"Nothing but brains."
"Brains!" Fosdick snorted contemptuously. "Why, they're a drug on the
market. I can buy brains by the hundred. Men with brains are falling
over each other downtown, trying to sell out for a song."
"Not brains like his," she protested.
"Better--a hundred times better. Why, his brain belongs to me. I've
bought it. I have it whenever and for whatever I want."
"I--I love him, father," she sobbed, hiding her face in his shoulder.
"I've tried my best not to. But I can't live without him. I--I--_love_
him!"
Fosdick was profoundly moved. There were tears in his eyes, and he
gently stroked her hair. She reached out for his hand, took it, kissed
it, and put it under her cheek--she hated to have anyone touch her hair,
which was most troublesome to arrange to her liking. "Listen to me,
child," said the old man. "You remember when Armstrong was trying to
impose on your tender heart? You remember what I said? Was I not
right? Aren't you glad you took my advice?"
"But I never loved him--really," said Amy.
"And you don't love Alois. You couldn't love one of our dependents.
You have too much pride for that. But, again I want to warn you.
There's a reason--the best of reasons--why you must not be even friendly
with--this young Siersdorf. I can't explain to you. He's an adventurer
like Armstrong. Wait a few days--a very few days, Amy. He has been
careful to let you see only the one side of him. There's another side.
When you see that, you'll be ashamed you ever thought of him, even in
jest. You'll see why I want you to be safely established as the wife of
some substantial man."
"Tell me what it is, father."
"I tell nothing," replied Fosdick. "Wait, and you will see."
"Is it something to his discredit? If so, I can tell you right now it
isn't true."
"Wait--that's all. Wait."
"But, father--after all he's done for us, isn't it only fair to warn
him?"
"Warn him of what?"
"Of what you say is going to happen."
"If you want to do yourself and me the greatest possible damage, you'll
hint to him what I've said. Do you understand?"
"It isn't fair not to warn him," she insisted. And she released herself
from his arms and faced him defiantly. "I tell you, I love him,
father!"
"Was ever parent so cursed in his children!" cried Fosdick. "I'm in the
house of my enemies. I tell you, Amy, you are to keep your mouth
_shut_!" He struck the floor sharply with his cane. "I will be obeyed,
do you hear?"
"And I tell you, father," retorted Amy, "that I'm going to warn him.
He's straight and honest, and he loves me and he has done things for me,
for us, that make us his debtor."
Fosdick threw up his arms in angry impotence. "Do your damnedest!" he
cried. "After all, what can you tell him? You can only throw him into
a fever and put him in a worse plight. But I warn you that, if you
disobey me, I'll make you pay for it. I'll cut off your allowance.
I'll teach you what it means to love and respect a father." And he
raged out of the house.
Even as her father went, Amy felt in the foundation of her defiance the
first tremors of impending collapse. She rushed upstairs to the
telephone; she would not let this impulse to do the generous, no, simply
the decent, thing ooze away as her impulses of that sort usually did, if
she had or took time to calculate the personal inconvenience from
executing them. After a rather common and most pleasing human habit,
she regarded herself as generous, and was so regarded, because she had
generous impulses; to execute them was, therefore, more or less
superfluous. In this particular instance, however, she felt that
impulse was not enough; there must be action.
"Is it you?" came in Alois's voice, just in time to stimulate her
flagging energy. "I was about to call _you_ up."
"I must see you at once," said Amy, with feverish eagerness. "I've got
something very, very important to say to you." She hesitated, decided
that she must commit herself beyond possibility of evasion--"something
about an attempt to do you a great injury."
"Oh!" His tone was curiously constrained; it seemed to her that there
was terror, guilt, in it. "Shall I come up? I've just found out I must
sail for Europe at noon."
"At noon! _To-day?_"
"In about two hours. And I must say good-by to you. It's very sudden.
I haven't even told my sister yet, though she's in the next room, here."
"I'll come down--that is--I'll try to." Amy felt weak, sick, sinking,
suffocating in a whirl of doubts and fears. "You are going on
business?"
"Yes," came the answer in a voice that rang false. "On business. I'll
be away only a few weeks, I think."
"If I shouldn't be able to come--good-by," said Amy.
"But I hope-- Let me come-- Wouldn't that be better?"
Not a word about what she had said, when it ought to have put him into a
quiver of anxiety; certainly, his going abroad looked like knowledge,
guilt, flight. "No--no--you mustn't come," she commanded. "I'll do my
best to get to you." And she added, "We might simply miss each other,
if you didn't wait there."
"Please--Amy!"
She shivered. How far she had gone with him! And her father was right!
"Good-by," she faltered, hastily ringing off.
If she could have seen him, her worst suspicions would have been
confirmed; for his hair was mussed and damp with sweat, his skin looked
as if he were in a garish light. He tried to compose himself, went in
where his sister was at work--absorbed in making the drawings of a new
kind of chimney-piece she had been thinking out. "Cis," he said, in an
uncertain voice, "I'm off for Europe at noon."