Captivating Mary Carstairs

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

"She and Uncle Elbert have stayed pretty good friends all through it. They exchange letters now and then, and once or twice when she has been in the city, I believe they have met—though not in recent years. My private suspicion is that she has never entirely got over being in love with him. Anyhow, there's their general relationship in a nutshell—parted but friendly. It might have stayed just like that till they were both in their graves, but for one accidental complication. There is a child."

"I seem to remember," said Peter. "A little boy."

"On the contrary. A little girl. Uncle Elbert," said Varney, "is a bit of a social butterfly. Mrs. Carstairs is an earnest domestic character. As I gather, that was what they clashed on—the idea of what a home ought to be. When the split came, Mrs. Carstairs took the child and Uncle Elbert was willing enough to have her do it. That was natural enough, Peter. He had his friends and his clubs and his little dinners, and he was no more competent to raise a girl baby than you are, which is certainly going some for a comparison. I suppose the fact was that he was glad to be free of the responsibility. But it's mighty different now.

"You see," said Varney, lighting one cigarette from another and throwing the old one away, "he must be pretty lonely all by himself in that big house of his. On top of that he's getting old and isn't in very good health. Explain it any way you like. The simple fact is that within this last year or so, it's gradually gotten to be a kind of obsession with him, an out-and-out, down-and-out monomania, to know that kid—to have her come and spend part of every year with him. That's natural, too, I should say."

"H'm. Mrs. Carstairs sticks to her like fly-paper, I suppose?"

"Not at all. She admits Uncle Elbert's rights and is entirely willing to let him have Mary—for such is our little heroine's name—for part of the time. It is the child who is doing the fly-paper business. The painful fact is that she declines to have anything whatever to do with her father. Invitations, commands, entreaties—she spurns them all. Yes, I asked him if they had tried spanking, but he didn't answer—seemed rather miffed, in fact. The child simply will not come, and that is point number one. Now, of course, Uncle Elbert realizes that he has not been what the world would call a good father. And he has figured it out that Mary, evidently a young precocity, has judged him, found him guilty, and sentenced him to banishment from her affections. That hurts, you know. Well, he is certain that if he could once see her and be thrown with her for a few days, she would find that he is not such an old ogre, after all, would take him back as a father, as we might say, and that after that everything would be plain sailing. That's his theory. The point is how to see her and be thrown with her for the necessary few days."

"Why does n't he get on the train and go to Hunston? Or, if Mrs. Carstairs is really so decent about the thing, why doesn't she get on the train and bring Mary down here?"

"Good. I put both of those up to him, and they seemed to embarrass him a little. I gathered that he had suggested them both to Mrs. Carstairs, and that she had turned them down hard. The ground seemed delicate. You see, we must allow for the personal equation in all this. No matter where they met, he couldn't hang around the house getting acquainted with Mary without coming into sort of intimate contact with Mrs. Carstairs, and giving a kind of domestic touch to their relations. You see how that is. She wants to be fair and generous about it, but if she is in love with him, that would be a little more than flesh and blood could bear, I suppose. Then, as I say, there is the pig-headedness of the child. Anyway, Uncle Elbert assures me that both those plans are simply out of the question. So there is the situation. Mary won't come to see him by herself. Mrs. Carstairs won't bring Mary to see him, and she won't let him come to see Mary. Well, what remains?"

Peter said nothing. In a room overhead a manifestly improvised quartet struck up "Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot?" with great enthusiasm.

"You see there is only one thing. The old gentleman," said Varney, "has brooded over the matter till it's broken him all up. He was in bed when I was there just now. He asked me to go to Hunston and bring his daughter to him. I told him that kidnapping was a little out of my line. 'Kidnapping is rather a harsh word,' he said. 'Yes,' said I, 'it's a criminal word, I believe.' But—"