Farron cared, perhaps, no more for appearances than Adelaide did, but
his habitual manner was much better adapted to concealment. In him the
fluctuations between the deepest depression and the highest elation were
accompanied by such slight variations of look and tone that they escaped
almost every one but Adelaide herself. He came down to dinner that
evening, and while Adelaide sat in silence, with her elbows on the table
and her long fingers clasping and unclasping themselves in a sort of
rhythmic desperation, conversation went on pleasantly enough between
Mathilde and Vincent. This was facilitated by the fact that Mathilde had
now transferred to Vincent the flattering affection which she used to
give to her grandfather. She agreed with, wondered at, and drank in
every word.
Naturally, Mathilde attributed her mother’s distress to the crisis in her
own love-affairs. She had had no word with her as to Wayne’s new
position, and it came to her in a flash that it would be daring, but
wise, to take the matter up in the presence of her stepfather. So, as
soon as they were in the drawing-room, and Farron had opened the evening
paper, and his wife, with a wild decision, had opened a book, Mathilde
ruthlessly interrupted them both, recalling them from what appeared to be
the depths of absorptions in their respective pages by saying:
“Mr. Farron, did you tell Mama what you had done about Pete?”
Farron raised his eyes and said:
“Yes.”
“And what did she say?”
“What is there for me to say?” answered Adelaide in the terrible, crisp
voice that Mathilde hated.
There was a pause. To Mathilde it seemed extraordinary the way older
people sometimes stalled and shifted about perfectly obvious issues; but,
wishing to be patient, she explained:
“Don’t you see it makes some difference in our situation?”
“The greatest, I should think,” said Adelaide, and just hinted that she
might go back to her book at any instant.
“But don’t you think--” Mathilde began again, when Farron interrupted her
almost sharply.
“Mathilde,” he said, “there’s a well-known business axiom, not to try to
get things on paper too early.”
She bent her head a trifle on one side in the way a puppy will when an
unusual strain is being put upon its faculties. It seemed to her curious,
but she saw she was being advised to drop the subject. Suddenly Adelaide
sprang to her feet and said she was going to bed.
“I hope your headache will be better, Mama,” Mathilde hazarded; but
Adelaide went without answering. Mathilde looked at Mr. Farron.
“You haven’t learned to wait,” he said.
“It’s so hard to wait when you are on bad terms with people you love!”
She was surprised that he smiled--a smile that conveyed more pain than
amusement.
“It is hard,” he said.
This closed the evening. The next morning Vincent went down-town. He
went about half-past ten. Adelaide, breakfasting in her room and dressing
at her leisure, did not appear until after eleven, and then discovered
for the first time that her husband had gone. She was angry at Mathilde,
who had breakfasted with him, at Pringle, for not telling her what was
happening.
“You shouldn’t have let him go, Mathilde,” she said. “You are old enough
to have some judgment in such matters. He is not strong enough. He almost
fainted yesterday.”
“But, Mama,” protested the girl, “I could not stop Mr. Farron. I don’t
think even you could have if he’d made up his mind.”
“Tell Pringle to order the motor at once,” was her mother’s answer.
Her distraction at her husband’s imprudence touched Mathilde so that she
forgot everything else between them.
“O Mama,” she said, “I’m so sorry you’re worried! I’m sorry I’m one of
your worries; but don’t you see I love Pete just as you do Mr. Farron?”
“God help you, then!” said Adelaide, quickly, and went to her room to
put on with a haste none the less meticulous her small velvet hat, her
veil, her spotless, pale gloves, her muff, and warm coat.
She drove to Vincent’s office. It was not really care for his health that
drove her, but the restlessness of despair; she had reached a point where
she was more wretched away from him than with him.
The office was high in a gigantic building. Every one knew her by sight,
the giant at the door and the men in the elevators. Once in the office
itself, a junior partner hurried to her side.
“So glad to see Vincent back again,” he said, proud of the fact that he
called his present partner and late employer by his first name. “You want
to see him?” There was a short hesitation. “He left word not to be
disturbed--”
“Who is there?” Adelaide asked.
“Dr. Parret.”
“He’s not been taken ill?”
He tried to reassure her, but Adelaide, without waiting or listening,
moved at once to Vincent’s door and opened it. As she did so she heard
him laughing and then she saw that he was laughing at the words of the
handsomest woman she had ever seen. A great many people had this first
impression of Lily Parret. Lily was standing on the opposite side of the
table from him, leaning with both palms flat on the polished wood,
telling him some continued narrative that made her blue eyes shine and
her dimples deepen.
Adelaide was not temperamentally jealous. She did not, like Vincent, hate
and fear any person or thing or idea that drew his attention away; on the
contrary, she wanted him to give his full attention to anything that
would make for his power and success. She was not jealous, but it did
cross her mind that she was looking now at her successor.
They stopped laughing as she entered, and Vincent said:
“Thank you, Dr. Parret, you have given me just what I wanted.”
“Marty would just as lief as not stick a knife in me if he knew,” said
Lily, not as if she were afraid, but as if this was one of the normal
risks of her profession. She turned to Adelaide, “O Mrs. Farron, I’ve
heard of you from Pete Wayne. Isn’t he perfectly delightful? But, then,
he ought to be with such a mother.”
Adelaide had a very useful smile, which could maintain a long, but
somewhat meaningless, brilliance. She employed it now, and it lasted
until Lily had gone.
“That’s a very remarkable girl,” said Farron, remembrances of smiles
still on his lips.
“Does she think every one perfect?”
“Almost every one; that’s how she keeps going at such a rate.”
“How long have you known her?”
“About ten minutes. Pete got her here. She knew something about Marty
that I needed.” He spoke as if he was really interested in the business
before him; he did not betray by so much as a glance the recognition that
they were alone, though she was calling his attention to the fact by
every line of her figure and expression of her face. She saw his hand
move on his desk. Was it coming to hers? He rang a bell. “Is Burke in the
outer office? Send him in.”
Adelaide’s heart began to beat as Marty, in his working-clothes,
entered. He was more suppressed and more sulky than she had yet seen him.
“I’ve been trying to see you, Mr. Farron,” he began; but Vincent cut in:
“One moment, Burke. I have something to say to you. That bout you said
you had with O’Hallohan--”
“Well, what of it?” answered Marty, suddenly raising his voice.
“He knocked you out.”
“Who says so?” roared Burke.
“He knocked you out,” repeated Vincent.
“Who says so?” Burke roared again, and somehow there was less confidence
in the same volume of sound.
“Well, not O’Hallohan; He stayed bought. But I have it straight. No, I’m
not trying to draw you out on a guess. I don’t play that kind of game. If
I tell you I know it for a fact, I do.”
“Well, and what of it?” said Marty.
“Just this. I wouldn’t dismiss a man for getting knocked out by a
bigger man--”
“He ain’t bigger.”
“By a better fighter, then; but I doubt whether or not I want a
foreman who has to resort to that kind of thing--to buying off the man
who licked--”
“I didn’t _buy_ him off,” said Burke, as if he knew the distinction, even
in his own mind, was a fine one.
“Oh, yes, you did,” answered Farron. And getting up, with his hands in
his pockets, he added, “I’m afraid your usefulness to me is over, Burke.”
“The hell it is!”
“My wife is here, Marty,” said Farron, very pleasantly. “But this story
isn’t the only thing I have against you. My friend Mrs. Wayne tells me
you are exerting a bad influence over a fellow whose marriage she wants
to get annulled.”
“Oh, let ’em get it annulled!” shouted Marty on a high and rising key.
“What do I care? I’ll do anything to oblige if I’m asked right; but when
Mrs. Wayne and that gang come around bullying me, I won’t do a thing for
them. But, if you ask me to, Mr. Farron, why, I’m glad to oblige you.”
“Thank you, Marty,” returned his employer, cordially. “If you arrange
that for me, I must own it would make me feel differently. I tell
you,” he added, as one who suggests an honorable compromise, “you get
that settled up, you get that marriage annulled--that is, if you think
you can--”
“Sure I can,” Burke replied, swaying his body about from the waist up, as
if to indicate the ease with which it could be accomplished.
“Well, when that’s done, come back, and we’ll talk over the other matter.
Perhaps, after all--well, we’ll talk it over.”
Burke walked to the door with his usual conquering step, but there
turned.
“Say,” he said, “that story about the fight--” He looked at Adelaide.
“Ladies don’t always understand these matters. Tell her, will you, that
it’s done in some first-class fights?”
“I’ll explain,” answered Vincent.
“And there ain’t any use in the story’s getting about,” Burke added.
“It won’t,” said Vincent. On which assurance Marty went away and left the
husband and wife alone.
Adelaide got up and went to the window and looked out toward the
Palisades. Marty Burke had been a symbol that enabled her to recall some
of her former attitudes of mind. She remembered that dinner where she had
pitted him against her husband. She felt deeply humiliated in her own
sight and in Vincent’s, for she was now ready to believe that he had read
her mind from the beginning. It seemed to her as if she had been mad, and
in that madness had thrown away the only thing in the world she would
ever value. The thought of acknowledging her fault was not repugnant to
her; she had no special objection to groveling, but she knew it would do
no good. Vincent, though not ungenerous, saw clearly; and he had summed
up the situation in that terrible phrase about choosing between loving
and being loved. “I suppose I shouldn’t respect him much if he did
forgive me,” she thought; and suddenly she felt his arms about her; he
snatched her to him, turned her face to his, calling her by strange,
unpremeditated terms of endearment. Beyond these, no words at all were
exchanged between them; they were undesired. Adelaide did not know
whether it were servile or superb to care little about knowing his
opinion and intentions in regard to her. All that she cared about was
that in her eyes he was once more supreme and that his arms were about
her. Words, she knew, would have been her enemies, and she did not make
use of them.
When they went out, they passed Wayne in the outer office.
“Come to dinner to-night, Pete,” said Farron, and added, turning to his
wife, “That’s all right, isn’t it, Adelaide?”
She indicated that it was perfect, like everything he did.
Wayne looked at his future mother-in-law in surprise. His pride had been
unforgetably stung by some of her sentences, but he could have forgiven
those more easily than the easy smile with which she now nodded at her
husband’s invitation, as if a pleasant intention on her part could wipe
out everything that had gone before. That, it seemed to him, was the very
essence of insolence.
Appreciating that some sort of doubt was disturbing him, Adelaide said
most graciously:
“Yes, you really must come, Mr. Wayne.”
At this moment Farron’s own stenographer, Chandler, approached him with
an unsigned letter in his hand.
Chandler took the routine of the office more seriously than Farron did,
and acquired thereby a certain power over his employer. He had something
of the attitude of a child’s nurse, who, knowing that her charge has
almost passed beyond her care, recognizes that she has no authority
except that bestowed by devotion.
“I think you meant to sign this letter, Mr. Farron,” he said, just as a
nurse might say before strangers, “You weren’t going to the party
without washing your hands?”
“Oh.” Farron fished in his waistcoat for his pen, and while he was
writing, and Chandler just keeping an eye on him to see that it was done
right, Adelaide said:
“And how is Mrs. Chandler?”
Chandler’s face lit up as he received the letter back.
“Oh, much better, thank you, Mrs. Farron--out of all danger.”
Wayne saw, what Chandler did not, that Adelaide had never even heard of
Mrs. Chandler’s ill health; but she murmured as she turned away:
“I’m so glad. You must have been very anxious.”
When they were gone, Wayne and Chandler were left a minute alone.
“What a personality!” Chandler exclaimed. “Imagine her remembering my
troubles, when you think what she has had to worry about! A remarkable
couple, Mr. Wayne. I have been up to the house a number of times since
Mr. Farron’s illness, and she is always there, so brave, so attentive. A
queenly woman, and,” he added, as if the two did not always go together,
“a good wife.”
Wayne could think of no answer to this eulogy, and as they stood in
silence the office door opened and Mr. Lanley came in. He nodded to each
of the two, and moved to Vincent’s room.
“Mr. Farron has just gone,” said Chandler, firmly. He could not bear to
have people running in and out of Farron’s room.
“Gone?” said Lanley, as if it were somebody’s fault.
“Mrs. Farron came down for him in the motor. He appeared to stand his
first day very well.”
Mr. Lanley glanced quickly from one to the other. This did not sound as
if any final break had occurred between the Farrons, yet on this subject
he could hardly question his son-in-law’s secretaries. He made one
further effort.
“I suppose Mr. Farron thought he was good for a whole day’s work.”
Chandler smiled.
“Mr. Farron, like all wise men, sir, does what his wife tells him.” And
then, as he loved his own work far more than conversation, Chandler
hurried back to his desk.
“I understand,” said Lanley to Wayne, “that you are here regularly now.”
“Yes.”
“Like your work?” Lanley was obviously delaying, hoping that some
information would turn up unexpectedly.
“Very much.”
“Humph! What does your mother think about it?”
“About my new job?” Wayne smiled. “You know those aren’t the kind of
facts--jobs and salaries--that my mother scrutinizes very closely.”
Lanley stared at him with brows slightly contracted.
“What does she scrutinize?” he asked.
“Oh, motives--spiritual things.”
“I see.” Mr. Lanley couldn’t go a step further, couldn’t take this young
man into his confidence an inch further. He stuck his stick into his
overcoat-pocket so that it stood upright, and wheeled sharply.
“Good-by,” he said, and added at the door, “I suppose you think this
makes a difference in your prospects.”
“Mrs. Farron has asked me to come to dinner to-night.”
Lanley wheeled back again.
“What?” he said.
“Yes, she almost urged me, though I didn’t need urging.”
Lanley didn’t answer, but presently went out in silence. He was
experiencing the extreme loneliness that follows being more royalist
than the king.