Part 28 (1/2)

”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.