From the Housetops Part 8

"Yes. But you must say it now-this instant. I will not grant you a moment's respite. If you do not say the word now, your chance is gone forever. It has to be now, Anne."

"And if I refuse-what then?"

"I would not marry you if you were the only woman on earth," he said flatly.

She smiled. "Are you sure that you love me, Braden?"

"I will love you when you become what you were,-a month ago," he said simply. "A girl worth the honour of being loved," he added.

"Men sometimes love those who are not worth the honour," she said, feeling her way. "They cannot help themselves."

"Will you say the word _now_?" he demanded hoa.r.s.ely.

She sighed. It was a sigh of relief,-perhaps of triumph. He was safe for all time. He would come to her in the end. She was on solid ground once more.

"I am afraid, Braden, that I cannot play fast and loose with a man as old as Mr. Thorpe," she said lightly.

He muttered an oath. "Don't be a fool! What do you call your treatment of me? Fast and loose! Good Lord, haven't you played fast and loose with me?"

"Ah, but you are young and enduring," she said. "You will get over it. He wouldn't have the time or strength to recover from the shock of-"

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake, don't talk like that! What do you call yourself?

What-" He checked the angry words and after a moment went on, more quietly: "Now, see here, Anne, I'm through parleying with you. I shall go on trying to prevent this marriage, but succeed or fail, I don't want to see your face again as long as I live. I'm through with you. You _are_ like your mother. You are a d.a.m.ned vampire. G.o.d, how I have loved and trusted you, how I have believed in you. I did not believe that the woman lived who could degrade herself as you are about to degrade yourself. I have had my eyes opened. All my life I have loved you without even knowing you. All my life I-"

"All my life I have loved you," she broke in cringingly.

He laughed aloud. "The h.e.l.l you have!" he cried out. "You have allowed me to hold you in my arms, to kiss you, to fondle you, and you have trembled with joy and pa.s.sion,-and now you call it love! Love! You have never loved in your life and you never will. You call self-gratification by the name of love. Thank G.o.d, I know you at last. I ought to pity you. In all humanity I ought to pity a fellow creature so devoid of-"

"Stop!" she cried, her face flaming red. "Go! Go away! You have said enough. I will hate you if you utter another word, and I don't want to hate you, Braden. I want to go on loving you all my life. I _must_ go on loving you."

"You have my consent," he said, ironically, bowing low before her.

"Humanity compels me to grant you all the consolation you can find in deceiving yourself."

"Wait!" she cried out, as he turned toward the door. "I-I am hurt, Braden.

Can't you see how you have hurt me? Won't you-"

"Of course, you are hurt!" he shouted. "You squeal when you are hurt. You think only of yourself when you cry 'I am hurt'! Don't you ever think of any one else?" His hand grasped the big silver door-k.n.o.b.

"I want you to understand, if you can, why I am doing this thing you revile me for."

"I understand," he said curtly.

She hurried her words, fearful that he might rush from the room before she could utter the belated explanation.

"I don't want to be poor. I don't want to go through life as my mother has gone, always fighting for the things she most desired, always being behind the game she was forced to play. You can't understand,-you are too big and fine,-you cannot understand the little things, Braden. I want love and happiness, but I want the other, too. Don't you see that with all this money at my command I can be independent, I can be safe for all time, I can give more than myself in return for the love that I must have? Don't you understand why-"

She was quite close to him when he interrupted the impa.s.sioned appeal. His hand shook as he held it up to check her approach.

"It's all over, Anne. There is nothing more to be said. I understand everything now. May G.o.d forgive you," he said huskily.

She stopped short. Her head went up and defiance shone in her face.

"I'd rather have your forgiveness than G.o.d's," she said distinctly, "and since I may not ask for it now, I will wait for it, my friend. We love each other. Time mends a good many breaks. Good-bye! Some day I hope you'll come to see your poor old granny, and bring-"

"Oh, for the love of heaven, have a little decency, Anne," he cried, his lip curling.

But her pride was roused, it was in revolt against all of the finer instincts that struggled for expression.

"You'd better go now. Run upstairs and tell your grandfather that his scheme worked perfectly. Tell him everything I have said. He will not mind. I am sorry you will not remain to see the contract signed. I should like to have you for a witness. If you-"

"Contract? What contract?"

"Oh," she said lightly, "just a little agreement on his part to make life endurable for me while he continues to live. We are to sign the paper at five o'clock. Yes, you'd better run along, Braden, or you'll find yourself the centre of a perplexed crowd. Before you go, please take a last look at me in my sepulchre. Here I stand! Am I not fair to look upon?"

"G.o.d, I'd sooner see you in your grave than here," he grated out. "You'd be better off, a thousand times."

"This is my grave," she said, "or will be soon. I suppose I am not to count you among the mourners?"

He slammed the door behind him, and she was alone.

"How I hate people who slam doors," she said to herself.

CHAPTER VII

A fortnight pa.s.sed. Preparations for the wedding went on in the Tresslyn home with little or no slackening of the tension that had settled upon the inmates with the advent of the disturber. Anne was now sullenly determined that nothing should intervene to prevent the marriage, unless an unkind Providence ordered the death of Templeton Thorpe. She was bitter toward Braden. Down in her soul, she knew that he was justified in the stand he had taken, and in that knowledge lay the secret of her revolt against one of the commands of Nature. He had treated her with the scorn that she knew she deserved; he had p.r.o.nounced judgment upon her, and she confessed to herself that she was guilty as charged. That was the worst of it; she could p.r.o.nounce herself guilty, and yet resent the justice of her own decision.

In her desperation, she tried to hold old Mr. Thorpe responsible for the fresh canker that gnawed at her soul. But for that encounter in his library, she might have proceeded with confidence instead of the uneasiness that now attended her every step. She could not free herself of the fear that Braden might after all succeed in his efforts to persuade the old man to change his mind. True, the contract was signed, but contracts are not always sacred. They are made to be broken. Moreover, by no stretch of the imagination could this contract be looked upon as sacred and it certainly would not look pretty if exposed to a court of law. Her sole thought now was to have it all safely over with. Then perhaps she could smile once more.

In the home of the bridegroom, preparations for the event were scant and of a perfunctory nature. Mr. Templeton Thorpe ordered a new suit of clothes for himself-or, to be quite precise, he instructed Wade to order it. He was in need of a new suit anyway, he said, and he had put off ordering it for a long, long time, not because he was parsimonious but because he did not like going up town for the "try-on." He also had a new silk hat made from his special block, and he would doubtless be compelled to have his hair trimmed up a bit about the nineteenth or twentieth, if the weather turned a trifle warmer. Of course, there would be the trip to City Hall with Anne, for the licence. He would have to attend to that in person. That was one thing that Wade couldn't do for him. Wade bought the wedding-ring and saw to the engraving; he attended to the buying of a gift for the best man,-who under one of the phases of an all-enveloping irony was to be George Dexter Tresslyn!-and in the same expedition to the jewellers' purchased for himself a watch-fob as a self-selected gift from a master who had never given him anything in all his years of service except his monthly wage and a daily malediction.

Braden Thorpe made the supreme effort to save his grandfather. Believing himself to be completely cured of his desire for Anne, he took the stand that there was no longer a necessity for the old gentleman to sacrifice himself to the greed of the Tresslyns. But Mr. Thorpe refused to listen to this new and apparently unprejudiced argument. He was firm in his determination to clip Anne's claws; he would take no chances with youth, ultimate propinquity, and the wiles of a repentant sinner.

"You can guard against anything," said he in his wisdom, "except the beautiful woman who repents. You never can tell what she'll do to make her repentance satisfactory to everybody concerned. So we'll take no chances with Anne. We'll put her in irons, my boy, so to speak."

And so it was that Braden, worn and disspirited, gave up in despair and prepared for his return to London. He went before an examining board in New York first and obtained his licence to become a practising physician and surgeon, and, with a set expression in his disillusioned eyes, peered out into the future in quest of the fame that was to take the place of a young girl's love.

He met his first patient in the Knickerbocker Cafe. Lunching alone there one day, a week before the date selected for sailing, he was accosted by an extremely gay and pretty young woman who came over from a table of four in a distant corner of the room.

"Is this Dr. Braden Thorpe?" she inquired, placing her hands on the back of the chair opposite and leaning forward with a most agreeable, even inviting smile.

Her face was familiar. "Since day before yesterday," he replied, rising with a self-conscious flush.

"May I sit down? I want to talk to you about myself." She sat down in the chair that an alert waiter pulled out for her.