The Grain of Dust Part 50

"I always have had a high opinion of you, young man," said he, with laughing eyes. "Almost as high an opinion as you have of yourself. Think over the legal side of my plan. When you get your thoughts in order, let me know--and make me a proposition as to your own share. Does that satisfy you?"

"It's all I ask," said Norman.

And they parted on the friendliest terms--and Norman knew that his fortune was a.s.sured, if Galloway lived another nine months. When he was alone, the sweat burst out upon him and, trembling from head to foot, he locked his door and flung himself at full length upon the rug. It was half an hour before the fit of silent hysterical reaction pa.s.sed sufficiently to let him gather strength to rise. He tottered to his desk chair, and sat with his head buried in his arms upon the desk. After a while the telephone at his side rang insistently. He took the receiver in a hand he could not steady.

"Yes?" he called.

"It's Tetlow. How'd you come out?"

"Oh--" He paused to stiffen his throat to attack the words naturally--"all right. We go ahead."

"With G.?"

"Certainly. But keep quiet. Don't let him know you've heard, if you see him or he sends for you. Remember, it's in my hands entirely."

"Trust me." Tetlow's voice, suppressed and jubilant, suggested a fat, hoa.r.s.e rooster trying to finish a crow before a coming stone from a farm boy reaches him. "It seems natural and easy to you, old man. But I'm about crazy with joy. I'll come right over."

"No. I'm going home."

"Can't I see you there?"

"No. I've other matters to attend to. Come about lunch time to-morrow--to the office, here."

"All right," said Tetlow disappointedly, and Norman rang off.

XX

In the faces of men who have dominion of whatever kind over their fellow men--be it the brutal rule of the prize fighter over his gang or the apparently gentle sway of the apparently meek bishop over his loving flock--in the faces of all men of power there is a dangerous look. They may never lose their tempers. They may never lift their voices. They may be ever suave and civil. The dangerous look is there--and the danger behind it. And the sense of that look and of its cause has a certain restraining effect upon all but the hopelessly impudent or solidly dense. Norman was one of the men without fits of temper. In his moments of irritation, no one ever felt that a storm of violent language might be impending. But the danger signal flaunted from his face. Danger of what? No one could have said. Most people would have laughed at the idea that so even tempered a man, pleased with himself and with the world, could ever be dangerous. Yet everyone had instinctively respected that danger flag--until Dorothy.

Perhaps it had struck for her--had really not been there when she looked at him. Perhaps she had been too inexperienced, perhaps too self-centered, to see it. Perhaps she had never before seen his face in an hour of weariness and relaxation--when the true character, the dominating and essential trait or traits, shows nakedly upon the surface, making the weak man or woman look pitiful, the strong man or woman formidable.

However that may be, when he walked into the sitting room, greeted her placidly and kissed her on the brow, she, glancing uncertainly up at him, saw that danger signal for the first time. She studied his face, her own face wearing her expression of the puzzled child. No, not quite that expression as it always had been theretofore, but a modified form of it. To any self-centered, self-absorbed woman--there comes in her married life, unless she be married to a b.o.o.by, a time, an hour, a moment even--for it can be narrowed down to a point--when she takes her first _seeing_ look at the man upon whom she is dependent for protection, whether spiritual or material, or both. In her egotism and vanity she has been regarding him as her property. Suddenly, and usually disagreeably, it has been revealed to her that she is his property. That hour had come for Dorothy Norman. And she was looking at her husband, was wondering who and what he was.

"You've had your lunch?" he said.

"No," replied she.

"You have been out for the air?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"You didn't tell me what to do."

He smiled good humoredly. "Oh, you had no money."

"Yes--a little. But I--" She halted.

"Yes?"

"You hadn't told me what to do," she repeated, as if on mature thought that sentence expressed the whole matter.

He felt in his pockets, found a small roll of bills. He laid twenty-five dollars on the table. "I'll keep thirty," he said, "as I shan't have any more till I see Tetlow to-morrow. Now, fly out and amuse yourself. I'm going to sleep. Don't wake me till you're ready for dinner."

And he went into his bedroom and closed the door. When he awoke, he saw that it was dark outside, and some note in the din of street noises from far below made him feel that it was late. He wrapped a bathrobe round him, opened the door into the sitting room. It was dark.

"Dorothy!" he called.

"Yes," promptly responded the small quiet voice, so near that he started back.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, and switched on the light. "There you are--by the window. What were you doing, in the dark?"

She was dressed precisely as when he had last seen her. She was sitting with her hands listless in her lap and her face a moving and beautiful expression of melancholy dreams. On the table were the bills--where he had laid them. "You've been out?" he said.

"No," she replied.

"Why not?"

"I've been--waiting."

"For what?" laughed he.

"For--I don't know," she replied. "Just waiting."

"But there's nothing to wait for."

She looked at him interrogatively. "No--I suppose not," she said.

He went back into his room and glanced at his watch. "Eleven o'clock!"

he cried. "Why didn't you wake me? You must be nearly starved."

"Yes, I am hungry," said she.

Her patient, pa.s.sive resignation irritated him. "I'm ravenous," he said.

"I'll dress--and you dress, too. We'll go downstairs to supper."

When he reappeared in the sitting room, in a dinner jacket, she was again seated near the window, hands listless in her lap and eyes gazing dreamily into vacancy. But she was now dressed in the black chiffon and the big black hat. He laughed. "You are prompt and obedient," said he.

"Nothing like hunger to subdue."

A faint flush tinged her lovely skin; the look of the child that has been struck appeared in her eyes.

He cast about in his mind for the explanation. Did she think he meant it was need that had brought her meekly back to him? That was true enough, but he had not intended to hint it. In high good humor because he was so delightfully hungry and was about to get food, he cried: "Do cheer up!

There's nothing to be sad about--nothing."