The Happiest Time of Their Lives Part 16

"Oh, Minnie's vulgarity is just artificial, a.s.sumed because she found it worked so well."

"Surely you accord her some natural talent along those lines."

"I suspect her secret mind is refined."

"Oh, that's not fair. Vulgar is as vulgar does."

Adelaide stood up, pushing back her chair. She found them utterly intolerable. Besides, as they talked she had suddenly seen clearly that she must herself speak to Vincent's doctor without an instant's delay. "I have to telephone, Minnie," she said, and swept out of the room. She never returned.

"Not one of the perfect lady's golden days, I should say," said one of the men, raising his eyebrows. "I wonder what's gone wrong?"

"Can Vincent have been straying from the straight and narrow?"

"Something wrong. I could tell by her looks."

"Ah, my dear, I'm afraid her looks is what's wrong."

Adelaide meantime was in her motor on her way to the doctor's office. He had given up his sacred lunch-hour in response to her imperious demand and to his own intense pity for her sorrow.

He did not know her, but he had had her pointed out to him, and though he recognized the unreason of such an att.i.tude, he was aware that her great beauty dramatized her suffering, so that his pity for her was uncommonly alive.

He was a young man, with a finely cut face and a blond complexion. His pity was visible, quivering a little under his mask of impa.s.sivity.

Adelaide's first thought on seeing him was, "Good Heavens! another man to be emotionally calmed before I can get at the truth!" She had to be tactful, to let him see that she was not going to make a scene. She knew that he felt it himself, but she was not grateful to him. What business had he to feel it? His feeling was an added burden, and she felt that she had enough to carry.

He did not make the mistake, however, of expressing his sympathy verbally. His answers were as cold and clear as she could wish. She questioned him on the chances of an operation. He could not reduce his judgment to a mathematical one; he was inclined to advocate an operation on psychological grounds, he said.

"It keeps up the patient's courage to know something is being done." He added, "That will be your work, Mrs. Farron, to keep his courage up."

Most women like to know they had their part to play, but Adelaide shook her head quickly.

"I would so much rather go through it myself!" she cried.

"Naturally, naturally," he agreed, without getting the full pa.s.sion of her cry.

She stood up.

"Oh," she said, "if it could only be kill or cure!"

He glanced at her.

"We have hardly reached that point yet," he answered.

She went away dissatisfied. He had answered every question, he had even encouraged her to hope a little more than her interpretation of what Vincent said had allowed her; but as she drove away she knew he had failed her. For she had gone to him in order to have Vincent presented to her as a hero, as a man who had looked upon the face of death without a quiver. Instead, he had been presented to her as a patient, just one of the long procession that pa.s.sed through that office. The doctor had said nothing to contradict the heroic picture, but he had said nothing to contribute to it. And surely, if Farron had stood out in his calmness and courage above all other men, the doctor would have mentioned it, couldn't have helped doing so; he certainly would not have spent so much time in telling her how she was to guard and encourage him. To the doctor he was only a patient, a pitiful human being, a victim of mortality. Was that what he was going to become in her eyes, too?

At four she drove down-town to his office. He came out with another man; they stood a moment on the steps talking and smiling. Then he drew his friend to the car window and introduced him to Adelaide. The man took off his hat.

"I was just telling your husband, Mrs. Farron, that I've been looking at offices in this building. By the spring he and I will be neighbors."

Adelaide just shut her eyes, and did not open them again until Vincent had got in beside her and she felt his arm about her shoulder.

"My poor darling!" he said. "What you need is to go home and get some sleep." It was said in his old, cherishing tone, and she, leaning back, with her head against the point of his shoulder, felt that, black as it was, life for the first time since the night before had a.s.sumed its normal aspect again.

CHAPTER VIII

The morning after their drive up-town Vincent told his wife that all his arrangements were made to go to the hospital that night, and to be operated upon the next day. She reproached him for having made his decision without consulting her, but she loved him for his proud independence.

Somehow this second day under the shadow of death was less terrible than the first. Vincent stayed up-town, and was very natural and very busy. He saw a few people,--men who owed him money, his lawyer, his partner,--but most of the time he and Adelaide sat together in his study, as they had sat on many other holidays. He insisted on going alone to the hospital, although she was to be in the building during the operation.

Mathilde had been told, and inexperienced in disaster, she had felt convinced that the outcome couldn't be fatal, yet despite her conviction that people did not really die, she was aware of a shyness and awkwardness in the tragic situation.

Mr. Lanley had been told, and his att.i.tude was just the opposite. To him it seemed absolutely certain that Farron would die,--every one did,--but he had for some time been aware of a growing hardness on his part toward the death of other people, as if he were thus preparing himself for his own.

"Poor Vincent!" he said to himself. "Hard luck at his age, when an old man like me is left." But this was not quite honest. In his heart he felt there was nothing unnatural in Vincent's being taken or in his being left.

As usual in a crisis, Adelaide's behavior was perfect. She contrived to make her husband feel every instant the depth, the strength, the pa.s.sion of her love for him without allowing it to add to the weight he was already carrying. Alone together, he and she had flashes of real gaiety, sometimes not very far from tears.

To Mathilde the brisk naturalness of her mother's manner was a source of comfort. All the day the girl suffered from a sense of strangeness and isolation, and a fear of doing or saying something unsuitable--something either too special or too every-day. She longed to evince sympathy for Mr. Farron, but was afraid that, if she did, it would be like intimating that he was as good as dead. She was caught between the negative danger of seeming indifferent and the positive one of being tactless.

As soon as Vincent had left the house, Adelaide's thought turned to her daughter. He had gone about six o'clock. He and she had been sitting by his study fire when Pringle announced that the motor was waiting. Vincent got up quietly, and so did she. They stood with their arms about each other, as if they meant never to forget the sense of that contact; and then without any protest they went down-stairs together.

In the hall he had shaken hands with Mr. Lanley and had kissed Mathilde, who, do what she would, couldn't help choking a little. All this time Adelaide stood on the stairs, very erect, with one hand on the stair-rail and one on the wall, not only her eyes, but her whole face, radiating an uplifted peace. So angelic and majestic did she seem that Mathilde, looking up at her, would hardly have been surprised if she had floated out into s.p.a.ce from her vantage-ground on the staircase.

Then Farron lit a last cigar, gave a quick, steady glance at his wife, and went out. The front door ended the incident as sharply as a shot would have done.

It was then that Mathilde expected to see her mother break down. Under all her sympathy there was a faint human curiosity as to how people contrived to live through such crises. If Pete were on the brink of death, she thought that she would go mad: but, then, she and Pete were not a middle-aged married couple; they were young, and new to love.

They all went into the drawing-room, Adelaide the calmest of the three.

"I wonder," she said, "if you two would mind dining a little earlier than usual. I might sleep if I could get to bed early, and I must be at the hospital before eight."

Mr. Lanley agreed a little more quickly than it was his habit to speak.

"O Mama, I think you're so marvelous!" said Mathilde, and touched at her own words, she burst into tears. Her mother put her arm about her, and Mr. Lanley patted her shoulder--his sovereign care.

"There, there, my dear," he murmured, "you must not cry. You know Vincent has a very good chance, a very good chance."

The a.s.sumption that he hadn't was just the one Mathilde did not want to appear to make. Her mother saw this and said gently:

"She's overstrained, that's all."

The girl wiped her eyes.

"I'm ashamed, when you are so calm and wonderful."

"I'm not wonderful," said her mother. "I have no wish to cry. I'm beyond it. Other people's trouble often makes us behave more emotionally than our own. If it were your Pete, I should be in tears." She smiled, and looked across the girl's head at Mr. Lanley. "She would like to see him, Papa. Telephone Pete Wayne, will you, and ask him to come and see her this evening? You'll be here, won't you?"