Part 24 (1/2)

” Blind or not, do stop the everlasting reiteration of that sentence.”

Mrs. Wainwright pa.s.sed into an offended silence, and the professor, also silent, looked with a gradually dwindling indignation at the scenery.

Night was suggested in the sky before the train was near to Athens. ” My trunks,” sighed Mrs.

Wainwright. ” How glad I will be to get back to my trunks! Oh, the dust! Oh, the misery ! Do find out when we will get there, Harrison. Maybe the train is late.”

But, at last, they arrived in Athens, amid a darkness which was confusing, and, after no more than the common amount of trouble, they procured carriages and were taken to the hotel. Mrs. Wainwright's impulses now dominated the others in the family.

She had one pa.s.sion after another. The majority of the servants in the hotel pretended that they spoke English, but, in three minutes, she drove them distracted with the abundance and violence of her requests.

It came to pa.s.s that in the excitement the old couple quite forgot Marjory. It was not until Mrs. Wainwright, then feeling splendidly, was dressed for dinner, that she thought to open Marjory's door and go to render a usual motherly supervision of the girl's toilet.

There was no light: there did not seem to be any- body in the room. ” Marjory ! ” called the mother, in alarm. She listened for a moment and then ran hastily out again. ” Harrison ! ” she cried. ” I can't find Marjory!” The professor had been tying his cravat. He let the loose ends fly. ”What?” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, opening his mouth wide. Then they both rushed into Marjory's room. ”Marjory!” beseeched the old man in a voice which would have invoked the grave.

The answer was from the bed. ”Yes?” It was low, weary, tearful. It was not like Marjory. It was dangerously the voice of a hcart-broken woman.

They hurried forward with outcries. ”Why, Marjory!

Are you ill, child? How long have you been lying in the dark? Why didn't you call us? Are you ill?”

” No,” answered this changed voice, ” I am not ill.

I only thought I'd rest for a time. Don't bother.”

The professor hastily lit the gas and then father and mother turned hurriedly to the bed. In the first of the illumination they saw that tears were flowing unchecked down Marjory's face.

The effect.of this grief upon the professor was, in part, an effect of fear. He seemed afraid to touch it, to go near it. He could, evidently, only remain in the outskirts, a horrified spectator. The mother, how.

ever, flung her arms about her daughter. ” Oh, Marjory! ”

She, too, was weeping.

The girl turned her face to the pillow and held out a hand of protest. ” Don't, mother! Don't !”

”Oh, Marjory! Oh, Marjory!”

” Don't, mother. Please go away. Please go away. Don't speak at all, I beg of you.”

” Oh, Marjory! Oh, Marjory!”

” Don't.” The girl lifted a face which appalled them. It had something entirely new in it. ” Please go away, mother. I will speak to father, but I won't -I can't-I can't be pitied.”

Mrs. Wainwright looked at her husband. ” Yes,”

said the old man, trembling. ”Go! ” She threw up her hands in a sorrowing gesture that was not without its suggestion that her exclusion would be a mistake.

She left the room.

The professor dropped on his knees at the bedside and took one of Marjory's hands. His voice dropped to its tenderest note. ”Well, my Marjory?”

She had turned her face again to the pillow. At last she answered in m.u.f.fled tones, ” You know.”

Thereafter came a long silence full of sharpened pain. It was Marjory who spoke first. ”I have saved my pride, daddy, but-I have-lost-everything --else.” Even her sudden resumption of the old epithet of her childhood was an additional misery to the old man. He still said no word. He knelt, gripping her fingers and staring at the wall.

” Yes, I have lost~everything-else.”

The father gave a low groan. He was thinking deeply, bitterly. Since one was only a human being, how was one going to protect beloved hearts a.s.sailed with sinister fury from the inexplicable zenith? In this tragedy he felt as helpless as an old grey ape.

He did not see a possible weapon with which he could defend his child from the calamity which was upon her. There was no wall, no s.h.i.+eld which could turn this sorrow from the heart of his child. If one of his hands loss could have spared her, there would have been a sacrifice of his hand, but he was potent for nothing. He could only groan and stare at the wall.

He reviewed the past half in fear that he would suddenly come upon his error which was now the cause of Marjory's tears. He dwelt long upon the fact that in Washurst he had refused his consent to Marjory's marriage with Coleman, but even now he could not say that his judgment was not correct. It was simply that the doom of woman's woe was upon Marjory, this ancient woe of the silent tongue and the governed will, and he could only kneel at the bedside and stare at the wall.