An Old Chester Secret Part 12

She tried, in panic denial, to meet his quiet eyes--then gave a little moan and bent over and hid her face on her knees.

"Oh, I do love him--I do," she said in a whisper. "But he doesn't love me. . . . And yet he is _mine_--Carl's and mine." Then anger flared up again: "Who told you? Oh, it was Miss Lydia, and she promised she wouldn't! How wicked in her!"

"No one told me." There was a moment's silence, then Doctor Lavendar said, "There were people in Old Chester who thought he was Miss Lydia's."

"Fools! fools!" she said, pa.s.sionately.

"No one came forward to deny it."

She did not notice this; the flood of despair and longing broke into entreaty; how could she get her child--her own child--who considered her just an outsider! "That's Miss Lydia's influence!" she said.

Doctor Lavendar listened, asked a question or two, and then was silent.

"I am dying for him!" she said; "oh, I am in agony for him!"

The old man looked at her with pitying keenness. Was this agony a spiritual birth or was it just the old selfishness which had never brooked denial? And if indeed it was a travail of the spirit, would not the soul be stillborn if her son's love should fail to sustain it? Yet why should Johnny love her? . . . Mary was talking and trying not to cry; her words were a fury of pain and protest:

"Miss Lydia won't give him up to people who haven't any claim upon him,--I mean any claim that is known. Of course we have a claim--the greatest! But Johnny doesn't know, so he won't consent to take our name--though it is our _right_! He doesn't know any reason for it. You see?"

"I see."

"I suppose if we told him the truth we could get him. But I'm afraid to tell him. Yet without telling him I can't make him love me! He said I was an 'outsider.' _I!_ his mother! But if he knew there was a reason--"

Doctor Lavendar looked out of the window into the yellowing leaves of the old jargonelle-pear tree, and shook his head. "Hearts don't come when Reason whistles to 'em," he said.

"Oh, if I could just hear him say 'mother'!"

"Why should he say 'mother'? You haven't been a mother to him."

"I've given him everything!"

Doctor Lavendar was silent.

"He _ought_ to come to us. He is ours; and he owes us--"

"Just what you've earned, Mary, just what you've earned. That's what children 'owe' their parents."

"Oh, what am I to do? What am I to do?"

"How much do you want him, Mary?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HEARTS DON'T ANSWER WHEN REASON WHISTLES TO THEM," HE SAID.]

She was stammering with sobs. "It's all I want--it's my life--"

"_Perhaps_ publicity would win him. He has a great respect for courage.

So perhaps--"

She cringed. "But that couldn't be! It couldn't be. Don't you understand?"

"Poor Mary!" said Doctor Lavendar. "Poor girl!"

"Doctor Lavendar, make him come to us. _You_ can do it. You can do anything!"

"Mary, neither you nor I nor anybody else can 'make' a harvest anything but the seed which has been sowed. My child, you sowed vanity and selfishness." . . . By and by he put his hand on hers and said: "Mary, wait. Wait till you love him more and yourself less."

It was dark when she went away.

When Doctor King came in in the evening he said to himself that Mary Robertson and the whole caboodle of 'em weren't worth the weariness in the wise old face.

"William," said Doctor Lavendar, "I hope there won't be any conundrums in heaven; I don't seem able to answer them any more." Then the whimsical fatigue vanished and he smiled. "Lately I've just said, 'Wait: G.o.d knows.' And stopped guessing."

But he didn't stop thinking.

CHAPTER VII

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."