“I don’t care what you say ‘about that,’” he mocked; “that worthless scoundrel seems to have an evil fascination for you. I don’t understand it; a decent young girl like you and a whiskey-soaked, loafin’, gamblin’ degenerate, who shook his wife—a fine woman—to be free to trail after you! That slimy wharf-rat has the fool idea that I took advantage of him when I sold him my interest in the store—and just to show you what a fool he is I’ll tell you that I sold him my interest at a tenth less than I could have got from three other people—did it, so help me God, out of sheer good feelin’, because he’s the son of a father who’d given me a hand up, and I thought because he was a fool I wouldn’t be just fair with him—I’d be generous! I did that for Sam Copeland’s sake.
“That was four years ago, and I hadn’t much idea then that he’d make good. He’s already cashed in everything Sam left him but the store. And I’ve still got his notes for twenty-five thousand dollars—twenty-five thousand, mind you!—that he’d like damned well to cancel by marryin’ you. A man nearly forty years old, who gambles and soaks himself in cocktails and runs after a feather-head like you while the business his father and I made the best in the State goes plumb to hell! Now, you listen to what I’m sayin’: if you want to marry him, you do it,—you go ahead and do it now, for if you wait for me to die, you’ll find he won’t be so anxious; there ain’t goin’ to be anything to marry you for!”
His voice that had been firm and strong at the beginning of this long speech sank to a hoarse whisper, but he cleared his throat and uttered his last words with sharp distinctness.
“I never meant to; I never had any idea of marrying him,” she said. “And I’ve never thought of the money. You can do what you like with it.”
“Well, a man can’t take his money with him to the graveyard, but he can tie a pretty long string to it; and it’s my duty to protect you as long as I can. I’d hoped you’d be married and settled before I went. Your mamma and I used to talk of that; you’d got a pretty tight grip on us; it couldn’t have been stronger if you’d been our own; and I don’t want anything to spoil this, Nan. I want you to be a good woman—not one of these high-flyin’, drinkin’ kind, that heads for the divorce court, but decent and steady. Now, I guess that’s about all.”
She stood beside him for a moment, smoothing his hair. Then she knelt, as though from an accession of feeling, and took his hands.
“I’m so sorry, papa! I never mean to hurt you; but I know I do; I know I must have troubled mamma, too, a very great deal. And you’ve both been so good to me! And I want to show you I appreciate it. And please don’t talk of the money any more or of my marrying anybody. I don’t want the money; I’m not going to marry: I want us to live on just as we have been. You’ve been cooped up too long, but you’re so much better now you’ll soon be able to travel.”
“No; there’s no more travel for me; I’ll be glad to hang on as I am. There’s nothing in this change idea. About a year more’s all I count on, and then you can throw me on the scrap-heap.”
She protested that there were many more comfortable years ahead of him; the doctors had said so. At the mention of doctors his anger flared again, but for an instant only. It was a question whether he had been mollified by her assurances or whether the peace that now reigned was attributable to his satisfaction with the plans he had devised to protect her from fortune-hunters.
She hated scenes and trouble of any kind, and peace or even a truce was worth having at any price. She had grown so accustomed to the bright, smooth surfaces of life as to be impatient of the rough, unburnished edges. It was not wholly Nan’s fault that she had reached womanhood selfish and willful. In their ignorance and anxiety to do as well by her as their neighbors did by their daughters, there had been no bounds to the Farleys’ indulgence.