Part 17 (1/2)
She rose as though this was the end of the argument. Her words, lightly spoken, were so transparently honest that the shrewd man of business summed up the whole situation in an instant. The mere possibility that his name should be mixed up with a racing scandal staggered him by its dangers and its absurdity. Anger against his daughter became in some measure compa.s.sion. Of course she was but a woman and a clever charlatan had entrapped her.
”Sit down--sit down,” he said bluffly, motioning her back to her seat.
”It is perfectly clear that this William Forrest of yours is a rogue, and as a rogue we must treat him. I am astonished at what you tell me.
It is a piece of nonsense, women's sense as ridiculous as the silly business which is responsible for it. Of course you must pay them the money. I will do the rest, Anna. I have friends who will quickly put that matter straight--and if your rogue finds his way to a race-course again, he is a very lucky man. Now sit down and let me speak to you in my turn, Anna. I want you to speak about Alban--I want to hear how you like him. He has now been with us long enough for us to know something about him. Let us see if your opinion agrees with mine.”
His keen scrutiny detected a flush upon her face while he asked the question and he understood that all he had suspected had been nothing but the truth. Anna had come to love this open-minded lad who had been forced upon them by such an odd train of circ.u.mstances; her threats concerning w.i.l.l.y Forrest were the merest bravado. Gessner would have trembled at the knowledge a week ago, but to-night it found him singularly complacent. He listened to Anna's response with the air of a light-hearted judge who condemned a guilty prisoner out of her own mouth.
”Alban Kennedy has many good qualities,” she said. ”I think he is very worthy of your generosity.”
”Ah, you like him, I perceive. Let us suppose, Anna, that my intentions toward him were to go beyond anything I had imagined--suppose, being no longer under any compulsion in the matter, the compulsion of an imaginary obligation which does not exist, I were still to consider him as my own son. Would you be surprised then at my conduct?”
”It would not surprise me,” she said. ”You have always wished for a son.
Alban is the most original boy of his age I have ever met. He is clever and absurdly honest. I don't think you would regret any kindness you may show to him.”
”And you yourself?”
”What have I to do with it, father?”
”It might concern you very closely, Anna.”
”In what way, father?”
”In the only way which would concern a woman. Suppose that I thought of him as your husband?”
She flushed crimson.
”Have you spoken to him on the matter?”
”No, but being about to speak to him--after dinner to-night.”
”I should defer my opinion until that has happened.”
He laughed as though the idea of it amused him very much.
”Of course, he will have nothing to do with us, Anna. What is a fortune to such a fine fellow? What is a great house--and I say it--a very beautiful wife? Of course, he will refuse us. Any boy would do that, especially one who has been brought up in Union Street. Now go and look for him in the garden. I must tell Geary to have that cheque drawn out--and mind you, if I meet that fellow Forrest, I will half kill him just to show my good opinion of him. This nonsense must end to-night.
Remember, it is a promise to me.”
She shrugged her shoulders and left the room with slow steps. Gessner, still smiling, turned up a lamp by his writing-table and took out his cheque-book.
CHAPTER XVIII
FATE IRONICAL
They were a merry party at the dinner-table, and the Reverend Silas Geary amused them greatly by his discussion of that absorbing topic, is golf worth playing? He himself, good man, deplored the fact that several worthy persons who, otherwise, would have been working ten or twelve hours a day as Cabinet ministers, deliberately toiled in the sloughs and pits of the golf course.
”The whole nation is chasing a little ball,” he said; ”we deplore the advance of Germany, but, I would ask you, how does the German spend his day, what are his needs, where do his amus.e.m.e.nts lie? There is a country for you--every man a soldier, every worker an intellect. In England nowadays our young fellows seem to try and find out how little they can do. We live for minimums. We are only happy when we have struck a bat with a ball and it has gone far. We reserve our greatest honors for those who thus excel.”
Alban ventured to say that beer seemed to be the recreation of the average German and insolence his amus.e.m.e.nt. He confessed that the Germans beat his own people by hard work; but he asked, is it really a good thing that work should be the beginning and the end of all things?
He had been taught at school that the supreme beauty of life lay in things apart and chiefly in a man's own soul. To which Gessner himself retorted that a woman's soul was what the writer probably meant.