XXVI
Itwas soon after this—in fact, no later than the following afternoon—that Mrs. Price hurried up the long driveway to the seminary. She was going home, and, being small and round and oldish, she panted and bubbled a little in her haste. Even her exactly appropriate garb, patterned closely on “correct and distinctive styles for more mature figures,” and her very sober little hat, shaped like a sugar-bowl, palpitated with undue excitement.
She burst in upon the dean and Fanny, who were quietly enjoying a cup of tea in the sunny little sitting-room, where a yellow rose showered its golden buds against the wide stone sills of the bay window. Fanny, looking up as she entered, recognized something amazing in the expression of her mother’s round face and rounder eyes.
“Why, mamma, what’s the matter?” she exclaimed, suspending the cream-pitcher over her father’s second cup of tea.
Mrs. Price dropped into the nearest chair, and, stretching out a plump hand, gave the dean a sudden prod in the arm that happened to be within easy reach.
“Edward, do you remember what you said—that night—about Faunce?”
The dean, still waiting for his cup of tea, looked around at her with an absent air.
“What night—what?”
“Just before he was married. You said he was prowling around at all hours of the night.”
“Oh, yes, I remember! He was. Give me that tea, please, Fanny, before you upset the cream-pitcher into it.”
Fanny recovered herself and hastily passed the cup over to her father, while Mrs. Price resumed.
“You were right, Edward—you always are! There’s something wrong. Diane has come home—alone!”
“Humph! What of that? He’s probably in New York, closing up his business before they sail.”
“She’s left him!”
“Eh?”
The dean jerked around in his chair and gazed at his wife in open-mouthed incredulity, while Fanny suddenly reddened and then paled. Only Mrs. Price, having recovered her breath, remained mistress of the situation.
“I said, she’s left him.”
“Nonsense! Your imagination always runs away with you, Julia. They haven’t been married six months.”
“I know it, but it’s true—the judge told me so himself.”
“Oh, mamma!”
Fanny’s exclamation did not express incredulity so much as dismay. She had given up all effort to drink her tea, and leaned back in her chair, her trembling hands hidden in her lap.
The dean continued to regard his wife over the tops of his big tortoise-shell spectacles. His mild face and pale-blue eyes behind the heavy brown rims made him look like a pallid but speculative beetle.
“What’s the matter? Did the judge tell you?”
Mrs. Price shook her head.
“He said: ‘My daughter came home last night to stay, and she has my entire approval and support.’ That’s exactly the way he worded it, Edward, and I—really, I was afraid to say a word. The atmosphere seemed to be thick—charged, you know. I can tell you I was glad to get out. I almost ran all the way home!”
“Did you see Diane, mamma?” Fanny managed to ask in a voice which at another time would have arrested her mother’s attention; but at the moment Mrs. Price was absorbed.
“Just for a few minutes, dear. She went right up-stairs and left me to the judge. You know I never am at home with him. I always feel—well, just the way I did when I was a little girl and my father made me fire off a Roman candle.I was so frightened when it exploded! You know I went over there to return those books papa borrowed, and I got right into it. As soon as Di went up-stairs, he began. I saw there was something the matter before. She looks as if she’d been drawn through a knot-hole. I was just thinking that I never saw a bride look like that when she got up and left me with him. Of course, I began to get ready to leave, too, but he made me sit down and sprang this thing on me—just like that! Somehow I felt as if I’d done it myself. I know David never felt a bit worse when Nathan said unto him, ‘Thou art the man!’ I felt as if I were either Faunce or Faunce’s mother, and I got up and ran!”
The dean smiled grimly.
“You’re not to blame, my dear, unless you want to shoulder a vicarious responsibility because I married them.”
“It’s an awful responsibility, Edward, to marry people these days! Fanny, give me a cup of tea. I feel a little faint. Was that water boiling, child, when you made it? Some of the tea-leaves are floating.”
“Elfrida brought it, mamma. I suppose it was.”
“Very likely it wasn’t, if she brought it. These Norwegians will be the death of me yet. I’ve no doubt that they made perfectly beautiful vikings—so crude and bloody, you know—but they’redeadly cooks! Edward, don’t you think you ought to do something, or say something? It’s so unscriptural.”
“What—the Norwegian?”
His wife stared at him in exasperation.
“You know perfectly what I mean. It’s shocking, the way people act. You really ought to talk to Diane.”
“Or to Faunce,” retorted the dean dryly. “Very likely he’s to blame.”
“Oh, no!” Fanny’s cry was so sharp that both parents looked at her, amazed, and she blushed painfully. “He was so much in love with Diane,” she faltered. “He told me so. We used to talk about her, and I know how he feels. He couldn’t—he simply couldn’t mean to quarrel with her!”
“So that’s what you were talking about, was it?” her father said in a relieved tone. “I sometimes thought, Fan, that he was trying to flirt with you at the same time that he was making love to Diane.”
“Oh, no!”
This time Fanny’s negative was low and a little tremulous. Mrs. Price glanced meaningly at her husband, but the dean, placidly spreading butter on a toasted muffin, was oblivious to the warning.
“I never believed in him, Fan—he’s too handsome. Personally I have more confidence in little plain old men, getting slightly bald and wearing spectacles.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Edward! We all know you. But it’s—it’s really terrible. Do you suppose Diane intends to get a divorce?”
The dean shook his head helplessly.
“Search me!”
“Edward! Those horrid boys are teaching you slang!”
“Of course they are, my dear. Slang is an expression of the age. I’m making a study of it, but I haven’t used much. If I did, I should say that I heard your news without even batting an eye.”
Mrs. Price rose and set her empty cup on the table.
“I think it’s time for me to go up-stairs and take off my things. I really do wish, Edward, you’d think it over. Something ought to be done. The judge is going to let that child ruin her whole life right at the start. You’re a minister of the gospel, as well as the dean of a seminary, and it’s your duty—it certainly is your duty—to preach the word. There’s nothing in it to favor divorce, and you know it!”
“My dear Julia—” the dean began, but she was already at the stairs, and she only called back something to him about David and Uriah’s wife as she disappeared.
The dean chuckled.
“The trouble with your mother’s quotations, my dear, is that she gets them misapplied. Whatdo you think of it, Fan? You know Faunce better than we do.”
Fanny was looking intently out of the window at the buds of the yellow rose.
“I don’t think I do know him very well, papa. You see, he was so much in love with Diane that he talked about her more than anything else. I felt, after a while, as if I stood on the outer edge. You understand, don’t you? It was as if I knew him quite well as my friend, but his real inner self, his soul, was a long way off. I—I thought it was because he was in love with—with some one else.”
The dean mused.
“I’m not so sure, my child. I think that was the way he made most of us feel—as if his soul was a long way off, as if he had something on his mind. Perhaps Diane has just found out what it is, and it’s given her a shock.”
Fanny started, turning her blue eyes on him.
“You mean you think he’s done something wrong?”
“I don’t think I meant anything as concrete as that, Fan. I was thinking that the inner self of some men is a shock to the average woman. That’s why we get these surprises, my dear. We don’t know people as they are, and when we find out their hidden characteristics we sometimes get a jar. It takes time to settle down and find that we can’t make the world over to suit our ownideas. Diane’s a bit headstrong; she’ll take it hard.”
“I don’t think she cared much for him, papa. She—she was in love with Overton before he went away.”
“Sh! My child, don’t say a word; that road leads to scandal. We don’t know yet how Overton was saved. I suppose, if this goes on, I’ll have to speak to Diane or to Faunce.”
“It’s not his fault, papa,” Fanny protested firmly, as she rose. “He loves her!”
The dean shook his head.
“Youth,” he remarked, “is optimistic. There’s Ferdie Farrar trying to bat that ball right into the seminary window, and I’ve warned him twice!” he added, springing up and making for the door, his eyes intent on the plunging figures on the distant campus.
Fanny heard him go out with his usual impetuosity; then she sat down weakly, poured herself another cup of lukewarm tea, and drank it. She was very glad that she had been so completely mistress of herself. She felt sure that her father had no suspicions. She was aware that Mrs. Price had, but she could depend on her mother.
Mrs. Price had her failings, but she was loyal to her little girl, as she still called her daughter. If she knew that Fanny had suffered when Faunce married Diane, she would not betray her knowledge, even by sympathizing with her. There wasrelief in that; it would be all the harder to drag her poor little secret out and dissect it, when it was a plain duty to let it die of inanition.
But it was like turning the knife in the wound to see that Diane could not get on with Faunce. Of course, they would patch this quarrel up, unless it was about some vital matter; but they could not go on as they had begun. At least Fanny could not believe it possible.
She had, besides, an intuitive knowledge of Diane’s frame of mind. Diane had loved Overton, and had been drawn to Faunce because of his association with Overton. He had won her consent to the marriage, but Fanny did not believe that he had ever completely won her heart. And now Overton had come back.
Fanny started as the thought took shape. Overton’s inexplicable return, the questions that it had raised about Faunce, the gossip and the scandal were synchronous with Diane’s flight. Was this the meaning of it?
Fanny rose slowly from the tea-table and went to the window. She felt a little giddy with the rush of troubled thoughts, and she blinked as the sunshine flashed full into her eyes. The window faced west, and the day was nearly done. Against a yellow mist she saw the striped and barred figures of the ball-players on the distant field. Their lithe forms etched against the orange tint of thehorizon reminded her of the Greek figures on one of Judge Herford’s glazed porcelains.
The trees were scantier here than in the hills, but their green leafage formed a graceful screen between their lawn and the campus. A mass of day lilies bloomed under the window, and she could see the little stars of the blue-eyed grass. She leaned forward, both hands resting on the sill, and looked out, the summer air touching her hot cheek and moving the delicate tendrils of fair hair on her forehead.