第122章

"Mr.Colton," I answered, "you have a monopoly of some things, but of others you have not.I am just as determined to have my own way in this matter as you are.I shall NOT accept your offer of employment.That is final.""Final be damned! Young man--"

"Mr.Colton, if you persist I shall go away.""Go away! Before I tell you to? Why, you--"I rose."The doctor told me that you must not excite yourself," Isaid."I am going.Good-by."

He was excited, there was no doubt of that.He sat up in bed.

"You come back!" he ordered."Come back! If you don't-- Well, by the Lord, if you don't I'll get up and come after you!"I believe he would have tried to do it.I was frightened, on his account.I turned reluctantly.He sank back on the pillow, grinning triumphantly.

"Sit down there," he panted."Sit down.Now I want you to tell me the real reason why you won't work for me.By gad! you're the first one in many a day I have had to ask twice.Why? Tell me the truth! Why?"I hesitated."Well, for one reason," I said, "I don't care for your business.""Don't CARE for it! After what you just did!""I did that because I was driven to it.But I don't care for the stock game.Once I used to think I liked that sort of thing; now Iknow I don't.If I am anything I am a bank man, a poor sort of one, perhaps, but--""Bank man! Why, you idiot! I don't care what you are.I can use you in a dozen places.You don't have to buck the market.I'll do that myself.But there are plenty of places where your brains and that common-sense you talk about will be invaluable to me.I do a banking business, on the side, myself.I own a mining property, a good one, out West.It needs a financial manager, and needs one badly.You come with me, do you hear! I'll place you where you fit, before I get through with you, and I'll make you a rich man in ten years.There! now will you say yes?"I shook my head."No," I said.

"NO! You are enough to drive a well man crazy, to say nothing of a half-sick relic like me._I_ say yes--yes--YES! Sooner or later I'll MAKE you.You've lost your place here.You told me yourself that that old crank Dean is going to make this town too hot to hold you.You'll HAVE to go away.Now won't you?"I nodded."I shall go away," I answered."I have made up my mind to go, now that Mother seems well enough for me to leave her.""Where will you go?"

"I don't know."

He stared at me in silence for what seemed a long time.I thought he must be exhausted, and once more I rose to go.

"Stop! Stay where you are," he ordered."I haven't got the answer to you yet, and I know it.There's something back of all this, something I don't know about.I'm going to find out what it is, if it takes me a year.You can tell me now, if you want to.It will save time.What is the real reason why you won't take my offer?"I don't know why I did it.I had kept the secret all the years and certainly, when I entered that room, I had no intention of revealing it.Yet, now, when he asked this question I turned on him and blurted out what I had sworn no one--least of all he or his--should ever know.

"I'll tell you why," I cried, desperately."I can't take the place you offer because you know nothing about me.You don't know who Iam.If you did you....Mr.Colton, you don't even know my name."He looked at me and shook his head, impatiently."Either you AREcrazy, or I am," he muttered."Don't know your name!""No, you don't! You think I am Roscoe Paine.I am not.I am Roscoe Bennett, and my father was Carleton Bennett, the embezzler."I had said it.And the moment afterward I was sorry.I would have given anything to take back the words, but repentance came too late.I had said it.

I heard him draw a deep breath.I did not look at him.I did not care to see his face and read on it the disgust and contempt I was sure it expressed.

"Humph!" he exclaimed."Humph! Do you mean to tell me that your father was Carleton Bennett--Bennett of Bennett and Company?""Yes."

"Well! well! well! Carleton Bennett! No wonder there was something familiar about your mother, something that I seemed to remember.I met her years ago.Well! well! So you're Carleton Bennett's son?""Yes, I am his son."

"Well, what of it?"

I looked at him now.He was smiling, actually smiling.His illness had affected his mind.

"What OF it!" I gasped.

"Ye-es, what of it? What has that got to do with your working for me?"I could have struck him.If he had not been weak and ill and irresponsible for what he was saying I think I should.

"Mr.Colton," I said, striving to speak calmly, "you don't understand.My father was Carleton Bennett, the embezzler, the thief, the man whose name was and is a disgrace all over the country.Mother and I came here to hide from that disgrace, to begin a new, clean life under a clean name.Do you think--? Oh, you don't understand!""I understand all right.This is the first time I HAVE understood.

I see now why a clever man like you was willing to spend his days in a place like Denboro.Well, you aren't going to spend any more of them there.You're going to let me make something worth while out of you."This sounded, in one way, like sanity.But in another--"Mr.Colton," I cried, "even if you meant it, which you don't--do you suppose I would go back to New York, where so many know me, and enter your employ under an assumed name? Run the risk of--""Hush! Enter it under your own name.It's a good name.The Bennetts are one of our oldest families.Ask my wife; she'll tell you that.""A good name!"

"Yes.I declare, Paine--Bennett, I mean--I shall begin to believe you haven't got the sense I credited you with.I can see what has been the matter with you.You came here, you and your sick mother, with the scandal of your father's crookedness hanging over you and her sickness making her super-sensitive, and you two kept the secret and brooded over it so long that you have come to think you are criminals, too.You're not.You haven't done anything crooked.What's the matter with you, man? Be sensible!""Sensible!"