The Happiest Time of Their Lives Part 39

But Adelaide was now in good fighting trim. She laughed out loud.

"Really, Vincent," she said, "your language! You must make your complaint against me a little more definite."

"Not much; and give you a chance to get up a little rational explanation.

Besides, we neither of us need explanations. We know what has been happening."

"You mean you really doubt my feeling for you? No, Vincent, I still love you," and her voice had a flute-like quality which, though it was without a trace of conviction, very few people who had ever heard it had resisted.

"I am aware of that," said Vincent quietly.

She looked beautifully dazed.

"Yet this morning you spoke--as if--"

"But what is love such as yours worth? A man must be on the crest of the wave to keep it; otherwise it changes automatically into contempt. I don't care about it, Adelaide. I can't use it in a life like mine."

She looked at him, and a dreamlike state began to come over her. She simply couldn't believe in the state of mind of those sick-room days; she could never really, she thought, have been less pa.s.sionately admiring than she was at that minute, yet the half-recollection confused her and kept her silent.

"Perhaps it's vanity on my part," he said, "but contempt like yours is something I could never forgive."

"You would forgive me anything if you loved me." Her tone was n.o.ble and sincere.

"Perhaps."

"You mean you don't?"

"Adelaide, there are times when a person chooses between loving and being loved."

The sentence made her feel sick with fear, but she asked:

"Tell me just what you mean."

"Perhaps I could keep on loving you if I shut my eyes to the kind of person you are; but if I did that, I could not hold you an instant."

She stared at him as fascinated as a bird by a snake. This, it seemed to her, was the truth, the final summing up of their relation. She had lost him, and yet she was eternally his.

As she looked at him she became aware that he was growing slowly pale. He was standing, and he put his hand out to the mantelpiece to steady himself. She thought he was going to faint.

"Vincent," she said, "let me help you to the sofa."

She wanted now to see him falter, to feel his hand on her shoulder, anything for a closer touch with him. For half a minute, perhaps, they remained motionless, and then the color began to come back into his face.

He smiled bitterly.

"They tell me you are such a good sick nurse, Mrs. Farron," he said, "so considerate to the weak. But I don't need your help, thank you."

She covered her face with her hands. He seemed to her stronger and more cruel than anything she had imagined. In a minute he left her alone.

CHAPTER XVI

Farron cared, perhaps, no more for appearances than Adelaide did, but his habitual manner was much better adapted to concealment. In him the fluctuations between the deepest depression and the highest elation were accompanied by such slight variations of look and tone that they escaped almost every one but Adelaide herself. He came down to dinner that evening, and while Adelaide sat in silence, with her elbows on the table and her long fingers clasping and unclasping themselves in a sort of rhythmic desperation, conversation went on pleasantly enough between Mathilde and Vincent. This was facilitated by the fact that Mathilde had now transferred to Vincent the flattering affection which she used to give to her grandfather. She agreed with, wondered at, and drank in every word.

Naturally, Mathilde attributed her mother's distress to the crisis in her own love-affairs. She had had no word with her as to Wayne's new position, and it came to her in a flash that it would be daring, but wise, to take the matter up in the presence of her stepfather. So, as soon as they were in the drawing-room, and Farron had opened the evening paper, and his wife, with a wild decision, had opened a book, Mathilde ruthlessly interrupted them both, recalling them from what appeared to be the depths of absorptions in their respective pages by saying:

"Mr. Farron, did you tell Mama what you had done about Pete?"

Farron raised his eyes and said:

"Yes."

"And what did she say?"

"What is there for me to say?" answered Adelaide in the terrible, crisp voice that Mathilde hated.

There was a pause. To Mathilde it seemed extraordinary the way older people sometimes stalled and s.h.i.+fted about perfectly obvious issues; but, wis.h.i.+ng to be patient, she explained:

"Don't you see it makes some difference in our situation?"

"The greatest, I should think," said Adelaide, and just hinted that she might go back to her book at any instant.

"But don't you think--" Mathilde began again, when Farron interrupted her almost sharply.

"Mathilde," he said, "there's a well-known business axiom, not to try to get things on paper too early."

She bent her head a trifle on one side in the way a puppy will when an unusual strain is being put upon its faculties. It seemed to her curious, but she saw she was being advised to drop the subject. Suddenly Adelaide sprang to her feet and said she was going to bed.

"I hope your headache will be better, Mama," Mathilde hazarded; but Adelaide went without answering. Mathilde looked at Mr. Farron.

"You haven't learned to wait," he said.

"It's so hard to wait when you are on bad terms with people you love!"

She was surprised that he smiled--a smile that conveyed more pain than amus.e.m.e.nt.

"It is hard," he said.

This closed the evening. The next morning Vincent went down-town. He went about half-past ten. Adelaide, breakfasting in her room and dressing at her leisure, did not appear until after eleven, and then discovered for the first time that her husband had gone. She was angry at Mathilde, who had breakfasted with him, at Pringle, for not telling her what was happening.

"You shouldn't have let him go, Mathilde," she said. "You are old enough to have some judgment in such matters. He is not strong enough. He almost fainted yesterday."

"But, Mama," protested the girl, "I could not stop Mr. Farron. I don't think even you could have if he'd made up his mind."

"Tell Pringle to order the motor at once," was her mother's answer.

Her distraction at her husband's imprudence touched Mathilde so that she forgot everything else between them.