An Old Chester Secret Part 11

"No," Robertson said, shortly.

"No one would know it but the boy himself. And if he knew it he'd let us adopt him. And that would mean taking his own name."

"No!" Carl broke out, "it won't do! You see, I--don't want him to know."

He paused, then seemed to pull the words out with a jerk: "I won't let him have any disrespect for his mother, and--" He got up and tramped about the room. "d.a.m.n it! _I_ don't want to lose his good opinion, myself."

Her face turned darkly red. "Oh," she cried, pa.s.sionately, "'opinion'!

What difference does his 'opinion' make to me? A mother is a mother. And I love him! Oh, I love him so, I could just _die_! If he would put his arms around me the way he does to that terrible Miss Lydia, and kiss me, and say"--she clenched her hands and closed her eyes, and whispered the word she hungered to hear--"'_Mother! Mother!_' If I could hear him say _that_," she said, "I could just lie down and die! Couldn't you?--to hear him say 'Father'?"

Robertson set his teeth. "And what kind of an idea would he have of his 'father'? No, I won't consent to it!"

"We can't get him in any other way," she urged.

"Then we'll never get him. I can't face it."

"You don't love him as much as I do!"

"I love him enough not to want to risk losing his respect."

But this sentiment was beyond Johnny's mother; all she thought of was her aching hunger for the careless, good-humored, but bored young man.

The hunger for him grew and grew; it gnawed at her day and night. She urged Carl to take a house in Princeton while Johnny was in college, and only Johnny's father's common sense kept this project from being carried out. "You're afraid!" she taunted him.

"Dear," he said, kindly, "I'm afraid of being an a.s.s. If he saw us tagging after him he'd hate us both. He's a man!" Carl said, proudly.

"No, I've no fancy for losing the regard of"--he paused--"my son," he said, very quietly.

His wife put her hand over her mouth and stared at him; the word was too great for her; it was her baby she thought of, not her son.

In Johnny's first vacation, when she had rushed to Old Chester in June to open the house, she was met by the information that he was going off for the summer on a geological expedition.

Mary's disappointment made her feel a little sick. "What _shall_ I do without you!"

"Oh, if Aunty can do without me, I guess outsiders can," said Johnny, with clumsy amiability.

"We'll be here when you get back in September," she said.

He yawned, and said, "All right." Then he strolled off, and she went upstairs and cried.

Johnny, walking home after this embarra.s.sing interview, striking at the roadside brambles with a switch and whistling loudly, said to himself: "How on earth did Mr. Robertson fall in love with her? _He's_ got brains." A day or two later he went off for his geological summer, leaving in his mother's heart that rankling word, "outsiders." As the weeks dragged along and she counted the days until he would be back, she brooded and brooded over it. It festered so deeply that she could not speak of it to Johnny's father. But once she said: "He's ungrateful! See all we've done for him!"--and Carl realized that bitterness toward Miss Lydia, who had "robbed" her, was extending to the boy himself. And again--it was in August, and Johnny was to be at home in a fortnight--she said, "He ought to be _made_ to come to us!"

Her husband looked at her in surprise. "You can't 'make' anybody love you, Mary. We are just outsiders to him."

She cried out so sharply that he was frightened, not knowing that he had turned a dagger-word in the wound.

Perhaps it was the intolerable pain of knowing that she was helpless that drove her one day, without Carl's knowledge, to the rectory. "I'll put it to Doctor Lavendar as--as somebody else's story--the trouble of a 'friend,' and maybe he can tell me how I can make Johnny feel that we are _not_ outsiders! Oh, he owes it to us to do what we want! I'll tell Doctor Lavendar that the father and mother lived out West and are friends of mine. . . . He'll never put two and two together."

She walked past the rectory twice before she could get her courage to the point of knocking. When she did, it was w.i.l.l.y King who opened the door.

"Oh--is Doctor Lavendar ill?" she said. And Doctor King answered, dryly, that when you are eighty-two you are not particularly well.

"I thought I'd just drop in and ask his advice on something--nothing important," said Johnny's mother, breathlessly. "I'll go away, and come some other time."

Upon which, from the open window overhead, came a voice: "I won't be wrapped up in cotton batting! Send Mary Robertson upstairs."

"Haven't I any rights?" w.i.l.l.y called back, good-naturedly, and Doctor Lavendar retorted:

"Maybe you have, but I have many wrongs. Come along, Mary."

She went up, saying to herself: "I'll not speak of it. I'll just say I've come to see him." She was so nervous when she entered the room that her breath caught in her throat and she could hardly say, "How do you do?"

The old man was in bed with a copy of _Robinson Crusoe_ on the table beside him. He held out a veined and trembling hand:

"William's keeping me alive so he can charge me for two calls a day.

Well, my dear, what can I do for you?"

Mrs. Robertson sat down in a big armchair and said, panting, that--that it was terribly hot.

Doctor Lavendar watched her from under his heavy, drooping eyelids.

"There was something I was going to ask you about," she said, "but it's no matter. Doctor King says you are sick."

"Don't believe all Doctor King tells you."

"I just wanted to get advice for--for somebody else. But it's no matter."

"Let's hear about the 'somebody else.'"

"They are not Old Chester people--so you won't mind if I don't name names?"

"Not in the least," said Doctor Lavendar, genially. "Call 'em Smith; that's a somewhat general t.i.tle."

"Oh--no, that's not their name," she said, panic-stricken--then saw that he had meant it as a joke, and said, trying to smile, yes, there _were_ a good many Smiths in the world! Then suddenly her misery rose like a wave, and swept her into words: "These people are terribly unhappy, at least the mother is, because--" She paused, stammered, felt she had gone too far, and stumbled into contradictions which could not have misled anyone, certainly not Doctor Lavendar. "They, these people, had let their child be adopted--oh, a great many years ago, because they--they were not so situated that they could bring him--it--up. But they could, now. And they wanted him, they wanted him--her, I mean," said Mary; "I believe it was a little girl. But the little girl didn't want to come back to them. And the person who had taken her influenced her against her parents, who had done _everything_ for her!--given her everything a child could want. It's cruel," said Mary. "Cruel! I know the parents, and--"

"Mary," said Doctor Lavendar, gently, "so do I."

She recoiled as if from a blow. "No--oh no! You are mistaken, sir. You couldn't know them. His--his relatives don't live here. They live in another city. You couldn't possibly know them!"

She was white with terror. What would Carl say? Oh, she must lie her way out of it! How mad she had been to come here and hint at things!

"I have known Johnny Smith's parentage for several years, Mary."

"I didn't say the child was Johnny Smith!"

"_I_ said so."

"I don't know what you're talking about! The father and mother lived out West, but _I_ don't know the child. He is nothing to me."

"I wonder," said Doctor Lavendar, half to himself, "do we all deny love thrice?--for you do love him, Mary, my dear; I know you do."