of general adulation. He lingered on, eating a great supper with real appetite. He went home in high good humor with himself. He felt that he was a conqueror born, that such things of his desire as did not come could be forced to come. He no longer regarded his passion for the nebulous girl of many personalities as a descent from dignity. Was he not king? Did not his favor give her whatever rank he pleased? Might not a king pick and choose, according to his fancy? Let the smaller fry grow nervous about these matters of caste. They did well to take care lest they should fall. But not he! He had won thus far by haughtiness, never by cringing. His mortal day would be that in which he should abandon his natural tactics for the modes of lesser men. True, only a strong head could remain steady in these giddy altitudes of self-confidence. But was not his head strong?

And without hesitation he called up the vision that made him delirious-and detained it and reveled in it until sleep came.

VIII

The longer he thought of it the stronger grew his doubt that the little Hallowell girl could be so indifferent to him as she seemed. Not that she was a fraud--that is, a conscious fraud--even so much of a fraud as the sincerest of the other women he had known. Simply that she was carrying out a scheme of coquetry. Could it be in human nature, even in the nature of the most indiscriminating of the specimens of young feminine ignorance and folly, not to be flattered by the favor of such a man as he? Common sense answered that it could not be--but neglected to point out to him that almost any vagary might be expected of human nature, when it could produce such a deviation from the recognized types as a man of his position agitated about such an unsought obscurity as Miss Hallowell. He continued to debate the state of her mind as if it were an affair of mightiest moment--which, indeed, it was to him. And presently his doubt strengthened into conviction. She must be secretly pleased, flattered, responsive. She had been in the office long enough to be impressed by his position. Yes, there must be more or less pretense in her apparently complete indifference--more or less pretense, more or less coquetry, probably not a little timidity.

She would come down from her high horse--with help and encouragement from him. He was impatient to get to the office and see just how she would do it--what absurd, amusing attractive child's trick she would think out, imagining she could fool him, as lesser intelligences are ever fatuously imagining they can outwit greater.

He rather thought she would come in to see him on some pretext, would maneuver round like a bird pretending to flutter away from the trap it has every intention of entering. But eleven o'clock of a wasted morning came and she did not appear. He went out to see if she was there--she must be sick; she could not be there or he would have heard from her. . . . Yes, she was at her desk, exactly as always. No, not exactly the same. She was obviously attractive now; the air of insignificance had gone, and not the dullest eyes in that office could fail to see at least something of her beauty. And Tetlow was hanging over her, while the girls and boys grinned and whispered. Clearly, the office was "on to" Tetlow. . . . Norman, erect and coldly infuriate, called out:

"Mr. Tetlow--one moment, please."

He went back to his den, Tetlow startling and following like one on the way to the bar for sentence. "Mr. Tetlow," he said, when they were shut in together, "you are making a fool of yourself before the whole office."

"Be a little patient with me, Mr. Norman," said the head clerk humbly. "I've got another place for her. She's going to take it to-morrow. Then--there'll be no more trouble."

Norman paled. "She wishes to leave?" he contrived to articulate.

"She spoke to me about leaving before I told her I had found her another job."

Norman debated--but for only a moment. "I do not wish her to leave," he said coldly. "I find her useful and most trustworthy."

Tetlow's eyes were fixed strangely upon him.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Norman, the under-note of danger but thinly covered.

"Then she was right," said Tetlow slowly. "I thought she was mistaken. I see that she is right."

"What do you mean?" said Norman--a mere inquiry, devoid of bluster or any other form of nervousness.

"You know very well what I mean, Fred Norman," said Tetlow. "And you ought to be ashamed of yourself."

"Don't stand there scowling and grimacing like an idiot," said Norman with an amused smile. "What do you mean?"

"She told me--about your coming to see her--about your offer to do something for her father--about your acting in a way that made her uneasy."

For an instant Norman was panic-stricken. Then his estimate of her reassured him. "I took your advice," said he. "I went to see for myself. How did I act that she was made uneasy?"

"She didn't say. But a woman can tell what a man has in the back of his head--when it concerns her. And she is a good woman--so innocent that you ought to be ashamed of yourself for even thinking of her in that way. God has given innocence instincts, and she felt what you were about."

Norman laughed--a deliberate provocation. "Love has made a fool of you, old man," he said.

"I notice you don't deny," retorted Tetlow shrewdly.

"Deny what? There's nothing to deny." He felt secure now that he knew she had been reticent with Tetlow as to the happenings in the cottage.