The Happiest Time of Their Lives Part 3

He prided himself on having emanc.i.p.ated himself from the ideas of his own generation. It bored him to listen to his cousins lamenting the vulgarities of modern life, the lack of elegance in present-day English, or to hear them explain as they borrowed money from him the sort of thing a gentleman could or could not do for a living. But on the subject of what a lady might do he still held fixed and unalterable notions; nor did he ever find it tiresome to hear his own daughter expound the axioms of this subject with a finality he had taught her in her youth. Having freed himself from fine-gentlemanism, he had quite unconsciously fallen the more easily a prey to fine-ladyism; all his conservatism had gone into that, as a man, forced to give up his garden, might cherish one lovely potted plant.

At a time when private schools were beginning to flourish once more he had been careful to educate Adelaide entirely at home with governesses.

Every summer he took her abroad, and showed her, and talked with her about, books, pictures, and buildings; he inoculated her with such fundamentals as that a lady never wears imitation lace on her underclothes, and the past of the verb to "eat" is p.r.o.nounced to rhyme with "bet." She spoke French and German fluently, and could read Italian.

He considered her a perfectly educated woman. She knew nothing of business, political economy, politics, or science. He himself had never been deeply interested in American politics, though very familiar with the lives of English statesmen. He was a great reader of memoirs and of the novels of Disraeli and Trollope. Of late he had taken to motoring.

He kissed his daughter and nodded--a real New York nod--to his son-in-law.

"I've come to tell you, Adelaide," he began.

"Such a thing!" murmured Mathilde, shaking her golden head above the cup of tea she was making for him, making in just the way he liked; for she was a little person who remembered people's tastes.

"I thought you'd rather hear it than read it in the papers."

"Goodness, Papa, you talk as if you had been getting married!"

"No." Mr. Lanley hesitated, and looked up at her brightly. "No; but I think I did have a proposal the other day."

"From Mrs. Baxter?" asked Adelaide. This was almost war. Mrs. Baxter was a regal and possessive widow from Baltimore whose long and regular visits to Mr. Lanley had once occasioned his family some alarm, though time had now given them a certain inst.i.tutional safety.

Her father was not flurried by the reference.

"No," he said; "though she writes me, I'm glad to say, that she is coming soon."

"You don't tell me!" said Adelaide. The cream of the winter season was usually the time Mrs. Baxter selected for her visit.

Her father did not notice her.

"If Mrs. Baxter should ever propose to me," he went on thoughtfully, "I shouldn't refuse. I don't think I should have the--"

"The chance?" said his daughter.

"I was going to say the fort.i.tude. But this," he went on, "was an elderly cousin, who expressed a wish to come and be my housekeeper. Perhaps matrimony was not intended. Mathilde, my dear, how does one tell nowadays whether one is being proposed to or not?"

In this poignant and unexpected crisis Mathilde turned slowly and painfully crimson. How _did_ one tell? It was a question which at the moment was anything but clear to her.

"I should always a.s.sume it in doubtful cases, sir," said Wayne, very distinctly. He and Mathilde did not even glance at each other.

"It wasn't your proposal that you came to announce to us, though, was it, Papa?" said Adelaide.

"No," answered Mr. Lanley. "The fact is, I've been arrested."

"Again?"

"Yes; most unjustly, most unjustly." His brows contracted, and then relaxed at a happy memory. "It's the long, low build of the car. It looks so powerful that the police won't give you a chance. It was nosing through the park--"

"At about thirty miles an hour," said Farron.

"Well, not a bit over thirty-five. A lovely morning, no one in sight, I may have let her out a little. All of a sudden one of these mounted fellows jumped out from the bushes along the bridle-path. They're a fine-looking lot, Vincent."

Farron asked who the judge was, and, Mr. Lanley named him--named him slightly wrong, and Farron corrected him.

"I'll get you off," he said.

Adelaide looked up at her husband admiringly. This was the aspect of him that she loved best. It seemed to her like magic what Vincent could do.

Her father, she thought, took it very calmly. What would have happened to him if she had not brought Farron into the family to rescue and protect?

The visiting boy, she noticed, was properly impressed. She saw him give Farron quite a dog-like look as he took his departure. To Mathilde he only bowed. No arrangements had been made for a future meeting. Mathilde tried to convey to him in a prolonged look that if he would wait only five minutes all would be well, that her grandfather never paid long visits; but the door closed behind him. She became immediately overwhelmed by the fear, which had an element of desire in it, too, that her family would fall to discussing him, would question her as to how long she had known him, and why she liked him, and what they talked about, and whether she had been expecting a visit, sitting there in her best dress. Then slowly she took in the fact that they were going to talk about nothing but Mr. Lanley's arrest. She marveled at the obtuseness of older people--to have stood at the red-hot center of youth and love and not even to know it! She drew her shoulders together, feeling very lonely and strong. As they talked, she allowed her eyes to rest first on one speaker and then on the other, as if she were following each word of the discussion. As a matter of fact she was rehearsing with an inner voice the tone of Wayne's voice when he had said that he loved her.

Then suddenly she decided that she would be much happier alone in her own room. She rose, patted her grandfather on the shoulder, and prepared to escape. He, not wishing to be interrupted at the moment, patted her hand in return.

"h.e.l.lo!" he exclaimed. "Hands are cold, my dear."

She caught Farron's cool, black eyes, and surprised herself by answering:

"Yes; but, then, they always are." This was quite untrue, but every one was perfectly satisfied with it.

As she left the room Mr. Lanley was saying:

"Yes, I don't want to go to Blackwell's Island. Lovely spot, of course.

My grandfather used to tell me he remembered it when the Blackwell family still lived there. But I shouldn't care to wear stripes--except for the pleasure of telling Alberta about it. It would give her a year's occupation, her suffering over my disgrace, wouldn't it, Adelaide?"

"She'd scold me," said Adelaide, looking beautifully martyred. Then turning to her husband, she asked. "Will it be very difficult, Vincent, getting papa off?" She wanted it to be difficult, she wanted him to give her material out of which she could form a picture of him as a savior; but he only shook his head and said:

"That young man is in love with Mathilde."

"O Vin! Those children?"

Mr. Lanley p.r.i.c.ked up his ears like a terrier.

"In love?" he exclaimed. "And who is he? Not one of the East Suss.e.x Waynes, I hope. Vulgar people. They always were; began life as auctioneers in my father's time. Is he one of those, Adelaide?"

"I have no idea who he is, if any one," said Adelaide. "I never saw or heard of him before this afternoon."

"And may I ask," said her father, "if you intend to let your daughter become engaged to a young man of whom you know nothing whatsoever?"

Adelaide looked extremely languid, one of her methods of showing annoyance.

"Really, Papa," she said, "the fact that he has come once to pay an afternoon visit to Mathilde does not, it seems to me, make an engagement inevitable. My child is not absolutely repellent, you know, and a good many young men come to the house." Then suddenly remembering that her oracle had already spoken on this subject, she asked more humbly, "What was it made you say he was in love, Vin?"

"Just an impression," said Farron.

Mr. Lanley had been thinking it over.

"It was not the custom in my day," he began, and then remembering that this was one of his sister Alberta's favorite openings, he changed the form of his sentence. "I never allowed you to see stray young men--"

His daughter interrupted him.

"But I always saw them, Papa. I used to let them come early in the afternoon before you came in."