"I suppose so." What was the chap driving at?
"Then marry her," suggested Hawksley with a cynical smile; "make a
settlement and give her her freedom. Simple enough. What?"
Cutty stepped back, stunned and terrified. "She would laugh at me!"
"You never can tell," replied Hawksley, maintaining the crooked smile.
The devil was blazing in his eyes now. "Try it. It's being done every
day; even here in this big America of yours. From the European point
of view you have compromised her--or she has compromised herself, by
spending the night here. Convention has been disregarded. A ripping good
chance, I call it. You tell me she wouldn't accept benefits, and you
want to help her. If she's the kind I believe her to be, even if she
refuses you she will not be angry. You never can tell what woman will or
won't do."
An old and forgotten bit of mental machinery began to set up a
ditter-datter in Cutty's brain. Marry Kitty? Make a settlement, and
then give her her freedom? Rot! Girls of Kitty's calibre were above
such expediencies. He tried to resurrect his interest in the drums of
jeopardy, which he might now appropriate without having to shanghai his
conscience. The clitter-clatter smothered it; indeed, this new racket
upset and demoralized the well-ordered machinery of his thinking
apparatus as applied daily. Marry Kitty!
"I'm old enough to be her father."
"What's that to do with it so long as convention is satisfied?"
Cutty was so shaken and confused that he missed the tragic irony of the
voice. All the receptive avenues to his brain seemed to have shut down
suddenly. He was conscious only of the clitter-clatter. Marry Kitty!
"You can't settle money on her," went on Hawksley, "without scandal. You
can't offer her anything without offending her. And you can't let her go
to rust without having her bit of good times."
"Utterly impossible," said Cutty, to the idea rather than to his
tormentor.
"Oh, of course, if you have an affair--No, God forgive me, I don't
mean that! I'm a damned ingrate! But your bringing up those stones and
knocking off the top of all the misery piling up in my heart! I was
only trying to hurt you, hurt myself, everybody. Please have a little
patience with me, for I've come out of hell!" Hawksley turned aside his
head.
"Buck up," said Cutty, his blazing wrath dropping to a smoulder. "I'll
fetch those togs."