Nature had her way; Nature outwilled and outwitted Ivy Gaylor.
For some time Ivy locked her new secret fast--her rage, her fear and
her intense joy.
When it grew too big for her she took it to Emma Snow. And again Lady
Snow did her best by the distracted, frightened girl.
It was not the common fear--fear of physical pain, so often the cross
of Western approaching motherhood--that racked Ivy Gaylor. She was too
Chinese for that; in spite of herself, her splendid Chinese blood that
she so hated and rejected told sometimes.
“I shall kill it, if it looks like me!”
“You will love it dearly, no matter what it looks like, Ivy,” Emma Snow
told her crooningly.
“They do it sometimes--quadroons--don’t they?”
“I think so--sometimes,” Lady Snow admitted.
“Poor little thing! Poor little unwanted baby! How unfair! Can God be
so fiendishly unfair, Cousin Emma? It is only one-fourth Chinese, and
three-fourths English, my poor little baby!”
A lesser woman might have chided, “Hush, Ivy!” but not Emma Snow.
She put an arm about the other’s heaving shoulders.
“God seems a long way off, dear, sometimes. But He never is. God shows
us all the mercy He dares always, I am sure. I don’t know much about
Him, Ivy. I doubt how many down here in the fog of life do; only the
saints, I think, if even they. But there are facts concerning Him that
He teaches us all, shows us clearly, if only we will let Him, if we
will learn and will see--all of us who live as long as I have. He has
taught me that, Ivy, about Himself. God helps us, all that we will let
Him, and more, I think. Sometimes He _has_ to punish us to do it, but
always, I am convinced and sure, He gives us all the mercy that He can.
Take what He sends--in October. Take it as a beautiful gift. Even, if
it should be the cross you fear, accept it gratefully. When we do that
the heaviest cross grows light. It is carried for us, dear. And you
will not hate your little baby. You will not be able to do that. Don’t
try to, for you can’t. But you may injure yourself--and it--in trying
to. Of course you want your baby, Ivy; every woman does--you more than
many girls I have known. And I’m sure that it will not be an unwanted
child to its father. Think of Tom, Ivy. Don’t spoil his pleasure in
your firstborn.”
“Poor Tom!” Ivy sobbed. “He wants a child terribly. But he has been
sweet about it--oh! so sweet. He has never spoken of it, except at
first I am sure he has suspected that I did not mean to give him a
child and that it has hurt him. But he has not begged or teased, or
anything like that--not once. He has been so splendid. Why did I marry?
I ought not. I wish I had never married.”
“Yes indeed, Tom has been splendid--from what you tell me. It is up to
you to pay him. A defaulting debtor is a poor, cheap thing always, but
in the debts of marriage only skunks default. You won’t! Why did you
marry? That’s easy. You married because you had to. I suspect that’s
why the majority of us do.”
Little by little the woman soothed the girl--measurably. But she could
not reassure her, perhaps partly because Lady Snow herself secretly
shared Ivy’s apprehension and revulsion. Ivy Gaylor could not be
comforted--yet. Lady Snow wondered sadly if the child, when it came,
would have the power to comfort its mother--if it came as Ivy so feared
it might, looking of the race whose Eastern blood was but a fourth of
its life stream. Would Gaylor’s love hold--if that happened? Would his
love of his wife hold; would the child find its birthright place in his
Englishman’s heart? Emma Snow was greatly troubled.
“Does your mother know?” Emma asked softly.
“No!” Ivy told her roughly. “And she shall not as long as I can help
it. I have been so happy since Tom came that I thought I had come to
love my mother; almost had forgiven her. Now I blame her more than I
ever did before. I hate her!”
Emma Snow was crying softly. She could not help it. Nor could she speak
a rebuke she did not feel. “Honor thy father and thy mother.” Yes;
but--Another commandment burned in her heart--“Ye fathers, provoke not
your children to anger.” Emma Snow believed it greater, more binding,
more sacred than that other commandment given at Sinai.
For a long time neither spoke.
When she--Lady Snow--did break their silence it was of Gaylor that she
spoke, for his tranquillity that she pleaded, Ivy’s duty to him that
she urged. The child would win its own welcome, or never be welcomed,
the woman knew. She could not help there. But the man whom Ivy loved,
the husband of whom Ivy was not ashamed--she was on sure ground there!
And she did help Ivy.
She could not cure or reassure; but she did brace the girl, even
assuage her a little. Ivy went home less tortured than when she had
come to her cousin.
Five months of tortured anxiety came and went, all the harder to bear
because she would not share her anxiety with her husband. She set
her teeth hard to spare him, as long as he could be spared, what he
might have to endure soon enough. The months were made all the harder,
too, by Gaylor’s radiant bubbling masculine delight, his deep burning
gratitude--when he knew--when he had to know.
He had been fond of her from the first--very, very fond of her,
persistently good to her. Now he gave her worship, the clumsy,
somewhat embarrassed worship that wells at such times in his type of
Englishman--grateful, triumphant and alarmed. Would he hate her--in
October?
There were days when again Nature had its way--days when inherent
mother-love, joy, pride, anticipation, swept all else aside--and Ivy
was glad; glad--just glad! For despite all her twists of temperament,
all her soul rebellion, Ivy Gaylor was womanly, sweet even when most
“jangled out of tune”; and, too, her Chinese blood told. It always
tells.
But those days were few. The grieving bitterness that followed, and
that swamped her, was living, burning agony; dread of hate, dread of
shame.
Sên King-lo and Ivy Gilbert had feasted on sour, forbidden grapes a
quarter of a century ago. To-day their daughter’s teeth were set on
edge--on edge they gnawed and tore her very soul at that apex-time of
womanhood when unsullied ecstasy, peace, entire contentment are woman’s
right.
The pity of it that that right ever can be alienable!
But Ruby Sên was suffering too.
In the long run, always the debtor pays--pays most when another seems
to make the payment and does make the more palpable payment. No
vicarious human atonement ever avails or releases the primary human
debtor. Never.
Mrs. Sên knew almost as soon as Ivy herself did, had suspected it
sooner than Ivy had. And Mrs. Sên knew why Ivy avoided her--never told
her--not even when October had come.
While he had lived, Sên King-lo always had paid for them both--his
wife’s debt and his own.
If he blundered once--always Sên King-lo was a man.
But Ruby Sên was paying now.