Part 23 (2/2)
”For going to Chicago?”
”For everything. For that too.”
”Not if I told you I advised her to go?”
”You!” In astonishment complete the girl stared. ”You advised her to go?”
”Yes, the same day I made Randall the loan. It was really a coincidence.
I wondered they didn't meet in the elevator.”
”A lawyer in a little town like this, with several departments in his business, comes in contact with a variety of things,” he commented after a moment.
”Tell me about Margery.” The girl seemed to have heard that suggestion only. ”I can't understand, can't believe--really.”
For a moment Roberts was silent. There was no banter in his manner when he looked up at last.
”I didn't tell you this merely to gossip,” he said slowly; ”I think you appreciate that without my saying it; but somehow I felt that you ought to know--that if any one could do any good there it is you. I never met either of them before, that's another coincidence; but from what you've told me and the little I saw of them both that day, I felt dead sorry.
Besides, life's so short, and I hate--divorce.”
”You can't mean it has come to that?”
”It hadn't come, but it was coming fast. She visited me first. From there she was going straight to her father--to stay.”
”It's horrible, simply horrible--and so unjustified! You induced her, though, to go to Chicago instead?”
”It was a compromise, a play for time. I tried to get her to go back home, but she refused, positively. The only alternative seemed to be to get her away--quick.... Was I right?”
”Yes, I think so, under the circ.u.mstances. But the trouble itself, I can't understand yet--Was it that abominable furniture?”
”Partly. At least that was the final straw, the match to the fuse. The whole thing had been gathering slowly for a long time. I didn't get the entire story, of course. She wasn't exactly coherent. It seems she ordered it on her own responsibility, and when the goods were delivered--the thing was merely inevitable, some time--that was all.”
”Inevitable? No. It was abominable of Margery--unforgivable.”
”I don't know about that; in fact I'm inclined to differ. I still maintain it was inevitable.”
”Inevitable fiddlesticks! Harry is the best-natured man alive, and generous. He's been too generous, too easy; that's the trouble.”
”'Generous?'” gently. ”'Generous?'... Is it generous for a man with nothing and no prospect of anything to take a girl out of a home where money was never a consideration, and transplant her into another where practically it is the only thought?... 'Generous' for his own pleasure, to undertake to teach her a financial lesson he knew to a moral certainty in advance she could never learn? Do you honestly call that 'generous'?”
”But she could learn. It--was her duty.”
”Duty!” Roberts laughed tolerantly. ”Is 'duty' in the dictionary you use a synonym for 'cooking' and 'scrubbing' and 'drudgery'? Is that your interpretation?”
”Sometimes--in this case, yes; for a time.”
”Permanently, you mean?”
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