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