THE two friends had been in New York five days, and in the continual round of theatres, and in sight-seeing, with occasional call at some establishment with which Whipple had dealings, they spent the time very pleasantly. The pain caused by Fred's secret visit to his old home was, in a measure, assuaged by his constant effort to be cheerful for the sake of his benefactor's enjoyment. He felt that he was succeeding, and the realization of the fact buoyed him up to further activity in self-obliteration. On occasion, Whipple acted like a college boy off on a lark. He passed funny criticisms on the persons they saw on the streets and in the cars, and at the table of the café where they got their meals he purposely blundered over the French words on the menu, to the great mystification of the polite waiter, who found it impossible to reconcile actual ignorance with the costly clothing Whipple wore and his extravagant tips and liberal orders.
On the sixth morning of their stay in the metropolis they went down to pay a promised visit to Lewis Marston, the importer of teas and coffees from whom Whipple had received many a shipment and had met once or twice in New Orleans.
“Sothisis the Mr. Spencer you've written me about so often?” Marston smiled cordially as he was introduced to Fred, and begged them to take seats in the spacious office of which he was the only occupant. “Young man, as we used to say in the South, your ears ought to burn, for your boss has written me lots of good things about you. I remember he wrote last winter that his business was growing out of all bounds, owing to the fresh blood and modern ideas you had put into it.”
Fred flushed modestly as he released the hand of the portly, pink-faced, side-whiskered old merchant.
“Mr. Whipple is noted for his generosity,” he said, lamely.
“Well, you are the only one of his force he has mentioned to me, at any rate,” the importer said, persistently, “and I know he means it, for a man who has ability and can be thoroughly trusted is hard to find these days.”
The three sat and chatted for an hour, Marston being interrupted now and then by a telegram or a question asked by some clerk who came from an adjoining room, where there was a din of clicking typewriting machines.
“Now we'll have to go,” Whipple said, as he arose. “Fred has got some letters of instructions to write home, and I'm due in Wall Street at this very minute.”
“To write letters!” Marston cried. “Well, he needn't go away to do that. Do you see that desk at the window? It is for the sole use of our customers. There is plenty of stationery. Sit down, Mr. Spencer. I'll have to leave soon myself. My wife is coming to get me to help her select some Persian rugs, and you'll have the whole office to yourself.”
“A good plan, Fred,” Whipple exclaimed; “then we could meet at the Astor House and take lunch together at one o'clock. I want to see what the old place is like. My daddy stopped there once before the war.”
“That's the idea!” the importer chimed in. “Make yourself thoroughly at home, Mr. Spencer. If you need anything, just tap that bell and the boy will attend to you.”
When his employer had left, Fred sat down at the desk and began to write.
“Oh, I forgot,” Marston said, apologetically, as he looked up from the letter he was writing. “I will call a stenographer, if you'd like to dictate your correspondence.”
“Oh, thank you,” Fred answered, “it won't be necessary; I have only a few lines to write.”
He had completed the task before him, and was waiting for an opportunity to leave without interrupting the merchant, who was busily writing at his desk, when an office-boy came and spoke to Marston in an undertone.
“Oh, she's not alone, then!” the merchant said aloud, as he pushed back his chair. “Send them up. I am not quite ready yet, and they will have to wait.”
A moment later a cheery feminine voice—evidently Mrs. Marston's—sounded in the corridor outside, where her husband stood waiting for her.
“Well, I'm glad you came along, too, Miss Margaret,” Fred heard the old man saying. “You must sit down in my dusty office for a moment.” He made an effort at lowering his voice, but it was still audible. “There is only one man there, but he is young and decidedly good-looking. By-the-way, he is that Mr. Spencer, the phenomenal young business man I told you about. Come in, and I'll let you entertain him till I can get away. I've got to run down to the main salesroom.”
“And I've got to telephone the cook.” It was evidently Mrs. Marston's voice again. “We are going back to lunch. The General has promised to meet us there. Where is the booth?”
“At the end of the corridor,” Marston was heard directing her. “Now, come on, young lady. By George, thatisa stunning gown! The new railroad helped pay for that, eh?”
The thin canvas door was pushed open. Fred stood up; his eyes dilated; his blood ran cold. It was Margaret Dearing to whom the voluble merchant was casually introducing him.
Margaret started and paled.
“Mr.Spencer!” she echoed, then quickly averted her face from the inattentive glance of her host.
Walton's eyes went down as he bowed, white and quivering. He could say nothing.
“Now, I'll leave you two to get acquainted,” Marston said, quite unconscious that anything unusual had happened, and, gathering up some sheets of paper from his desk, he hastened away.
“Margaret!” Walton gasped, when they were alone in the awful silence of the room.
“Mr. Spencer?—Spencer?” the young lady groped, as she gazed on him in helpless wonder.
“God forgive me, I had to change my name!” he panted, as he stood white as death could have made him under her timid, almost frightened stare. “I had no other reason than that I wanted to live down my disgrace, and it looked like it would be impossible otherwise. I was a drowning man, Margaret, grasping at a straw; a new life opened out to me, and I entered it with the hope that—”
“I understand!” the girl gasped, and she drew herself up in pained haughtiness and twisted her gloved hands tightly in front of her. “But need we—talk about it?”
“No, I haven't eventhatright,” Walton declared, as he looked at the woman, grown infinitely more beautiful and graceful than even her girlhood had foreshadowed. “I promised Wynn the night I left that I'd never insult you by coming in contact with you again, or even addressing a line to you. I knew we had to part—that I could best serve you by going away never to return. Your brother was right. He acted only as any honorable man should in talking to me as he did. I was insane to aspire to your friendship with that thing hanging over me; but it was the insanity of love, Margaret—a love that never can die. I ought not to say it now, but what does it matter? I am not fit for you to wipe your feet on. I am still a fugitive from justice—a criminal living under an assumed name.”
He paused, for she had collapsed limply into Marston's chair, and was resting her white brow on her bloodless hand.
“Oh, don't—it is—is killing me!” she cried. “I had thought we might never meet again. I was beginning to hope that, in time, the memory of—of it all would be less painful, but it is revived again. Oh, it is unbearable!” He took a deep, trembling breath, and moved a step nearer to her.
“But evenyouwill grant that, by continued effort, I may purge my soul of it—at least, in the eyes of God,” he said. “I don't mean that I could ever ask you to receive me openly as an equal after what has happened, but you will, at least, be glad that I am honestly striving to lead a better life.”
“Yes, yes,” she said—“oh yes!”
“And I am notwhollyliving under false colors,” he went on, anxiously. “I have confessed the worst to my employer, and he is doing all he can to help me. He trusts me. I don't like to say these things in my own behalf, and yet surely you will forgive me for saying that I am, at least, not living as I used to live.”
“You intend to make—make reparation?” she said, raising an awful glance to his face.
“Of course. I have sent back all my savings so far—every dollar I could get together; and before another year is past I hope to send enough, at least, to—”
“Money!” she cried, almost in a tone of disgust—and as she spoke she had a picture of a golden-haired child with a sunny face playing on the lawn at her home—“money! As if that would count in a matter like—likethat!”
“It is all I can do now, Margaret!” he exclaimed, as he shrank under the unexpected severity of her words.
“I presume so,” she answered, coldly, even sternly, and she fixed an unreadable stare on his blighted face; “and yet if you could be back at home, and see what I have seen, perhaps you'd realize that there are things mere money cannot restore. I can't blame you wholly—to save my life, I can't! The temptation was deliberately put in your track; you were not born with the power to resist, and so you fell like many another man has fallen, but you ought to have stayed on at Stafford and done your duty—yourfullduty!”
“I couldn't! I assure you, Icouldn't, Margaret!” he went on, almost piteously, his lips quivering under stress of the vast emotion let loose within him. “My father would have punished me by law—would have deprived me of every chance to atone in the way that I am now trying to atone. But I have no right to talk to you this way. I am breaking my promise to Wynn. By my own act, I have banished myself from you forever.”
“Yes, forever!” she admitted, as her proud head went down. “There is nothing either of us can do. We must try not to meet again, even by accident. I must join Mrs. Marston now. I hear her in the corridor. You are very pale, and she might wonder and imagine all sorts of things. I'd have to introduce you, and I can't even remember your—your new name. I will tell no one at home that I have seen you. You may trust that to me. Your secret is safe. I can't recall the name of the place you live in. I sha'n't try. I never have believed it wasallyour fault—that is, notall. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” he repeated, huskily; and he saw her rise, and, without extending her hand, or giving him another glance, she moved unsteadily toward the door.
When she was gone he sat down at the desk and took up his pen, and with an inanimate hand began to address one of his letters, wondering dumbly that such mere details as a street and number and a man's initials could rise to his memory at such a moment.
That evening, in the big drawing-room at the Marstons', General Sylvester sat down by his niece.
“You look tired,” he said. “I think you show it more than usual; being on one's feet all day is no little tax on the energy. By-the-way, we are invited to a big reception for next Wednesday evening at the Langleys'. It is given to some foreign statesman or other. I have the card somewhere. You must look your prettiest and wear the dandy gown I selected.”
“Why, it isn't for evening wear.” Margaret smiled faintly. “Besides, do you think we ought to stay as—long as that?”
“As long as that?” he exclaimed. “Are you really thinking of going home? Of course, it lies with you, dear. As far as I am personally concerned, it doesn't matter one way or the other. Say, little girl, are you really homesick?”
“I think I am, Uncle Tom.” She avoided his eyes, which were so solicitously bearing down on her from beneath their heavy brows. “I presume the novelty of this sort of thing soon wears off, and our home is so soothing and restful.”
“Ah, I smell a rat!” the General said, teasingly. “I forgot about that lonely bachelor neighbor of ours. We were to look after him, weren't we? Well, we'll go back, and you'll encourage him a little more, won't you?”
The girl shuddered, an irrepressible sob struggled up within her, and her head sank to her tightly clasped hands.
“Oh, howcanyou say such a thing?” she asked, under her breath. “I don't love him. I know I can never do so now, and to think of what you want is—horrible!” To the old man's utter bewilderment she rose, placed her handkerchief to her lips, and left the room.
KENNETH GALT was now living the life of a recluse in his old home. The tendency to this sort of existence belongs to rare and exceptional temperaments. He kept assuring himself that it was to be only for a time, that when Sylvester returned with his stately niece he would crawl out of his morbid husk and bask in their genial hospitality. Of course, he told himself, this gloomy period of solitary self-accusation simply must not continue. He had taken steps which no living man could retrace in his decision in regard to Dora's fate and the fate of her child, and there was nothing left for him to do but to try to forget his part in the tragedy. If he now feared that he might never again have complete peace of mind in regard to the girl's condition, it was due to his present unwise proximity to her, and to his queer, almost ecstatic, pride in his son. Some men are coarse enough to have a contempt for the rights, social and otherwise, of their own children of illegitimate birth; but Kenneth Galt, in despising many of the laws of man, gave little Lionel the credit of being the product of a law he himself had made, and which, therefore, was worthy of consideration. In some States the declaration by a pair that they intend to live together constitutes a legal marriage, and it was with that broad view that Dora, blinded by faith in the superior knowledge of her lover, had unquestioningly delivered herself. He shuddered as the conviction struck into him that, under the same temptation that had swerved him from fidelity to their pact,shewould have remained firm. She was scarcely more than a child when he deserted her. What, he asked himself, had she developed into? Dearing said she was more beautiful than ever, and as for her advance in strength of mind and soul, there were her pictures to witness. And as he looked at them day after day their subtle, creative depth grew upon him. He had made a fair financial success; but what he had done, he now told himself, was only what butchers and cobblers had accomplished. What she was doing, in her exile from her kind, was the work of deathless inspiration. Dearing had once aptly said that God used Evil as the fertilizer to the soil of Good, and if so, to carry the analogy further, Galt, in his craving for the praise of the world, and in his cowardly shrinking from Right, was the impure soil in which the flower of Dora's genius was being nurtured. Yes, there was no denying it. Fate was playing a sardonic game with him. Dora, cloaked in suffering frailty, and championed by Truth and Spirit, was pitted against him, the carping, sourfaced apostle of man's puny material rights; she would go on, and he would go on. What would be the goal, and which the ultimate winner? He had argued that the grave and nothingness comprised the pot of dross at the end of every life's rainbow; but was he right? Could that mysterious, compelling sense of fatherhood; the thrill of boundless ecstasy, when he held Lionel in his arms; the awful brooding over the boy's future; the infinite rebuke of the child's fathomless eyes—could such things be mere functions of matter?
He was in his library when these reflections were passing through his brain, and his attention was attracted by children's voices somewhere outside raised to a high pitch of anger. Stepping to a window, he looked out toward the house of his neighbor, Congressman Weston. He was just in time to see Weston's son, Grover, climb over the low paling fence, and, with a loud and abusive threat, approach Lionel, who was shorter by a head.
“You said I shouldn't say it again,” he cried, “but I do! She is not fit for anybody to go with. My mother wouldn't notice her, and no other nice lady would. Peopledon't—they don't go near her!”
Galt's blood was shocked to stillness in his veins, and then, as if by reactionary process, it began to boil. He saw the erect figure of his son stand as if stunned for an instant, and then, like a young tiger, Lionel sprang at the other boy, his little hands balled. Galt heard the blows as they fell on young Weston's fat cheeks, and he chuckled and ground his teeth in blended satisfaction and rage. He sprang through the open window to the grass, and hurriedly skirted a clump of boxwood just in time to see Grover Weston recovering from the unexpected onslaught and beginning to rain blow after blow upon Lionel's white face. The contest was close, despite the inequality in ages and sizes; but the nameless scion of the Gaits, unconscious of his heritage of bravery, was unconquerable. He was there to fight, justly roused as he was, to his last breath. For one instant Grover tore himself from Lionel's bear-like clutch, and stood glowering in sheer astonishment from his battered and bruised face.
“You little bastard, I'll—” And he suddenly hurled his fist into Lionel's face with all his force. It was a staggering blow, but Lionel met it without a whimper or the loss of a breath. He sprang again at his assailant, and, catching him around the neck with his strong left arm, he battered the other boy's face with blow after blow.
“Hit him—that's right, hit him, Lionel!” Galt cried out, in utter forgetfulness of his own incongruous position. “Beat his nasty face to a pulp while you've got him! If you don't do it now, he'll down you when he gets free. Give him his medicine, and give him a full dose. That's the thing—trip him up!”
Without sparing an instant to look, but having recognized Galt's voice, Lionel bent his wiry body toward accomplishing the trick advised. The two combatants swung back and forth, still bound together by Lionel's clutch, till finally they went down side by side. And then ensued another struggle as to which should get on top.
“Throw your leg over!” Galt cried out. “Ah, that's a beauty! Now, beat him till he takes it back!” Lionel needed no such advice. His little fists moved like the spokes of a turning wheel. A shrill howl of defeat rose from the conquered bully, and he uttered a prolonged scream of genuine alarm. Then emerged from a side door of the Weston house no less a personage than the Congressman himself, and he ran across the grass, taking flower-pots and beds of roses at long leaps.
Reaching the fighters, he grasped Lionel by the collar of his blouse and drew him off of his cowering son. And as he held him, squirming like a cat, he turned on Galt. “Damn it, man!” he cried, in breathless fury, “what do you mean by standing here and encouraging this brat to fight my boy?”
“Why, I only wanted to see fair play, that's all,” Galt replied, a dangerous gleam in his eyes. “I happened to hear your big bully of a son dare the little one to fight him, and he brought it on by insulting the little fellow's mother. God bless him, he didn't need my advice. He could whip two such whelps as yours, and never half try! He hasn't a cowardly bone in his body! He was all there!”
“Well, it seems to me,youare in a pretty business!” Weston retorted, white with rage.
“I might be even more active than I am, Weston,” Galt said, with cold significance, “and if you are not satisfied with the part I have taken, you only have to say the word. You know that well enough.”
The Congressman was taken aback. There was something in the unruffled tone and meaning stare of his neighbor's eyes that perplexed and quelled him. He now turned upon his sniffling offspring.
“You go in the house!” he said, angrily. “You are always picking at some child under your size. I have noticed it.” Weston was a politician before anything else, and the thought of turning against him a man who controlled as many votes as did the president of the greatest railway in the State was not particularly inviting.
“I didn't mean to offend you, Galt,” he said, as his boy limped away, still mopping his eyes with his fists. “I reckon I got hot because it was my own flesh and blood. Of course, it was natural for you to sympathize with the smaller of the two.”
“That's the wayIfelt about it, Weston,” Galt said, staring coldly at the speaker. “I have nothing at all to apologize for.”
“Well, I'll see that Grover behaves himself better in future,” the Congressman said, still with his political eye open to advantages. “Of course, it would be natural for a child like mine to pick up remarks floating about among older people in regard to the mother of—”
“We'll let that drop,too, Weston!” Galt snarled. His lip quivered ominously as he glanced significantly at Lionel, who was listening attentively, the blood from a bruised nose trickling down to his chin and neck.
“All right, I understand,” the Congressman said; and he moved awkwardly away, wondering what manner of man the frigid and reticent Galt was, after all.
“I suppose I've got myself in a pretty mess,” Lionel remarked, ruefully, when Weston had left him and his father together. “My mother has made me promise time after time not to fight; but, you see, I did.”
“Yes, I see you did,” Galt responded, a lump of queer approval in his throat.
“I couldn't help it—I really couldn't,” Lionel said, with a rueful look at his hands, which were covered with the blood of his antagonist. “I must be a bad boy; but oh, I couldn't let him say my beautiful mother—my sweet mo—” He choked up. “I couldn't—I simply couldn't! She is so sweet and good! I couldn't help it!”
“Of course not, but don't worry about it,” Galt said, sunken to depths of shame he had never reached before. “You must try to forget it—forget the whole thing.”
“I am afraid my mother will find out about it, and, you know, she mustn't,” the child said, his great eyes filled with concern. “She would ask what the boy said, and Granny says she must never be told nasty things children say to me. Such things make her sad and keep her from painting. She must not find out about this—this fight.”
“Well, she really need not know,” Galt said, as the heat of his shame mantled his face and brow.
“But shewill,” Lionel insisted, gloomily, “for she is sure to see this blood on me. It is on my neck, and running down under my collar. Do you suppose I could get it off without soiling my waist?”
Galt unbuttoned the broad white collar, and drew it away from the child's neck.
“It hasn't touched it yet,” he said. “Wait a moment!” And he adroitly, and yet with oddly quivering fingers, inserted his own handkerchief between the collar and the trickling blood. “Now come into the house, and I'll fix you up. Your clothes are a little rumpled, but when I have washed the blood off no one need know about your fight.”
“Oh, that would be afineidea!” Lionel exclaimed, joyfully. He put his little hand into his father's, and together they went into the house. “She won't know, will she?”
“No, she need not know,” Galt said aloud; but in his thought he added: “Lionel, you are a little gentleman. You are a living proof that blood will tell.”
The lonely man's heart was warmed by an inward glow of pride which was quickly succeeded by an icy breath of despair that seemed to blow over him. This, he reflected, was only the introductory part of the vast soul tragedy he himself had put on the stage of existence. The trials he had encountered through young manhood were naught to those foreshadowed in the unsuspecting and trusting face at his side.
“Here is the bath,” he said, as they reached the white-tiled room on the second floor. “Now go in, and be careful to take off your blouse without getting it bloody. If we are going to work this thing we must work it right. Perhaps you'd better strip and bathe all over. It will make you feel good anyway, after that fierce round of yours. Let me fill the tub.”
“I think I'd better, maybe,” acquiesced Lionel. “Well, be careful,” Galt warned him, as he turned on the two streams of water and tested the blending temperature.
“I really can't unbutton this collar behind,” Lionel said, with a touch of manly shame over the confession. “My mother always does it. She has never let me learn. I am big enough, gracious knows!”
“Wait, let me undress you!” the father said, as he hastily dried his hands.
“I wish you would, if you'll be so kind,” Lionel said, in a tone of reliance, which somehow reached an hitherto untouched fount of feeling in the breast of his companion.
As the child stood before him, Galt, with throbbing pulse and reverent fingers, found himself doing the duties of a mother to his offspring. The flowing necktie and collar were removed; next the blouse and underbody. Then a vision of inexplicable and awe-inspiring beauty greeted the senses of the beholder, as the symetrical form, a veritable poem in flesh and blood, stood bared to his sight. He laid the still unsoiled garments on a chair, and lifted the boy in his arms to put him into the water. The warm, smooth cheek touched his own; a tingling throb of paternity—of starving, yearning fatherhood—shot through him as he held the boy across his arms like a baby and lowered him slowly to the water.
“Look out, I'll duck you!” he said, jestingly, and the boy replied with a ringing laugh which held no hint of fear.
In the water the child lay with his face smilingly upturned.
“Ugh!” he exclaimed, “it feels good. This tub is big enough to swim in—a little bit, anyway. Will you show me how to swim some day?”
“Yes, my son—yes, Lionel, some day, perhaps.”
“Indeepwater—in a really-really stream that fish swim in?”
“Yes, Lionel.”
“Oh, that would be so nice! Couldn't we catch fish, too?”
“I think so—yes, of course, some day, perhaps.”
But would those delights, conceived for the first time to-day, ever be realized? Galt asked himself, as keen pangs from some unknown source darted through him. Sick unto death of the vapid adulation of narrow men and women, would he ever experience the transcendental joy of intimate and daily companionship with this human wonder, such as other fathers enjoyed with their sons?
No, the question was already answered. The bliss—the queer, Heaven-tending bliss of the present moment—was merely stolen. Was it likely that any son at all would ever come to him—a son which he could father in the broadest, holiest sense? No; and he started and fell to quivering superstitiously. Even if he were married and another son was given to him in lawful wedlock, could he dare—in the face of Infinite Justice—dare to putthatchild forward, acknowledgethatchild as his own, whiledeserting, ignoring, denyingLionel?
“Great God!” his quaking soul cried out in sheer anguish. “Lionel, my son; my boy, made in the image of her and me, he who trusts and so innocently loves me! And yet it must be. Fate has ordained it. I have his faith and love now, but later he may turn on me like an avenging angel.”
“My mother soaps me all over before I get out. Must I do it?” the child asked, as his merry, haunting eyes smiled up through their long, wet lashes.
“It won't be necessary this time,” Galt said. “The blood is entirely washed off. Get out and let me dry you with this big towel.”
“Ugh! it is cold.” The boy shuddered, as he stood out on the rug and allowed himself to be enveloped from head to foot in the big Turkish towel. He was soon dry, and as he stood, his soft skin flushed as delicately pink as the inside of a sea-shell, Galt, making many an awkward mistake, proceeded to dress him.
“Now let me brush your hair; at least, I know how to do that, young man,” the father said, “but I think it ought to be wet more.”
“Oh no; it is too wet now!” the child declared, as he shook his locks, the ends of which had been under water. “My mother combs it dry.”
“There, how will that do, Miss Particular?” Galt asked as he led the child to a large mirror.
“I don't know; it looks funny, somehow”—Lionel made a grimace at his image in the glass—“but it will have to do. I'd better hurry home. They might miss me, and find out about the fight. I like you for that.”
“For what?” Galt followed him to the door, and as they started across the grass toward the cottage he felt Lionel timidly reaching out for his hand. He had evidently not heard Galt's half-whispered question.
“What was it you said you liked me for?” his father repeated, taking the little hand and holding it tenderly.
“Oh, because you wanted me to whip him. He's rich and has everything, and Granny says his father is a great man. I suppose if you liked Grover the best you would have toldhimhow to fight.”
“You are smaller than he,” Galt said, lamely.
“Then itwasn'tbecause you like me?” Galt felt the little hand stiffen, as if some impulse of dormant confidence in the tiny palm had forsaken it.
“Yes, it was because I like you,” Galt said, warmly, and, obeying a desire he refused to combat, he raised the boy in his arms and held him tight against his breast. “If he had hurt you, Lionel, I don't know what I should have done.”
“Then I'm glad I made him bellow,” the boy said, with a little laugh, as he got down to the ground. “Something had to be done, you know, after he said that about my mother.”
Yes, something had to be done, Kenneth Galt told his tortured inner self, as he stood and watched the boy trip lightly homeward—some one had to fight and struggle and smart as a consequence of the wrong that had been done, and the duty had fallen on a little child. Through the slow, weary years of perhaps a long life the fight just beginning would go on, and the chief cause of it must shirk it all. Galt groaned, and clinched his hands, and turned back to his desolate home. He had contended that there was no such thing as spirit, and yet this remorse raging like a tempest within him certainly had naught to do with matter. He had argued that man, born of the flesh, could gratify all animal desires and suffer no ill effects except those excited by physical fear; but there was nothing to fear in this case. Dora's lips were sealed; no one else knew the truth, or ever would know, and yet the very skies above seemed turning to adamant and closing in around him.
DORA BARRY sat at her easel absorbed in the painting of a picture, though the afternoon light was fading from her canvas in a way that made the work difficult, when her mother came to the door and glanced in.
“I have kept a lookout for fully an hour,” she announced, “but I haven't once seen Lionel. I am getting old and silly, I suppose, but I can't keep from worrying.”
Dora got up quickly, her face full of alarm, and the two went to the window of the dining-room and stood looking out for a moment.
“There! Isn't that—I see him!” Mrs. Barry cried out in relief. “Why, he is with Kenneth Galt! He has him in his arms. There!—don't you see?—just beyond the row of cedars. Thank Heaven! we had our scare for nothing.”
But Dora, wide-eyed and astonished, was silent; her face was very grave. Her mother ran eagerly to the door to meet the child, but Dora remained as if rooted to the spot, her gaze fixed on the receding form of Galt.
“Why did he have him?” she whispered to herself. “What can it mean? He was treating him kindly, and gently, too. I could see it in his face. It was glowing as it used to glow when he was true to himself and to me. It looked like Lionel's arm was round his neck. What can it mean?”
When the child had come in, Dora sat down and drew him into her lap and held him fondly to her breast. “Mother was frightened,” she said, cooingly, her lips on his brow. “She missed her little boy, and was afraid something had happened to him.”
“Oh, I'm all right, mother,” Lionel said. “I can take care of myself; you must never be afraid.”
“But how did you happen to be with Mr. Galt?” Mrs. Barry asked. “I didn't know you knew him.”
“Why, why—” but Lionel went no further. He had never lied, and the plan his sense of honor had laid for him was difficult to execute. His grandmother repeated her question in more positive tones, but, with eyes downcast, he refused to answer.
“Let him alone, mother,” Dora said, her face rigid. “It doesn't make any difference.”
“It doesn't, eh?” the old woman exclaimed, in surprise. “Well, I think you both are acting queerly. There is no reason why Lionel should not tell us when and how he met Mr. Galt. I can see by his face that he is keeping something back.”
But Dora was holding the child's head against her throbbing breast, and she threw an almost commanding glance at her mother.
“Let him alone now,” she said, firmly, and with such a sharp tone of finality that her mother stared at her in surprise and left the room.
That evening Dora prepared the child for bed. As she undressed him she scanned each piece of his clothing most carefully. She found a green smudge made from strong pressure against the turf in a most unexpected place, high up on the child's back; she discovered the imprint of soiled fingers on the broad white collar, and remarked the inconsistency of this with Lionel's immaculately clean hands; the necktie had been loose and awkwardly retied; and, most conspicuous of all, was the uncouth way the golden hair was dressed. She noted all these things without comment; but when the white bed-covers were turned down, and Lionel had said his prayers and crawled in, Dora lowered the lamp and reclined beside him. Outwardly she was calm. To the child's observation, no new thing had happened in her even life, and yet her whole being was aflame, her soul panting in suspense.
“Mother's little boy never has told her a story in all his life,” she began, as soothingly as if she were crooning him to sleep. “Isn't that nice?Somelittle boys tell fibs to their mothers, butmyboy has always told the truth, and mother is so glad.”
Lionel lay still. She kissed him softly and waited. At any other time his little arms and lips would have responded, and she marked well the change to-night. Lionel did not move or speak, but simply lay with his old-young gaze gravely fixed on the ceiling where the lamp-chimney had focussed a ring of light.
“You would tellyourmother everything that ever happened to you, wouldn't you, darling?” she said, shyly pressing her cheek against his. She felt him nod impulsively, but second thought seemed to seal his lips. His was a tender age at which to begin the defence of a wronged parent by pretext and concealment, but the burden was on his shoulders, and little Lionel was manfully doing his best.
“There are two kinds of stories, and they are both bad,” Dora went on, desperate over the delay of the divulgence which she thought could mean so little to the child and yet so very much to her. “It is bad to tell a lie, and it is bad to keep back anything at all from your mother, because she is more to you than all the rest of the world. She is yourmother; she works for you; she loves you; she would die for you; and if anybody—no matter who it is—were to want you to keep a secret from her, it would be wrong—very, very wrong. It would make your mother very unhappy; it would make her cry long after you were asleep to know that her little son was keeping anything from her.”
She felt the little white-robed figure quiver. He raised himself on his elbow and slowly sat up; his young face, in the dim light, was full of struggle.
“Is that so, mother?” he asked.
“Yes, darling,” she answered. “There can be no secrets at all between a mother and her boy. She must tellhimeverything, and he must not keep a thing back fromher. How did you happen to meet—Mr. Galt this afternoon?”
“That'swhat you want to know?”
“Yes, dear—that's all. Surely, there can be no reason why your own dear mother should not know a little thing like that. Surely he—Mr. Galt—couldn't have told you not to tell me?”
The child was still for a moment. He folded his little arms over his knee, clinched his hands, and sat avoiding her insistent eyes.
“Wait!” he said, finally. “I want to go to Granny.”
“You want to go to Granny, and leave your mother?” she asked, deeply perplexed. .
“Just a minute,” he said, as he crawled over her and got down on the floor. “I'll be back. I'll be right back, mother, dear.”
“It is something you will tell her, but can't tell me!” Dora cried out, in half-assumed reproach. “Why,Lionel?”
“I'll be back,” he said, evasively. “There is no hurry.” And she heard the patter of his bare feet along the corridor to his grandmother's room.
Mrs. Barry always retired early, and she was now in her bed, but very wide awake. Something in the incident had set her to thinking on new lines. “Can it be? Can it be?” she kept asking herself, in great excitement. “Why didn't I think of it?”
“Granny!” she heard Lionel call out from the dark, doorway.
“Yes, dear, what is it?” she asked.
“I want to come to your bed a minute—just a minute.”
“All right, come on, darling; don't stumble over anything.”
She heard him groping through the dark, and then felt his little hands on her wrinkled face.
“Granny,” he said, a tremor in his voice, “you told me if anybody ever said anything mean about my mother, that I must not let her know about it—never at all.”
“Yes, darling, that would be a nice, brave little man, for you wouldn't want to make her sad, would you?”
“Well, I had a terrible fight with Grover Weston over in Mr. Galt's yard. Grover said a nasty, mean thing about her. You told me not to let her know anything like that, and so did Mr. Galt, but mamma is begging me so hard.”
“Oh!” The old woman lifted the boy over her into the bed, and put her arms about him tenderly. “You can tell Granny about it, and then if she thinks best perhaps you may tell your mother.”
He complied, and the wondering old woman, as she lay with the child in her arms, heard the whole beautiful story in every detail, even to Galt's display of affection, and as she listened cold tears welled up in her old eyes and trickled down the furrows of her cheeks to her pillow. When it was over, she led the child back to his mother.
“Don't ask him any more about it. Wait,” she said, in an undertone, and with a significant gesture in the direction of her room. “Don't spoil a beautiful thing. God bless him! he is right—young as he is, he is right! The very angels of heaven are closing his sweet lips to-night. Don't bother him.”
When Lionel was asleep Dora anxiously crept into her mother's room. A lamp was now burning on a table, but Dora blew it out, and went and sat on the edge of her mother's bed.
“I know your secret now,” Mrs. Barry faltered, with a suppressed sob in her pillow. “All these years I have wondered over your great trouble, and why you were not more open with me about it, but Lionel has made it clear. I understand now.”
“Did Kenneth Galt tell my child that—” Dora cried out, in a rasping undertone. “Did he dare to—”
“No, no, not that!” the old woman corrected. “He simply betrayed himself in his conduct toward the boy. Listen! Lionel need never suspect that you know what he did, but you must be told the truth. It is too beautiful for you to miss.”
She told the whole story as it had come from the child's lips, together with other things she had culled as to happenings between him and his father on former occasions.
“Let them both alone,” she added, fervently, as she concluded. “The little fellow, nameless and cast out as he is, has of himself won the love God gave him the right to. It is his. Let him keep it, and I pray Heaven that it may drag that haughty spirit down into the mire of repentance. I've thought it all over. I remember the date well. I know now why he deserted you; he couldn't face public exposure just at that particular time. His temptation was great, and he fell. I believe he loved youthen, and that he doesyet.”
“Does yet!” Dora sneered, and she put a protesting hand out to her mother's as it lay on the coverlet. “Don't say that. He couldn't now—after all this time.”
“But hedoes, he does—a thousand times more than he did, too,” the old woman insisted. “He hasn't married; he is leading a lonely, morbid life. He-is longing for you—though he may still dread public opinion—and is adoring the child. He may resist longer, but in the end he will succumb and crawl to your feet and beg for forgiveness. Watch my prophecy. He'll do it!—he'll do it!”
“You don't know, mother,” Dora sighed, and she stood up and moved away in the darkness. “You don't know.”
Dora went back to her room and stood looking down at her sleeping child. Suddenly her eyes filled and her breast heaved high.
“Mother's little champion!” she cried, and she knelt down by the bed, covered her face, and wept.