The Happiest Time of Their Lives Part 25

Getting out of this as best she could on a vague statement about atmosphere and suns.h.i.+ne and charm, Mrs. Baxter took refuge in inquiries about Vincent's health, "your charming child," and "your dear father."

"You know more about my dear father than I do," returned Adelaide, sweetly. It was Mrs. Baxter's cue.

"I did not feel last evening that I knew anything about him at all. He is in a new phase, almost a new personality. Tell me, who is this Mrs. Wayne?"

"Mrs. Wayne?" Mrs. Baxter must have felt herself revenged by the complete surprise of Adelaide's tone.

"Yes, she dined at the house last evening. Apparently it was to have been a tete-a-tete dinner, but my arrival changed it to a _partie carree_."

She talked on about Wilsey and the conversation of the evening, but it made little difference what she said, for her full idea had reached Adelaide from the start, and had gathered to itself in an instant a hundred confirmatory memories. Like a picture, she saw before her Mrs.

Wayne's sitting-room, with the ink-spots on the rug. Who would not wish to exchange that for Mr. Lanley's series of fresh, beautiful rooms?

Suddenly she gave her attention back to Mrs. Baxter, who was saying:

"I a.s.sure you, when we were alone I was prepared for a formal announcement."

It was not safe to be the bearer of ill tidings to Adelaide.

"An announcement?" she said wonderingly. "Oh, no, Mrs. Baxter, my father will never marry again. There have always been rumors, and you can't imagine how he and I have laughed over them together."

As the indisputable subject of such rumors in past times, Mrs. Baxter fitted a little arrow in her bow.

"In the past," she said, "women of suitable age have not perhaps been willing to consider the question, but this lady seems to me distinctly willing."

"More than willingness on the lady's part has been needed," answered Adelaide, and then Pringle's ample form appeared in the doorway. "There's a man from the office here, Madam, asking to see Mr. Farron."

"Mr. Farron can see no one." A sudden light flashed upon her. "What is his name, Pringle?"

"Burke, Madam."

"Oh, let him come in." Adelaide turned to Mrs. Baxter. "I will show you," she said, "one of the finest sights you ever saw." The next instant Marty was in the room. Not so gorgeous as in his wedding-attire, he was still an exceedingly fine young animal. He was not so magnificently defiant as before, but he scowled at his unaccustomed surroundings under his dark brows.

"It's Mr. Farron I wanted to see," he said, a soft roll to his r's. At Mrs. Wayne's Adelaide had suffered from being out of her own surroundings, but here she was on her own field, and she meant to make Burke feel it. She was leaning with her elbow on the back of the sofa, and now she slipped her bright rings down her slim fingers and shook them back again as she looked up at Burke and spoke to him as she would have done to a servant.

"Mr. Farron cannot see you."

Cleverer people than Burke had struggled vainly against the poison of inferiority which this tone instilled into their minds.

"That's what they keep telling me down-town. I never knew him sick before."

"No?"

"It wouldn't take five minutes."

"Mr. Farron is too weak to see you."

Marty made a strange grating sound in his throat, and Adelaide asked like a queen bending from the throne:

"What seems to be the matter, Burke?"

"Why,"--Burke turned upon her the flare of his light, fierce eyes,--"they have it on me on the dock that as soon as he comes back he means to bounce me."

"To bounce you," repeated Adelaide, and she almost smiled as she thought of that poor exhausted figure up-stairs.

"I don't care if he does or not," Marty went on. "I'm not so d.a.m.ned stuck on the job. There's others."

"There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far," murmured Adelaide.

Again he scowled, feeling the approach of something hostile to him.

"What's that?" he asked, surmising that she was insulting him.

"I said I supposed you could get a better job if you tried."

He did not like this tone either.

"Well, whether I could or not," he said, "this is no way. I'm losing my hold of my men."

"Oh, I can't imagine your doing that, Burke."

He turned on her to see if she were really daring to laugh at him, and met an eye as steady as his own.

"I guess I'm wasting my time here," he said, and something intimated that some one would pay for that expenditure.

"Shall I take a message to Mr. Farron for you?" said Adelaide.

He nodded.

"Yes. Tell him that if I'm to go, I'll go to-day."

"I see." She rose slowly, as if in response to a vague, amusing caprice.

"Just that. If you go, you'll go to-day."

For the first time Burke, regaining his self-confidence, saw that she was not an enemy, but an appreciative spectator, and his face broke up in a smile, queer, crooked, wrinkled, but brilliant.

"I guess you'll get it about right," he said, and no compliment had ever pleased Adelaide half so much.

"I think so," she confidently answered, and then at the door she turned. "Oh, Mrs. Baxter," she said, "this is Marty Burke, a very important person."

Importance, especially Adelaide Farron's idea of importance, was a category for which Mrs. Baxter had the highest esteem, so almost against her will she looked at Burke, and found him looking her over with such a shrewd eye that she looked away, and then looked back again to find that his gaze was still upon her. He had made his living since he was a child by his faculty for sizing people up, and at his first glimpse of Mrs.

Baxter's s.h.i.+fting glance he had sized her up; so that now, when she remarked with an amiability at once ponderous and shaky that it was a very fine day, he replied in exactly the same tone, "It is that," and began to walk about the room looking at the pictures. Presently a low, but sweet, whistle broke from his lips. He made her feel uncommonly uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that she was driven to conversation.

"Are you fond of pictures, Burke?" she asked. He just looked at her over his shoulder without answering. She began to wish that Adelaide would come back.

Adelaide had found her husband still accessible. He received in silence the announcement that Burke was down-stairs. She told the message without bias.

"He says that they have it on him on the dock that he is to be bounced.

He asked me to say this to you: that if he is to go, he'll go to-day."

"What was his manner?"