CHAPTER XXXVII
"I have an uneasy feeling," said Mr. Houghton, "that he is thinking ofmarrying the woman, just to carry out Eleanor's wish. Poor Eleanor!Always doing the wrong thing, with greatness." This was in September.Maurice was to come up to Green Hill for a Sunday, and the Houghtonswere in the studio talking about the expected guest. Later Edith was todrive over to the junction and meet him....
It was not only Green Hill which talked about Maurice. In the monthsthat followed Eleanor's death, a good many people had pondered hisaffairs, because, somehow, that visit of Jacky's to Mrs. Newbolt'shouse, got noised abroad, so Maurice's friends (making the inevitabledeductions) told one another exactly what he ought to do.
Mrs. Newbolt expressed herself in great detail: "I shall never forgivehim," she said; "my poor Eleanor! _She_ forgave him, and sent for thechild. More than _I_ would do for any man! But I could have told herwhat to expect. In fact, I did. I always said if she wasn'tentertainin', she'd lose him. Yes; she had a hard time--but she kept herfigger. Should Maurice marry the--boy's mother? _'Course not!_ Puffectnonsense. You think he'll make up to Edith Houghton? She would have toomuch self-respect to look at him! And if she did, her father would neverconsent to it."
The Mortons' opinion was just as definite: "I hope Maurice will marryagain; Edith's just the girl for him--_What!_" Mrs. Morton interruptedherself, at a whisper of gossip, "he had a mistress? I don't believe aword of it!"
"But I'm afraid it's true," her husband told her, soberly; "there's aboy." His wife's shocked face made him add: "I think Curtis will feelhe ought to legitimatize the youngster by marrying his mother. Mauriceis good stuff. He won't sidestep an obligation."
"I never heard of such an awful idea!" said Mrs. Morton, dismayed. "Ihope he'll do nothing of the kind! You can't correct one mistake bymaking another. Don't you agree with me?" she demanded of Doctor Nelson;who displayed, of course, entire ignorance of Mr. Curtis's affairs.
He only said, "Well, it's a rum world."
Johnny Bennett, in Buenos Aires, reading a letter from his father, said:"Poor Eleanor!" ... Then he grew a little pale under his tan, and addedsomething which showed his opinion--not, perhaps, of what Maurice_ought_ to do, but of what he would do! "I might as well make it athree-years' contract," Johnny said, bleakly, "instead of one. Of coursethere 11 be no use going back home. Eleanor's death settles _my_ hash."
Even Mrs. O'Brien, informed by kitchen leakage as to what had happened,had something to say: "He ought to make an honest woman of the littlefellow's mother. But to think of him treating Miss Eleanor that way!"
And now, in the studio, the Houghtons also were saying what Mauriceought--and ought not!--to do: "I'm afraid he's thinking of marryingher," Mr. Houghton had said; and his wife had said, quickly, "I hopeso--for the sake of his child!"
"But, Mary," he protested, "look at it from the woman's point of view;this 'Lily' would be wretched if she had to live Maurice's kind oflife!"
Edith, standing with her back to her father and mother, staring downinto the ashes of the empty fireplace, said, over her shoulder, "Mauricemay marry somebody who will help him with Jacky--just as Eleanor wouldhave done, if she had lived."
"My dear," her father said, quickly, "he has had enough of your sex tolast his lifetime! As a mere matter of taste, I think Maurice won'tmarry anybody."
"I don't see why, just because he--did wrong ten years ago," Edithsaid, "he has got to sidestep happiness for the rest of his life! But asfor marrying that Mrs. Dale, it would be a cat-and-dog life."
"Edith," said her father, "when you agree with me I am filled withadmiration for your intelligence! Your sex has, generally, mereintuition--a nice, divine thing, and useful in its way. But indifferentto logic. My sex has judgment; so when you, a female, display judgment,I, as a parent, am gratified. 'Cat-and-dog life' is a mild way ofputting it;--a quarrelsome home is hell,--and hell is a poor place inwhich to bring up a child! Mary, my darling, you can derail any train byputting a big enough obstacle on the track; the fact that the obstacleis pure gold, like your idealism, wouldn't prevent a domestic wreck--inwhich Jacky would be the victim! But in regard to Maurice's marryinganybody else"--he paused and looked at his daughter--"_that_ seems to meundesirable."
Edith's face hardened. "I don't see why," she said; then added,abruptly, "I must go and write some letters," and went quickly out ofthe room.
They looked after her, and then at each other.
"You see?" Mary Houghton said; "she cares for him!"
"I couldn't face it!" her husband said; "I couldn't have Edith in such amess. Morally speaking, of course he has a right to marry; but he can'thave my girl! Let him marry some other man's girl--and I'll give them myblessing. He's a dear fellow--but he can't have our Edith."
She shook her head. "If it were not for his duty to Jacky, I would beglad to have Edith marry him. And as for saying that she 'can't,' theseare not the days, Henry, when fathers and mothers decide whom theirgirls may marry."
While his old friends were thus talking him over, Maurice was travelingup to the mountains. He had seen Mr. and Mrs. Houghton in Mercer severaltimes since Eleanor's death, but he had not been able to face theassociations and recollections of Green Hill. This was largely because,though his friends had, with such ease, reached decisions for him, hewas himself so absorbed in indecision that he could not go back to thecareless pleasantness of old intimacies, (As for that question of thewheels,--"if--if--if anything happens to Eleanor?"--Eleanor herself hadanswered it in one word: _Lily_.) So, since her death Maurice's wholemind was intent on Jacky. What must he do fear him? His occasionalefforts to train the child had been met, more than once, by sharprebuffs. Whenever he went to see Jacky, Lily was perfectly goodhumored--_unless_ she felt she was being criticized; then the clawsshowed through the fur!
"You can give me money, if you want to, to send him to a swell school."She said, once; "but I tell you, Mr. Curtis, right out, _I ain't goingto have you come in between me and Jacky by talking up things to himthat I don't care about._ All these religious frills about Truth! Theysay nowadays hardly any rich people tell the truth. And talking grammarto him! You set him against me," she, said, and her eyes filled withangry tears.
"I wouldn't think of setting him against you," he said; "only, I want todo my duty to him."
"'Duty'!" said Lily, contemptuously; "I'm not going to bring him upold-fashioned. And this thing of telling him not to say 'ain't,' _I_ sayit, and what else would he say? There ain't any other word. He's mychild--and I'll bring him up the way I like! Wait; I'll give you somefudge; I've just made it..."
Maurice, now, on his way up to Green Hill, looking out of the carwindow, and remembering interviews like this with his son's mother,wondered if Edith had seen Lily the day she took Jacky home? That madehim wonder what Edith would think of the whole business? To a woman likeEdith it would be simply disgusting. "I'll just drop out of her life,"he said. He thought of the day he brought Jacky to Mrs. Newbolt's door,and Edith had looked at him--and then at Jacky--and then at him again._She understood!_ Would she understand now? Probably not. "Of course oldJohnny'll get her ... But, oh, what life might have been!"
Edith had driven over to the junction earlier than was necessary,because she had wanted to get away from her father and mother. "They areafraid he'll fall in love with me," she thought, hotly; "if he everdoes, nothing they can say shall separate us. Nothing! But mother'll tryto influence him to marry that dreadful creature, and father will saythings about 'honor,' so he'll feel he ought never to marry--anybody.Oh, they are lambs," she said, setting her teeth; "but they mustn't keepMaurice from being happy!" At the station, as she sat in the buggyflecking her whip idly, and waiting for Maurice's train, her whole mindwas on the defensive. "He has a right to be happy. He has a right tomarry again ... but they needn't worry about _me_!" she thought. "I'venever grown up to Maurice. But whatever happens, he shan't marry thatwoman!"
When Maurice got off the train there was a blank moment when she did n
otrecognize him. As a careworn man came up to her with an outstretchedhand and a friendly, "This is awfully nice in you, Skeezics!" she said,with a gasp, "_Maurice!_" He had aged so that he looked, she thought, asold as Eleanor. But they were both laboriously casual, until the usualremarks upon the weather, and the change in the time-table, had beenexhausted.
It was Edith who broke into reality--Maurice had taken the reins, andthey were jogging slowly along. "Maurice," she said, "how is Jacky?" Hisstart was so perceptible that she said, "You don't mind my asking?"
"I don't mind anything you could say to me, Edith. I'm grateful to youfor asking."
"I want to help you about him," she said.
He put out his left hand and gripped hers. Then he said: "I'm going todo my best for the little fellow. I've botched my own life, Edith;--ofcourse you know that? But he shan't botch his, if I can help it!"
"I think you can help it," Edith said.
His heart contracted; yet it was what he had expected. The idealism ofan absolutely pure woman. "Well," he said, heavily, "of course I've gotto do what I honestly think is the light thing."
"Are you sure," she said, "that you know what the right thing is? Youmustn't make a mistake."
"I may be said to have made my share," he told her, dryly.
She did not answer that; she said, passionately, "Maurice, I'd giveanything in the world if I could help you!"
"Don't talk that way," he commanded, harshly. "I'm human! So pleasedon't be kind to me, Edith; I can't stand it."
Instantly her heart pounded in her throat: "He _cares_. Oh, they can'tseparate us. But they'll try to." ... The rest of the drive was rathersilent. On the porch at Green Hill the two older friends were waiting towelcome him. ("Don't let's leave them alone," Henry Houghton had said,with a worried look; which made his wife, in spite of her ownuneasiness, smile, "Oh, Henry, you are an innocent creature!") Afterdinner Mrs. Houghton, determinedly commonplace, came to the rescue ofwhat threatened to be a somewhat conscious occasion, by talking booksand music. Her husband may have been "innocent," but he did his part byshoving a cigar box toward the "boy," and saying, "How's business? Wemust talk Weston's offer over," he said.
Maurice nodded, but got up and went to the piano; "Tough on you,Skeezics," he said once, glancing at Edith.
"Oh, I don't mind it, _much_," she said, drolly.
So the evening trudged along in secure stupidity. Yet it was a strainingstupidity, and there was an inaudible sigh of relief from everybodywhen, at last, Mary Houghton said, "Come, good people! It's time to goto bed."
"Yes, turn in, Maurice," said his host; "you look tired." Then he goton his feet, and said good night with an alacrity which showed how muchhe "wished he was asleep"! But he was not permitted to sleep. Maurice,swinging round from the piano, said, with a rather rigid face:
"Would you mind just waiting a minute and letting me tell you somethingabout myself, Uncle Henry?"
"Of course not!" Mr. Houghton said, with great assumption ofcheerfulness. He went back to the sofa--furtively achieving a cigar ashe did so--and saying to himself, "Well, at least it will give me achance to let him see how I feel about his ever marrying again."
Edith was standing by the piano, one hand resting on the keyboard anddrumming occasionally in disconnected octaves. ("If it's business," shethought, "I'll leave them alone; but if they are going to 'advise' him,I'll stay--and fight.")
Maurice came and sat on the edge of the big table, his hands in hispockets, and one foot swinging nervously. "I hope you dear people don'tthink I'm an ungrateful cuss, not to have come to Green Hill thissummer; but the fact is, I've been awfully up against it, trying to makeup my mind about something."
Henry Houghton looked at the fire end of his cigar with frowningintentness and said yes, he supposed so. "Weston's offer seems to mefair," he said (this referred to a partnership possibility, on whichMaurice had consulted him by letter); but his remark, now, was soobviously a running to cover that, in spite of himself, Maurice grinned."Weston's a very square fellow," said Henry Houghton.
"If you are going to talk 'offers,'" said Edith, "do you want me toclear out?"
"It isn't business," Maurice said, quietly; "it's my ... little son. No;don't clear out, Edith. I'd rather talk to your mother and Uncle Henrybefore you."
"All right," said Edith, and struck some soft chords; but her youngmouth was hard.
"Of course," Maurice said, "as things are now--I mean poor Eleanorgone--I have thought a good deal of what I ought to do for Jacky. It wasNelly's wish that I should do the straight thing for him. There wasn'tany question, I think, of the 'straight thing' for Lily--"
"Of course not!" Mary Houghton agreed. And her husband said, "Any suchidea would be nonsense, Maurice."
"And I myself don't count," Maurice went on.
Again Mrs. Houghton agreed--very gravely: "Compared to the child, dearMaurice, you don't."
"You _do_!" Edith said; but nobody heard her.
"So at first," Maurice said, "I kept thinking of how Eleanor had wantedme to have him--legally, you know; wanted it so much that she--" therewas a silence in the studio; "that she was glad to die, to make itpossible." He paused, and Mary Houghton saw his cheek twitch. "Well, Ifelt that clinched it. I felt I _must_ carry out her wish, and ask Mrs.Dale to--marry me."
"Morbid," said Henry Houghton.
Edith, listening, said nothing; but she was ready to spring!
"Perhaps it was morbid," Maurice said; "but just at first it seemed thatway to me. Then I began to realize that what poor Nelly wanted, wasn'tto have me marry Lily--that was only a means to an end; she wanted Jackytaken care of"; (Edith nodded.) "And she thought marrying his mother wasthe best way to do that." (Edith shook her head.)
"Well; I thought it all over ... I kept myself and my own feelings outof it." Behind those laconic words lay the weeks of struggle, of whicheven these good friends could have no idea! Weeks in which, while Mercerwas deciding what he ought to do, Maurice, "keeping himself out of it,"had put aside ambition and smothered taste, and thrown over, once forall, personal happiness. As a wrestler strips from his body allhampering things, so he had stripped from his mind every instinct whichmight interfere with a straight answer to a straight question: "Whatwill be best for my boy?" He gave the answer now, in Henry Houghton'sstudio, while Edith, over in the shadows, at the piano, looked at him.Her face was quite pale.
"So all I had to do," said Maurice, "was to think of Jacky's welfare.That made it easier to decide. I find," he said, simply, "that you candecide things pretty easily if you don't have to think of yourself. So Isaid, 'If I marry Lily, though Jacky couldn't be taken away from me,physically, spiritually'--you know what I mean, Mrs. Houghton?--'hemight be removed to--to the ends of the earth!' I might lose hisaffection; and I've got to hold on to _that_, at any cost, becausethat's how I can influence him." He was talking now entirely to Edith'smother, and his voice was harsh with entreaty for understanding. Hedidn't care very much whether Henry Houghton understood or not. And ofcourse Edith could never understand! But that this serene woman of thestars should misjudge him was unbearable. "You see what I mean, Mrs.Houghton, don't you? I know Lily;--and I know that if she thought I hadany _right_ to say how he must be brought up, it would mean nothing butperfectly hideous controversies all the time! So long as she thinks shehas the upper hand, she'll be generous; she doesn't mind his being fondof me, you know. But she'd fight tooth and nail if she thought I had any_rights_! You see that, don't you?"
"I see it!" Edith said.
"Yet from a merely material point of view," said Mrs. Houghton, "inspite of 'controversies,' legitimacy would give Jacky advantages,which--oh, Maurice, don't you see?--_your son_ has a right to!"
But her husband said, quickly, "Mary, living with a quarreling fatherand mother is spiritual illegitimacy; and the disadvantages of thatwould be worse than the material handicap of being a--a fatherlesschild."
His daughter flashed a passionately grateful look at him.
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bsp; Maurice, still speaking to Edith's mother, said: "That's the way Ilooked at it, Mrs. Houghton. So it seemed to me that I could do more forhim if I didn't marry Lily."
Mary Houghton was silent; it was very necessary to consider the stars.
"I put myself out of it," Maurice said. "I just said, 'If it's best forJacky, I'll ask her to marry me,' My honest opinion was that it would bebad for him."
Edith struck two chords--and sat down on the piano stool, swallowinghard.
"You don't agree with me, I'm afraid, Mrs. Houghton?" he said,anxiously.
"My dear boy," she said, "I am sure you are doing what you believe to beright. But it does not seem right to me."
He flinched, but he was not shaken; "It isn't going to be easy, whateverI do. I want to educate him, and see him constantly, and influence himas much as possible. And Lily will be less jealous of me, in her ownhouse, than she would be in mine."
Edith got up and came and sat on the arm of the sofa by her father. "Ican see," she said, "how much easier it would be for Maurice to do thehard thing."
Maurice looked at her with deep tenderness. "You _are_ a satisfyingperson!" he said.
Henry Houghton took his girl's hand, and held it in a grip that hurther. "Maurice is right," he said; "things are _not_ going to be easy forhim. For, though he won't marry Jacky's mother, he won't, I think, marryanybody else."
"Why won't he?" said Edith.
"There is no _moral_ reason why he shouldn't," her father conceded; "itis a question of taste; one might perhaps call it a question ofhonor"--Maurice whitened, but Henry Houghton went on, calmly, "Mauricewill, of necessity, be so involved with this woman--and God knows whatannoyances she may make for him, that--it distresses me to say so--but Ican see that he will not feel like asking any woman to share such aburden as he has to carry."
"If he loves any woman," Edith said, "let him ask her! If she turns himdown, it stamps her for a coward!"
"Don't you think I'm right, Maurice?" her father said.
"Yes," Maurice said. "You are right. I've faced that."
Edith sprang to her feet, and stood looking at her father and mother,her eyes stern with protecting passion. "It seems to me absurd," shesaid,--"like standing up so straight you fall over backward!--forMaurice to feel he can't marry--somebody else, just because he--he didwrong, ever so many years ago! He's sorry, now. Aren't you sorry,Maurice?" she said.
His eyes stung;--the simplicity of the word was like a flower tossedinto the black depths of his repentance! "Yes, dear," he said, gently;"I'm 'sorry.' But no amount of 'sorrow' can alter consequences, Edith."
"Oh," she said, turning to the other two, "don't you want Maurice _ever_to be happy?"
"I want him to be good," said her mother.
"I can't be happy, Edith," Maurice told her; "don't you see?"
She looked straight in his eyes, her own eyes terror-stricken. ... Theywould drive him away from her! "You _shall_ be happy," she said.
They saw only each other, now.
"No," Maurice said; "it's just as your father says; I have no right todrag any girl into the kind of life I've got to live. I'll have to seeLily a good deal, so as to keep in with her--and be able to look afterJacky. Personal happiness is all over for me."
She caught at his arm; "It isn't! Maurice, don't listen to them!" Thenshe turned and stood in front of him, as though to put her young breastbetween him and that tender, menacing parental love. "Oh, mother--oh,father! I _do_ love you; I don't want to do anything you don't approveof;--but Maurice comes first. If he asks me to marry him, I will."
Under his breath Maurice said, "_Edith!_"
"My darling," Henry Houghton said, "consider: people are bound to knowall about this. The publicity will be a very painful embarrassment--"
Edith broke in, "As if that matters!"
"But the serious thing," her father went on, "Is that this woman will bea millstone around his neck--"
"She shall be around my neck, too!" she said. There was a breathlessmoment; then Truth, nobly naked, spoke: "Maurice, duty is the firstthing in the world;--not happiness. If you thought it was your duty tomarry Lily, I wouldn't say a word. You would never know that I cared.Never! I'd just stand by, and help you. I'd live in the same house withher, if it would help you! But--" her voice shook; "you _don't_ thinkit's your duty. You know it isn't! You know that it would make thingsworse for Jacky,--not better, as Eleanor wanted them to be. So whyshouldn't you be happy? Oh, it's _artificial_, to refuse to be happy!"Before he could speak, she added, quite simply, the sudden tears brightin her eyes, "I know you love me."
He looked at the father and mother: "You wouldn't have me lie to her,would you?--even to save her from herself! ... Of course I love you,Edith,--more than anything on earth,--but I have no right--"
"You have a right," she said.
"I _want_ you," he said, "God knows, it would mean life to me! But--"
"Then take me," she said.
Mrs. Houghton came and put her arms around her girl and kissed her."Take her, Maurice," she said, quietly. Then she looked at her husband:"Dear," she said, and smiled--a little mistily; "wisdom will not diewith us! The children must do what _they_ think is right ... Even if itis wrong." She had considered the stars.
THE END
The Vehement Flame Page 37
