Part 29

But the theory was that, at some minute when Miss Nash's attention was diverted, the prowling woman got possession of the child, through means which were still a matter of speculation. She had money, since it was known that five thousand dollars had been paid to her by a life-insurance company on her husband's death, and, therefore, the power of flitting about, and covering up her traces. Discovering that she had a boy and not a girl, she had given him the first name she could think of, which was that of her late husband. She could easily have learned from the papers that the child she had stolen was the son of Henry Theodore Whitelaw, though the full name may or may not have remained in a memory probably not retentive at its best. But on the night of her arrest, knowing that she was about to forsake the child for whom she had come to feel a passionate affection, she had made one last wild effort to connect him with his true inheritance. Why she had done this but partially was again a matter of conjecture. She may have given all of the name she remembered; she may have been kept from giving the full name through fear. It was impossible to tell. But she gave the name--with some errors, it was true--but still the name. The name taken with the extraordinary family resemblance--everyone would admit that--was one of the main points in the reconstruction of the history.

He reviewed a few more of the proofs and the half-proofs, asking at last, timidly, and as if afraid of the family verdict:

"Well, what does everyone say?"

The silence was oppressive. The only movement on anyone's part came when Lily stretched out her hand to a tray and with her little finger knocked off the ash from her cigarette. It seemed to Tom as if none of them would speak, as if he himself must speak first.

"I vote we take him in." This was Tad. "Since we all know you want him, father--well, that settles it. As far as I'm concerned I'll--I'll crawl down."

Lily shrugged her slim shoulders. "I don't care one way or another. I've got my own affairs to think of. If he doesn't interfere with me I won't interfere with him." Again she knocked off the ash of her cigarette. "Have him, if you want to."

It was Mrs. Whitelaw's turn. She sat still, pensive. The clock could be heard ticking. Her husband gazed at her as if his life would depend on what she had to say. Tom himself went numb again. She spoke at last.

"If you're satisfied, Henry, I'm satisfied. All I ask in the world is that you--" she gasped her little sob--"is that you shall be happy." Rising she walked straight up to Tom. "I want to kiss you."

When he had bent his head she kissed him on the forehead, formally, sacramentally. She went back to her seat.

Without moving from his place at the table, Whitelaw smiled across the room at Tom, a smile of relief and tenderness.

"Well, what do you say?"

Tom looked down at Hildred, noting her strange expression. It was not a satisfied expression; rather it was challenging, defiant of something, he didn't know of what. But he couldn't now consider Hildred; he couldn't consider anyone but himself. He did not change his position, leaning on the white marble mantelpiece; nor was his tone other than conversational.

"I'm awfully sorry, sir--I'm sorry to say it to you especially--but it's--it's not good enough."

With the slightest possible movement of the head Hildred made him a sign of proud approval. Whitelaw's smile went out.

"What's not good enough?"

"The--the welcome--home."

Tad spluttered, indignantly. "What the devil do you want? Do you expect us to put up an arch?"

"No; I don't expect anything. I should only like you to understand that though it isn't easy for you, it's easier for you than for me."

Tad turned to his father. "Now you're getting it! I could have told you beforehand, if you'd consulted me."

"You see," Tom continued, paying no attention to the interruption, "you're all different from me. You're used to different things, to different standards and ways of thinking. If I were to come in among you the only phrase that would describe me is the homely one of the fish out of water. I should be gasping for breath. I couldn't live in your atmosphere."

Tad was again the only one to voice a comment. "Well, I'll be damned!"

Tom's legs which had quaked at first, began to be surer under him. "Please don't think I'm venturing to criticize anyone or anything. This is your life, and it suits you. It wouldn't suit me because it isn't mine. The past makes me as it makes you, and it's too late now to unmake us. It's possible that I may be Harry Whitelaw. When I hear the evidence that can be produced I can almost think I am. But if I _am_ Harry Whitelaw by birth, I'm _not_ Harry Whitelaw by life and experience. I can't go back and be made over. I'm myself as I stand." Still having in his hand the pictures of Lucy Speight, he held them out. "To all intents and purposes this is--my mother."

"And I kissed you!"

Tom smiled. "Yes, but you don't know how she kissed me. I do. She loved me. I loved her. I've tried--I've tried my very best--to turn my back on her--to call her a thief--and any other name that would blacken her--and--and I can't do it."

The sleeping lioness in the mother was roused suddenly. Leaving her place behind the tea-table, she advanced near enough to him to point to the two photographs.

"Do you mean to say that--having the choice between--that--and me--you choose--that?"

"I don't choose. I can't do anything else. It isn't what you think that rules your life; it's what you love. I'm one of the people to whom love means more than anything else. I daresay it's a weakness--especially in a man--but that's the way it is."

"If your first stipulation is love...."

"Wouldn't it be yours, Onora?"

"I'd try to be reasonable--when so many concessions have been made."

"Yes," Tom hastened to say, "but that's just my point. I'm not asking for concessions. The minute they must be made--well, I'm not there. I couldn't come into your family--on concessions."

Whitelaw spoke up again. "I don't blame you."

Tom tried to make his position clearer. "It's a little like this. A long time ago I was coming along by the Hudson in the train. I was on my way to New York with the man who had adopted me, after I'd been a State ward. There was a steamer on the river, and I watched her--coming _from_ I didn't know where--going _to_ I didn't know where. And it came to me then that she was something like myself. I didn't know what port I'd sailed from; nor what port I was making for. But now that I'm twenty-three--if that's my age--I see this: that once in so often I touched at some happy isle, where the people took me in and were good to me. It was what carried me along."

The mother broke in, reproachfully. "Happy isles--full of convicts and murderers!"

"Yes; but they were happy. The convicts and murderers were kind. A homeless boy doesn't question the moral righteousness of the people who give him food and shelter and clothes, and, what's more, all their best affection. What it comes to is this, that having lived in those happy isles--awhile in one, awhile in another--I don't want to go ashore at an unhappy one, even though I was born there."

Springing to his feet, Tad bore down on him. "Do you know what I call you? I call you an ass."

"Very likely. I'm only trying to explain to you why I can't be your brother--even if I am--your brother."

"It's because you don't want to be--and you damn well know it."

"That may be another way of putting it; but I'm not putting it that way."

Lily rose languidly, throwing out her words to nobody in particular. "I think he's a good sport, if you ask me. I wouldn't come into a family like us--not the way we are."

"Wait, Lily," Whitelaw cried, as she was sauntering out. He too got to his feet. "You've all spoken. You've done the best you could. I'm not blaming anyone. Now I want you all to understand--" He indicated Tom--"that this is _my son_. I know he's my son. I claim him as my son. Not even what he says himself can make any difference to me."

Tom strode across the room, grasping the other's hand. "Yes, sir; and you're my father. I know that too, and I claim you on my side. But we'll stop right there. It's as far as we can go. I'll be your son in every sense but that of--" He looked round about on them all--"but that of being your heir or a member of your family. I can't do that; but--between you and me--everything is understood."

He got out of the room with dignity. Passing Tad, he nodded, and said, "Thanks!" To Lily he said, "Thank you too. It was bully, what you said." Reaching the mother whom he didn't know and who didn't know him, he bowed low. Sitting again behind the tea-table, she lifted her hand for him to take it. He took it and kissed it. Her little soblike gasp followed him as he passed into the big dim hall.

He had taken no leave of Hildred, because he knew she would do what actually she did; but he didn't know that she would speak the words he heard spoken.

"I'm going with him, dear Mrs. Whitelaw; but I shan't be long. I just don't want him to go away alone because--because I mean to marry him."

XLVII

As they went down the steps she took his arm. "Tom, darling, I'm proud of you. Now they know where we stand, both of us."

"It was splendid of you, Hildred, to play up like that. It backs me tremendously that you're not afraid to own me. But, you know, what I've just said will put us farther apart."

"Oh, I don't know about that. Father said we couldn't be engaged unless you were acknowledged as Mr. Whitelaw's son; and you have been. He never said anything about your being Mrs. Whitelaw's son. This is a case in which it's the father that counts specially."

"But I couldn't take any of his money beyond what I earned."

"Oh, but that wouldn't make any difference."

They crossed the Avenue and entered the Park. They entered the Park because it was the obvious place in which to look for a little privacy. All the gay sweet life of the May afternoon was at its brightest. Riders were cantering up and down the bridle-path; friends were strolling; children were playing; birds were flying with bits of string or straw for the building of their nests. To Tom and Hildred the gladness was thrown out by the deeper gladness in themselves.

"But you don't know how poor we'll be."

"Oh, don't I? Where do you think I keep my eyes? Why, I expect to be poor when I marry--for a while at any rate. I expect to do my own housework, like most of the young married women I know."

"Oh, but you've always talked so much about servants."

"Yes, dear Tom, but that was to be on a desert island where we were to be all alone. We shan't find that island except in our hearts."

"But even without the island, I always supposed that when a girl like you got married she...."

"She began with an establishment on the scale of ours in Louisburg Square, at the least. Yes, that used to be the way, twenty or thirty years ago. But I'm sorry to say it isn't so any longer. Talk about revolution! We've got revolution as it is. With rents and wages as they are, and all the other expenses, why, a young couple must begin with the simple life, or stay single. I'd rather begin with the simple life, and I know more about it than you think."

He laughed. "So I see."

"Oh, I can cook and sew and make beds and wash dishes...."

They sauntered on, without noticing where they were going, till they came to a dell, where in the shade of an elm there was a seat, and another near a heart-shaped clump of lilacs, all in bloom. They sat in the shade of the elm. They were practical young lovers, and yet they were young lovers. They were lovers for whom there had never been any lovers but themselves. The wonderful thing was that each felt what the other felt; the discoveries by which they had come to the knowledge of this fact were the first that had ever been made.

"Oh, Tom, do you feel like that? Why, that's just the way I feel."

"Is it, Hildred? Well, it shows we were made for each other, doesn't it, because I never thought that anyone felt like that but me?"

"Well, no one ever did but me. Only Tom, dear, tell me when it was that you first began to fall in love with me."

"It was the night--a winter's night--five, six, seven years ago--when I found Guy in a mix-up with a lot of hoodlums in the snow."

"And you brought him home. That was the first time you ever saw me."

"Yes, it was the first time I ever saw you that I began...."

"And I began then, too. Since that evening, there's never been anybody else. Oh, Tom, was there ever anybody else with you?"

Tom thought of Maisie. "Not--not really."

"Well, unreally then?"

As he made his confession she listened eagerly. "Yes, that _was_ unreally. And you never heard anything more about her?"

"Oh, yes. When I was in Boston a few weeks ago I went to see her aunt. She told me that Maisie had been married for the last two years to a traveling salesman she'd been in love with for a long time, and that she had a baby."

The thought of Maisie brought back the thought of Honey; and the thought of Honey woke him to the fact that he had been on this spot before.

"Why--why, Hildred! This is the very bench on which Miss Nash and the other nurse were sitting--"

"When you were stolen?"

"When somebody was stolen." He looked round him. "And there's Miss Nash over there!"

On the bench near the lilacs Miss Nash was seated with a book.

"We ought to go and speak to her," Hildred suggested.

Miss Nash received them with her beatific look. "I saw you leave the house. I thought you'd come here. I followed you. I had something to do, something I swore to God I'd do the day my little boy came back. I'd--" She held up a novel of which the open pages were already yellowing--"I'd finish this. _Juliet Allingham's Sin_ is the name of it. I was just at the scene where the lover drowns when my little boy was taken. I've never opened the book since; but I've kept it by me." She rose, weeping. "Now I can finish it--but I'll go home."

Sitting down on the seat she had left free for them, they began to talk of the scene of the afternoon, which as yet they had avoided.

"I hope I didn't hurt their feelings."

"They didn't mind hurting yours."

"They didn't mean to. They thought they were generous."

"Which only shows...."

"But _he's_ all right. Hildred, he's a big man."

"And you really think he's your father, Tom?"

"I know he is. Everything makes me sure of it."

"Well, then, if he's your father, she must be your mother."

"Yes, but I don't go that far. It isn't what must be that I think about; it's what _is_."

She persisted in her logic. "And Tad and Lily must be your brother and sister."

"They can be what they like. I don't care anything about them."

"It's only your mother that you don't...."

He got up, restlessly. It was easier to reconstruct the scene which Honey had described to him than to let her bring what she was saying too sharply to a point.

"It was over here that the baby carriage stood, right in the heart of this little clump." She followed him into it. "Miss Nash and the other nurse were over there, where we were sitting first. And right here, just where I'm standing, the queer thing must have happened."

"Are you sorry it happened, Tom?"

"You mean, if it actually happened to me. Why, no; and yet--yes. I can't tell. I'm sorry not to have grown up with--with my father. And yet if I had, I should have missed--all the other things--Honey--and perhaps you."

"Oh, you couldn't have missed me, I couldn't have missed you. We might not have met in the way we did meet, but we'd have met."

He hardly heard her last words, because he was staring off along the path by which they themselves had come down. His tone was puzzled, scarcely more than a whisper.

"Hildred, look!"

"Why, it's Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw. She's changed her dress. How young she looks with that kind of flowered hat. I remember now. They always come here on the tenth of May. They've been here already this morning. Lily told me so. I know what it is. They're looking for you. Miss Nash has told them where we are. I'm going to run."

"Don't run far," he begged of her. "I can't imagine what's up."

He stood where he was, watching their advance. It was not his place to go forward, since he wasn't sure that he was wanted. He only thought he must be when, as they reached the bench beneath the elm, Whitelaw pointed him out and let his wife go on alone.

She came on in the hurried way in which she did everything, her great eyes brimming, as they often were, with unshed tears. At the entrance among the lilacs she held out both her hands, their diamonds upward, as if he was to kiss them. He took the hands, but lightly, barely touching them, keeping on his guard.

"Harry!" The staccato sentences came out as little breathless cries torn from a heart that tried to keep them back. "Harry! You--you needn't--love me--or be my son--or live with us--unless--unless you like--but I want you to--to let me kiss you--just once--the way--the way your other--mother--used to."