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GILBERT was alone in his office, working in one of his characteristic fits of great energy. A sort of inspiration would seize him, he would map out astounding campaigns, design advertisements, write letters to his travelling salesmen which filled them with admiration and enthusiasm, humorous, racy letters, replete with valuable suggestions. The greater part of his time he was cross and wretched, but he had his glorious hours, his days of geniality and amazing penetration. The entire office staff would be enchanted, and ready to adore him, for he had a perverse charm about him, an elusive loveableness, a touch of the fascination so marked in his eldest child.
He always addressed his salesmen in his own writing, a very neat and legible one, and he was doing that now, his plump, well-kept hand travelling deliberately over the paper, and a faint smile on his lips, when there was a knock at the door and his young Cuban entered.
“Your daughter is outside, sir!” he announced, with all the homage of a courtier. He was profoundly attached to “the family”; he was not without hope of something happening similar to the things he had read of in French romances—that, as a reward for his furious zeal, he would one day be invited to dinner, for instance, when he could be presented to the young ladies with due ceremony. After that, the rest would be easy....
“Ask her to step in,” said Gilbert, and looking at his watch, decided that he would take Edna out to lunch. He took it for granted that it was Edna, because it always was. She was sent as an emissary by both Bertie and Andrée when they wanted money or permission for any unapproved enterprise, because she knew how to handle him.
He wheeled round in his chair, and was surprised to see Andrée standing there.
“Well, well!” he said, good-humouredly. “What do you want, eh?”
He thought she looked “queer,” and he stared at her more closely. She had a sort of desperate, defiant air, an unchanging smile.
“Sit down! Sit down!” he said. “What brings you here, Andrée?”
“I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to tell you something.... I wanted you to hear it from me instead of from Mother, so that you—wouldn’t fly at her.”
She knew that she was antagonizing him, but she could not help it. The only way she felt able to tell her monstrous piece of news was rudely and sternly, to deny even to herself the dread and shrinking she suffered. Her father’s face changed perceptibly.
“Well!” he said, impatiently.
She laid her pocket-book on his desk, a beautiful little pocket-book, for she had all her mother’s elegance in trifles—and stood looking down at him.
“I’m going to marry Mr. Stephens!” she said.
“Who the devil is Mr. Stephens?” he cried.
Andrée began to laugh.
“That man you had a fight with last summer, in the mountains.”
“What!” he cried, springing up. “What! That common, worthless little cad!”
“Yes!” she said, looking him steadfastly in the face, and smiling. “That common, worthless little cad. Don’t begin to rave at me. You can’t stop me. Mother’s been trying for weeks.”
“I’m not going to ‘rave,’ young woman. I have more effective means than that to put a stop to your nonsense. You’re not so independent as you imagine—”
“If you’ll just take it for granted that I’m going to do it, we can talk,” said Andrée. “Otherwise it’s no use, and I’d better go.”
“I see your mother’s hand in this!” he said. “Some of her—peculiar ideas—”
“No, you don’t. She doesn’t even know I’m going to tell you. She’s done all she could to persuade me—”
“Persuade isn’t the word I’d use. Look here, Andrée, my girl, I’m not going to argue with you. Put this idea out of your head once and for all—”
“Why?”
“Why? Because I tell you to. You’re too young to know what you’re doing, and you’ll have to listen to people who are older and know better.”
“But—about this—you don’t know better. You don’t know anything about him. And anyway, it’s not a question of knowing, it’s a question of—of feeling. I—like him. I’m older than Mother was when she married you. I know what I’m doing. His only crime is being—what you call ‘common.’ He’s very remarkable. If you knew him, you’d soon see it.”
“You don’t know enough of the world to realize that marriages between people of unequal social position are always unhappy.”
“They’re just as unhappy in other cases,” said Andrée. “I don’t believe social position has anything to do with it. It’s—disposition. And Al has a wonderful disposition.”
“Al!” her father repeated, contemptuously.
“Yes, Al! That’s what he calls himself. I like it! It’s so nice and jolly and—common!”
“Andrée!” said her father, sternly. “This is nothing but a whim—a freak of yours.... I think you’re only trying to torment and worry the people who love you.”
“You’ll see if it’s a whim!” she answered.
Suddenly he was disarmed; some gesture, some intonation of hers, had brought back to him the naughty little girl who had so perplexed and amused him, the scowling little rebel he had so often wanted to shake—and never had. He remembered her with surprising vividness as a child of six, spending a Saturday morning with him, sitting in the corner of this very office, cutting out paper dolls, while she waited for him to wind up his business and take her out to lunch and the circus.
“Andrée!” he said. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you go over to Germany with your mother to study music for a year.”
“But I’m going to study here! That’s what Al and I have arranged. I’m going to go on just the same!” she said, triumphantly. “And he’s going to give me a grand piano for a wedding present!”
This put an end to his softness.
“If you don’t renounce this—mad idea—at once, and finally,” he said, “it will mean—that I wash my hands of you. That you’ll be entirely cut off from your family, including your mother, whom you pretend to love so much. You’ll disgrace—”
“Nonsense!” she interrupted. “It’s not true to say I’ll disgrace you, because I want to marry someone you don’t like. It’s—”
“Enough!” he said, frowning. “I’ve said all I’m going to. If you’re not prepared to tell me now that you will—obey me in this matter ... or at least, agree to wait a year—”
“No, I’m not prepared to do that!”
“Then you may consider that you are no longer a member of my household!”
“What does that mean?” she asked, scornfully. “Does it mean you’re turning me out?”
“Yes!” he shouted. “If you haven’t the common decency to appreciate, or feel any gratitude for all that’s been done for you, you can try doing without for a while. You can go back now and talk it over with your mother, and when I come home this evening, I’ll tell you what I’ve decided.”
“No, thanks! I won’t go home. I’ll never go home again. It’s your home, not mine, I see. Good-by!”
He caught her by the arm.
“I won’t allow this! I insist upon your going home at once. Do you hear?”
“Of course I hear! Everyone in the office must. But I won’t go!”
“Yes, you will!” he said. He was furious, and very much frightened. He had no idea what she might do. “I’m going to call a taxi and send you home.”
“You’ll have to get a policeman to go with me!” she said, laughing again. “I won’t go! I don’t mind a row once in a while, but I don’t like the idea of a whole lot of them. It was hard enough to come and tell you about this, but you’ve made things impossible now. You won’t treat me as a woman—”
“You’re not a woman!” he cried. And certainly she had never looked less like one. She looked like a school-girl, reckless and ignorant of the consequences of her folly, her face alight with a defiance that was more mischievous than resolute.
“Good-by!” she said.
“Andrée!... Confound you!... Think of your mother! Go home, and we’ll talk the thing over thoroughly this evening!”
“All right!” she said, suddenly, and left him without another word.