"I'm afraid it is."
"Is there no way by which I can be taken as myself?"
Mrs. Ansley turned from her contemplation of the Lion and the Unicorn
on the Old State House. "No one is ever taken as himself. We all have
to be taken with the circumstances that surround us."
Ansley enlarged on this, leaning forward and toying with a paperweight.
"My wife is quite right. Nobody in the world is just a human being pure
and simple. He's a human being plus the conditions which go to make him
up. You can't separate the conditions from the man, nor the man from
the conditions. If you're Henry Whitelaw's son, stolen and brought up
in circumstances no matter how poor and criminal, you're one person; if
you're the son of this--this woman, whom I shan't condemn any more than
I can help, you're another. You see that, don't you?"
"Can't I be--what I've made myself?"
"You can't make yourself anything but what you've been from the
beginning. You can correct and improve and modify; but you can't
change."
"So that if I'm the son of--of this woman, you wouldn't want me. Is
that it?"
"How could we?" came from Mrs. Ansley. "But I know from Mr. Whitelaw
himself that--"
Ansley smiled, paternally. "Suppose we leave it there. After all, the
last word rests with him."
"I don't think so, sir. It rests with me."
This could be dismissed as of no importance. "Oh, with you, of course,
in a certain sense. They can't force you. But if they're satisfied that
you're--"
"And if I'm not satisfied?"
"Oh, but, my dear fellow, you wouldn't make yourself difficult on that
score."
"It's not a question of being difficult; it's one of what I can do."
They got no farther than that. Tom's reluctance to deny the woman he
had always regarded as his mother was not only hard for them to seize,
it was hard for him to explain. He couldn't make them see that the
creature who for them was only a common shoplifter was for him the
source of tender and sacred memories. To accuse her of a greater crime
than theft would be to desecrate the shrine which he himself had built
of love and pity; but he was unable to put it into words, as they were
unable to understand it. He himself worded it as plainly as he could
when, rising, he said:
"So that I must renounce my mother or renounce Hildred."
Ansley also rose. "That's not quite the way to express it. If she _was_
your mother, there can be no question of your renouncing her. But then,
too, there can be no question of--of Hildred. I'm sure you must see."
"And if I see, would Hildred also see?"
Leaving her window, Mrs. Ansley, bulbous and quivering, lilted forward.
"We must leave that to your sense of honor. In a way we're in your
hands. It's within your power to make us suffer."
"I should never do that," he assured her, hastily. "Hildred wouldn't
want me to. After all you've done for me neither she nor I--"
"Quite so, my dear fellow, quite so." Ansley held out his hand. "We
trust you both. But the situation is clear, I think. If you come back
to us as Harry Whitelaw, you'll find us eager to welcome you. If you
don't, or if you can't--"
A wave of the hand, a shrug of the shoulders, expressing the rest, Tom
could only bow himself out.