Part 54

“This thing has come to the point where it must stop,” said he, “and I'm going to stop it. I have some rights in the matter of the health and comfort of the girl I love.”

“What do you intend to do?” asked Carroll, frightened.

“I shall have it out with your mother,” replied Orde.

“You mustn't do that,” implored Carroll. “It would do absolutely no good, and would just result in a quarrel that could never be patched up.”

“I don't know as I care particularly,” said Orde.

“But I do. Think--she is my mother.”

Orde stirred uneasily with a mental reservation as to selfishness, but said nothing.

“And think what it means to a girl to be married and go away from home finally without her parent's consent. It's the most beautiful and sacred thing in her life, and she wants it to be perfect. It's worth waiting and fighting a little for. After all, we are both young, and we have known each other such a very short time.”

So she pleaded with him, bringing forward all the unanswerable arguments built by the long average experience of the world--arguments which Orde could not refute, but whose falsity to the situation he felt most keenly. He could not specify without betraying Gerald's confidence. Raging inwardly, he consented to a further armistice.

At his hotel he found a telegram. He did not open it until he had reached his own room. It was from home, urging his immediate return for the acceptance of some contracted work.

“To hell with the contracted work!” he muttered savagely, and calling a bell-boy, sent an answer very much to that effect. Then he plunged his hands into his pockets, stretched out his legs, and fell into a deep and gloomy meditation.

He was interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Come in!” he called, without turning his head.

He heard the door open and shut. After a moment he looked around. Kendrick Bishop stood watching him.

Orde lit the gas.

“Hello, Kendrick!” said he. “Sit down.” The boy made no reply. Orde looked at him curiously, and saw that he was suffering from an intense excitement. His frame trembled convulsively, his lips were white, his face went red and pale by turns. Evidently he had something to say, but could not yet trust his voice. Orde sat down and waited.

“You've got to let my mother alone,” he managed to say finally.

“I have done nothing to your mother, Kendrick,” said Orde kindly.

“You've brought her to the point of death,” asserted Keudrick violently. “You're hounding her to her grave. You're turning those she loves best against her.”

Orde thought to catch the echo of quotation in these words.

“Did your mother send you to me?” he asked.

“If we had any one else worth the name of man in the family, I wouldn't have to come,” said Kendrick, almost in the manner of one repeating a lesson.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Orde after a moment of thought.

“Go away,” cried Kendrick. “Stop this unmanly contest against a defenceless woman.”

“I cannot do that,” replied Orde quietly.

Kendrick's face assumed a livid pallor, and his eyes seemed to turn black with excitement. Trembling in every limb, but without hesitation, he advanced on Orde, drew a short riding-whip from beneath his coat, and slashed the young man across the face. Orde made an involuntary movement to arise, but sank back, and looked steadily at the boy. Once again Kendrick hit; raised his arm for the third time; hesitated. His lips writhed, and then, with a sob, he cast the little whip from him and burst from the room.

Orde sat without moving, while two red lines slowly defined themselves across his face. The theatrical quality of the scene and the turgid rhetorical bathos of the boy's speeches attested his youth and the unformed violence of his emotions. Did they also indicate a rehearsal, or had the boy merely been goaded to vague action by implicit belief in a woman's vagaries? Orde did not know, but the incident brought home to him, as nothing else could, the turmoil of that household.

“Poor youngster!” he concluded his reverie, and went to wash his face in hot water.