FOR MAYBELLE'S SAKE
MRS. BURNHAM stared at her guest with a look that was not simply
bewildered, it was frightened. What _could_ the woman mean!
"Who is Maybelle?" she spoke the words almost fiercely; but her
bewildered guest kept her voice low and gentle.
"I must ask you to forgive me, dear Mrs. Burnham. I know that my words
must seem very intrusive, perhaps unpardonable; but indeed I thought I
was doing right, and it is for Maybelle's sake alone that I have
ventured."
The repetition of that name seemed to irritate Mrs. Burnham. "Will you
tell me who she is?" she asked imperiously.
"My friend, is it possible that you do not understand? or do you mean
that it is your pleasure to ignore her? Of course you know that there
was a child, a little daughter?"
"Whose daughter?"
"The daughter of the lady who afterward became your son's wife." Mamie
Parker was growing indignant. However painful the subject might be to
Erskine Burnham's mother, certainly the child was not to blame; nor
could she, who was apparently the child's only friend, be quite beyond
the line of toleration because she had ventured to try to awaken
sympathy for her in the heart of a woman who certainly had reason to be
interested in her story. Whatever had taken place to hurt them, surely
the child ought not to suffer for it.
Mrs. Burnham struggled for composure. Even at that moment the thought
uppermost in her mind was that she must shield her son; yes, and her
son's wife, if possible. Something terrible had happened somewhere. A
confusion of persons, probably, or--she could not think clearly, but
there was something, some story, which she must ferret out to its
foundation, and must at the same time hide from her son, unless--she
would not complete that thought.
"You will forgive me I am sure for not being able to quite follow you."
Her voice though cold and constrained was again self-controlled, and she
even forced a smile.
"I think I must be unusually stupid this afternoon. There is some
misunderstanding that I do not yet quite grasp. This--child? is she?--of
whom you are speaking, she is not,--not alone in the world? Why does she
especially need a friend?"
Miss Parker's bewildered look returned; they were not getting on. She
hesitated a moment, then said firmly:--
"Her father is still living, Mrs. Burnham, but he is seriously ill, and
she will soon be quite alone. At the best, the father, as you probably
know, is not the kind of friend that one would choose for a young girl,
though he has tried to be good to her, in his way."
Mrs. Burnham suddenly leaned forward and grasped the arm of her caller,
and spoke with more vehemence than before, though this time her voice
was low.
"What do you mean?" she said. "Isn't it possible for you to speak
plainly? How should I know what you are talking about? Her '_father_'!
Whose father? Who is she? What is she? And what are either of them to
me? I do not understand in the least."
"Mrs. Burnham," said Mamie Parker, sitting erect, with a bright spot of
color burning on either cheek, "do you mean me to understand that you
are ignorant of the fact that your son married a woman who was divorced
from her first husband in less than three years after her marriage, and
left with him a little child not six months old, who is now a young
woman?"
It was well for Ruth Burnham that she could do just what she did at that
moment, although it was for her an unprecedented thing. Every vestige of
self-control gave way; she covered her face with her hands and broke
into a perfect passion of weeping. Not the slow quiet weeping natural to
a woman of her years, but a tempestuous outburst that shook her whole
frame with its force.
The distressed witness of this misery sat for a moment irresolute, then
she came softly to Mrs. Burnham's side and touched the bowed head with a
gentle, caressing movement such as one might give to a little child, and
spoke low and tenderly.
"Dear friend, forgive me; I am so sorry! I did not for a moment imagine
that I was telling you anything that you did not already know. I felt my
rudeness in coming to you with matters about which I was supposed to
know nothing, but I thought you had, perhaps, been misinformed, and that
if you could once understand, poor Maybelle would--"
Then she stopped. There seemed nothing that she could say, while that
bowed form was shaken with emotion.
It passed in a few minutes. The woman who was accustomed to exercising
self-control could not long be under the dominion of her emotions. She
raised her head and spoke quietly.
"I hope you can forgive me for making your errand so hard. My nerves do
not often play me false in this way. You did right to come to me. Now,
may I ask you to begin at the beginning and tell me all that you know
about this matter? You are correct in your inference; there are some
things that I have not understood."
It was rather a long story. Miss Parker, feeling herself dismissed from
the place of comforter, went back to her chair and tried to obey
directions and begin at the beginning; held closely to her work by keen
incisive questions.
Yes, she had known Mr. Somerville before he married Irene Carpenter; or
rather, she had known of him, as girls in country villages always knew
about any people who came their way. He was an Englishman of good
family, a younger son she had heard, though just what significance
attached to that, she had not understood at the time. He had the name
among the young people of being wild. They had heard that Irene's uncle
disapproved of the match, and threatened to lock her up if she tried to
have anything more to do with him. She, Mamie, knowing something of
Irene's temperament, had always thought that this was what precipitated
matters. She knew that Irene was married during her uncle's absence from
home, and that there were some exciting scenes after his return.
The newly married couple went abroad very soon, but they stayed only a
short time, and rumor had it that they quarrelled with Mr. Somerville's
family and were not invited to stay longer. After that, they lived in
New York in good style for a few months, and Mrs. Somerville went into
society and was said to be very gay. Yes, she had heard a number of
things about that winter, but the stories were contradictory and not
reliable. Oh, yes, some of the stories were ugly, but gossip was always
that; she could not go into details about that period; there was nothing
reliable, and nothing that she cared to talk of. It was when the child
was about six months old that her father and mother quarrelled and
separated. Oh, yes, there was a divorce; she had made an effort to
discover the truth about that, for the little girl's sake, and was sure
of it. The mother went abroad with some friends and remained there for
several years.
She had heard that she served as nursery governess in an American family
who were living in Berlin, for the purpose of educating their sons. She
knew that this was so, because she had met one of the sons, later, and
he had told her about her; she went by the name of Carpenter--Miss
Carpenter. After leaving that family, Miss Parker did not know what she
had done; knew nothing of her for several years. Then she came back to
the old homestead and lived there for some time with a maiden aunt who
was all that was left of the family, and was an invalid. She had heard
that Irene was not contented there, and knew that after a time she and
the invalid aunt went abroad. It was while they were living in Paris
that Mr. Erskine Burnham met them. Miss Parker had heard of his marriage
almost immediately, because she had friends in Paris at the time who had
met both Miss Carpenter and Mr. Burnham. Indeed all these items had come
to her from time to time by a series of accidents or happenings. She had
admired Irene Carpenter at a distance as a girl, and that had made it
seem natural to inquire after her, as opportunity offered.
Oh, yes, she had known more or less of Mr. Somerville during all these
years. He had remained in New York much of the time; though he had twice
crossed the ocean, and once had gone to the Pacific coast, always taking
Maybelle with him.
Her first meeting with him in New York had been at the studio of an
artist friend for whom he was doing some work. She had seen the child
first, a beautiful little girl who had charmed her; then he had come in
and she had been shocked on recognizing him, to think that she must have
been playing with Irene's little girl. He was an amateur artist, never
working steadily enough to make a success for himself, but doing very
good work, and earning his living in that way. Oh, yes, and in music
also, it was much the same story. He was in frail health, was unsteady,
and could not be depended upon; but could play divinely when he chose,
and on occasion earned money in that way, playing the violin, or piano,
or organ. He always took the child with him and seemed devoted to her,
never speaking other than gently to her; and he seemed to try to train
her wisely. It was pathetic to see him making an effort to fill the
place of both father and mother. Oh, yes, she saw a great deal of him,
or rather, of the child, in whom she had been singularly interested from
the first, of course.
Her father had moved his family to New York about that time, and she was
in school as a real student for the first time in her life. But she gave
most of her leisure to the little Maybelle. Her mother became very fond
of the child, and after a while they kept her with them much of the
time, to the great comfort of the father, who owned that he often had to
go to places where he did not like to take the baby.
Yes, she came to know the father quite well. Maybelle had been allowed
always to suppose that her mother was dead. She never questioned, having
taken that for granted. Her father, however, during one of his ill turns
when he thought he was going to die, had revealed to her mother and
herself the sorrowful story of his life, and had shown them Irene's
picture. Miss Parker believed that he had a faint hope that when he was
gone, the mother would see that their child was cared for.
Yes, he had told her only the truth. She had taken pains to corroborate
that part of the story which she had not known before; had gone herself
to see the woman with whom they had been boarding when his wife left
him. The woman said that Mr. Somerville had come home intoxicated the
night before; "not bad," the poor creature said, "only silly," but the
next morning he and his wife had quarrelled, and she went away and never
came back.
Being closely cross-questioned Miss Parker added, that the woman had
further given it as her opinion that Mrs. Somerville meant all along to
be "that shabby," and was only waiting for a good excuse; that she
didn't care a "toss up" for her husband, nor the baby neither, though he
"just doted" on both of them.
Yes, Miss Parker had talked with him more than once about his sad,
wrecked life. She considered him a weak man rather than an intentionally
wicked one. He had never spoken ill of his wife. He said frankly that
their marriage was a mistake, and that it was his fault. Irene was too
young to be married to any one, but he was fascinated with her, and
determined to win her at any cost. The truth was, he said, he cheated
her. She was tired of her humdrum life in that dull village where her
people spent much of their time; she longed to get away, to travel;
above all she wanted to go abroad. She had inferred that, because he was
from across the water, and belonged to an old family and could show her
pictures of a fine old estate that had been in the family for
generations, he was therefore wealthy; and he had let her think so. It
was the discovery that she had been deceived in this respect, he said,
that made her begin to really dislike him, he thought, instead of being
simply indifferent to him, as she had been at first. He made no pretence
of believing that she had ever loved him.
No, he could not say that she had ever seemed to love the child. At
first she had been angry about it, looking at it merely in the light of
a hindrance to the few pleasures she could have, cooped up in a
boarding-house; and the strongest feeling she had ever shown for the
helpless little creature was toleration.
When they quarrelled, and she threatened to leave him, he had told her
that she could not take the baby, and she had replied that it was the
last thing she wanted to do. But he had not believed her; he had not
thought such a state of mind possible. The little thing, he said, had so
wound itself about his heart that the thought of living without her was
torture; and he had believed that the mother felt the same, but did not
choose to own it. He had taken the baby to a friend of his for the day,
and felt secure all day in the thought that Irene would be drawn
homeward from wherever she went that morning, by the memory of the
clinging arms and smiling baby face. But she had never come back.
At this point Ruth Erskine Burnham lost her studied self-control and
said the only unguarded word that she had spoken since the interview
began.
"That is monstrous! I cannot credit it. The woman who would do such a
thing as that would be a fiend!"
"Oh, no!" said Miss Parker, startled at the feeling she had roused, and
remembering that they were speaking of this woman's son's wife. "He did
not feel it so, the father. He made excuses for her. Even while he was
telling me the story, he stopped to say simply:--
"'You see I didn't stop to consider that she disliked and despised me,
by this time, and that the baby was my child; that made all the
difference in the world;' and of course it would, Mrs. Burnham."