Margot ran across the room and kissed me. “Oh, I’m so happy, papa!” she
cried.
“Is it the duke?” I asked.
She made a wry face. “He was horrid!” she said. “I couldn’t _endure_
him.”
“So you had to fall back on the marquis?”
Neither of the women liked this way of putting the matter. It suggested
that I knew the painful truth of the failure of the ducal campaign. But
they were not to be put out of humor. “You liked him yourself, papa,”
said Margot.
I was abstractedly thinking how I had no sense of her being my
daughter or of Edna being my wife. You would say that after all we
three had been through together, from Passaic up, it would be a sheer
impossibility for there ever to be a sense of strangeness between us.
But there is no limit to the power of the human soul to cut itself off;
intimacy is hard to maintain, isolation--alas--is the natural state.
I looked on them as strangers; I could feel that, in spite of their
clever, resolute forcing, in spite of the hypocrisy of love for me
which each doubtless maintained at all times with the other, still they
could scarcely hide their feeling that I was a strange man come in from
the street.
“Yes, I liked Crossley,” said I. “I think he’ll make you a good
husband.”
“He is _mad_ about her!” said Edna. “There was a while this summer when
he thought he had lost her, and he all but went out of his mind.”
To look at her was to believe it; for, a lovelier girl was never
displayed in all her physical perfection by a more discriminating
mother.
“When is the wedding to be?” said I.
There was a brief, surcharged silence--no more than a pause. Then Edna
said indifferently, “As soon as the settlements are arranged.”
“Oh--is he settling something on her?” said I, with pretended
innocence. “I’m glad of that. There’s been too much of the other sort
of thing.”
Margot came to the rescue with a charming laugh. “Poor Hugh!” she said.
“He hasn’t anything but mortgages.”
“Um--I see,” said I glumly--and I observed intense anxiety behind the
smiles in those two pairs of beautiful eyes. “How much have we got to
pay for him?”
Edna looked reproachfully at me. “Margot,” said she, “you’d better go
tell them to serve lunch in fifteen minutes.”
“Nonsense,” said I cheerfully. “Let her stay. What’s the use of this
hypocrisy? She knows he cares no more about her than she cares about
him--that it’s simply a matter of buying and selling. If she doesn’t
know it, if she’s letting her vanity bamboozle her----”
“Godfrey--please!” implored Edna. “Don’t smirch the child’s romance.
She and Hugh love each other. If she were poor, he’d marry her just the
same.”
“Has he offered to go ahead, regardless of settlements?” I asked.
“Of course not, papa,” flashed Margot. “Things aren’t done that way
over here.”
“Oh, yes, they are,” replied I. “Romantic love matches occur every day.
Even royalty throws up its rights, to marry a chorus girl. But when
there’s a fat American goose to pluck and eat, why, they pluck and eat
it. I’m the goose, my dear--not you.”
“You don’t understand,” murmured Margot.
“I wish I didn’t,” said I. “And I wish you didn’t have to understand.
If possible I want to arrange matters with him so that he’ll always
treat you decently.”
“But, Godfrey,” cried Edna in a panic, “you can’t talk money to _him_.”
“Why not?” said I. “He’s _thinking_ money. Why shouldn’t he talk it?”
“He knows nothing about those things, papa----”