"Now I must go down to the office to see my father," Vickers said finally.
"I"ll be back early in the afternoon, and then--we will make our plans."
"Will you tell him, your father?" Mrs. Conry asked tensely.
"He will have to know, of course." As he spoke a wave of pain shot over the young man"s face. He stepped to the door and then turned:--
"You will telegraph about Delia,--she might meet us in New York--in two days."
"Very well," Mrs. Conry murmured submissively.
The Colonel was sitting in his little corner office before the old-fashioned dingy desk, where he had transacted so many affairs of one sort or another for nearly thirty years. He was not even reading his mail this morning, but musing, as he often was when the clerks thought that he was more busily employed. Isabelle and her child had returned from California, the day before. She had not recovered from bearing the child, and the St. Louis doctors who had been consulted had not helped her. It might be well to see some one in New York.... But the Colonel was thinking most of all this morning of his son. The tenacious old merchant was wondering whether he had done right in accepting the young man"s sacrifice.
In his disgust for the do-nothing, parasitic offspring about him, perhaps he had taken a delicate instrument and blunted it by setting it at coa.r.s.e work. Well, it was not too late to change that.
"The boy didn"t start right," the Colonel mused sadly. "He didn"t start selling hardware on the road. He"s done his best, and he"s no such duffer as Parrott"s boy anyhow. But he would make only a front office kind of business man. The business must get on by itself pretty soon. Perhaps that idea for a selling company would not be a bad thing. And that would be the end of Parrott and Price."
Nevertheless, the old man"s heart having come slowly to this generous decision was not light,--if the other boy had lived, if Belle had married some one who could have gone into the business. The bricks and mortar of the building were part of his own being, and he longed to live out these last few years in the shadow of his great enterprise....
"Father, can I see you about something important?"
The Colonel, startled from his revery, looked up at his son with his sweet smile.
"Why, yes, my boy,--I wasn"t doing much, and I had something to say to you.
Sit down. You got away from home early this morning."
He glanced inquiringly at his son"s white, set face and tense lips. Playing with his eye-gla.s.ses, he began to talk lightly of other matters, as was his wont when he felt the coming of a storm.
Vickers listened patiently, staring straight across his father to the wall, and when the Colonel came to a full pause,
"Father, you said you were ready for me to take a vacation. I must go at once, to-day if possible. And, father, I can"t come back."
The old man moved slightly in his chair. It was his intention to offer the young man his freedom, but it hurt him to have it taken for granted in this light manner. He waited.
"Something has happened," Vickers continued in a low voice, "something which will alter my whole life."
The Colonel still waited.
"I love a woman, and I must take her away from here at once."
"Who is she?" the old man asked gently.
"Mrs. Conry--"
"But she"s a married woman, isn"t she, Vick?"
"She has a dirty brute of a husband--she"s left him forever!"
The Colonel"s blue eyes opened in speechless surprise, as his son went on to tell rapidly what had happened the previous night. Before he had finished the old man interrupted by a low exclamation:--
"But she is a married woman, Vickers!"
"Her marriage was a mistake, and she"s paid for it, poor woman,--paid with soul and body! She will not pay any longer."
"But what are you going to do, my boy?"
"I love her, father. I mean to take her away, at once, take her and her child."
"Run away with a married woman?" The Colonel"s pale face flushed slightly, less in anger than in shame, and his eyes fell from his son"s face.
"I wish with all my heart it wasn"t so, of course; that she wasn"t married, or that she had left him long ago. But that can"t be helped. And I don"t see how a divorce could make any difference, and it would take a long time, and cause a dirty mess. He"s the kind who would fight it for spite, or blackmail. Perhaps later it will come. Now she must not suffer any more. I love her all the deeper for what she has been through. I want to make her life happy, make it up to her somehow, if I can."
The Colonel rose and with an old man"s slow step went over to the office door and locked it.
"Vickers," he said as he turned around from the door, still averting his shamed face, "you must be crazy, out of your mind, my son!"
"No, father," the young man replied calmly; "I was never surer of anything in my life! I knew it would hurt you and mother,--you can"t understand. But you must trust me in this. It has to be."
"Why does it have to be?"
"Because I love her!" he burst out. "Because I want to save her from that man, from the degradation she"s lived in. With me she will have some joy, at last,--her life, her soul,--oh, father, you can"t say these things to any one! You can"t give good reasons."
The old merchant"s face became stern as he replied:--
"You wish to do all this for her, and yet you do not mean to marry her."
"I can"t marry her! I would to-day if I could. Some day perhaps we can,--for the sake of the child it would be better. But that makes no difference to me. It is the same as marriage for us--"
""Doesn"t make any difference"--"the same as marriage"--what are you talking about?"
The young man tried to find words which would fully express his feeling. He had come a long way these last hours in his ideas of life; he saw things naked and clear cut, without dubious shades. But he had to realize now that what _his_ soul accepted as incontrovertible logic was meaningless to others.
"I mean," he said at last slowly, "that this woman is the woman I love. I care more for her happiness, for her well-being than for anything else in life. And so no matter how we arrange to live, she is all that a woman can be to a man, married or not as it may happen."
"To take another man"s wife and live with her!" the Colonel summed up bitterly. "No, Vick, you don"t mean that. You can"t do a dirty thing like that. Think it over!"
So they argued a little while longer, and finally the old man pleaded with his son for time, offering to see Mrs. Conry, to help her get a separation from her husband, to send her abroad with her child,--to all of which Vickers replied steadily:--
"But I love her, father--you forget that! And she needs me now!"
"Love her!" the old man cried. "Don"t call that love!"
Vickers shut his lips and rose, very white.
"I must go now. Let"s not say any more. We"ve never had any bitter words between us, father. You don"t understand this--do you think I would hurt you and mother, if it didn"t have to be? I gave up my own life, when it was only myself at stake; but I cannot give her up--and everything it will mean to her."
The Colonel turned away his face and refused to see his son"s outstretched hand. He could not think without a blush that his son should be able to contemplate this thing. Vickers, as he turned the handle of the door, recollected something and came back.