William King reported the result of his call to Dr. Lavendar, and when
he told the tragic story of the dead baby the old man blinked and shook
his head.
"Do you wonder she doesn't call herself Mrs. _Frederick_ Richie?"
William demanded. "I don't!"
"No; that's natural, that's natural," Dr. Lavendar admitted.
"I suppose it was a dreadful thing to say," said William, "but I just
burst out and said that if ever there was an excuse for divorce, she
had it!"
"What did she say?"
"Oh, of course, that she hadn't been divorced. I was ashamed of myself
the next minute for speaking of such a thing."
"Poor child," said Dr. Lavendar, "living up there alone, and with such
memories! I guess you're right; I guess she'd like to have little
David, if only for company. But I think I'll keep him for a week or two
myself, and let her get sort of acquainted with him under my eye. That
will give me a chance to get acquainted with her. But to think I
haven't known about that baby until now! It must be my fault that she
was not drawn to tell me. But I'm afraid I wasn't drawn to her just at
first."
Yet Dr. Lavendar was not altogether at fault. This newcomer in Old
Chester was still a stranger to everybody, except to Sam Wright's Sam
and to William King. To be sure, as soon as she was settled in her
house Old Chester had called and asked her to tea, and was confused and
annoyed because its invitations were not accepted. Furthermore, she did
not return the calls. She went to church, but not very regularly, and
she never stopped to gossip in the vestibule or the church-yard. Even
with Dr. Lavendar she was remote. The first time he went to see her he
asked, with his usual directness, one or two questions: Did Mr. Pryor
live in Mercer? No; he had business that brought him there
occasionally. Where did he live? In Philadelphia. Had she any relatives
in this part of the world--except her brother? No, none; none anywhere.
Was Mr. Pryor married? Yes. Had he any family? One daughter; his wife
was dead. "And you have lost your husband?" Dr. Lavendar said, gently.
"This is a lonely life for you here, I am afraid."
But she said oh, no; not at all; she liked the quiet. Then, with faint
impatience as if she did not care to talk about her own affairs, she
added that she had always lived in the East; "but I find it very
pleasant here," she ended vaguely.
Dr. Lavendar had gone away uneasy and puzzled. Why didn't she live with
her brother? Family differences no doubt. Curious how families fall
out! "You'd think they'd be glad to hang together," the solitary old
man thought; "and they are not necessarily bad folk who quarrel. Look
at Sam and his boy. Both of 'em good as gold. But it's in the blood
there," he said to himself sighing.
Sam and his son were not bad folk. The boy had nothing bad about him;
nothing worse than an unexpectedness that had provided Old Chester with
smiles for many years. "No; he is not bad; I have seen to _that_," his
father used to say. "He's hardly been out of my sight twenty-four hours
at a time. And I put my foot down on college with all its temptations.
He's good--if he's nothing else!" And certainly Samuel Wright was good
too. Everybody in Old Chester said so. He said so himself. "I, my dear
Eliza, have nothing with which to reproach myself," he used to tell his
wife ponderously in moments of conjugal unbending. "I have done my
duty. I always do my duty; under all circumstances. I am doing my duty
now by Sam."
This was when he and his son fell out on one point or another, as they
had begun to do as soon as young Sam learned to talk; and all because
the father insisted upon furnishing the boy with his own most excellent
principles and theories, instead of letting the lad manufacture such
things for himself. Now when Sam was twenty-three the falling-out had
become chronic. No doubt it was in the blood, as Dr. Lavendar said.
Some thirty years before, Sam senior, then a slim and dreamy youth,
light-hearted and given to writing verses, had fallen out with his
father, old Benjamin Wright; fallen out so finally that in all these
years since, the two men, father and son, had not spoken one word to
each other. If anybody might have been supposed to know the cause of
that thirty-year-old feud it was Dr. Lavendar. He certainly saw the
beginning of it....
One stormy March evening Samuel Wright, then twenty-four years old,
knocked at the Rectory door; Dr. Lavendar, shielding his lamp from the
wind with one hand, opened it himself.
"Why, Sam, my boy," he said and stopped abruptly. He led the way into
his study and put the lamp down on the table. "Something is the matter?"
"Yes."
"What is it, Samuel?"
"I can't tell you, sir."
"Does your father know?"
"My father knows.... I will tell you this, Dr. Lavendar--that so help
me God, I will never speak to my father again."
The young man lifted one hand; his face was dreadful to look upon. Then
trying to speak in a natural voice he asked if he might stay at the
Rectory for that night.
Dr. Lavendar took two turns about his study, then he said, "Of course
you may, Samuel, but I shall feel it my duty to acquaint your father
with the fact."
"Just as you please, sir."
"And Sam--I hope the night will bring wisdom."
Sam was silent.
"I shall see your father in the morning and try to clear this thing up."
"Just as you please, sir. I would like to go to my room now if you have
no objection."
And that was all Dr. Lavendar got out of the son.
He lighted a lamp and silently preceded his guest up-stairs; then he
went back to his study and wrote a line to the father. He sent it out
to the Wright house and sat up until midnight waiting for an answer.
None came. "Well," said Dr. Lavendar at last trudging up to bed, "the
boy comes by his obstinacy honestly." The next morning he went early to
see Mr. Benjamin Wright. But as far as any straightening out of the
trouble went or any enlightenment as to its cause, he might as well
have stayed at home.
"Sam send you?"
"No; I came to see what I could do for you both. I take it for granted
that Sam is at fault in some way? But he is a good boy, so I am sure he
can be made to see his error."
"Did he tell you what was the trouble?"
"No; will you?"
"Let him come back and behave himself!" the older man said.
Dr. Lavendar thrust out his lower lip with a thoughtful frown. "It
would expedite things, Wright, if you could tell me a little about the
affair?"
Mr. Wright hesitated. He thrust his hand down into a blue ginger-jar
for a piece of dried orange-skin and bit at it as if to steady his
lips. "Sam can tell you if he wants to. He has perhaps informed you
that he wishes to see the world? That he thinks life here very narrow?
No? Well, I sha'n't quote him. All I shall say, is that I am doing my
duty to him. I've always done my duty to him. If he sees fit to set up
his own Ebenezer, and say he won't speak to me--I suppose he conveyed
that filial sentiment to you?--he can do so. When he gets hungry he can
speak. That's what other puppies do when they are hungry."
And that was all Dr. Lavendar got out of the father....
This was thirty-two years ago. Sain Wright may have been hungry, but he
never spoke. Instead, he worked. Old Chester seethed with curiosity for
a while--to see Benjamin Wright pass his son with a contemptuous stare,
to see Sam pass his father without a glance was very exciting. But
excitement ebbs in thirty-two years. For one thing, old Mr. Wright came
less often into town--because he could not bear to meet his son, people
said; and Samuel never took the hill road out of Old Chester for a
corresponding reason. Furthermore, it was hard to connect Samuel with
anything so irrational as a quarrel, for every year he grew in solemn
common sense. Benjamin Wright's growth was all in the way of temper; at
least so his boy Simmons, a freckled mulatto of sixty years, informed
Old Chester.
"He 'ain't got no human feelin's, 'cept for them there canaries,"
Simmons used to say in an aggrieved voice; "he'll stand and look at 'em
and chirp to 'em by the hour--an' 'en he'll turn round and swear at you
'nough to take your leg off," Simmons said, bitterly. Simmons did his
best for the canaries which he detested, cleaning out the cages and
scraping the perches and seeing that the seed-trays and bath-tubs were
always full; he did his best conscientiously, and it was hard to be
"swore at when you 'ain't done nothin'." Perhaps Benjamin Wright had
some "human feelings" for his grandson, Sam; but certainly Simmons's
opinion was justified by his treatment of his granddaughters. When by
their father's orders the little girls came up to the lonely house on
the hill, the old man used to pitch small coins to them and tell them
to go and look at the canaries,--"and then clear out. Simmons, give 'em
some cake or something! Good-by. Good-by. Clear out." Long before he
had settled into such dreary living, the son with whom he had
quarrelled had made a life of his own. His slimness and gayety had
disappeared as well as his dreaminess and versifying instincts.
"Poetry?" he had been heard to say, "why, there isn't a poem that was
ever written that I'd take five minutes out of my business to read!" It
seemed as if the quarrel had wrenched him from the grooves, physical
and spiritual, in which Nature had meant him to run and started him on
lines of hard common sense. He was intensely positive; heavy and
pompous and painfully literal; inclined to lay down the law to
everybody; richer than most of us in Old Chester, and full of solemn
responsibilities as burgess and senior warden and banker. His air of
aggressive integrity used to make the honestest of us feel as if we had
been picking pockets! Yes; a good man, as Old Chester said.
Years ago Dr. Lavendar had given up trying to reconcile the two
Wrights; years ago Old Chester's speculations languished and died out.
Once in a while some one remembered the quarrel and said, "What in the
world could it have been about?" And once in a while Samuel's own
children asked awkward questions. "Mother, what was father's row with
grandfather?" And Mrs. Wright's answer was as direct as the question.
"I don't know. He never told me."
When this reply was made to young Sam he dropped the subject. He had
but faint interest in his father, and his grandfather with whom he took
tea every Sunday night was too important a person to connect with so
trivial an affair as a quarrel.
This matter of offspring is certainly very curious. Why should the
solid Samuel Wright and his foolish, obedient Eliza have brought into
the world a being of mist and fire? A beautiful youth, who laughed or
wept or sung aloud, indifferent to all about him! Sometimes Sam senior
used to look at his son and shake his head in bewildered astonishment;
but often he was angry, and oftener still--though this he never
admitted--hurt. The boy, always impersonally amiable, never thought it
worth while to explain himself; partly because he was not interested in
his father's opinion of his conduct, and partly because he knew he
could not make himself understood.
"But who, my dear Eliza," Samuel would say to his wife--"who could
understand such a boy? Look at this last performance of his! Purchasing
pictures of _actors_! Where does he get such low tastes?--unless some
of your family were interested in such things?"
"Oh no, Samuel; no, indeed," Mrs. Wright protested nervously.
"And to use money not his own! Do you know what that is called, my dear
Eliza? It is called--"
"Oh don't, Samuel." whimpered the poor mother.
"And to think how carefully I have trained him! And all I have done for
him. I let him buy that skiff he said he wanted. Absolute waste of
money! Our old rowboat is good enough for the girls, so why isn't it
good enough for him? And I never laid a hand on him in punishment
either; not many fathers can say that."
As for the bank supplies young Sam had explained to his mother that
they had been ordered and charged, so what _was_ the matter? And Mrs.
Wright kneading her tear-soaked handkerchief into a ball, cried some
more and said:
"Oh, Sam dear, why do you act so?"
Sam looked at her attentively, wondering why her little nose always
reddened when she cried. But he waited patiently, until she finished
her rambling reproaches. It occurred to him that he would tell Mrs.
Richie all about this matter of the prints. "She will understand," he
thought.
Sam's acquaintance with Mrs. Richie had begun when she was getting
settled in her new house. Sam senior, having no desire to climb the
hill road, sent his various communications to his tenant by his son,
and afterwards Sam junior had communications of his own to make. He
fell into the habit of stopping there on Sunday afternoons, quite
oblivious of the fact that Mrs. Richie did not display any pleasure at
seeing him. After one of these calls he was apt to be late in reaching
"The Top," as his grandfather's place was called, and old Benjamin
Wright, in his brown wig and moth-eaten beaver hat, would glare at him
with melancholy dark eyes.
"Gad-a-mercy, what do you mean,--getting here at six-five! I have my
tea at six, sir; at six sharp. Either get here on time or stay away. I
don't care which. Do you hear?"
"Yes, sir," young Sam would murmur.
"Where have you been? Mooning after that female at the Stuffed Animal
House?"
"I had to leave a message, sir, about the lease."
"How long does it take to leave a message about a lease?"
"She was not down-stairs and I had to wait--"
"_I_ had to wait! That's more to the point. There, don't talk about it.
You drive me crazy with your chatter."
Then they would sit down to supper in a black silence only broken by an
occasional twitter from one of the many cages that hung about the room.
But afterwards young Sam had his reward; the library, a toby, long
before he was old enough to smoke, and his grandfather reading aloud in
a wonderful voice, deep, sonorous, flexible--Shakespeare, Massinger,
Beaumont and Fletcher. To be sure, there was nothing personal in such
reading--it was not done to give pleasure to young Sam. Every night the
old man rumbled out the stately lines, sitting by himself in this
gloomy room walled to the ceiling with books, and warmed by a soft-coal
fire that snapped and bubbled behind the iron bars of the grate.
Sometimes he would burst into angry ecstasy at the beauty of what he
read "There! What do you think of that?"
"Oh, it's splendid!"
"Hah! Much you know about it! There is about as much poetry in your
family as there is in that coal scuttle."
It was when he was eighteen that once the old man let his grandson read
_The Tempest_ with him. It was a tremendous evening to Sam. In the
first place, his grandfather swore at him with a fury that really
attracted his attention. But that night the joy of the drama suddenly
possessed him. The deed was done; the dreaming youth awoke to the
passion of art. As Benjamin Wright gradually became aware of it delight
struggled with his customary anger at anything unexpected. He longed to
share his pleasure with somebody; once he mentioned to Dr. Lavendar
that "that cub, Sam, really has something to him!" After that he took
the boy's training seriously in hand, and his artless pride concealed
itself in a severity that knew no bounds of words. When Sam confessed
his wish to write a drama in blank verse, his grandfather swore at him
eagerly and demanded every detail of what he called the "fool plot of
the thing."
"What does that female at the Stuffed Animal House say to the idea of
your writing a drama?" he asked contemptuously.
"She says I may read it to her."
"Knows as much about dramatic poetry as you do I suppose? When you
finish the first act bring it to me. I'll tell you how bad it is."
His eager scoffing betrayed him, and every Sunday night, in spite of
slaughtering criticism the boy took courage to talk of his poem. He had
no criticism from Mrs. Richie.
When he first began to call at the Stuffed Animal House she had been
coldly impatient, then uneasy then snubbing. But nothing can be so
obtuse as a boy; it never occurs to him that he is not wanted. Sam
continued to call and to tell her of his play and to look at her with
beautiful, tragic eyes, that by and by openly adored. Inevitably the
coldness to which he was so calmly impervious wore off; a boy's
innocent devotion must touch any woman no matter how self-absorbed she
may be. Mrs. Richie began to be glad to see him. As for his drama, it
was beautiful, she said.
"No," Sam told her, "it isn't--yet. You don't know. But I like to read
it to you, even if you don't." His candor made her laugh, and before
she knew it in spite of the difference in their years they were friends
As William King said, she was lonely, and Sam's devotion was at least
an interest. Besides, she really liked the boy; he amused her, and her
empty days were so devoid of amusement! "I can't read novels _all_ the
time," she complained. In this very bread-and-butter sort of interest
she had no thought of possible consequences to Sam. A certain pleasant
indolence of mind made it easy not to think of consequences at all. But
he had begun to love her--with that first passion of youth so divinely
tender and ridiculous! After a while he talked less of his play and
more of himself. He told her of his difficulties at home, how he hated
the bank, and how stupid the girls were.
"Lydia is the nicest, but she has no more imagination than a turnip.
They are very uninteresting--my family," he said meditatively. "I don't
like any of them--except mother. Mother hasn't any sense, but she's
good," Sam ended earnestly.
"Oh, but you mustn't say things like that!"
"Why not? They're true," he said with a surprised look.
"Well, but we don't always tell the truth right out," she reminded him.
"I do," said Sam, and then explained that he didn't include his
grandfather in his generalization. "Grandfather's bully; you ought to
hear him swear!"
"Oh, I don't want to!" she said horrified.
"I told him that I burned the prints up," Sam went on. "And he said,
'good riddance to bad rubbish.' That was just like grandfather! Of
course he did say that I was a d--I mean, a fool, to buy them in the
first place; and I knew I was. But having bought them, the only thing
to do was to burn them. But father!--"
Mrs. Richie's eyes crinkled with mischievous gayety. "Poor Mr. Wright!"
Sam dropped his clasped hands between his knees. "It's queer how I
always do the wrong thing. Though it never seems wrong to me. You know
father would not let me go to college for fear I'd go to the devil?" he
laughed joyously. "But I might just as well, for he thinks everything I
do in Old Chester is wrong." Then he sighed. "Sometimes I get pretty
tired of being disapproved of;--especially as I never can understand
why it is. The fact is people are not reasonable," he complained. "I
can bear anything but unreasonableness."
She nodded. "I know, I never could please my grandmother--she brought
me up. My mother and father died when I was a baby. I think grandmother
hated me; she thought everything I did was wrong. Oh, I was so
miserable! And when I was eighteen I got married--and that was a
mistake."
Sam gazed up at her in silent sympathy,
"I mean my--husband was so much older than I," she said. Then with an
evident effort to change the subject she added that one would think it
would be simple enough to be happy; "all my life I only wanted to be
happy," she said.
"You're happy now, aren't you?" he asked,
She looked down at him--he was sitting on a stool before the fire near
her feet--and laughed with a catching of the breath. "Oh, yes, yes; I'm
happy."
And Sara caught his breath too, for there were tears in her eyes.
But instantly she veered away from personalities. "What is that scar on
your wrist?"
Sam looked down at his hands clasped about his knees, and blushed
faintly. "Oh, nothing; I was very young when that happened."
"How did it happen?" she asked absently. It was often possible to start
Sam talking and then think her own thoughts without interruption.
"Why, I was about twelve, I believe," Sam said, "and Miss Ellen
Bailey--she used to teach school here, then she got married and went
out West;--she gave me a little gold image of Pasht, at least I thought
it was gold. It was one of those things you ladies wear on your
watch-chains, you know."
"Yes?" she said indolently.
"Well, I took a tremendous fancy to it. But it seems it wasn't gold, it
was brass, and somebody told me so; I think it was Miss Ellen herself.
I was so disappointed, I didn't want to live--queer! I can remember now
just how I felt; a sort of sinking, here;" Sam laid his hand on his
breast, "So I decided to throw myself out of the window. I did; but
unfortunately--"
"You threw yourself out of the window!" she is interrupted horrified.
Sam laughed. "Oh, well, I wasn't successful: I continued to live.
Unfortunately my trousers caught on the grape trellis under the window,
and there I hung! It must have been pretty funny--though I didn't think
so at the time. First place, I tore my wrist on a nail--that's the
scar; and then father caught me and sent me to bed for being a fool; so
I didn't gain anything." His lip drooped. His feeling for his father
was a candid mixture of amusement and contempt.
"But do you always act on the spur of the moment?" she said astonished.
Sam laughed and said he supposed so. "I am a good deal of a fool," he
added simply.
"Well," she said sighing, "it's dangerous to be like that. I know,
because I--I am a good deal of a fool myself." Then again, abruptly,
she changed the subject. "What do you think? I'm going to have some
company!"
Sam frowned. "Your brother?"
"No, oh no; not--Mr. Pryor." Then she told him that Dr. Lavendar had
asked her if she would look after a little boy for him for a few weeks.
Sam was not responsive. Little boys were a great deal of trouble, he
said.
"Come now; how long since--"
Sam's limpid deer's-eyes reproached her silently.
"How shall I amuse him?" she said.
And Sam eager to serve her promised to find a pair of rabbits for the
child. "I used to like rabbits when I was young," he explained.
At last, after his hostess had swallowed many yawns, Sam reluctantly
said good night. He went bounding down the hill in the darkness, across
the fields, through the woods. In the starlight, the great world lay
dim and lovely before him--it belonged to him! He felt the joyous
buffet of the night wind upon his face, the brush of boughs against his
shoulder, the scent of young ferns, and the give of the spongy earth
under his feet; he sprang in long leaps over the grass, the tears were
wet upon his fresh cheeks, he sang aloud. But he did not know what he
sang; in his young breast, Love, like some warm living thing, stirred,
and lifted glorious wings and drove his voice throbbing and exultant to
his lips! As he came down Main Street, the church clock struck eleven.
But it might have struck twelve and he would not have been disturbed.
Standing in the doorway of the Wright house in thunderous silence the
senior warden, lamp in hand awaited his son. As Sam entered, the
silence broke into a flash of crackling and scathing contempt.
"It does not occur to you, sir, I suppose, that a lady may find your
society tiresome? It is after eleven!"
Sam smiling to himself hung up his hat. He was reflecting that he must
see about those rabbits at once.
"You will understand, sir, if you please, that while you do me the
honor to live under my roof you will return to it at night at a
respectable hour. I will not sit up for you in this way. You will be in
at ten o'clock. Do you hear?"
"Yes, sir," said Sam; and added with sudden awakening of interest, "if
you would let me have a key, father, I--"
"I will not let you have a key! I will have no boy entering my house at
midnight with a key! Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir," Sam murmured falling back into his own thoughts.
Mr. Wright, still talking, stood at the foot of the stairs so that his
son could not pass him. Sam yawned, then noticed how in oratorical
denunciation his father's long upper lip curved like the beak of a bird
of prey; behind his hand he tried to arch his own lip in the same
manner. He really did not hear what was said to him; he only sighed
with relief when it was over and he was allowed to go up-stairs and
tumble sleepily into bed.
As for his long-suffering hostess, when she was alone Helena Richie
rubbed her eyes and began to wake up. "That boy never knows when to
go!" she said to herself with amused impatience. Then her mind turned
to her own affairs. This little boy, David Allison, would be in Old
Chester on Saturday; he was to stay with Dr. Lavendar for a while, and
then come to her for a week or two. But she was beginning to regret the
invitation she had sent through Dr. King. It, would be pleasant to have
the little fellow, but "I can't keep him, so why should I take him even
for a week? I might get fond of him! I'm afraid it's a mistake. I
wonder what Lloyd would think? I don't believe he really loves
children. And yet--he cared when the baby died."
She pulled a low chair up to the hearth and sat down, her elbows on her
knees, her fingers ruffling the soft locks about her forehead. "Oh, my
baby! my little, little baby!" she said in a broken whisper. The old
passion of misery swept over her; she shrank lower in her chair,
rocking herself to and fro, her fingers pressed against her eyes. It
was thirteen years ago, and yet even now in these placid days in Old
Chester, to think of that time brought the breathless smother of agony
back again--the dying child, the foolish brute who had done him to
death.... If the baby had lived he would be nearly fourteen years old
now; a big boy! She wondered whether his hair would still have been
curly? She knew in her heart that she never could have had the courage
to cut those soft curls off--and yet, boys hated curls, she thought;
and smiled proudly. He would have been so manly! If he had lived, how
different everything would have been, how incredibly different! For of
course, if he had lived she would have been happy in spite of
Frederick. And happiness was all she wanted.
She brushed the tears from her flushed cheeks, and propping her chin in
her hands stared into the fire, thinking--thinking.... Her childhood
had been passed with her father's mother, a silent woman who with
bitter expectation of success had set herself to discover in Helena
traits of the poor, dead, foolish wife who had broken her son's heart.
"Grandmamma hated me," Helena Richie reflected. "She begrudged me the
least little bit of pleasure." Yet her feeling towards the hard old
woman now was not resentment; it was only wonder. "_Why_ didn't she
like me to be happy?" she thought. It never occurred to her that her
grandmother who had guarded and distrusted her had also loved her. "Of
course I never loved her," she reminded herself, "but I wouldn't have
wanted her to be unhappy. She wanted me to be wretched. Curious!" Yet
she realized that at that time she had not desired love; she had only
desired happiness. Looking back, she pondered on her astounding
immaturity; what a child she had been to imagine that merely to get
away from that gray life with her grandmother would be happiness, and
so had married Frederick. Frederick.... She was eighteen, and so
pretty. She smiled remembering how pretty she was. And Frederick had
made such promises! She was to have every kind of happiness. Of course
she had married him. Thinking of it now, she did not in the least blame
herself. If the dungeon doors open and the prisoner catches a glimpse
of the green world of sunshine, what happens? Of course she had married
Frederick! As for love, she never thought of it; it did not enter into
the bargain--at least on her part. She married him because he wanted
her to, and because he would make her happy. And, oh, how glad her
grandmother had been! At the memory of that passionate satisfaction,
Helena clasped her hands over the two brown braids that folded like a
chaplet around her head and laughed aloud, the tears still glittering
on her lashes. Her prayers, her grandmother said, had been answered;
the girl was safe--an honest wife! "Now lettest Thou Thy servant--" the
old woman murmured, with dreadful gratitude in her voice.
Thinking of that gratitude, the tears dried upon Helena's cheeks, hot
with the firelight and with her thoughts. "Suppose she had lived just a
little longer?--just three years longer? Where would her gratitude have
been then?" Helena's face overflowed with sudden gay malice, but below
the malice was weariness. "You are happy now--aren't you?" Sam Wright
had said.... Why, yes, certainly. Frederick had "repented," as Dr. King
expressed it; she had seen to his "_repentance_"! That in itself was
something to have lived for--a searing flame of happiness. Enough one
might think to satisfy her--if she could only have forgotten the baby.
At first she had believed that she could forget him. Lloyd had told her
she would. How young she had been at twenty-one to think that any one
could forget! She smiled dryly at her childish hope and at Lloyd's
ignorance; but his tenderness had been so passionately convincing,--and
how good he had been about the baby! He had let her talk of him all she
wanted to. Of course, after a while he got a little tired of the
subject, and naturally. It was Frederick's baby! And Lloyd hated
Frederick as much as she did. How they used to talk about him in those
first days of his "repentance!"... "Have you heard anything?" "Yes;
running down-hill every day." "Is there any news?" "Yes, he'll drink
himself into his grave in six months." Ah, that was happiness
indeed!--"his _grave_, in six months!"... She flung herself back in her
chair, her hands dropping listlessly into her lap. "Oh--my little, dead
baby!"...
It was nearly midnight; the fire had burned quite out; the room had
fallen into shadows. Oh, yes, as she told Sam Wright, she was happy.
Her face fell into lines of dull indifference.
She got up, wearily, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles, as a child
does; then suddenly remembered that she had reached no conclusion about
this little boy Dr. Lavendar was interested in. Suppose she should get
fond of him and want to keep him--how would Lloyd feel about it? Would
he think the child might take her thoughts from him? But at that she
smiled; he could not be so foolish! "I'll write and ask him, anyhow. Of
course, if he objects, I wouldn't dream of it. I wonder what he will
think?"