The Grain of Dust Part 36

"Norman," he said, "how can you be such a combination of bigness and petty deviltry? You are a monster of self-indulgence. It's a G.o.d's mercy there aren't more men with your selfishness and your desires."

Norman laughed sardonically. "The difference between me and most men,"

said he, "isn't in selfishness or in desires, but in courage. Courage, Billy--there's what most of you lack. And even in courage I'm not alone.

My sort fill most of the high places."

Tetlow looked dismal confession of a fear that Norman was right.

"Yes," pursued Norman, "in this country there are enough wolves to attend to pretty nearly all the sheep--though it's amazing how much mutton there is." With an abrupt s.h.i.+ft from raillery, "You'll help me with her, Billy?"

"Why don't you let her alone, Fred?" pleaded Tetlow. "It isn't worthy of you--a big man like you. Let her alone, Fred!--the poor child, trying to earn her own living in an honest way."

"Let her alone? Tetlow, I shall never let her alone--as long as she and I are both alive."

The fat man, with his premature wrinkles and his solemn air of law books that look venerable though fresh from the press, took on an added pastiness. "Fred--for G.o.d's sake, can't you love her in a n.o.ble way--a way worthy of you?"

Norman gave him a penetrating glance. "Is love--such love as mine--_and_ yours--" There Tetlow flushed guiltily--"is it ever n.o.ble?--whatever that means. No, it's human--human. But I'm not trying to harm her. I give you my word. . . . Will you help me--and her?"

Tetlow hesitated. His heavy cheeks quivered. "I don't trust you," he cried violently--the violence of a man fighting against an enemy within.

"Don't ever speak to me again." And he rushed away through the rain, knocking umbrellas this way and that.

About noon two days later, as Norman was making one of his excursions past the Equitable elevators, he saw Bob Culver at the news stand. It so happened that as he recognized Culver, Culver cast in the direction of the elevators the sort of look that betrays a man waiting for a woman.

Unseen by Culver, Norman stopped short. Into his face blazed the fury of suspicion, jealousy, and hate--one of the cyclones of pa.s.sion that swept him from time to time and revealed to his own appalled self the full intensity of his feeling, the full power of the demon that possessed him. Culver was of those glossy, black men who are beloved of women. He was much handsomer than Norman, who, indeed, was not handsome at all, but was regarded as handsome because he had the air of great distinction. Many times these two young men had been pitted against each other in legal battles. Every time Norman had won. Twice they had contended for the favor of the same lady. Each had scored once. But as Culver's victory was merely for a very light and empty-headed lady of the stage while he had won Josephine Burroughs away from Culver, the balance was certainly not against him.

As Norman slipped back and into the cross corridor to avoid meeting Culver, Dorothy Hallowell hurried from a just descended elevator and, with a quick, frightened glance toward Culver, in profile, almost ran toward Norman. It was evident that she had only one thought--to escape being seen by her new employer. When she realized that some one was standing before her and moved to one side to pa.s.s, she looked up. "Oh!"

she gasped, starting back. And then she stood there white and shaking.

"Is that beast Culver hounding you?" demanded Norman.

She recovered herself quickly. With flas.h.i.+ng eyes, she cried: "How dare you! How dare you!"

Norman, possessed by his rage against Culver, paid no attention. "If he don't let you alone," he said, "I'll thrash him into a hospital for six months. You must leave his office at once. You'll not go back there."

"You must be crazy," replied she, calm again. "I've no complaint to make of the way I'm being treated. I never was so well off in my life. And Mr. Culver is very kind and polite."

"You know what that means," said Norman harshly.

"Everyone isn't like you," retorted she.

He was examining her from head to foot, as if to make sure that it was she with no charm missing. He noted that she was much less poorly dressed than when she worked for his firm. In those days she often looked dowdy, showed plainly the girl who has to make a hasty toilet in a small bedroom, with tiny wash-stand and looking-gla.s.s, in the early, coldest hours of a cold morning. Now she looked well taken care of physically, not so well, not anything like so well as the women uptown--the ladies with nothing to do but make toilettes; still, unusually well looked after for a working girl. At first glance after those famished and ravening days of longing for her and seeking her, she before him in rather dim reality of the obvious office-girl, seemed disappointing. It could not be that this insignificance was the cause of all his fever and turmoil. He began to hope that he was recovering, that the cloud of insane desire was clearing from his sky. But a second glance killed that hope. For, once more he saw her mystery, her beauties that revealed their perfection and splendor only to the observant.

While he looked she was regaining her balance, as the fading color in her white skin and the subsidence of the excitement in her eyes evidenced. "Let me pa.s.s, please," she said coldly--for, she was against the wall with him standing before her in such a way that she could not go until he moved aside.

"We'll lunch together," he said. "I want to talk with you. Did that well-meaning a.s.s--Tetlow--tell you?"

"There is nothing you can say that I wish to hear," was her quiet reply.

"Your eyes--the edges of the lids are red. You have been crying?"

She lifted her glance to his and he had the sense of a veil drawing aside to reveal a desolation. "For my father," she said.

His face flushed. He looked steadily at her. "Now that he is gone, you have no one to protect you. I am----"

"I need no one," said she with a faintly contemptuous smile.

"You do need some one--and I am going to undertake it."

Her face lighted up. He thought it was because of what he had said. But she immediately undeceived him. She said in a tone of delighted relief, "Here comes Mr. Tetlow. You must excuse me."

"Dorothy--listen!" he cried. "We are going to be married at once."

The words exploded dizzily in his ears. He a.s.sumed they would have a far more powerful effect upon her. But her expression did not change. "No,"

she said hastily. "I must go with Mr. Tetlow." Tetlow was now at hand, his heavy face almost formidable in its dark ferocity. She said to him: "I was waiting for you. Come on"

Norman turned eagerly to his former friend. He said: "Tetlow, I have just asked Miss Hallowell to be my wife."

Tetlow stared. Then pain and despair seemed to flood and ravage his whole body.

"I told you the other day," Norman went on, "that I was ready to do the fair thing. I have just been saying to Miss Hallowell that she must have some one to protect her. You agree with me, don't you?"

Tetlow, fumbling vaguely with his watch chain, gazed straight ahead.

"Yes," he said with an effort. "Yes, you are right, Norman. An office is no place for an attractive girl as young as she is."

"Has Culver been annoying her?" inquired Norman.

Tetlow started. "Ah--she's told you--has she? I rather hoped she hadn't noticed or understood."

Both men now looked at the girl. She had shrunk into herself until she was almost as dim and unimpressive, as cipher-like as when Norman first beheld her. Also she seemed at least five years less than her twenty.

"Dorothy," said Norman, "you will let me take care of you--won't you?"

"No," she said--and the word carried all the quiet force she was somehow able to put into her short, direct answers.

Tetlow's pasty sallowness took on a dark red tinge. He looked at her in surprise. "You don't understand, Miss Dorothy," he said. "He wants to marry you."

"I understand perfectly," replied she, with the far-away look in her blue eyes. "But I'll not marry him. I despise him. He frightens me. He sickens me."

Norman clinched his hands and the muscles of his jaw in the effort to control himself. "Dorothy," he said, "I've not acted as I should. Tetlow will tell you that there is good excuse for me. I know you don't understand about those things--about the ways of the world----"

"I understand perfectly," she interrupted. "It's you that don't understand. I never saw anyone so conceited. Haven't I told you I don't love you, and don't want anything to do with you?"

Tetlow, lover though he was--or perhaps because he was lover, of the hopeless kind that loves generously--could not refrain from protest.

The girl was flinging away a dazzling future. It wasn't fair to her to let her do it when if she appreciated she would be overwhelmed with joy and grat.i.tude. "I believe you ought to listen to Norman, Miss Dorothy,"

he said pleadingly. "At any rate, think it over--don't answer right away. He is making you an honorable proposal--one that's advantageous in every way----"

Dorothy regarded him with innocent eyes, wide and wondering. "I didn't think you could talk like that, Mr. Tetlow!" she exclaimed. "You heard what I said to him--about the way I felt. How could I be his wife? He tried everything else--and, now, though he's ashamed of it, he's trying to get me by marriage. Oh, I understand. I wish I didn't. I'd not feel so low." She looked at Norman. "Can't you realize _ever_ that I don't want any of the grand things you're so crazy about--that I want something very different--something you could never give me--or get for me?"

"Isn't there anything I can do, Dorothy, to make you forget and forgive?" he cried, like a boy, an infatuated boy. "For G.o.d's sake, Tetlow, help me! Tell her I'm not so rotten as she thinks. I'll be anything you like, my darling--_anything_--if only you'll take me. For I must have you. You're the only thing in the world I care for--and, without you, I've no interest in life--none--none!"

He was so impa.s.sioned that pa.s.sersby began to observe them curiously.

Tetlow became uneasy. But Norman and Dorothy were unconscious of what was going on around them. The energy of his pa.s.sion compelled her, though the pa.s.sion itself was unwelcome. "I'm sorry," she said gently.