The Happiest Time of Their Lives Part 17

Mr. Lanley nodded without cordiality; he did not approve of encouraging the affair unnecessarily.

"How kind you are, Mama!" exclaimed Mathilde, almost inaudibly. It was just what she wanted, just what she had been wanting all day, to see her own man, to a.s.sure herself, since death was seen to be hot on the trail of all mortals, that he and she were not wasting their brief time in separation.

"We might take a turn in the motor," said Mr. Lanley, thinking that Mrs.

Wayne might enjoy that.

"It would do you both good."

"And leave you alone, Mama?"

"It's what I really want, dear."

The plan did not fulfil itself quite as Mr. Lanley had imagined. Mrs.

Wayne was out at some sort of meeting. They waited a moment for Pete.

Mathilde fixed her eyes on the lighted doorway, and said to herself that in a few seconds the thing of all others that she desired would happen--he would come through it. And almost at once he did, looking particularly young and alive; so that, as he jumped in beside her on the back seat, both her hands went out and caught his arm and clung to him.

Her realization of mortality had been so acute that she felt as if he had been restored to her from the dead. She told him the horrors of the day.

Particularly, she wanted to share with him her grat.i.tude for her mother's almost magic kindness.

"I wanted you so much, Pete," she whispered; "but I thought it would be heartless even to suggest my having wishes at such a time. And then for her to think of it herself--"

"It means they are not really going to oppose our marriage."

They talked about their marriage and the twenty or thirty years of joy which they might reasonably hope to s.n.a.t.c.h from life.

"Think of it," he said--"twenty or thirty years, longer than either of us have lived."

"If I could have five years, even one year, with you, I think I could bear to die; but not now, Pete."

In the meantime Mr. Lanley, alone on the front seat, for he had left his chauffeur at home, was driving north along the Hudson and saying to himself:

"Sixty-four. Well, I may be able to knock out ten or twelve pretty satisfactory years. On the other hand, might die to-morrow; hope I don't, though. As long as I can drive a car and everything goes well with Adelaide and this child, I'd be content to live my full time--and a little bit more. Not many men are healthier than I am. Poor Vincent! A good deal more to live for than I have, most people would say; but I don't know that he enjoys it any more than I do." Turning his head a little, he shouted over his shoulder to Pete, "Sorry your mother couldn't come."

Mathilde made a hasty effort to withdraw her hands; but Wayne, more practical, understanding better the limits put upon a driver, held them tightly as he answered in a civil tone: "Yes, she would have enjoyed this."

"She must come some other time," shouted Mr. Lanley, and reflected that it was not always necessary to bring the young people with you.

"You know, he could not possibly have turned enough to see," Pete whispered reprovingly to Mathilde.

"I suppose not; and yet it seemed so queer to be talking to my grandfather with--"

"You must try and adapt yourself to your environment," he returned, and put his arm about her.

The cold of the last few days had given place to a thaw. The melting ice in the river was streaked in strange curves, and the bare trees along the straight heights of the Palisades were blurred by a faint bluish mist, out of which white lights and yellow ones peered like eyes.

"Doesn't it seem cruel to be so happy when Mama and poor Mr. Farron--"

Mathilde began.

"It's the only lesson to learn," he answered--"to be happy while we are young and together."

About ten o'clock Mr. Lanley left her at home, and she tiptoed up-stairs and hardly dared to draw breath as she undressed for fear she might wake her unhappy mother on the floor below her.

She had resolved to wake early, to breakfast with her mother, to ask to be allowed to accompany her to the hospital; but it was nine o'clock when she was awakened by her maid's coming in with her breakfast and the announcement not only that Mrs. Farron had been gone for more than an hour, but that there had already been good news from the hospital.

"Il parait que monsieur est tres fort," she said, with that absolute neutrality of accent that sounds in Anglo-Saxon ears almost like a complaint.

Adelaide had been in no need of companionship. She was perfectly able to go through her day. It seemed as if her soul, with a soul's capacity for suffering, had suddenly withdrawn from her body, had retreated into some unknown fortress, and left in its place a hard, trivial, practical intelligence which tossed off plan after plan for the future detail of life. As she drove from her house to the hospital she arranged how she would apportion the household in case of a prolonged illness, where she would put the nurses. Nor was she less clear as to what should be done in case of Vincent's death. The whole thing unrolled before her like a panorama.

At the hospital, after a little delay, she was guided to Vincent's own room, recently deserted. A nurse came to tell her that all was going well; Mr. Farron had had a good night, and was taking the anesthetic nicely. Adelaide found the young woman's manner offensively encouraging, and received the news with an insolent reserve.

"That girl is too wildly, spiritually bright," she said to herself. But no manner would have pleased her.

Left alone, she sat down in a rocking-chair near the window. Vincent's bag stood in the corner, his brushes were on the dressing-table, his tie hung on the electric light. Immortal trifles, she thought, that might be in existence for years.

She began poignantly to regret that she had not insisted on seeing him again that morning. She had thought only of what was easiest for him. She ought to have thought of herself, of what would make it possible for her to go on living without him. If she could have seen him again, he might have given her some precept, some master word, by which she could have guided her life. She would have welcomed something imprisoning and safe.

It was cruel of him, she thought, to toss her out like this, rudderless and alone. She wondered what he would have given her as a commandment, and remembered suddenly the apocryphal last words which Vincent was fond of attributing to George Washington, "Never trust a n.i.g.g.e.r with a gun."

She found herself smiling over them. Vincent was more likely to have quoted the apparition's advice to Macbeth: "Be b.l.o.o.d.y, bold, and resolute." That would have been his motto for himself, but not for her.

What was the principle by which he infallibly guided her?

How could he have left her so spiritually unprovided for? She felt imposed upon, deserted. The busily planning little mind that had suddenly taken possession of her could not help her in the larger aspects of her existence. It would be much simpler, she thought, to die than to attempt life again without Vincent.

She went to the window and looked out at the roofs of neighboring houses, a disordered conglomeration of water-tanks and skylights and chimney-pots. Then nearer, almost under her feet, she looked into a courtyard of the hospital and saw a pale, emaciated man in a wheel-chair.

She drew back as if it were something indecent. Would Vincent ever become like that? she thought. If so, she would rather he died now under the anesthetic.

A little while later the nurse came in, and said almost sternly that Dr.

Crew had sent her to tell Mrs. Farron that the conditions seemed extremely favorable, and that all immediate danger was over.

"You mean," said Adelaide, fiercely, "that Mr. Farron will live?"

"I certainly inferred that to be the doctor's meaning," answered the nurse. "But here is the a.s.sistant, Dr. Withers."

Dr. Withers, bringing with him an intolerable smell of disinfectants and chloroform, hurried in, with his hair mussed from the haste with which he had removed his operating-garments. He had small, bright, brown eyes, with little lines about them that seemed to suggest humor, but actually indicated that he buoyed up his life not by exaltation of himself, but by half-laughing depreciation of every one else.

"I thought you'd be glad to know, Mrs. Farron," he said, "that any danger that may have existed is now over. Your husband--"

"That _may_ have existed," cried Adelaide. "Do you mean to say there hasn't been any real danger?"

The young doctor's eyes twinkled.

"An operation even in the best hands is always a danger," he replied.

"But you mean there was no other?" Adelaide asked, aware of a growing coldness about her hands and feet.

Withers looked as just as Aristides.

"It was probably wise to operate," he said. "Your husband ought to be up and about in three weeks."

Everything grew black and rotatory before Adelaide's eyes, and she sank slowly forward into the young doctor's arms.