Chapter 7

AS for Johnny's mother, she kept on thinking, too, but she yielded, for the moment, to the inevitableness of her harvest. And of course the devotion, and the invitations to Philadelphia, and the summers in Old Chester continued. Johnny's bored good humor accepted them all patiently enough; "for she is kind," he reminded himself. "And I like _him_," he used to tell his aunt Lydia. Once he confided his feelings on this subject to William King:

"They are queer folks, the Robertsons," Johnny said. "Why do they vegetate down here in Old Chester? They don't seem to know anybody but Aunt Lydia."

William and the big fellow were jogging along in the doctor's shabby buggy out toward Miss Lydia's; she was very frail that summer and Johnny had insisted that William King should come to see her. "The Robertsons know _you_, apparently," the doctor said.

"Well, yes," John said, "and they've been nice to me ever since I can remember."

"G'on!" Doctor King told his mare, and slapped a rein down on Jinny's back.

"But, Doctor King, they _are_ queer," Johnny insisted. "What's the milk in the coconut about 'em?"

"Maybe a thunderstorm soured it."

Johnny grinned, then he looked at Jinny's ears, coughed, and said, "I'd like to ask you a question, sir."

"Go ahead."

"When people are kind to you--just what do you owe 'em? I didn't ask them to be kind to me--I mean the Robertsons--but, holy Peter!" said Johnny, "they've given me presents ever since I was a child. They even had a wild idea of getting me to take their name! I said, 'No, thank you!' Why should I take their name? . . . Mrs. Robertson always seems sort of critical of Aunty. Think of that! Course she never says anything; she'd better not! If she did I'd raise Cain. But I _feel_ it," Johnny said, frowning. "Well, what I want to know is, what do you owe people who do you favors? Mind you, _I_ don't want their favors!"

"Well," William ruminated, "I should say that we owe people who do us favors, the truth of how we feel about them. If the truth wouldn't be agreeable to them, don't accept the favors!"

"Well, the 'truth' is that I get mad when Mrs. Robertson looks down on Aunty! Think of what she's stood for me!" the boy said, suddenly very red in the face. "When I was fifteen one of the fellows told me I was--was her son. I rubbed his nose in the mud."

"Oh, that was how Mack got his broken nose, was it?" Doctor King inquired, much interested. "Well, I'm glad you did it. I guess it cured him of being _one_ kind of a fool. There was a time when I wanted to rub one or two female noses in the mud. However, they are really not worth thinking of, Johnny."

"No," John agreed, "but anybody who looks cross-eyed in my presence at Aunt Lydia will get his head punched."

"Amen," said William King, and drew Jinny in at Miss Lydia's gate.

It cannot be said that William King's opinion as to what we owe people who do us favors was very illuminating to Johnny. "I like 'em--and I don't like 'em," he told Miss Lydia, with a bothered look. "But I wish to Heaven she'd let up on presents!"

On the whole he liked them more than he failed to like them; perhaps because they were, to a big, joyous, somewhat conceited youngster, rather pitiful in the way in which they seemed to hang upon him. He said as much once to his aunt Lydia; Mrs. Robertson had asked him to come to supper, but had not asked Miss Lydia. "I suppose I've got to go," he said, scowling, "but they needn't think I'd rather have supper with them than with you! I just go because I'm sorry for 'em."

"I am, too, Johnny," she said. She had ceased to be afraid of them by this time. Yet she might have been just a little afraid if she had known all that this special invitation involved. . . .

Mary Robertson no longer shared her longing for her son with her husband. She had not even told him of that day when her misery had welled up and overflowed in frantic words to Doctor Lavendar. But she had never resigned herself to reaping what she had sowed. She was still determined, _somehow_, to get possession of her boy. Occasionally she spoke of this determination to Doctor Lavendar, just because it was a relief to put it into words; but he never gave her much encouragement. He could only counsel a choice of two things: secrecy--and fortitude; or truth--and doubtful hope.

Little by little hope gained, and truth seemed more possible. And by and by a plan grew in her mind: she would get Doctor Lavendar to help her to tell Johnny the truth, and then, supported by religion (as she thought of it), she would tell her son that it was his duty to live with her;--"nobody will know _why_! And he can't say 'no,' if Doctor Lavendar says, 'honor thy father and thy mother'!" That Doctor Lavendar would say this, she had no doubt whatever, for was he not a minister, and ministers always counseled people to obey the Commandments. "But when I get him here, with Johnny, we must be by ourselves," she thought; "I won't speak before _her_!"

So that was why Miss Lydia was not invited to supper when Johnny was--Johnny and Doctor Lavendar! Mary Robertson was so tense all that September day when her two guests were expected that her husband noticed it.

"You're not well, Mary?" he said.

"Oh yes, yes!" she said--she was pacing up and down, up and down, like a caged creature. "Carl, Doctor Lavendar is coming this evening."

"My dear, I think that is about the tenth time you have mentioned it! I should not call the old gentleman a very exciting guest."

"And Johnny is coming."

"Well, what of it? I hope Doctor Lavendar won't ask him to say his catechism!"

As it happened, Johnny came first, and his mother was so eager to see him and touch him that, hearing his step, she ran to help him off with his coat--to his great embarrassment; then she came into the library clinging to his arm. Father and son greeted each other with, "Hello, youngster!" and, "Hello, sir!" and Johnny added that it was beginning to rain like blazes.

"I sent the carriage for Doctor Lavendar," Mrs. Robertson said.

"He coming?" Johnny asked.

"Yes," she said; "he's very, very good, Johnny, and"--she paused, then said, breathlessly, "_you must do whatever he wants you to do_."

The young man looked faintly interested. "What's she up to now?" he asked himself; then began to talk to his father. But remembering his aunt Lydia's parting injunction, "Now, Johnny, be nice to Mrs. Robertson," he was careful to speak to his mother once in a while. Happening to catch the twinkle of her rings, he tried to be especially "nice."

"When I get rich I'm going to buy Aunty a diamond ring like yours, Mrs. Robertson."

"I'll give you one of mine, if you'll wear it," she said, eagerly.

Johnny's guffaw of laughter ended in a droll look at his father, who said:

"My dear Mary! This _cub_, and a diamond ring?"

She was too absorbed in loving her child to be hurt by his bad manners, and, besides, at that moment Doctor Lavendar arrived, and she ran out into the hall to welcome him; as she took his hand she whispered:

"Doctor Lavendar, you will help me with Johnny? _I am going to tell him._ I'm going to tell him to-night!--and I depend on you to make him come to us."

The old man's face grew very grave; he looked closely at Mary, standing there, clasping and unclasping her hands, but he did not answer her. Later, when they went out to the dining room, he was still silent, just watching Mary and listening to Johnny,--who laughed and talked (and was "nice" to his mother), and ate enormously, and who looked, sitting there at his grandfather's old table, as much like the new Mr. Smith as twenty-three can look like seventy-eight.

"Well," the young fellow said, friendly and confidential to the company at large, "what do you suppose? It's settled--my 'career'!"

"I hope that means Robertson and Carey?" Mr. Robertson said. He glanced over at his son with a sort of aching pride in his strength and carelessness. "I've offered this youngster a place in my firm," he explained to Doctor Lavendar, who said:

"Have you, indeed?"

"No," Johnny said, "it doesn't mean Carey and Robertson, though you're mighty kind, Mr. Robertson. But you see I can't leave Old Chester. It would pull Aunt Lydia up by the roots to go away. And of course I couldn't go without her."

Mary's plump hand, with its shining rings, clenched sharply on the tablecloth; she drew in her breath, but she said nothing.

"Well, what are you going to do?" Carl said, not daring to meet his wife's eyes.

"Aunt Lydia got a job for me in Mr. Dilworth's hardware store."

His mother cried out--then checked herself. "Miss Lydia ought not to have thought of such a thing!" she tried to speak quietly, but she had to bite her lip to keep it steady.

"Mary!" her husband warned her.

John's face darkened. "Aunty ought always to do whatever she does do," he said.

"Of course," his father agreed, soothingly.

"I only meant," Mary explained, in a frightened voice, "that a hardware store isn't much of a chance for a man like you."

"It means staying in Old Chester with Aunty," he explained; "she's not very well now, Mrs. Robertson," he said, and sighed; "it would be too much for her, to move. She's not equal to it." His strong, rather harsh face softened and sobered. "And as for a hardware store not being a chance for _me_--I mean to make Rome howl with a Mercer branch! You see, Aunty bought a half-interest for me. The Lord knows where she got the money! Saved it out of her food all these years, I guess."

"She didn't, apparently, save it out of your food," Doctor Lavendar said, dryly; "I believe you weigh two hundred, Johnny."

"Only a hundred and eighty-four," the young man assured him.

Mary, listening, was tingling all over; she had planned a very cautious approach to the truth which was to give her son back to her. She meant first to hint, and then to admit, and then to declare her _right_ to his love. But that Miss Lydia, without consulting Johnny's father and mother, should have put him into such a business--"_my son_ in a hardware store!" Mary thought;--that Miss Lydia should have dared! "He's mine--he's mine--he's mine! . . . Of course," she was saying to herself as they went back to the library after dinner--"of course, he'll give it up the minute he knows who he is. But I hate her!"

The room, in the September dusk, was lighted only by a lamp on the big desk; the windows opening on the garden were raised, for it was hot after the rain, and the air blew in, fragrant with wet leaves and the scent of some late roses. Johnny's father, sinking down in a great leather chair, watched the young, vigorous figure standing in front of the mantelpiece, smoking and, after the fashion of his years, laying down the law for the improvement of the world. Doctor Lavendar did not look at Johnny, but at his mother, who stood clutching the corner of the big desk--that desk at which, one September night twenty-three years ago, Johnny's grandfather had been sitting when Miss Lydia came into the library. . . .

"Mary, my dear, aren't you going to sit down?" said Doctor Lavendar.

She did not seem to hear him. "Look here," she said, harshly; "I can't stand it--I won't stand it--"

Carl sprang up and laid his hand on her arm. "Mary!" he said, under his breath. "_Please_," he besought her; "for God's sake don't--don't--"

"Johnny, you belong to me," Mary said.

John Smith, his cigar halfway to his lips, paused, bewildered and alarmed. "Isn't she well?" he said, in a low voice to Doctor Lavendar.

"I'm perfectly well. But I'm going to speak. Doctor Lavendar will tell you I have a right to speak! Tell him so, Doctor Lavendar."

"She has the right to speak," the old man said.

"You hear that?" said the mother. "He says I have a right to you!"

"I didn't say that," said Doctor Lavendar.

"Mary," her husband protested, "I will not allow"--but she did not hear him:

"Miss Lydia sha'n't have you any longer. You are _mine_, Johnny--_mine_. I want you, and I'm going to have you!"

John Smith's face went white; he put his cigar down on the mantelpiece, went across the long room, closed the door into the hall, then came back and looked at his mother. No one spoke. Doctor Lavendar had bent his head and shut his eyes; he would not watch the three struggling souls before him. Johnny slowly turned his eyes toward Mr. Robertson.

"And you--?"

"Yes," his father said. "John, you'll make the best of us, won't you?"

Silence tingled between them.

Then, unsteadily, and looking always at his father, John began to speak. "Of course it makes no difference to me. Aunt Lydia and I have our own life. But--I'm sorry, sir." He put his shaking hands into his pockets. "You and Mrs. Robertson--"

"Oh, say 'mother'! Say 'mother'!" she cried out.

"--have been very kind to me, always,"--he paused, in a sudden, realizing adjustment: their "kindness," then, had not been the flattery he had supposed? It was just--love? "Awfully kind," he said, huskily. "Once I did wonder . . . then I thought it couldn't be, because--because, you see, I've always liked you, sir," he ended, awkwardly.

Carl Robertson was dumb.

"I've told you," his mother said, trembling--her fingers, catching at the sheet of blotting paper on desk, tore off a scrap of it, rolled it, twisted it, then pull off another scrap--"I've told you, because you are to come to us. You are to take our name--your name." She paused, swallowing hard, and struggling to keep the tears back. "You are _ours_, not hers. People thought you were hers, and it just about killed me."

Instantly the blood rushed into John Smith's face; his eyes blazed. "What!" he stammered; "what! You knew that?" . . . His upper lip slowly lifted, and Doctor Lavendar saw his set teeth. "You _knew_ that some damned fools thought _that_, of my aunt Lydia? Are you my mother, and yet you could allow another woman-- My God!" he said, softly.

She did not realize what she had done; she began to reassure him frantically.

"No one shall ever know! No one will ever guess--"

Doctor Lavendar shook his head. "Mary," he warned her, "we must be known, even as also we know, before we enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

They did not listen to him.

"You mean," John said, "that you won't let it be known that you are--my mother?"

"No, never! never! It couldn't be known--I promise you."

"Thank you," said John Smith, sardonically,--and Doctor Lavendar held up protesting hands. But no one looked at him.

"It would only be supposed," Carl said, "that, being childless people, we would make you our son. Nothing, as your mother says, would need be known."

"How could you 'make me your son' and not have it known?"

"I mean by law," his father explained.

"There was a 'law' that made me your son twenty-three years ago. That's the only law that counts. You broke it when I was born. Can I be born again?"

"Yes," said Doctor Lavendar.

"You deserted me," Johnny said, "and Aunt Lydia took me. Shall I be like you, and desert her? Little Aunt Lydia!" He gave a furious sob. "I'm not _your_ sort!" he said. The words were like a blow in Mary's face.

"Doctor Lavendar, tell him--tell him, 'honor thy father and thy mother'!"

"'Honor'?" her son said. "Did I understand you to use the word '_honor_'?"

Again Doctor Lavendar raised an admonishing hand. "Careful, John."

"He means," Carl said to his wife, quietly, though his face was gray--"he means he wants us to acknowledge him. Mary, I'm willing. Are you?"

Doctor Lavendar lifted his bowed head, and his old eyes were suddenly eager with hope. Johnny's mother stood looking at her child, her face twisted with tears.

"_Must_ I, to get him?" she gasped.

"No," Johnny said; "it is quite unnecessary." He smiled, so cruelly that his father's hands clenched; but Mary only said, in passionate relief, "Oh, you are good!" And the hope in Doctor Lavendar's eyes flickered out.

"Nothing will ever be known?" her son repeated, still smiling. "Well, then, Mrs. Robertson, I thank you for 'nothing.'"

Doctor Lavendar frowned, and Mary recoiled, with a sort of moan. Carl Robertson cried out:

"Stop! You shall not speak so to your mother! I'm ashamed of you, sir!"

But the mother ran forward and caught at her son's arm. "Oh, but I will make it known! I will say who you are! I'll say you are mine! I will--I will--"

"You can't, for I'm not," he said.

She was clinging to him, but he looked over her head, eye to eye with his father. "How can I be her son, when she let people here in Old Chester believe that Aunt Lydia--"

"Johnny," said Doctor Lavendar, "it didn't make the slightest difference to Miss Lydia."

The young man turned upon him. "Doctor Lavendar, these two people didn't own me, even when a pack of fools believed--" He choked over what the fools believed. "They let them think _that_ of Aunt Lydia! As for this--this lady being my 'mother'-- What's 'mother' but a word? Aunt Lydia may not be my mother, but I am her son. Yes--yes--I am."

"You are," Doctor Lavendar agreed.

John turned and looked at his father. "I'm sorry for _him_," he said to Doctor Lavendar.

"We will acknowledge you to-morrow," Carl Robertson said.

"I won't acknowledge you," his son flung back at him. "All these years you have hidden behind Aunty. Stay hidden. I won't betray you."

Mary had dropped down into her father's chair; her face was covered by her hands on the desk. They heard her sob. Her husband bent over her and put his arms about her.

"Mary," he said, in a whisper, "forgive me; I brought it on you--my poor Mary!" Then he stood up and looked at his son in suffering silence. "I don't blame you," he said, simply.

At that, suddenly, John Smith broke. The pain of it all had begun to penetrate his passionate loyalty. For a moment there was silence, except for Mary's sobs. Then Johnny said, hoarsely, "Mr. Robertson, I'm--sorry. But . . . there isn't anything to do about it. I--I guess I'll go home."

"John," said Doctor Lavendar, "your aunt Lydia would want you to be kind."

Carl Robertson shook his head. "We don't want kindness, Doctor Lavendar. I guess we don't want anything he can give. Good-by, boy," he said.

His son, passing him, caught at his hand and wrung it. "Goo'-by," he said, roughly. There were tears in his eyes.

Then, without a look at his mother, he walked quickly down the room, and out into the hall. They could hear him putting on his hat and coat. . . . Carl Robertson pressed his clenched hand against his lips, and turned his back to the other two. Mary was silent. Doctor Lavendar covered his eyes for a moment; then, just as Johnny's hand was on the knob of the front door he called out:

"John, wait a minute, will you? Give me an arm; I'm going to walk home."

The young man, out in the hall, frowned, and set his jaw.

"All right," he called back, briefly. There was no detaining word or cry from the library while Doctor Lavendar shuffled silently into his coat,--and a minute later the door of the new Mr. Smith's house closed upon his grandson and the old minister.

It had begun to rain again, and the driveway was very dark--darker even than on that September night when Johnny's mother had cringed back from Miss Lydia's little leading hand and they had hurried along under the big trees. It was her son who hurried now. . . .

"Not so fast, Johnny," said Doctor Lavendar.

"Excuse me, sir." He fell into step with the old man, but he was tense with the effort to walk slowly. . . . They were nearly at the gate before there was any speech between them. Then Johnny said, violently:

"There's no use saying anything to me, Doctor Lavendar! Not a particle of use!"

"I haven't said anything, John."

"They got you here to--to influence me! I saw through it the minute--she began. But I never forgive," Johnny said; "I want you to understand that!" He was hurrying again. The old man pressed a little on his arm.

"I'm sorry to be so slow, Johnny."

"Oh--excuse me, sir; I didn't realize. . . . She threw me away. I've thrown her away. There's no use talking to me!"

Doctor Lavendar was silent.

"I tell you, I won't have anything to do with them--with her, I mean. He's not so bad. I--I like him--in spite of--of everything. But she deserted me when I was born."

"It is certainly cruel to desert a newborn thing," said Doctor Lavendar.

John Smith agreed, furiously--and his upper lip lifted.

"I think," said Doctor Lavendar, "something has been born to-night--" He was very much out of breath.

"I'm walking too fast again? I beg your pardon, sir," the boy said.

"Suppose we stand still for a minute," said Doctor Lavendar.

They stood still; the rain fell heavily on Doctor Lavendar's shoulders and dripped from the brim of his old felt hat. "She deserted me," John said. "There is nothing to be said in excuse. Nothing."

"No, desertion can never be excused," the old man agreed; "and, as you say, when your body was born, she left it. To-night her soul has been born. Do you mean to desert it, John?"

"Even a dog doesn't leave her pups!" John said.

("His grandfather over again!" Doctor Lavendar thought.) Yet it was to that inherited brutality that he made his appeal:

"No; a mother has to be higher than an animal, to desert her young," Doctor Lavendar said.

The young man's violent agreement broke off in the middle:--"What do you mean by that?"

"Shame is a strange thing," said Doctor Lavendar; "it can lift us up to heaven or push us down to hell; it gives us courage or it makes us cowards. An animal doesn't know shame."

"You mean that--that woman--?"

"I mean your mother was ashamed, John--" The young man was silent. "She tried to get away from shame by getting away from you. Now she knows that only by staying with you could she really get away from it."

"I will _never_ call her 'mother'!" Johnny burst out.

"Miss Lydia didn't stop to consider what she was going to call you; she just took care of you. Yet you weren't as helpless as that poor woman back there in that empty house. Johnny, her little weak soul, just born to-night, will die unless you take care of it."

The young man stood still, his hands clenched. Doctor Lavendar took off his soaking wet hat, shook it, put it on again, and waited. There was only the sound of the rain and the drip-drip from the big trees along the driveway. Then the boy said:

"You said desertion could not be excused. I am ashamed to be known as belonging to her!"

"That's just how she felt about you--_so she deserted you_."

Silence, except for John Smith's panting breath. Down the road, through the lilac bushes, came the twinkle of a lamp in Miss Lydia's window.

"John," said Doctor Lavendar, "go to your mother. If you don't, you will be doing just what she did. Be kind to her helpless soul, as Miss Lydia was kind to your helpless body."

Still silence. Then suddenly Mary's son flung Doctor Lavendar's hand from his arm, and turned back, almost running, to vanish in the shadows of his grandfather's driveway. But as he ran, he threw over his shoulder some broken, passionate words that sounded like--"I _won't_ be like her--"

Doctor Lavendar stood still for a minute; then he drew a great breath of relief and plodded on slowly into the rainy darkness.

THE END

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:

The repeated book title before chapter one was deleted to avoid redundancy.

Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

Page 83, "stomache" changed to "stomach" (stomach ache, and)

End of Project Gutenberg's An Old Chester Secret, by Margaret Deland