The Happiest Time of Their Lives Part 31

"She's not as bad as you think," said Mr. Lanley, who believed in old-fashioned loyalty.

"I can't bear her," said Adelaide.

"Why not?" As far as his feelings went, this seemed a perfectly safe question; but it wasn't.

"Because she tries so hard to make you ridiculous. Oh, not intentionally; but she talks of you as if you were a _Don Juan_ of twenty-five. You ought to be flattered, Papa dear, at having jealous scenes made about you when you are--what is it?--sixty-five."

"Four," said Mr. Lanley.

"Yes; such a morning as I had! Not a minute with poor Vincent because you had had Mrs. Wayne to dine. I'm not complaining, but I don't like my father represented as a sort of comic-paper old man, you poor dear,"--and she laid her long, gloved hand on his knee,--"who have always been so conspicuously dignified."

"If I have," said her father, "I don't know that anything she says can change it."

"No, of course; only it was horrible to me to hear her describing you in the grip of a boyish pa.s.sion. But don't let's talk of it. I hear," she said, as if she were changing the subject, "that you have taken to going to the Metropolitan Museum at odd moments."

He felt utterly stripped, and said without hope:

"Yes; I'm a trustee, you know."

Adelaide just glanced at him.

"You always have been, I think." They drove home in silence.

One reason why she was determined to have her father come home was that it was the first time that Vincent was to take luncheon downstairs, and when Adelaide had a part to play she liked to have an audience. She was even glad to find Wayne in the drawing-room, though she did wonder to herself if the little creature had entirely given up earning his living.

It was a very different occasion from Pete's last luncheon there; every one was as pleasant as possible. As soon as the meal was over, Adelaide put her hand on her husband's shoulder.

"You're going to lie down at once, Vin."

He rose obediently, but Wayne interposed. It seemed to him that it would be possible to tell his story to Farron.

"Oh, can't Mr. Farron stay a few minutes?" he said. "I want so much to speak to you and him together about--"

Adelaide cut him short.

"No, he can't. It's more important that he should get strong than anything else is. You can talk to me all you like when I come down.

Come, Vin."

When they were up-stairs, and she was tucking him up on his sofa, he asked gently:

"What did that boy want?"

Adelaide made a little face.

"Nothing of any importance," she said.

Things had indeed changed between them if he would accept such an answer as that. She thought his indifference like the studied oblivion of the debtor who says, "Don't I owe you something?" and is content with the most non-committal reply. He lay back and smiled at her. His expression was not easy to read.

She went down-stairs, where conversation had not prospered. Mr. Lanley was smoking, with his cigar drooping from a corner of his mouth. He felt very unhappy. Mathilde was frightened. Wayne had recast his opening sentence a dozen times. He kept saying to himself that he wanted it to be perfectly simple, but not infantile, and each phrase he thought of in conformity with his one rule sounded like the opening lines of the stage child's speech.

In the crisis of Adelaide's being actually back again in the room he found himself saying:

"Mrs. Farron, I think you ought to know exactly what has been happening."

"Don't I?" she asked.

"No. You know that I was going to San Francisco the day after to-morrow--"

"Oh dear," said Adelaide, regretfully, "is it given up?"

He told her rather slowly the whole story. The most terrible moment was, as he had expected, when he explained that they had met, he and Mathilde, to apply for their marriage license. Adelaide turned, and looked full at her daughter.

"You were going to treat me like that?" Mathilde burst into tears. She had long been on the brink of them, and now they came more from nerves than from a sense of the justice of her mother's complaint. But the sound of them upset Wayne hopelessly. He couldn't go on for a minute, and Mr.

Lanley rose to his feet.

"Good Lord! good Lord!" he said, "that was dishonorable! Can't you see that that is dishonorable, to marry her on the sly when we trusted her to go about with you--"

"O Papa, never mind about the dishonorableness," said Adelaide. "The point is"--and she looked at Wayne--"that they were building their elopement on something that turned out to be a fraud. That doesn't make one think very highly of your judgment, Mr. Wayne."

"I made a mistake, Mrs. Farron."

"It was a bad moment to make one. You have worked three years with this firm and never suspected anything wrong?"

"Yes, sometimes I have--"

Adelaide's eyebrows went up.

"Oh, you have suspected. You had reason to think the whole thing might be dishonest, but you were willing to run away with Mathilde and let her get inextricably committed before you found out--"

"That's irresponsible, sir," said Lanley. "I don't suppose you understood what you were doing, but it was utterly irresponsible."

"I think," said Adelaide, "that it finally answers the question as to whether or not you are too young to be married."

"Mama, I will marry Pete," said Mathilde, trying to make a voice broken with sobs sound firm and resolute.

"Mr. Wayne at the moment has no means whatsoever, as I understand it,"

said Adelaide.

"I don't care whether he has or not," said Mathilde.

Adelaide laughed. The laugh rather shocked Mr. Lanley. He tried to explain.

"I feel sorry for you, but you can't imagine how painful it is to us to think that Mathilde came so near to being mixed up with a crooked deal like that--Mathilde, of all people. You ought to see that for yourself."

"I see it, thank you," said Pete.

"Really, Mr. Wayne, I don't think that's quite the tone to take," put in Adelaide.

"I don't think it is," said Wayne.