The Happiest Time of Their Lives Part 10

She had learned to distrust nothing so much as her own candor, and her interview with Mr. Lanley had put her specially on her guard.

"I hope you will be candid, Mrs. Farron," she said aloud, and for her this was the depth of dissimulation.

"Well, then," said Adelaide, "you and I are in about the same position, aren't we? We are both willing that our children should marry, and we have no objection to offer to their choice except our own ignorance. We both want time to judge. But how can we get time, Mrs. Wayne? If we do not take definite action _against_ an engagement, we are giving our consent to it. I want a little reasonable delay, but we can get delay only by refusing to hear of an engagement. Do you see what I mean? Will you help me by pretending to be a very stern parent, just so that these young people may have a few months to think it over without being too definitely committed?"

Mrs. Wayne shrank back. She liked neither diplomacy nor coercion.

"But I have really no control over Pete," she said.

"Surely, if he isn't in a position to support a wife--"

"He is, if she would live as he does."

Such an idea had never crossed Mrs. Farron's mind. She looked round her wonderingly, and said without a trace of wilful insolence in her tone:

"Live here, you mean?"

"Yes, or somewhere like it."

Mrs. Farron looked down, and smoothed the delicate dark fur of her m.u.f.f.

She hardly knew how to begin at the very beginning like this. She did not want to hurt any one's feelings. How could she tell this childlike, optimistic creature that to put Mathilde to living in surroundings like these would be like exposing a naked baby on a mountaintop? It wasn't love of luxury, at least not if luxury meant physical self-indulgence.

She could imagine suffering privations very happily in a Venetian palace or on a tropical island. It was an esthetic, not a moral, problem; it was a question of that profound and essential thing in the life of any woman who was a woman--her charm. She wished to tell Mrs. Wayne that her son wouldn't really like it, that he would hate to see Mathilde going out in overshoes; that the background that she, Adelaide, had so expertly provided for her child was part of the very attraction that made him want to take her out of it. There was no use in saying that most poor mortals were forced to get on without this magic atmosphere. They had never been G.o.ddesses; they did not know what they were going without. But her child, who had been, as it were, born a fairy, would miss tragically the delicate beauty of her every-day life, would fade under the ugly monotony of poverty.

But how could she say this to Mrs. Wayne, in her flat-heeled shoes and simple, boyish shirt and that twelfth-century saint's profile, of which so much might have been made by a clever woman?

At last she began, still smoothing her m.u.f.f:

"Mrs. Wayne, I have brought up my daughter very simply. I don't at all approve of the extravagances of these modern girls, with their own motors and their own bills. Still, she has had a certain background. We must admit that marriage with your son on his income alone would mean a decrease in her material comforts."

Mrs. Wayne laughed.

"More than you know, probably."

This was candid, and Adelaide pressed on.

"Well is it wise or kind to make such a demand on a young creature when we know marriage is difficult at the best?" she asked.

Mrs. Wayne hesitated.

"You see, I have never seen your daughter, and I don't know what her feeling for Pete may be."

"I'll answer both questions. She has a pleasant, romantic sentiment for Mr. Wayne--you know how one feels to one's first lover. She is a sweet, kind, unformed little girl, not heroic. But think of your own spirited son. Do you want this persistent, cruel responsibility for him?"

The question was an oratorical one, and Adelaide was astonished to find that Mrs. Wayne was answering it.

"Oh, yes," she said; "I want responsibility for Pete. It's exactly what he needs."

Adelaide stared at her in horror; she seemed the most unnatural mother in the world. She herself would fight to protect her daughter from the pa.s.sive wear and tear of poverty; but she would have died to keep a son, if she had had one, from being driven into the active warfare of the support of a family.

In the pause that followed there was a ring at the bell, an argument with the servant, something that sounded like a scuffle, and then a young man strolled into the room. He was tall and beautifully dressed,--at least that was the first impression,--though, as a matter of fact, the clothes were of the cheapest ready-made variety. But nothing could look cheap or ill made on those splendid muscles. He wore a silk shirt, a flower in his b.u.t.tonhole, a gray tie in which was a pearl as big as a pea, long patent-leather shoes with elaborate buff-colored tops; he carried a thin stick and a pair of new gloves in one hand, but the most conspicuous object in his dress was a brand-new, gray felt hat, with a rather wide brim, which he wore at an angle greater than Mr. Lanley attempted even at his jauntiest. His face was long and rather dark, and his eyes were a bright gray blue, under dark brows. He was scowling.

He strode into the middle of the room, and stood there, with his feet wide apart and his elbows slightly swaying. His hat was still on.

"Your servant said you couldn't see me," he said, with his back teeth set together, a method of enunciation that seemed to be habitual.

"Didn't want to would be truer, Marty," answered Mrs. Wayne, with a utmost good temper. "Still, as long as you're here, what do you want?"

Marty Burke didn't answer at once. He stood looking at Mrs. Wayne under his lowering brows; he had stopped swinging his elbows, and was now very slightly twitching his cane, as an evilly disposed cat will twitch the end of its tail.

Mrs. Farron watched him almost breathlessly. She was a little frightened, but the sensation was pleasurable. He was, she knew, the finest specimen of the human animal that she had ever seen.

"What do I want?" he said at length in a deep, rich voice, shot here and there with strange nasal tones, and here and there with the remains of a brogue. "Well, I want that you should stop persecuting those poor kids."

"I persecuting them? Don't be absurd, Marty," answered Mrs. Wayne.

"Persecuting them; what else?" retorted Marty, fiercely. "What else is it? They wanting to get married, and you determined to send the boy up the river."

"I don't think we'll go over that again. I have a lady here on business."

"Oh, please don't mind me," said Mrs. Farron, settling back, and wriggling her hands contentedly into her m.u.f.f. She rather expected the frivolous courage of her tone to draw the ire of Burke's glance upon her, but it did not.

"Cruel is what I call it," he went on. "She wants it, and he wants it, and her family wants it, and only you and the judge that you put up to opposing--"

"Her family do not want it. Her brother--"

"Her brother agrees with me. I was talking to him yesterday."

"Oh, that's why he has a black eye, is it?" said Mrs. Wayne.

"Black eyes or blue," said Marty, with a horizontal gesture of his hands, "her brother wants to see her married."

"Well, I don't," replied Mrs. Wayne, "at least not to this boy. I will never give my consent to putting a child of her age in the power of a degenerate little drunkard like that."

Mrs. Farron listened with all her ears. She did not think herself a prude, and only a moment before she had been accusing Mrs. Wayne of ignorance of the world; but never in all her life had she heard such words as were now freely exchanged between Burke and his hostess on the subject of the degree of consent that the girl in question had given to the advances of Burke's protege. She would have been as embarra.s.sed as a girl if either of the disputants had been in the least aware of her presence. Once, she thought, Mrs. Wayne, for the sake of good manners, was on the point of turning to her and explaining the whole situation; but fortunately the exigencies of the dispute swept her on too fast.

Adelaide was shocked, physically rather than morally, by the nakedness of their talk; but she did not want them to stop. She was fascinated by the spectacle of Marty Burke in action. She recognized at once that he was a dangerous man, not dangerous to female virtue, like all the other men to whom she had heard the term applied, but actually dangerous to life and property. She was not in the least afraid of him, but she knew he was a real danger. She enjoyed the knowledge. In most ways she was a woman timid in the face of physical danger, but she had never imagined being afraid of another human being. That much, perhaps, her sheltered training had done for her. "If she goes on irritating him like this he may murder us both," she thought. What she really meant was that he might murder Mrs. Wayne, but that, when he came to her and began to twist her neck, she would just say, "My dear man, don't be silly!" and he would stop.

In the meantime Burke was not so angry as he was affecting to be. Like most leaders of men, he had a strong dramatic instinct, and he had just led Mrs. Wayne to the climax of her just violence when his manner suddenly completely changed, and he said with the utmost good temper:

"And what do you think of my get-up, Mrs. Wayne? It's a new suit I have on, and a boutonniere." The change was so sudden that no one answered, and he went on, "It's clothes almost fit for a wedding that I'm wearing."

Mrs. Wayne understood him in a flash. She sprang to her feet.

"Marty Burke," she cried, "you don't mean to say you've got those two children married!"

"Not fifteen minutes ago, and I standing up with the groom." He smiled a smile of the wildest, most piercing sweetness--a smile so free and intense that it seemed impossible to connect it with anything but the consciousness of a pure heart. Mrs. Farron had never seen such a smile.

"I thought I'd just drop around and give you the news," he said, and now for the first time took off his hat, displaying his crisp, black hair and round, pugnacious head. "Good morning, ladies." He bowed, and for an instant his glance rested on Mrs. Farron with an admiration too frank to be exactly offensive. He put his hat on his head, turned away, and made his exit, whistling.

He left behind him one person at least who had thoroughly enjoyed his triumph. To do her justice, however, Mrs. Farron was ashamed of her sympathy, and she said gently to Mrs. Wayne: