The Lady is Dead. Patrick Laing
much worse than that,” Deirdre replied. “Incredible as it may sound, it seems that recently Mark has become afflicted with what is known as the wandering eye. The—you should excuse the expression—lady involved,” she suppressed another giggle, “is, according to Lee, ‘a cheap, painted hussy who uses loud perfume and is old enough to be his mother.’ She wanted to know what I thought she ought to do about the situation.”
“What did you tell her?” I asked curiously.
“I told her that anything that was worth having was certainly worth fighting for.”
“How unladylike!”
Deirdre leaned over the back of my chair and pretended to pull my hair. “I seem to recall that I practically had to do the proposing because you had some ridiculous notion about not having the right to ask me to marry you,” she remarked, “and if you dare to imply that I’m not a lady, Patrick Laing . . .”
I surrendered unconditionally.
“A painted hussy who uses loud perfume,” I repeated, chuckling a little over Lee’s undoubtedly biased description of her rival. And then for no reason that I could account for logically, the memory of the exotic perfume worn by the woman who had been in Barto’s office flashed across my mind. I had no grounds for supposing there might be any connection between the two, yet the idea that there was, persisted, while behind it skulked the uneasy suspicion that such a connection was not good. I began to feel a vague and disquieting distrust of Antonio Barto and his influence upon young Mark Fordyce.
CHAPTER III
The next few weeks drifted by uneventfully insofar as further developments in the affairs of the Fordyces were concerned. Lee dropped around at the house once or twice during that time, and I learned later from Deirdre that the girl’s campaign to win Mark back had practically bogged down. He remained friendly enough, but he had apparently made it plain that he intended to keep that friendship upon a strictly platonic basis.
“What can you do, Paddy,” Deirdre asked me after the second of Lee’s visits, “when a man not only drops you for another woman, but then actually expects you to be interested and sympathetic when he tells you all about her?”
“I don’t know, Derry,” I answered, being in a somewhat flippant mood at the moment. “I’ve never been dropped for another woman. But tell Lee to cheer up. Men don’t have too much sense when they’re just past twenty.”
“Neither,” she retorted pointedly, “do they seem to have too much when they’re past thirty.”
I left that remark strictly alone.
As for Mark himself, I got the impression that he was avoiding me, for he made no further effort to discuss his theatrical problem with me, as I had been almost certain he would after our talk in my office that morning. I learned indirectly that he had accepted and was going on with the part in the play, but whether with or without his father’s consent, I had no way of knowing.
I did, however, have one brief encounter with Eric Fordyce. It was a few days after the explosion in the laboratory when, as I was returning home from an evening class, I encountered him on his way back from the university chemistry laboratory, where he had evidently been putting in a few hours of extra work on his research experiment with his collaborator, Professor Fosdick. Since we were headed in the same direction, we continued the rest of the way together.
“I expect to be leaving here shortly, Laing,” he remarked presently as we walked along. “My experimental work with Professor Fosdick is almost completed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I replied with sincerity; for while the man’s peculiar reserve had prevented him from becoming on very intimate terms with anybody, I had liked what little I had come to know of him. “I had hoped you might be interested in staying on as a regular member of the faculty.”
“Ordinarily, I’d like nothing better,” he admitted—a little wistfully, I thought. “But I feel that Mark needs a change. He’s becoming restless here.”
“I thought Mark was particularly happy at the university,” I said in surprise.
“He’ll be graduated from the university in June,” he pointed out. “After that, he must decide what he wants to do with his life.”
Since he had, figuratively, unlatched the door for me, I decided to risk pushing it open a little farther.
“Mark seems to be interested in the theater,” I ventured, “and I’ve heard from other sources that he has genuine talent. Has he considered going on the stage as a career?”
The violence of Eric Fordyce’s reaction startled me, even though I had been partially prepared for it.
“No!” he exclaimed. “That is the one thing he shall never do! Mark shall never go on the stage with my consent—or without it, if I am able to prevent it.”
Then, as though realizing belatedly the force of his own words and fearing that they might have given offense, he apologized.
“Sorry, Laing,” he said. “I hadn’t meant to go off like that. It’s merely that I can’t see the theater as a fitting career for my son.”
After that, he seemed lost in his own thoughts; but just before we reached his house, he spoke again.
“Laing,” he said, and his voice sounded strangely tired, as though the weight of the years had suddenly descended upon him, “never undertake to interfere in other people’s lives, just because an illogical quirk in the law has given you the power to do it. For the satisfaction it promises at the outset soon turns into a burden that is too great for any mortal man to bear.”
The speech was a strange one, and he had uttered it almost as though it had been wrung from him by some secret torment which he was unable to bear any longer in silence. But he had not said enough to justify my asking him to say more, and so there was no way left open whereby I could try to help him.
I answered something—I had no idea what either then or later—and we said good night.
For a long time afterward I puzzled over what he had said to me and its possible application to Mark, for I had no doubt that in some way it concerned him. Then gradually it faded from my mind, and was all but forgotten.
For approximately three weeks then all was, if not actually serene, at least quiet. Had I not been so occupied with my own affairs—getting two classes of Senior students over the final hump before graduation, to say nothing of making out final grades for several other classes of both undergraduate and graduate students—I might have realized that this apparent calm was only the lull which precedes the storm. And then, as it was bound to, the storm broke.
I was preparing to leave my office for the day when, somewhat to my surprise, Mark stopped by to extend to Deirdre and me an invitation to attend the dress rehearsal of the Senior play, which was to be held that evening.
“I hope you’ll both come,” he went on with boyish shyness. “Dress rehearsal is a little different from the actual performance—sort of extra special. The audience is made up only of people who have been personally invited by the cast and crew.”
I thanked him and assured him that Deirdre and I would be very happy to attend. Then I asked, “Will your father be there, too, Mark?”
He hesitated. “I’m afraid not, Professor Laing,” he admitted finally. “So far as I know, he isn’t even aware that I’m in the play.”
“You didn’t tell him, then?”
“I couldn’t,” he answered. “He was worried over some difficulty he and Professor Fosdick were having with their experiment, and I didnt want to upset him further. After that straightened itself out, it was too late—I mean for Professor Barto to have got anybody to take my place in case Dad made me step out.”
I couldn’t help wondering whether most of that explanation hadn’t been merely a convenient