Now, all of a sudden, it was too late! And Peter wasn't even near. I could imagine the child's despair, with the present of a five-hundred-thousand-dollar house flung at her head—a house which would be "no use" to her fiancé if it were not to be shared with her. Even knowing what I knew, I feared that the situation might become serious, more because of Peter's absence than anything else.
As soon as we finished luncheon and Caspian was saying good-bye to Pat (decorously in the presence of Larry, from whom she refused to be detached), I asked Jack what he thought. "If only we knew where to get at Peter in New York!" I wailed. "I'm afraid the girl will be married to that creature before Peter comes back; and then nothing will be of any use."
"We mustn't let that happen," said Jack. "Not that I believe Storm has turned his back without thinking of every contingency. And he must know about the sale."
"He didn't mention it when he told me the story," I said. "Not a word about the Stanislaws house!"
"Probably it didn't strike him as important in that connection," Jack argued; and I accepted the deduction; but I was far from comfortable and my peace of mind was not restored by a conversation I snatched with Pat when Caspian had gone. I begged her to do nothing rash, in a moment of generous impulse; but she exclaimed, "It is others who seem to have the generous impulses! I cannot afford to be generous. But dear Molly, I must be just. And now everything is against Larry and me. We must go where the tide takes us."
She didn't use as flowery language as that, but it's difficult to quote Patty in the vernacular.
Well, we crawled home after a while, Jack and I. And nothing more happened that day, except that Pat 'phoned me from her ruinous home about nine o'clock in the evening, to say "Mistaire" Caspian had come back. He had bought the Stanislaws house and paid for it, but she had refused to accept the gift. "It must be his, not mine," she said. "I understand that he would not have bought it except for my sake, so already I owe him a big debt of gratitude. I will not owe him more. It is now too much."
"Did he get the license?" I tremblingly ventured to inquire.
"Yes," Pat answered. But when I hurried on to the next question, "Have you fixed a date?" silence was my answer. She had dropped the receiver, and I was afraid I could guess why. She couldn't bear to discuss the sword hanging over her head. Few descendants of Damocles can!
All that was yesterday. I've waited to-day to write you in the hope of having something new to tell. But it's now ten o'clock P. M. and there is nothing good; rather the contrary. Pat has almost if not quite promised to marry Ed Caspian at the end of the week, Saturday, and Mrs. Shuster has hinted at her willingness to become Mrs. Moore on the same day. The knots are to be tied (devil permitting) very quietly, at home, in the water-logged drawing-room at Kidd's Pines. My pleadings to Pat of no avail. The combination of pawned rings, debts, five-hundred-thousand-dollar houses, etc., and Peter's absence at the crucial moment is too strong for her. As for Larry, he seems to be as hopeless as his daughter. I fancy from a chance word which Pat inadvertently let drop that, with the prospect of a millionaire son-in-law, Larry desperately attempted to free himself, but Mrs. Shuster "persuaded" him to stick to his bargain. How she managed I don't know, but there are lots of ways, and Larry with all his faults is a gentleman. He even has a chivalrous vein which, though lying deep under selfishness, crops up near the surface occasionally. I wish he'd been chivalrous with his daughter, while there was time for it to do good, instead of at the last moment with this silly middle-aged woman who wants to get "into society" through him.