The Grain of Dust Part 34

Burroughs brought his fist down on the table--and Norman recognized the gesture of the bluffer. "I wish you to break off with that woman!" he cried. "I insist upon it--upon positive a.s.surances from you."

"Fred!" pleaded Josephine. "Don't listen to him. Remember, I have said nothing."

He had long been looking for a justifying grievance against her. It now seemed to him that he had found it. "Why should you?" he said genially but with subtle irony, "since you are getting your father to speak for you."

There was just enough truth in this to entangle her and throw her into disorder. She had been afraid of the consequences of her father's interfering with a man so spirited as Norman, but at the same time she had longed to have some one put a check upon him. Norman's suave remark made her feel that he could see into her inmost soul--could see the anger, the jealousy, the doubt, the hatred-tinged love, the love-saturated hate seething and warring there.

Burroughs was saying: "If we had not committed ourselves so deeply, I should deal very differently with this matter."

"Why should that deter you?" said Norman--and Josephine gave a piteous gasp. "If this goes much farther, I a.s.sure you I shall not be deterred."

Burroughs, firmly planted in a big leather chair, looked at the young man in puzzled amazement. "I see you think you have us in your power,"

he said at last. "But you are mistaken."

"On the contrary," rejoined the young man, "I see you believe you have me in your power. And in a sense you are _not_ mistaken."

"Father, he is right," cried Josephine agitatedly. "I shouldn't love and respect him as I do if he would submit to this hectoring."

"Hectoring!" exclaimed Burroughs. "Josephine, leave the room. I cannot discuss this matter properly before you."

"I hope you will not leave, Josephine," said Norman. "There is nothing to be said that you cannot and ought not to hear."

"I'm not an infant, father," said Josephine. "Besides, it is as Fred says. He has done nothing--improper."

"Then why does he not say so?" demanded Burroughs, seeing a chance to recede from his former too advanced position. "That's all I ask."

"But I told you all about it, father," said Josephine angrily. "They've been distorting the truth, and the truth is to his credit."

Norman avoided the glance she sent to him; it was only a glance and away, for more formidably than ever his power was enthroned in his haggard face. He stood with his back to the fire and it was plain that the muscles of his strong figure were braced to give and to receive a shock. "Mr. Burroughs," he said, "your daughter is mistaken. Perhaps it is my fault--in having helped her to mislead herself. The plain truth is, I have become infatuated with a young woman. She cares nothing about me--has repulsed me. I have been and am making a fool of myself about her. I've been hoping to cure myself. I still hope. But I am not cured."

There was absolute silence in the room. Norman stole a glance at Josephine. She was sitting erect, a greenish pallor over her ghastly face.

He said: "If she will take me, now that she knows the truth, I shall be grateful--and I shall make what effort I can to do my best."

He looked at her and she at him. And for an instant her eyes softened.

There was the appeal of weak human heart to weak human heart in his gaze. Her lip quivered. A brief struggle between vanity and love--and vanity, the stronger, the strongest force in her life, dominating it since earliest babyhood and only seeming to give way to love when love came--it was vanity that won. She stiffened herself and her mouth curled with proud scorn. She laughed--a sneer of jealous rage. "Father," she said, "the lady in the case is a common typewriter in his office."

But to men--especially to practical men--differences of rank and position among women are not fundamentally impressive. Man is in the habit of taking what he wants in the way of womankind wherever he finds it, and he understands that habit in other men. He was furious with Norman, but he did not sympathize with his daughter's extreme att.i.tude.

He said to Norman sharply:

"You say you have broken with the woman?"

"She has broken with me," replied Norman.

"At any rate, everything is broken off."

"Apparently."

"Then there is no reason why the marriage should not go on." He turned to his daughter. "If you understood men, you would attach no importance to this matter. As you yourself said, the woman isn't a lady--isn't in our cla.s.s. That sort of thing amounts to nothing. Norman has acted well.

He has shown the highest kind of honesty--has been truthful where most men would have s.h.i.+fted and lied. Anyhow, things have gone too far." Not without the soundest reasons had Burroughs accepted Norman as his son-in-law; and he had no fancy for giving him up, when men of his pre-eminent fitness were so rare.

There was another profound silence. Josephine looked at Norman. Had he returned her gaze, the event might have been different; for within her there was now going on a struggle between two nearly evenly matched vanities--the vanity of her own outraged pride and the vanity of what the world would say and think, if the engagement were broken off at that time and in those circ.u.mstances. But he did not look at her. He kept his eyes fixed upon the opposite wall, and there was no sign of emotion of any kind in his stony features. Josephine rose, suppressed a sob, looked arrogant scorn from eyes s.h.i.+ning with tears--tears of self-pity. "Send him away, father," she said. "He has tried to degrade _me_! I am done with him." And she rushed from the room, her father half starting from his chair to detain her.

He turned angrily on Norman. "A h.e.l.l of a mess you've made!" he cried.

"A h.e.l.l of a mess," replied the young man.

"Of course she'll come round. But you've got to do your part."

"It's settled," said Norman. And he threw his cigar into the fireplace.

"Good night."

"Hold on!" cried Burroughs. "Before you go, you must see Josie alone and talk with her."

"It would be useless," said Norman. "You know her."

Burroughs laid his hand friendlily but heavily upon the young man's shoulder. "This outburst of nonsense might cost you two young people your happiness for life. This is no time for jealousy and false pride.

Wait a moment."

"Very well," said Norman. "But it is useless." He understood Josephine now--he who had become a connoisseur of love. He knew that her vanity-founded love had vanished.

Burroughs disappeared in the direction his daughter had taken. Norman waited several minutes--long enough slowly to smoke a cigarette. Then he went into the hall and put on his coat with deliberation. No one appeared, not even a servant. He went out into the street.

In the morning papers he found the announcement of the withdrawal of the invitations--and from half a column to several columns of comment, much of it extremely unflattering to him.

XIII

When a "high life" engagement such as that of Norman and Miss Burroughs, collapses on the eve of the wedding, the gossip and the scandal, however great, are but a small part of the mess. Doubtless many a marriage--and not in high life alone, either--has been put through, although the one party or the other or both have discovered that disaster was inevitable--solely because of the appalling muddle the sensible course would precipitate. In the case of the Norman-Burroughs fiasco, there were--to note only a few big items--such difficulties as several car loads of presents from all parts of the earth to be returned, a house furnished throughout and equipped to the last scullery maid and stable boy to be disposed of, the entire Burroughs domestic economy which had been reconstructed to be put back upon its former basis.

It is not surprising that, as Ursula Fitzhugh was credibly informed, Josephine almost decided to send for Bob Culver and marry him on the day before the day appointed for her marriage to Fred. The reason given for her not doing this sounded plausible. Culver, despairing of making the match on which his ambition--and therefore his heart was set--and seeing a chance to get suddenly rich, had embarked for a career as a blackmailer of corporations. That is, he nosed about for a big corporation stealthily doing or arranging to do some unlawful but highly profitable acts; he bought a few shares of its stock, using a fake client as a blind; he then proceeded to threaten it with exposure, expensive hindrances and the like, unless it bought him off at a huge profit to himself. This business was regarded as most disreputable and--thanks to the power of the big corporations over the courts--had resulted in the sending of several of its practisers to jail or on hasty journeys to foreign climes. But Culver, almost if not quite as good a lawyer as Norman, was too clever to be caught in that way. However, while he was getting very rich rapidly, he was as yet far from rich enough to overcome the detestation of old Burroughs, and to be eligible for the daughter.

So, Josephine sailed away to Europe, with the consolation that her father was so chagrined by the fizzle that he had withdrawn his veto upon the purchase of a foreign t.i.tle--that veto having been the only reason she had looked at home for a husband. Strange indeed are the ways of love--never stranger than when it comes into contact with the vanities of wealth and social position and the other things that cause a human being to feel that he or she is lifted clear of and high above the human condition. Josephine had her consolation. For Norman the only consolation was escape from a marriage which had become so irksome in antic.i.p.ation that he did not dare think what it would be in the reality.

Over against this consolation was set a long list of disasters. He found himself immediately shunned by all his friends. Their professed reason was that he had acted shabbily in the breaking of the engagement; for, while it was a.s.sumed that Josephine must have done the actual breaking, it was also a.s.sumed that he must have given her provocation and to spare. This virtuous indignation was in large part mere pretext, as virtuous indignation in frail mortals toward frail mortals is apt to be.

The real reason for shying off from Norman was his atmosphere of impending downfall. And certainly that atmosphere had eaten away and dissipated all his former charm. He looked dull and boresome--and he was.

But the chief disaster was material. As has been said, old Burroughs, in his own person and in the enterprises he controlled, gave Norman's firm about half its income. The day Josephine sailed, Lockyer, senior partner of the firm, got an intimation that unless Norman left, Burroughs would take his law business elsewhere, and would "advise" others of their clients to follow his example. Lockyer no sooner heard than he began to bestir himself. He called into consultation the learned Benchley and the astute Sanders and the soft and sly Lockyer junior. There could be no question that Norman must be got rid of. The only point was, who should inform the lion that he had been deposed?

After several hours of anxious discussion, Lockyer, his inward perturbations hid beneath that mask of smug and statesmanlike respectability, entered the lion's den--a sick lion, sick unto death probably, but not a dead lion. "When you're ready to go uptown, Frederick," said he in his gentlest, most patriarchal manner, "let me know. I want to have a little talk with you."

Norman, heavy eyed and listless, looked at the handsome old fraud. As he looked something of the piercing quality and something of the humorous came back into his eyes. "Sit down and say it now," said he.

"I'd prefer to talk where we can be quiet."

Norman rang his bell and when an office boy appeared, said "No one is to disturb me until I ring again." Then as the boy withdrew he said to Lockyer: "Now, sir, what is it?"