Mathilde murmured to Pete:
"Who are they talking about?"
"A mixture of Alcibiades and _Bill Sykes_," said Adelaide, catching the low tone, as she always did.
"He"s the district leader and a very bad influence," said Mrs. Wayne.
"He"s a champion middle-weight boxer," said Pete.
"He"s the head of my stevedores," said Farron.
"O Mr. Farron," Mrs. Wayne exclaimed, "I do wish you would use your influence over him."
"My influence? It consists of paying him eighty-five dollars a month and giving him a box of cigars at Christmas."
"Don"t you think you could tone him down?" pleaded Mrs. Wayne. "He does so much harm."
"But I don"t want him toned down. His value to me is his being just as he is. He"s a myth, a hero, a power on the water-front, and I employ him."
"You employ him, but do you control him?" asked Adelaide, languidly, and yet with a certain emphasis.
Her husband glanced at her.
"What is it you want, Adelaide?" he said.
She gave a little laugh.
"Oh, I want nothing. It"s Mrs. Wayne who wants you to do something--rather difficult, too, I should imagine."
He turned gravely to their guest.
"What is it you want, Mrs. Wayne?"
Mrs. Wayne considered an instant, and as she was about to find words for her request her son spoke:
"She"ll tell you after dinner."
"Pete, I wasn"t going to tell the story," his mother put in protestingly.
"You really do me injustice at times."
Adelaide, remembering the conversation of the morning, wondered whether he did. She felt grateful to him for wishing to spare Mathilde the hearing of such a story, and she turned to him with a caressing graciousness in which she was extremely at her ease. Mathilde, recognizing that her mother was pleased, though not being very clear why, could not resist joining in their conversation; and Mrs. Wayne was thus given an opportunity of murmuring the unfortunate Anita"s story into Vincent"s ear.
Adelaide, holding Pete with a flattering gaze, seeming to drink in every word he was saying, heard Mrs. Wayne finish and heard Vincent say:
"And you think you can get it annulled if only Burke doesn"t interfere?"
"Yes, if he doesn"t get hold of the boy and tell him that his dignity as a man is involved."
Adelaide withdrew her gaze from Pete and fixed it on Vincent. Was he going to accept that challenge? She wanted him to, and yet she thought he would be defeated, and she did not want him to be defeated. She waited almost breathless.
"Well, I"ll see what I can do," he said. This was an acceptance.
This from Vincent meant that the matter, as far as he was concerned, was settled.
"You two plotters!" exclaimed Adelaide. "For my part, I"m on Marty Burke"s side. I hate to see wild creatures in cages."
"Dangerous to side with wild beasts," observed Vincent.
"Why?"
"They get the worst of it in the long run."
Adelaide dropped her eyes. It was exactly the right answer. For a moment she felt his complete supremacy. Then another thought shot through her mind: it was exactly the right answer if he could make it good.
In the meantime Mr. Lanley began to grow dissatisfied with the prolonged role of spectator. He preferred danger to oblivion; and turning to Mrs.
Wayne, he said, with his politest smile:
"How are the bridges?"
"Oh, dear," she answered, "I must have been terribly tactless--to make you so angry."
Mr. Lanley drew himself up.
"I was not angry," he said.
She looked at him with a sort of gentle wonder.
"You gave me the impression of being."
The very temperateness of the reply made him see that he had been inaccurate.
"Of course I was angry," he said. "What I mean is that I don"t understand why I was."
Meantime, on the opposite side of the table, Mathilde and Pete were equally immersed, murmuring sentences of the profoundest meaning behind faces which they felt were mask-like.
Farron looked down the table at his wife. Why, he wondered, did she want to tease him to-night, of all nights in his life?
When they came out of the dining-room Pete said to Mathilde with the utmost clearness:
"And what was that magazine you spoke of?"
She had spoken of no magazine, but she caught the idea, the clever, rather wicked idea. He made her work her mind almost too fast sometimes, but she enjoyed it.
"Wasn"t it this?" she asked, with a beating heart.
They sat down on the sofa and bent their heads over it with student-like absorption.
"I haven"t any idea what it is," she whispered.
"Oh, well, I suppose there"s something or other in it."