The Happiest Time of Their Lives Part 27

CHAPTER XII

In all her life Mathilde had never felt so conspicuous as she did going up the long flight of stairs at the Fifth Avenue entrance of the museum.

It seemed to her that people, those walking past in the sunshine on the sidewalk, and the strangers in town seeing the sights from the top of the green busses, were saying to one another as they looked at her, "There goes a New York girl to meet her lover in one of the more ancient of the Egyptian rooms."

She started as she heard the voice of the guard, though he was saying nothing but "Check your umbrella" to a man behind her. She sped across the marble floor of the great tapestry hall as a little, furry wild animal darts across an open s.p.a.ce in the woods. She was thinking that she could not bear it if Pete were not there. How could she wait many minutes under the eyes of the guards, who must know better than any one else that no flesh-and-blood girl took any real interest in Egyptian antiquities?

The round, unambitious dial at the entrance, like an enlarged kitchen-clock, had pointed to the exact hour set for the meeting. She ought not to expect that Pete, getting away from the office in business hours, could be as punctual as an eager, idle creature like herself.

She had made up her mind so clearly that when she entered the night-blue room there would be nothing but tombs and mummies that when she saw Pete standing with his overcoat over his arm, in the blue-serge clothes she particularly liked, she felt as much surprised as if their meeting were accidental.

She tried to draw a long breath.

"I shall never get used to it," she said. "If we had been married a thousand years, I should always feel just like this when I see you."

"Oh, no, you won't," he answered. "I hope the very next time we meet you will say, quite in a wife's orthodox tone: 'My dear, I've been waiting twenty minutes. Not that I mind at all; only I was afraid I must have misunderstood you.'"

"You hope? Oh, I hope we shall never be like that."

"Really? Why, I enjoy the idea. I shall enjoy saying to total strangers, 'Ah, gentlemen, if my wife were ever on time--' It makes me feel so indissolubly united to you."

"I like it best as we are now."

"We might try different methods alternate years: one year we could be domestic, and the next, detached, and so on."

By this time they had discovered that they were leaning on a mummy-case, and Mathilde drew back with an exclamation. "Poor thing!" she said. "I suppose she once had a lover, too."

"And very likely met him in the room of Chinese antiquities in the Temple Museum," said Pete, and then, changing his tone, he added: "But come along. I want to show you a few little things which I have selected to furnish our home. I think you'll like them."

Pete was always inventing games like this, and calling on her to enter in without the slightest warning. One of them was about a fancy ball he was giving in the main hall of the Pennsylvania Station. But this new idea, to treat the whole museum as a sort of super-department store, made her laugh in a faint, dependent way that she knew Pete liked. She believed that such forms of play were peculiar to themselves, so she guarded them as the deepest kind of secret; for she thought, if her mother ever found out about them, she would at once conclude that the whole relation was childish. To all other lovers Mathilde attributed a uniform seriousness.

It took them a long time to choose their house-furnishings: there was a piece of black-and-gold lacquer; a set of painted panels; a Persian rug, swept by the tails of two haughty peac.o.c.ks; some cloud-gray Chinese porcelains; a set of Du Barry vases; a crystal-and-enamel box, designed probably for some sacred purpose, but contributed by Pete as an excellent receptacle for chocolates at her bedside. "The Boy with the Sword" for the dining-room, Ver Meer's "Women at the Window," the small Bonnington, and then, since Mathilde wanted the portrait of Mrs. Fitzherbert, and Wayne felt a faint weariness with the English school, a compromise was effected by the selection of Constable's landscape of a bridge. Wayne kept constantly repeating that he was exactly like Warren Hastings, astonished at his own moderation. They had hardly begun, indeed, before Mathilde felt herself overcome by that peculiar exhaustion that overtakes even the robust in museums.

Wayne guided her to a little sofa in a room of gold and jade.

"How beautifully you know your way about here!" she said. "I suppose you've brought lots of girls here before me."

"A glorious army," said Pete, "the matron and the maid. You ought to see my mother in a museum. She's lost before she gets well inside the turnstile."

But Mathilde was thinking.

"How strange it is," she observed, "that I never should have thought before about your caring for any one else. Pete, did you ever ask any one else to marry you?"

Wayne nodded.

"Yes; when I was in college. I asked a girl to marry me. She was having rather a rotten time."

"Were you in love with her?"

He shook his head, and in the silence shuffling and staccato footsteps were heard, announcing the approach of a youthful art cla.s.s and their teacher. "Jade," said the voice of the lady, "one of the hardest of known substances, has yet been beautifully worked from time immemorial--"

More pairs of eyes in that art cla.s.s were fixed on the obviously guilty couple in the corner than on the beautiful cloudy objects in the cases, and it was not until they had all followed their guide to the armor-room, and had grouped themselves about the casque of Joan of Arc, that Wayne went on as if no interruption had occurred:

"If you want to know whether I have ever experienced anything like my feeling for you since the first moment I saw you, I never have and never shall, and thereto I plight thee my troth."

Mathilde turned her full face toward him, shedding grat.i.tude and affection as a lamp sheds light before she answered:

"You were terribly unkind to me yesterday."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"I shall never forget the way you kissed me, as if I were a rather repulsive piece of wood."

Pete craned his neck, and met the suspicious eye of a guard.

"I don't think anything can be done about it at the moment," he said; and added in explanation, "You see, I felt as if you had suddenly deserted me."

"Pete, I couldn't ever desert you--unless I committed suicide."

Presently he stood up, declaring that this was not the fitting place for arranging the details of their marriage.

"Come to one of the smaller picture galleries," he said, "and as we go I'll show you a portrait of my mother."

"Your mother? I did not know she had had a portrait done. By whom?"

"A fellow called Bellini. He thought he was doing the Madonna."

When they reached the picture, a figure was already before it. Mr.

Lanley was sitting, with his arms folded and his feet stretched out far before him, his head bent, but his eyes raised and fixed on the picture.

They saw him first, and had two or three seconds to take in the profound contemplation of his mood. Then he slowly raised his eyes and encountered theirs.

There is surely nothing compromising in an elderly gentleman spending a contemplative morning alone at the Metropolitan Museum. It might well be his daily custom; but the knowledge that it was not, the consciousness of the rarity of the mood that had brought him there, oppressed Mr. Lanley almost like a crime. He felt caught, outraged, ashamed as he saw them.

"That's the age which has a right to it," he said to himself. And then as if in a mirror he saw an expression of embarra.s.sment on their faces, and was reminded that their meeting must have been illicit, too. He stood up and looked at them sternly.

"Up-town at this hour, Wayne?" he said.

"Grandfather, I never knew you came here much," said Mathilde.

"It's near me, you know," he answered weakly, so weakly that he felt impelled to give an explanation. "Sometimes, my dear," he said, "you will find that even the most welcome guest rather fills the house."

"You need not worry about yours," returned Mathilde. "I left her with Mama."

Mr. Lanley felt that his brief moment of peace was indeed over. He could imagine the impressions that Mrs. Baxter was perhaps at that very moment sharing with Adelaide. He longed to question his granddaughter, but did not know how to put it.

"How was your mother looking?" he finally decided upon.

"Dreary," answered Mathilde, with a laugh.

"Does this picture remind you of any one?" asked Wayne, suddenly.