Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and others Part 25

Well, Mary, this is about the best day's work for me that's come along for some time. Carter was speaking in the carriage only an hour ago about the possibility of our handling the New Na.s.sau Bridge contract together. I don't know why not." George mused a moment, smilingly.

"I thought you had an utter contempt for him as a business man," Mary said stingingly--involuntarily, too, for she had not meant to be diverted from her original plan of a mere dignified farewell.

"Never for him," George said promptly. "I don't like some of his people. Burns, his chief construction engineer, for instance. But I've the greatest respect for him! And your mother!" said George, laughing again. "And how pretty she looked, too! Well, sir, they walked in on me this afternoon. I never was so surprised in my life! You know, Mary,"

said George, taking his own big leather chair, stretching his legs out luxuriously, and eying the tip of a cigar critically, "you know that your mother is an extremely fascinating woman! You'll see now how she'll blossom out, with a home of her own again--he's got a big house over on the Avenue somewhere, beside the Bar k.o.c.k place--and he runs three or four cars. Just what your mother loves!"

Mary continued to regard her husband steadily, silently. One look at the fixed expression of contempt on her face would have enlightened him, but George was lighting his cigar now, and did not glance at her.

"I'll tell you another thing, Mary," said George, after a match-scratching-and-puffing interlude, "I'll tell you another thing, my dear. You're an angel, and you don't notice these things as I do, but, by Jove, your mother was reaching the point where she pretty nearly made trouble between us! Fact!" he pursued, with a serious nod.

"I get tired, you know, and nervous, and unreasonable--you must have had it pretty hard sometimes this month between your mother and me! I get hot--you know I don't mean anything! If you hadn't the disposition of a saint, things would have come to a head long ago. Now this very morning I talked to you like a regular kid. Mary, the minute I got back to the office I was ashamed of myself. Why, ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have raised the very deuce with me for that! But, by Jove--" his voice dropped to a pause.

"By Jove," George went on, "you are an angel! Now tell me the honest truth, old girl, didn't you resent what I said to-day, just for a minute?"

"I certainly did," Mary responded promptly and quietly, but with an uncomfortable sense of lessened wrath. "What you said was absolutely unwarrantable and insulting!"

"I'll BET you did!" said George, giving her a glance that was a little troubled, and a little wistful, too. "It was insulting, it was unwarrantable. But, my Lord, Mary, you know how I love your mother!" he continued eagerly. "She and I are the best of friends. We rasp each other now and then, but we both love you too much ever to come to real trouble. I'm no angel, Mary," said George, looking down his cigar thoughtfully, "but as men go, I'm a pretty decent man. You know how much time I've spent at the club since we were married. You know the fellows can't rope me into poker games or booze parties. I love my wife and my kids and my home. But when I think of you, and realize how unworthy I am of you, by Heaven--!" He choked, shook his head, finding further speech for a moment difficult. "There's no man alive who's worthy of you!" he finished. "The Lord's been very good to me."

Mary's eyes had filled, too. She sat for a minute, trying to steady her suddenly quivering lips. She looked at George sitting there in the twilight, and said to herself it was all true. He WAS good, he WAS steady, he was indeed devoted to her and to the children. But--but he had insulted her, he had broken her heart, she couldn't let him off without some rebuke.

"You should have thought of these things before you--" she began, with a very fair imitation of scorn in her voice. But George interrupted her. His hands were clasped loosely between his knees, his head hanging dejectedly.

"I know," he said despondently, "I know!"

Mary paused. What she had still to say seemed suddenly flat. And in the pause her mother's one piece of advice came to her mind. After all it only mattered that he was unhappy, and he was hers, and she could make him happy again.

She left her chair, went with a few quick steps to her husband's side, and knelt, and put her cheek against his shoulder. He gave a great boyish laugh of relief and pleasure and put his arms about her.

"How old are you, George?" she said.

"How old am I? What on earth--why, I'm forty," he said.

"I was just thinking that the best of you men is only a little boy, and should be treated as such!" said Mary, kissing him.

"You can treat me as you like," he a.s.sured her, joyously. "And I'm starving. And unless you think there is any likelihood of Mamma dropping in and spoiling our plan, I would like to take you out to dinner."

"Well, she might," Mary agreed with a happy laugh, "so I'll simply run for my hat. You never can be sure, with Mamma!"

THE MEASURE OF MARGARET COPPERED

Duncan Coppered felt that his father's second marriage was a great mistake. He never said so; that would not have been Duncan's way. But he had a little manner of discreetly compressing his lips, when, the second Mrs. Coppered was mentioned, eying his irreproachable boots, and raising his handsome brows, that was felt to be significant. People who knew and admired Duncan--and to know him was to admire him--realized that he would never give more definite indications of filial disapproval than these. His exquisite sense of what was due his father's wife from him would not permit it. But all the more did the silent sympathy of his friends go out to him.

To Harriet Culver he said the one thing that these friends, comparing notes, considered indicative of his real feeling. Harriet, who met him on the Common one cold afternoon, reproached him, during the course of a slow ride, for his non-appearance at various dinners and teas.

"Well, I've been rather bowled over, don't you know? I've been getting my bearings," said Duncan, simply.

"Of course you have!" said Harriet, with an expectant thrill.

"I'd gotten to count on monopolizing the governor," pursued Duncan, presently, with a rueful smile. "I shall feel no end in the way for a while, I'm afraid, Of course, I didn't think Dad would always keep"-his serious eyes met Harriet's--"always keep my mother's place empty; but this came rather suddenly, just the same."

"Had your father written you?" said Harriet, confused between fear of saying the wrong thing and dread of a long silence.

"Oh, yes!" Duncan attempted an indifferent tone. "He had written me in August about meeting Miss Charteris and her little brother in Rome, you know, and how much he liked her. Her brother was an invalid, and died shortly after; and then Dad met her again in Paris, quite alone, and they were married immediately."

He fell silent. Presently Harriet said daringly: "She's--clever; she's gifted, isn't she?"

"I think you were very bold to say that, dear!" said Mrs. Van Winkle, when Harriet repeated this conversation, some hours later, in the family circle.

"Oh, Aunt Minnie, I had to--to see what he'd say."

"And what did he say?" asked Harriet's mother,

"He looked at me gravely, you know, until I was ashamed of myself," the girl confessed, "and then he said: 'Why, Hat, you must know that Mrs.

Coppered was a professional actress?'"

"And a very obscure little actress, at that," finished Mrs. Culver, nodding.

"Pacific Coast stock companies or something like that," said Harriet.

"Well, and then, after a minute, he said, so sadly, 'That's what hurts, although I hate myself for letting it make a difference.'"

"Duncan said that?" Mrs. Van Winkle was incredulous.

"Poor boy! With one aunt Mrs. Vincent-Hunter and the other an English d.u.c.h.ess! The Coppereds have always been among Boston's best families.

It's terrible," said Mrs. Culver.

"Well, I think it is," the girl agreed warmly. "Judge Clyde Potter's grandson, and brought up with the very nicest people, and sensitive as he is--I think it's just too bad it should be Duncan!"

"There's no doubt she was an actress, I suppose, Emily?"

"Well," said Harriet's mother, "it's not denied." She shrugged eloquently.

"Shall you call, mother?"

"Oh, I shall have to once, I suppose. The Coppereds, you know. Every one will call on her for Carey's sake," said Mrs. Culver, sighing.

Every one duly called on Mrs. Carey Coppered, when she returned to Boston; and although she made her mourning an excuse for declining all formal engagements, she sent out cards for an "at home" on a Friday in January. She was a thin, graceful woman, with the blue-black Irish eyes that are set in with a sooty finger, and an unexpectedly rich, deep voice. Her quiet, almost diffident manner was obviously accentuated just now by her recent sorrow; but this did not conceal from her husband's friends the fact that the second Mrs. Coppered was not of their world. Everything charming she might be, but to the manner born she was not. They would not meet her on her own ground, she could not meet them on theirs. In her own home she listened like a puzzled, silenced child to the gay chatter that went on about her.

Duncan stood with his father, at his stepmother's side, on her afternoon at home, prompting her when names or faces confused her, treating her with a little air of gracious intimacy eminently becoming and charming under the circ.u.mstances. His tact stood between her and more than one blunder, and it was to be noticed that she relied upon him even more than upon his father. Carey Coppered, indeed, hitherto staid and serious, was quite transformed by his joy and pride in her, and would not have seen a thousand blunders on her part. The consensus of opinion, among his friends, was that Carey was "really a little absurd, don't you know?" and that Mrs. Carey was "quite deliciously odd," and that Duncan was "too wonderful--poor, dear boy!"

Mrs. Coppered would have agreed that her stepson was wonderful, but with quite a literal meaning. She found him a real cause for wonder--this poised, handsome, crippled boy of nineteen, with his tailor, and his tutor, and his groom, and the heavy social responsibilities that bored him so heartily. With the honesty of a naturally brilliant mind cultivated by hard experience, and much solitary reading, she was quite ready to admit that her marriage had placed her in a new and confusing environment; she wanted only to adapt herself, to learn the strange laws by which it was controlled. And she would naturally have turned quite simply to Duncan for help.

But Duncan very gently, very coldly, repelled her. He was representative of his generation. Things were not LEARNED by the best people; they were instinctively KNOWN. The girls that Duncan knew--the very children in their nurseries--never hesitated over the wording of a note of thanks, never innocently omitted the tipping of a servant, never asked their maid's advice as to suitable frocks and gloves for certain occasions. All these things, and a thousand more, his stepmother did, to his cold embarra.s.sment and annoyance.

The result was unfortunate in two ways. Mrs. Coppered shrank under the unexpressed disapproval into more than her native timidity, rightly thinking his att.i.tude represented that of all her new world; and Carey, who worshipped his young wife, perceived at last that Duncan was not championing his stepmother, and for the first time in his life showed a genuine displeasure with his son.

This was exquisitely painful to Margaret Coppered. She knew what father and son had been to each other before her coming; she knew, far better than Carey, that the boy's adoration of his father was the one vital pa.s.sion of his life. Mrs. Ayers, the housekeeper, sometimes made her heartsick with innocent revelations.