Part 44 (1/2)
”Yes, I told her that.”
”She makes no mention of coming home?”
”Not a word.”
”d.i.c.k, she must return, and at once,” Dora declared, vehemently.
”Not to this place, Dora. She would never do it. It wouldn't be fair to ask her.”
”But something must be done.”
”I feel pretty sick about it. It was partly through me and my wretched debts that father and mother got so short of money. Mother was always hard up. It runs in the blood. And, what with one thing and another, we were all of us in a pretty tight fix; and she tried to get us out of it.”
”I don't blame her for altering her father's checks. That's nothing,”
observed Dora, with typical feminine inconsequence, ”but letting people think that--”
”I know, I know! But it couldn't really have done me any harm when I was under the turf; and it meant ruin to father, if she had done nothing.
Look here, Dora, mother must come back, or father must go to her. We've got to arrange it between us. If mother won't come home, she must be fetched.”
Dora sat for a few moments with her elbows resting on her knees and her chin on her hands, gazing thoughtfully out of the window, watching the sparrows on the path outside.
”Can she ever forgive him?” she asked, after a pause.
”Well, the sermon was certainly pretty rough, especially after things had been all smoothed out. But father is a demon for doing nasty things when he thinks they've got to be done. You don't suppose he's any less fond of mother than before, do you?”
”No; but, you see, a woman feels differently about these things--things of conscience, I mean. Your mother probably thinks he despises her, and a proud woman can never stand that.”
”But he doesn't. It was himself that he was troubled about, to think that he had strayed from the strict path of duty to such an extent as to allow me--his son--to be blamed for that--Well, it's all wrong, anyway, and mother's got to come home.”
”How are we to set about it, d.i.c.k?”
”Dora, you'll have to go and fetch her. I've thought it all out.”
”I? How can I? That wouldn't do at all, d.i.c.k. Don't you see that she would resent it--the advance coming from me, because I was one of those most concerned and affected by her sin; and, being a woman, more likely to be hard upon her than anyone else.”
”You mean that you nearly married Ormsby because she led you to think that I wasn't worth a tinker's d.a.m.n. Well, perhaps I wasn't--before the war. But I learned things out there. I had to pull myself together, and endure and go through such privation that a whole life on fifteen dollars a week would be luxury in comparison. I'd go to mother at once, if I were strong enough, but I'm not. So, what do you suggest, little girl?”
”I think we ought to sound your father on the matter first. He is difficult to approach. He has a trick of making you feel that he prefers to bear his sorrow alone; but I think it can be managed, if we use a little harmless deception.”
”How?”
”Well, first of all, it wouldn't be a bad idea to get Jane to turn your mother's room out, and clean it as if getting ready for the return of the mistress of the house.”
”I see,” cried d.i.c.k, with a spasmodic tightening of the right hand which rested on Dora's shoulder. ”Give father the impression that she's coming back, just to see how he takes it.”
”Yes.”