The Happiest Time of Their Lives Part 9

It was characteristic of Mrs. Wayne that, still absorbed by her own convictions, she did not notice the insult of hearing ladies and gentlemen described to her as if they were beings wholly alien to her experience; but the tone of his speech startled her, and she woke, like a person coming out of a trance, to all the harm she had done.

"I may be old-fas.h.i.+oned--" he began and then threw the phrase from him; it was thus that Alberta, his sister, began her most offensive p.r.o.nouncements. "It has always appeared to me that we shelter our more favored women as we shelter our planted trees, so that they may attain a stronger maturity."

"But do they, are they--are sheltered women the strongest in a crisis?"

Fiend in human shape, he thought, she was making him question his bringing up of Adelaide. He would not bear that. His foot stole out to the self-starter.

For the few minutes that remained of the interview she tried to undo her work, but the injury was too deep. His life was too near its end for criticism to be anything but destructive; having no time to collect new treasure, he simply could not listen to her suggestion that those he most valued were imitation. He hated her for holding such opinion. Her soft tones, her eager concessions, her flattering sentences, could now make no impression upon a man whom half an hour before they would have completely won.

He bade her a cold good night, hardly more than bent his head, the chauffeur took the heavy coat from her, and the car had wheeled away before she was well inside her own doorway.

Pete's brown head was visible over the banisters.

"h.e.l.lo, Mother!" he said. "Did the old boy kidnap you?"

Mrs. Wayne came up slowly, stumbling over her long, blue draperies in her weariness and depression.

"Oh, Pete, my darling," she said, "I think I've spoiled everything."

His heart stood still. He knew better than most people that his mother could either make or mar.

"They won't hear of it?"

She nodded distractedly.

"I do make such a mess of things sometimes!"

He put his arm about her.

"So you do, Mother," he said; "but then think how magnificently you sometimes pull them out again."

CHAPTER V

Mr. Lanley had not reported the result of his interview immediately. He told himself that it was too late; but it was only a quarter before eleven when he was back safe in his own library, feeling somehow not so safe as usual. He felt attacked, insulted; and yet he also felt vivified and encouraged. He felt as he might have felt if some one, unbidden, had cut a vista on the Lanley estates, first outraged in his sense of property, but afterward delighted with the widened view and the fresher breeze. It was awkward, though, that he didn't want Adelaide to go into details as to his visit; he did not think that the expedition to the pier could be given the judicial, grandfatherly tone that he wanted to give.

So he did not communicate at all with his daughter that night.

The next morning about nine, however, when she was sitting up in bed, with her tray on her knees, and on her feet a white satin coverlet sown as thickly with bright little flowers as the Milky Way with stars, her last words to Vincent, who was standing by the fire, with his newspaper folded in his hands, ready to go down-town, were interrupted, as they nearly always were, by the burr of the telephone.

She took it up from the table by her bed, and as she did so she fixed her eyes on her husband and looked steadily at him all the time that central was making the connection; she was trying to answer that unsolved problem as to whether or not a mist hung between them. Then she got her connection.

"Yes, Papa; it is Adelaide." "Yes?" "Did she appear like a lady?" "A lady?" "You don't know what I mean by that? Why, Papa!" "Well, did she appear respectable?" "How cross you are to me!" "I'm glad to hear it. You did not sound cheerful."

She hung up the receiver and turned to Vincent, making eyes of surprise.

"Really, papa is too strange. Why should he be cross to me because he has had an unsatisfactory interview with the Wayne boy's mother? I never wanted him to go, anyhow, Vin. I wanted to send _you_."

"It would probably be better for you to go yourself."

He left the room as if he had said nothing remarkable. But it was remarkable, in Adelaide's experience, that he should avoid any responsibility, and even more so that he should s.h.i.+ft it to her shoulders. For an instant she faced the possibility, the most terrible of any that had occurred to her, that the balance was changing between them; that she, so willing to be led, was to be forced to guide. She had seen it happen so often between married couples--the weight of character begin on one side of the scale, and then slowly the beam would s.h.i.+ft. Once it had happened to her. Was it to happen again? No, she told herself; never with Farron. He would command or die, lead her or leave her.

Mathilde knocked at her door, as she did every morning as soon as her stepfather had gone down town. She had had an earlier account of Mr.

Lanley's interview. It had read:

"DEAREST GIRL:

"The great discussion did not go very well, apparently. The opinion prevails at the moment that no engagement can be allowed to exist between us. I feel as if they were all meeting to discuss whether or not the sun is to rise to-morrow morning. You and I, my love, have special information that it will."

After this it needed no courage to go down and hear her mother's account of the interview. Adelaide was still in bed, but one long, pointed fingertip, pressed continuously upon the dangling bell, a summons that had long since lost its poignancy for the temperamental Lucie, indicated that she was about to get up.

"My dear," she said in answer to Mathilde's question, "your grandfather's princ.i.p.al interest seems to be to tell me nothing at all, and he has been wonderfully successful. I can get nothing from him, so I'm going myself."

The girl's heart sank at hearing this. Her mother saw things clearly and definitely, and had a talent for expressing her impressions in unforgetable words. Mathilde could still remember with a pang certain books, poems, pictures, and even people whose charms her mother had destroyed in one poisonous phrase. Adelaide was too careful of her personal dignity to indulge in mimicry, but she had a way of catching and repeating the exact phrasing of some foolish sentence that was almost better--or worse--than mimicry. Mathilde remembered a governess, a kind and patient person of whom Adelaide had greatly wearied, who had a habit of beginning many observations, "It may strike you as strange, but I am the sort of person who--" Mathilde was present at luncheon one day when Adelaide was repeating one of these sentences. "It may strike you as strange, but I like to feel myself in good health." Mathilde resented the laughter that followed, and sprang to her governess's defense, yet sickeningly soon she came to see the innocent egotism that directed the choice of the phrase.

She felt as if she could not bear this process to be turned against Pete's mother, not because it would alter the respectful love she was prepared to offer this unknown figure, but because it might very slightly alter her att.i.tude toward her own mother. That was one of the characteristics of this great emotion: all her old beliefs had to be revised to accord with new discoveries.

This was what lay behind the shrinking of her soul as she watched her mother dress for the visit to Mrs. Wayne. For the first time in her life Mathilde wished that her mother was not so elaborate. Hitherto she had always gloried in Adelaide's elegance as a part of her beauty; but now, as she watched the ritual of ribbons and laces and perfumes and jewels, she felt vaguely that there was in it all a covert insult to Pete's mother, who, she knew, would not be a bit like that.

"How young you are, Mama!" she exclaimed as, the whole long process complete, Adelaide stood holding out her hand for her gloves, like a little girl ready for a party.

Her mother smiled.

"It's well I am," she said, "if you go on trying to get yourself involved with young men who live up four flights of stairs. I have always avoided even dressmakers who lived above the second story," she added wistfully.

The wistful tone was repeated when her car stopped at the Wayne door and she stepped out.

"Are you sure this is the number, Andrews?" she asked. She and the chauffeur looked slowly up at the house and up and down the street. They were at one in their feeling about it. Then Adelaide gave a very gentle little sigh and started the ascent.

The flat did not look as well by day. Though the eastern sun poured in cheerfully, it revealed worn places on the backs of the arm-chairs and one fearful calamity with an ink-bottle that Pete had once had on the rug. Even Mrs. Wayne, who sprang up from behind her writing-table, had not the saint-like mystery that her blue draperies had given her the evening before.

Though slim, and in excellent condition for thirty-nine, Adelaide could not conceal that four flights were an exertion. Her fine nostrils were dilated and her breath not perfectly under control as she said:

"How delightful this is!" a statement that was no more untrue than to say good-morning on a rainy day.

Most women in Mrs. Wayne's situation would at the moment have been acutely aware of the ink-spot. That was one of Adelaide's a.s.sets, on which she perhaps unconsciously counted, that her mere appearance made nine people out of ten aware of their own physical imperfections. But Mrs. Wayne was aware of nothing but Adelaide's great beauty as she sank into one of the armchairs with hardly a hint of exhaustion.

"Your son is a very charming person, Mrs. Wayne," she said.

Mrs. Wayne was standing by the mantelpiece, looking boyish and friendly; but now she suddenly grew grave, as if something serious had been said.

"Pete has something more unusual than charm," she said.

"But what could be more unusual?" cried Adelaide, who wanted to add, "The only question is, does your wretched son possess it?" But she didn't; she asked instead, with a tone of disarming sweetness, "Shall we be perfectly candid with each other?"

A quick gleam came into Mrs. Wayne's eyes. "Not much," she seemed to say.