The Grain of Dust Part 35

Lockyer strolled to the window, looked out as if searching for something he failed to find, came back to the chair on the opposite side of the desk from Norman, seated himself. "I don't know how to begin," said he.

"It is hard to say painful things to anyone I have such an affection for as I have for you."

Norman pushed a sheet of letter paper across the desk toward his partner. "Perhaps that will help you," observed he carelessly.

Lockyer put on his nose gla.s.ses with the gesture of grace and intellect that was famous. He read--a brief demand for a release from the partners.h.i.+p and a request for an immediate settlement. Lockyer blinked off his gla.s.ses with the gesture that was as famous and as admiringly imitated by lesser legal lights as was his gesture of be-spectacling himself. "This is most astounding, my boy," said he. "It is most--most----"

"Gratifying?" suggested Norman with a sardonic grin.

"Not in the least, Frederick. The very reverse--the exact reverse."

Norman gave a shrug that said "Why do you persist in those frauds--and with _me_?" But he did not speak.

"I know," pursued Lockyer, "that you would not have taken this step without conclusive reasons. And I shall not venture the impertinence of prying or of urging."

"Thanks," said Norman drily. "Now, as to the terms of settlement."

Lockyer, from observation and from gossip, had a pretty shrewd notion of the state of his young partner's mind, and drew the not unwarranted conclusion that he would be indifferent about terms--would be "easy."

With the suavity of Mr. Great-and-Good-Heart he said: "My dear boy, there can't be any question of money with us. We'll do the generously fair thing--for, we're not hucksterers but gentlemen."

"That sounds terrifying," observed the young man, with a faint ironic smile. "I feel my s.h.i.+rt going and the cold winds whistling about my bare body. To save time, let _me_ state the terms. You want to be rid of me. I want to go. It's a whim with me. It's a necessity for you."

Lockyer s.h.i.+fted uneasily at these evidences of unimpaired mentality and undaunted spirit.

"Here are my terms," proceeded Norman. "You are to pay me forty thousand a year for five years--unless I open an office or join another firm. In that case, payments are to cease from the date of my re-entering practice."

Lockyer leaned back and laughed benignantly. "My dear Norman," he said with a gently remonstrant shake of the head, "those terms are impossible. Forty thousand a year! Why that is within ten thousand of the present share of any of us but you. It is the income of nearly three quarters of a million at six per cent--of a million at four per cent!"

"Very well," said Norman, settling back in his chair. "Then I stand pat."

"Now, my dear Norman, permit me to propose terms that are fair to all----"

"When I said I stood pat I meant that I would stay on." His eyes laughed at Lockyer. "I guess we can live without Burroughs and his dependents.

Maybe they will find they can't live without us." He slowly leaned forward until, with his forearms against the edge of his desk, he was concentrating a memorable gaze upon Lockyer. "Mr. Lockyer," said he, "I have been exercising my privilege as a free man to make a d.a.m.n fool of myself. I shall continue to exercise it so long as I feel disposed that way. But let me tell you something. I can afford to do it. If a man's a.s.set is money, or character or position or relatives and friends or popular favor or any other perishable article, he must take care how he trifles with it. He may find himself irretrievably ruined. But my a.s.set happens to be none of those things. It is one that can be lost or damaged only by insanity or death. Do you follow me?"

The old man looked at him with the sincere and most flattering tribute of compelled admiration. "What a mind you've got, Frederick--and what courage!"

"You accept my terms?"

"If the others agree--and I think they will."

"They will," said Norman.

The old man was regarding him with eyes that had genuine anxiety in them. "Why _do_ you do it, Fred?" he said.

"Because I wish to be free," replied Norman. He would never have told the full truth to that incredulous old cynic of a time-server--the truth that he was resigning at the dictation of a pride which forbade him to involve others in the ruin he, in his madness, was bent upon.

"I don't mean, why do you resign," said Lockyer. "I mean the other--the--woman."

Norman laughed harshly.

"I've seen too much of the world not to understand," continued Lockyer.

"The measureless power of woman over man--especially--pardon me, my dear Norman--especially a bad woman!"

"The measureless power of a man's imagination over himself," rejoined Norman. "Did you ever see or hear of a man without imagination being upset by a woman? It's in here, Mr. Lockyer"--he rapped his forehead--"altogether in here."

"You realize that. Yet you go on--and for such a--pardon me, my boy, for saying it--for such a trifling object."

"What does 'trifling' mean, sir?" replied the young man. "What is trifling and what is important? It depends upon the point of view. What I want--that is vital. What I do not want--that is paltry. It's my nature to go for what I happen to want--to go for it with all there is in me. I will take nothing else--nothing else."

There was in his eyes the glitter called insanity--the glitter that reflects the state of mind of any strong man when possessed of one of those fixed ideas that are the idiosyncrasy of the strong. It would have been impossible for Lockyer to be possessed in that way; he had not the courage nor the concentration nor the independence of soul; like most men, even able men, he dealt only in the conventional. Not in his wildest youth could he have wrecked or injured himself for a woman; women, for him, occupied their conventional place in the scheme of things, and had no allure beyond the conventionally proper and the conventionally improper--for, be it remembered, vice has its beaten track no less than virtue and most of the vicious are as tame and unimaginative as the plodders in the high roads of propriety. Still, Lockyer had a.s.sociated with strong men, men of boundless desires; thus, he could in a measure sympathize with his young a.s.sociate. What a pity that these splendid powers should be perverted from the ordinary desires of strong men!

Norman rose, to end the interview. "My address is my house. They will forward--if I go away."

Lockyer gave him a hearty handclasp, made a few phrases about good wishes and the like, left him alone. The general opinion was that Norman was done for. But Lockyer could not see it. He had seen too many men fall only to rise out of lowest depths to greater heights than they had fallen from. And Norman was only thirty-seven. Perhaps this would prove to be merely a dip in a securely brilliant career and not a fall at all.

In that case--with such a brain, such a genius for the lawlessness of the law, what a laughing on the other side of the mouth there might yet be among young Norman's enemies--and friends!

He spent most of the next few days--the lunch time, the late afternoon, finally the early morning hours--lurking about the Equitable Building, in which were the offices of Pytchley and Culver. As that building had entrances on four streets, the best he could do was to walk round and round, with an occasional excursion through the corridors and past the elevators. He had written her, asking to see her; he had got no answer.

He ceased to wait at the elevators after he had twice narrowly escaped being seen by Tetlow. He was indifferent to Tetlow, except as meeting him might make it harder to see Dorothy. He drank hard. But drink never affected him except to make him more grimly tenacious in whatever he had deliberately and soberly resolved. Drink did not explain--neither wholly nor in any part--this conduct of his. It, and the more erratic vagaries to follow, will seem incredible conduct for a man of Norman's character and position to feeble folk with their feeble desires, their dread of criticism and ridicule, their exaggerated and adoring notions of the master men. In fact, it was the natural outcome of the man's nature--arrogant, contemptuous of his fellowmen and of their opinions, and, like all the master men, capable of such concentration upon a desire that he would adopt any means, high or low, dignified or the reverse, if only it promised to further his end. Fred Norman, at these vulgar vigils, took the measure of his own self-abas.e.m.e.nt to a hair's breadth. But he kept on, with the fever of his infatuation burning like a delirium, burning higher and deeper with each baffled day.

At noon, one day, as he swung into Broadway from Cedar street, he ran straight into Tetlow. It was raining and his umbrella caught in Tetlow's. It was a ludicrous situation, but there was no answering smile in his former friend's eyes. Tetlow glowered.

"I've heard you were hanging about," he said. "How low you have sunk!"

Norman laughed in his face. "Poor Tetlow," he said. "I never expected to see you develop into a crusader. And what a Don Quixote you look. Cheer up, old man. Don't take it so hard."

"I warn you to keep away from her," said Tetlow in subdued, tense tones, his fat face quivering with emotion. "Hasn't she shown you plainly that she'll have nothing to do with you?"

"I want only five minutes' talk with her, Tetlow," said Norman, dropping into an almost pleading tone. "And I guarantee I'll say nothing you wouldn't approve, if you heard. You are advising her badly. You are doing her an injury."

"I am protecting her from a scoundrel," retorted Tetlow.

"She'll not thank you for it, when she finds out the truth."

"You can write to her. What a shallow liar you are!"

"I cannot write what I must say," said Norman. It had never been difficult for him, however provoked, to keep his temper--outwardly.

Tetlow's insults were to him no more than the barkings of a watch dog, and one not at all dangerous, but only amusing. "I must see her. If you are her friend, and not merely a jealous, disappointed lover, you'll advise her to see me."

"You shall not see her, if I can help it," cried his former friend. "And if you persist in annoying her----"

"Don't make futile threats, Tetlow," Norman interrupted. "You've done me all the mischief you can do. I see you hate me for the injuries you've done me. That's the way it always is. But I don't hate you. It was at my suggestion that the Lockyer firm is trying to get you back as a partner." Then, as Tetlow colored--"Oh, I see you're accepting their offer."

"If I had thought----"

"Nonsense. You're not a fool. How does it matter whose the hand, if only it's a helping hand? And you may be sure they'd never have made you the offer if they didn't need you badly. All the credit I claim is having the intelligence to enlighten their stupidity with the right suggestion."

In spite of himself Tetlow was falling under the spell of Norman's personality, of the old and deep admiration the lesser man had for the greater.