Chapter 13

My heart dropped when I saw what a family party air we had. I felt it to my finger-tips, and I could see that the lad writhed under it. His expression changed from misery to mutiny. I should not have been surprised if he had made one plunge into the roaring current of Broadway and sunk from sight forever. The thing that troubled me most was the poor taste of it: as if the whole family had congregated in the metropolis to capture that unhappy boy. For the first time I began to feel some sympathy for him.

“Mr. Goward,” I said, abruptly, in a voice too low even for Aunt Elizabeth to hear, “nobody wishes to make you uncomfortable. We are not here for any such purpose. I have something in my pocket to show you; that is all. It will interest you, I am sure. As soon as we get to the hotel, if you don't mind, I will tell you about it--or, in fact, will give it to you. Count the rest out. They are not in the secret.”

“I feel like a convict arrested by plainclothes men,” complained Harry, glancing before and behind.

“You won't,” I said, “when you have talked to me five minutes.”

“Sha'n't I?” he asked, dully. He said nothing more, and we pursued our way to the hotel in silence. Elizabeth Talbert and Dr. Denbigh talked enough to make up for us.

Aunt Elizabeth made herself so charming, so acutely charming, that I heard the boy draw one quick, sharp breath. But his eyes followed her more sullenly than tenderly, and when she clung to the doctor's arm upon a muddy crossing the young man turned to me with a sad, whimsical smile.

“It doesn't seem to make much difference--does it, Mrs. Price? She treats us all alike.”

There is the prettiest little writing-room in “The Happy Family,” all blue and mahogany and quiet. This place was deserted, and thither I betook myself with Harry Goward, and there he began as soon as we were alone:

“Well, what is it, Mrs. Price?”

“Nothing but this,” I said, gently enough. “I have taken it upon myself to solve a mystery that has caused a good deal of confusion in our family.”

Without warning I took the muddy letter from my pocket, and slid it under his eyes upon the big blue blotter.

“I don't wish to be intrusive or strenuous,” I pleaded, “none of us wishes to be that. Nobody is here to call you to account, Mr. Goward, but you see this letter. It was received at our house in the condition in which you find it. Would you be so kind as to supply the missing address? That is all I want of you.”

The boy's complexion ran through the palette, and subsided from a dull Indian-red to a sickly Nile-green. “Hasn't she ever read it?” he demanded.

“Nobody has ever read it,” I said. “Naturally--since it is not addressed. This letter went fishing with Billy.”

The young man took the letter and examined it in trembling silence.

Perhaps if Fate ever broke him on her wheel it was at that moment. His destiny was still in his own hands, and so was the letter. Unaddressed, it was his personal property. He could retain it if he chose, and the family mystery would darken into deeper gloom than ever. I felt my comfortable, commonplace heart beat rapidly.

Our silence had passed the point of discomfort, and was fast reaching that of anguish, when the boy lifted his head manfully, dipped one of “The Happy Family's” new pens into a stately ink-bottle, and rapidly filled in the missing address upon the unfortunate letter. He handed it to me without a word. My eyes blurred when I read:

“Personal. Miss Peggy Talbert, Eastridge. (Kindness of Miss Alice Talbert.)”

“What shall I do with it?” I asked, controlling my agitation.

“Deliver it to her, if you please, as quickly as possible. I thought of everything else. I never thought of this.”

“Never thought of--”

“That she might not have got it.”

“Now then, Mr. Goward,” I ventured, still speaking very gently, “do you mind telling me what you took that 5.40 train for?”

“Why, because I didn't get an answer from the letter!” exclaimed Harry, raising his voice for the first time. “A man doesn't write a letter such as that more than once in a lifetime. It was a very important letter. I told her everything. I explained everything. I felt I ought to have a hearing. If she wanted to throw me over (I don't deny she had the right to) I would rather she had taken some other way than--than to ignore such a letter. I waited for an answer to that letter until quarter-past five. I just caught the 5.40 train and went to my aunt's house, the one--you know my uncle died the other day--I have been there ever since. By-the-way, Mrs. Price, if anything else comes up, and if you have any messages for me, I shall be greatly obliged if you will take my address.”

He handed me his card with an up-town street and number, and I snapped it into the inner pocket of my wallet.

“Do you think,” demanded Harry Goward, outright, “that she will ever forgive me, REALLY forgive me?”

“That is for you to find out,” I answered, smiling comfortably; for I could not possibly have Harry think that any of us--even an unpopular elder sister--could be there to fling Peggy at the young man's head. “That is between you and Peggy.”

“When shall you get home with that letter?” demanded Harry.

“Ask my husband. At a guess, I should say tomorrow.”

“Perhaps I had better wait until she has read the letter,” mused the boy. “Don't you think so, Mrs. Price?”

“I don't think anything about it. I will not take any responsibility about it. I have got the letter officially addressed, and there my errand ends.”

“You see, I want to do the best thing,” urged Harry Goward. “And so much has happened since I wrote that letter--and when you come to think that she has never read it--”

“I will mail it to her,” I said, suddenly. “I will enclose it with a line and get it off by special delivery this noon.”

“It might not reach her,” suggested Harry, pessimistically. “Everything seems to go wrong in this affair.”

“Would you prefer to send it yourself?” I asked.

Harry Goward shook his head.

“I would rather wait till she has read it. I feel, under the circumstances, that I owe that to her.”

Now, at that critical moment, a wide figure darkened the entrance of the writing-room, and, plumping down solidly at another table, spread out a fat, ring-laden hand and began to write a laborious letter. It was the lady with the three chins. But the girl with the poodle did not put in an appearance. I learned afterward that the dog rule of “The Happy Family” admitted of no permits.

Harry Goward and I parted abruptly but pleasantly, and he earnestly requested the privilege of being permitted to call upon me to-morrow morning.

I mailed the letter to Peggy by special delivery, and just now I asked Tom if he didn't think it was wise.

“I can tell you better, my dear, day after tomorrow,” he replied. And that was all I could get out of him.

“The Happy Family.”--It is day after tomorrow, and Tom and I are going to take the noon train home. Our purpose, or at least my purpose, to this effect has been confirmed, if not created, by the following circumstances:

Yesterday, a few hours after I had parted from Harry Goward in the blue writing-room of “The Happy Family,” Tom received from father a telegram which ran like this:

“Off for Washington--that Gooch business. Shall take Peggy. Child needs change. Will stop over from Colonial Express and lunch Happy Family. Explicitly request no outsider present. Can't have appearance of false position. Shall take her directly out of New York, after luncheon. Cyrus Talbert.”

Torn between filial duty and sisterly affection, I sat twirling this telegram between my troubled fingers. Tom had dashed it there and blown off somewhere, leaving me, as he usually does, to make my own decisions. Should I tell Harry? Should I not tell Harry? Was it my right? Was it not his due? I vibrated between these inexorable questions, but, like the pendulum I was, I struck no answer anywhere. I had half made up my mind to let matters take their own course. If Goward should happen to call on me when Peggy, flying through New York beneath her father's stalwart wing, alighted for the instant at “The Happy Family”--was I to blame? Could _I_ be held responsible? It struck me that I could not. On the other hand, father could not be more determined than I that Peggy should not be put into the apparent position of pursuing an irresolute, however repentant, lover.... I was still debating the question as conscientiously and philosophically as I knew how, when the bell-boy brought me a note despatched by a district messenger, and therefore constitutionally delayed upon the way.

The letter was from my little sister's fiance, and briefly said:

“My dear Mrs. Price,--I cannot tell you how I thank you for your sisterly sympathy and womanly good sense. You have cleared away a lot of fog out of my mind. I don't feel that I can wait an unnecessary hour before I see Peggy. I should like to be with her as soon as the letter is. If you will allow me to postpone my appointment with yourself, I shall start for Eastridge by the first train I can catch to-day.

“Gratefully yours,

“Henry T. Goward.”

IX. THE MOTHER, by Edith Wyatt

I am sure that I shall surprise no mother of a large family when I say that this hour is the first one I have spent alone for thirty years. I count it, alone. For while I am driving back in the runabout along the six miles of leafy road between the hospital and Eastridge with mother beside me, she is sound asleep under the protection of her little hinged black sunshade, still held upright. She will sleep until we are at home; and, after our anxious morning at the hospital, I am most grateful to the fortune sending me this lucid interval, not only for thinking over what has occurred in the last three days, but also for trying to focus clearly for myself what has happened in the last week, since Elizabeth went on the 5.40 to New York; since Charles followed Elizabeth; since Maria, under Dr. Denbigh's mysteriously required escort, followed Charles; since Tom followed Maria; and since Cyrus, with my dear girl, followed Tom.

On the warm afternoon before Elizabeth left, as I walked past her open door, with Lena, and carrying an egg-nog to Peggy, I could not avoid hearing down the whole length of the hall a conversation carried on in clear, absorbed tones, between my sister and Alice.

“Did I understand you to say,” said Elizabeth, in an assumption of indifference too elaborate, I think, to deceive even her niece, “that this Mr. Wilde you mention is now living in New York?”

“Oh yes. He conducts all the art-classes at the Crafts Settlement. He encouraged Lorraine's sisters in their wonderful work. I would love to go into it myself.”

Lorraine's sisters and her circle once entertained me at tea in their establishment when I visited Charles before his marriage, in New York. They are extremely kind young women, ladies in every respect, who have a workshop called “At the Sign of the Three-legged Stool.” They seem to be carpenters, as nearly as I can tell. They wear fillets and bright, loose clothes; and they make very rough-hewn burnt-wood footstools and odd settees with pieces of glass set about in them. It is all very puzzling. When Charles showed me a candlestick one of the young ladies had made, and talked to me about the decoration and the line, I could see that it was very gracefully designed and nicely put together. But when he noticed that in the wish to be perfectly open-minded to his point of view I was looking very attentively at a queer, uneven wrought-iron brooch with two little pendant polished granite rocks, he only laughed and put his hand on my shawl a minute and brought me more tea.

So that I could understand something of what Alice was mentioning as she went on: “You know Lorraine says that, though not the most PROMINENT, Lyman Wilde is the most RADICAL and TEMPERAMENTAL leader in the great handicraft development in this country. Even most of the persons in favor of it consider that he goes too far. She says, for instance, he is so opposed to machines of all sorts that he thinks it would be better to abolish printing and return to script. He has started what they call a little movement of the kind now, and is training two young scriveners.”

Elizabeth was shaking her head reflectively as I passed the door, and saying: “Ah--no compromise. And always, ALWAYS the love of beauty.” And I heard her advising Alice never, never to be one of the foolish women and men who hurt themselves by dreaming of beauty or happiness in their narrow little lives; repeating sagely that this dream was even worse for the women than for the men; and asked whether Alice supposed the Crafts Settlement address wouldn't probably be in the New York telephone-book. Alice seemed to be spending a very gratifying afternoon.

My sister Elizabeth's strongest instinct from her early youth has been the passion inspiring the famous Captain Parklebury Todd, so often quoted by Alice and Billy: “I do not think I ever knew a character so given to creating a sensation. Or p'r'aps I should in justice say, to what, in an Adelphi play, is known as situation.” Never has she gratified her taste in this respect more fully than she did--as I believe quite accidentally and on the inspiration of these words with Alice--in taking the evening train to New York with Mr. Goward.

Twenty or thirty people at the station saw them starting away together, each attempting to avoid recognition, each in the pretence of avoiding the other, each with excited manners. So that, as both Peggy and Elizabeth have been born and brought up here; as, during Mr. Goward's conspicuous absence and silence, during Peggy's illness, and all our trying uncertainties and hers, in the last weeks, my sister had widely flung to town talk many tacit insinuations concerning the character of Mr. Goward's interest in herself; as none of the twenty or thirty people were mute beyond their kind; and as Elizabeth's nature has never inspired high neighborly confidence--before night a rumor had spread like the wind that Margaret Talbert's lover had eloped with her aunt.

Billy heard the other children talking of this news and hushing themselves when he came up. Tom learned of the occurrence by a telephone, and, after supper, told Cyrus and myself; Maria was informed of it by telephone through an old friend who thought Maria should know of what every one was saying. Lorraine, walking to the office to meet Charles, was overtaken on the street by Mrs. Temple, greatly concerned for us and for Peggy, and learned the strange story from our sympathetic neighbor, to repeat it to Charles. At ten o'clock there was only one person in the house, perhaps in Eastridge, who was ignorant of our daughter's singular fortune. That person was our dear girl herself.

Since my own intelligence of the report I had not left her alone with anybody else for a moment; and now I was standing in the hall watching her start safely up-stairs, when to our surprise the front-door latch clicked suddenly; she turned on the stairs; the door opened, and we both faced Charles. From the first still glances he and I gave each other he knew she hadn't heard. Then he said quietly that he had wished to see Peggy for a moment before she went to sleep. He bade me a very confiding and responsible good-night, and went out with her to the garden where they used to play constantly together when they were children.

Up-stairs, unable to lie down till she came back, I put on a little cambric sack and sat by the window waiting till I should hear her foot on the stairs again. “Charles is telling her,” I said to Cyrus. He was walking up and down the room, dumb with impatience and disgust, too pained for Peggy, too tried by his own helplessness to rest or even to sit still. In a way it has all been harder for him than for any one else. His impulses are stronger and deeper than my dear girl's, and far less cool. She is very especially precious to him; and, whether because she looks so like him, or because he thinks her ways like my own, her youth and her fortune have always been at once a more anxious and a more lovely concern with him than any one else's on earth. She is, somehow, our future to him.

While we waited here in this anxiety up-stairs, down in the garden I could hear not the words, but the tones of our children as they spoke together. Charles's voice sounded first for a long time, with an air of calmness and directness; and Peggy answered him at intervals of listening, answered apparently less with surprise at what he told her than in a quiet acceptance, with a little throb of control, and then in accord with him. Then it was as though they were planning together.

In the still village night their voices sounded very tranquil; after a little while, even buoyant. Peggy laughed once or twice. Little by little a breath of relief blew over both her father's solicitude and mine. It was partly from the coolness and freshness of the out-door air, and the half-unconscious sense it often brings, that beyond whatever care is close beside you at the instant there is--and especially for the young--so much else in all creation. Then, for me, there was a deep comfort in the knowledge that in this time of need my children had each other; that they could speak so together, in an intimate sympathy, and were, not only superficially in name, but really and beautifully, a brother and sister.

At last, as they parted at the gate, Charles said, in a spirited, downright tone: “Stick to that, cling to it, make it your answer to everything. It's all you now know and all you need to know, and you'll be as firm on it as on a rock.”

The lamplight from the street filtering through the elm leaves glimmered on Peggy's bright hair as she looked up at him. Her eyelashes were wet, but she was laughing as she said: “But, of course, I HAVE to cling to it. It's the truth. Good-night! Good-night!” And her step on the stairs was light and even skipping.

On the next morning, when I knocked at her door to find whether she would rather breakfast up-stairs, I saw at once she had slept. She stood before the mirror fastening her belt ribbon, and looking so lovely it seemed impossible misfortune should ever touch her.

“Why, mother dear, you aren't dressed for the library-board meeting! Isn't that this morning?”

“Yes.”

She looked at me with her little, sweet, quick smile, and we sat down for a moment on her couch together, each with a sense that neither would say one word too sharply pressing.

“Dear mother, why NOT go to the board meeting? You don't need to protect me so. You CAN'T protect me every minute. You see, of course, last night Charles--told me of what everybody thinks.” Her voice throbbed again. She stopped for a minute. “But for weeks and weeks I had felt something like this coming toward me. And now that it's come,” she went on, bravely, “we can only just do as we always have done--and not make any difference--can we?”

“Except that I feel I must be here, because we can't know from minute to minute what may come up.”

“You feel you can't leave me, mother. But you can. I want to see whoever comes, just as usual. I'd have to at some time, you know, at any rate. And I mean to do it now--until I go away out of Eastridge. Charles is going to arrange that so very wonderfully. He has gone to New York now to see about it.”

“He has, my dear?” I said, in some surprise.

“Yes. And, mother, about--about what's over,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Oh, just--just it couldn't all have happened in this way if”--she spoke in quite a clear, soft voice, looking straight into my eyes, with one of her quick turns--“he were a real MAN--anybody I could think of as being my husband. It was just that I didn't truly know him. That was all.”

We held each other's hands fast for one moment of perfect understanding before we rose.

“Then I'll go, dear, this morning, just as you like,” I said. She came into my room and fastened my cuff-pins for me. “Why, mother, I don't believe you and your little duchesse cuffs and your little, fine, gold watch-chain have ever been away from the chair of the library committee at a board meeting for twenty years! Just think what a sensation you were going to make if I hadn't interfered! There, how nice you look!”

The weather was so inclement during my absence that I felt quite secure concerning all intrusion for her. At noon the storm rose high, with a close-timed thunder and lightning; the Episcopal church spire was struck; two trees were blown over in the square; and, instead of ordering Dan and the horses out in this tumult, I dined with a board member living next the library, and drove home at three o'clock when the violence of the gale had abated.

The house was perfectly still when I reached it. The children were at school; Cyrus, at the factory; mother, napping, with her door closed. In her own room up-stairs, in the middle of the house, Peggy sat alone, in a loose wrapper, with her hair flying over her shoulders. An open book lay unnoticed in her lap. Her face was white and tear-stained, and her eyes looked wild and ill.

As her glance fell on me I saw her need of me, and hurried in to close the door. “Oh, mother; mother!” she moaned. “Such a morning! It's all come back--all I fought against--all I was conquering. What does it mean? What does it mean?”

“What has happened? Who has been here?”

“Maria--sneering at Charles's ideas, asking me questions, petting me and pitying me and making a baby of me, until I broke down at last and wanted all the things she wanted to have done, and let her kiss me good-bye for her kindness in doing them--”

In a passion of tears she walked up and down, up and down the room, as her father does, except with that quick, nervous grace she always has, and in a painful, sobbing excitement.

Every sense I had was for an instant's passage fused in one clear, concentrated anger against a sister who could play so ruthlessly upon my poor child's woman pulses and emotions, so disarm her of her self-control and right free spirit.

“Why did she come?” I said, at last, with the best calmness I could muster. Peggy stood still for a moment, startled by a coldness in my voice I couldn't alter.

“She came to find out about things for herself. Then when she did find out about Charles's way of helping us she simply hated it--and she sent me after--after the letter you had. I got it from your desk, and Maria took it to find out its real address.”

At that she sank again in a chair, and buried her face in her hands, hardly knowing what she was saying. “Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?” she repeated, softly and wildly. “Yesterday I could behave so well by what I knew was true about him. Then, when Maria came and spoke as though I was three years old, and hadn't any understanding nor any dignity of my own, and the best thing for any girl, at any rate, were to cling to the man she loved as though she were his mother and he were her dear, erring child” (she began to laugh a little), “the feebler he were the more credit to her for her devotion--then I couldn't go on by what I knew was true about him--only back, back again to all my--old mistake.” She was laughing and crying now with little, quick gasps, in a sheer hysteria which no doubt would have given her sister entire satisfaction as a manifesto of her normal womanliness.