Part 26 (2/2)
For a long time the old man was silent, but he arose at last with a definite abruptness and said hoa.r.s.ely ” Wait! ”
Mrs. Wainwright was standing before her mirror with her elbows thrust out at angles above her head, while her fingers moved in a disarrangement of 'her hair. In the gla.s.s she saw a reflection of her husband coming from Marjory's room, and his face was set with some kind of alarming purpose. She turned to watch him actually, but he walked toward the door into the corridor and did not in any wise heed her.
” Harrison! ” she called. ” Where are you going? ”
He turned a troubled face upon her, and, as if she had hailed him in his sleep, he vacantly said: ”What ? ”
”Where are you going?” she demanded with increasing trepidation.
He dropped heavily into a chair. ”Going?” he repeated.
She was angry. ”Yes! Going? Where are you going? ”
”I am going-” he answered, ”I am going to see Rufus Coleman.”
Mrs. Wainwright gave voice to a m.u.f.fled scream.
” Not about Marjory ? ”
”Yes,” he said, ”about Marjory.”
It was now Mrs. Wainwright's turn to look at her husband with an air of stupefaction as if he had opened up to her visions of imbecility of which she had not even dreamed. ” About Marjory!” she gurgled. Then suddenly her wrath flamed out.
”Well, upon my word, Harrison Wainwright, you are, of all men in the world, the most silly and stupid.
You are absolutely beyond belief. Of all projects!
And what do you think Marjory would have to say of it if she knew it ? I suppose you think she would like it ? Why, I tell you she would keep her right hand in the fire until it was burned off before she would allow you to do such a thing.”
” She must never know it,” responded the professor, in dull misery.
” Then think of yourself! Think of the shame of it! The shame of it ! ”
The professor raised his eyes for an ironical glance at his wife. ” Oh I have thought of the shame of it!”
” And you'll accomplish nothing,” cried Mrs. Wain- wright. ” You'll accomplish nothing. He'll only laugh at you.”
” If he laughs at me, he will laugh at nothing but a poor, weak, unworldly old man. It is my duty to go.”
Mrs. Wainwright opened her mouth as if she was about to shriek. After choking a moment she said: ” Your duty? Your duty to go and bend the knee to that man? Yourduty?”
”'It is my duty to go,”' he repeated humbly. ”If I can find even one chance for my daughter's happi- ness in a personal sacrifice. He can do no more than he can do no more than make me a little sadder.”
His wife evidently understood his humility as a tribute to her arguments and a clear indication that she had fatally undermined his original intention.
” Oh, he would have made you sadder,” she quoth grimly. ”No fear! Why, it was the most insane idea I ever heard of.”
The professor arose wearily. ” Well, I must be going to this work. It is a thing to have ended quickly.” There was something almost biblical in his manner.
” Harrison! ” burst out his wife in amazed lamenta- tion. You are not really going to do it? Not really!”
” I am going to do it,” he answered.
” Well, there! ” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Wainwright to the heavens. She was, so to speak, prostrate. ” Well, there! ”
<script>