_ CHAPTER XXXI. DORA DECIDES
"Dick, you are no longer an invalid, and it is absurd for you to pose as one."
"Well, I feel pretty rotten, and I need a lot of attention. Come here, little one, and look after me."
"It is absurd of you to describe yourself as weak, when you have a grip like that. Why, you positively bruised my arm."
Dora made a great show of reluctance in coming to Dick's side. He sat in his father's arm-chair in the study, near the window, where the warm sunshine could fall upon him.
"You are a prisoner, Dora, until you tell me why you have avoided me during the past few days."
"Your father requires so much attention."
"And don't I?"
"No, you are getting quite yourself again, and rough, and brutal, and tyrannical."
She looked at him indulgently, and made a little
moue.
"You know, we're engaged, Dora, and, when a fellow is in love with a girl with lots of money, like you, it's only natural that he should take every opportunity of being with his sweetheart. And he doesn't expect that same sweetheart to give him the cold shoulder."
Dora drew forward a little hassock, and settled herself at his feet with a sigh. He bent forward, and looked into her eyes questioningly.
"Are you quite sure my going away didn't make any difference to you, Dora?"
"How foolish you are, Dick! That wretched will of your grandfather's made it necessary that I should marry you, and marry you I must, or you'll be a pauper. Father, who was opposed to the match at one time, is now all eagerness for it. I hate to think that money has any part in our marriage."
"Never mind about that. Your father was all eagerness that you should marry Ormsby at one time, wasn't he?"
"Dick, I thought I told you never to mention that horrid man's name again."
"You are quite sure he is a horrid man?"
"Dick, don't be absurd." She flushed hotly. "What hurts me about our marriage is that you, the man, have no option in the matter. I am just a stepping-stone to wealth, so far as you are concerned, and I--I don't like it."
"Why not, darling?"
"Because it would have been so much nicer, if--if you had come to me with nothing, despised and friendless. Then, I could have shown my love by defying the whole world for your sake."
"Thanks, darling, but I prefer the money, if you don't mind."
"Ah! but you're a man."
"I only want mother to come back to be perfectly happy," Dick said, gravely. "You don't know mother. She could stand anything but rebuke. That sermon of father's must have almost done for her. Nothing could be more terrible in her eyes than to be held up to contempt. You must make allowances for mother, Dora."
"She must be wretchedly unhappy," Dora agreed. "Yet, she writes no letters that give any clue to her feelings."
"No, the letters she sends are merely to let us know where she is--never a word about father."
"Does she know how ill he has been?"
"Well, you see, I can't write much, and I hesitated to say anything that would hurt her feelings. I said he'd been very ill, but was mending slowly, and we hoped to see him himself again in a week or two."
"Does she know that he has given up St. Botolph's?"
"Yes, I told her that."
"She makes no mention of coming home?"
"Not a word."
"Dick, she must return, and at once," Dora declared, vehemently.
"Not to this place, Dora. She would never do it. It wouldn't be fair to ask her."
"But something must be done."
"I feel pretty sick about it. It was partly through me and my wretched debts that father and mother got so short of money. Mother was always hard up. It runs in the blood. And, what with one thing and another, we were all of us in a pretty tight fix; and she tried to get us out of it."
"I don't blame her for altering her father's checks. That's nothing," observed Dora, with typical feminine inconsequence, "but letting people think that--"
"I know, I know! But it couldn't really have done me any harm when I was under the turf; and it meant ruin to father, if she had done nothing. Look here, Dora, mother must come back, or father must go to her. We've got to arrange it between us. If mother won't come home, she must be fetched."
Dora sat for a few moments with her elbows resting on her knees and her chin on her hands, gazing thoughtfully out of the window, watching the sparrows on the path outside.
"Can she ever forgive him?" she asked, after a pause.
"Well, the sermon was certainly pretty rough, especially after things had been all smoothed out. But father is a demon for doing nasty things when he thinks they've got to be done. You don't suppose he's any less fond of mother than before, do you?"
"No; but, you see, a woman feels differently about these things--things of conscience, I mean. Your mother probably thinks he despises her, and a proud woman can never stand that."
"But he doesn't. It was himself that he was troubled about, to think that he had strayed from the strict path of duty to such an extent as to allow me--his son--to be blamed for that--Well, it's all wrong, anyway, and mother's got to come home."
"How are we to set about it, Dick?"
"Dora, you'll have to go and fetch her. I've thought it all out."
"I? How can I? That wouldn't do at all, Dick. Don't you see that she would resent it--the advance coming from me, because I was one of those most concerned and affected by her sin; and, being a woman, more likely to be hard upon her than anyone else."
"You mean that you nearly married Ormsby because she led you to think that I wasn't worth a tinker's damn. Well, perhaps I wasn't--before the war. But I learned things out there. I had to pull myself together, and endure and go through such privation that a whole life on fifteen dollars a week would be luxury in comparison. I'd go to mother at once, if I were strong enough, but I'm not. So, what do you suggest, little girl?"
"I think we ought to sound your father on the matter first. He is difficult to approach. He has a trick of making you feel that he prefers to bear his sorrow alone; but I think it can be managed, if we use a little harmless deception."
"How?"
"Well, first of all, it wouldn't be a bad idea to get Jane to turn your mother's room out, and clean it as if getting ready for the return of the mistress of the house."
"I see," cried Dick, with a spasmodic tightening of the right hand which rested on Dora's shoulder. "Give father the impression that she's coming back, just to see how he takes it."
"Yes."
"Good! Set about it to-day."
"I'll find Jane at once. And, now, I've been here with you quite a long time, and there are many things for me to attend to."
"No, not yet," he pleaded with an invalid's sigh, a very mechanical one; but he had found it effectual in reaching Dora's heart on previous occasions. It was efficacious to-day. Her heart was full to bursting with joy and love and--the spring. Dick again raised the delicate question of the date of their marriage, and Dora no longer procrastinated. It should take place as soon as ever the rector and his wife were reconciled.
* * * * *
John Swinton, who was just beginning to move about the house, white-faced and shaky, with a lustreless eye and snow-white head, was awakened from his torpor by a tremendous bustling up and down stairs. Furniture strewed the landing outside his wife's room, and it was evident that something was going on.
"What is happening?" he asked on one occasion, when he found the road to the staircase absolutely barred.
"The mistress's room is being prepared for her return," replied Jane, to whom the query was addressed.
He started as though someone had struck him in the breast.
"Coming home," he gasped, staring at the woman with dropped jaw and wondering eye.
"Miss Dora's orders, sir. She said the room might be wanted any day now, and it must be cleaned."
"Coming home," murmured the rector, as he steadied himself with the aid of the banister, "coming home! coming home!" There was a different inflection in his voice each time he repeated the phrase. Tenderness crept into the words, and tears streamed down his cheeks, as he passed slowly into his study. "Coming home! Mary coming home!"
Dick and Dora were rather alarmed at the result of their plot. They dreaded the effect of possible disappointment; but they had learned what they wanted to know--that was the main point. The rector was inconsolable without his wife. Her return was the only thing that could dispel the torpor which rendered him indifferent to daily concerns.
Netty was called into counsel to decide what was to be done. Her simple settlement of the difficulty was very welcome.
"I shall just write and tell mother what you've done. Then, she can act as she pleases; but I expect she'll be very angry." _