The Landloper by Holman Day (ereader ebook .txt) 📖

up the stairs, carrying one ice cube on his shoulder, with another swinging from tongs. There was but one door to the Kilgour apartment and the girl and Dodd stood in front of it; they had evidently waited in the corridor after emerging from the elevator, and the young man was detaining her, talking earnestly.
The girl opened the door with her latch-key, and with an apology he stepped in front of the pair and entered.
"Well, I'll be--" blurted Dodd. "So that's what he is--a cheap, low-lived iceman!"
Mrs. Kilgour came into her vestibule and led the way to the kitchen, for Farr stood irresolutely in the doorway, awaiting directions as to his burden. Following her, the young man noted her house-dress, beribboned over-much, her rouged face, her bleached hair, and wondered how such a woman could have beguiled Andrew Kilgour, as he felt he knew that sacrificing hero from what Citizen Drew had said.
"Say, that's the plug-ugly who insulted us in the woods. I'll never forget that face," stormed Dodd, making no effort by lowered tones to conceal his sentiments from the iceman. "Where else am I going to run across him? He needs a horse-whipping. If there weren't ladies present I'd give him one."
"The man seems to be minding his own business," said the girl, coldly.
Farr heard her. There was a hint of contempt in her tones, and the young man humbly accepted the scorn as directed toward him. He lifted the ice into the box and received his coin from the languid woman, who seemed to pay as little heed to his presence as she did to Dodd's threats.
She seemed to be more especially interested in herself, and when Farr departed was fondling into place the masses of her hair before a mirror in the vestibule. Through the space formed by the portieres he saw Dodd reaching eager hands to the girl, her presence having apparently charmed away his thoughts of vengeance.
The iceman went humbly on his way.
He was meditating on the sacrifice of Captain Andrew Kilgour; he remembered that stalwart men are willing slaves of the weakest women. He wondered how much of the honesty of the father was in the daughter. He tried to console himself by insisting that it was not there. He had had only a limited opportunity to study Richard Dodd. However, he was convinced that his unflattering estimate of that young man was surely justified; and so certain was he that the character of Dodd must be patent to all he went back to his tasks with a lowered estimate of the girl who would select such a man as husband. And yet out of the dust of the highway the profile of her face had touched him as his heart never had been touched before; he had plucked the rose and had plodded on behind the little sister of the rose. He wondered what strange impulse had touched him. She must be merely like all the rest. Her graciousness in that first meeting had tempted him to believe that she was different. Now some consciousness, equally as intangible, suggested to him that she was selfishly selling herself for ease. His thoughts were pretty much mixed, he acknowledged. But as he went on, bearing his burdens, listening to the petty tyrants who may ruthlessly taunt the man who comes in by the back door, he was aware that he had full need of much ministration from his new friend, Humility.
In the sitting-room of the Kilgour flat Richard Dodd was telling the mother that he had made application for a marriage license.
"And I have waited long enough," he declared. "Mother Kilgour, you must convince Kate that we are to be married within a week."
And he gave the mother a look which made her turn pale and twist her ringed fingers nervously.
"Kate, what is the use?" she pleaded. "You are acting like a child. You love Richard. You know you love him. You tell me often that you love him! Richard is such a dear boy!" She said this fawningly, with evident intent to placate the sullen young man. Her tone, her air suggested the nervous embarrassment of a debtor who seeks to put off a creditor with flattery and fresh promises. "Now be a darling child and say that we'll have the wedding next week without any fuss or feathers."
"I am not ready to get married, and I simply will not be married just yet," declared the girl, her red lips compressed.
"You don't love me!" complained Dodd.
"I like you, Richard," admitted the girl, frankly, without any coquettishness. "I have never cared for anybody else. You have been good to me, except when you were foolish."
"Foolishness--that's what she calls being so much in love with her that I can't keep my hands off her," said Dodd to the mother. "Mother Kilgour, you haven't talked to Kate as you should. She doesn't know what love is."
"Oh, I'll find out all about it, and then we'll be married--when I'm ready to become a wife," said the girl, with an indulgent smile. "All at once I'll wake up, just as you have been begging me to do, and then we'll simply run away and be married and live happily for ever after."
"I don't like this stalling," growled Dodd, brutally.
"I'll leave you two children together," said the mother. "I'm sure you'll come to an understanding." She went away, showing relief.
"Sit down here on the divan with me, sweetheart," pleaded the young man.
But without removing her hat she went to the piano and began to play.
"Please come!" he entreated.
She smiled at him over her shoulder and made a pretty _moue_.
Muttering an oath of passion he leaped up, hurried across the room, and began to kiss her fiercely.
He crushed back with his lips all her protests; standing over her, he held her upon the piano-bench until by main strength and with all the force of her resentment she tore away from him.
"And now you are going to blame me because I can't help it," he gasped.
"I don't in the least understand why normal persons can find any pleasure in that kind of folly."
"Is your idea of loving anybody rubbing noses like Eskimos?"
"I'd endure that kind of loving in preference to that kind of kissing, Richard. That isn't love which you're offering--not the kind of love I want. I am going out for my walk--you filched it from me. No, I'm going alone. Go and talk with mamma, if you like."
She escaped the clutch he made and hurried out and to the elevator.
Flushed and angry, Dodd made his way to an inner room where Mrs. Kilgour was reading a novel, sunning herself with feline indolence. She put the book by with evident regret.
"Oh, Kate, has so much poise!" she lamented, breaking in on the young man's complaints. "She is so like her father. No one except myself could do anything with him at all. Sometime it was very hard for me! He would set his mind and his teeth! But I always won in the end."
"Well, go ahead and win now," commanded the surly lover. "You are simply letting this thing run along."
"I know Kate's nature, Richard. It's only a matter of the right time."
He sat down at her feet on the end of the couch.
"The time is here--now!" he told her. "I insist that you make Kate understand. I have been patient and reasonable for a year. You have promised me that you will bring everything around all right. Why don't you do it?"
"But delivering a daughter into marriage isn't like delivering groceries on order!" Her tone showed a bit of impatience. "Be reasonable!"
"I don't want to say anything to hurt your feelings, but we must get down to cases. I'm not asking you to deliver anything to me except what was promised long ago--promised by Kate herself. And you know what you said when I loaned you five thousand dollars to help you save those stocks. Excuse me, Mother Kilgour, but I can't always control my nature; I've been in the game with the bunch for a long time and I'm naturally suspicious--I have seen a good many chaps trimmed, and I don't propose to have anything put over on me."
"You are insolent and cruel," she cried, her cheeks pale.
"I don't mean you--I believe you want to help me. But it's time to be up and doing. She doesn't give me one good reason why she will not be married right away. It's only jolly and putting it off."
"But you are twitting me about the service you have done me! I am not selling my daughter!"
"That isn't it at all! But you must agree that I have been good to you. I want you to be a friend to me. But I don't get anything that's definite. If this thing drags on and on the first thing I know some fellow will come along and she'll fall for him. That's the girl nature!"
"You are talking about my daughter, Richard! She has her father's disposition and she is true blue. She has given her promise and she will keep it."
"When?" he demanded, curtly.
"I can't drive her."
"You said you could," he insisted. "You said a year ago when I advanced that money that you knew just how to handle her."
"Are you going to keep twitting me about that money?"
"No; only I'm going to say that you haven't even told me about what stocks you were protecting. You haven't said anything about repaying the loan, Mother Kilgour. It has been a sort of general stand-off all around for me. Hold on! I'm not making a holler! But I like to be taken in right. I'm a Dodd, and I can't help playing to protect myself."
"It will come around all right, Richard. You don't know Kate as I do. I understand her because I understood her father. She is rather self-centered. But she is romantic underneath! But you know you're so sort--sort of--well, just a business man--so matter-of-fact. A girl like Kate needs to be stirred--her poise shaken--something like that!"
"Lochinvar business, eh?" he sneered.
"It must be something a little bit out of the ordinary to hurry her, Richard. Go away, please. Let me think. I have an idea. I must spend a little time on it."
"How much time?"
"Oh, I don't know just how much. Be patient."
"Mrs. Kilgour, if this thing cannot be put through by you I want you to say so. I'm at the end of that patience you're appealing to. I won't be fooled."
"You don't need to say that you're Colonel Dodd's nephew," she retorted. "You have all the family traits."
"Well, there's one I haven't got: I loaned you five thousand dollars without taking security--and that's the act of a good friend. Excuse me, but I've got to speak of it--you need a little reminder. Four days from now I'll have my marriage license from the city clerk. And when I have it in my hands I shall come to you and shall expect that you'll do your part."
"I will," she said.
"How? I want plain statements from now on."
"I will write you a letter to-morrow," she faltered. "I will give you directions what to do. You'd better not come here till--till I have it all arranged. You know what they say about absence!"
"I know what they say about a good many things. But I want something besides say-so."
"I will tell you in my letter what to do. Then you follow instructions."
"I don't like to go into a thing blind. What is the plan?"
"Oh, if I tell you all about it you'll go and do something to spoil it,"