Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and others Part 24

There was a silence.

"George, DON'T you see how unreasonable you are?" Mary said, after a bitter struggle for calm.

"That's final," George said briefly.

"I don't know what you mean by final," his wife answered with warmth.

"If you really think--"

"I won't argue it, my dear. And I won't have my life ruined by your mother, as thousands of men's lives have been ruined, by just such unscrupulous irresponsible women!"

"George," said Mary, very white, "I won't turn against my mother!"

"Then you turn against me," George said in a deadly calm.

"Do you expect her to board, George, in the same city that I have my home?" Mary demanded, after a pause.

"Plenty of women do it," George said inflexibly.

"But, George, you know Mamma! She'd simply be here all the time; it would come to exactly the same thing. She'd come after breakfast, and you'd have to take her home after dinner. She'd have her clothes made here, and laundered here, and she'd do all her telephoning..."

"That is exactly what has got to stop," said George. "I will pay her board at some good place. But I'll pay it... she won't touch the money.

Besides that, she can have an allowance. But she must understand that she is NOT to come here except when she is especially invited, at certain intervals."

"George, DEAR, that is absolutely absurd!"

"Very well," George said, flushing, "but if she is here to-night, I will not come home. I'll dine at the club. When she has gone, I'll come home again."

Mary's head was awhirl. She scarcely knew where the conversation was leading then, or what the reckless things they said involved. She was merely feeling blindly now for the arguments that should give her the advantage.

"You needn't stay at the club, George," she said, "for Mamma and I will go down to Beach Meadow. When you have come to your senses, I'll come back. I'll let Miss Fox go, and Mamma and I will look out for the children--"

"I warn you," George interrupted her coldly, "that if you take any such step, you will have a long time to think it over before you hear from me! I warn you that it has taken much less than this to ruin the happiness of many a man and woman!"

Mary faced him, breathing hard. This was their first real quarrel.

Brief times of impatience, unsympathy, differences of opinion there had been, but this--this Mary felt even now--was gravely different. With a feeling curiously alien and cold, almost hostile, she eyed the face opposite her own; the strange face that had been so familiar and dear only at breakfast time.

"I WILL go," she said quietly. "I think it will do us both good."

"Nonsense!" George said. "I won't permit it."

"What will you do, make a public affair of it?"

"No, you know I won't do that. But don't talk like a child, Mary.

Remember, I mean what I say about your mother, and tell her so when she arrives."

After that, he went away. A long time pa.s.sed, while Mary sat very still in the big leather chair at the head of the table. The sunlight shifted, fell lower,--shone ruby red through a decanter of claret on the sideboard. The house was very still.

After a while she went slowly upstairs. She dragged a little trunk from a hall closet, and began quietly, methodically, to pack it with her own clothes. Now and then her breast rose with a great sob, but she controlled herself instantly.

"This can't go on," she said aloud to herself. "It's not today--it's not to-morrow--but it's for all time. I can't keep this up. I can't worry and apologize, and neglect George, and hurt Mamma's feelings for the rest of my life. Mamma has always done her best for me, and I never saw George until five years ago--

"It's not," she went on presently, "as if I were a woman who takes marriage lightly. I have tried. But I won't desert Mamma. And I won't--I will NOT!--endure having George talk to me as he did today!"

She would go down to the children, she would rest, she would read again during the quiet evenings. Days would go by, weeks. But finally George would write her--would come to her. He must. What else could he do?

Something like terror shook her. Was this the way serious, endless separations began between men and their wives? Her mind flitted sickly to other people's troubles: the Waynes, who had separated because Rose liked gayety and Fred liked domestic peace; the Gardiners, who--well, there never did seem to be any reason there. Frances and the baby just went to her mother's home, and stayed home, and after a while people said she and Sid had separated, though Frances said she would always like Sid as a friend--not very serious reasons, these! Yet they had proved enough.

Mary paused. Was she playing with fire? Ah, no, she told herself, it was very different in her case. This was no imaginary case of "neglect"

or "incompatibility." There was the living trouble,--Mamma. And even if tonight she conceded this point to George, and Mamma was banished, sooner or later resentment, bitter and uncontrollable, would rise again, she knew, in her heart. No. She would go. George might do the yielding.

Once or twice tears threatened her calm. But it was only necessary to remind herself of what George had said to dry her eyes into angry brilliance again. Too late now for tears.

At five o'clock the trunk was packed, but Mamma had not yet arrived.

There remained merely to wait for her, and to start with her for Beach Meadow. Mary's heart was beating fast now, but it was less with regret than with a nervous fear that something would delay her now. She turned the key in the trunk lock and straightened up with the sudden realization that her back was aching.

For a moment she stood, undecided, in the centre of her room. Should she leave a little note for George, "on his pincushion," or simply ask Lizzie to say that she had gone to Beach Meadow? He would not follow her there, she knew; George understood her. He knew of how little use bullying or coaxing would be. There would be no scenes. She would be allowed to settle down to an existence that would be happy for Mamma, good for the children, restful--free from distressing strain--for Mary herself.

With a curious freedom from emotion of any sort, she selected a hat, and laid her gloves beside it on the bed. Just then the front door, below her, opened to admit the noise of hurried feet and of joyous laughter. Several voices were talking at once. Mary, to whom the group was still invisible, recognized one of these as belonging to Mamma. As she went downstairs, she had only time for one apprehensive thrill, before Mamma herself ran about the curve of the stairway, and flung herself into Mary's arms.

Mamma was dressed in corn-colored silk, over which an exquisite wrap of the same shade fell in rich folds. Her hat was a creation of pale yellow plumes and hydrangeas, her silk stockings and little boots corn-colored. She dragged the bewildered Mary down the stairway, and Mary, pausing at the landing, looked dazedly at her husband, who stood in the hall below with a dark, middle-aged man whom she had never seen before.

"Here she is!" Mamma cried joyously. "Richie, come kiss her right this minute! Ma'y, darling, this is your new papa!"

"WHAT!" said Mary, faintly. But before she knew it the strange man did indeed kiss her, and then George kissed her, and Mamma kissed her again, and all three shouted with laughter as they went over and over the story. Mary, in all the surprise and confusion, still found time to marvel at the sight of George's radiant face.

"Carter--of all people!" said George, with a slap on the groom's shoulder. "I loved his dea' wife like a sister!" Mamma threw in parenthetically, displaying to Mary's eyes her little curled-up fist with a diamond on it quite the width of the finger it adorned.

"Strangely enough," said Mr. Carter, in a deep, dignified boom, "your husband and I had never met until to-day, Mrs.--ah, Mary--when-" his proud eye travelled to the corn-colored figure, "when this young lady of mine introduced us!"

"Though we've exchanged letters, eh?" George grinned, cutting the wires of a champagne bottle. For they were about the dining-room table now, and the bride's health was to be drunk.

Mary, managing with some effort to appear calm, outwardly congratulatory, interested, and sympathetic; and already feeling somewhere far down in her consciousness an exhilarated sense of amus.e.m.e.nt and relief at this latest performance of Mamma's,--was nevertheless chiefly conscious of a deep and swelling indignation against George.

George! Oh, he could laugh now; he could kiss, compliment, rejoice with Mamma now, he could welcome and flatter Richard Carter now, although he had repudiated and insulted the one but a few hours ago, and had for years found nothing good to say of the other! He could delightedly involve Mary in his congratulations and happy prophecies now, when but today he had half broken her heart!

"Lovely!" she said, smiling automatically and rising with the others when the bridegroom laughingly proposed a toast to the firm that might some day be "Venable and Carter," and George insisted upon drinking it standing, and, "Oh, of course, I understand how sudden it all was, darling!" "Oh, Mamma, won't that be heavenly!" she responded with apparent rapture to the excited outpourings of the bride. But at her heart was a cold, dull weight, and her sober eyes went again and again to her husband's face.

"Oh, no!" she would say to herself, watching him, "you can't do that, George! You can't change about like a weatherc.o.c.k, and expect me to change, too, and forget everything that went before! You've chosen to dig the gulf between us--I'm not like Mamma, I'm not a child--my dignity and my rights can't be ignored in this fashion!"

No, the matter involved more than Mamma now. George should be punished; he should have his scare. Things must be all cleared up, explained, made right between them. A few weeks of absence, a little realization of what he had done would start their marriage off again on a new footing.

She kissed her mother affectionately at the door, gave the new relative a cordial clasp with both hands.

"We'll let you know in a week or two where we are," said Mamma, all girlish confusion and happiness. "You have my suit-case, Rich'? That's right, dea'. Good-by, you nice things!"

"Good-by, darling!" Mary said. She walked back into the empty library, seated herself in a great chair, and waited for George.

The front door slammed. George reappeared, chuckling, and rubbing his hands together. He walked over to a window, held back the heavy curtain, and watched the departing carriage out of sight.

"There they go!" he said. "Carter and your mother--married, by Jove!