Part 49 (1/2)
”No; because the things said were very simple-just statements of fact as to which there could be no misunderstanding.”
”Had the statements of fact anything”-he moistened his dry lips-”anything to do with-with Hubert?”
”Some of them. But there!” She caught herself up. ”You're not going to make me tell you things. I'm your mother, and if I intervene at all, it must be in the way of helping you to come together and not of putting you apart.” She rose, drawing her cloak about her. ”I think I must go in, dear. I'm beginning to feel the damp.”
He, too, rose, sitting down again sidewise on the rustic rail of the summerhouse.
”Wait a minute, mother. I want to ask you something. When I was at Marillo I wandered into your room one day and saw a picture.”
”A picture?”
”Yes; a picture; and I-I wondered how it-it happened to come there.”
She bent a little toward him, drawing her cloak more closely about her.
If it was acting it was well done.
”It-it couldn't have been-”
He chucked the b.u.t.t of his cigarette into the lake.
”Yes, I guess it was. It had an inscription on it-'Life and Death, by Hubert Wray.'”
”Oh, my G.o.d! Where did you say you saw it, Bob?”
”In your bedroom, against the wall. I thought it might be a portrait you'd had done, and so lifted-”
”And I told them to put it out of sight. You see, Hubert didn't send it till after we'd left the house-just before he went to California. I'd given orders that it was to be locked up in an empty closet in my wardrobe room. Oh, Bob darling, I don't know what you're going to think of me.”
”Oh, you're all right, mother. It wasn't you. I-I only wondered how you'd come by the thing at all.”
She made an obvious effort at controlling emotion.
”Why, Bob, it was this way. After-after what Jennie told me that day I-I naturally thought a good deal about Hubert-and-and their relations to each other-”
”She talked about them, did she?”
”Well, you see, in a way she had to. She was let in for it, poor thing.
I can't tell you everything without giving you the whole story-and it's _her_ story, as I've said before. I've no right to betray her, and least of all to you.”
”All right. Go on.”
”So when I'd heard that Hubert had a new picture at the Kahler Gallery-and everyone was talking about it-and I knew from the things they said what-what sort of a picture it was-”
”Yes, yes; I understand.”
”Well, then, I-I went and saw it; and to-to get it out of sight I bought it on the spot. I didn't want it to be still on exhibition when you came back; and I hoped that people would forget it. I should have burned it at once, only that Hubert delayed sending it, and-well, you see how it happened. But even so, Bob dear, you knew you were marrying a model-”
”Oh yes; it isn't that-not altogether.”