"Of course, if you ask me why Mathilde should love me--"
"Don"t be untruthful, Mr. Wayne. I thought better of you. If you should come back from China next year to find her engaged to some one else, you could tell a great many reasons why he was not good enough for her. Now tell me some of the reasons why you are. And please don"t include because you love her so much, for almost any one would do that."
Pete fought down his panic, reminding himself that no man living could hear such words without terror. His egotism, never colossal, stood feebly between him and Mrs. Farron"s estimate of him. He seemed to sink back into the general human species. If he had felt inclined to detail his own qualities, he could not have thought of one. There was a long silence, while Adelaide sat with a look of docile teachableness upon her expectant face.
At last Wayne stood up.
"It"s no use, Mrs. Farron," he said "That question of yours can"t be answered. I believe she loves me. It"s my bet against yours."
"I won"t gamble with my child"s future," she returned. "I did with my own. Sit down again, Mr. Wayne. You have heard, I suppose, that I have been married twice?"
"Yes." He sat down again reluctantly.
"I was Mathilde"s age--a little older. I was more in love than she. And if he had been asked the question I just asked you, he could have answered it. He could have said: "I have been a leader in a group in which I was, an athlete, an oarsman, and the most superb physical specimen of my race"--brought up, too, he might have added, in the same traditions that I had had. Well, that wasn"t enough, Mr. Wayne, and that was a good deal. If my father had only made me wait, only given me time to see that my choice was the choice of ignorance, that the man I thought a hero was, oh, the most pitifully commonplace clay--Mathilde shan"t make my mistake."
Wayne"s eyes lit up.
"But that"s it," he said. "She wouldn"t make your mistake. She"d choose right. That"s what I ought to have said. You spoke of Mathilde"s spirit.
She has a feeling for the right thing. Some people have, and some people are bound to choose wrong."
Adelaide laid her hand on her breast.
"You mean me?" she asked, too much interested to be angry.
He was too absorbed in his own interests to give his full attention to hers.
"Yes," he answered. "I mean your principles of choice weren"t right ones--leaders of men, you know, and all that. It never works out.
Leaders of men are the ones who always cry on their wives" shoulders, and the martinets at home are imposed on by every one else." He gave out this dictum in pa.s.sing: "But don"t trouble about your responsibility in this, Mrs. Farron. It"s out of your hands. It"s our chance, and Mathilde and I mean to take it. I don"t want to give you a warning, exactly, but--it"s going to go through."
She looked at him with large, terrified eyes. She was repeating, "they cry on their wives" shoulders," or, he might have said, "on the shoulders of their trained nurses." She knew that he was talking to her, saying something. She couldn"t listen to it. And then he was gone. She was glad he was.
She sat quite still, with her hands lying idly, softly in her lap. It was possible that what he said was true. Perhaps all these people who made such a show of strength to the world were those who sucked double strength by sapping the vitality of a life"s companion. It had been true of Joe Severance. She had heard him praised for the courage with which he went forth against temptation, but she had known that it was her strength he was using. She looked up, to see her daughter, pale and eager, standing before her.
"O Mama, was it very terrible?"
"What, dear?"
"Did Pete tell you of our plan?"
Adelaide wished she could have listened to those last sentences of his; but they were gone completely.
She put up her hand and patted the unutterably soft cheek before her.
"He told me something about putting through your absurd idea of an immediate marriage," she said.
"We don"t want to do it in a sneaky way, Mama."
"I know. You want to have your own way and to have every one approve of you, too. Is that it?"
Mathilde"s lips trembled.
"O Mama," she cried, "you are so different from what you used to be!"
Adelaide nodded.
"One changes," she said. "One"s life changes." She had meant this sentence to end the interview, but when she saw the girl still standing before her, she said to herself that it made little difference that she hadn"t heard the plans of the Wayne boy, since Mathilde, her own tractable daughter, was still within her power. She moved into the corner of the sofa. "Sit down, dear," she said, and when Mathilde had obeyed with an almost imperceptible shrinking in her att.i.tude, Adelaide went on, with a sort of serious ease of manner:
"I"ve never been a particularly flattering mother, have I? Never thought you were perfect just because you were mine? Well, I hope you"ll pay the more attention to what I have to say. You are remarkable. You are going to be one of the most attractive women that ever was. Years ago old Count Bartiani--do you remember him, at Lucerne?"
"The one who used scent and used to look so long at me?"
"Yes, he was old and rather horrid, but he knew what he was talking about. He said then you would be the most attractive woman in Europe. I heard the same thing from all my friends, and it"s true. You have something rare and perfect---"
These were great words. Mathilde, accustomed all her life to receive information from her mother, received this; and for the first time felt the egotism of her beauty awake, a sense of her own importance the more vivid because she had always been humble-minded. She did not look at her mother; she sat up very straight and stared as if at new fields before her, while a faint smile flickered at the corners of her mouth--a smile of an awakening sense of power.
"What you have," Adelaide went on, "ought to bring great happiness, great position, great love; and how can I let you throw yourself away at eighteen on a commonplace boy with a glib tongue and a high opinion of himself? Don"t tell me that it will make you happy. That would be the worst of all, if you turned out to be so limited that you were satisfied,--that would be a living death. O my darling, I give you my word that if you will give up this idea, ten years from now, when you see this boy, still glib, still vain, and perhaps a little fat, you will actually shudder when you think how near he came to cutting you off from the wonderful, full life that you were ent.i.tled to." And then, as if she could not hope to better this, Adelaide sprang up, and left the girl alone.
Mathilde rose, too, and looked at herself in the gla.s.s. She was stirred, she was changed, she was awakened, but awakened to something her mother had not counted on. Almost too gentle, too humble, too reasonable, as she had always been, the drop of egotism which her mother had succeeded in instilling into her nature served to solidify her will, to inspire her with a needed power of aggression.
She nodded once at her image in the mirror.
"Well," she said, "it"s my life, and I"m willing to take the consequences."
CHAPTER XIII
When Mathilde emerged from the subway into the sunlight of City Hall Park, Pete was nowhere to be seen. She had spent several minutes wandering in the subterranean labyrinth which threatened to bring her to Brooklyn Bridge and nowhere else, so she was a little late for her appointment; and yet Pete was not there. He had promised to be waiting for her. This was a more important occasion than the meeting in the museum and more terrifying, too.
Their plans were simple. They were going to get their marriage license, they were going to be married immediately, they were then going to inform their respective families, and start two days later for San Francisco.
Mathilde stared furtively about her. A policeman strolled past, striking terror to a guilty heart; a gentleman of evidently unbroken leisure regarded her with a benevolent eye completely ringed by red. Crowds were surging in and out of the newspaper offices and the Munic.i.p.al Building and the post office, but stare where she would, she couldn"t find Pete.
She had ten minutes to think of horrors before she saw him rushing across the park toward her, and she had the idea of saying to him those words which he himself had selected as typically wifely, "Not that I mind at all, but I was afraid I must have misunderstood you." But she did not get very far in her mild little joke, for it was evident at once that something had happened.
"My dear love," he said, "it"s no go. We can"t sail, we can"t be married.
I think I"m out of a job."
As they stood there, her pretty clothes, the bright sun shining on her golden hair and dark furs and polished shoes, her beauty, but, above all, their complete absorption in each other, made them conspicuous. They were utterly oblivious.
Pete told her exactly what had happened. Some months before he had been sent to make a report on a coal property in Pennsylvania. He had made it under the a.s.sumption that the firm was thinking of underwriting its bonds. He had been mistaken. As owners Honaton & Benson had already acquired the majority of interest in it. His report,--she remembered his report, for he had told her about it the first day he came to see her,--had been favorable except for one important fact. There was in that district a car shortage which for at least a year would hamper the marketing of the supply. That had been the point of the whole thing. He had advised against taking the property over until this defect could be remedied or allowed for. They had accepted the report.
Well, late in the afternoon of the preceding day he had gone to the office to say good-by to the firm. He could not help being touched by the friendliness of both men"s manner. Honaton gave him a silver traveling-flask, plain except for an offensive cat"s-eye set in the top.
Benson, more humane and practical, gave him a check.
"I think I"ve cleared up everything before I leave," Wayne said, trying to be conscientious in return for their kindness, "except one thing.