第48章 IX(5)

He began to understand why Hallowell cared nothing about the active life of the day--about its religion, politics, modes of labor, its habits of one creature preying upon another. To-morrow, not religion, not politics, but chemistry, not priests nor politicians, but chemists, would change all that--and change it by the only methods that compel. An abstract idea of liberty or justice can be rejected, evaded, nullified. But a telephone, a steam engine, a mode of prolonging life--those realizations of ideas COMPEL.

When Dorothy came, Norman went into the garden with her in a frame of mind so different from any he had ever before experienced that he scarcely recognized himself. As the influence of the father's glowing imagination of genius waned before the daughter's physical loveliness and enchantment for him, he said to himself, "I'll keep away from him." Why? He did not permit himself to go on to examine into his reasons. But he could not conceal them from himself quickly enough to hide the knowledge that they were moral.

"What is the matter with you to-day?" said Dorothy. "You are not a bit interesting."

"Interested, you mean," he said with a smile of raillery, for he had long since discovered that she was not without the feminine vanity that commands the centering of all interest in the woman herself and resents any wandering of thought as a slur upon her own powers of fascination.

"Well, interested then," said she. "You are thinking about something else."

"Not now," he assured her.

But he left early. No sooner had he got away from the house than the scientific dreaming vanished and he wished himself back with her again--back where every glance at her gave him the most exquisite sensations.

And when he came the following day he apparently had once more restored her father to his proper place of a nonessential. All that definitely remained of the day before's impression was a certain satisfaction that he was aiding with his money an enterprise of greater value and of less questionable character than merely his own project. But the powerful influences upon our life and conduct are rarely direct and definite. He, quite unconsciously, had a wholly different feeling about Dorothy because of her father, because of what his new knowledge of and respect for her father had revealed and would continue to reveal to him as to the girl herself--her training, her inheritance, her character that could not but be touched with the splendor of the father's noble genius. And long afterward, when the father as a distinct personality had been almost forgotten, Nor-man was still, altogether unconsciously, influenced by him--powerfully, perhaps decisively influenced. Norman had no notion of it, but ever after that talk in the laboratory, Dorothy Hallowell was to him Newton Hallowell's daughter.

When he came the following day, with his original purposes and plans once more intact, as he thought, he found that she had made more of a toilet than usual, had devised a new way of doing her hair that enabled him to hang a highly prized addition in his memory gallery of widely varied portraits of her.

The afternoon was warm. They sat under a big old tree at the end of the garden. He saw that she was much disturbed--and that it had to do with him. From time to time she looked at him, studying his face when she thought herself unobserved. As he had learned that it is never wise to open up the disagreeable, he waited.

After making several futile efforts at conversation, she abruptly said:

"I saw Mr. Tetlow this morning--in Twenty-third Street. I was coming out of a chemical supplies store where father had sent me."

She paused. But Norman did not help her. He continued to wait.

"He--Mr. Tetlow--acted very strangely," she went on. "I spoke to him. He stared at me as if he weren't going to speak--as if I weren't fit to speak to."

"Oh!" said Norman.

"Then he came hurrying after me. And he said, `Do you know that Norman is to be married in two weeks?' "

"So!" said Norman.

"And I said, `What of it? How does that interest me?' "

"It didn't interest you?"

"I was surprised that you hadn't spoken of it," replied she. "But I was more interested in Mr. Tetlow's manner. What do you think he said next?"

"I can't imagine," said Norman.

"Why--that I was even more shameless than he thought. He said: `Oh, I know all about you. I found out by accident. I shan't tell anyone, for I can't help loving you still. But it has killed my belief in woman to find out that YOU would sell yourself.' "

She was looking at Norman with eyes large and grave. "And what did you say?" he inquired.

"I didn't say anything. I looked at him as if he weren't there and started on. Then he said, `When Norman abandons you, as he soon will, you can count on me, if you need a friend.' "

There was a pause. Then Norman said, "And that was all?"

"Yes," replied she.

Another pause. Norman said musingly: "Poor Tetlow! I've not seen him since he went away to Bermuda--at least he said he was going there. One day he sent the firm a formal letter of resignation. . . .

Poor Tetlow! Do you regret not having married him?"

"I couldn't marry a man I didn't love." She looked at him with sweet friendly eyes. "I couldn't even marry you, much as I like you."

Norman laughed--a dismal attempt at ease and raillery.

"When he told me about your marrying," she went on, "I knew how I felt about you. For I was not a bit jealous. Why haven't you ever said anything about it?"

He disregarded this. He leaned forward and with curious deliberateness took her hand. She let it lie gently in his. He put his arm round her and drew her close to him. She did not resist. He kissed her upturned face, kissed her upon the lips. She remained passive, looking at him with calm eyes.