And even while the three Thropps were wondering how they could summon this vanquished monster out of the vasty deep of Chicago they could have found him by putting their heads out of the window and shouting his name. He was loitering opposite in the areaway of an empty residence.

He did not know that Kedzie's father and mother were with her, any more than they knew that he was with them.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

After a deal of vain abuse of Gilfoyle for abducting their child and thwarting her golden opportunity, Adna asked at last, "What does Mr.

Dyckman think of all this?"

"You don't suppose I've told him I was married, do you?" Kedzie stormed.

"Do I look as loony as all that?"

"Oh!" said Adna.

"Why, he doesn't even know my name is Thropp, to say nothing of Thropp-hyphen-Gilfoyle."

"Oh!" said Adna.

"Who does he think you are?" asked Mrs. Thropp.

"Anita Adair, the famous favorite of the screen," said Kedzie, rather advertisingly.

"Hadn't you better tell him?" Adna ventured.

"I don't dast. He'd never speak to me again. He'd run like a rabbit if he thought I was a gra.s.s widow."

Mrs. Thropp remonstrated: "I don't believe he'd ever give you up. He must love you a heap if he wants to marry you."

"That's so," said Kedzie. "He's always begging me to name the day. But I don't know what he'd think if I was to tell him I'd been lying to him all this time. He thinks I'm an innocent little girl. I just haven't got the face to tell him I'm an old married woman with a mislaid husband."

"You mean to give him up, then?" Mrs. Thropp sighed.

Adna raged back: "Give up a billion-dollar man for a fool poet? Not on your tintype!"

Kedzie gave her father an admiring look. They were getting on sympathetic ground. They understood each other.

Adna was encouraged to say: "If I was you, Kedzie, I'd just lay the facts before him. Maybe he could buy the feller off. You could probably get him mighty cheap."

Mrs. Thropp habitually resented all her husband's arguments. She scorned this proposal.

"Don't you do it, Kedzie. Just as you said, he'd most likely run like a rabbit."

"Then what am I going to do?" Kedzie whimpered.

There was a long silence. Mrs. Thropp pondered bitterly. She was the most moral of women. She had brought up her children with all rigidity.

She had abused them for the least dereliction. She had upheld the grimmest standard of virtue, with "Don't!" for its watchword. Of virtue as a warm-hearted, alert, eager, glowing spirit, cultivating the best and most beautiful things in life, she had no idea. Virtue was to her a critic, a satirist, a neighborhood gossip, something scathing and ascetic. That delicate balance between failing to mind one's own business and failing to respond to another's need did not bother her--nor did that theory of motherhood which instils courage, independence, originality, and enthusiasm for life, and starts children precociously toward beauty, love, grace, philanthropy, invention, art, glory.

She had the utmost contempt for girls who went right according to their individualities, or went wrong for any reason soever. The least indiscretions of her own daughters she visited with endless tirades.

Kedzie had escaped them for a long while. She had succeeded as far as she had because she had escaped from the most dangerous of all influences--a perniciously repressive mother. She would have been scolded viciously now if it had not been for Dyckman's mighty prestige.

The Dyckman millions in person were about to enter this room. The Dyckman millions wanted Kedzie. If they got her it would be a wonderful thing for a poor, hard-working girl who had had the s.p.u.n.k to strike out for herself and make her own way without expense to her father and mother. The Dyckman millions, furthermore, would bring the millennium at once to the father and mother.

Mrs. Thropp, fresh from her village (yet not so very fresh--say, rather, recent from sordid humility), sat dreaming of herself as a Dyckman by marriage. She imagined herself and the great Mrs. Dyckman in adjoining rocking-chairs, exchanging gossip and recipes and anecdotes of their joint grandchildren-to-be. Just to inhale the aroma of that future, that vision of herself as Mr. Dyckman's mother-in-law, was like breathing in deeply of laughing-gas; a skilful dentist could have extracted a molar from her without attracting her attention. And in the vapor of that stupendous temptation the devil actually did extract from her her entire moral code without her noticing the difference.

If Kedzie had been married to Gilfoyle and besought in marriage by another fellow of the same relative standard of income Mrs. Thropp could have waxed as indignant as anybody. If Kedzie's new suitor had earned as high as four thousand a year, which was a pile of money in Nimrim, she would still have raged against the immorality of tampering with the sacrament of marriage. She might have withstood as much as twenty thousand a year for the sake of home and religion. She abhorred divorce, as well as other people do (especially divorcees).

But to resist a million dollars and all that went with it was impossible. To resist a score of millions was twenty times impossibler.

She made up her mind that Dyckman should not escape from this temporary alliance with the Thropps without paying at least a handsome initiation-fee. Suddenly she set her jaw and broke into the parley of her husband and their daughter:

"Well, I've made up my mind. Adna, you shut up awhile and get on out this room. I'm going to have a few words with my girl."

Adna looked into the face of his wife and saw there that red-and-white-striped expression which always puts a wise man to flight.

He was glad to be permitted to retreat. When he was gone Mrs. Thropp beckoned Kedzie to sit by her on the _chaise longue_. She gathered her child up as some adoring old buzzard might cuddle her nestling and impart choice ideals of scavengery.

"Look here, honey: you listen to your mother what loves you and knows what's best for you. You've struck out for yourself and you've won the grandest chance any girl ever had. If you throw it away you'll be slappin' Providence right in the face. The Lord would never have put this op'tunity in your reach if He hadn't meant you to have it."

"What you talking about, momma?" said Kedzie.

"My father always used to say: 'Old Man Op'tunity is bald-headed except for one long scalplock in the middle his forehead. Grab him as he comes toward you, for there's nothing to lay holt on as he goes by.'"

"What's all this talk about bald-heads?" Kedzie protested.

"Hush your mouth and listen to a woman that's older'n what you are and knows more. Look at me! I've slaved all my life. I've been a hard-workin', church-goin' woman, a good mother to a lot of ungrateful children, a faithful, lovin' wife--and what have I got for it? Look at me. Do you want to be like me when you get my age? Do you?"

It was a hard question to answer politely, so Kedzie said nothing. Mrs.

Thropp went on:

"You got a chance to look like me and live hard and die poor, and that's what'll happen if you stick by this low-life, good-for-nothing dawg you married. Don't do it. Money's come your way. Grab it quick. Hold on to it tight. Money's the one thing that counts. You take my word for it. It don't matter much how you get it; the main thing is Get it! People don't ask you How? but How Much? If you got enough they don't care How."

"That's all right enough," said Kedzie, "but the main question with me is How?"

"How is easy," said Mrs. Thropp, and her face seemed to turn yellow as she lowered her voice. "This Mr. Dyckman is crazy about you. He wants you. If he's willin' to marry you to get you, I guess he'll be still more willin' to get you without marryin' you."

"Why, momma!"

It was just a whisper. Kedzie had lived through village perils and city perils; she had been one of a band of dancers as scant of morals as of clothes; she had drifted through all sorts of encounters with all sorts of people; but she had never heard so terrible a thought so terribly expressed. She flinched from her mother. Her mother saw that shudder of retreat and grew harsher:

"You tell Mr. Dyckman about your husband, and you'll lose him. You will--for sure! If you lose him, you lose the greatest chance a girl ever had. Take him--and make him pay for you!--in advance. Do you understand? You can't get much afterward. You can get a fortune if you get your money first. Look at you, how pretty you are! He'd give you a million if you asked him. Get your money; then tell him if you want to; but don't lose this chance. Do you hear me?"

"Yes," Kedzie sighed. "Yes, momma."

"Promise me on your solemn honor!"

Kedzie giggled with sheer nervousness at the phrase. But she would not promise.

The door-bell rang, and the maid admitted Jim Dyckman, who had not paused to send his name up by the telephone. While he gave his hat and stick to the maid and peeled off his gloves Kedzie was whispering: