He nodded. "It would be impossible; people must never suspect--" He stopped through sheer shame at the thought of all the years he had hidden behind this small, scared-looking woman, who had had no place to hide from a ridiculous but pursuing suspicion.
When he got back to Philadelphia and told his wife about the boy, he said, "Some of those old cats in Old Chester actually thought he was--her own child."
"What!"
"Fools. But, Mary, she never betrayed us--that little old woman! She never told the truth."
"She never knew it was said."
"G.o.d knows, I hope she didn"t. . . . We ought to have kept him."
"Carl! You know we couldn"t; it would have been impossible!"
"Well, we cared more for our reputations than for our--son," he said.
For a moment that poignant word startled Mary into silence; then she said, breathlessly: "But, Carl, that isn"t common sense! What about--the boy himself? Would it have been a good thing for him that people should know?"
"It might have been a good thing for us," he said; "and it couldn"t be any worse for him than it is. Everybody thinks he"s illegitimate." He paused, and then he said a really profound thing--for a fat, selfish man. "Mary, I believe there isn"t any _real_ welfare that"s built on a lie. If it was to do over again I"d stand up to my own cussed folly."
"You don"t seem to consider me!" she said, bitterly.
But he only said, slowly, "He"s the finest little chap you ever saw."
"Pretty?" she said, forgetting her bitterness.
"Oh, he"s a boy, a real boy. Freckled. And when he"s mad he shows his teeth, just as your father used to; I saw him in a fight. No; of course he"s not "pretty.""
"I"d like to see him--if I wasn"t afraid to," she said. She was thirty-four now, a sad, idle, rich woman, with only three interests in life: eating and shopping and keeping the Secret which made her cringe whenever she thought of it, which, since the night she heard Johnny laugh, was pretty much all the time. It was the shopping interest that by and by united with the interest of the Secret; it occurred to her that she might give "him" something. She would buy him a pair of skates!
"But you must send them to him, Carl."
"Why don"t you do it yourself?"
"It would look queer. People might--think."
"Well, they "thought" about that poor little woman."
"Idiots! She"s a hundred years old!" Mary said, jealously.
"She wasn"t when he was born," her husband said, wearily. He probably loved his wife, but since that day when she had flung away the lure of mystery, her mind had ceased to interest him. This was cruel and unjust, but it was male human nature.
"Why don"t you get acquainted with the youngster?" Carl said, yawning.
"_Carl!_ You know it wouldn"t do. Besides, how could I?"
"We could take the house ourselves next summer. There"s some furniture in it still. It would come about naturally enough. And he would be at our gates."
"Oh no--_no_! Maybe he looks like me."
"No, he doesn"t. Didn"t I tell you he isn"t particularly good-looking?"
"Maybe he looks like you?" she objected, simply.
And he laughed, and said, "Thank you, my dear!"
But Mary didn"t laugh. She got up and stood staring out of the window into the rainy street; "You send him the skates," she said; "you"ve seen him, so it wouldn"t seem queer."
The skates were sent, and Johnny"s mother was eager to see Johnny"s smudgy and laborious letter acknowledging "Mr. Robertson"s kind present."
"That"s a very nice little letter!" she said; "he must be clever, like you. I"ll buy some books for him."
That was in January. By April Johnny and his books and his multiplication table and his freckles were almost constantly in her mind. It was about the middle of April that she said to her husband:
"If you haven"t a tenant, I suppose we might open father"s house for a month? Perhaps being there would be better than--giving presents? If I saw him just once I shouldn"t want to give him things."
"I"m afraid you"d want to more than ever," he demurred, which, of course, made her protest:
"Oh no, I shouldn"t! Do let"s do it!"
"Well," he conceded, in triumphant reluctance--for it was what he had wanted her to say--"if you insist. But I don"t believe you"ll like it."
So that was how it happened that the weatherworn "For Sale or To Let"
sign was taken down, and the rusty iron gates were opened, and the weedy graveled driveway made clean and tidy as it used to be in Johnny"s grandfather"s time. Johnny himself was immensely interested in all that went on in the way of renovation, and in the beautiful horses that came down before Mr. and Mrs. Robertson arrived.
"Aunty, they must be pretty rich," he said.
"They are," said Miss Lydia.
"I guess if they had a boy they"d give him a pony," Johnny said, sighing.
"Very likely," Miss Lydia told him. And she, too, watched the opening up of the big house with her frightened blue eyes.
"Lydia, you"re losing flesh," Mrs. Barkley said in an anxious ba.s.s.
Indeed, all Old Chester was anxious about Miss Sampson"s looks that summer. "What _is_ the matter?" said Old Chester.
But Miss Lydia, although she really did grow thin, never said what was the matter.
"I do dislike secretiveness!" said Mrs. Drayton; "I call it vulgar."
"I wonder what she calls curiosity?" Doctor Lavendar said when this remark was repeated to him.
Miss Lydia may have been vulgar, but her vulgarity did not save her from terror. When Mary drove past the little house, the Gra.s.shopper"s heart was in her mouth! Would Johnny"s mother stop?--or would Mrs. Robertson go by? There came, of course, the inevitable day when the mother stopped. . . . It was in June, a day of white clouds racing in a blue sky, and tree tops bending and swaying and locust blossoms showering on the gra.s.s. Johnny was engaged in trying to lure his cat out of a pear tree, into which a dog had chased her.
"Stop!" Mary Robertson called to the coachman; then, leaning forward, she tried to speak. Her breath came with a gasp. "Are you the--the boy who lives with Miss Sampson?"
"Yes"m," Johnny said. "Kitty, Kitty!" Then he called: "Say, Aunty! Let"s try her with milk!"
Miss Lydia, coming to the door with a saucer of milk, stood for a paralyzed moment, then she said, "How do you do, Mary?"
"You haven"t forgotten me?" Mrs. Robertson said.