The Happiest Time of Their Lives Part 24

"A very unusual type, is she not, our friend, Mrs. Wayne?" said Wilsey.

"A little bit of a reformer, I'm afraid," said Mrs. Baxter.

"Don't be too hard on her," answered Lanley.

"Oh, very charming, very charming," put in Wilsey, feeling, perhaps, that Mrs. Baxter had been severe; "but the poor lady's mind is evidently seething with a good many undigested ideas."

"You should have pointed out the flaws in her reasoning, Wilsey,"

said his host.

"Argue with a woman, Lanley!" Mr. Wilsey held up his hand in protest.

"No, no, I never argue with a woman. They take it so personally."

"I think we had an example of that this evening," said Mrs. Baxter.

"Yes, indeed," the lawyer went on. "See how the dear lady missed the point, and became so illogical and excited under our little discussion."

"Funny," said Lanley. "I got just the opposite impression."

"Opposite?"

"I thought it was you who missed the point, Wilsey."

He saw how deeply he had betrayed himself as the others exchanged a startled glance. It was Mrs. Baxter who thought of the correct reply.

"_Were_ there any points?" she asked.

Wilsey shook his finger.

"Ah, don't be cruel!" he said, and held out his hand to say good night; but Lanley was smoking, with his head tilted up and his eyes on the ceiling. What he was thinking was, "It isn't good for an old man to get as angry as I am."

"Good night, Lanley; a delightful evening."

Mr. Lanley's chin came down.

"Oh, good night, Wilsey; glad you found it so."

When he was gone, Mrs. Baxter observed that he was a most agreeable companion.

"So witty, so amiable, and, for a leader at the bar, he has an extraordinarily light touch."

Mr. Lanley had resumed his position on the hearth-rug and his contemplation of the ceiling.

"Wilsey's not a leader at the bar," he said, with open crossness.

He showed no disposition to sit and chat over the events of the evening.

CHAPTER XI

Early the next morning, in Mrs. Baxter's parlance,--that is to say, some little time before the sun had reached the meridian,--she was ringing Adelaide's door-bell, while she minutely observed the curtains, the door-mat, the ivy plants in the vestibule, and the brightness of the bra.s.s k.n.o.bs on the railing. In this she had a double motive: what was evil she would criticize, what was good she would copy.

Adelaide was sitting with her husband when her visitor's name was brought up. Since she had discovered that she was to be nothing but a sort of super-nurse to him, she found herself expert at rendering such service.

She had brought in his favorite flowers, chosen a book for his bedside, and now sat gossiping beside him, not bringing him, as she said to herself, any of her real troubles; that would not be good for him. How extraordinarily easy it was to conceal, she thought. She heard her own tones, as gay and intimate as ever, as satisfactory to Vincent; and yet all the time her mind was working apart on her anxieties about Mathilde--anxieties with which, of course, one couldn't bother a poor sick creature. She smoothed his pillow with the utmost tenderness.

"Oh, Pringle," she said, in answer to his announcement that Mrs. Baxter was down-stairs, "you haven't let her in?"

"She's in the drawing-room, Madam." And Pringle added as a clear indication of what he considered her duty, "She came in Mr. Lanley's motor."

"Of course she did. Well, say I'll be down," and as Pringle went away with this encouraging intelligence, Adelaide sank even farther back in her chair and looked at her husband. "What I am called upon to sacrifice to other people's love affairs! The Waynes and Mrs. Baxter--I never have time for my own friends. I don't mind Mrs. Baxter when you're well, and I can have a dinner; I ask all the stupid people together to whom I owe parties, and she is so pleased with them, and thinks they represent the most brilliant New York circle; but to have to go down and actually talk to her, isn't that hard, Vin?"

"Hard on me," said Farron.

"Oh, I shall come back--exhausted."

"By what you have given out?"

"No, but by her intense intimacy. You have no idea how well she knows me.

It's Adelaide this and Adelaide that and 'the last time you stayed with me in Baltimore.' You know, Vin, I never stayed with her but once, and that only because she found me in the hotel and kidnapped me.

However,"--Adelaide stood up with determination,--"one good thing is, I have begun to have an effect on my father. He does not like her any more.

He was distinctly bored at the prospect of her visit this time. He did not resent it at all when I called her an upholstered old lady. I really think," she added, with modest justice, "that I am rather good at poisoning people's minds against their undesirable friends." She paused, debating how long it would take her to separate Mathilde from the Wayne boy; and recalling that this was no topic for an invalid, she smiled at him and went down-stairs.

"My dear Adelaide!" said Mrs. Baxter, enveloping her in a powdery caress.

"How wonderfully you're looking, Mrs. Baxter," said Adelaide, choosing her adverb with intention.

"Now tell me, dear," said Mrs. Baxter, with a wave of a gloved hand, "what are those Italian embroideries?"

"Those?" Adelaide lifted her eyebrows. "Ah, you're in fun! A collector like you! Surely you know what those are."

"No," answered Mrs. Baxter, firmly, though she wished she had selected something else to comment on.

"Oh, they are the Villanelli embroideries," said Adelaide, carelessly, very much as if she had said they were the Raphael cartoons, so that Mrs.

Baxter was forced to reply in an awestruck tone:

"You don't tell me! Are they, really?"

Adelaide nodded brightly. She had not actually made up the name. It was that of an obscure little palace where she had bought the hangings, and if Mrs. Baxter had had the courage to acknowledge ignorance, Adelaide would have told the truth. As it was, she recognized that by methods such as this she could retain absolute control over people like Mrs. Baxter.

The lady from Baltimore decided on a more general scope.

"Ah, your room!" she said. "Do you know whose it always reminds me of--that lovely salon of Madame de Liantour's?"

"What, of poor little Henrietta's!" cried Adelaide, and she laid her hand appealingly for an instant on Mrs. Baxter's knee. "That's a cruel thing to say. All her good things, you know, were sold years ago. Everything she has is a reproduction. Am I really like her?"