THERE was no use in waiting for old Gilbert. He would take the next
train to Vickley.
He packed, and left a message, and caught a train which would get him
home at midnight.
The train had barely left the environs of Chicago when he realized
abruptly the folly of his errand. What! Propose to his father and
mother that they should adopt and bring up his illegitimate child! It
was too preposterous.
He felt an impulse to get up and jump from the slowly moving train. He
would go to Dr. Zerneke and ... And what? Give her a check?
He sank back in his chair. The train slid more swiftly out past the
little towns, gathered momentum, hurled itself on toward Vickley. The
song of the wheels on the rails was a mocking one. It seemed to say,
over and over, “You’re in for it now! You’re in for it now!”
He could get off at Aurora, of course.
No, he’d have to see it through, somehow.
Was it so preposterous? He wished he had asked Dr. Zerneke for some
statistics about this situation! Was it often done? He smiled, after a
fashion, at the thought of saying to his father: “Every year, in the
United States, six hundred respectable families (or sixty, or whatever
it might be) take a son’s illegitimate child to raise. You see, this
has plenty of precedent.” Yes, doubtless it did sometimes happen in the
United States: but not in Vickley. Not with people like the Overbecks.
He simply couldn’t involve his family in a thing like that.
(Well, nobody asked him to! Why didn’t he get off at Aurora--go back
and sign the check which let him off scot-free?)
The train stopped presently at Aurora. Here was his chance. He’d better
take it.
But he was still in his chair when the train pulled out of Aurora.
He simply couldn’t decide this thing by himself. It was too
overwhelming--too full of lifelong consequences. It needed a wiser head
than his own. And his father was the wisest man he knew.
He would tell his father. His father might know what to do.
He envisaged in imagination that interview with his father.
“Did you seduce this girl under promise of marriage?”
And “Was she a virgin?” Yes, that would be terribly important to his
father. If she had been a virgin, if he had seduced her, if he had
promised marriage, his father’s stern sense of justice might prevail
though the heavens fell.... But it wasn’t a question of marrying
Isabel. It was a question of what should become of her child.
There had been a time, many years ago, when Norman not merely admired
and feared his father, but loved and trusted him. When he was in
trouble he could come to his father, though in fear and trembling, and
tell the truth. He wished he could be that little boy again.
“What is it, Son? Tell your father.”
“I--I had a sweetheart at college, Father, and now she has a baby, and
doesn’t want to keep it, and I don’t want it given away to strangers,
and I don’t know what to do!”
“Was she a good girl?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Then you’d better marry her, Son. It will hurt us all, but you must do
what is right.”
“But she won’t marry me, Father.”
“Send her to me. I’ll talk with her about it. She’ll _have_ to marry
you, Son.”
Norman smiled. It would be wonderful to believe again in his father’s
omnipotence.
Well, what would his father say to Isabel? He imagined that, in the
same boyish mood.
“How old are you, Isabel?”
“Twenty-six, sir.”
“You were a year older than Norman when this happened. You can have no
cause for resentment against him such as would justify you in refusing
to marry him.”
“But I want to be a painter!”
“We cannot always have what we want. My son wanted to be a lawyer. Now
he can’t be--and you must take your punishment along with him. I will
buy a pants-pressing establishment for the two of you, down on Commerce
Street. By faithfully pressing creases in the trousers of our best
citizens for the rest of your life, you will expiate your sin. And now
off to the preacher with you!”
“Yes, sir!” (Exit Isabel, crying.)
He frowned, and imagined it again, in a slightly more realistic vein.
“You seem to be a well-brought-up young woman. I really can’t
understand this at all.”
“I’m afraid nothing I could say would make it any clearer to you, Mr.
Overbeck.”
“Well, we won’t go into that. The fact is that you and Norman have
brought a child into the world. I have told him that he must marry you.”
“And I have told him that I won’t marry him.”
“Nonsense! Why not?”
“Because I am going to Paris to paint.”
“You can paint just as well in Vickley. The landscapes here along the
Mississippi are as beautiful as any in the world. I have traveled,
and I know. I’m sure Norman would have no objection to your doing
water-color sketches in your spare time.”
“I’m afraid that wouldn’t do, Mr. Overbeck. I’ve already explained to
your son how I feel about it. It’s very good of you to trouble yourself
in the matter, but quite unnecessary. My mind is fully made up.” Very
cool Isabel was, in this interview. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I
have another engagement.”
No, it wouldn’t be like that _at all_. His father had emotions--and
so had Isabel. There would be a battle. He would almost crush, almost
overwhelm her--but not quite. She would be defiant, stubborn to the
last. It would be rather a magnificent spectacle, that struggle between
them--between the world as it always had been and the world as it was
perhaps coming to be--between the old dispensation and the new.
(Why was he so sure his father would want them to marry? He might take
old Gilbert’s practical and cynical view of the situation.... No, he
wouldn’t do that. He was a good man, in his stern way. And in that
thought there was some obscure comfort for Norman.)
He rose restlessly and went into the smoking compartment.
In all his experience of smoking cars and smoking compartments, he had
never heard there what was known as a “typical smoking-car story.” But
this time, as it chanced, one was being told. It was just finished as
he entered, and there was a burst of laughter. He recognized the story
from the final lines. It was the one about the young couple who had
been caught in the storm while driving in the country, and had stayed
overnight at a farmhouse. His entrance put a damper on the others, and
they shifted self-consciously to the subject of automobiles. Norman
sat down in a corner, lighted a cigarette, and picked up a discarded
magazine that lay on the leather seat beside him. It was an obscure
magazine devoted to the more humorous aspects of sex. Norman reflected
that the aspects of sex with which he was now becoming personally
acquainted rather took the humor out of stories about casual sexual
encounters. He had once thought they were funny, too; but just now it
seemed to him that these things were too serious to laugh about. Some
time he might recover his sense of sexual humor, but just now it was at
a low ebb.
The world, however, had not changed because of an incident in the life
of Norman Overbeck. Sex continued to seem funny to other people. The
three other men in the smoking-compartment, encouraged by his apparent
absorption in his reading, verged closer to that delectable topic, and
presently one of them began to tell another story. “If I had secretly
committed a murder,” thought Norman, “I suppose I would find them
talking about murders!” For by a painful coincidence this story was the
one about the eight girls in Scotland who had illegitimate children
and all named the same boy as the father. The doctor’s curiosity was
aroused, and he went to see the boy to find out how it could happen....
Norman, feeling a little sick, threw down his cigarette, dropped his
magazine and went out. As he went, he heard, in bad Scotch dialect,
the tag line, “Wull, ye see, doctor, Oi’ve a bicycle!” And the robust
laughter of the three followed him into the corridor.... Was he never
going to be able to listen to a dirty story again with normal masculine
gusto?
The porter came through the car. “First call for dinner!”
The man sitting across from him at the little table in the dining-car
was a salesman. Norman roused himself and they talked about
automobiles. If it had been anything else, he might have lost himself
in the conversation for a few minutes at least. But one can talk about
automobiles without having to think of what one is saying....
He stopped in the smoking-compartment for a cigarette. The magazine
devoted to funny stories about sex was gone. In its place was a copy
of the New Republic. He turned the pages. At another time he would not
have noticed it, but there staring him in the face was an article on
“Unmarried Mothers.” The illegitimacy rate for Scotland, he noted, was
66 per thousand births, for England and Wales 42, for France (before
the war) 88, the United States 23.8.... He studied the tables guiltily.
Isabel had found these statistics comforting, so she said. He did not
find them so. “A considerable proportion of the mothers are girls
in their teens, while what data is available indicates that a large
majority of them are working in unskilled or semi-skilled occupations,
with an undue proportion in factory work and domestic service.”
But there wasn’t anything about girls who wanted to go to Paris and
paint, and wouldn’t marry the fathers of their children....
“Contrary, however, to prevalent ideas on the subject, European
statistics show that illegitimacy rates tend to increase rather than
decrease with the spread of education; they are lower in cities than
in rural districts; and comparisons of the poorest parts of London
with certain well-to-do parts show the richer districts as having an
illegitimacy rate of nearly six times the poorest districts.”
Well, there was a grain of comfort in that....
But why must he, now, find the subject of illegitimacy everywhere he
turned?
Damn these coincidences!
He took one more glance at the article, and read: “In Austria, about a
quarter of all births are illegitimate; in some rural districts nearly
a half.”
Yes--but why had _Isabel_ had a baby? Perhaps simply because, after
all, she was a girl. It seemed to be the sort of thing that quite
generally happened to girls, in or out of marriage. Mere ignorance
couldn’t account for all those illegitimate babies! Girls must _want_
to have babies, in spite of the frightful penalties that are attached
to having them except in accordance with the rules. Nature laughs at
the solemn rules of marriage, and the babies come at her bidding. Not
accident, not carelessness, but some profound wish, deeper than their
conscious fears, for this fulfillment of their natural destiny! In
Isabel, too? He had to believe that. The woman in her had wanted--not
merely that hour of delirium in the woods--but motherhood. Yet her
nature was divided against itself. Something else in her was in revolt
against being a woman. She was running away from her fate. That was the
truth.... And he, in this internal battle between woman and artist,
was the victim, along with her child. The woman that was in Isabel had
chosen him to be her child’s father. The artist that was in Isabel
was deserting them both with a brutal indifference. But here they
were, father and child, made so at her deep wish, the wish she now
repudiated. Nothing she might do could destroy the bond she had created
between him and her child. She had given him a son. Let her run away
to Paris, and forget. He couldn’t forget. He was caught in a trap of
Nature’s. It was real. It was damnable. But it was true. He had a son.
And what was he going to do about it?
He looked at his watch. Still an hour and a half from Vickley.
Would his father understand?