" 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 muffled 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 assailed 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 shield 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.
Marjory raised her voice in a laugh. " Did I betray myself? Did I become the maiden all forlorn ? Did I giggle to show people that I did not care? No-Idid not-I did not. And it was such a long time, daddy! Oh, such a long time! I thought we would never get here. I thought I would never get where Icould be alone like this, where I could-cry-if Iwanted to. I am not much of - a crier, am I, daddy?
But this time-this-time-"
She suddenly drew herself over near to her father and looked at him. " Oh, daddy, I want to tell you one thing. just one simple little thing." She waited then, and while she waited her father's head went lower and lower. " Of course, you know-I told you once. I love him! I love him! Yes, probably he is a rascal, but, do you know, I don't think I would mind if he was a-an assassin. This morning I sent him away, but, daddy, he didn't want to go at all.
I know he didn't. This Nora Black is nothing to him.
I know she is not. I am sure of it. Yes-I am sure of it. * * * I never expected to talk this way to any living creature, but-you are so good, daddy.
Dear old daddy---"
She ceased, for she saw that her father was praying.
The sight brought to her a new outburst of sobbing, for her sorrow now had dignity and solemnity from thebowed white head of her old father, and she felt that her heart was dying amid the pomp of the church.
It was the last rites being performed at the death-bed.
Into her ears came some imagining of the low melan.
choly chant of monks in a gloom.
Finally her father arose. He kissed her on the brow. " Try to sleep, dear," he said. He turned out the gas and left the room. His thought was full of chastened emotion.
But if his thought was full of chastened emotion, it received some degree of shock when he arrived in the presence of Mrs. Wainwright. " Well, what is all this about ? " she demanded, irascibly. " Do you mean to say that Marjory is breaking her heart over that man Coleman ? It is all your fault-" She was apparently still ruffled over her exclusion.
When the professor interrupted her he did not speak with his accustomed spirit, but from something novel in his manner she recognised a danger signal.
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"Then it Is true?" she asked. Her voice was a mere awed whisper.
" It is true," answered the professor.
"Well," she said, after reflection, "I knew it. Ialway's knew it. If you hadn't been so blind! You turned like a weather-cock in your opinions of Coleman.
You never could keep your opinion about him for more than an hour. Nobody could imagine what you might think next. And now you see the result of it! I warned you! I told you what this Coleman was, and if Marjory is suffering now, you have only yourself to blame for it. I warned you! "" If it is my fault," said the professor, drearily, " Ihope God may forgive me, for here is a great wrong to my daughter."Well, if you had done as I told you-" she began.
Here the professor revolted. " Oh, now, do not be-gin on that," he snarled, peevishly. Do not begin on that."" Anyhow," said Mrs. Wainwright, it is time that we should be going down to dinner. Is Marjory com-ing? "
" No, she is not," answered the professor, " and Ido not know as I shall go myself."
" But you must go. Think how it would look!
All the students down there dining without us, and cutting up capers! You must come."" Yes," he said, dubiously, " but who will look after Marjory ? "" She wants to be left alone," announced Mrs.
Wainwright, as if she was the particular herald of this news. " She wants to be left alone."" Well, I suppose we may as well go down."Before they went, the professor tiptoed into his daughter's room. In the darkness he could only see her waxen face on the pillow, and her two eyes gazing fixedly at the ceiling. He did not speak, but immedi.
ately withdrew, closing the door noiselessly behind him.
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