Mrs. Peyton reached home in the state of exhaustion which follows on a
physical struggle. It seemed to her as though her talk with Clemence Verney
had been an actual combat, a measuring of wrist and eye. For a moment she
was frightened at what she had done--she felt as though she had betrayed
her son to the enemy. But before long she regained her moral balance,
and saw that she had merely shifted the conflict to the ground on which
it could best be fought out--since the prize fought for was the natural
battlefield. The reaction brought with it a sense of helplessness, a
realization that she had let the issue pass out of her hold; but since, in
the last analysis, it had never lain there, since it was above all needful
that the determining touch should be given by any hand but hers, she
presently found courage to subside into inaction. She had done all she
could--even more, perhaps, than prudence warranted--and now she could but
await passively the working of the forces she had set in motion.
For two days after her talk with Miss Verney she saw little of Dick. He
went early to his office and came back late. He seemed less tired, more
self-possessed, than during the first days after Darrow’s death; but there
was a new inscrutableness in his manner, a note of reserve, of resistance
almost, as though he had barricaded himself against her conjectures. She
had been struck by Miss Verney’s reply to the anxious asseveration that
she had done nothing to influence Dick--“Nothing,” the girl had answered,
“except to read his thoughts.” Mrs. Peyton shrank from this detection of
a tacit interference with her son’s liberty of action. She longed--how
passionately he would never know--to stand apart from him in this struggle
between his two destinies, and it was almost a relief that he on his side
should hold aloof, should, for the first time in their relation, seem to
feel her tenderness as an intrusion.
Only four days remained before the date fixed for the sending in of the
designs, and still Dick had not referred to his work. Of Darrow, also, he
had made no mention. His mother longed to know if he had spoken to Clemence
Verney--or rather if the girl had forced his confidence. Mrs. Peyton was
almost certain that Miss Verney would not remain silent--there were times
when Dick’s renewed application to his work seemed an earnest of her having
spoken, and spoken convincingly. At the thought Kate’s heart grew chill.
What if her experiment should succeed in a sense she had not intended? If
the girl should reconcile Dick to his weakness, should pluck the sting from
his temptation? In this round of uncertainties the mother revolved for two
interminable days; but the second evening brought an answer to her
question.
Dick, returning earlier than usual from the office, had found, on the
hall-table, a note which, since morning, had been under his mother’s
observation. The envelope, fashionable in tint and texture, was addressed
in a rapid staccato hand which seemed the very imprint of Miss Verney’s
utterance. Mrs. Peyton did not know the girl’s writing; but such notes had
of late lain often enough on the hall-table to make their attribution easy.
This communication Dick, as his mother poured his tea, looked over with a
face of shifting lights; then he folded it into his note-case, and said,
with a glance at his watch: “If you haven’t asked any one for this evening
I think I’ll dine out.”
“Do, dear; the change will be good for you,” his mother assented.
He made no answer, but sat leaning back, his hands clasped behind his head,
his eyes fixed on the fire. Every line of his body expressed a profound
physical lassitude, but the face remained alert and guarded. Mrs. Peyton,
in silence, was busying herself with the details of the tea-making, when
suddenly, inexplicably, a question forced itself to her lips.
“And your work--?” she said, strangely hearing herself speak.
“My work--?” He sat up, on the defensive almost, but without a tremor of
the guarded face.
“You’re getting on well? You’ve made up for lost time?”
“Oh, yes: things are going better.” He rose, with another glance at his
watch. “Time to dress,” he said, nodding to her as he turned to the door.
It was an hour later, during her own solitary dinner, that a ring at the
door was followed by the parlour-maid’s announcement that Mr. Gill was
there from the office. In the hall, in fact, Kate found her son’s partner,
who explained apologetically that he had understood Peyton was dining at
home, and had come to consult him about a difficulty which had arisen since
he had left the office. On hearing that Dick was out, and that his mother
did not know where he had gone, Mr. Gill’s perplexity became so manifest
that Mrs. Peyton, after a moment, said hesitatingly: “He may be at a
friend’s house; I could give you the address.”
The architect caught up his hat. “Thank you; I’ll have a try for him.”
Mrs. Peyton hesitated again. “Perhaps,” she suggested, “it would be better
to telephone.”
She led the way into the little study behind the drawing-room, where
a telephone stood on the writing-table. The folding doors between the
two rooms were open: should she close them as she passed back into the
drawing-room? On the threshold she wavered an instant; then she walked on
and took her usual seat by the fire.
Gill, meanwhile, at the telephone, had “rung up” the Verney house, and
inquired if his partner were dining there. The reply was evidently
affirmative; and a moment later Kate knew that he was in communication with
her son. She sat motionless, her hands clasped on the arms of her chair,
her head erect, in an attitude of avowed attention. If she listened she
would listen openly: there should be no suspicion of eavesdropping. Gill,
engrossed in his message, was probably hardly conscious of her presence;
but if he turned his head he should at least have no difficulty in seeing
her, and in being aware that she could hear what he said. Gill, however, as
she was quick to remember, was doubtless ignorant of any need for secrecy
in his communication to Dick. He had often heard the affairs of the office
discussed openly before Mrs. Peyton, had been led to regard her as familiar
with all the details of her son’s work. He talked on unconcernedly, and she
listened.
Ten minutes later, when he rose to go, she knew all that she had wanted to
find out. Long familiarity with the technicalities of her son’s profession
made it easy for her to translate the stenographic jargon of the office.
She could lengthen out all Gill’s abbreviations, interpret all his
allusions, and reconstruct Dick’s answers from the questions addressed to
him. And when the door closed on the architect she was left face to face
with the fact that her son, unknown to any one but herself, was using
Darrow’s drawings to complete his work.
* * * * *
Mrs. Peyton, left alone, found it easier to continue her vigil by the
drawing-room fire than to carry up to the darkness and silence of her own
room the truth she had been at such pains to acquire. She had no thought of
sitting up for Dick. Doubtless, his dinner over, he would rejoin Gill at
the office, and prolong through, the night the task in which she now knew
him to be engaged. But it was less lonely by the fire than in the wide-eyed
darkness which awaited her upstairs. A mortal loneliness enveloped her. She
felt as though she had fallen by the way, spent and broken in a struggle of
which even its object had been unconscious. She had tried to deflect the
natural course of events, she had sacrificed her personal happiness to a
fantastic ideal of duty, and it was her punishment to be left alone with
her failure, outside the normal current of human strivings and regrets.
She had no wish to see her son just then: she would have preferred to let
the inner tumult subside, to repossess herself in this new adjustment to
life, before meeting his eyes again. But as she sat there, far adrift on
her misery, she was aroused by the turning of his key in the latch. She
started up, her heart sounding a retreat, but her faculties too dispersed
to obey it; and while she stood wavering, the door opened and he was in the
room.
In the room, and with face illumined: a Dick she had not seen since the
strain of the contest had cast its shade on him. Now he shone as in a
sunrise of victory, holding out exultant hands from which she hung back
instinctively.
“Mother! I knew you’d be waiting for me!” He had her on his breast now, and
his kisses were in her hair. “I’ve always said you knew everything that was
happening to me, and now you’ve guessed that I wanted you to-night.”
She was struggling faintly against the dear endearments. “What _has_
happened?” she murmured, drawing back for a dazzled look at him.
He had drawn her to the sofa, had dropped beside her, regaining his hold of
her in the boyish need that his happiness should be touched and handled.
“My engagement has happened!” he cried out to her. “You stupid dear, do you
need to be told?”