At the same moment, Mr. Keller entered the office. Jack possessed the dog's enviable faculty of distinguishing correctly between the people who are, and the people who are not, their true friends. Mr. Keller privately disliked the idea of having a person about him who had come out of a madhouse. Jack's instincts warned him to leave a room when Mr. Keller entered it. He left the office now.
"Is it possible that you trust that crazy creature with the key of your desk?" said Mr. Keller. "Even your bitterest enemy, Mrs. Wagner, would not believe you could be guilty of such an act of rashness."
"Pardon me, sir, it is you who are guilty of an act of rashness in forming your judgment. 'Fancy a woman in her senses trusting her keys to a man who was once in Bedlam!' Everybody said that of me, when I put Jack to the proof in my own house."
"Aha! there are other people then who agree with me?" said Mr. Keller.
"There are other people, sir (I say it with all needful respect), who know no more of the subject than you do. The most certain curative influence that can be exercised over the poor martyrs of the madhouse, is to appeal to their self-respect. From first to last, Jack has never been unworthy of the trust that I have placed in him. Do you think my friends owned they had been mistaken? No more than you will own it! Make your mind easy. I will be personally answerable for anything that is lost, while I am rash enough to trust my crazy creature with my key."
Mr. Keller's opinion was not in the least shaken; he merely checked any further expression of it, in deference to an angry lady. "I dare say you know best," he remarked politely. "Let me mention the little matter that has brought me here. David Glenney is, no doubt, closely occupied in London. He ought to know at once that the wedding-day is deferred. Will you write to him, or shall I?"
Mrs. Wagner began to recover her temper.
"I will write with pleasure, Mr. Keller. We have half an hour yet before post-time. I have promised Minna to see how the wonderful necklace looks on her. Will you excuse me for a few minutes? Or will you go upstairs with me?--I think you said something about it in the drawing-room."
"Certainly," said Mr. Keller, "if the ladies will let me in."
They ascended the stairs together. On the landing outside the drawing-room, they encountered Fritz and Minna--one out of temper, and the other in tears.
"What's wrong now?" Mr. Keller asked sharply. "Fritz! what does that sulky face mean?"
"I consider myself very badly used," Fritz answered. "I say there's a great want of proper consideration for Me, in putting off our marriage. And Madame Fontaine agrees with me."
"Madame Fontaine?" He looked at Minna, as he repeated the name. "Is this really true?"
Minna trembled at the bare recollection of what had passed. "Oh, don't ask me!" she pleaded piteously; "I can't tell what has come to my mother--she is so changed, she frightens me. And as for Fritz," she said, rousing herself, "if he is to be a selfish tyrant, I can tell him this--I won't marry him at all!"
Mr. Keller turned to Fritz, and pointed contemptuously down the stairs.
"Leave us!" he said. Fritz opened his lips to protest. Mr. Keller interposed, with a protest of his own. "One of these days," he went on, "you may possibly have a son. You will not find his society agreeable to you, when he happens to have made a fool of himself." He pointed down the stairs for the second time. Fritz retired, frowning portentously. His father addressed Minna with marked gentleness of manner. "Rest and recover yourself, my child. I will see your mother, and set things right."
"Don't go away by yourself, my dear," Mrs. Wagner added kindly; "come with me to my room."
Mr. Keller entered the drawing-room, and sent Joseph with another message. "Go up to Madame Fontaine, and say I wish to see her here immediately."
CHAPTER VIII
The widow presented herself, with a dogged resignation singularly unlike her customary manner. Her eyes had a set look of hardness; her lips were fast closed; her usually colorless complexion had faded to a strange grayish pallor. If her dead husband could have risen from the grave, and warned Mr. Keller, he would have said, "Once or twice in my life, I have seen her like that--mind what you are about!"
She puzzled Mr. Keller. He tried to gain time--he bowed and pointed to a chair. Madame Fontaine took the chair in silence. Her hard eyes looked straight at the master of the house, overhung more heavily than usual by their drooping lids. Her thin lips never opened. The whole expression of the woman said plainly, "You speak first!"
Mr. Keller spoke. His kindly instinct warned him not to refer to Minna, in alluding to the persons from whom he had derived his information. "I hear from my son," he said, "that you do not approve of our putting off the wedding-day, though it is only for a fortnight. Are you aware of the circumstances?"
"I am aware of the circumstances."
"Your daughter informed you of my sister's illness, I suppose?"
At that first reference to Minna, some inner agitation faintly stirred the still surface of Madame Fontaine's face.
"Yes," she said. "My thoughtless daughter informed me."
The epithet applied to Minna, aggravated by the deliberate emphasis laid on it, jarred on Mr. Keller's sense of justice. "It appears to me," he said, "that your daughter acted in this matter, not only with the truest kindness, but with the utmost good sense. Mrs. Wagner and my sister's physician were both present at the time, and both agreed with me in admiring her conduct. What has she done to deserve that you should call her thoughtless?"
"She ought to have remembered her duty to her mother. She ought to have consulted me, before she presumed to decide for herself."
"In that case, Madame Fontaine, would you have objected to change the day of the marriage?"
"I am well aware, sir, that your sister has honored my daughter by making her a magnificent present----"
Mr. Keller's face began to harden. "May I beg you to be so good as answer my question plainly?" he said, in tones which were peremptory for the first time. "Would you have objected to grant the fortnight's delay?"
She answered him, on the bare chance that a strong expression of her opinion, as the bride's mother, might, even now, induce him to revert to the date originally chosen for the wedding. "I should certainly have objected," she said firmly.
"What difference could it possibly make to you?" There was suspicion in his manner, as well as surprise, when he put that question. "For what reason would you have objected?"
"Is my objection, as Minna's mother, not worthy of some consideration, sir, without any needless inquiry into motives?"
"Your daughter's objection--as the bride--would have been a final objection, to my mind," Mr. Keller answered. "But your objection is simply unaccountable; and I press you for your motives, having this good reason for doing so on my side. If I am to disappoint my sister--cruelly to disappoint her--it must be for some better cause than a mere caprice."
It was strongly put, and not easily answered.