A CASE OF NECESSITY
She told Rush when they left the table, that she had some shopping to do
in town for Paula and meant to go on the afternoon train. She was
expected back at Ravinia to-morrow anyhow. Beyond trying to persuade her
to let Pete drive her in he made no protest, but she could see that he
was troubled about it and she wasn't much surprised to find Wallace Hood
waiting on the station platform when her train got in.
She didn't, very much, mind Wallace. There was no appearance of his being
there in the rôle of guardian because she wasn't considered safe to leave
to herself. You could always trust Wallace to do a thing like that
perfectly.
It was a great piece of luck for him he told her. He had called up
Hickory Hill to congratulate John upon Paula's enormous success; had
learned from Rush of Mary's visit and that she was even then on the way
to Chicago. He had just dropped round at the station in the hope of being
able to pick her up for dinner. She had some shopping to do he understood
and he wouldn't detain her now.
"Oh, nothing that matters a bit," said Mary. "It was an excuse merely,
for running away from Hickory Hill."
There was something to be said for a man like Wallace as a confidant. He
was perfectly safe not to guess anything on his own account. He seemed
touched by her candor and hugged her arm against his side as they walked
along, a gesture of endearment such as he hadn't indulged in for half a
dozen years.
"So if you have nothing better to do," she went on, "we can begin
our evening now. Though I suppose I had better find, first, a place
to sleep."
"Frederica Whitney's in town for a day or two, just for a flying visit
to Martin. She'd be glad to take you in, I'm sure."
"Oh, I think not," said Mary. "Not if I can get anything with four walls
at the Blackstone."
She thought from his glance at her that he attached some special
significance to her unwillingness to go to the Whitney house and hastened
to assure him this was not the case.
"Frederica's a dear. Only I just happen to feel like not being anybody's
guest to-night. Oh, and I didn't mean you by that either."
"It's nice to be nobody in that sense," he said.
His next suggestion was that he get his car, start north up the shore
with her, have dinner at one of the taverns along the road and deliver
her in good season for a night's sleep in the cottage at Ravinia.
But this suggestion was declined rather more curtly.
"To-morrow is as soon as I want to go there," she said. "Pete's going
over then to get father so I shall go on duty. But meanwhile I'll let him
enjoy his holiday in peace."
He made no further demur to telephoning over to the Blackstone.
On his coming back presently with the news that he had a room for her,
she said, "Then we've nothing on our minds, have we? Except finding a
place for dinner that's quiet and--not too romantic. I _am_ glad you came
to meet me."
She was quite sincere about this. It would have been ghastly she
reflected, to have spent the evening alone in a hotel bedroom with her
own thoughts, if those she had entertained on the train coming in were a
fair sample.
He was being just as nice to her as possible. By his old-fashioned
standards, no hotel was a proper place for a young girl to spend a night
in alone. Yet beyond offering two alternative suggestions, he forbore
trying to dissuade her. So when he chose the Saddle and Cycle as their
anchorage for the evening, she endorsed his choice with the best
appearance of enthusiasm she could muster, though she'd rather have gone
to a place where three out of four of the other diners wouldn't in all
probability be known to her.
Arriving, however, in the unclassified hour between tea and dinner, they
found they had the place pretty much to themselves and settled down in a
secluded angle of the veranda for a leisurely visit. They began on Paula,
of course, her retrieved failure and her sensational success. How sorry
Wallace was not to have been there for her "Nedda." (He didn't go in much
for Sunday entertainments of any sort, Mary remembered.) Well, it had
been just as splendid as everybody said it was. That was one thing, at
any rate, that had been put beyond discussion. Even the pundits were, for
the moment anyhow, silenced.
He was curious as to how the intimate details of this strange life she
had a chance to observe, struck her. How she liked Paula's colleagues; to
what extent the glamour evaporated when one was behind the scenes.
She satisfied him as well as she could, though her opportunities, she
said, were a good deal narrower than he took them to be. She had,
herself, so much to do as Paula's factotem that there wasn't much leisure
for loafing about. And this launched her into a humorously exaggerated
account of what was involved in being secretary, chauffeur and chaperon
to a successful opera star. But she pulled up when she saw he was taking
it seriously.
"It's shocking she should work you like that," he said in a burst of
undisguised indignation. "Of course, it's precisely what Paula would do.
She has very little common consideration, I'm afraid, for anybody."
Mary could not remember having heard him speak like that, in all the
years she'd known him, of anybody; she was sure he never had so spoken of
any one who bore the name of Wollaston. Taken aback as she was she
changed her tune altogether and tried to reassure him.
"But that's what I'm there for, Wallace dear! To be worked. And you've
no idea how I like having something to do which amounts, in a small way,
to a job."
"It's too hard for you, though," he persisted. "It isn't what you were
trained for. And it's rather, as I said,--shocking. If it was all
understood from the first, then so much the worse for the understanding.
I hope your father, when he went up there, didn't discover what your
duties were supposed to be."
"No," Mary said rather dryly, "I don't believe he did."
"Well," he said thoughtfully, at the end of a short silence, "I am
profoundly thankful that she's made so--solid a success."
Up to this moment none of their talk had been quite real to Mary. She had
betrayed no inattention to him and when it had come her turn to carry on
the conversational stream she had done so adequately and even with a
certain vivacity. But it had meant no more than an occupation; something
that passed the time and held her potential thoughts at bay.
This last observation of his, though, struck a different note. He had
done full justice to his pleasure in Paula's success at the very
beginning of their talk. Now he meant something by it. Leaning forward a
little for a keener look at him, she asked what it was that he meant.
He was a little surprised to be brought to book like that, but he made
hardly an effort to fence with her. "I was glad, I meant, for purely
non-sentimental reasons. Her success may prove, I suppose, a practical
solution of some difficulties."
"Practical?" she echoed. "You don't mean,--yes, I suppose you do
mean,--money difficulties. Do you mean that Paula's going to be invited
to support the family now?" She finished with a little laugh and he
winced at it. "Father said something like that to me one day while I was
down south with him," she explained. "Only he said it as a joke,--a sort
of joke. That's why I laughed."
"He talked to you then about his affairs?" Wallace asked. "May I ... Do
you mind telling me what he said?"
"Of course not, if I can remember. He'd been remiss, he said, about
making money. He said that if he had died, then when he was so ill, there
wouldn't have been, beyond his life insurance which was for Paula, much
more than enough to pay his debts. Practically nothing for Rush and me is
what that came to. I pointed out to him that we could take care of
ourselves, and he said that anyway as soon as he could get back into
practise, he'd begin to make a lot of money and save. It must be a good
deal worse,--the whole situation I mean--than I took it to be, for you to
mean that seriously about Paula."
She had managed an appearance of composure but in truth she was badly
shaken. Money matters was just about the one real taboo that she
respected and to break over this habitual reticence even with an old
friend like Wallace troubled her delicacy. The notion she got from the
look in his face that there was something dubious about her father's
solvency, was terrifying. She hid her hands under the table so that he
shouldn't see they were trembling. She wanted the truth from him now,
rather than vaguely comforting generalties, and if she betrayed her real
feelings, these latter were what she would drive him back upon.
"Can you tell me," she asked after a pause, "exactly how bad it is?"
He couldn't furnish details. He told her though that there couldn't be
any doubt her father's affairs were more involved than his summary of
them had made them appear. "He isn't a very good bookkeeper, of
course,--never was; and he has never taken remonstrances very seriously.
Why, about all I know is that Martin Whitney is worried. He tried to
dissuade John from going in anywhere near so heavily on the Hickory Hill
project.--And that, of course, was before we had any reason to suppose
that his ability to earn money was going to be ..."
It was apparent that he discarded the word that came to his tongue here
and cast about for another; "interfered with," was what he finally hit
upon. "Then he's your aunt's trustee and I believe that complicates the
situation, though just how much I don't know. Rush didn't get a letter
from Martin this morning, did he?"
"I don't know," Mary said numbly.
"I thought perhaps," he explained, "that might be the reason why you
didn't want to go to their house tonight. Rush doesn't quite understand
Martin's position nor do justice to it. Martin wants to have a really
thorough talk with him I know, as soon as possible."
"Wallace ..." Mary asked, after another silence, "what was the word
you didn't say when you spoke of father's earning power
being--interfered with? Was it--cut off? Do you mean that father
isn't--ever going to be well?"
Startled as he was, he did not attempt a total denial; answered her,
though with an effort, candidly.
"It's not hopeless, at all," he assured her. "It really is not. If he'll
rest, live an outdoor life for the next year or two, he has a good chance
to become a well man again. It's probable that he will,--practically so.
But if he attempts to take up his practise in the autumn it will simply
be, so Darby declares, suicide."
"That means tuberculosis, I suppose," she said.
He nodded; then involuntarily he reached his hands out toward her, a
gesture rare with him and eloquent equally of sympathy and consternation.
He hadn't in the least meant to tell her all that--nor indeed any of it.
Her hands met his with a warm momentary pressure and then withdrew. He
had, for a fact, pretty well forgotten where they were.
"If you knew," she said, "how kind you've been not to try to--spare me.
No, don't bother. I'm not going to cry. Just give me a minute..."
It was less than that before she asked, in a tone reassuringly steady,
"Does father know, himself?"
"He's been warned, but he's skeptical. Steinmetz says there's nothing
surprising about that. It's his all but universal experience with men of
his own profession. Of course this summer out at Hickory Hill is so much
to the good. And if he can get sufficiently interested to stay there the
year round, why, there's no knowing. The investment in that farm may
prove the wisest one he ever made."
"If it were only possible,"--she was quoting what her father had said to
her the other night at Ravinia,--"for him to be whole-heartedly there!
And he could be--for it's a place one can't help loving and he and Rush
are wonderful companions--he could be whole-heartedly there if it weren't
for Paula."
It was precisely at this point, he indicated to her, that Paula could
come in by relieving him of the necessity of getting back into practise.
Martin would look out for the fixed indebtedness on the farm. He would
probably be willing, in case John made it his home and put his own mature
judgment at the disposal of the two young partners, to finance still
further increases in the investment. But for the ordinary expenses of
living during the next year or two, Paula should cease being a burden and
become a support. "Do you think," he finished by asking, "that she has
any idea what the situation really is?"
Mary replied to this question a little absently. "Father insisted that
she carry out the Ravinia contract. She told me so herself and seemed, I
don't know why, just a little resentful about it. But I'm sure she can't
have any idea that there was a need for money at the back of it. It has
irritated her rather whenever she has caught me economizing up there. And
father will never tell her any more pointedly than he has, you can be
sure. Some one of us will have to do it."
"You're on very good terms with her, aren't you?" Wallace asked. He
added instantly, though with an effort, "I'm willing to tell her if you
wish me to."
She smiled very faintly at that for she knew how terrifying such a
prospect would be to him. "Whoever told Paula," she said, "she'd
eventually attribute it, I think, back to me. So I may as well, and
rather better, do it directly."
The tension slackened between them for a while after that. The talk
became casual. Wallace, it was easy to see, was enormously relieved. Mary
had been put in unreserved possession of the facts and had endured them
better than he could possibly have hoped. He began chatting about the
farm again, not now as an incubus but as a hopeful possibility. Both the
boys had real mettle in them and might be expected to buckle down and
show it. Rush would forget the disillusionment of his holiday hopes when
the necessities of the case were really brought home to him. And as for
Graham ...
Wallace broke off short there, flushed, and made a rather panicky effort
to retrieve the slip. He was in the family enough to be a part of the
Graham conspiracy. Poor Graham, distracted by her innocent inability to
make up her mind to marry him! He would be all right as soon as her
maidenly hesitations should have come to an end, and she'd made him the
happiest man in the world with the almost inevitable yes.
She had gone rather white by the end of a long silence. Finally:
"Wallace," she began in a tone so tense that he waited breathlessly for
her to go on, "do you remember I asked you once, the day I came home from
New York, if you couldn't find me a job? I know you didn't think I meant
it and I did not altogether--then. But I mean it now. I need
it--desperately.--Wallace, I can't ever marry Graham. I know I can't. And
I can't go on being dependent on father while he's dependent on Paula."
He caught at a straw. "Paula is really very fond of you," he said.
"Yes, in a way," Mary agreed; "though she sometimes has regarded me a
little dubiously. But if she ever saw me--coming between her and father,
or father turning ever so little away from her--toward me, whether it was
any of my doing or not, she'd--hate me with her whole heart. It may not
be very logical but it's true."
Then she brought him back from the digression. "Anyhow, it's on my own
account, not Paula's--nor even father's--that I want a job. Father will
feel about it, of course, as you do and so will Rush and--and the rest.
And I don't want it to hurt anybody more than necessary. I'd rather stay
here but I suppose on their account I'd better go away. And you know so
many people--in so many places. There's your sister in Omaha. I remember
how much trouble you said she had finding a nursery governess. I'd be
pretty good at that I think. I could teach French and--I'd be nice to
children."
For a moment she wildly thought she had won him. She saw the tears come
into his eyes.
"Anything I have in the world, my dear, or anything I can command is
yours. On any terms you like."
But there he disposed of the tears and got himself together, as if he'd
remembered some warning. She could imagine Rush over the telephone, "Of
course, she's terribly run down with that damned war work of hers; not
quite her real self, you know."
She saw him summon a resolute smile and heard the familiar note of
encouragement in his voice. "We'll think about it," he told her. "After
all, things aren't, probably, as black as they look. And sometimes when
they look darkest it's only the sign that they're about to change their
faces altogether. Anyhow, we've stared at them long enough to-night,
haven't we? And all I meant was to take you out for a jolly evening!
Don't you think we might save it, even yet? Is there anything at the
theatres you'd like to see?"
"Some musical show?" she asked. "Yes, I'd like that very much.
Thank you."