Larry did not return for dinner, which Isabelle ate by herself in sombre
silence. When she went upstairs to take the mother's place with the boy,
Margaret did not seem to notice her husband's absence, though she inquired
repeatedly whether the New York doctor had telephoned. Later in the evening
when Isabelle suggested that some effort should be made to find the boy's
father, Margaret exclaimed impatiently:--
"I can't tell where he is! ... It is easier for me that he isn't here." And
in answer to Isabelle's expression, she added: "Don't look so shocked, B!
Larry gets on my nerves frightfully when there is anything extra to bear or
do. Of course I shall telephone his office in the morning, and he will come
out at once. That doctor said there would be no change before morning. Do
you suppose he knows anything, that doctor? He had the look of polite
ignorance!"
The New York doctor arrived towards midnight with a nurse, and stayed the
night to await developments. Margaret still sat by the boy's bed, and
Isabelle left her huddled in a large chair, her eyes staring at the shadow
on the faintly lighted bed. She had listened to what Dr. Rogers had to say
without a word. She was almost stone, Isabelle felt, looking at her with
some awe. What could have made her like this!
She was still in this stony mood the next morning when Larry reached the
house. Dressed in a loose black gown that clung to her slight figure and
brought out the perfect whiteness of her skin, she stood and listened
indifferently to the vague explanation of his absence that her husband
poured out profusely. Then with a remark that the doctor would see him
before he went, she left the room. Isabelle, who was present, watched the
two keenly, trying to divine the secret. To be sure, Larry was not
attractive, she decided,--too effusive, too anxious to make the right
impression, as if he were acting a part before Isabelle, and full of wordy
concern for every one. A little below the medium height, he stood very
erect, consciously making the most of his inches. His sandy hair was thin,
and he wore glasses, behind which one eye kept winking nervously. Neatly,
almost fashionably dressed, he bore no evident marks of dissipation. After
Conny's description, Isabelle had expected to see his shortcomings written
all over him. Though he was over-mannered and talkative, there was nothing
to mark him as of the outcast class. "One doesn't despise one's husband
because he's foolish or unfortunate about money matters," Isabelle said to
herself. And the sympathy that she had felt for Margaret began to
evaporate.
"You say that he fell off that embankment?" Larry remarked to her. "I was
afraid he was too young to ride about here by himself with all the motors
there are in this neighborhood. But Margaret was anxious to have him
fearless.... People who motor are so careless--it has become a curse in the
country.... Mrs. Woodyard came out with you? I am so sorry this frightful
accident spoiled your day."...
He ran on from remark to remark, with no prompting from Isabelle, and had
got to their life in Germany when the doctor entered the room. Larry shook
hands punctiliously with him, inquiring in a special tone: "I hope you have
good news of the little fellow, Doctor? I thought I would not go up until I
had seen you first."...
The doctor cut short the father's prolixity in a burly voice:--
"It's concussion, passing off, I think. But nobody can say what will happen
then,--whether there is anything wrong with the cord. It may clear up in a
few days. It may not. No use speculating.... I shall be back to-morrow or
send some one. Good day."
Larry followed him into the hall, talking, questioning, exclaiming.
Isabella noticed that the doctor gave Pole a quick, impatient glance,
shaking him off with a curt reply, and jumped into the waiting carriage. In
some ways men read men more rapidly than women can. They look for fewer
details, with an eye to the essential stuff of character.
What had the doctor said to Margaret? Had he let her know his evident
fears? When she came into the room for a moment, there was an expression of
fixed will in her white face, as if she had gone down into herself and
found there the courage to meet whatever was coming.... 'The older boy,
too,' thought Isabelle,--'the one so like her, with no outward trace of the
father!'
While Margaret was giving directions for telephoning, making in brief
phrases her arrangements for the day, Falkner came in. He was in his
working clothes, and with his thick beard and scrubby mustache looked quite
rough beside the trim Larry.
"How is the boy?" he demanded directly, going up to the mother.
"Better, I think,--comfortable at least," she answered gently. There was a
warm gleam in her eyes as she spoke to this stranger, as if she had felt
his fibre and liked it.
"I will come in this afternoon. I should like to see him when I can."
"Yes, this afternoon," Margaret replied. "I should be glad to have you
come."
Isabelle had told Pole that Falkner was the man who had found the boy and
brought him home. Larry, with the subtle air of superiority that clothes
seem to give a small man, thanked Falkner in suitable language. Isabelle
had the suspicion that he was debating with himself whether he should give
this workingman a couple of dollars for his trouble, and with an hysterical
desire to laugh interposed:--
"Mr. Pole, this is Mr. Falkner, an old friend of ours!"
"Oh," Larry remarked, "I didn't understand!" and he looked at Falkner
again, still from a distance.
"Rob," Isabelle continued, turning to Falkner, "you didn't tell me
yesterday how Bessie is. I haven't heard from her for a long while,--and
Mildred?"
"They are well, I believe. Bessie doesn't write often."
Pole followed him into the hall, making remarks. Isabelle heard Falkner
reply gruffly: "Yes, it was a nasty fall. But a kid can fall a good way
without hurting himself seriously."
When Pole came back and began to talk to her, Isabelle's sympathy for his
wife revived. The house had settled into the dreary imitation of its
customary routine that the house of suspense takes on. To live in this,
with the mild irritation of Larry's conversational fluency, was quite
intolerable. It was not what he said, but the fact that he was forever
saying it. "A bag of words," Isabelle called him. "Poor Margaret!" And she
concluded that there was nothing more useful for her to do than to take
upon herself the burden of Larry until he should dispose of himself in some
harmless way.