Norman gave a shrug that said "Why do you persist in those frauds--and with ME?" But he did not speak.
"I know," pursued Lockyer, "that you would not have taken this step without conclusive reasons. And I shall not venture the impertinence of prying or of urging."
"Thanks," said Norman drily. "Now, as to the terms of settlement."
Lockyer, from observation and from gossip, had a pretty shrewd notion of the state of his young partner's mind, and drew the not unwarranted conclusion that he would be indifferent about terms--would be "easy."
With the suavity of Mr. Great-and-Good-Heart he said:
"My dear boy, there can't be any question of money with us. We'll do the generously fair thing--for, we're not hucksterers but gentlemen."
"That sounds terrifying," observed the young man, with a faint ironic smile. "I feel my shirt going and the cold winds whistling about my bare body. To save time, let ME state the terms. You want to be rid of me.
I want to go. It's a whim with me. It's a necessity for you."
Lockyer shifted uneasily at these evidences of unimpaired mentality and undaunted spirit.
"Here are my terms," proceeded Norman. "You are to pay me forty thousand a year for five years--unless I open an office or join another firm. In that case, payments are to cease from the date of my re-entering practice."
Lockyer leaned back and laughed benignantly. "My dear Norman," he said with a gently remonstrant shake of the head, "those terms are impossible. Forty thousand a year! Why that is within ten thousand of the present share of any of us but you. It is the income of nearly three quarters of a million at six per cent--of a million at four per cent!"
"Very well," said Norman, settling back in his chair. "Then I stand pat."
"Now, my dear Norman, permit me to propose terms that are fair to all----"
"When I said I stood pat I meant that I would stay on." His eyes laughed at Lockyer. "I guess we can live without Burroughs and his dependents. Maybe they will find they can't live without us." He slowly leaned forward until, with his forearms against the edge of his desk, he was concentrating a memorable gaze upon Lockyer. "Mr. Lockyer," said he, "I have been exercising my privilege as a free man to make a damn fool of myself. I shall continue to exercise it so long as I feel disposed that way. But let me tell you something.
I can afford to do it. If a man's asset is money, or character or position or relatives and friends or popular favor or any other perishable article, he must take care how he trifles with it. He may find himself irretrievably ruined. But my asset happens to be none of those things. It is one that can be lost or damaged only by insanity or death. Do you follow me?"
The old man looked at him with the sincere and most flattering tribute of compelled admiration. "What a mind you've got, Frederick--and what courage!"
"You accept my terms?"
"If the others agree--and I think they will."
"They will," said Norman.
The old man was regarding him with eyes that had genuine anxiety in them. "Why DO you do it, Fred?" he said.
"Because I wish to be free," replied Norman. He would never have told the full truth to that incredulous old cynic of a time-server--the truth that he was resigning at the dictation of a pride which forbade him to involve others in the ruin he, in his madness, was bent upon.
"I don't mean, why do you resign," said Lockyer.
"I mean the other--the--woman."
Norman laughed harshly.
"I've seen too much of the world not to understand," continued Lockyer. "The measureless power of woman over man--especially--pardon me, my dear Norman--especially a bad woman!"
"The measureless power of a man's imagination over himself," rejoined Norman. "Did you ever see or hear of a man without imagination being upset by a woman? It's in here, Mr. Lockyer"--he rapped his forehead--"altogether in here."
"You realize that. Yet you go on--and for such a --pardon me, my boy, for saying it--for such a trifling object."
"What does `trifling' mean, sir?" replied the young man. "What is trifling and what is important?
It depends upon the point of view. What I want--that is vital. What I do not want--that is paltry.
It's my nature to go for what I happen to want--to go for it with all there is in me. I will take nothing else--nothing else."
There was in his eyes the glitter called insanity--the glitter that reflects the state of mind of any strong man when possessed of one of those fixed ideas that are the idiosyncrasy of the strong. It would have been impossible for Lockyer to be possessed in that way; he had not the courage nor the concentration nor the inde-pendence of soul; like most men, even able men, he dealt only in the conventional. Not in his wildest youth could he have wrecked or injured himself for a woman; women, for him, occupied their conventional place in the scheme of things, and had no allure beyond the conventionally proper and the conventionally improper--for, be it remembered, vice has its beaten track no less than virtue and most of the vicious are as tame and unimaginative as the plodders in the high roads of propriety. Still, Lockyer had associated with strong men, men of boundless desires; thus, he could in a measure sympathize with his young associate. What a pity that these splendid powers should be perverted from the ordinary desires of strong men!
Norman rose, to end the interview. "My address is my house. They will forward--if I go away."
Lockyer gave him a hearty handclasp, made a few phrases about good wishes and the like, left him alone.
The general opinion was that Norman was done for.
But Lockyer could not see it. He had seen too many men fall only to rise out of lowest depths to greater heights than they had fallen from. And Norman was only thirty-seven. Perhaps this would prove to be merely a dip in a securely brilliant career and not a fall at all. In that case--with such a brain, such a genius for the lawlessness of the law, what a laughing on the other side of the mouth there might yet be among young Norman's enemies--and friends!
