Concerning Sally Part 67

Sally sat gazing at the lined old face before her a long time without speaking. As she looked, her eyes softened even more and grew tender--and those eyes could be wonderfully tender. He bore her gaze as well as he could, but he was ill at ease. If the truth must be told, his mood had softened, too, and the very fact embarra.s.sed him.

Perhaps he remembered the days of the little lizard and the coal-trees and the occasions when the gynesaurus had climbed to the topmost branch and gazed forth upon a wide prospect of tree-tops and swamps.

It could not have been pleasant to recollect those days. For him, they were no more and could be never again. He was roused by Sally's low voice.

"Oh, father," she said impulsively, "why do you do it? Why can't you give it up? I could get your lizard for you. Why not return to your old life? You might do something yet. At least, it would be a comfort to be respectable."

He laughed at that. "No doubt it would," he observed, "be a great comfort to be respectable. And no doubt it would be a great comfort to you to have a respectable father; reformed; dragged from the depths."

The tears came to Sally's eyes. "Does your programme," he asked then, nonchalantly, "include--er--reuniting a family long separated by circ.u.mstances? You may remember that I mentioned the matter once before."

She shook her head slowly and regretfully. "I'm afraid not. I couldn't consent to exposing mother to the--" She hesitated and stopped.

"The dangers incident to such an arrangement?" he suggested. "Pardon me for supplying what you were considerate enough to omit. Perhaps you are wise. And Charlie?"

"And Charlie." She nodded. "You see, yourself, that such a thing could not be--at any rate, until you have proved that you could do it."

"I couldn't," he answered promptly. "Don't think that I haven't tried.

I have tried, repeatedly. I hate the life, but I can't give it up.

But," he added, "you need not have been afraid for Charlie."

"I am very much afraid for Charlie," said Sally simply, "in any case.

He is sick of it now. How long the present mood will last, I do not know. Could you manage that he is not allowed to play at--at your--"

He bowed gravely. "That can be arranged, I think."

"Thank you, father."

Once more there was silence between them. Finally he made a movement as if to go. "I was--I wanted--was curious to see how you had come out, Sally. That was the main reason for my troubling you. If there were other reasons, they no longer exist. I--"

"Don't go yet, father," Sally interrupted. "I have more to say."

He sat down again and waited. She was considering--trying to consider the problem before her in every aspect. But she could not get the point of view of her father and Charlie, and she wanted to.

"Father," she resumed, "what _is_ the attraction? I have been trying hard to get a sympathetic view of it and I can't. I can't see anything except what is sordid and repulsive. The life is--is not desirable--"

"Not very desirable," he broke in, with a horrible, dry laugh.

"And it can hardly be simply covetousness. If it is, you miss your mark. What I--"

"It is not covetousness. I may as well say that it is not a sin of covetousness," he corrected, "in deference to the generally received opinion. I have no desire to gloss over and to try to excuse by a form of words, although I, personally, am not convinced that it is a sin according to natural law. However, we need not discuss that aspect of it."

He waved that view aside with a familiar motion of his hand. How familiar they were--those little tricks of the hand and of the voice!

They made Sally's eyes fill and a lump come in her throat. She raised her hand to her forehead and leaned upon it. It half concealed her eyes. She said nothing. The professor went on in his old lecture-room manner; a judicial manner.

"No, it is not a sin of covetousness, but simply a pa.s.sion to which any man who is subject to it can't help giving way. It is a pa.s.sion as old as humanity--perhaps older. There are no more inveterate gamblers than the savages. Possibly," he added, smiling, "my little lizard had it; possibly it goes back to those ancient days that you know about, Sally. It may be that the saurians had their own games of chance and their own stakes--and, I may add, their own methods of enforcing payment. Indeed, their life was one great gamble. For that matter, life is no more than that now."

Sally made an inarticulate protest.

"As for getting the other man's money," the professor continued, unheeding, "that is merely incidental. We feel better, it's true, when we win, but that is for another reason. It has nothing to do with the game--keeping his money. The other man can keep his money--or, as far as the game is concerned, I would give it back to him--for all the happiness it brings him or would bring me. The distinction which I mean to draw is a little subtle, but I flatter myself that you can appreciate it."

He looked at her and she nodded. The tears still stood in her eyes.

"Happiness, Sally," he resumed, absently gazing at the wall, "is--but you probably do not care for my views on the subject of happiness," he said, interrupting himself and glancing at her with a smile. The smile was rather pleasant to contemplate; a thing sufficiently remarkable--for him. "Probably you think I am better qualified to tell you what it is not than what it is; how to avoid it than how to get it. I can give advice, but I cannot follow it."

Sally smiled quickly. "Your views are interesting," she said. She stirred a little. She did not know how he would take what she was about to say. "You would--would you feel hurt, father, if I should offer you an allowance?"

A quarter of an hour before, he would not have felt hurt or embarra.s.sed in the least. In fact, that was the very thing he had come there for. At the moment, it was different. A flush crept into his face slowly.

"Why should I feel hurt?" His voice had changed. It had lost that intimate quality which it had had during the last few minutes, when he had been on the point of telling Sally about happiness. "It is Uncle John's money, I suppose? Why should I feel any compunctions about taking it? And--er--there are conditions incident to the acceptance of this--er--this gift, I suppose?"

"I'm afraid there are," she replied; "at least, tacitly understood."

He considered for a few moments. "I think," he said then, "that it will conduce to happiness, on the whole, if we are not too tacit about those conditions. What are they?"

"I hoped," she answered gently, "that you would not insist on my repeating them. You must understand, from what I have said, what they are."

"I prefer that they should be stated as conditions."

"Very well." Sally's voice was harder and colder. "As you like. You are not to take any steps whatever, even to reveal your existence to my mother and Charlie. Charlie is not to be allowed to play at your house--not to be allowed to enter it."

"But, Sally, I may be unable to prevent that," he protested. "The house is not mine. I am only--only an employe and an underling. I will do what I can, but there is no use in promising what I can't perform."

Sally smiled a little. It was something new for him to stick at promising.

"Those are the conditions which I must make in self-defense," she said.

"May I venture to ask what is offered on the other side?"

She made a rapid calculation. "The most that I can offer you is seven hundred a year. I'd like to make it a thousand; but I have mother and Charlie to take care of, and I must pay Patty what she had let him have--without my knowledge," she added apologetically. "I agree to send you sixty dollars a month on those conditions."

He was leaning back in his chair and spoke in his old manner, lightly.

"And if the conditions are violated?"

"The allowance stops," Sally replied promptly.

"And further?"

There was a suspicion of moisture again in Sally's eyes. "You make it unnecessarily hard, father," she said gently. "I shall act further if you compel me to." She was reminded of the time when she had asked his permission to go to dancing-school. Her feelings, she found, were much the same as they had been on that occasion. "I am ready to put it in writing if you wish."

"Oh, no," said the professor airily. "It is not necessary, Sally. Your word would be all that anybody could require; anybody who knew you."

"Thank you," she murmured. It was very low and he gave no sign of having heard it.

Again he was silent; then he turned to her. A smile of amus.e.m.e.nt curled his lip. "There is, at least, no question of sentiment in all this, is there, Sally?"

"Oh, I don't know," she murmured more gently than ever. She was not looking at him, but down at the arm of her chair. "There may be, but I must not let it interfere with my judgment--in this matter. There is mother to think of."

"Ah! I infer that your mother would not welcome an occasion for reuniting that family which I mentioned."