CHAPTER XX.
THE next evening Miss Forbes dressed for a dinner party in a very bad humour.
Her mother was prostrated with a violent headache and had been obliged to send an excuse.
“Such a dreadful thing to do,” grumbled Augusta to her maid as she revolved before the pier glass. “Have you asked Marie the particulars? Is my mother really ill?”
“Dreadful, I believe, miss.”
“It makes me feel heartless to leave her, but one of us must go, that is certain. Can I see her?”
“No, miss. She is trying to sleep.”
“People may have an idea that the path of an American heiress who is going to marry an English Duke is strewn with Jacqueminots; I wish they knew what I have gone through in the last month. I wish to heaven papa would come over.”
It was a bright and lively dinner given by a very young and newly-titled United Statesian, who treated the British peerage as a large and lovely joke, and was accepted on much the same footing. The Duke, who had pulled himself together since the swerve in his fortunes, looked something more of a man. His cheeks had more colour and his eye-belongings less. He held himself erectly and talked well. Augusta bored him hideously, but he reflected that a Duke need see little of his Duchess, and filled his present rôle creditably. Fletcher Cuyler as usual was the life of the company, and even Augusta forgot to be intellectual.
A theatre party followed the dinner. Augusta returned to the hotel a little after midnight. As she opened the door of the private drawing-room of Mrs. Forbes’ suite, she saw with surprise that her mother was sitting by one of the tables.
“I thought you were in bed with a headache,” she began, and then uttered an exclamation of alarm and went hastily forward.
Mrs. Forbes, as white as the dead, her hair unbound and dishevelled, her eyes swollen, sat with clenched hands pressed hard against her cheeks.
“Mother!” exclaimed Augusta. “You—you look terribly. How you must have suffered. Has the pain gone?”
“Yes, the pain has gone.”
“Well, I am glad you are better——”
“It will be a long while before I am better. Oh, I want your father! Cable to him! Go for him! Do anything, only bring him here.”
“I’ll cable this minute if you are really ill. But what is the matter?”
Mrs. Forbes muttered something. Augusta bent her ear. “What?” she asked. Her mother repeated what she had said. As Augusta lifted her head her face was scarlet.
“Gracious goodness!” she ejaculated. “Who would ever have thought of such a thing?” She walked aimlessly to the window, then returned to her mother. “Well,” she added, “it’s nothing to be so upset about. It isn’t as if it were your first. And papa will be delighted.”
Mrs. Forbes flung her arms over the table, her head upon them, and burst into wild sobbing.
“Good heavens, mother, don’t take on so,” cried her daughter. “What good could papa do if he were here? I hope I’ll never have a baby if it affects one like that.”
She hovered over her mother, much embarrassed. She was not heartless and would have been glad to relieve her distress; but inasmuch as she was incapable of such distress herself she comprehended not the least of what possessed her mother. She took refuge upon the plane where she was ever at home.
“I have always said,” she announced, “that it is not a good thing for American men to spoil their wives as they do, and particularly as papa spoils you. Here you are in the most ordinary predicament that can befall a woman, and yet you are utterly demoralized because he is not here to pet you and make you think you are the only woman that ever had a baby. And upon my word,” she added reflectively, “I believe he would be perfectly happy if he were here. I can just see the fuss he would make over you——”
Here her mother’s sobs became so violent that she was roused to genuine concern.
“I’ll cable at once,” she said. “But what shall I cable? I don’t know how to intimate such a thing, and I certainly can’t say it right out.”
“I will write. Give me the things.” Mrs. Forbes raised her disfigured face and pushed back her hair. “It will make me feel better. Of course you cannot cable without alarming him, and he has had enough.”
Augusta brought the writing materials with alacrity. Mrs. Forbes wrote two lines. The tears splashed on the paper.
“Those will look like real tears,” said Augusta reassuringly. “Once I helped Mabel write a letter breaking off an engagement, and she sprinkled it with the hair-brush. I am sure he must have guessed. Here, I’ll send it right away, and then you’ll feel better.”
She summoned a bell-boy and dispatched the letter. “There!” she said, patting her mother’s head. “He’ll be sure to come over now, and all will go as merry as a marriage-bell—my marriage-bell. Tell me, mamma, don’t you feel that this is a special little intervention of Providence to bring things about just as we want them? Aren’t you glad that this is the end of doubt and worry, and that you can keep your houses and lovely jewels?”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Forbes wearily. “I want nothing but my husband.”