I
MRS. CARTER looked up from her breakfast and glanced anxiously at the
clock.
“I wonder where that postman can be!” she exclaimed fretfully. “He’s
always late nowadays.”
“Nonsense!” retorted her husband, unfolding his newspaper. “It’s
because you want a letter from William. The postman will be along all
right.”
Mrs. Carter sighed. She could not understand the gap in her son’s
correspondence. William was her eldest and the pride of her heart. At
twenty-seven he had been a success in business. He had dominated the
family, advising his stout, deliberate father, overwhelming his lame
brother Daniel, and bossing the two younger children, Leigh and Emily,
until, goaded to frenzy, first one and then the other of the worms
turned. As the only girl in the family, Emily reached the limit of her
endurance long before Leigh came into the battle as a feeble second.
But not even Emily could stem the tide of Mrs. Carter’s devotion to
her first-born. It had cost her many a sleepless night when, more than
a year ago, William Henry Carter had been selected by a well-known
mercantile firm to go to Japan. It had been a crowning opportunity for
William; to his mother it was a source of mingled pride and anguish.
She packed his trunk with unnumbered socks and collar-buttons--she was
sure he couldn’t get them in Japan--and she smuggled in some jars of
strawberry jam, “the kind that dear Willie always loved.”
Afterward her only solace had been his letters. She overlooked his
ungrateful wrath when the jam jars broke into the socks, and fell back
on her pride in his continuing success, and on the fact that he had
been permitted to come home _via_ the Mediterranean, and was to act for
his firm in Paris.
Now, after an absence of fourteen months, he might be home at any
moment; but there had been a gap in the correspondence--no letters for
more than two months. The maternal anxiety would have communicated
itself to the family, if it had not been that William’s company had
heard from the young man in the interim, and could assure the anxious
Mr. Carter that his son was well and doing business with eminent talent
and success. Mr. Payson, the head of the establishment, lived in town,
and he was liberal in his praise.
Mrs. Carter’s mind dwelt upon this with a feeling of maternal pride,
still tempered with anxiety, when she became aware that Emily and Leigh
were quarreling openly because of the latter’s unfeeling remark that a
girl with a snub nose and freckles should never do her hair in a Greek
knot.
“It’s enough to make a cat laugh,” said Leigh. “What have you got to
balance that knob on the back of your head?”
“Leigh, dear, don’t plague sister so,” Mrs. Carter remonstrated mildly.
“As if a boy like Leigh knew anything about a girl’s hair!” cried Emily
indignantly. “It’s a psyche-knot.”
Leigh laughed derisively; but at this moment, when the quarrel had
become noisy enough to disturb Mr. Carter, it was interrupted by the
entrance of the morning mail. Miranda, the colored maid of all work,
appeared with a replenished coffee-pot and a letter for Mrs. Carter.
The anxious mother gave a cry of joy.
“My goodness--it’s from Willie!”
The interest became general, and five pairs of expectant eyes focussed
on Mrs. Carter as she opened the envelope, her fingers shaking with
eagerness. Miranda, to whom the fifth pair of eyes belonged, became
unusually attentive to Daniel, and insisted on replenishing his
coffee-cup.
“This was written in Paris,” Mrs. Carter exclaimed eagerly, “and--and
posted in New York! I wonder! ‘Dear mother,’” she began reading aloud,
her voice tremulous with joy, “‘I’m coming home on the _Britannic_, and
I’m bringing you the--the----’”
She stopped short, her mouth open like a fish’s, and a look of horror
glazing the rapture in her eyes.
There was a profound and expectant pause. Daniel, the least interested
member of the group, managed to drink his hot coffee with apparent
relish, and sixteen-year-old Emily ate a biscuit, but Mr. Carter, who
had laid down his newspaper to listen, became impatient.
“What’s the matter, mama?” he asked peevishly. “You look scared. Is
William going to bring you a crocodile from the Nile?”
Mrs. Carter rallied.
“N-no, not exactly--that is----” She looked absently at the maid.
“Miranda, go down to the ice-box and look it through. Let me know just
what’s left over. I’ve got to ’phone to the market immediately.”
“Yes’m.”
Miranda, descrying a sensation from afar, retired reluctantly. She
couldn’t hear quite as well in the kitchen entry when all the windows
were open.
Mrs. Carter waited until the pantry door closed behind the maid; then
she turned her horrified eyes upon her family.
“William’s married!” she gasped.
“Married?” echoed Mr. Carter angrily. “You’re crazy! William’s got too
much sense. You haven’t read it straight. Give me that letter!”
He stretched out a fiercely impatient hand, but Mrs. Carter ignored his
order.
“Listen! I did read it right. I know my own boy’s writing. I’ll read it
aloud--listen!”
Mr. Carter thumped the table.
“Why in thunder don’t you read it, then? We’re listening! Of all the
crazy notions! Married--you’ll find it’s ‘meandered.’ Go ahead!”
Mrs. Carter rallied her forces again, aware that Daniel and Leigh and
Emily were gaping in amazed incredulity. She turned the letter over to
the first page, caught her breath, and began.
“‘Dear mother,’” she read again, unsteadily this time, “‘I’m
coming home on the _Britannic_, and I’m bringing you the sweetest
daughter-in-law in the whole world. Her name is Fanchon la Fare, and
she’s the cleverest, the dearest, the most devoted girl in France. I
can’t tell you how beautiful she is, but you’ll fall in love with her
at first sight--just as I did. She’s small, “just as high as my heart,”
mother, and she’s got the eyes of a wild fawn----’”
“Wild fawn--thunder!” ejaculated Mr. Carter, unable to restrain
himself. “Give me that letter!”
This time Mrs. Carter surrendered it. She passed it down _via_ Daniel,
who was looking unusually pale. His face startled her, and, while Mr.
Carter was reading the letter, she met her second son’s eyes. They gave
her another shock.
“Dan,” she whispered in an awe-struck voice, “I--do you think he was
engaged to--to----”
She mouthed a name, unable to finish her sentence under the young man’s
look. Daniel frowned, his white lips closing in a sharp line, but Emily
spoke up unabashed.
“Willie’s engaged to Virginia Denbigh. She’s got his ring. I’ve seen it
on her finger.”
“Oh, Emily!” her mother sank back in her chair, feeling weaker than
ever. Her boy, her Willie! She couldn’t believe that he would do
anything like that. She shook her head indignantly at Emily. “Hush!”
she whispered.
“He is, too!” her daughter insisted. “Why, mama, you know he is!”
Mrs. Carter cast a miserable glance at her husband, who was still
reading the letter. He was a big, broad-shouldered man, with a ruddy
face and bristling gray hair. Although usually a man of fairly equable
temperament, his expression at the moment was almost ferocious. He had
grown very red, and his eyebrows were bushed out over the bridge of his
nose in a scowl that transformed him.
Leigh nudged the unsympathetic Emily under the table.
“Gee, look at father!” he murmured.
Emily, who had resumed her breakfast, nodded with her mouth full. She
had played the trump card, and she was quietly observing Daniel. He was
as white as a sheet, she thought, and those big eyes of his had a way
of smoldering.
“It’s because he’s had a bad night, I suppose,” Emily mused, “or
else----”
She speculated, gazing at him; but she did not arrive at any
conclusion. She was interrupted by a furious sound from the foot of
the table. It was fortunately smothered, but it had the rumble of an
approaching tornado.
“The young donkey!” Mr. Carter exclaimed aloud. “My word, I thought
William Carter had sense!”
Mrs. Carter’s amiable, distressed face emerged a little from behind
the big silver hot-water urn which had descended in the family, along
with a Revolutionary sword and the copper warming-pans.
“Can you find out anything, Johnson?” she asked faintly. “I--I can’t!
He doesn’t even say where they were married or--or anything.”
“Married in a lunatic asylum, I suppose,” Mr. Carter returned fiercely.
“He says--as plain as can be--that he hasn’t known the creature three
months!”
“Good gracious! I didn’t get as far as that, I----”
William’s mother stopped short; she was afraid of making matters worse.
Emily, who had stopped eating to listen, came suddenly to the surface.
“Listen, mama! She’s French, isn’t she?”
“I--I suppose so, dear.” Mrs. Carter shuddered slightly. “I’m afraid
she is.”
“Then I don’t see how Willie did it in three months. I read
somewhere--in a magazine, I think--that it took months and months to
court a French girl, and both parents have to say ‘yes,’ and you’ve got
to have birth certificates, and the banns have to be posted for three
weeks, and even then you can’t do it in a hurry; you’ve got to have a
civil marriage and a religious marriage, and--and everything!”
“Good Lord, Emmy! How does a fellow run away with his best girl?” Leigh
asked.
“He can’t!” Emily, having the floor, held it proudly. “He just can’t!
It wouldn’t be legal; he’s got to have his birth certificate.”
“Humph!” Mr. Carter glared over the top of William’s letter at his
wife. “William didn’t happen to carry his birth certificate hung around
his neck, did he?”
Mrs. Carter shook her head, her eyes fixed on Emily. For the first time
she felt it was to be her portion to hear wisdom from the mouths of
babes and sucklings.
“Emmy, are you sure you read all that?” she inquired anxiously.
“Of course she did, mother,” said Daniel, speaking for the first time,
his low, deep voice breaking in on the shrill excitement of the family
clamor. “It’s French law.”
That settled it. Daniel had studied law in old Judge Jessup’s office,
and there was nothing in law, domestic and international, that Judge
Jessup didn’t know. Mr. Carter turned his distorted countenance upon
his second son.
“Is that really a fact, Dan?”
Dan nodded. He was not eating. He had thrust aside an almost untouched
breakfast. The hand that he stretched out now for a glass of water was
a little unsteady, but his father did not notice it. Mr. Carter was
scowling at the letter again.
“It’s as plain as day here, he’s known her less than three months.
Take three weeks for the banns out of that, and you get seven or eight
weeks. The young donkey! Where were her people, I’d like to know?”
Mrs. Carter gasped. Horrible thoughts had been assailing her from the
first, and she could no longer suppress them.
“D-do you think she can be respectable?” she quavered tearfully.
Mr. Carter was mute. He had no adequate language in which to express
his own views upon that point, but his gloomy look was eloquent.
There was a horrible pause. Leigh and Emily exchanged glances. There
was a little satisfaction in hers; she had exploded a bombshell
second only to William’s letter, and now she interrupted her father’s
forty-second perusal of that document.
“Papa,” she said in her solemn young voice, “Willie was engaged to
Virginia Denbigh, and I don’t believe she’s broken it off at all!”
“Hush up, Emmy!” cried Daniel angrily. “Leave Virginia Denbigh out of
it. You’ve no right to talk about her. William’s married!”
“I guess I’ve got a right to tell the truth!” Emily flared up. “Willie
was engaged to Virginia Denbigh up to last week--and I know it!”
But, to her surprise, it was Leigh who broke out suddenly.
“What does it matter?” he cried. “If William’s fallen in love at first
sight, he can’t help it, can he? It’s too much for a fellow, isn’t it?
When a man sees a woman he loves at first sight--it’s--it’s like a
tornado, it bowls him over!”
“Eh?”
Mr. Carter turned and stared at his youngest son. So did his mother.
Leigh was a high-school boy preparing for college. Emily, blond and
snub-nosed and honest, had missed beauty by the proverbial inch that’s
as good as a mile, but Leigh was a handsome boy. He had the eyes of a
girl, too.
“Love at first sight?” bellowed Mr. Carter, getting his breath. “What
d’you know about it, you--you young idiot?”
Leigh reddened, but he held his ground.
“I know--how I’d feel,” he replied hotly.
“Oh, Leigh!” his mother smiled indulgently. “You’re such a child!”
“I’m not!” he retorted with spirit. “I’m eighteen--I’m a man!”
Emily giggled provokingly, and Mr. Carter struck the table with his
fist.
“Shut up!” he roared. “I’ve got one donkey--I don’t want another! What
did you say, Emily?”
“I said Willie was engaged to Virginia Denbigh and----”
Daniel, with a suppressed groan of anger, rose from the table; but his
father stopped him.
“Wait!” he said sharply. “I want to get the stuffing out of this. What
do you mean, Emily?”
“I mean just exactly what I say, papa,” cried his daughter, giving
Daniel a look of triumph. “Virginia’s got Willie’s ring on the third
finger of her left hand, and he wrote her letters--love-letters--from
Japan. I guess I know; I saw her reading one. I guess any girl could
tell that!”
“You’re nothing but a child!” Mr. Carter exclaimed angrily, but he
was searching back in his own mind. He had always planned this match
between his favorite son and Virginia Denbigh, and Emily’s words went
home. He reddened. “Dan, do you know anything about this?” he demanded,
turning on his son.
Daniel, who was standing with his hand on the back of his chair, just
as he had risen, averted his eyes.
“I’d rather not say anything about it, father,” he replied after a
moment. “It’s--it’s not fair to Miss Denbigh, is it, to discuss it?”
His father, who had been observing him narrowly, thrust William’s
letter into his pocket.
“I see it’s true,” he remarked dryly, “Emily’s got more candor than you
have, that’s all.”
Daniel made no reply to this. He reached for his cane and moved
silently toward the door, aware of Emily’s cryptic gaze.
Mr. Carter, meanwhile, broke out stormily again, striking the edge of
the table.
“I’m ashamed of William!” he growled. “My son--and no sense of honor!
I--I’d like to thrash him!”
No one replied to this. Daniel opened the door, went out, and closed it
gently behind him. In the pause they heard his slow, slightly halting
tread as he went across the hall to the front porch and descended the
steps. As the last echo of his footsteps died away, Emily turned to her
father.
“Why, papa, didn’t you know why Dan wouldn’t tell about Willie and
Virginia?” she asked wisely.
Her father cast a startled look at her, his eyes still clouded with
wrath and mortification.
“No. Why?”
Emily smiled across at Leigh.
“Dan’s in love with Virginia himself, and Willie cut him out. That’s
why!”
Mr. Carter stared at her with exasperation. She was going a little too
far, and her annihilation was impending when Mrs. Carter suddenly
uttered a cry of horror. She had picked up the newspaper. It was local,
but it often copied bits from the New York dailies, when the bits were
likely to interest the town.
“Oh, good gracious, here’s a marriage notice from a New York paper!”
she cried, pointing it out with a shaking forefinger: “‘William Henry
Carter and Fanchon la Fare.’ Papa, they weren’t married until they got
to New York--the very day Willie posted that letter!”
Mr. Carter snatched the paper from her hand and read the notice; then
he slammed it down on the table with a violence that made all the
dishes rattle. He was fairly choking with rage now.
“Came over on the steamer with him, of course!” he shouted.
“You get the idea, mama? A French girl! Came over on the same
steamer--seven--nine days at sea--and got married in New York. My
word!” he fairly bellowed. “What kind of a daughter-in-law d’you think
we’ve got? I ask you that!”
“Oh, papa--sh!” gasped his wife weakly. “Think of these children----”
“Sh?” he shouted. “Sh? With this thing out in black and white? D’you
think people haven’t got eyes? The whole town’ll read it--trust ’em
for that! French laws--birth certificates--banns--chaperons--I’d like
to see ’em--wow!”
There was a crash of china, and Mrs. Carter rose and fairly thrust
Leigh and Emily out of the room. For the first time in her experience
with him, Mr. Carter had become volcanic.