Captivating Mary Carstairs | Page 5

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--"
Peter looked up, interrupting. "Is this all straight? Is that really what he
wants you to do?"
"Naturally, Peter. Why not? You cling to the theory that such heroic
measures are entirely unnecessary? So did I till I had threshed the
whole thing up and down with Uncle Elbert for an hour and a half,
trying to suggest some alternative that didn't look so silly. Kindly get
the facts well into your head, will you? The man must pursue Mary's
affection either there or here, mustn't he? He can't do it there because
his wife won't let him. In order to do it here, one would say offhand
that Mary would have to be here, and since her mother declines to bring
her, it does look to me as if the job would have to be done by
somebody else. However, if my logic is wrong, kindly let your
powerful--"
"I don't say it's wrong. I merely say that it sounds like a cross between a
modern pork-king's divorce suit and a seventeenth century peccadillo."
"And I reply that I don't care a hoot how it sounds. The only question
of any interest to me, Peter, is whether or not Uncle Elbert has a moral
right to a share in his own child. I say that he has such a right, and I say
further that this is the only way in the world that he can assert his right.
Oh, hang how it sounds! I'm the nearest thing to a son that he has in
this world, and I mean for him to have his rights. So--"
"Very fine," said Peter dryly. "But what's the matter with Carstairs
getting his rights for himself? Why doesn't he sneak up there and pull

the thing off on his own?"
Varney laughed. "Evidently you don't know Uncle Elbert, after all. He's
as temperamentally unfit to carry through a job of this sort as a
hysterical old lady. Besides, even though they haven't met for so long, I
suppose his own daughter would recognize him, wouldn't she? I never
gave that idea a thought. Like his wife, he says he wants to have
nothing whatever to do with