Part 8 (1/2)
Francis away. That's all there is to it. I'll buy her farm, or a dozen farms, if she's got them, if she'll agree to keep quiet. But if she says she will, can I trust her, Gordon?”
Gordon nodded a.s.sent. ”Absolutely,” he answered. ”If she agrees to anything at all, she'll stick to what she says. You needn't worry about that. She's the soul of honor.”
Palmer rose abruptly. ”I must get back home,” he said, more in his usual manner. ”I look like the very devil. Ring her up, Gordon, and have her come down here and get the thing settled up, that's a good fellow. I'm half wrong in my head myself over the thing. Get it settled right, Gordon, and I'll never forget it.” He hesitated a moment, and then continued awkwardly. ”And I'm devilish sorry, Gordon; I really am. And I wish you'd tell the girl so when you see her. I hope you won't lay this up against me. I never meant to do it, and I never would have done it if I hadn't lost my head altogether. I'm sorry. That's all I can say.”
Gordon held out his hand. ”Harry,” he said, ”you've done an awful thing, but G.o.d forbid that one man should sit in judgment on another.
A higher power than ourselves must do that. As far as I'm concerned, I forgive you the wrong you've done, and I'll do all in my power to help you.”
Palmer eagerly took the proffered hand. ”Gordon, you're a brick!” he said gratefully. ”I wish to G.o.d I were half as good a chap as you are.” And, turning on his heel, he left the office.
CHAPTER IX
PALMER HAS A VISITOR
Eight--nine--ten--eleven-- The little clock on the mantel chimed the hour musically and significantly, and Palmer jumped quickly to his feet, pulling out his watch as he did so for confirmation. Then, with a laugh and a shake of his head, he thrust it back into his pocket again.
”No use, May,” he said; ”I've lost track of an hour somewhere, and it doesn't seem to be the clock's fault. I suppose I'll have to blame you instead.”
May Sinclair smiled. ”I find, Harry,” she said slowly, ”that being engaged makes awfully irresponsible creatures of us. You wouldn't think that it would change people who ought to have arrived at years of discretion so that they act and talk and feel in a way their common sense tells them is ridiculous, and yet a way so pleasant that they wouldn't have it different if they could. I find my most settled tastes, habits, plans, everything, all completely changed. And I guess, Harry, you find it a good deal the same way, too.”
She had risen as she spoke, and stood beside him, slender, delicate, womanly, altogether charming. With no a.s.sumption of coquetry, she laid a detaining hand on his arm, and raised her brown eyes wistfully to his.
”I don't want you to go yet,” she whispered. ”You can stay till half-past eleven, Harry. Honestly, I'm not a bit tired to-night.”
Palmer stooped and kissed her. ”Mustn't try to tempt me, May,” he answered, ”after you've got doctor's orders to take things easy and have plenty of rest. If you'd only give up your beloved settlement work, then it would be a different thing altogether. You wait till we're married, and I'll make you give it up, whether or no. You'll find I'm enough to reform, without your having to bother your head with those b.u.ms from the slums. Gad, May, how's that? One of these regular eppy--what-you-may-call-'ems--b.u.ms from the slums; really, now, I call that rather clever.”
The girl shook with laughter. ”Oh, Harry, Harry,” she cried, ”your sense of humor will certainly kill me some day. It's so very--well, obvious--to say the least. But--” and she drew closer to him--”I love you, dear, in spite of it.”
Palmer slipped his arm around the girl's slender waist, and kissed her again and again. ”You don't know, May,” he whispered, ”what it means to me to hear you say that. It makes me feel awfully proud, and yet at the same time, you know, it makes me feel awfully ashamed of myself, too. I never ought to have dared to ask you to marry me in the first place, May. That's the whole trouble. You're a million times too good for me. Sometimes, you know, I get to thinking lately I'm a deuced poor sort of a chap, after all.”
The girl laid a protesting finger on his lips. ”Stop!” she commanded; ”I can find fault with you all I please, but I'm the only one. You're not to say a word against yourself, because I won't let you. I wouldn't want you to be any different, my dear, in any possible way--if only you wouldn't make fun of the settlement. That really makes me discouraged, Harry.”
Palmer raised his right hand. ”I solemnly swear,” he cried, with mock seriousness, ”that if it bothers you, May, I'll never make fun of it again. Only--and I'm really in earnest about this--I always have believed that there's trouble enough coming every one's way before they've finished the game to keep them busy, and yet here you deliberately go out hunting for it. That's what I can't get through my head.”
The girl in her turn grew suddenly grave. ”Oh, but Harry,” she protested, ”we don't have any real troubles, you and I. If you could know some of the things we come across there at the settlement. Just think, last night I heard about the little O'Brien girl, the brightest, prettiest little thing in the whole club; she isn't a day over seventeen, and some brute of a man got her to go off with him in an automobile, and there was wine, of course, and now--now the poor thing's in trouble. Just think of it, Harry. You can't imagine the temptation and all that part of it for girls that haven't good homes.
And most men are such beasts. Oh, I've thanked G.o.d, Harry, more times than you've ever guessed, that I'm to marry a man that's big and strong and clean and honest. I'm so proud of you, Harry, you don't know how proud.”
Fortunately for both, the dim light masked the expression on Palmer's face, and the girl did not mark the sudden spasm of pain that contracted it. Somewhat hastily, it seemed to her, he stooped and kissed her again.
”I'm a brute myself,” he said with a faint attempt at humor, ”keeping you up till almost midnight. To-morrow night, dear. No, don't come down. Good-night, May, good-night.”
Once outside the Sinclairs' home, Palmer strode away down the street, for the first time in his life, perhaps, in an agony of self-abas.e.m.e.nt. Up to now, his fears and worries had been purely selfish ones. He had done something of which he was ashamed, and in which he did not wish to be found out, and in spite of the payment of hush money and solemn protestations of secrecy in return, he had felt that he was treading on the edge of a slumbering volcano. Now, however, May Sinclair's parting words had for once awakened his dormant moral sense, and he flushed hotly at the thought that the kisses he had given the pure girl who believed him all that was true had been but a short twenty-four hours before lavished in a mad burst of pa.s.sion upon another.
With all his faults, Palmer was kind. Horses and dogs were his friends. Small children, oftentimes to his great embarra.s.sment, made much over him. Kind--and weak, he was never cast to play the villain in life's drama; betrayals of friends.h.i.+p, premeditated deception, even injury to the feelings of another, none of these things was natural to him, and his love for May Sinclair, all unknown to him, was working and striving to rouse the finer sense sleeping within him far beneath the crust of ignorance and selfishness and sloth.
Thus, in repentant, self-contemptuous mood, he reached the entrance of his big house on the avenue, and in moody silence unlocked the door and entered the quiet hall. At once, to his surprise, a silent figure came forward to meet him, and, peering through the half-light, he recognized the figure of his secretary.
”Hullo, Morton,” he exclaimed in surprise, ”what's the trouble now?”
The secretary advanced with an air of caution. ”There's a young woman waiting in the reception-room to see you, sir,” he said in a low tone.
”She's been here since ten o'clock, and she seems to be an uncommonly determined sort of person. In fact, she was too much for me, altogether. I couldn't get rid of her. She insists she's got to see you.”