Mary Wollaston Part 44

Lucile saw that Wallace hesitated a little about accepting her invitation to lunch and recalled the fact that he hadn't dropped in on them once during the week though he had known that they were more or less back in town.

"Why, yes, I'll come with pleasure," he said. "I don't know precisely what sort of terms I'm on with John. He felt for a few days, I know, that I'd been rather officious, but I may as well have it out with him now as later. And I shall be glad of an opportunity to give Mary my best wishes.

I wrote her a note, of course, the day I read the announcement of the engagement in the newspapers." He added, "I certainly was in the dark as to that affair."

"Aren't you--still more or less, in the dark about it?" Miss Wollaston inquired. "I don't mind owning that I am. Mary's sense of social values always seemed to me to be at least adequately developed. On the surface one would have to call her rather worldly, I think."

"On the surface perhaps," Wallace interposed, "but not really; not at heart. Still, I'll grant it isn't easy to understand. There's a certain attraction about the man of course. And then there's his music."

"And Mary," Miss Wollaston observed, "happens to be the one utterly unmusical person in the family. She's completely absorbed in the preparation for his opera however." Then after a little pause, "She may prove rather more explanatory with you than she has been with me. She seems to take a certain pleasure in mystifying me. In saying things in a matter-of-fact way that are quite astounding. That's the new generation, of course. They talk a different language from mine. It will be a comfort," she concluded, rather pathetically, as they mounted the high steps to her brother's door, "to talk the matter over quietly with some one to whom my ideas and standards are still intelligible."

But this comfort was, for the present, to be denied her. Mary had spent the morning in her room writing notes and was coming down the stairs when the church-goers came in.

She negotiated what were left of the steps in a single swoop, gave her visitor both hands along with the "Wallace! How nice!" that welcomed him, and then, drawing back with a gesture which invited his scrutiny, said, "Well? What do you think?--Oh, but thanks for your note, first. I've just answered it."

Radiant was the word. There couldn't be any doubt of that. And younger.

There was a twinkle of mischief that he had to go back-five years, anyhow, to remember the like of.

He had none of Lucile's feeling that decency required one's joy over an event of this sort to be of the chastened variety and he brightened in instantaneous response to the girl's mood, but the mere impact of her left him for a moment wordless.

"You needn't try to make me a speech," she said. "I know you're pleased.

Not as pleased as you would be if you knew all about it, but ..."

"As pleased as possible, anyhow," he said. On that, amicably arm in arm, they followed Miss Wollaston into the drawing-room.

"I don't believe we've seen each other," she said, "since the night we had dinner together at the Saddle and Cycle, weeks and weeks ago."

"No," he said. "I remember very well that we haven't."

Miss Wollaston had drifted away from them (occupied, as she so often was when there were no persons present in the formal status of guests, in making minute readjustments of pillows and things as a sort of standing protest against the demon of disorder), and having noted this fact he went on:

"I didn't come for the picnic tea you invited me to the other day. If I'd known how the land lay, I shouldn't have sent a subst.i.tute. I'm afraid, perhaps, that was rather--tactless of me."

He saw the queerest look come into her face,--enough in itself to startle him rather though it wasn't without a gleam of humor.

"I was just wondering," she explained, "whether if you had come that particular day, I mightn't be engaged to you now instead of to Tony."

Unluckily Lucile heard that and froze rigid for a moment with horror.

Then recovering her motor faculties, she moved in a stately manner toward the door.

"I think if you will excuse me," she said, "I'll go up and prepare for luncheon."

Mary gazed conscience-stricken from her to Wallace who was blus.h.i.+ng like a boy caught stealing apples. "I'm sorry," she gasped, but not quickly enough for the apology to overtake her aunt. "It's terrible of me to say things like that and I do, every now and then. Can you bear with me until I've had time to quiet down? It's all so new, to be happy like this, I'm a little--wild with it."

In his nice neutral unexaggerated way he told her that her happiness could never be anything but a joy to him; and after that, when they were seated side by side upon the cane davenport he asked about her plans; when they were going to be married, where they meant to live, and so on.

"Why, we'll be married, I suppose," she said, "at the end of the customary six weeks' engagement. There isn't a thing to wait for, really."

"I'm glad of that," he remarked.

Anybody but Mary would have taken that at its face value; he was glad that they would have to wait no longer. But he flinched as she glanced round toward him and at that she laughed and patted his hand rea.s.suringly.

"We're doing everything correctly," she told him; "beginning with father's announcement of the engagement in the papers, Tuesday. We remain on exhibition during the conventional six weeks and then we're married at noon over in the Fourth Church. Impeccable! That's going to be our middle name."

Mary used so very little slang that she was able to produce quite extraordinary effects with it when she did.

"I'm glad," Wallace said, a little ruffled by the start she had given him, "that you have not been persuaded to do anything--differently."

"Who do you suppose it was," she asked, "who insisted, in an adamantine manner, that it be done like that? It wasn't me and it wasn't Aunt Lucile. It was Anthony March." She added, after a reflective silence, "He was right about it, of course, because when that's over it's done with.

And then--what he hasn't thought of, and I wouldn't have, most likely until it was too late--he'll have a friendlier audience next Tuesday night than if he'd given me my way and made a trip to the City Hall with me last Monday. I wanted to burn my bridges, you see;--and he laughed at me. I haven't told that to any one but you.--All the same, if he thinks, from that, that he can go on acc.u.mulating--millstones ..."

"Tell me where you are planning to live," Wallace said, getting back as he was always glad to do, to firm ground again. "Not too far away, I hope, for us to go on seeing a lot of you."

"Oh, it's very sad about that," she told him. "I was hoping to live with him in his secret lair over the Italian grocery. No, but it was really delightful. One big room, bigger than this, with dormers and dusty beams and an outside stair. He's had it for years. It's not half a mile from here--and Paula could never find out where it was! But, unexpectedly, he's being turned out. I could have wept when he told me."

"Unexpectedly!" quoted Wallace, the professional real estate man in him touched by this evidence of lay negligence. "March hadn't any lease, I suppose."

"He didn't need any," said Mary. "He owned it."

"If he owns it how can they turn him out--unexpectedly?"

"What he owned was the second story. Well, he still does, of course. But when they tear the first floor and the bas.e.m.e.nt out from under him, as they're going to do next week, his second story won't do him much good."

"But, good gracious, they can't do that!" Wallace cried. "They must leave him his floor and his ceiling just where they are now. And his light. They can build above and below--I suppose that's what they're tearing the old building down for--but that layer of s.p.a.ce, if he really bought it and has got anything to show that he really bought it, belongs to him."

"Do you mean seriously," she demanded, "that it's possible to buy the second story of a building? It's like Pudd'n-'head Wilson's joke about buying half a dog and killing his half."

"Of course I mean it," he insisted. "An eas.e.m.e.nt like that cost our estate thousands of dollars only a year or two ago. Serious! I should think it was! Ask Rodney Aldrich. See what he says.--Of course, it's nothing unless he can show some instrument that proves his t.i.tle. But if he can it might be worth ... Well, it's just a question how badly they happen to need that particular bit of land. Those people we fell foul of managed to hold us up for a tidy sum."

She was looking at him thoughtfully, a faint, rather wry smile just touching her lips. "A minute ago," she said, "I was about to fling myself upon your neck and thank you for so wonderful a wedding present to us as that would be. And now I'm wondering ... Wallace, I don't suppose it would strike you that there would be anything--shady about doing a thing like that."

"Shady!" He was, for a moment, deeply affronted by the mere suggestion.

Then, remembering her total ignorance of all such matters, he smiled at her. "My dear Mary, do you think--leaving my rect.i.tude aside--that I'd have referred you to Rodney Aldrich if I'd felt that there was anything questionable about it?"

"I know," she conceded. "And Martin Whitney would feel the same way. And father, I suppose, and Rush. Everybody we know. Yet I was wondering whether I'd say anything to Tony about it. I've decided I will, but I'm going to ask you not to, nor to anybody else, until I've talked to him.

I'd like it left--altogether to him, you see."

He agreed, rather blankly to this. Presently she went on:

"I'm glad he's a real genius, not just a fragment of one as so many of them are. There's something--robust about him. And since that's so, I don't believe we'll do him any real harm; we--advantage-s.n.a.t.c.hers, you know. That's so very largely how we live, we nice people (it's why we're able to be nice, of course)--that we get perfectly blind to it. But he's so strong, and he can see in so deep, that I guess he's safe. That's the belief I have to go on, anyhow."

She sprang up and gave him another pat upon the shoulder. "He'll be getting here in a few minutes, I suspect. Father telephoned that he and Paula were going to bring him down as soon as his rehearsal was over. I'm going up now to try to make my peace with Aunt Lucile."

After lunch she told the family that she had matters to talk over with Tony and meant to take him for a walk. His father and mother expected them to drop in at their house about five and the intervening two hours would give them just about time to "cover the ground." She was openly laughing at her own pretense at being matter-of-fact.

It was pretty hot for walking, her father thought. Why not let Pete drive them around a while in the car? Or take the small car and drive herself?

But she was feeling pedestrian, she said, and, anyhow, the topic she had in mind couldn't be discussed in a motor-car. They'd go to Lincoln Park and stroll around in the shade.

"And if we get tired," she added with a flicker, in response to her aunt's movement of protest, "we can squeeze in among the other couples on some gra.s.sy bank.--Oh, Aunt Lucile, don't mind! We _won't_ do anything--disgraceful."