Part 16 (1/2)

Well--she'd better make it!”

There wasn't time to explore the meaning of that last remark for they were then pulling up at the door. She laid it aside for future reference, however. She was so fortunate as to meet Doctor Darby on the stairs and so to get at once the latest and most authoritative report.

He brightened at the sight of her but she thought he didn't look very hopeful. He said though, that he believed her father was going to get well. ”Medically, he hasn't more than an even chance. He hasn't much fight in him somehow. But that stepmother of yours means to pull him through. She doesn't mean to be beaten and I don't believe she will be.

I've never seen the equal of her. It shows they're born, not made. She's never had, your aunt a.s.sures me, any nursing experience whatever.”

Mary thought she detected a twinkle in Darby's eye over this mention of Aunt Lucile, but it was gone before she could make sure.

”You're to go up and see him for five minutes,” he went on. ”Paula's keeping a look-out for you. He mustn't be allowed to talk, of course, but she wants him to know you're back. She has an idea, and she's probably right, that he is worrying about you.”

”What is there that I can do?” she asked. ”To help, I mean.”

”Hope,” he told her bluntly. ”Pray if you can. Cheer up your aunt a bit, if possible; she's in despair. Only don't try to take away any of her occupations. That's about all.”

”In other words, nothing,” she commented.

”Well, none of us can do much more than that,” he said, ”excepting always, Paula.”

It was not until she had spent that heart-tearing five minutes at her father's bedside, while she talked cheerful little encouraging futilities in a voice dry with the effort she had to make to keep it from breaking, that she saw her aunt--and felt grateful for Doctor Darby's warning. Mary had never thought of Lucile before as an old woman, but she seemed more than that now,--broken and, literally, in despair--of her brother's life.

And beyond this there was a bitterness which Mary could not, at first, account for.

”Paula, I hear, has allowed you to see him. For five minutes! Well, that is more than she has allowed me. Or any of us. It was a chance for showing off, I suppose, that was more than she could resist.”

”I was a little afraid it might be that,” Mary admitted. ”Afraid of finding her--carefully costumed for the part, you know. But she wasn't.

She didn't come into the room with me at all; just told me not to show I was shocked by the way he looked and not to let him talk. And she seemed glad I was back; not for me but because it might help him. It seems a miracle that he's still alive, after almost a week of that, and I guess it is she who has done it. They all say so.”

”Men!” the old woman cried fiercely. ”All men! The two nurses as well.

There's something about her that makes idiots of all of them. She knows it. And she revels in it. It's the breath of life to her. She has played fast and loose with your father's happiness for it. And now she's playing with his life as well. And feeling, all the while, that it is a very n.o.ble repentance!”

”Repentance for what?” Mary asked. ”Rush said something like that. I thought, before I went away, that father was getting reconciled to the Ravinia idea. Do you think it was worrying about ...”

”No, I don't,” Lucile interrupted shortly. ”Your father was exposed, soaking wet, to a cold north wind, while he was driving forty miles in an open car. That's the reason he took pneumonia. And it's the only reason.

I don't know what Rush may have been saying to you, but I've known your father ever since he was born, and I can tell you that Paula might have gone on making a fool of herself to the end of time without his dying of it. He was--fond of her, I will admit. But he had a life of his own that she knows nothing about. He was too proud to tell her about it, and she hadn't wit enough to see it for herself. That's the truth, and this emotional sprawl she's indulging in now doesn't change it.--Meanwhile, she is adding to her collection five new men!”

”I don't believe,” said Mary quietly, ”that there is one of them she knows exists. Or wouldn't poison,” she added with a smile, ”to improve father's chance of getting well.”

This won a nod of grim a.s.sent. ”There are plenty of them. She could replace them easily enough. But her hunger for their wors.h.i.+p is insatiable. For a while your father's--infatuation satisfied her. She may have tried to pull herself up to his level. I dare say she did. But even at that time she could not abide Wallace Hood, though he was kindness itself to her, simply because he kept his head. Unfortunately, this poor young musician was not able to keep his.”

It seemed to Mary, even when allowance was made for the bitterness of the desperate old woman, who then went on for the better part of an hour with her bill of particulars, that this must be true. Paula must have lost her head, at any rate. What Mary herself had seen the beginning of, must have gone on at an accelerated speed until it was beyond all bounds.

There had been few hours when March might not come to the house and none to which he did not stay. There were whole days when Paula was hardly out of his company. She took him about with her to people's houses. She talked about him when she went alone. Those who had at first not known what to think, at last had come to believe that there was only one thing they could.

”I tried to suggest to her, quite early, before it had gone so far, that she was in danger of being misunderstood. It only made her furious. And John was hardly less so when I mentioned to him that I had spoken to her.

He would see nothing; kept a face of granite through it all.”

”Aunt Lucile,” Mary asked, after a little silence, ”do you think she has really been--unfaithful to father?”