JOHNNY would have had his gun right off, and many other things, too, if Miss Lydia hadn't interfered. "Please don't send him so many presents," she wrote Mrs. Robertson in her scared, determined way. And Mary, reading that letter, fed her bitterness with the memory of something which had happened during the visit.
"It's just what I said," she told Johnny's father; "she influences him against us by not letting us give him presents! I know that from the way he talks. I told him, after I bought the stereopticon for him, that I could give him nicer things than she could, and—"
"Mary! You mustn't say things like that!"
"And—and—" Mary said, crying, "he said, 'I like Aunty without any presents.' You see? Influence! The idea of her daring to say we mustn't give him a gun. He'sours!"
"No, he's hers," Johnny's father said, sadly; "she has the whip hand, Mary—unless we tell the truth."
"Of course we can't do that," she said, sobbing.
But after that Philadelphia experience Miss Lydia—a fragile creature now, who lived and breathed for her boy—was obliged every winter to let Johnny visit these people who had disowned him, cast him off, deserted him!—that was the way she put it to herself. She had to let him go because she couldn't think of any excuse for saying he couldn't go. She even asked Doctor Lavendar for a reason for refusing invitations, which the appreciative and frankly acquisitive Johnny was anxious to accept. With a present of a bunch of lamplighters in her hand she went to the rectory, offering, as an explanation of her call, the fact that Johnny had got into a fight with the youngest Mack boy and rubbed his nose in the gutter, and Mrs. Mack was very angry, and said her boy's nose would never be handsome again; and she, Miss Lydia, didn't know what to do because Johnny wouldn't tell her what the fight was about and wouldn't apologize.
"Johnny's fifteen and the Mack boy is seventeen; and a boy doesn't need a handsome nose," said Doctor Lavendar. "I'd not interfere, if I were you."
Then she got the real question out: Didn't Doctor Lavendar think it might be bad for Johnny to visit Mr. and Mrs. Robertson? "They're very rich, you know," Miss Lydia warned him, piteously.
"They've taken a fancy to him, have they?" Doctor Lavendar asked. She nodded. The old man meditated. "Lydia," he said at last, "you are so rich, and they're so poor, I'd be charitable, if I were you."
So she was charitable. And for the next three or four years Johnny went away for his good times, and old Miss Lydia stayed at home and had very bad times for fear that Mr. and Mrs. Robertson might suddenly turn into Johnny's father and mother! Then the father and mother would come to Old Chester in the summer and have their bad times, for fear that Miss Lydia would "influence" Johnny against Mr. and Mrs. Robertson. (We got to quite like the Robertsons, though we didn't see much of them. "Pity they had no children," said Old Chester; "all that Smith money going begging!")
The Smith money certainly went begging, so far as Johnny was concerned. Every time his father and mother tried to spend it on him Miss Lydia put her little frightened will between the boy and his grandfather's fortune. "Boys can't accept presents, Johnny, except from relations, you know," she would tell him; "it isn't nice." And Johnny, thinking of the gun or the pony or what not, would stick out his lips and sigh and say no, he "s'posed not." As a result of such remarks he developed as healthy a pride as one could hope for in a lad, and by the time he was eighteen he was hot with embarrassment when Mrs. Robertson tried to force things upon him.
"No, ma'am," he would say, awkwardly. "I—I can't take any presents."
"Why not?" she would demand, deeply hurt.
"Well, you know, you are not a relation," Johnny would say; and his mother would rush up to her room and pace up and down, up and down, and cry until she could hardly see.
"She's robbed us of our own child!" she used to tell her husband.
As for Johnny, he told Miss Lydia oncethat Mrs. Robertson was kind, and all that, but she was a nuisance.
"Oh, Johnny, I wouldn't saythat, dear. She's been nice to you."
"What makes her?" said Johnny, curiously. "Why is she always gushing round?"
"Well, she likes you, Johnny."
Johnny grinned. "I don't see why. I'm afraid I'm not awfully polite to her. She was telling me she'd give me anything on earth I wanted; made me feel like a fool!" said Johnny, "and I said, 'Aunty gives me everything I want, thank you'; and she said, 'She doesn't love you as much as I do.' And I said (all this love talk makes me kind of sick!) I said, 'Oh yes, she does; she loved me when I was a squealing baby! You didn't know me then.'"
"What did she say?" Miss Lydia asked, breathlessly.
"Oh, she sort of cried," said Johnny, with a bored look.
But his perplexity about Mrs. Robertson's gush lingered in his mind, and a year or two later, on his twentieth birthday, as it happened, he asked Miss Lydia again what on earth it meant? . . . The Robertsons had braved the raw Old Chester winter and comedown to the old house to be near their son on that day. They came like the Greeks, bearing gifts, which, it being Johnny's birthday, they knew could not be refused—and old Miss Lydia, unlike the priest of Apollo, had no spear to thrust at them except the forbidden spear of Truth! So her heart was in her mouth when Johnny, who had gone to supper with his father and mother, came home at nearly midnight and told her how good they were to him. But he was preoccupied as he talked, and once or twice he frowned. Then suddenly he burst out:
"Aunty, why does Mr. Robertson bother about me?"
"Does he?" Miss Lydia said.
"Well, yes; he says he wants me to go into his firm when I leave college. He says he'll give me mighty good pay. But—but he wants me to take his name."
"Oh!" said Miss Lydia. She looked so little and pretty, lying there in her bed, with her soft white hair—the frizette had vanished some years ago—parted over her delicate furrowed brow, and her blue eyes wide and frightened, like a child's, that Johnny suddenly hugged her.
"As for the name part of it," he said, "Isaid my name was Smith. Not handsome or distinguished, but my own. I said I had no desire to change it, but if I ever did it would be to Sampson."
A meager tear stood in the corner of Miss Lydia's eye. "That was very nice of you, Johnny," she said, quaveringly.
"I'd like the business part of it all right," said Johnny. . . . "Say, Aunt Lydia—whatisall the milk in the coconut about me? Course I'm not grown up for nothing; I know I'm—queer. I got on to that when I was fifteen—I put the date on Eddy Mack's nose! But I'd like to know, really, who I am?"
"You're my boy," said Miss Lydia.
"You bet I am!" said Johnny; "but who were my father and mother?"
"They lived out West, and—"
"I know all that fairy tale, Aunty. Let's have the facts."
Miss Lydia was silent; her poor old eyes blinked; then she said: "They—deserted you, Johnny. But you mustn't mind."
The young man's face reddened sharply. "They weren't married, I suppose, when I was born?" he said, in a husky voice.
"They—got married before you were born."
He frowned, but he was obviously relieved; then he looked puzzled. "Yet they deserted me? Were they too poor to take care of me?"
"Well, no," Miss Lydia confessed.
"Not poor, yet they dumped me onto your doorstep?" he repeated, bewildered, but with a slow anger growing in his face. "Well, I guess I'm well rid of 'em if they were that kind of people! Cowards. I'd rather have murderers 'round, than cowards!"
"Oh, my dear, you mustn't be unjust. They gave me money for your support."
"Money!" he said. "They paid you to take me off their hands?" He paused; "Aunt Lydia," he said—and as he spoke his upper lip lifted and she saw his teeth—"Aunt Lydia, I'll never ask you about them again. I have no interest in them. They are nothing to me, just as I was nothing to them. But tell me one thing, is Smith my name?"
"Yes," said Miss Lydia (it's hismiddlename, she assured herself truthfully).
But Johnny laughed: "I guess you just called me Smith. Well, that's all right, though I'd rather you'd made it Sampson. But Smith will do. I said so to Mrs. Robertson.I said that my name was the same as her father's, and I thought he was the finest old man I'd ever known, and, though I was no relation, I hoped my Smith name would be as dignified as his."
"What did she say?" said Miss Lydia.
"Oh, she got weepy," said Johnny, good-naturedly; "she's always either crying or kissing. But she's kind. Look at those!" he said, displaying some sleeve links that his mother's soft, adoring fingers had fastened into his cuffs. "Well, I don't take a berth with a new name tacked on to it, at Robertson & Carey's. He'll have to get some other fellow to swap names for him!"
He went off to his room, his face still dark with the deep, elemental anger which that word "deserted" had stirred in him, but whistling as if to declare his entire indifference to the deserters. Old Miss Lydia, alone, trembled very much. "Take their name!What will they do next?" she said to herself.
The Robertsons were asking each other the same question, "What can we do now to get him?" The lure of a business opportunity had not moved the boy at all, and what he had said about being called Sampson had been like a knife-thrust in their hearts.It made Mary Robertson so angry that she sprang at a fierce retaliation: "Shecouldn'tkeep him—he wouldn't stay with her—if we told him the truth!" she said to Johnny's father.
"But we never can tell him," Carl reminded her.
"Sometimes I think she'll drive me to it!" said Mary.
"No," Robertson said, shortly.
"No one would know it but the boy himself. And if he knew it he'd let us adopt him. And that would mean taking his own name."
"No!" Carl broke out, "it won't do! You see, I—don't want him to know." He paused, then seemed to pull the words out with a jerk: "I won't let him have any disrespect for his mother, and—" He got up and tramped about the room. "Damn it!Idon't want to lose his good opinion, myself."
Her face turned darkly red. "Oh," she cried, passionately, "'opinion'! What difference does his 'opinion' make to me? A mother is a mother. And I love him! Oh, I love him so, I could justdie!If he would put his arms around me the way he does tothat terrible Miss Lydia, and kiss me, and say"—she clenched her hands and closed her eyes, and whispered the word she hungered to hear—"'Mother! Mother!' If I could hear him saythat," she said, "I could just lie down and die! Couldn't you?—to hear him say 'Father'?"
Robertson set his teeth. "And what kind of an idea would he have of his 'father'? No, I won't consent to it!"
"We can't get him in any other way," she urged.
"Then we'll never get him. I can't face it."
"You don't love him as much as I do!"
"I love him enough not to want to risk losing his respect."
But this sentiment was beyond Johnny's mother; all she thought of was her aching hunger for the careless, good-humored, but bored young man. The hunger for him grew and grew; it gnawed at her day and night. She urged Carl to take a house in Princeton while Johnny was in college, and only Johnny's father's common sense kept this project from being carried out. "You're afraid!" she taunted him.
"Dear," he said, kindly, "I'm afraid ofbeing an ass. If he saw us tagging after him he'd hate us both. He's a man!" Carl said, proudly. "No, I've no fancy for losing the regard of"—he paused—"my son," he said, very quietly.
His wife put her hand over her mouth and stared at him; the word was too great for her; it was her baby she thought of, not her son.
In Johnny's first vacation, when she had rushed to Old Chester in June to open the house, she was met by the information that he was going off for the summer on a geological expedition.
Mary's disappointment made her feel a little sick. "WhatshallI do without you!"
"Oh, if Aunty can do without me, I guess outsiders can," said Johnny, with clumsy amiability.
"We'll be here when you get back in September," she said.
He yawned, and said, "All right." Then he strolled off, and she went upstairs and cried.
Johnny, walking home after this embarrassing interview, striking at the roadside brambles with a switch and whistling loudly, said to himself: "How on earth did Mr.Robertson fall in love with her?He'sgot brains." A day or two later he went off for his geological summer, leaving in his mother's heart that rankling word, "outsiders." As the weeks dragged along and she counted the days until he would be back, she brooded and brooded over it. It festered so deeply that she could not speak of it to Johnny's father. But once she said: "He's ungrateful! See all we've done for him!"—and Carl realized that bitterness toward Miss Lydia, who had "robbed" her, was extending to the boy himself. And again—it was in August, and Johnny was to be at home in a fortnight—she said, "He ought to bemadeto come to us!"
Her husband looked at her in surprise. "You can't 'make' anybody love you, Mary. We are just outsiders to him."
She cried out so sharply that he was frightened, not knowing that he had turned a dagger-word in the wound.
Perhaps it was the intolerable pain of knowing that she was helpless that drove her one day, without Carl's knowledge, to the rectory. "I'll put it to Doctor Lavendar as—as somebody else's story—the trouble of a 'friend,' and maybe he can tell me how Ican make Johnny feel that we arenotoutsiders! Oh, he owes it to us to do what we want! I'll tell Doctor Lavendar that the father and mother lived out West and are friends of mine. . . . He'll never put two and two together."
She walked past the rectory twice before she could get her courage to the point of knocking. When she did, it was Willy King who opened the door.
"Oh—is Doctor Lavendar ill?" she said. And Doctor King answered, dryly, that when you are eighty-two you are not particularly well.
"I thought I'd just drop in and ask his advice on something—nothing important," said Johnny's mother, breathlessly. "I'll go away, and come some other time."
Upon which, from the open window overhead, came a voice: "I won't be wrapped up in cotton batting! Send Mary Robertson upstairs."
"Haven't I any rights?" Willy called back, good-naturedly, and Doctor Lavendar retorted:
"Maybe you have, but I have many wrongs. Come along, Mary."
She went up, saying to herself: "I'll notspeak of it. I'll just say I've come to see him." She was so nervous when she entered the room that her breath caught in her throat and she could hardly say, "How do you do?"
The old man was in bed with a copy ofRobinson Crusoeon the table beside him. He held out a veined and trembling hand:
"William's keeping me alive so he can charge me for two calls a day. Well, my dear, what can I do for you?"
Mrs. Robertson sat down in a big armchair and said, panting, that—that it was terribly hot.
Doctor Lavendar watched her from under his heavy, drooping eyelids.
"There was something I was going to ask you about," she said, "but it's no matter. Doctor King says you are sick."
"Don't believe all Doctor King tells you."
"I just wanted to get advice for—for somebody else. But it's no matter."
"Let's hear about the 'somebody else.'"
"They are not Old Chester people—so you won't mind if I don't name names?"
"Not in the least," said Doctor Lavendar, genially. "Call 'em Smith; that's a somewhat general title."
"Oh—no, that's not their name," she said, panic-stricken—then saw that he had meant it as a joke, and said, trying to smile, yes, therewerea good many Smiths in the world! Then suddenly her misery rose like a wave, and swept her into words: "These people are terribly unhappy, at least the mother is, because—" She paused, stammered, felt she had gone too far, and stumbled into contradictions which could not have misled anyone, certainly not Doctor Lavendar. "They, these people, had let their child be adopted—oh, a great many years ago, because they—they were not so situated that they could bring him—it—up. But they could, now. And they wanted him, they wanted him—her, I mean," said Mary; "I believe it was a little girl. But the little girl didn't want to come back to them. And the person who had taken her influenced her against her parents, who had doneeverythingfor her!—given her everything a child could want. It's cruel," said Mary. "Cruel! I know the parents, and—"
"Mary," said Doctor Lavendar, gently, "so do I."
She recoiled as if from a blow. "No—oh no! You are mistaken, sir. You couldn'tknow them. His—his relatives don't live here. They live in another city. You couldn't possibly know them!"
She was white with terror. What would Carl say? Oh, she must lie her way out of it! How mad she had been to come here and hint at things!
"I have known Johnny Smith's parentage for several years, Mary."
"I didn't say the child was Johnny Smith!"
"Isaid so."
"I don't know what you're talking about! The father and mother lived out West, butIdon't know the child. He is nothing to me."
"I wonder," said Doctor Lavendar, half to himself, "do we all deny love thrice?—for you do love him, Mary, my dear; I know you do."
She tried, in panic denial, to meet his quiet eyes—then gave a little moan and bent over and hid her face on her knees.
"Oh, I do love him—I do," she said in a whisper. "But he doesn't love me. . . . And yet he ismine—Carl's and mine." Then anger flared up again: "Who told you? Oh, it was Miss Lydia, and she promised she wouldn't! How wicked in her!"
"No one told me." There was a moment's silence, then Doctor Lavendar said, "There were people in Old Chester who thought he was Miss Lydia's."
"Fools! fools!" she said, passionately.
"No one came forward to deny it."
She did not notice this; the flood of despair and longing broke into entreaty; how could she get her child—her own child—who considered her just an outsider! "That's Miss Lydia's influence!" she said.
Doctor Lavendar listened, asked a question or two, and then was silent.
"I am dying for him!" she said; "oh, I am in agony for him!"
The old man looked at her with pitying keenness. Was this agony a spiritual birth or was it just the old selfishness which had never brooked denial? And if indeed it was a travail of the spirit, would not the soul be stillborn if her son's love should fail to sustain it? Yet why should Johnny love her? . . . Mary was talking and trying not to cry; her words were a fury of pain and protest:
"Miss Lydia won't give him up to people who haven't any claim upon him,—I mean any claim that is known. Of course we have a claim—the greatest! But Johnnydoesn't know, so he won't consent to take our name—though it is ourright!He doesn't know any reason for it. You see?"
"I see."
"I suppose if we told him the truth we could get him. But I'm afraid to tell him. Yet without telling him I can't make him love me! He said I was an 'outsider.'I!his mother! But if he knew there was a reason—"
Doctor Lavendar looked out of the window into the yellowing leaves of the old jargonelle-pear tree, and shook his head. "Hearts don't come when Reason whistles to 'em," he said.
"Oh, if I could just hear him say 'mother'!"
"Why should he say 'mother'? You haven't been a mother to him."
"I've given him everything!"
Doctor Lavendar was silent.
"Heoughtto come to us. He is ours; and he owes us—"
"Just what you've earned, Mary, just what you've earned. That's what children 'owe' their parents."
"Oh, what am I to do? What am I to do?"
"How much do you want him, Mary?"
"HEARTS DON'T ANSWER WHEN REASON WHISTLES TO THEM," HE SAID."HEARTS DON'T ANSWER WHEN REASON WHISTLES TO THEM," HE SAID.
She was stammering with sobs. "It's all I want—it's my life—"
"Perhapspublicity would win him. He has a great respect for courage. So perhaps—"
She cringed. "But that couldn't be! It couldn't be. Don't you understand?"
"Poor Mary!" said Doctor Lavendar. "Poor girl!"
"Doctor Lavendar, make him come to us.Youcan do it. You can do anything!"
"Mary, neither you nor I nor anybody else can 'make' a harvest anything but the seed which has been sowed. My child, you sowed vanity and selfishness." . . . By and by he put his hand on hers and said: "Mary, wait. Wait till you love him more and yourself less."
It was dark when she went away.
When Doctor King came in in the evening he said to himself that Mary Robertson and the whole caboodle of 'em weren't worth the weariness in the wise old face.
"William," said Doctor Lavendar, "I hope there won't be any conundrums in heaven; I don't seem able to answer them any more." Then the whimsical fatigue vanished and he smiled. "Lately I've just said, 'Wait: God knows.' And stopped guessing."
But he didn't stop thinking.
AS for Johnny's mother, she kept on thinking, too, but she yielded, for the moment, to the inevitableness of her harvest. And of course the devotion, and the invitations to Philadelphia, and the summers in Old Chester continued. Johnny's bored good humor accepted them all patiently enough; "for she is kind," he reminded himself. "And I likehim," he used to tell his aunt Lydia. Once he confided his feelings on this subject to William King:
"They are queer folks, the Robertsons," Johnny said. "Why do they vegetate down here in Old Chester? They don't seem to know anybody but Aunt Lydia."
William and the big fellow were jogging along in the doctor's shabby buggy out toward Miss Lydia's; she was very frail that summer and Johnny had insisted that William King should come to see her. "The Robertsons knowyou, apparently," the doctor said.
"Well, yes," John said, "and they've been nice to me ever since I can remember."
"G'on!" Doctor King told his mare, and slapped a rein down on Jinny's back.
"But, Doctor King, theyarequeer," Johnny insisted. "What's the milk in the coconut about 'em?"
"Maybe a thunderstorm soured it."
Johnny grinned, then he looked at Jinny's ears, coughed, and said, "I'd like to ask you a question, sir."
"Go ahead."
"When people are kind to you—just what do you owe 'em? I didn't ask them to be kind to me—I mean the Robertsons—but, holy Peter!" said Johnny, "they've given me presents ever since I was a child. They even had a wild idea of getting me to take their name! I said, 'No, thank you!' Why should I take their name? . . . Mrs. Robertson always seems sort of critical of Aunty. Think of that! Course she never says anything; she'd better not! If she did I'd raise Cain. But Ifeelit," Johnny said, frowning. "Well, what I want to know is, what do you owe people who do you favors? Mind you,Idon't want their favors!"
"Well," William ruminated, "I should saythat we owe people who do us favors, the truth of how we feel about them. If the truth wouldn't be agreeable to them, don't accept the favors!"
"Well, the 'truth' is that I get mad when Mrs. Robertson looks down on Aunty! Think of what she's stood for me!" the boy said, suddenly very red in the face. "When I was fifteen one of the fellows told me I was—was her son. I rubbed his nose in the mud."
"Oh, that was how Mack got his broken nose, was it?" Doctor King inquired, much interested. "Well, I'm glad you did it. I guess it cured him of beingonekind of a fool. There was a time when I wanted to rub one or two female noses in the mud. However, they are really not worth thinking of, Johnny."
"No," John agreed, "but anybody who looks cross-eyed in my presence at Aunt Lydia will get his head punched."
"Amen," said William King, and drew Jinny in at Miss Lydia's gate.
It cannot be said that William King's opinion as to what we owe people who do us favors was very illuminating to Johnny. "I like 'em—and I don't like 'em," he told MissLydia, with a bothered look. "But I wish to Heaven she'd let up on presents!"
On the whole he liked them more than he failed to like them; perhaps because they were, to a big, joyous, somewhat conceited youngster, rather pitiful in the way in which they seemed to hang upon him. He said as much once to his aunt Lydia; Mrs. Robertson had asked him to come to supper, but had not asked Miss Lydia. "I suppose I've got to go," he said, scowling, "but they needn't think I'd rather have supper with them than with you! I just go because I'm sorry for 'em."
"I am, too, Johnny," she said. She had ceased to be afraid of them by this time. Yet she might have been just a little afraid if she had known all that this special invitation involved. . . .
Mary Robertson no longer shared her longing for her son with her husband. She had not even told him of that day when her misery had welled up and overflowed in frantic words to Doctor Lavendar. But she had never resigned herself to reaping what she had sowed. She was still determined,somehow, to get possession of her boy. Occasionally she spoke of this determination toDoctor Lavendar, just because it was a relief to put it into words; but he never gave her much encouragement. He could only counsel a choice of two things: secrecy—and fortitude; or truth—and doubtful hope.
Little by little hope gained, and truth seemed more possible. And by and by a plan grew in her mind: she would get Doctor Lavendar to help her to tell Johnny the truth, and then, supported by religion (as she thought of it), she would tell her son that it was his duty to live with her;—"nobody will knowwhy!And he can't say 'no,' if Doctor Lavendar says, 'honor thy father and thy mother'!" That Doctor Lavendar would say this, she had no doubt whatever, for was he not a minister, and ministers always counseled people to obey the Commandments. "But when I get him here, with Johnny, we must be by ourselves," she thought; "I won't speak beforeher!"
So that was why Miss Lydia was not invited to supper when Johnny was—Johnny and Doctor Lavendar! Mary Robertson was so tense all that September day when her two guests were expected that her husband noticed it.
"You're not well, Mary?" he said.
"Oh yes, yes!" she said—she was pacing up and down, up and down, like a caged creature. "Carl, Doctor Lavendar is coming this evening."
"My dear, I think that is about the tenth time you have mentioned it! I should not call the old gentleman a very exciting guest."
"And Johnny is coming."
"Well, what of it? I hope Doctor Lavendar won't ask him to say his catechism!"
As it happened, Johnny came first, and his mother was so eager to see him and touch him that, hearing his step, she ran to help him off with his coat—to his great embarrassment; then she came into the library clinging to his arm. Father and son greeted each other with, "Hello, youngster!" and, "Hello, sir!" and Johnny added that it was beginning to rain like blazes.
"I sent the carriage for Doctor Lavendar," Mrs. Robertson said.
"He coming?" Johnny asked.
"Yes," she said; "he's very, very good, Johnny, and"—she paused, then said, breathlessly, "you must do whatever he wants you to do."
The young man looked faintly interested."What's she up to now?" he asked himself; then began to talk to his father. But remembering his aunt Lydia's parting injunction, "Now, Johnny, be nice to Mrs. Robertson," he was careful to speak to his mother once in a while. Happening to catch the twinkle of her rings, he tried to be especially "nice."
"When I get rich I'm going to buy Aunty a diamond ring like yours, Mrs. Robertson."
"I'll give you one of mine, if you'll wear it," she said, eagerly.
Johnny's guffaw of laughter ended in a droll look at his father, who said:
"My dear Mary! Thiscub, and a diamond ring?"
She was too absorbed in loving her child to be hurt by his bad manners, and, besides, at that moment Doctor Lavendar arrived, and she ran out into the hall to welcome him; as she took his hand she whispered:
"Doctor Lavendar, you will help me with Johnny?I am going to tell him.I'm going to tell him to-night!—and I depend on you to make him come to us."
The old man's face grew very grave; he looked closely at Mary, standing there, clasping and unclasping her hands, but hedid not answer her. Later, when they went out to the dining room, he was still silent, just watching Mary and listening to Johnny,—who laughed and talked (and was "nice" to his mother), and ate enormously, and who looked, sitting there at his grandfather's old table, as much like the new Mr. Smith as twenty-three can look like seventy-eight.
"Well," the young fellow said, friendly and confidential to the company at large, "what do you suppose? It's settled—my 'career'!"
"I hope that means Robertson and Carey?" Mr. Robertson said. He glanced over at his son with a sort of aching pride in his strength and carelessness. "I've offered this youngster a place in my firm," he explained to Doctor Lavendar, who said:
"Have you, indeed?"
"No," Johnny said, "it doesn't mean Carey and Robertson, though you're mighty kind, Mr. Robertson. But you see I can't leave Old Chester. It would pull Aunt Lydia up by the roots to go away. And of course I couldn't go without her."
Mary's plump hand, with its shining rings, clenched sharply on the tablecloth; she drew in her breath, but she said nothing.
"Well, what are you going to do?" Carl said, not daring to meet his wife's eyes.
"Aunt Lydia got a job for me in Mr. Dilworth's hardware store."
His mother cried out—then checked herself. "Miss Lydia ought not to have thought of such a thing!" she tried to speak quietly, but she had to bite her lip to keep it steady.
"Mary!" her husband warned her.
John's face darkened. "Aunty ought always to do whatever she does do," he said.
"Of course," his father agreed, soothingly.
"I only meant," Mary explained, in a frightened voice, "that a hardware store isn't much of a chance for a man like you."
"It means staying in Old Chester with Aunty," he explained; "she's not very well now, Mrs. Robertson," he said, and sighed; "it would be too much for her, to move. She's not equal to it." His strong, rather harsh face softened and sobered. "And as for a hardware store not being a chance forme—I mean to make Rome howl with a Mercer branch! You see, Aunty bought a half-interest for me. The Lord knows where she got the money! Saved it out of her food all these years, I guess."
"She didn't, apparently, save it out of yourfood," Doctor Lavendar said, dryly; "I believe you weigh two hundred, Johnny."
"Only a hundred and eighty-four," the young man assured him.
Mary, listening, was tingling all over; she had planned a very cautious approach to the truth which was to give her son back to her. She meant first to hint, and then to admit, and then to declare herrightto his love. But that Miss Lydia, without consulting Johnny's father and mother, should have put him into such a business—"my sonin a hardware store!" Mary thought;—that Miss Lydia should have dared! "He's mine—he's mine—he's mine! . . . Of course," she was saying to herself as they went back to the library after dinner—"of course, he'll give it up the minute he knows who he is. But I hate her!"
The room, in the September dusk, was lighted only by a lamp on the big desk; the windows opening on the garden were raised, for it was hot after the rain, and the air blew in, fragrant with wet leaves and the scent of some late roses. Johnny's father, sinking down in a great leather chair, watched the young, vigorous figure standing in front of the mantelpiece, smoking and, after thefashion of his years, laying down the law for the improvement of the world. Doctor Lavendar did not look at Johnny, but at his mother, who stood clutching the corner of the big desk—that desk at which, one September night twenty-three years ago, Johnny's grandfather had been sitting when Miss Lydia came into the library. . . .
"Mary, my dear, aren't you going to sit down?" said Doctor Lavendar.
She did not seem to hear him. "Look here," she said, harshly; "I can't stand it—I won't stand it—"
Carl sprang up and laid his hand on her arm. "Mary!" he said, under his breath. "Please," he besought her; "for God's sake don't—don't—"
"Johnny, you belong to me," Mary said.
John Smith, his cigar halfway to his lips, paused, bewildered and alarmed. "Isn't she well?" he said, in a low voice to Doctor Lavendar.
"I'm perfectly well. But I'm going to speak. Doctor Lavendar will tell you I have a right to speak! Tell him so, Doctor Lavendar."
"She has the right to speak," the old man said.
"You hear that?" said the mother. "He says I have a right to you!"
"I didn't say that," said Doctor Lavendar.
"Mary," her husband protested, "I will not allow"—but she did not hear him:
"Miss Lydia sha'n't have you any longer. You aremine, Johnny—mine. I want you, and I'm going to have you!"
John Smith's face went white; he put his cigar down on the mantelpiece, went across the long room, closed the door into the hall, then came back and looked at his mother. No one spoke. Doctor Lavendar had bent his head and shut his eyes; he would not watch the three struggling souls before him. Johnny slowly turned his eyes toward Mr. Robertson.
"And you—?"
"Yes," his father said. "John, you'll make the best of us, won't you?"
Silence tingled between them.
Then, unsteadily, and looking always at his father, John began to speak. "Of course it makes no difference to me. Aunt Lydia and I have our own life. But—I'm sorry, sir." He put his shaking hands into his pockets. "You and Mrs. Robertson—"
"Oh, say 'mother'! Say 'mother'!" she cried out.
"—have been very kind to me, always,"—he paused, in a sudden, realizing adjustment: their "kindness," then, had not been the flattery he had supposed? It was just—love? "Awfully kind," he said, huskily. "Once I did wonder . . . then I thought it couldn't be, because—because, you see, I've always liked you, sir," he ended, awkwardly.
Carl Robertson was dumb.
"I've told you," his mother said, trembling—her fingers, catching at the sheet of blotting paper on desk, tore off a scrap of it, rolled it, twisted it, then pull off another scrap—"I've told you, because you are to come to us. You are to take our name—your name." She paused, swallowing hard, and struggling to keep the tears back. "You areours, not hers. People thought you were hers, and it just about killed me."
Instantly the blood rushed into John Smith's face; his eyes blazed. "What!" he stammered; "what! You knew that?" . . . His upper lip slowly lifted, and Doctor Lavendar saw his set teeth. "Youknewthat some damned fools thoughtthat, of my aunt Lydia? Are you my mother, and yet you could allow another woman— My God!" he said, softly.
She did not realize what she had done; she began to reassure him frantically.
"No one shall ever know! No one will ever guess—"
Doctor Lavendar shook his head. "Mary," he warned her, "we must be known, even as also we know, before we enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
They did not listen to him.
"You mean," John said, "that you won't let it be known that you are—my mother?"
"No, never! never! It couldn't be known—I promise you."
"Thank you," said John Smith, sardonically,—and Doctor Lavendar held up protesting hands. But no one looked at him.
"It would only be supposed," Carl said, "that, being childless people, we would make you our son. Nothing, as your mother says, would need be known."
"How could you 'make me your son' and not have it known?"
"I mean by law," his father explained.
"There was a 'law' that made me your son twenty-three years ago. That's the only law that counts. You broke it when I was born. Can I be born again?"
"Yes," said Doctor Lavendar.
"You deserted me," Johnny said, "and Aunt Lydia took me. Shall I be like you, and desert her? Little Aunt Lydia!" He gave a furious sob. "I'm notyoursort!" he said. The words were like a blow in Mary's face.
"Doctor Lavendar, tell him—tell him, 'honor thy father and thy mother'!"
"'Honor'?" her son said. "Did I understand you to use the word 'honor'?"
Again Doctor Lavendar raised an admonishing hand. "Careful, John."
"He means," Carl said to his wife, quietly, though his face was gray—"he means he wants us to acknowledge him. Mary, I'm willing. Are you?"
Doctor Lavendar lifted his bowed head, and his old eyes were suddenly eager with hope. Johnny's mother stood looking at her child, her face twisted with tears.
"MustI, to get him?" she gasped.
"No," Johnny said; "it is quite unnecessary." He smiled, so cruelly that his father's hands clenched; but Mary only said, in passionate relief, "Oh, you are good!" And the hope in Doctor Lavendar's eyes flickered out.
"Nothing will ever be known?" her son repeated, still smiling. "Well, then, Mrs. Robertson, I thank you for 'nothing.'"
Doctor Lavendar frowned, and Mary recoiled, with a sort of moan. Carl Robertson cried out:
"Stop! You shall not speak so to your mother! I'm ashamed of you, sir!"
But the mother ran forward and caught at her son's arm. "Oh, but I will make it known! I will say who you are! I'll say you are mine! I will—I will—"
"You can't, for I'm not," he said.
She was clinging to him, but he looked over her head, eye to eye with his father. "How can I be her son, when she let people here in Old Chester believe that Aunt Lydia—"
"Johnny," said Doctor Lavendar, "it didn't make the slightest difference to Miss Lydia."
The young man turned upon him. "Doctor Lavendar, these two people didn't own me, even when a pack of fools believed—" He choked over what the fools believed. "They let them thinkthatof Aunt Lydia! As for this—this lady being my 'mother'— What's 'mother' but a word? Aunt Lydia may not be my mother, but I am her son. Yes—yes—I am."
"You are," Doctor Lavendar agreed.
John turned and looked at his father."I'm sorry forhim," he said to Doctor Lavendar.
"We will acknowledge you to-morrow," Carl Robertson said.
"I won't acknowledge you," his son flung back at him. "All these years you have hidden behind Aunty. Stay hidden. I won't betray you."
Mary had dropped down into her father's chair; her face was covered by her hands on the desk. They heard her sob. Her husband bent over her and put his arms about her.
"Mary," he said, in a whisper, "forgive me; I brought it on you—my poor Mary!" Then he stood up and looked at his son in suffering silence. "I don't blame you," he said, simply.
At that, suddenly, John Smith broke. The pain of it all had begun to penetrate his passionate loyalty. For a moment there was silence, except for Mary's sobs. Then Johnny said, hoarsely, "Mr. Robertson, I'm—sorry. But . . . there isn't anything to do about it. I—I guess I'll go home."
"John," said Doctor Lavendar, "your aunt Lydia would want you to be kind."
Carl Robertson shook his head. "Wedon't want kindness, Doctor Lavendar. I guess we don't want anything he can give. Good-by, boy," he said.
His son, passing him, caught at his hand and wrung it. "Goo'-by," he said, roughly. There were tears in his eyes.
Then, without a look at his mother, he walked quickly down the room, and out into the hall. They could hear him putting on his hat and coat. . . . Carl Robertson pressed his clenched hand against his lips, and turned his back to the other two. Mary was silent. Doctor Lavendar covered his eyes for a moment; then, just as Johnny's hand was on the knob of the front door he called out:
"John, wait a minute, will you? Give me an arm; I'm going to walk home."
The young man, out in the hall, frowned, and set his jaw.
"All right," he called back, briefly. There was no detaining word or cry from the library while Doctor Lavendar shuffled silently into his coat,—and a minute later the door of the new Mr. Smith's house closed upon his grandson and the old minister.
It had begun to rain again, and the driveway was very dark—darker even than on thatSeptember night when Johnny's mother had cringed back from Miss Lydia's little leading hand and they had hurried along under the big trees. It was her son who hurried now. . . .
"Not so fast, Johnny," said Doctor Lavendar.
"Excuse me, sir." He fell into step with the old man, but he was tense with the effort to walk slowly. . . . They were nearly at the gate before there was any speech between them. Then Johnny said, violently:
"There's no use saying anything to me, Doctor Lavendar! Not a particle of use!"
"I haven't said anything, John."
"They got you here to—to influence me! I saw through it the minute—she began. But I never forgive," Johnny said; "I want you to understand that!" He was hurrying again. The old man pressed a little on his arm.
"I'm sorry to be so slow, Johnny."
"Oh—excuse me, sir; I didn't realize. . . . She threw me away. I've thrown her away. There's no use talking to me!"
Doctor Lavendar was silent.
"I tell you, I won't have anything to do with them—with her, I mean. He's not so bad. I—I like him—in spite of—of everything.But she deserted me when I was born."
"It is certainly cruel to desert a newborn thing," said Doctor Lavendar.
John Smith agreed, furiously—and his upper lip lifted.
"I think," said Doctor Lavendar, "something has been born to-night—" He was very much out of breath.
"I'm walking too fast again? I beg your pardon, sir," the boy said.
"Suppose we stand still for a minute," said Doctor Lavendar.
They stood still; the rain fell heavily on Doctor Lavendar's shoulders and dripped from the brim of his old felt hat. "She deserted me," John said. "There is nothing to be said in excuse. Nothing."
"No, desertion can never be excused," the old man agreed; "and, as you say, when your body was born, she left it. To-night her soul has been born. Do you mean to desert it, John?"
"Even a dog doesn't leave her pups!" John said.
("His grandfather over again!" Doctor Lavendar thought.) Yet it was to that inherited brutality that he made his appeal:
"No; a mother has to be higher than an animal, to desert her young," Doctor Lavendar said.
The young man's violent agreement broke off in the middle:—"What do you mean by that?"
"Shame is a strange thing," said Doctor Lavendar; "it can lift us up to heaven or push us down to hell; it gives us courage or it makes us cowards. An animal doesn't know shame."
"You mean that—that woman—?"
"I mean your mother was ashamed, John—" The young man was silent. "She tried to get away from shame by getting away from you. Now she knows that only by staying with you could she really get away from it."
"I willnevercall her 'mother'!" Johnny burst out.
"Miss Lydia didn't stop to consider what she was going to call you; she just took care of you. Yet you weren't as helpless as that poor woman back there in that empty house. Johnny, her little weak soul, just born to-night, will die unless you take care of it."
The young man stood still, his hands clenched. Doctor Lavendar took off hissoaking wet hat, shook it, put it on again, and waited. There was only the sound of the rain and the drip-drip from the big trees along the driveway. Then the boy said:
"You said desertion could not be excused. I am ashamed to be known as belonging to her!"
"That's just how she felt about you—so she deserted you."
Silence, except for John Smith's panting breath. Down the road, through the lilac bushes, came the twinkle of a lamp in Miss Lydia's window.
"John," said Doctor Lavendar, "go to your mother. If you don't, you will be doing just what she did. Be kind to her helpless soul, as Miss Lydia was kind to your helpless body."
Still silence. Then suddenly Mary's son flung Doctor Lavendar's hand from his arm, and turned back, almost running, to vanish in the shadows of his grandfather's driveway. But as he ran, he threw over his shoulder some broken, passionate words that sounded like—"Iwon'tbe like her—"
Doctor Lavendar stood still for a minute; then he drew a great breath of relief and plodded on slowly into the rainy darkness.