Mary Wollaston Part 28

"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 rea.s.sure 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sured 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 rea.s.suringly 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 d.a.m.ned 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."