Part 36 (2/2)

”Only a man who works hard at it can realize how complicated it is. The only way is to start with the understanding that something is going to be done. No matter how many difficulties there are in the way, SOMETHING'S GOING TO BE DONE! If a strong man starts out with that, why then he can fight his way through, and push the difficulties aside or bend them to suit his purpose, and accomplish something.”

Mrs. Dabney, listening to this, found nothing in it to quarrel with--yet somehow remained, if not skeptical, then pa.s.sively unconvinced. ”What are your plans?” she asked him.

”Oh, it's too soon to formulate anything,” he told her, with prepared readiness. ”It isn't a thing to rush into in a hurry, with half baked theories and limited information. Great results, permanent results, are never obtained that way.”

”I hope it isn't any Peabody model-dwelling thing.”

”Oh, nothing like it in the least,” he a.s.sured her, and made a mental note to find out what it was she had referred to.

”The Lord-Rowton houses are better, they say,” she went on, ”but it seems to me that the real thing is that there shouldn't be all this immense number of people with only fourpence or fivepence in their pocket. That's where the real mischief lies.”

He nodded comprehendingly, but hesitated over further words. Then something occurred to him. ”Look here!” he said. ”If you're as keen about all this, are you game to give up this footling old shop, and devote your time to carrying out my plans, when I've licked 'em into shape?”

She began shaking her head, but then something seemed also to occur to her. ”It'll be time enough to settle that when we get to it, won't it?”

she observed.

”No--you've got to promise me now,” he told her.

”Well that I won't!” she answered, roundly.

”You'd see the whole--the whole scheme come to nothing, would you?”--he scolded at her--”rather than abate a jot of your confounded mulishness.”

”Aha!” she commented, with a certain alertness of perception s.h.i.+ning through the stolidity of her mien. ”I knew you were humbugging! If you'd meant what you said, you wouldn't talk about its coming to nothing because I won't do this or that. I ought to have known better. I'm always a goose when I believe what you tell me.”

A certain abstract justice in her reproach impressed him. ”No you're not, Lou,” he replied, coaxingly. ”I really mean it all--every word of it--and more. It only occurred to me that it would all go better, if you helped. Can't you understand how I should feel that?”

She seemed in a grudging way to accept anew his professions of sincerity, but she resisted all attempts to extract any promise. ”I don't believe in crossing a bridge till I get to it,” she declared, when, on the point of his departure, he last raised the question, and it had to be left at that. He took with him some small books she had tied in a parcel, and told him to read. She had spoken so confidently of their illuminating value, that he found himself quite committed to their perusal--and almost to their endors.e.m.e.nt. He had thought during the day of running down to Newmarket, for the Cesarewitch was to be run on the morrow, and someone had told him that that was worth seeing. By the time he reached his hotel, however, an entirely new project had possessed his mind. He packed his bag, and took the next train for home.

CHAPTER XXV

”I DIDN'T ask your father, after all,” was one of the things that Thorpe said to his wife next day. He had the manner of one announcing a concession, albeit in an affable spirit, and she received the remark with a scant, silent nod.

Two days later he recurred to the subject. They were again upon the terrace, where he had been lounging in an easy-chair most of the day, with the books his sister had bid him read on a table beside him. He had glanced through some of them in a desultory fas.h.i.+on, cutting pages at random here and there, but for the most part he had looked straight before him at the broad landscape, mellowing now into soft browns and yellows under the mild, vague October sun. He had not thought much of the books, but he had a certain new sense of enjoyment in the fruits of this placid, abstracted rumination which perhaps they had helped to induce.

”About your father,” he said now, as his wife, who had come out to speak with him on some other matter, was turning to go away again: ”I'm afraid I annoyed you the other day by what I said.”

”I have no recollection of it,” she told him, with tranquil politeness, over her shoulder.

He found himself all at once keenly desirous of a conversation on this topic. ”But I want you to recollect,” he said, as he rose to his feet. There was a suggestion of urgency in his tone which arrested her attention. She moved slowly toward the chair, and after a little perched herself upon one of its big arms, and looked up at him where he leant against the parapet.

”I've thought of it a good deal,” he went on, in halting explanation.

His purpose seemed clearer to him than were the right phrases in which to define it. ”I persisted in saying that I'd do something you didn't want me to do--something that was a good deal more your affair than mine--and I've blamed myself for it. That isn't at all what I want to do.”

Her face as well as her silence showed her to be at a loss for an appropriate comment. She was plainly surprised, and seemingly embarra.s.sed as well. ”I'm sure you always wish to be nice,” she said at last. The words and tone were alike gracious, but he detected in them somewhere a perfunctory note.

”Oh--nice!” he echoed, in a sudden stress of impatience with the word.

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