“I have tested you, Natalie,” I went on. “I know you are the woman
I want as my daughter. It will make me happy to see you outshining
them all, as you will. And I’ll make you absolutely independent of
Walter--of me, even.”
She was looking at me with glistening eyes. I saw that I had thrilled
her through and through. Profoundly to move a human being, one must
touch his or her deepest passion--his or her particular form of vanity.
“Won’t you, Natalie?” I pleaded, “won’t you make me happy? Won’t you
let me give you what your beauty and refinement demand?”
She looked at me sweetly--a look of surrender.
I knew I had won. Then her eyes were twinkling, and instantly I grasped
the reason. We both burst out laughing. It certainly was amusing--a
father wooing and winning for his son where all his son’s efforts had
made his cause only more hopeless. And throughout, what a quaint
reversal of old-established, generally accepted ideas of love and
marriage! But--“Other times, other customs!”
[Illustration: “_‘You will marry on the sixteenth of April, at noon.
Get yourself ready.’_”]
I dropped Natalie at Mrs. Kirkby’s and went back to my study. I rang
the bell and sent the answering servant for Walter. Presently I looked
up from my work--he was standing before me, shifting his eyes from
point to point, his body from leg to leg.
“You will marry on the sixteenth of April, at noon,” said I. “Get
yourself ready.”
And I dismissed him with a wave of my hand.
It would be sheer madness for me to keep my apparent promise, made, in
the heat of my earnestness, merely to save Natalie from her own folly,
and therefore not really binding. To give her a quarter of a million a
year absolutely and for life would be to invite disaster--no, to compel
it. She’d be in the divorce courts ridding herself of Walter within
two years.
She shall have the substance of my promise--I shall do everything for
her. But she must not have the mere letter, which would injure her,
would tempt her to wreck her life and my plans and the future of her
children. It was wise to promise; it would be wrong to fulfil. No, I
must retain full control, must keep my steadying hand firmly upon her.
And, after all, what did I pledge?
I was careful to phrase it delicately, for I’m always extremely
particular in my choice and use of words at crucial moments. I was
careful to say, “an annual income of a quarter of a million.” All turns
upon the word “an”--if it were “the,” my phrase would mean something
entirely different.
I shall settle two hundred and fifty thousand on her on the day they
marry--after the ceremony. I shall protest that a quarter of a million
in all was what I meant--and I certainly did, though I don’t here deny
that I may have meant for her to think I meant a quarter of a million a
year. She will be--not in what you would call a pleasant state of mind.
But what can she do? When she shall have calmed down, she’ll probably
give me the benefit of the doubt, tell herself she misunderstood me,
rail at herself for her folly, and then--behave herself.
True, she’s shrewd, and her parents, too. They’ll try legally to commit
me _before_ the wedding. But surely I can circumvent them.
There’s “a way out.” There _always_ is!