A LOYAL HEART
Thefriendship so strangely started between Mrs. Burnham and the girl thrust upon her conscience, grew apace. As Ruth had surmised, her old friend Flossy had lost none of her charm with young people, and she won Maybelle's fascinated interest from the first moment of their meeting; an interest that developed rapidly into love.
When Mrs. Roberts's young people came home—an event that Ruth, at least, had dreaded for Maybelle's sake—it was found that the charm was increased. Ruth, in writing to Erskine about them, which she did at some length, had added: "I might have saved you much of this description, by simply saying that the children are very like their mother. Even Erskine, tall and muscular as he is, a thorough boy in every sense of the word, and a manlyone, yet has that indefinable indescribable charm about him that our little Flossy always had and always will have, should she live to be a hundred, bless her! what a blessing she would be to this old world if she should. Do you realize, dear, that he is your namesake, as well as mine? At first I was not sure that I wanted another Erskine,—there is but one to me, you know,—but Erskine Roberts is such a splendid repetition of the family name that we cannot but be proud of him."
But she gave no description of Maybelle, and mentioned her name as little as possible. She shrank almost painfully from the thought of writing about this girl to one who ought to be deeply interested in her,—as in the nature of the case Erskine should be if he knew,—and yet looked upon her as an intruder, almost resenting his mother's efforts in her behalf.
But if she kept silence about her to Erskine, she atoned for it in the amount of time and thought that she bestowed upon the child. As the weeks passed and she grew to better understand this child-woman with whom she had to deal, she found herself bestowing uponher a wealth of love and tenderness that she had not supposed any but her very own could call out. And her love was returned in royal measure. However much Maybelle might admire and love Mrs. Roberts and enjoy her son and daughters, she had given the wealth of her heart unreservedly to Mrs. Burnham. "Next to Aunt Mamie I love you best of all the world," she would declare as she patted Ruth's shoulder with a loving little touch that was peculiarly her own. "It ought always to be Aunt Mamie first, you know, because she—shemotheredme all those years when I was hungry for a mother. Dear Mrs. Burnham, if she were your daughter and I could be your granddaughter, would not that be perfect? But that couldn't be, of course, for Aunt Mamie loved her own dear mother better than any other mother in the world; and she was adear; I loved her very much, but—how many different kinds of love there can be in the same heart!" she broke off to say, with the air of a dreamy philosopher, "Different kinds of loves and different kinds of unloves, ever so many of them! the heart is a curious country, isn't it?"
By that time Mrs. Burnham had come to understand Miss Parker's absorbed interest in the girl, which continued unabated even amid the absorbing interests of a strange land. She wrote long loving letters to the child of her adoption, and long earnest ones to Mrs. Burnham about her.
"There have been times," she wrote, "when I have almost regretted that I left the dear girl all alone and came away out here where weeks must intervene before I can hear from her. I felt this especially after I found that my brother, although very glad indeed to welcome me, had made interests here about which I knew nothing, one that is to help make a home for him in the near future, so that so far as care and companionship are concerned he could have done very well without me. When I first began to understand the situation here, I was puzzled, and just a little bit troubled over the question why I had been allowed to come, or rather left to think that to come was the only right course, when apparently I was much more needed at home on that dear child's account, than here. But after reading Maybelle'sletter I understood that it was in order to leave the way clear and plain for her to your dear heart; you can do so much more for her than I can ever hope to. How blissful the darling is over her new friendships and interests! I am glad that you have kidnapped her loyal little heart, just as I knew you would."
"Poor girl!" Mrs. Burnham said softly to herself after reading this letter. "She has one of those hungry hearts that Maybelle talks about; and she fancied that her brother could fill it, instead of being quite satisfied with his generous corner of it! I wonder if it can be possible that she cared for the child's father, as the Madame hints? That would account for—but there is nothing to be accounted for; one could not help loving Maybelle. I must tell Miss Parker that she is always to have the first place in that 'curious' heart, while I am enthroned as second. Dear simpleton!" Then, as the thought crossed her mind, not for the first time, that the one who should hold that first place might be named Erskine, the uneasy conviction shook her that in such event certain ugly truths would have to be revealed.
But she put the thought from her as soon as possible. She could not plan for the future, and for the present, Maybelle and Erskine Roberts were simply comrades heartily enjoying each other's society, as her own Erskine and Alice Warder had done, without apparently other thoughts than those shared with them by Marian Roberts, who was Erskine's twin.
Ruth wrote to Miss Parker that same evening, giving her a detailed account of one of her talks with Maybelle.
"You may well call hers a 'loyal heart,' my friend," she wrote. "You should hear the pathetic way in which the child talks about you by the hour! Yesterday she said to me:—
"'Sometimes I used to wish that I could call Aunt Mamie, mother. She is the only woman that I ever had such a thought about; I suppose it was because she came close enough to give me an idea of what a real mother would be. I mean to keep her always for my heart-mother. There can be heart-mothers, you know, and in some ways they are almost as dear as real ones. Oh, I wonder if you know how a girl like me sometimes longs andlongsfor a real mother!I think it is the only possession that I ever envied. Sometimes, Mrs. Burnham, I have been fiercely jealous for hours together, so that I almost hated the girls who chattered about their mothers. Wasn't that dreadful! Oh, I cannot think what would have become of me long before this, if I had not had Aunt Mamie.'"
Thus much Ruth Burnham wrote, and stayed her pen. Was it necessary for her to tell all this? To lay bare even to this woman, who knew so much, the depths of a suffering young heart, thereby revealing the magnitude of the mother's sin against it? And that mother was her daughter, her son's wife! She wanted to write it; there were times when she wanted to shout it out to all the world, just what manner of woman was being sheltered by her name and home. She knew that she would never do it, but ought not Mamie Parker who had mothered the child, to understand? She thought long, she shed a few struggling tears that seemed to burn her face; the hurt at her heart was too deep for tears, and then she hid her face on the writing table and talked with God.
The end of it was that she tore the sheet acrossand threw the fragments into her grate. And wrote again:—
"You may well call hers a 'loyal heart,' my friend; she loves with a depth that seems to me unusual in one so young; and she has enthroned you at her heart's very centre. I want to say, just here, that I do not think she overestimates what you have done for her; I believe you have saved her to herself."
Meanwhile, the days that Mrs. Burnham, without any definite planning, had thought might be given to her visit lengthened into weeks, and still she lingered in the East.
Erskine was astonished, was bewildered, was half indignant, yet she set no date for the home-going. One reason for this was the fact that Mr. Roberts's stay abroad, which was to have been very brief, had been much lengthened by unexpected business complications, and his wife was begging her old friend to stay with her until his return. But of course there was no real excuse for this, as she had her children and multitudes of home friends about her. The real reason was that Ruth could not decide to leave Maybelle. The girl clung to her withan ever increasing abandon to the joy of having for her very own one who knew how to be in every sense of the word motherly. Certainly she was nearer real happiness than her confused life had ever been before. From being one whom some of her schoolmates pitied and patronized because she seemed to have no friends of her own except a somewhat doubtful father, she became almost an object of envy.
All of the girls at Madame Sternheim's knew Mrs. Evan Roberts by reputation; and highly exaggerated stories of her house and her friends and her lavish expenditures for certain of them, were afloat in the school. But it chanced that Maybelle was the first one of the school girls who had entered the charmed circle of Mrs. Roberts's friendships.
When it became known that she was being sent for three or four times a week to take dinner with the Roberts family, that she went on Tuesdays to luncheon, that she spent most of her Saturdays and Sundays in the same choice home, interest in her comings and goings became marked. Then, when she began slowly, and almost reluctantly it must be admitted, tochoose out some especially lonely or homesick or timid girl to take with her to dine at Mrs. Roberts's, her popularity knew no bounds.
Madame Sternheim, too, during these days was gracious almost beyond recognition. It was not that the good woman had not meant to be gracious always; she had been faithful to her duty as she saw it, and poor Maybelle, who confessed that she had hours of almost hating her, had in reality very much for which to thank her.
But Madame Sternheim was very human indeed, and the daughter of a poor artist father with a questionable past and a doubtful future, whose only friend, apparently, was a very fine young woman, it is true, but a woman without family and with no reasonable way of accounting for her interest in the girl, and nothing to show how soon the interest might cease—for that matter she had already gone away off to China for no reason in particular, unless it was to be well rid of her charge now that the father was gone—was one person, and a girl who had apparently been adopted into the inner circle of Mrs. Roberts's family was quite another;especially now that the poor father had been respectably buried and all doubtful or uncomfortable things could be forgotten. Madame Sternheim was relieved and pleased and hopeful. She liked to have Mrs. Roberts's carriage stand before her door waiting for Maybelle. She liked to say to certain of her patrons:—
"Oh, the coachman is used to waiting; our dear Maybelle is almost certain to be tardy, but then she is so much at home at Mrs. Roberts's house that she can take all sorts of liberties. Oh, yes, she dines there several times a week and often takes some of her classmates with her. Dear Mrs. Roberts welcomes my girls to her home as though she were their elder sister. What a charming woman she is! Really when one comes to know her intimately, one feels that the half has not been told concerning her."
And Maybelle was blossoming under this reign of love. Her cheeks were rounding out a little and taking on a touch of color, and her eyes were growing less sad. She had by no means forgotten her grief nor put aside the thought of her father. On the contrary, sheliked nothing better than to talk of him by the hour to a sympathetic listener, while to be allowed to talk about her mother, was to give free vent to the one pent-up passion of her life.
It was to Mrs. Burnham that she talked most freely, though Mrs. Roberts's young people were sympathetic, and Erskine, especially, liked nothing better than to hear long stories about the artist and his method of dealing with a picture.
"He made them up," Maybelle would say, "composed them, you know, or made a plot, as you do when you write a story for your college paper. The picture grew, just as a story does. 'That's an idea!' papa would say, when I was sitting meekly enough beside him, telling him some story of my day. 'That's a look I never saw before, let me get it, Maysie'—that was one of his dear names for me, he had dozens of them—and he would seize palette and brush and work for a few minutes as hard as he could, then sit back and gaze at me and think, and I knew that a new picture was born and would have to be watched over and nourished and developed. It was very interesting."
"Yes, indeed! he painted me a hundred times and in a hundred different ways, but they did him no good; he never would try to sell them, nor even show them. They are all boxed up with our other things and stored; Aunt Mamie took charge of them. He told her they were never to be sold. I think it was because my mother's picture was always mixed in with them, and he could not bear to sell her. He used to make pictures of me, sometimes, that he said were like mamma. There would be just little hints of me about them, not a likeness of me at all, but a beautiful girl, and the tears would come into papa's dear eyes when he looked at her, and he would say softly, 'It is her image.'"
When Maybelle talked in this way to Ruth, she once or twice said wistfully:—
"It must be beautiful to be loved in the way that my father loved my mother." But Erskine Roberts never heard any words of this kind.
PUZZLING QUESTIONS
"Thisis lovely!" said Maybelle, as she drew the curtains, and pushed her sewing chair closer to Mrs. Burnham's. "Isn't it nice to be alone together? Erskine wanted me to go with them to the rehearsal and act as prompter, but I told him I was going to follow the promptings of my own heart and stay with you, especially since his mother must also be away. If we lived all alone in a dear little home, you and I, I could take care of you all the time."
"I am afraid I should need something besides lovely rooms and pretty sewing," Mrs. Burnham said laughingly.
"Yes, indeed! but I could do them; all sorts of things. I used to do things for Mrs. Parker, and for papa when he would let me. I was always coaxing papa to have a little bit of a house just large enough for us two, and let metake charge of it; I knew I could; I could learn, you know, and Mrs. Parker taught me a great many things; but he never would. Poor papa! he didn't want a home; he said that he had one once, and he wanted it to live in his memory forever. He meant that time—before mamma died. Do you think it is like most men to be so constant to a memory?"
"I do not know," Mrs. Burnham said, with an effort. She never knew what to say to Maybelle when she was in this mood. It was impossible to join in the talk about a dead mother, and not feel herself a hypocrite. But Maybelle was already on another theme.
"Dear Mrs. Burnham, I am glad we are alone to-night. There are matters about which I want to talk with you.
"Do you know, I have been treated always like a little girl? and it seems to me that the time has come for me to begin to be a woman. I used to try to get papa to tell me about his affairs, but he never would. During those last dreadful days, all he would tell me was that he had left everything to Aunt Mamie, and I was to do just as she said. But I have a feelingthat papa was poor; and that he just made enough by his pictures to support us, perhaps not always that; I have thought lately that perhaps a great many of my nice things and—and opportunities, came through Aunt Mamie. Madame Sternheim has dropped hints more than once that have made me believe so. And now,—don't you think I ought to know all about it, and be making plans to support myself?"
"My dear!" was all that Ruth could say, in an almost dismayed tone. Maybelle's future and her connection with it were more puzzling to Erskine Burnham's mother than they could possibly be to this child. The earnest young voice went on:—
"I wrote to Aunt Mamie just how I felt, but she cannot see it as I do. She says that she is alone in the world, that money is the only thing she has enough of, and that papa gave me to her to take care of. She does not understand why I should not be quite happy over such an arrangement; but dear Mrs. Burnham, I am sure you do. It is not that I do not love to belong to her, I mean to, always; and sometimes I cannot sleep for the joy of thinking that sheloves me so dearly; I can't think why she does. But don't you think that a self-respecting girl wants to support herself just as soon as she possibly can, unless she has a father and mother who can do it as well as not, and want to?"
This also was a sore and embarrassing phase of the subject to poor Ruth. Oh, to be able to say to her that her mother, her own mother, was in a position to cover for her every need that money could supply and that the man who now stood in the place of father to her would insist upon so much tardy justice—if he knew of her existence! Yet Ruth's common sense told her that even though there were no terrible reasons for silence for the sake of others, the hardest blow that could be given to a girl like Maybelle would be to destroy her beautiful illusions of her mother with the base truth. That mother of sacred memory, alive, well, living in ease and luxury and ignoring her as utterly as though she had never been born! Could such a cruel blow as that be borne! Yet any words that this much-tried woman could arrange in reply to the appeal just made, seemed false. She hesitated, and knew that her face was flushing underthe girl's earnest gaze. At last, she said the only words there seemed left for her to say.
"My dear, I am a little bit on both sides of this question. I certainly sympathize with your view, and on general principles should agree with you. But the circumstances are peculiar this time." And as she said the words she felt like a hypocrite; how peculiar they were, that poor child had not the least idea! "Miss Parker is, as she says, practically alone in the world. Her brother's marriage is a coming event; then he will not need her any more, in the special sense in which she can help him now, and he does not need her money, for he has plenty of his own. Their father discovered a gold mine, you know, as well as one of another metal, almost more valuable than gold. So, if Miss Parker wants to spend a little of her surplus money upon you, because she loves you, ought you not to please her in this, and be governed by her advice, at least for the present? When you are older, and especially when Miss Parker returns home, which I think she will do before very long, probably some plans can be made that will please you both. Cannot you wait, dear?"
Maybelle sat thoughtful for a moment, then she drew a long sigh.
"I suppose I must," she said. "Indeed, there is no other way for me at present; only—I am to graduate, you know, in a few days, and I thought—but of course I ought not, contrary to Aunt Mamie's wishes. But I do not know what she wants me to do for the summer. She has not seemed to remember it. I have always spent the summer vacations with her."
"You are not to forecast anxieties about the summer," Mrs. Burnham said, trying to make her voice sound cheery and free from all anxiety, though it struck her like a physical pain, the fact that she could not say to this girl who was growing dearer to her with every passing day, "Come home with me, child, of course;" that she could never invite her to her home, and could never explain to her why she must not. She must simply be silent and trust to Maybelle's shrewd guessing that there were reasons why this new friend of hers did not feel at home in her own home, and was not at liberty to take her friends there.
It was true that summer was upon them, andthe air of the boarding school was athrob with the plans of eager girls getting ready for the home-going. Maybelle was almost the only one who had not some sort of home to plan for. And yet Maybelle was to graduate! If only Mrs. Burnham could say to her, "Come, we will make home together, and you may do for me all that your heart prompts." There were hours when she was tempted to do something of the kind. But her words to Maybelle revealed none of her pain.
"There are lovely schemes maturing for the summer. 'Good times,' my dear, and unlike the illustrious Gloriana McQuirk you are 'in 'em.' I am not to divulge them before the appointed hour, but I empower you to say to those envious schoolgirls that your summer plans are a delicious secret even from yourself, being locked in the heart of that blessed little schemer, Mrs. Roberts."
Maybelle's face was still serious, but, after a moment, she laughed softly.
"I am the strangest girl!" she said. "I don't think there can be another girl in the world who lives my kind of life. I have notwhat Madame Sternheim calls a 'relative' this side heaven to care what becomes of me, and I have the dearest company of people, on whom, according to Madame again, I have not the shadow of a claim, who never weary of doing for me! What more, for instance, could you and that dear Mrs. Roberts and those girls and boys of hers do for me, even though I had that potent charm, some of 'the same blood' in my veins? And yet, do you know, selfish creature that I am, the Madame has so instilled her principles into me that if I only had a sister or brother of my very own to love and care for, I think I could give up joyfully all other luxuries."
"Are you not forgetting your aunts in England, my dear?"
Maybelle shook her head and spoke resolutely. "I want to forget them; I do not claim them as aunts of mine." Then, in response to Ruth's look that might have meant reproach, she added:—
"They did not like mamma, Mrs. Burnham, and they were not good to her. Papa told me as much as that. He said she was young,and away from all her home friends and unhappy, and they led her a hard life. Papa could not help feeling hard toward them for that. It was the reason why he never went to England again after Grandmother died. He took me to see Grandmother, did you know that? But she did not seem like a grandmother. She wasn'tdear, you know, and sweet, like the grandmothers in stories, and in real life too,—some of the girls at school have lovely ones,—but mine was stately and cold. She and my two aunts used to talk about mamma right before me.
"'She looks likeher,' one of them said, with a strong emphasis on the 'her' a contemptuous emphasis it seemed to me. And the other aunt replied, 'But she isn't like her in disposition, apparently.' Then Grandmother said quickly, 'Heaven forbid!' Could one love people who talked in that way before a child about her dear dead mother? Not that they meant me to understand," she added thoughtfully, after a moment, as one who must do full justice even to one's enemies. "I don't think they did; they were the kind of people who think that achild is deaf and blind and stupid. I understood hints and shrugs of the shoulders and curls of the lip and exclamations a great deal better than they thought I did. I have no relatives, dear Mrs. Burnham, that I care for, but I have friends whom I love with every bit of me. May I ask just one little question?—and you need not answer it if it is part of the secret. Do the summer plans include you? Because if they don't, and there could be a way for me to have you for just a little piece of the summer, I—"
The tremble in her voice had grown so marked that she stopped abruptly. She looked up, after a minute, with her eyes swimming in tears, and said with a queer little attempt at a laugh:—
"I'm not going to cry, Mrs. Burnham, don't you be afraid. And I'm not going to be selfish and babyish; I mean to be just as glad and happy and grateful as I can be, even though you have to be away from me all summer long."
It was just at that moment that Ruth resolved upon yielding to Flossy's entreaties and spending at least part of the summer with them at their new seaside cottage, which was to be a surprise to all the young people, Maybelleincluded. Erskine expected her at home, but what were Erskine's needs compared to this deserted child's?—and the child clung to her. But she would not tell Maybelle, not just yet; so she spoke lightly, commending the child's resolve to count her mercies, and then admonishing her that she had better also count her stitches, as she was making a mistake in the row she was crocheting.
There was a thoughtful silence on the part of both for a few minutes, then Maybelle spoke again in what Mrs. Burnham called her grown-up tone.
"There is one strange question I have wanted to ask of somebody for a long time. I tried to talk to Erskine about it without letting him know that it was really a question in my mind; but Erskine is like all boys, very wise and very positive, without being always able to give a reason for what he believes."
"Which means," said Ruth, smiling, "that Erskine did not agree with you."
"Well, he didn't," and Maybelle stopped to laugh at herself; then spoke earnestly.
"That is, so far as I may be said to have anopinion on that subject; I am not sure what I think, or at least I do not know why I think it. Mrs. Burnham, do Christian people ever pray for their dead? And if they do not, why not? Does the Bible say we must not? I have tried to find something in the Bible about it, and I could not."
Ruth was much startled. This was very different from the question she had expected. The young people argued vigorously upon every live question of the day, not excepting interesting theological points, but this was out of the regular line. While she considered just how best to answer it, Maybelle explained.
"I suppose that seems to you a strange question; young people do not often discuss such things, I suppose; but it interests me very much because I have such a longing, sometimes, to pray for mamma, that I can hardly keep her name from my lips; yet I thought perhaps it was wrong. I began to have that feeling almost as soon as Aunt Mamie taught me to pray. I had said my prayers before that time; papa taught me to say: 'Now I lay me down to sleep,' and 'Bless thy little lamb to-night.' I used tolike to say them, but I did not understand what praying really was, until long after that time. But when Aunt Mamie made it plain to me, and my heart took hold of the fact that I was really talking with God, and that I could talk to Him about papa, and in that way help him, I cannot tell you how glad I was! And then, very soon, I wanted to put mamma in."
Nothing that the girl had said had ever startled Ruth as much as this. Was there a woman living who needed prayer more than this child's mother? Yet how could she counsel her daughter to pray for her?
AN ALLY
"Ido not know that there is any 'thus saith the Lord,' against your wish, my dear," she said at last, in a hesitating tone, "but the inference from all gospel teaching seems to be that this life is the time for prayer."
Maybelle gave a disappointed sigh.
"I should think people would study into it," she said, "and find out if they might. It makes such an awful blank in one's praying to suddenly leave out a name that has been on one's lips and in one's heart for years."
Then Ruth knew that the child was thinking of her father, and that she must move very carefully in trying to comfort her.
"I did not have that feeling about my father, Maybelle dear, nor about my husband. On the contrary I had an almost joyful realization that they were beyond the need for prayer—werewhere they could make no mistakes, where the mistakes of others could never harm them any more, and where they would be forever in the presence of the Lord. What could one possibly ask more for them?"
Maybelle was silent for several minutes, and her eyes were soft with unshed tears. Then she spoke gently:—
"What a lovely thought! thank you."
After a moment she began again, earnestly.
"Mrs. Burnham, there is something I want you to know. What I am sure that Madame Sternheim thinks about my papa isn't true. Papa learned how to pray; and every afternoon during those last few weeks, he and I used to read in the Bible together, and pray. And the last time I saw him he told me that, although he had wasted his life, and been in every way a different man from what he ought to have been, God had forgiven him, and was going to take him home. He wasn't a bad man, ever, Mrs. Burnham; at least—well, I know he did some wrong things, but he was good in many ways. He had a very low estimate of himself, though, and those were thewords he said. I shall never forget the last sentence he ever spoke; I can often close my eyes and seem to hear his dear voice with its note of exultation, 'It is wonderful, but I am goinghome!' He used to speak that word 'home' in a peculiar manner; his voice seemed to linger over it lovingly, like a caress. He had no home, you know, after mamma went away."
This was Maybelle's way of speaking of death; but the woman, who realized how literally the phrase "went away" applied to this child's mother, could never hear it without an inward shudder. Her own eyes had dimmed with tears as she listened to this pathetic and yet gracious close of a wasted life. Then she acted upon a sudden resolution.
"Maybelle, dear, there is one person for whom I want you to pray with all your soul; that is my son's wife."
"Your daughter?" said Maybelle, lingering over the word as a sweet sound, yet with a hint of surprise in her tone, as though she might almost ask, "Why should any woman so blessed as she need praying for?" But what she added was:—
"I should love to pray for her. Tell me about her, please. She must be a very happy woman to have the right to call you 'mother.' What is it you want me to ask for her? Of course she is a Christian?"
"She is a member of the church," said Ruth. "But I do not think she knows the Lord Jesus in the way that you and I know Him, or that she loves and serves Him."
"Oh!" said Maybelle, and that single mono-syllable from her lips meant much. Surprise, regret, pity, resolve, were all expressed in it.
Ruth made haste to finish what she had resolved to say.
"And she needs to know Him; oh! she needs it more than most women do. If she could come, even now, into intimate fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, it would make an infinite difference, not only with her life, but in the lives of others. There are others who—" She stopped abruptly; excitement was getting the better of discretion. She must have a care what she said. After a moment she spoke with less intensity.
"I hope you will pray, too, for Erskine. Formy son, I mean." For Maybelle had made a little startled movement at the mention of this name, and turned great wondering eyes upon her.
"My son's name is Erskine, you remember. He is my only one, dear, the only treasure that I ever had; for years and years he has been all that I have; and I cry out so for God's best for him! He is a Christian, a good, true Christian man; he is everything that to other people seems desirable; but—"
"I think I know what you mean," Maybelle said gently. "I know that there can be degrees in living religion. Sometimes I think I know that fact better than any other; I have had so many illustrations of it in my life. It must be hard for him that his wife does not always think just as he does in this. At least I should think it would be very hard indeed for married people not to be as one in such matters."
"Yes," said Ruth, "it is very hard." Then she turned suddenly to a radically different subject, with the conviction strong upon her that she could talk no more about Erskine and Irene without saying what would be better left unsaid.
But she had secured a wonderful ally in Maybelle. The girl knew how to pray, and her faith was as the faith of a little child: simple, and literal, and firm. She became intensely interested in Mrs. Burnham's daughter-in-law. She asked many questions about her, sometimes making remarks, in her ignorance, that wrung Ruth's heart.
"I think I love her," she said one day. "There are times when I feel a curious yearning tenderness for her, as though I must put my arms about her and kiss her. It seems strange, doesn't it, when I have never seen her? I do not love a great many people; of course I like ever so many, but this feeling that I have is different. Still, I suppose it is the way one feels toward those for whom one prays, definitely and daily. Isn't it?"
"Perhaps," said Ruth, unable to add another word, and turning away her face so that the child could not see what it might express. If only Irene had lovedher!
One noticeable feature of this time was that Maybelle began to speak confidently regarding the answer to her prayers.
"You will tell me when your daughter truly begins to serve Jesus Christ, won't you?" she said. "I think I should like to know it, soon, because it changes the tone of one's prayers, don't you think, as soon as one for whom you have been asking just this, recognizes Jesus Christ and begins to be acquainted with Him?"
"You speak very confidently, dear," Ruth could not help saying. "Do you always feel quite sure that the people for whom you pray will 'recognize' Jesus Christ?"
"Not always," the girl said thoughtfully. "I cannot be sure, because they may keep on refusing to let Him in, and of course He will not force an entrance. When I was a little girl, I thought that was very strange. I wondered why God did notmakepeople love and serve Him, whether they wanted to, or not. But when I grew old enough to realize what love really is, I knew better; for what is enforced service worth? and as for enforcedlove, that couldn't be. But sometimes the feeling comes to me that the one for whom I am asking, will let him in; and I have it now."
And then Mrs. Burnham began to desireexceedingly that this girl should pray mightily for her son. More than all things else, more even than that the rags of his outward respectability—as regarded his home—might be preserved to him, did she long for his entire consecration to God. She knew only too well that, despite his strict integrity and his firm adherence to the letter of his faith, the world was gripping him with a mighty hold. She knew, too, how insidiously and how surely Irene's views, and Irene's feelings, and Irene's wishes were slipping in between him and that entirely consecrated life which would hold him safe above all the world's allurements.
It was not that he was markedly different in word or deed from what his early manhood had promised. It was rather that he had not grown, spiritually, with the passing years; and of late years, since his marriage, his mother could detect a backward movement, as of one drifting downstream imperceptibly to himself, and losing force. There were times when she felt almost jealous of the hold which her daughter-in-law had taken upon the heart of this girl who believed as well as prayed.
"You will not forget my Erskine?" she said one day when they had been talking about it.
"Oh, no!" Maybelle said quickly. "No, indeed! How could I, dear Mrs. Burnham, when he is your son, and you asked me to pray for him? I never forget him; but after all, it isn't so important, you know."
"Why not?" The mother was almost indignant. From her standpoint nothing in life seemed quite so important as that Erskine should be the kind of Christian that the Lord wanted.
"Why, because," said the child, wonderingly, "hebelongs, you know, and—won't the dear Lord take care of his own? But it is different with her,—why, she may not let Him!"
There was the most peculiar emphasis of that word "belongs"; and almost infinite dismay expressed by the last phrase. Maybelle was a literalist. She believed that when the Lord said, "Yewill notcome unto me that ye might have life," he meant that it was quite within man's power to refuse it.
But from that hour Ruth's heart was quieter concerning her son, and she prayed in stronger faith. Erskine "belonged" and she could trustthe Lord to take care of His own. It seemed strange, but the child was really helping the Christian of mature years. "Except ye become as little children," she repeated to her heart with a grateful smile. Maybelle's faith was as the faith of a little child; that was what made it so strong.
The plans for the summer matured and, to the joy of all concerned, Mrs. Burnham was carried a willing captive to the new seaside home; and, on one pretext or another, lingered there from week to week. The young people were fertile in schemes, and vied with one another in pretexts to hold her just a few days more.
"You cannot surely go until after the fourteenth!" and "Why, we must have you for the twenty-first, anyway!"
Meantime, Erskine was growing almost indignant, at least on paper. His final argument was put with lawyer-like directness.
"It seems to be true that you have ceased to care for your son, but perhaps the advent of your grandson will move you. Erskine Burnham, Junior, arrived at four this morning, as I have already announced to you by telegram,and is in excellent health and spirits, and very desirous of beholding the face of his grandmother; I might remark, in passing, that his father and mother sympathize with him in this desire, save that the cruel grandmother seems to be quite dead to all natural affection. We are hoping that to have a grandson will be something so unnatural as to arouse her desires for home."
But if he could have seen his mother during that first hour after the despatch reached her, he would have been deeply pained as well as puzzled. Did ever grandmother take such triumphant news in such strange fashion before? She was alone in her room, and she let the paper drop away from her while she hid her face in her hands and shook as though in an ague chill. Her grandson! yes, but Irene's son! born of such a mother into this dangerous, sin-stricken world! to be trained by such a mother! and her fair and lovely daughter an outlaw at this moment from her mother's home and heart! How would it be possible for a boy with such an inheritance as such a mother would give him, to escape the snares that wouldassuredly be set for him? Great waves of pain seemed to have this woman in its clutches, as she lived over again her own young motherhood, and thought of all that it had meant to her, and contrasted herself with that other mother; and remembered that she was the mother of Erskine Burnham's son.
But by degrees saner thoughts began to come. Heredity was not everything, she reminded herself; and even according to it its full place, had not the boy a father? The thought of Maybelle in this connection helped to quiet her. Was ever sweeter, purer, more lovable girl born of woman than she? And was not that same woman her mother? What of heredity here?
But the girl was deserted by her mother, and mercifully preserved from such training as she would have given. What was that promise? "When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." Had not the Lord made good this word? If only this little new boy, her grandson, could—And then Ruth turned in stern repellence from herself. What was this that she was thinking! Could not God take care of his own?
But she must go home, of course she must go home now, at once. But she did not. One of Mrs. Roberts's flock fell ill, and before noon of the following day was very seriously, even desperately ill, and there followed a long, hard battle with disease; and Ruth, who had lingered for her pleasure, apparently, could not of course leave them now, when for the first time there was opportunity to be of real service. The sick one, even after the battle was fought, was slow in convalescing, and the mother was worn, and Ruth could see that she held a place in this home that no one else just then could fill, and she stayed.
So it came to pass that the summer was gone, and the Roberts household was established in town again, and Maybelle was entered at Madame Sternheim's for a year of graduate work, before the Burnham carriage waited at the station for the belated grandmother, and her son paced the station platform more eager and impatient for his mother than it seemed to him he had ever been in his life before, and his son was two months old that day.
A CRISIS
"Doyou think I will ever let you go away from us again?" This was Erskine Burnham's word to his mother when he had her all to himself in the carriage. His arms were about her, and he was kissing eyes and nose and hair after the fashion of his childhood.
"Such a wicked, wicked grandmother! Does she think she deserves the most beautiful, most intelligent grandson that ever drew breath?"
Throughout that drive they were very gay; both of them covered under the semblance of merrymaking, the deep feeling that neither wished just then to express.
Only once, as the carriage turned in at the familiar gateway, did Erskine trust himself to a tender word:—
"O mommie, mommie! do you suppose you know anything about how a boy feels to get his mother again?"
"My boy!" she began, but her voice broke, and she could not utter another word. And then the carriage drew up before the side entrance, and Erskine became very busy with the bags and wraps, and believed that his mother's emotion was the natural feeling of a grandmother on coming into her possession.
The weeks that immediately followed were very far from happy ones, although one member of the family circle was doing her utmost in the interests of peace.
Ruth Burnham had not lingered for months away from her home simply from dread of facing the situation; nor yet on account entirely of the young girl whom she had taken to her heart; there had been underneath these, a determined purpose to leave those two quite to themselves; to try the effect upon Irene of relieving her for a time of her mother-in-law's daily presence. It is true she had not planned just how long she could do this—she had not been sure when she went away that it could be done, save for a few days; but she had allowed herself to be apparently swayed by every passing reason for delay, despite Erskine's evidentbewilderment over such action, with an end in view which had to do with that solemn self-sacrifice she had made. It remained to be seen whether this phase of it had been of any avail.
At first, Irene was gracious, or tried to be; but in all her apparent sweetness, and sometimes even attempts at deference, there was a curious little undertone sting, which made Ruth feel constrained, and always uncertain what to say or do next.
But the baby, toward whom her sore heart turned with a hunger that was almost pain, was as fair and sweet a creation as ever came from the thought of God. So like his father—in the eyes of the grandmother, that there were moments when she could shut herself up alone with him and live her mother-joy over again.
Not many of them; her time with him was literally counted by moments, and grew more and more uncertain each passing day.
Ruth had schooled herself to see at least indifference on the part of the mother toward her child, and had planned how she would try to atone for such unutterable loss by making him the very centre of her own life. But behold!instead of anything like indifference, Irene developed a love for the child so passionate, so fierce, indeed, that it suggested the instinct of wild animals, instead of cultivated motherhood.
Moreover, the poor mother was jealous of even the nurse who lavished loving nonsense upon her baby, and intensely jealous of the grandmother, for whom the baby, even thus early in his life, began to exhibit a perverse fondness.
The entire situation was a surprise, and, it must be admitted, an added blow to Ruth. Instead of being able to rejoice that the maternal instinct had been at last awakened in this woman, she was dismayed and heartsick over it. If Irene meant to begin thus early to keep the boy under her constant care and surveillance, what hope was there for his future?
She awakened to the fact that she had been counting upon this mother's fondness for all sorts of social functions, and expecting to see her enter with zest upon her former care-free life, thus making it possible for the baby to be much under his grandmother's supervision. She had planned prematurely. Irene seemedto have forgotten society; she never walked, or drove, without her baby; she kept him with her during all his waking moments, and apparently lived for the purpose of warding off the attentions of, especially, his grandmother.
In vain did Ruth try, by utmost deference to the mother's superior claim, by never presuming to offer even a suggestion as to the child's care, to disarm the intense dislike that Irene could not help showing—a dislike of having her even notice the child.
So marked was this condition of things becoming to the servants that Ruth, beyond measure distressed and bewildered, stayed much of the time in her own room, and considered and abandoned a dozen schemes for going away again. The difficulty was to make any movement that would not excite Erskine's suspicion; for Erskine, being a man and a very busy one, continued to be what Irene once told him he was, "as blind as a bat." He was a very proud, glad father, prepared to believe that his son was the sweetest, brightest, most beautiful baby who ever blessed the earth with his presence, and he was unequivocally and blissfully happyat seeing that baby in his grandmother's arms. In rejoicing over her home-coming, and in delighting over the thought of having his son grow up in daily intimacy with her, he said "we" as heartily and jubilantly as though certain that Irene shared his happiness, and it is certain that he so believed.
"We have learned one lesson, anyway," he said gayly, as they sat together one evening after dinner. "That is that we mustn't let you get away from home again very soon. A mother who has no conception of when it is time to come home must not be allowed her freedom. Do you think we have forgiven you already for those months of indifference to us? What was the charm, mommie? You have never told us. The truth is, you have told us very little about that long visit. Irene used to be sure that there was some attraction that you did not reveal. Have you made her confess, Irene?"
Irene made a feint of joining in his gayety, and said something about not thinking it worth while to attempt what he had failed in accomplishing.
"Well," Erskine said, after a moment, puzzled and a trifle hurt because his mother did not seem to join heartily in the nonsense, "there is one comfort; I am not afraid of her deserting us again. Erskine Burnham, Junior, is an attraction that will hold, even though his father's power seems to have waned."
It was by random sentences like these, that Ruth was made to realize how difficult it would be to get away again.
As the days passed and the situation grew more and more strained, the mother's only comfort was that Erskine did not understand it. How should he? The claims of business pressed every day more heavily upon him. From being the younger partner in a great legal firm, as his decided ability became known, he had risen steadily, until responsibilities as well as honors had been thrust upon him, and he was now a recognized power in his profession. This meant very close attention to business, and he had scarcely any time that he could call his own.
How could he know, and, after a little, the resolute mother asked herself why he should ever know that when he left his beautiful homeeach morning for his long, busy day in town, he left jealousy and suspicion and unreasoning aversion behind him?
"I think she hates me," Ruth said to herself as she sat in her room with folded hands and listened to the vigorous protests of the boy across the hall, and knew that she, his grandmother, who loved every hair of his dear golden head, must hold herself from going to him. "I am sure she hates me, and the feeling grows stronger every day. Oh, what shall I do? what can I do! How is one to endure such a state of things for a lifetime? I am not an old woman. I may have to stay here for years and years! If I couldonlyget through with it all and go to my home!"
It was not often that she indulged herself in such moods, and she felt always distinctly self-condemned when they were allowed to take hold of her. She had never been one to indulge herself in what her old friend Eurie Mitchell used to characterize as "useless whining"; and it would be beneath the mature Christian to allow it.
But a crisis was at hand. Erskine surprisedhis family one afternoon by coming home several hours earlier than usual.
"I ran away!" was his gay announcement as he found his wife and mother in the living-room. They had been entertaining a caller who had asked first for Ruth, and then had insisted upon seeing the young mother and the baby.
"Such tiresome people!" Irene had said impatiently. "Forever trying to pry into my affairs! I wish they would at least let me have my baby in peace."
But she had ordered the nurse to bring him down to her in a few minutes, for the callers were Erskine's friends of long standing, and she knew that he meant them to be treated with all deference.
"This is great luck to find you both here," Erskine said. "It will save time. I escaped from the office on purpose to enjoy a drive with my family. It is just the day for Boy Junior," and he tossed the delighted baby in his arms as he spoke. "It is as balmy as spring. Why, this is a spring month, isn't it? I had forgotten. Get ready, beloveds, and we shallhave time for a glimpse of the bay before the sun sets."
"Oh, no!" said Irene, hastily. "Not today, Erskine; I don't want to go. You can take mother, and baby and I will stay at home."
Erskine looked surprised and troubled.
"Why is that, dear? I planned on purpose for you. I don't think you get out enough in this sweet spring air. I could not help noticing how pale and worn you looked this morning. Don't you think so, mamma? Come, dearest, it will do you good; and I have so little time nowadays for driving with you. I have been planning all the morning to get away."
"I don't want to go," Irene said fretfully. But her husband took no notice of the words.
"We'll go on a lark!" he explained to the delighted baby. "Father and mother and grandmother and grandson. How does that sound, my boy? I feel like a boy myself to-day. You and the little boy may have the back seat, mommie, and your big girl and boy will sit in front, and drive. Don't you want to drive, Irene? The horses are in fine spirit, just asyou like them to feel when you have the reins.
"Here, nurse," as that young woman appeared at the moment in the doorway. "Put this young man into driving attire, while the ladies are getting on their wraps. We mustn't waste another minute of this glorious sunshine."
But at this point the baby asserted himself. The nurse had taken him from his father's arms and was moving toward the door; as he passed Ruth, he made a quick, unexpected spring in her direction, and had not her arms been quick and her grasp firm, there might have been an accident. As it was, he cuddled in her embrace with a gurgle of happiness.
"You young scamp!" said the proud father, with a relieved laugh. "You knew where you meant to land, didn't you? Showed excellent taste, too. He is becoming to you, mommie. You look young enough to-day to be mistaken for his mother. Doesn't she, Irene?"
For Ruth's cheeks had flushed like a girl's, and her heart was beating swiftly under the baby's caresses. She bent her head over the golden one, and murmured some incoherentsentence, while she hid eyes that were filled with tears. It was so rare a thing in these days to get a chance to cuddle that baby!
And then Irene spoke, in a tone of voice that her husband had rarely heard:—
"Rebecca, I did not ring for you. Go away; I will bring the baby myself. Iwishyou wouldn't! I don't want him kissed nor fondled. Give him to me."
This last, addressed to Ruth, in a tone so sharp and a manner so rude that Erskine in unbounded astonishment said:—
"Irene!"
Just that word, but not as she had ever before heard it spoken.
"I don't care!" she said. "Let her leave my baby alone. I don't want her to touch him, and I won't have it! Iwon't! I say!"
Her voice had risen almost to a scream.
Rebecca had disappeared with the swiftness with which this woman's servants generally obeyed her commands, and Ruth, putting the baby without a word into his amazed father's arms, fled away also.
A STRANGE CHANGE
Therewas no driving out that day; the Burnham horses were remanded to the stable with no other explanation to their astonished care taker than that the ladies had decided not to go out.
When Ruth, distressed and bewildered as to what course to take, obeyed the tardy summons to dinner, she found a stranger in the dining room whom Erskine introduced as a member of the Severn law firm, from town, who had come out for a business conference. Would she be kind enough to take Irene's place at table? His wife, he explained to the guest, was the victim of a severe headache and must be excused.
Throughout the dinner Erskine was thoughtful for and courteously attentive to his mother; but of course there was no opportunity for a personal word. When at last he excused himself for a business conference and took his guestto the library, Ruth stood where he had left her, irresolute and distressed. Under normal conditions the proper and natural thing for a mother whose daughter was suffering with headache would be to go to her with sympathetic inquiries and offers of help. Should she attempt this? Would Erskine think it the right step for her to take? She feared that she knew only too well how Irene would receive her; but no matter. The question was, What did Erskine want? What did he think about it all? Did he blame her for the strange exhibition he had seen that afternoon? True, it was not more than she had endured before, but it was a strange experience to Erskine, and it would be only natural for him to think that his wife must have had strong provocation, in order to make such an outburst possible. If he thought that,—if he blamed her in any way, how would it be possible ever to undeceive him? Wait—ought she to undeceive him? Ought she even to exonerate herself? Could she expect any man to take sides against his wife? What a horrible question! Could she want him to do such a thing even for her? Oh, the misery of it all!That she and her son had reached the hour when they could not explain to each other!
Only one thing seemed certain. She must go away somewhere, and speedily. It must now be apparent even to Erskine that they could not continue longer in this way of living.
She crept back to her room, at last, and sat in the darkness with hands closely clasped, so closely that the diamond of her engagement ring cut into the flesh. She listened for words from across the hall, or for movements. She went over and over and over the miserable scene of the afternoon; she listened for Erskine, and wondered if he would stop at her room, and was afraid to have him come.
It was late when he came upstairs very quietly and paused at his mother's door and listened; and she was breathlessly still. Then he went on, to his own rooms; and Ruth, physically exhausted, went to her bed, and, in the course of time, fell asleep, not having been able to come to any decision as to what she could do.
The gray dawn of another day was beginning to make faint shadows in the room, when a knock at her door awakened her, and Erskine entered.
Was she awake? he inquired anxiously. It was too bad to disturb her rest, but he must. Irene was ill, very ill. Nurse was with her, and the baby had awakened and was crying. Might he bring him to her, and could she care for him until they could plan how to manage?
Even in that moment of haste and anxiety Ruth detected in her son's voice a kind of solemn relief, almost of satisfaction, and read its meaning. It was as if he had said:—
"Irene is violently ill, is not herself, indeed, and probably has not been for a long time. It is plain that she was not responsible for what she said or did yesterday." His mother could understand that even such an explanation, sad as it was, was balm to his soul. She sprang up and began to dress in haste, while she answered him. Of course she would care for Baby; bring him at once; or wait, she would go for him herself.
"Go back to Irene," she commanded. "She may be needing you this minute; and you needn't think of Baby again." How glad her hungry arms were to enfold him, even at such price, she would have been almost ashamed to have had known.
In this manner the dreaded day broke for them; with all embarrassments forgotten and all programmes of possible action swept away. Irene was desperately ill. Rebecca, the baby's nurse, who was a graduate of a training school, and had done hospital service, admitted that it looked like what she called "a case." She was willing to transfer her attentions entirely to the mother, until other arrangements could be made.
Then began in the Burnham household a new and strange but very busy life. With incredible promptness the house took on that indescribable and distinctly felt change which serious illness brings in its train. All ordinary routine was suspended. The eight o'clock car for which Erskine was almost as sure to be ready as the sun was to rise at a given moment, halted at the corner for passengers as usual, but went on without him. He came down to breakfast at any hour when he could best get away from Irene, and sometimes stood in the doorway, coffee cup in hand, ready for a summons; for Irene was as imperious in her delirium as she had been in health. The house seemed to be inthe hands of physicians and nurses. As the illness had from the first assumed a serious form, a trained nurse had been at once secured, but it proved necessary for Rebecca, also, to be in almost constant attendance. This placed the baby entirely in the care of his grandmother, whose thankful and devoted service was his at any hour of the day or night. While the machinery of all the rest of the house was more or less thrown out of gear, the people taking their meals at any hour that chanced to be convenient for them, and ordering all their movements with a view to the sick room, Erskine Burnham junior went on his serene and methodical way. He was bathed and dressed and breakfasted at his usual hours; he went out in his carriage at the given time; he sat on the porch in the sunshine at just such and such periods, and was in every respect as serene and sunny and well-cared-for a baby as though his mother was not lying upstairs making a desperate fight for life.
This state of things lasted for about three weeks; then the alarming character of the illness subsided, and by degrees, the long, slowperiod of convalescence was entered upon, and the house adjusted itself again to changed conditions.
In kitchen and dining room something like routine could once more be carried out; and Erskine began to think of business, and even to get away to his office for an hour or two each day.
By and by the closely drawn shades below stairs were raised, and flowers began to appear in the vases.
But in Baby Erskine's apartments his grandmother still reigned supreme. The special trained nurse had departed, and Rebecca had sole charge of the patient. A young nurse girl had been secured at the first, to help with the care of baby, under Ruth's supervision, and she was proving herself a comfort.
Altogether, these days, full of responsibilities though they were, and not without some anxieties, held much comfort and even happiness for Ruth. Erskine's baby was in her care, and as often as she chose was in her arms; she could fondle him as she would, without fear of reproof. She could bathe and rub and clothe the perfectlittle body, she could curl the lovely golden rings of hair about her fingers, she could catch him up in a transport of bliss and kiss his lovely little neck and dimpled chin and exquisite arms, and in a thousand tender mother-ways rest her heart upon him.
And the baby lavished love without measure upon her, and clung to her when any attempt was made to take him away, and made wild little demonstrations of delight at her approach; and all day she was happy.
It was only at night when he lay in his crib near her bedside, sleeping quietly, that the spectre of the near future came and sat with her and set her heart to quivering. The days were passing swiftly; each one was bringing nearer the hour when she must give back her treasure and banish herself. Where? She did not know; she had not been able to decide. Somewhere with Maybelle, if that could be brought about; only—What could be said to Erskine?
Was it absolutely necessary? Was it possible that this very serious illness, whose outcome much of the time had been more than doubtful, had wrought changes in Irene? Sometimes italmost seemed to her that such was the case; and yet it might be only physical weakness that made the difference.
Daily now, by the doctor's advice, Baby was taken to his mother's room for a few minutes. At first, Ruth sent the little maid with him, and avoided going in at the same time, lest the baby's demonstrations of delight over her would annoy his mother. But one morning as she was passing through the hall with Baby in her arms, the door of the sick room opened, and Rebecca called:—
"Mrs. Burnham, will you please bring Baby here a minute? His mother wants to see him."
So Ruth turned at once and carried him to the bedside, where he, being in genial mood, chose to smile upon and coo at his mother.
"He grows rapidly, doesn't he?" Irene said, and it was the first remark she had volunteered, directed to her mother-in-law.
Ruth had seen her twice a day ever since there had been any admittance for other than those in constant attendance, but her visits had necessarily been very brief, and there had been no attempt at conversation.
"Yes, indeed!" she made haste to say. "He is growing finely; you will be astonished to find how strong he is, and he seems to be perfectly well."
"He does you credit." His mother's tone was listlessness personified. Ruth, looking at her closely, began to realize that some strange change which seemed not to be accounted for by illness had come upon Irene. It was not simply that the fierceness of her love for her child was gone, and almost if not quite indifference taken its place, physical weakness might account for that; but there was an indescribable something about her that seemed to Ruth like a surrender, as one who had made a fierce fight and been worsted in the battle and had given up. The troubled grandmother thought it all over after she and baby were back in his room. She could not but fear that a new distress was coming upon them. What if Irene were that abnormal creature, a woman who could not continue to love a child, even her own! There was no fear that she would again desert it, her evident and unfailing, even increasing passion for her husband would holdher, this time, to her home; but—could the misery of it be borne, if this baby must grow up under the control of an unloving mother? She strained him to her so suddenly and so closely that he rebelled, and got off a lovely jargon of talk in protest.
She went back, later, to Irene's room, carrying the baby who was in a flutter of delight over just the joy of living. It did not seem possible that one could look at him without loving him. She could not help wanting to test Irene and see if her interest in him had indeed waned.