THE next evening Miss Forbes dressed for a dinner party in a
very bad humour.
Her mother was prostrated with a violent headache and had been obliged
to send an excuse.
“Such a dreadful thing to do,” grumbled Augusta to her maid as she
revolved before the pier glass. “Have you asked Marie the particulars?
Is my mother really ill?”
“Dreadful, I believe, miss.”
“It makes me feel heartless to leave her, but one of us must go, that
is certain. Can I see her?”
“No, miss. She is trying to sleep.”
“People may have an idea that the path of an American heiress who is
going to marry an English Duke is strewn with Jacqueminots; I wish they
knew what I have gone through in the last month. I wish to heaven papa
would come over.”
It was a bright and lively dinner given by a very young and
newly-titled United Statesian, who treated the British peerage as a
large and lovely joke, and was accepted on much the same footing. The
Duke, who had pulled himself together since the swerve in his fortunes,
looked something more of a man. His cheeks had more colour and his
eye-belongings less. He held himself erectly and talked well. Augusta
bored him hideously, but he reflected that a Duke need see little of
his Duchess, and filled his present _rôle_ creditably. Fletcher
Cuyler as usual was the life of the company, and even Augusta forgot to
be intellectual.
A theatre party followed the dinner. Augusta returned to the hotel
a little after midnight. As she opened the door of the private
drawing-room of Mrs. Forbes’ suite, she saw with surprise that her
mother was sitting by one of the tables.
“I thought you were in bed with a headache,” she began, and then
uttered an exclamation of alarm and went hastily forward.
Mrs. Forbes, as white as the dead, her hair unbound and dishevelled,
her eyes swollen, sat with clenched hands pressed hard against her
cheeks.
“Mother!” exclaimed Augusta. “You--you look terribly. How you must have
suffered. Has the pain gone?”
“Yes, the pain has gone.”
“Well, I am glad you are better----”
“It will be a long while before I am better. Oh, I want your father!
Cable to him! Go for him! Do anything, only bring him here.”
“I’ll cable this minute if you are really ill. But what is the matter?”
Mrs. Forbes muttered something. Augusta bent her ear. “What?” she
asked. Her mother repeated what she had said. As Augusta lifted her
head her face was scarlet.
“Gracious goodness!” she ejaculated. “Who would ever have thought of
such a thing?” She walked aimlessly to the window, then returned to her
mother. “Well,” she added, “it’s nothing to be so upset about. It isn’t
as if it were your first. And papa will be delighted.”
Mrs. Forbes flung her arms over the table, her head upon them, and
burst into wild sobbing.
“Good heavens, mother, don’t take on so,” cried her daughter. “What
good could papa do if he were here? I hope I’ll never have a baby if
it affects one like that.”
She hovered over her mother, much embarrassed. She was not heartless
and would have been glad to relieve her distress; but inasmuch as she
was incapable of such distress herself she comprehended not the least
of what possessed her mother. She took refuge upon the plane where she
was ever at home.
“I have always said,” she announced, “that it is not a good thing for
American men to spoil their wives as they do, and particularly as papa
spoils you. Here you are in the most ordinary predicament that can
befall a woman, and yet you are utterly demoralized because he is not
here to pet you and make you think you are the only woman that ever had
a baby. And upon my word,” she added reflectively, “I believe he would
be perfectly happy if he were here. I can just see the fuss he would
make over you----”
Here her mother’s sobs became so violent that she was roused to genuine
concern.
“I’ll cable at once,” she said. “But what shall I cable? I don’t know
how to intimate such a thing, and I certainly can’t say it right out.”
“I will write. Give me the things.” Mrs. Forbes raised her disfigured
face and pushed back her hair. “It will make me feel better. Of course
you cannot cable without alarming him, and he has had enough.”
Augusta brought the writing materials with alacrity. Mrs. Forbes wrote
two lines. The tears splashed on the paper.
“Those will look like real tears,” said Augusta reassuringly. “Once
I helped Mabel write a letter breaking off an engagement, and she
sprinkled it with the hair-brush. I am sure he must have guessed. Here,
I’ll send it right away, and then you’ll feel better.”
She summoned a bell-boy and dispatched the letter. “There!” she said,
patting her mother’s head. “He’ll be sure to come over now, and all
will go as merry as a marriage-bell--my marriage-bell. Tell me, mamma,
don’t you feel that this is a special little intervention of Providence
to bring things about just as we want them? Aren’t you glad that this
is the end of doubt and worry, and that you can keep your houses and
lovely jewels?”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Forbes wearily. “I want nothing but my
husband.”