"I have an uneasy feeling," said Mr. Houghton, "that he is thinking of
marrying the woman, just to carry out Eleanor's wish. Poor Eleanor!
Always doing the wrong thing, with greatness." This was in September.
Maurice was to come up to Green Hill for a Sunday, and the Houghtons
were in the studio talking about the expected guest. Later Edith was to
drive over to the junction and meet him....
It was not only Green Hill which talked about Maurice. In the months
that followed Eleanor's death, a good many people had pondered his
affairs, because, somehow, that visit of Jacky's to Mrs. Newbolt's
house, got noised abroad, so Maurice's friends (making the inevitable
deductions) told one another exactly what he ought to do.
Mrs. Newbolt expressed herself in great detail: "I shall never forgive
him," she said; "my poor Eleanor! _She_ forgave him, and sent for the
child. More than _I_ would do for any man! But I could have told her
what to expect. In fact, I did. I always said if she wasn't
entertainin', she'd lose him. Yes; she had a hard time--but she kept her
figger. Should Maurice marry the--boy's mother? _'Course not!_ Puffect
nonsense. You think he'll make up to Edith Houghton? She would have too
much self-respect to look at him! And if she did, her father would never
consent to it."
The Mortons' opinion was just as definite: "I hope Maurice will marry
again; Edith's just the girl for him--_What!_" Mrs. Morton interrupted
herself, at a whisper of gossip, "he had a mistress? I don't believe a
word of it!"
"But I'm afraid it's true," her husband told her, soberly; "there's a
boy." His wife's shocked face made him add: "I think Curtis will feel
he ought to legitimatize the youngster by marrying his mother. Maurice
is good stuff. He won't sidestep an obligation."
"I never heard of such an awful idea!" said Mrs. Morton, dismayed. "I
hope he'll do nothing of the kind! You can't correct one mistake by
making another. Don't you agree with me?" she demanded of Doctor Nelson;
who displayed, of course, entire ignorance of Mr. Curtis's affairs.
He only said, "Well, it's a rum world."
Johnny Bennett, in Buenos Aires, reading a letter from his father, said:
"Poor Eleanor!" ... Then he grew a little pale under his tan, and added
something which showed his opinion--not, perhaps, of what Maurice
_ought_ to do, but of what he would do! "I might as well make it a
three-years' contract," Johnny said, bleakly, "instead of one. Of course
there 11 be no use going back home. Eleanor's death settles _my_ hash."
Even Mrs. O'Brien, informed by kitchen leakage as to what had happened,
had something to say: "He ought to make an honest woman of the little
fellow's mother. But to think of him treating Miss Eleanor that way!"
And now, in the studio, the Houghtons also were saying what Maurice
ought--and ought not!--to do: "I'm afraid he's thinking of marrying
her," Mr. Houghton had said; and his wife had said, quickly, "I hope
so--for the sake of his child!"
"But, Mary," he protested, "look at it from the woman's point of view;
this 'Lily' would be wretched if she had to live Maurice's kind of
life!"
Edith, standing with her back to her father and mother, staring down
into the ashes of the empty fireplace, said, over her shoulder, "Maurice
may marry somebody who will help him with Jacky--just as Eleanor would
have done, if she had lived."
"My dear," her father said, quickly, "he has had enough of your sex to
last his lifetime! As a mere matter of taste, I think Maurice won't
marry anybody."
"I don't see why, just because he--did wrong ten years ago," Edith
said, "he has got to sidestep happiness for the rest of his life! But as
for marrying that Mrs. Dale, it would be a cat-and-dog life."
"Edith," said her father, "when you agree with me I am filled with
admiration for your intelligence! Your sex has, generally, mere
intuition--a nice, divine thing, and useful in its way. But indifferent
to logic. My sex has judgment; so when you, a female, display judgment,
I, as a parent, am gratified. 'Cat-and-dog life' is a mild way of
putting it;--a quarrelsome home is hell,--and hell is a poor place in
which to bring up a child! Mary, my darling, you can derail any train by
putting a big enough obstacle on the track; the fact that the obstacle
is pure gold, like your idealism, wouldn't prevent a domestic wreck--in
which Jacky would be the victim! But in regard to Maurice's marrying
anybody else"--he paused and looked at his daughter--"_that_ seems to me
undesirable."
Edith's face hardened. "I don't see why," she said; then added,
abruptly, "I must go and write some letters," and went quickly out of
the room.
They looked after her, and then at each other.
"You see?" Mary Houghton said; "she cares for him!"
"I couldn't face it!" her husband said; "I couldn't have Edith in such a
mess. Morally speaking, of course he has a right to marry; but he can't
have my girl! Let him marry some other man's girl--and I'll give them my
blessing. He's a dear fellow--but he can't have our Edith."
She shook her head. "If it were not for his duty to Jacky, I would be
glad to have Edith marry him. And as for saying that she 'can't,' these
are not the days, Henry, when fathers and mothers decide whom their
girls may marry."
While his old friends were thus talking him over, Maurice was traveling
up to the mountains. He had seen Mr. and Mrs. Houghton in Mercer several
times since Eleanor's death, but he had not been able to face the
associations and recollections of Green Hill. This was largely because,
though his friends had, with such ease, reached decisions for him, he
was himself so absorbed in indecision that he could not go back to the
careless pleasantness of old intimacies, (As for that question of the
wheels,--"if--if--if anything happens to Eleanor?"--Eleanor herself had
answered it in one word: _Lily_.) So, since her death Maurice's whole
mind was intent on Jacky. What must he do fear him? His occasional
efforts to train the child had been met, more than once, by sharp
rebuffs. Whenever he went to see Jacky, Lily was perfectly good
humored--_unless_ she felt she was being criticized; then the claws
showed through the fur!
"You can give me money, if you want to, to send him to a swell school."
She said, once; "but I tell you, Mr. Curtis, right out, _I ain't going
to have you come in between me and Jacky by talking up things to him
that I don't care about._ All these religious frills about Truth! They
say nowadays hardly any rich people tell the truth. And talking grammar
to him! You set him against me," she, said, and her eyes filled with
angry tears.
"I wouldn't think of setting him against you," he said; "only, I want to
do my duty to him."
"'Duty'!" said Lily, contemptuously; "I'm not going to bring him up
old-fashioned. And this thing of telling him not to say 'ain't,' _I_ say
it, and what else would he say? There ain't any other word. He's my
child--and I'll bring him up the way I like! Wait; I'll give you some
fudge; I've just made it..."
Maurice, now, on his way up to Green Hill, looking out of the car
window, and remembering interviews like this with his son's mother,
wondered if Edith had seen Lily the day she took Jacky home? That made
him wonder what Edith would think of the whole business? To a woman like
Edith it would be simply disgusting. "I'll just drop out of her life,"
he said. He thought of the day he brought Jacky to Mrs. Newbolt's door,
and Edith had looked at him--and then at Jacky--and then at him again.
_She understood!_ Would she understand now? Probably not. "Of course old
Johnny'll get her ... But, oh, what life might have been!"
Edith had driven over to the junction earlier than was necessary,
because she had wanted to get away from her father and mother. "They are
afraid he'll fall in love with me," she thought, hotly; "if he ever
does, nothing they can say shall separate us. Nothing! But mother'll try
to influence him to marry that dreadful creature, and father will say
things about 'honor,' so he'll feel he ought never to marry--anybody.
Oh, they are lambs," she said, setting her teeth; "but they mustn't keep
Maurice from being happy!" At the station, as she sat in the buggy
flecking her whip idly, and waiting for Maurice's train, her whole mind
was on the defensive. "He has a right to be happy. He has a right to
marry again ... but they needn't worry about _me_!" she thought. "I've
never grown up to Maurice. But whatever happens, he shan't marry that
woman!"
When Maurice got off the train there was a blank moment when she did not
recognize him. As a careworn man came up to her with an outstretched
hand and a friendly, "This is awfully nice in you, Skeezics!" she said,
with a gasp, "_Maurice!_" He had aged so that he looked, she thought, as
old as Eleanor. But they were both laboriously casual, until the usual
remarks upon the weather, and the change in the time-table, had been
exhausted.
It was Edith who broke into reality--Maurice had taken the reins, and
they were jogging slowly along. "Maurice," she said, "how is Jacky?" His
start was so perceptible that she said, "You don't mind my asking?"
"I don't mind anything you could say to me, Edith. I'm grateful to you
for asking."
"I want to help you about him," she said.
He put out his left hand and gripped hers. Then he said: "I'm going to
do my best for the little fellow. I've botched my own life, Edith;--of
course you know that? But he shan't botch his, if I can help it!"
"I think you can help it," Edith said.
His heart contracted; yet it was what he had expected. The idealism of
an absolutely pure woman. "Well," he said, heavily, "of course I've got
to do what I honestly think is the light thing."
"Are you sure," she said, "that you know what the right thing is? You
mustn't make a mistake."
"I may be said to have made my share," he told her, dryly.
She did not answer that; she said, passionately, "Maurice, I'd give
anything in the world if I could help you!"
"Don't talk that way," he commanded, harshly. "I'm human! So please
don't be kind to me, Edith; I can't stand it."
Instantly her heart pounded in her throat: "He _cares_. Oh, they can't
separate us. But they'll try to." ... The rest of the drive was rather
silent. On the porch at Green Hill the two older friends were waiting to
welcome him. ("Don't let's leave them alone," Henry Houghton had said,
with a worried look; which made his wife, in spite of her own
uneasiness, smile, "Oh, Henry, you are an innocent creature!") After
dinner Mrs. Houghton, determinedly commonplace, came to the rescue of
what threatened to be a somewhat conscious occasion, by talking books
and music. Her husband may have been "innocent," but he did his part by
shoving a cigar box toward the "boy," and saying, "How's business? We
must talk Weston's offer over," he said.
Maurice nodded, but got up and went to the piano; "Tough on you,
Skeezics," he said once, glancing at Edith.
"Oh, I don't mind it, _much_," she said, drolly.
So the evening trudged along in secure stupidity. Yet it was a straining
stupidity, and there was an inaudible sigh of relief from everybody
when, at last, Mary Houghton said, "Come, good people! It's time to go
to bed."
"Yes, turn in, Maurice," said his host; "you look tired." Then he got
on his feet, and said good night with an alacrity which showed how much
he "wished he was asleep"! But he was not permitted to sleep. Maurice,
swinging round from the piano, said, with a rather rigid face:
"Would you mind just waiting a minute and letting me tell you something
about myself, Uncle Henry?"
"Of course not!" Mr. Houghton said, with great assumption of
cheerfulness. He went back to the sofa--furtively achieving a cigar as
he did so--and saying to himself, "Well, at least it will give me a
chance to let him see how I feel about his ever marrying again."
Edith was standing by the piano, one hand resting on the keyboard and
drumming occasionally in disconnected octaves. ("If it's business," she
thought, "I'll leave them alone; but if they are going to 'advise' him,
I'll stay--and fight.")
Maurice came and sat on the edge of the big table, his hands in his
pockets, and one foot swinging nervously. "I hope you dear people don't
think I'm an ungrateful cuss, not to have come to Green Hill this
summer; but the fact is, I've been awfully up against it, trying to make
up my mind about something."
Henry Houghton looked at the fire end of his cigar with frowning
intentness and said yes, he supposed so. "Weston's offer seems to me
fair," he said (this referred to a partnership possibility, on which
Maurice had consulted him by letter); but his remark, now, was so
obviously a running to cover that, in spite of himself, Maurice grinned.
"Weston's a very square fellow," said Henry Houghton.
"If you are going to talk 'offers,'" said Edith, "do you want me to
clear out?"
"It isn't business," Maurice said, quietly; "it's my ... little son. No;
don't clear out, Edith. I'd rather talk to your mother and Uncle Henry
before you."
"All right," said Edith, and struck some soft chords; but her young
mouth was hard.
"Of course," Maurice said, "as things are now--I mean poor Eleanor
gone--I have thought a good deal of what I ought to do for Jacky. It was
Nelly's wish that I should do the straight thing for him. There wasn't
any question, I think, of the 'straight thing' for Lily--"
"Of course not!" Mary Houghton agreed. And her husband said, "Any such
idea would be nonsense, Maurice."
"And I myself don't count," Maurice went on.
Again Mrs. Houghton agreed--very gravely: "Compared to the child, dear
Maurice, you don't."
"You _do_!" Edith said; but nobody heard her.
"So at first," Maurice said, "I kept thinking of how Eleanor had wanted
me to have him--legally, you know; wanted it so much that she--" there
was a silence in the studio; "that she was glad to die, to make it
possible." He paused, and Mary Houghton saw his cheek twitch. "Well, I
felt that clinched it. I felt I _must_ carry out her wish, and ask Mrs.
Dale to--marry me."
"Morbid," said Henry Houghton.
Edith, listening, said nothing; but she was ready to spring!
"Perhaps it was morbid," Maurice said; "but just at first it seemed that
way to me. Then I began to realize that what poor Nelly wanted, wasn't
to have me marry Lily--that was only a means to an end; she wanted Jacky
taken care of"; (Edith nodded.) "And she thought marrying his mother was
the best way to do that." (Edith shook her head.)
"Well; I thought it all over ... I kept myself and my own feelings out
of it." Behind those laconic words lay the weeks of struggle, of which
even these good friends could have no idea! Weeks in which, while Mercer
was deciding what he ought to do, Maurice, "keeping himself out of it,"
had put aside ambition and smothered taste, and thrown over, once for
all, personal happiness. As a wrestler strips from his body all
hampering things, so he had stripped from his mind every instinct which
might interfere with a straight answer to a straight question: "What
will be best for my boy?" He gave the answer now, in Henry Houghton's
studio, while Edith, over in the shadows, at the piano, looked at him.
Her face was quite pale.
"So all I had to do," said Maurice, "was to think of Jacky's welfare.
That made it easier to decide. I find," he said, simply, "that you can
decide things pretty easily if you don't have to think of yourself. So I
said, 'If I marry Lily, though Jacky couldn't be taken away from me,
physically, spiritually'--you know what I mean, Mrs. Houghton?--'he
might be removed to--to the ends of the earth!' I might lose his
affection; and I've got to hold on to _that_, at any cost, because
that's how I can influence him." He was talking now entirely to Edith's
mother, and his voice was harsh with entreaty for understanding. He
didn't care very much whether Henry Houghton understood or not. And of
course Edith could never understand! But that this serene woman of the
stars should misjudge him was unbearable. "You see what I mean, Mrs.
Houghton, don't you? I know Lily;--and I know that if she thought I had
any _right_ to say how he must be brought up, it would mean nothing but
perfectly hideous controversies all the time! So long as she thinks she
has the upper hand, she'll be generous; she doesn't mind his being fond
of me, you know. But she'd fight tooth and nail if she thought I had any
_rights_! You see that, don't you?"
"I see it!" Edith said.
"Yet from a merely material point of view," said Mrs. Houghton, "in
spite of 'controversies,' legitimacy would give Jacky advantages,
which--oh, Maurice, don't you see?--_your son_ has a right to!"
But her husband said, quickly, "Mary, living with a quarreling father
and mother is spiritual illegitimacy; and the disadvantages of that
would be worse than the material handicap of being a--a fatherless
child."
His daughter flashed a passionately grateful look at him.
Maurice, still speaking to Edith's mother, said: "That's the way I
looked at it, Mrs. Houghton. So it seemed to me that I could do more for
him if I didn't marry Lily."
Mary Houghton was silent; it was very necessary to consider the stars.
"I put myself out of it," Maurice said. "I just said, 'If it's best for
Jacky, I'll ask her to marry me,' My honest opinion was that it would be
bad for him."
Edith struck two chords--and sat down on the piano stool, swallowing
hard.
"You don't agree with me, I'm afraid, Mrs. Houghton?" he said,
anxiously.
"My dear boy," she said, "I am sure you are doing what you believe to be
right. But it does not seem right to me."
He flinched, but he was not shaken; "It isn't going to be easy, whatever
I do. I want to educate him, and see him constantly, and influence him
as much as possible. And Lily will be less jealous of me, in her own
house, than she would be in mine."
Edith got up and came and sat on the arm of the sofa by her father. "I
can see," she said, "how much easier it would be for Maurice to do the
hard thing."
Maurice looked at her with deep tenderness. "You _are_ a satisfying
person!" he said.
Henry Houghton took his girl's hand, and held it in a grip that hurt
her. "Maurice is right," he said; "things are _not_ going to be easy for
him. For, though he won't marry Jacky's mother, he won't, I think, marry
anybody else."
"Why won't he?" said Edith.
"There is no _moral_ reason why he shouldn't," her father conceded; "it
is a question of taste; one might perhaps call it a question of
honor"--Maurice whitened, but Henry Houghton went on, calmly, "Maurice
will, of necessity, be so involved with this woman--and God knows what
annoyances she may make for him, that--it distresses me to say so--but I
can see that he will not feel like asking any woman to share such a
burden as he has to carry."
"If he loves any woman," Edith said, "let him ask her! If she turns him
down, it stamps her for a coward!"
"Don't you think I'm right, Maurice?" her father said.
"Yes," Maurice said. "You are right. I've faced that."
Edith sprang to her feet, and stood looking at her father and mother,
her eyes stern with protecting passion. "It seems to me absurd," she
said,--"like standing up so straight you fall over backward!--for
Maurice to feel he can't marry--somebody else, just because he--he did
wrong, ever so many years ago! He's sorry, now. Aren't you sorry,
Maurice?" she said.
His eyes stung;--the simplicity of the word was like a flower tossed
into the black depths of his repentance! "Yes, dear," he said, gently;
"I'm 'sorry.' But no amount of 'sorrow' can alter consequences, Edith."
"Oh," she said, turning to the other two, "don't you want Maurice _ever_
to be happy?"
"I want him to be good," said her mother.
"I can't be happy, Edith," Maurice told her; "don't you see?"
She looked straight in his eyes, her own eyes terror-stricken. ... They
would drive him away from her! "You _shall_ be happy," she said.
They saw only each other, now.
"No," Maurice said; "it's just as your father says; I have no right to
drag any girl into the kind of life I've got to live. I'll have to see
Lily a good deal, so as to keep in with her--and be able to look after
Jacky. Personal happiness is all over for me."
She caught at his arm; "It isn't! Maurice, don't listen to them!" Then
she turned and stood in front of him, as though to put her young breast
between him and that tender, menacing parental love. "Oh, mother--oh,
father! I _do_ love you; I don't want to do anything you don't approve
of;--but Maurice comes first. If he asks me to marry him, I will."
Under his breath Maurice said, "_Edith!_"
"My darling," Henry Houghton said, "consider: people are bound to know
all about this. The publicity will be a very painful embarrassment--"
Edith broke in, "As if that matters!"
"But the serious thing," her father went on, "Is that this woman will be
a millstone around his neck--"
"She shall be around my neck, too!" she said. There was a breathless
moment; then Truth, nobly naked, spoke: "Maurice, duty is the first
thing in the world;--not happiness. If you thought it was your duty to
marry Lily, I wouldn't say a word. You would never know that I cared.
Never! I'd just stand by, and help you. I'd live in the same house with
her, if it would help you! But--" her voice shook; "you _don't_ think
it's your duty. You know it isn't! You know that it would make things
worse for Jacky,--not better, as Eleanor wanted them to be. So why
shouldn't you be happy? Oh, it's _artificial_, to refuse to be happy!"
Before he could speak, she added, quite simply, the sudden tears bright
in her eyes, "I know you love me."
He looked at the father and mother: "You wouldn't have me lie to her,
would you?--even to save her from herself! ... Of course I love you,
Edith,--more than anything on earth,--but I have no right--"
"You have a right," she said.
"I _want_ you," he said, "God knows, it would mean life to me! But--"
"Then take me," she said.
Mrs. Houghton came and put her arms around her girl and kissed her.
"Take her, Maurice," she said, quietly. Then she looked at her husband:
"Dear," she said, and smiled--a little mistily; "wisdom will not die
with us! The children must do what _they_ think is right ... Even if it
is wrong." She had considered the stars.
THE END