An Old Chester Secret Part 6

Then there'd have been no fuss about my grandson."

"_Grandson?_" said Doctor King, in a whisper to Mrs. Robertson. And she whispered back, "He is wandering."

When Mary's husband arrived for the funeral and for the reading of the will (in which there was nothing "handsome" for Johnny!) the doctor told him of the new Mr. Smith's last words; and Mr. Robertson said, hurriedly, "Delirious, of course."

"I suppose so," said Doctor King.

But when he walked home with Doctor Lavendar, after the funeral, he said, "Have you any idea who Johnny Smith belongs to, Doctor Lavendar?"

"Miss Lydia," said Doctor Lavendar, promptly.

To which William King replied, admiringly, "I have never understood how anybody _could_ look as innocent as you, and yet be so chock-full of other people's sins! Wonder if his mother will ever claim him?"

"Wonder if Miss Lydia would give him up if she did?" Doctor Lavendar said.

"She'd have to," William said.

"On the principle that a 'mother is a mother still, the holiest thing alive'?" Doctor Lavendar quoted.

"On the principle of ownership," said William King. "As to a mother being a 'holy thing,' I have never noticed that the mere process of child-bearing produces sanct.i.ty."

"William," said Doctor Lavendar, "Mrs. Drayton would say you were indelicate. Also, I believe you know that two and two make four?"

"I have a pretty good head for arithmetic," said William King, "but I only added things up a day or two ago."

CHAPTER IV

AFTER Mr. Smith's death the Robertsons stayed on in Old Chester to close the house. Mary hardly left it, even to walk in the garden behind the circling brick wall. But she sent her husband on innumerable errands into Old Chester, and when he came back she would say, "Did you see--_him_?"

And sometimes Johnny's father would say, "Yes."

"You didn't speak to him?" she would ask, in a panic.

"Of course not! But he's an attractive boy." Once he added, "Why don't you go and call on Miss Lydia--and see him yourself?"

She caught her soft hands together in terror. "Go to Miss Lydia's? I?

Oh, I couldn't! Oh, Carl, don't you see--_I might like him_!"

"You couldn't help it if you saw him."

"That's just it! I don't want to like him. Nothing would induce me to see him."

Yet there came a moment when the urge of maternity was greater than the instinct of secrecy, greater even than the fear of awakening in herself that "liking" which would inevitably mean pain. She and Johnny's father were to leave Old Chester the next day; for a week she had been counting the hours until they would start, and she could turn her back on this gnawing temptation! But when that last day came, she vacillated: "I'll just walk down and look at Miss Lydia's; he might be going in or coming out. . . . No! I won't; he might see me, and think-- . . . I must--I must. . . . Oh, I _can't_, I won't!" Yet in the late afternoon she slipped out of the house and went stealthily down the carriage road, and, standing in the shadow of one of the great stone gateposts, stared over at Miss Lydia's open door. As she stood there she heard a sound.

Her heart leaped--and fell, shuddering. Just once in her life had she felt that elemental pang; it was when another sound, the little, thin cry of birth pierced her ears. Now the sound was of laughter, the shrill, cracking laughter of an adolescent boy. She crept back to the big house, so exhausted that she said to old Alfred, "Tell Mr.

Robertson that I have a headache, and am lying down."

Later, when her husband, full of concern at her discomfort, came upstairs to sit on the edge of her bed and ask her how she felt, she told him what had happened.

"I wouldn't see him for anything," she said, gasping; "even his voice just about killed me! Oh, Carl, suppose I were to like him? Oh, what shall I do?--_I don't want to like him._"

"Why, my dear, it would be all right if you did," he tried to rea.s.sure her. "There's no reason why you shouldn't see him once in a while--and like him, too. _I_ like him, though I haven't spoken to him. But I'm going to."

"Oh, Carl, don't--" she besought him.

But he said: "Don't worry. You know I would never do anything rash."

And the next day he stopped boldly at Miss Lydia's door, and talked about the weather, and gave Johnny a dollar.

"Go downstreet and buy something," he said.

And Johnny said, "Thank you, sir!" and went off, whistling.

"He's a promising boy," Mr. Robertson said, in a low voice.

Miss Lydia was extremely nervous during this five minutes. She had been nervous during the weeks that Mary and Carl were up there in the big house. Suppose they should see just how "promising" Johnny was--and want him?--and say they would take him? Then she would rea.s.sure herself: "They can only take their son--and they don't want _him_!" Yet she was infinitely relieved when, the next day, the Smith house was finally closed and the "For Sale or To Let" sign put up on the iron gates that shut the graveled driveway from Old Chester's highroad.

"They'll sell the house and never come back," she told herself. And indeed Johnny was a year older, a year more plucky and high-tempered and affectionate, before Miss Lydia had any further cause for uneasiness.

Then, suddenly, Mr. Carl Robertson appeared in town; he came, he said, to make sure that the still unsold Smith house was not getting dilapidated. While he was looking it over he took occasion to tell several people that that boy who lived with the old lady in the house by the gate was an attractive youngster.

"I suppose," said Mr. Robertson, "Mary ought to sell that house to settle the estate, but she says she won't turn the old lady out. The little beggar she takes care of seems a nice little chap." Then he said, casually, "Who were his father and mother?"

"That's what n.o.body knows," some one said; then added, significantly, "Lydia is very secretive." And some one else said, "There _is_ a suspicion that the child is her own."

"Her _own_?" Carl Robertson gaped, open-mouthed. And when he turned his back on this particular gossip his face was darkly red. "Somebody in this town needs a horse-whipping!" he told himself; "G.o.d forbid that Miss Sampson knows there are such fools in the world!" He was so angry and ashamed that his half-formed wish to do something for the child crystallized into purpose. But before he made any effort to carry his purpose out he discounted public opinion. "Nothing like truth to throw people off the track," he reflected. So, with the frankness which may be such a perfect screen for lack of candor, he put everybody he met off the track by saying he was going to give Miss Lydia a hand in bringing up that boy of hers.

"Very generous," said Mrs. Barkley, and told Old Chester that the fat Mr. Robertson was an agreeable person, and she did wonder why his father-in-law had not got along with him!

"The reason I spoke of it to Mrs. Barkley," Carl Robertson told Miss Lydia, "was that I knew she'd inform everybody in town. So that if, later on, I want to see the--the boy, once in a while, it won't set people gossiping."

It was the night before he was leaving Old Chester that he said this.

They were in Miss Lydia's parlor; the door was closed, for Johnny was in the dining room, doing his examples, one leg around the leg of his chair, his tongue out, and breathing heavily: "Farmer Jones sold ten bushels of wheat at--"

"I do want to see more of him," Mr. Robertson said; "and I want Mary to."

"Do you?" said Miss Lydia.

"Well, he's ours, and--"

"He's his father's and mother's," she conceded; "they would naturally want to see him."

"Yes," Carl Robertson said; "but of course we could never do more than that. We could never have him."

Miss Lydia felt her legs trembling, and she put her hands under her black silk ap.r.o.n lest they might tremble, too. "No," she agreed, "I suppose you couldn't."