The Landloper Part 27

"Are you tired?"

"Yes."

He drove slowly. "I don't want you to work any more. You know I don't.

You know how I feel. Kate, I have published our intentions of marriage."

Her demeanor till then had been marked by tolerance, a bit pettish. Now she turned on him the indignant stare of offended womanhood.

"Richard, I have not given you permission to do that."

"But you are going to marry me!"

"Some day. I will tell you when. I am not ready."

"You are playing with me."

"I am not so frivolous."

"But why do you keep putting it off?"

"A woman who gives herself has the right to say when it shall be."

"My G.o.d!" he raged. "I wish you would wake up."

She did not answer.

"You don't know what love is. You won't let me touch you."

"I suppose that your experience has qualified you, Richard," she returned, half humorously, half scornfully.

"We are going to be married. Your mother is anxious for you to marry. I am going to tell my uncle to hunt for another secretary."

"Be careful how you take liberties with my private business," she warned him, sharply.

"You need somebody to take care of it for you. You have promised to be my wife. You can't give me a single good reason for waiting any longer."

"But I intend to wait."

He drove along in angry silence and they left the car together at the Trelawny Apartments. The car had made a detour in reaching the curb--avoiding a white wagon at the rear of which an iceman was briskly pecking in twain a cake of ice.

The girl glanced sharply at the man and turned her head when she reached the sidewalk in order to survey him more closely. The iceman, peering up at the windows to locate such signal-cards as might be visible, lowered his gaze and intercepted the girl's scrutiny. Color came into her cheeks, but she frowned as if resenting his stare and hurried into the vestibule, her lover at her heels.

"Look here, Friend Myself," reflected Walker Farr, "it's time you woke up!" He sighed and swung a chunk of ice upon his shoulder. "But what else can I expect? Come on, Humility, and give me a soft word or two. I was hoping I'd never see her again."

"Youse take those two front numbers--ten and twelve--Mrs. Kilgour and Mr. Knowles," advised his helper. "Package-entrance is around behind."

Farr toiled up the stairs, carrying one ice cube on his shoulder, with another swinging from tongs. There was but one door to the Kilgour apartment and the girl and Dodd stood in front of it; they had evidently waited in the corridor after emerging from the elevator, and the young man was detaining her, talking earnestly.

The girl opened the door with her latch-key, and with an apology he stepped in front of the pair and entered.

"Well, I'll be--" blurted Dodd. "So that's what he is--a cheap, low-lived iceman!"

Mrs. Kilgour came into her vestibule and led the way to the kitchen, for Farr stood irresolutely in the doorway, awaiting directions as to his burden. Following her, the young man noted her house-dress, beribboned over-much, her rouged face, her bleached hair, and wondered how such a woman could have beguiled Andrew Kilgour, as he felt he knew that sacrificing hero from what Citizen Drew had said.

"Say, that's the plug-ugly who insulted us in the woods. I'll never forget that face," stormed Dodd, making no effort by lowered tones to conceal his sentiments from the iceman. "Where else am I going to run across him? He needs a horse-whipping. If there weren't ladies present I'd give him one."

"The man seems to be minding his own business," said the girl, coldly.

Farr heard her. There was a hint of contempt in her tones, and the young man humbly accepted the scorn as directed toward him. He lifted the ice into the box and received his coin from the languid woman, who seemed to pay as little heed to his presence as she did to Dodd's threats.

She seemed to be more especially interested in herself, and when Farr departed was fondling into place the ma.s.ses of her hair before a mirror in the vestibule. Through the s.p.a.ce formed by the portieres he saw Dodd reaching eager hands to the girl, her presence having apparently charmed away his thoughts of vengeance.

The iceman went humbly on his way.

He was meditating on the sacrifice of Captain Andrew Kilgour; he remembered that stalwart men are willing slaves of the weakest women. He wondered how much of the honesty of the father was in the daughter. He tried to console himself by insisting that it was not there. He had had only a limited opportunity to study Richard Dodd. However, he was convinced that his unflattering estimate of that young man was surely justified; and so certain was he that the character of Dodd must be patent to all he went back to his tasks with a lowered estimate of the girl who would select such a man as husband. And yet out of the dust of the highway the profile of her face had touched him as his heart never had been touched before; he had plucked the rose and had plodded on behind the little sister of the rose. He wondered what strange impulse had touched him. She must be merely like all the rest. Her graciousness in that first meeting had tempted him to believe that she was different.

Now some consciousness, equally as intangible, suggested to him that she was selfishly selling herself for ease. His thoughts were pretty much mixed, he acknowledged. But as he went on, bearing his burdens, listening to the petty tyrants who may ruthlessly taunt the man who comes in by the back door, he was aware that he had full need of much ministration from his new friend, Humility.

In the sitting-room of the Kilgour flat Richard Dodd was telling the mother that he had made application for a marriage license.

"And I have waited long enough," he declared. "Mother Kilgour, you must convince Kate that we are to be married within a week."

And he gave the mother a look which made her turn pale and twist her ringed fingers nervously.

"Kate, what is the use?" she pleaded. "You are acting like a child. You love Richard. You know you love him. You tell me often that you love him! Richard is such a dear boy!" She said this fawningly, with evident intent to placate the sullen young man. Her tone, her air suggested the nervous embarra.s.sment of a debtor who seeks to put off a creditor with flattery and fresh promises. "Now be a darling child and say that we'll have the wedding next week without any fuss or feathers."

"I am not ready to get married, and I simply will not be married just yet," declared the girl, her red lips compressed.

"You don't love me!" complained Dodd.

"I like you, Richard," admitted the girl, frankly, without any coquettishness. "I have never cared for anybody else. You have been good to me, except when you were foolish."

"Foolishness--that's what she calls being so much in love with her that I can't keep my hands off her," said Dodd to the mother. "Mother Kilgour, you haven't talked to Kate as you should. She doesn't know what love is."

"Oh, I'll find out all about it, and then we'll be married--when I'm ready to become a wife," said the girl, with an indulgent smile. "All at once I'll wake up, just as you have been begging me to do, and then we'll simply run away and be married and live happily for ever after."

"I don't like this stalling," growled Dodd, brutally.

"I'll leave you two children together," said the mother. "I'm sure you'll come to an understanding." She went away, showing relief.

"Sit down here on the divan with me, sweetheart," pleaded the young man.

But without removing her hat she went to the piano and began to play.

"Please come!" he entreated.

She smiled at him over her shoulder and made a pretty _moue_.

Muttering an oath of pa.s.sion he leaped up, hurried across the room, and began to kiss her fiercely.