Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/379

Rh "Of course you don't know me, Dora; it is twelve years—"

"Why, yes, I do," she said; "of course I do!" She got up, eagerly, the sulky baby hiding its head in her neck, and held out her pretty hand. "Mamma told me she saw you at Mrs. Strong's yesterday."

He sat down on the other side of the fire and laughed. "Well, upon my word! Dora—and a baby! It's absurd; I believe it's a doll."

"A doll!" she said, indignantly. "Amy, look at the gentleman! Come, goosie, look at him—"

Amy silently burrowed in her shoulder, and she gave up in despair. "You little monkey!" she said. "Mr. Austin, she isn't always so silly. And she's the dearest thing that ever was. Well, you shall have some tea, even if Amy won't speak to you."

"And your mother? She is well?" he said, taking his tea and looking at her with his kind, amused eyes. "And your husband? Of course I have seen him. My dear, how does it seem to have married a famous man?"

Her face was suddenly illuminated. "You have seen Augustine? In what? Oh, Mr. Austin, isn't he wonderful? You won't mind my saying that he is wonderful, will you? And yet you can't know how wonderful he is, until you see him playing with Amy. I will let him know you are here. Oh yes, of course I will. Mamma told him all about you last night, and what talent you had. She said that some time you would write a great book. What is it to be about, Mr. Austin? Mamma has a headache, and Amy is such a little horse-marine when she gets going that it worries her—when she has a headache. So she has gone to sit in the library, and Augustine went in to cheer her up. Wait; I'll call him. There! Amy darling, do be good and let mother go."

She put the child—a fluff of white and rose and gold—down in her chair, and it gazed solemnly over the cushioned arm at the stranger, while she went to call her husband, who came immediately; the same large, gentle creature, with the wonderful face, whom Austin had seen on the stage. It was a strange face, at once luminous and frank, and without self-consciousness; yet, lying behind the simplicity, there was the most profound emotional complexity, held always in the leash of simple goodness. He sat down and took his little girl on his knee, and as he and Austin talked he hugged the child furtively, whispering to her once or twice, and Amy chuckled loudly and whispered back again. Dora looked on like a Madonna.

A moment later Adèle Wharton entered, and, somehow, they all turned to her as people turn to the sun—except, indeed, the baby, who was displeased at being placed hastily on the floor while her father got up to fetch a footstool for grandmamma, and her mother rose to put a little silk shawl over her shoulders, and Henry Austin moved the bowl of violets towards her,—he had the feeling that he must do something, and the violets were nearest to hand.

"Does Amy bother you, Mrs. Wharton?" Augustine said. "I'll carry her up-stairs."

"Bless her little heart, no! If she won't suddenly roar," she said; but the husband and wife exchanged an uneasy glance, and Dora slipped away with the child in her arms. When she came back the other three were talking about Augustine's last part; or rather, his mother-in-law was talking—very calmly, with extraordinary insight into the character, but with a cold-blooded incisiveness that made Henry Austin wince. The actor did not wince; he stood, his elbow on the mantelpiece, listening. "Yes," he agreed—"yes; you are right; but if—" And then they fell into argument.

Dora and Henry Austin listened—she, humbly; he, with a sense of watching something grow—watching clay take immortal form under the modeller's hands!

"You won't mind our talking about it?" Augustine said, turning apologetically to his guest. "I didn't mean to get into it, but I don't dare to lose Mrs. Wharton's idea, even when I don't quite agree with her."

"You will agree with me," she said, simply, "when you think it over. I maintain, Mr. Austin, that where Augustine is confronted by the fact of his own complicity in the crime—you remember, he has not been conscious of complicity?—I mean in the Prince's part,—