“I know, but Irene will not tire you,” Rena replied, at a loss to understand his evident shrinking from seeing Irene.
She did not stay long that morning, for she was to take a drive with Tom, and Rex did not try to detain her. He wanted to be alone, and after she was gone he lay so still with his eyes closed that I thought he was asleep. Rousing up at last he said, “Send Mr. McPherson to me, please.”
Colin came at once, and for a time I heard the two voices in low and earnest consultation. Then Colin come out, and, going to his own rooms, where his papers were kept, selected one, which he took to Rex. It was a copy of Sandy McPherson’s will, which Rex read carefully, while in his heart there was an indescribable regret and longing for what he knew could never be. He had said often to himself that he was not like other men; that no woman, however fair she might be, could create in him a desire to possess her. He could respect and admire, but love her, never! And he did not quite understand this new sensation confronting him with both pain and happiness—happiness as he recalled the face which had bent over him so often when his fever was at its height, and pain when he said to himself: “It never could have been, for there is nothing in me to attract a bright spirit like hers even if there were no Tom. But she shall not be the loser pecuniarily, if I can help it,” and he laughed as he thought of his experiment which was to benefit Tom and Rena. He had talked it over with Colin and asked for a copy of the will, which, after reading two or three times, he put under his pillow, while he thought it out.
“I’ll do it,” he said, “but I’ll tell Tom first.”
With his mind made up, he waited impatiently for Tom, who came fresh and breezy and seeming very happy. After some demur Rena had promised to marry him at Christmas time if her aunt were willing and some investments recently made turned out well, “for we shall want a lot of money,” she said.
“Bother the investments,” Tom had replied. “I don’t intend to touch a penny of your money. We will let that rest for the rainy day, or our old age. I want to do everything myself. We can’t, of course, set up housekeeping very steep at first, and not at all like what you are accustomed to with your Aunt Mary, but I know a pretty little flat of six or seven rooms on a pleasant street in Newton which will come within my means, and where I think we can be very happy till I can afford something bigger and better—a house of our own, with garden and grounds.”
Rena had always said she detested a flat, and should smother in one, but Tom’s arm was around her as they drove through the woods, and he talked of the cozy little rooms and the dear little wife waiting to meet him when his day’s work was done, and asked if she could bear it. She was very frank, and answered, “I hate flats as a rule. Your mother’s house—the first I remember—was big, and Aunt Mary’s is, also, but I can be happy anywhere with you, only we must sometime have the big house and the garden, not right in the city, but outside, where there is room to spread and breathe, and keep hens if we want to. I dote on little chickens.”
Tom promised, but thought his clients must be more numerous than they were at present before that consummation of her wishes. And so the matter was settled, and Tom was radiant when he went in to Rex, who startled him by asking:
“How is your business?”
“Fair, but not as good as I wish it were,” Tom said, thinking of the inexpensive flat in which he and Rena were to live.