Mary Wollaston by Henry Kitchell Webster (best story books to read txt) 📕

he indicated to her, that Paula could come in by relieving him of the necessity of getting back into practise. Martin would look out for the fixed indebtedness on the farm. He would probably be willing, in case John made it his home and put his own mature judgment at the disposal of the two young partners, to finance still further increases in the investment. But for the ordinary expenses of living during the next year or two, Paula should cease being a burden and become a support. "Do you think," he finished by asking, "that she has any idea what the situation really is?"

Mary replied to this question a little absently. "Father insisted that she carry out the Ravinia contract. She told me so herself and seemed, I don't know why, just a little resentful about it. But I'm sure she can't have any idea that there was a need for money at the back of it. It has irritated her rather whenever she has caught me economizing up there. And father will never tell her any more pointedly than he has, you can be sure. Some one of us will have to do it."

"You're on very good terms with her, aren't you?" Wallace asked. He added instantly, though with an effort, "I'm willing to tell her if you wish me to."

She smiled very faintly at that for she knew how terrifying such a prospect would be to him. "Whoever told Paula," she said, "she'd eventually attribute it, I think, back to me. So I may as well, and rather better, do it directly."

The tension slackened between them for a while after that. The talk became casual. Wallace, it was easy to see, was enormously relieved. Mary had been put in unreserved possession of the facts and had endured them better than he could possibly have hoped. He began chatting about the farm again, not now as an incubus but as a hopeful possibility. Both the boys had real mettle in them and might be expected to buckle down and show it. Rush would forget the disillusionment of his holiday hopes when the necessities of the case were really brought home to him. And as for Graham ...

Wallace broke off short there, flushed, and made a rather panicky effort to retrieve the slip. He was in the family enough to be a part of the Graham conspiracy. Poor Graham, distracted by her innocent inability to make up her mind to marry him! He would be all right as soon as her maidenly hesitations should have come to an end, and she'd made him the happiest man in the world with the almost inevitable yes.

She had gone rather white by the end of a long silence. Finally:

"Wallace," she began in a tone so tense that he waited breathlessly for her to go on, "do you remember I asked you once, the day I came home from New York, if you couldn't find me a job? I know you didn't think I meant it and I did not altogether--then. But I mean it now. I need it--desperately.--Wallace, I can't ever marry Graham. I know I can't. And I can't go on being dependent on father while he's dependent on Paula."

He caught at a straw. "Paula is really very fond of you," he said.

"Yes, in a way," Mary agreed; "though she sometimes has regarded me a little dubiously. But if she ever saw me--coming between her and father, or father turning ever so little away from her--toward me, whether it was any of my doing or not, she'd--hate me with her whole heart. It may not be very logical but it's true."

Then she brought him back from the digression. "Anyhow, it's on my own account, not Paula's--nor even father's--that I want a job. Father will feel about it, of course, as you do and so will Rush and--and the rest. And I don't want it to hurt anybody more than necessary. I'd rather stay here but I suppose on their account I'd better go away. And you know so many people--in so many places. There's your sister in Omaha. I remember how much trouble you said she had finding a nursery governess. I'd be pretty good at that I think. I could teach French and--I'd be nice to children."

For a moment she wildly thought she had won him. She saw the tears come into his eyes.

"Anything I have in the world, my dear, or anything I can command is yours. On any terms you like."

But there he disposed of the tears and got himself together, as if he'd remembered some warning. She could imagine Rush over the telephone, "Of course, she's terribly run down with that damned war work of hers; not quite her real self, you know."

She saw him summon a resolute smile and heard the familiar note of encouragement in his voice. "We'll think about it," he told her. "After all, things aren't, probably, as black as they look. And sometimes when they look darkest it's only the sign that they're about to change their faces altogether. Anyhow, we've stared at them long enough to-night, haven't we? And all I meant was to take you out for a jolly evening! Don't you think we might save it, even yet? Is there anything at the theatres you'd like to see?"

"Some musical show?" she asked. "Yes, I'd like that very much. Thank you."


CHAPTER XIX

THE DRAMATIST

Mary returned to Ravinia--went on duty, as she put it to Wallace--the following afternoon rather taut-drawn in her determination to have things out with Paula at once. But the mere attitude and atmosphere of the place, as before, let her down a little.

It was restful to have her days filled up with trivial necessary duties; an hour's errand running in the small car; a pair of soiled satin slippers to clean with naptha; a stack of notes to answer from such unknown and infatuate admirers as managed to escape the classification feebleminded and were entitled therefore to have the fact recognized (this at a little desk in the corner while Novelli at the piano and Paula ranging about the room, ran over her part in half-voice in the opera she had rehearsed yesterday with the orchestra and was to sing to-night), a run to the park for a visit to Paula's dressing-room in the pavilion in order to make sure, in conference with her dresser, that all was in order for to-night; a return to the cottage in time to heat Paula's milk (their maid of all work couldn't be trusted not to boil it); then at seven, driving Paula to the park for the performance, spending the evening in her dressing-room or in the wings chatting sometimes with other members of the force whom she found it possible to get acquainted with; occasional incursions into the front of the house to note how something went or, more simply, just to hear something she liked; driving Paula home again at last, undressing her; having supper with her--the most substantial meal of the day--talking it over with her; and so, like Mr. Pepys--to bed.

It might shock Wallace Hood, a schedule like that, but there were days when to Mary it was a clear God-send.

She decided within the first twenty-four hours to wait for some sort of lead from Paula before plunging into a discussion of her father's affairs. It would take the edge off if the thing weren't too glaringly premeditated. Paula just now was doing all she could. Mary opened all her mail and would know if any offer came in that involved future plans. She accepted the respite gratefully.

She had a use to put it to. For the first two or three days after her return, she had not been able to turn to anything that associated itself with Anthony March without such an emotional disturbance as prevented her from thinking at all. The mere physical effect of those sheets of score paper was, until she could manage to control it, such as to make any continuance of the labor of translating his opera, impossible.

By a persistent effort of will she presently got herself in hand however and went on not only with her translation but with the other moves in her campaign to get _The Outcry_ produced. Her first thought was that something might be accomplished directly through LaChaise. Her simple plan had been to make friends with him so that when she urged the arguments for producing this work, they'd be--well--lubricated by his liking for her.

She began saying things to him on a rather more personal note, things with a touch of challenge in them. There was no gradual response to this but suddenly--a week or ten days after her return from Hickory Hill this was--he seemed to perceive her drift. He turned a look upon her, the oddest sort of look, startled, inquiring, lighted up with a happy though rather incredible surmise. It was an exclamatory look which one might interpret as saying, "What's this! Do you really mean it!"

Mary got no further than that. She didn't mean it, of course, a serious love-affair with LaChaise, and she tried for a while to feel rather indignant against an attitude toward women which had only two categories; did she offer amorous possibilities or not. An attitude that had no half lights in it, no delicate tints of chivalry nor romance. LaChaise would do nothing for the sake of her blue eyes. He had no interest whatever in that indeterminate, unstable emotional compound that goes, between men and women, by the name of friendship.

She tried to call this beastly and feel indignant about it, but somehow that emotion didn't respond. She had more real sympathy for and understanding of an attitude like that than she had for one like Graham's. It was simpler and more natural. It involved you in no such labyrinths of farfetched absurdities and exasperating cross-purposes as Graham's did.

It was characteristically,--wasn't it?--a Latin attitude; or would it be fairer to say that its antithesis as exemplified by Graham was a northern specialty? She extracted quite a bit of amusement from observing some of the results of individual failures to understand this fundamental difference, all the more after she had Jimmy Wallace to share observations with. He was a dramatic critic, but he consented to take a fatherly, or better avuncular, interest in the Ravinia season during the month of his musical colleague's vacation.

The special episode they focused upon was Violet Williamson's flirtation with Fournier. She was a pretty woman, still comfortably on the east side of forty, socially one of the inner ring, spoiled, rather, by an enthusiastic husband but not, thanks to her own good sense, very seriously. James Wallace was an old and very special friend of hers and she commandeered his services as soon as he appeared at Ravinia, in her campaign for possession of the French baritone.

Mary had reflected over this and talked it out pretty thoroughly with Jimmy before it occurred to her that she might be able to turn it to her own account--or rather to her lover's. For that matter, why not, while she had him under her hand, recruit Jimmy as an aid in the campaign?

"Do you mind being used for ulterior purposes?" she asked him.

He intimated that he did not if they were amusing, as any of Mary's were pretty sure to be.

"I'm interested in an opera," she told him, "or rather, I'm very much interested in a man who has written one. Father and I have agreed that he's a great person and everybody seems willing