The Happiest Time of Their Lives Part 20

"Do you call that a kiss?"

"O Mathilde, do you think any kiss will change the facts?" he answered, and was gone.

As soon as he had left her the desire for tears left her, too. She felt calm and more herself, more an isolated, independent human being than ever before in her life. She thought of all the things she ought to have said to Pete. The reason why she felt no obligation to him was that she was one with him. She was prepared to sacrifice him exactly as she was, or ought to be, willing to sacrifice herself; whereas her mother--it seemed as if her mother's power surrounded her in every direction, as solid as the ancients believed the dome of heaven.

Pringle appeared in the doorway in his eternal hunt for the tea-things.

"May I take the tray, miss?" he said.

She nodded, hardly glancing at the untouched tea-table. Pringle, as he bent over it, observed that it was nice to have Mr. Farron back.

Mathilde remembered that she, too, had once been interested in her stepfather's return.

"Where's my mother, Pringle?"

"Mrs. Farron's in her room, I think, miss, and Mr. Lanley's with her."

Lanley had stopped as usual to ask after his son-in-law. He found his daughter writing letters in her room. He thought her looking cross, but in deference to her recent anxieties he called it, even in his own mind, overstrained.

"Vincent is doing very well, I believe," she answered in response to his question. "He ought to be. He is in charge of two lovely young creatures hardly Mathilde's age who have already taken complete control of the household."

"You've seen him, of course."

"For a few minutes; they allow me a few minutes. They communicate by secret signals when they think I have stayed long enough."

Mr. Lanley never knew how to treat this mood of his daughter's, which seemed to him as unreasonable as if it were emotional, and yet as cold as if it were logic itself. He changed the subject and said boldly:

"Mrs. Baxter is coming to-morrow."

Adelaide's eyes faintly flashed.

"Oh, wouldn't you know it!" she murmured. "Just at the most inconvenient time--inconvenient for me, I mean. Really, lovers are the only people you can depend on. I wish I had a lover."

"Adelaide," said her father with some sternness, "even in fun you should not say such a thing. If Mathilde heard you--"

"Mathilde is the person who made me see it. Her boy is here all the time, trying to think of something to please her. And who have I?

Vincent has his nurses; and you have your old upholstered lady. I can't help wis.h.i.+ng I had a lover. They are the only people who, as the Wayne boy would say, 'stick around.' But don't worry, Papa, I have a loyal nature." She was interrupted by a knock at the door, and a nurse--the same who had been too encouraging to please her at the hospital--put in her head and said brightly:

"You may see Mr. Farron now, Mrs. Farron."

Adelaide turned to her father and made a little bow.

"See how I am favored," she said, and left him.

Nothing of this mood was apparent when she entered her husband's room, though she noticed that the arrangement of the furniture had been changed, and, what she disliked even more, that they had brushed his hair in a new way. This, with his pallor and thinness, made him look strange to her. She bent over, and laid her cheek to his almost motionless lips.

"Well, dear," she said, "have you seen the church-warden part they have given your hair?"

He shook his head impatiently, and she saw, she had made the mistake of trying to give the tone to an interview in which she was not the leading character.

"Who has the room above mine, Adelaide?" he asked.

"My maid."

"Ask her not to practice the fox-trot, will you?"

"O Vincent, she is never there."

"My mistake," he answered, and shut his eyes.

She repented at once.

"Of course I'll tell her. I'm sorry that you were disturbed." But she was thinking only of his tone. He was not an irritable man, and he had never used such a tone to her before. All pleasure in the interview was over. She was actually glad when one of the nurses came in and began to move about the room in a manner that suggested dismissal.

"Of course I'm not angry," she said to herself. "He's so weak one must humor him like a child."

She derived some satisfaction, however, from the idea of sending for her maid Lucie and making her uncomfortable; but on her way she met Mathilde in the hall.

"May I speak to you, Mama?" she said.

Mrs. Farron laughed.

"May you speak to me?" she said. "Why, yes; you may have the unusual privilege. What is it?"

Mathilde followed her mother into the bedroom and shut the door.

"Pete has just been here. He has been offered a position in China."

"In China?" said Mrs. Farron. This was the first piece of luck that had come to her in a long time, but she did not betray the least pleasure. "I hope it is a good one."

"Yes, he thinks it good. He sails in two weeks."

"In two weeks?" And this time she could not prevent her eye lighting a little. She thought how nicely that small complication had settled itself, and how clever she had been to have the mother to dinner and behave as if she were friendly. She did not notice that her daughter was trembling; she couldn't, of course, be expected to know that the girl's hands were like ice, and that she had waited several seconds to steady her voice sufficiently to p.r.o.nounce the fatal sentence:

"He wants me to go with him, Mama."

She watched her mother in an agony for the effect of these words.

Mrs. Farron had suddenly detected a new burn in the hearth-rug. She bent over it.

"This wood does snap so!" she murmured.

The rug was a beautiful old Persian carpet of roses and urns.

"Did you understand what I said, Mama?"

"Yes, dear; that Mr. Wayne was going to China in two weeks and wanted you to go, too. Was it just a _politesse_, or does he actually imagine that you could?"

"He thinks I can."