“And would you, if I tell you all, be man enough to show some mercy?” he asked, in a hopeless way.
“I hold out no promises. I am determined to have a confession from you before your marriage. If you don’t give it, you don’t marry, and you can put that down for a certainty,” Dick said doggedly.
“And if I tell you,” in sudden hope, “will you let my marriage go on without telling Clara? Promise to let us get away on our wedding tour and then you can do as you wish. Only give me that much,” almost pleaded the now trembling man.
“And let you wreck the life of the innocent, unsuspecting woman who becomes your bride? What sort of a man do you think I am?” Richard asked in scorn.
“My God, man! Have some feeling. Haven’t I suffered enough already? You are a man, you can understand how a man will sell his soul to hell for the sake of a woman,” he said bitterly. “Have some feeling!”
“Can’t you understand it?” he continued, desperately, in vain effort to wake compassion in Richard’s breast. “She was pretty, she had no friends to make any trouble about it, and I lost my head. I have suffered for it. I have regretted it.” And Tolman Bike put his hands over his face, and Richard heard a broken, husky sob.
This was more than he could endure. His sternness fled at that sound, and he could hardly refrain from attempting to console the wretched man. Only thoughts of the poverty-stricken little sister helped him maintain an air of unrelenting sternness.
“Well, what do you ask of me?” Richard asked with a roughness that covered his real feeling. Now that he had conquered the man his suspicions fled. He felt sorry for Bike’s suffering and had a guilty feeling that he was the cause of it.
“Only give me until to-morrow and I’ll swear to you that you shall know what you want to before ten o’clock. Give me until then. If I fail, you have yet time to stop my marriage in the evening. You are a man, but if you won’t spare me for a man’s follies, spare me for the sake of the woman I am to marry. I’m sick! I can’t talk! Only give me until to-morrow.”
“—— it, Bike,” Richard said, feelingly, “if it wasn’t for the girl’s sister, I’d fling the whole thing over.” He little knew what it meant to him. “I believe your promise. I’m a man, reckless, indolent, careless as the worst of them, and, confound it, I’m sorry for you. There’s my hand.”