Till the Clock Stops Part 12

She rose, but made no attempt to go from him. Perhaps instinct told her that there could be no ultimate escape.

"I don't wear my heart on my sleeve," he went on evenly, "but I dare say you have at least suspected my feelings for you. I have never flattered myself that you have regarded me as more than a friend of the house--a good friend, I hope--and you have known me so long that you may have come to consider me an old friend in more senses than one. Yet here I am, Doris, asking you to marry me--"

"Please, Mr. Bullard--" The whisper came from pale lips.

He proceeded gently, steadily--"At present you would say that you cannot give me the affection I desire, yet I would ask to be allowed to try to earn it. I can give you many things besides a whole-hearted admiration, Doris. You are the only woman I have ever thought of as wife. With me you would be secure from worldly hardships, and I venture to believe that you would never regret marrying me. One word more. You have been sad of late.

No business of mine, perhaps, but if there is anything I can do, you may command me. Doris, will you marry me?"

Perhaps she liked him better at that moment than ever she had done; certainly better than ever she would like him again. For he broke the long silence with these words--

"I have your father's permission, your mother's approval."

"My father's permission!" she said faintly. For support she laid her arm on the mantel. Her mind was in a turmoil. At last--"I cannot marry you, Mr. Bullard."

"With all respect," he quietly answered, "I cannot take your words as final."

She was not indignant, only afraid. "You speak of my father's 'permission,'" she managed to say. "Does that include his 'approval'? You will forgive me, but--"

"I will forgive you anything but a refusal."

"Then please excuse my leaving you. I will come back."

She went quickly to the library. From the table Mr. Lancaster raised a face whose haggard aspect almost made her cry out--so aged it was, so stricken with trouble. She closed the door, went over to the table, and halted opposite him.

"Father, do you really wish me to marry Mr. Bullard?"

"My child, life--everything--is uncertain, and so--and so I would see you provided for."

"I am not afraid of poverty--compared with some things." She nerved herself. "Father, you and I used to be frank with each other. Will it--help you if I marry Mr. Bullard?"

The man writhed. "Yes, Doris," he whispered at last.

"In what way?" Again she had to wait for his reply.

"It--it would save me..."

"Save you?"

"...from a grave difficulty..."

"Difficulty?"

"...disgrace." His head drooped. And suddenly all that mattered to heart was swamped by a wave of loving pity. She ran round to him and clasped him, and kissed him. "Oh, my dear," she sighed, "it was never, never your fault."

Then she went back to the drawing-room. She looked straight at Bullard as he stood by the fire, well-dressed, well-groomed, and just rather well-fed. And there and then she made up her mind.

"Mr. Bullard," she said calmly, "I promise to marry you, if you still wish it, a year hence; but I will not be engaged to you formally or openly. That is all I can say--all I can offer you."

He frowned slightly at her tone rather than her words. The least trustworthy people are not the least trusting, and he did not doubt, knowing her as he did, that she would redeem any promise she made, nor was he particularly anxious for marriage within a year. But he had his vanity.

"Do you mean," he asked with increased suavity, "that you would wish to ignore my existence until the year is up?"

"Not your existence, Mr. Bullard--we should meet as before, I suppose--but--well, I think you must see what I mean."

He bowed. "It shall be as you will, Doris. Enough that I have your word for a year hence. Or"--he smiled--"let us say, when the clock stops, which your father will tell you is practically the same thing. Don't look so puzzled! Will you give me your hand on it?" The man was not without dignity; he made no attempt to detain her hand.

"Thank you and good-night," he said. "I will pay my respects to Mrs.

Lancaster to-morrow afternoon."

He went out with the step of success. He had not only secured a wife to be proud of, but had, he believed, disarmed a possible enemy. For some time he had had vaguely uneasy moments with regard to Teddy France.

When the door had closed Doris dropped her face in her hands, but her eyes remained dry. Five minutes later, Mrs. Lancaster, coming in, received the calm and brief announcement that her daughter had promised to marry Mr. Bullard a year hence; that until then he was to be regarded as an ordinary acquaintance, and that he would call upon Mrs. Lancaster on the following afternoon.

The mother was not heartless. "You are doing this to help your father, Doris. I know all about it. It is--it is n.o.ble of you!"

The girl looked at her, and the question rushed to her lips--"Oh, why have _you_, his wife, never done anything to help him?" But it remained unuttered. "Good-night, mother," she said, and hastened to the refuge of her room.

She wrote a few lines to Teddy, stating simply what she had done. After that she gave way.

About the same hour, in Dr. Handyside's study, four hundred miles away, a conference of three people was drawing to a close. Earlier in the day Caw had received a belated visit from Mr. Harvie, the Glasgow lawyer, who, owing to illness, had been unable to attend to business since his client's death. Beyond the information that Caw had been left the sum of 5,000 free of duty, the old housekeeper an annuity, and the doctor 1,000, Mr. Harvie had little to say. The rest of his late client's fortune, the house and its contents, were already Alan's--if the young man were still alive, and Mr. Harvie, whatever his own ideas might be, was under an obligation to a.s.sume as much until--a slight grimace of disapproval--"the clock stopped." "I have other instructions," he added, "but they are not to be acted on at present." He had returned to town by the last steamer.

"So we have come back to where we started," Dr. Handyside was saying.

"The sum total of our discoveries is that we can do next to nothing. If I hadn't become so intimate with your master's character--not his affairs, you understand, Caw--I should have had very little respect for his methods. As for his motives, they are no business of ours."

"If I may say so," returned Caw, who would have been happier standing at attention than sitting in Miss Handyside's company, "you take a lofty view of the matter, sir, and you put it in a nutsh.e.l.l when you say that his motives are none of our business. I am sorry to have brought you and Miss Handyside into the trouble--"

"I rather think I came in," observed Miss Handyside with a smile.

"Which is a fact, miss. And very welcome, too, if I may say so. Also, Mr.

Craig trusted you both."

"Wherefore it is up to us to trust his wisdom and respect his wishes," said Handyside. "The green box must remain where it is and take its chance."

"If you hadn't told us," said Marjorie to Caw, "that you were the last to see inside the box, I should be imagining all sorts of things. And those two men were his friends!"

Caw's expression resumed its usual stolidity. To have replied that they had ceased to be his master's friends would have involved explanations which he did not feel at liberty to impart even to those trustworthy people.

"Do you think they will try again, Caw?" the girl pursued. "I wish you had not sent back the money--"

"Don't be absurd, Marjorie!" said her father. "Caw had no choice."

"Well, sir, I was sorely tempted to stick to it as a bit of revenge, but I asked myself what my master would have done--and then, as you say, sir, there was no choice. As to your question, miss, I answer 'Yes.' A man like Mr. Bullard--I'm not so sure of the other--would not give up trying for such a prize. You see, I learned his ways out there in the old days.

All his successes were made by bold methods. He feared nothing, cared for n.o.body. Oh, yes, he is bound to have another try, though I don't fancy it will be to-morrow or the next day."

"One would almost imagine," remarked the doctor, easing his injured foot on the supporting chair, "that the beggars guessed you were powerless in the matter."