The Heart of Arethusa Part 10

"You are."

"Why, Ross!"

"Well, I told you why I didn't go back home just at first, Elinor.

A sc.r.a.p of an infant who seemed to thoroughly dislike the sound of my voice, for as I remember it, she howled vociferously every time I went near her, was not much attraction. And then I just put off going back and kept putting it off, year after year. Now do you still wonder"--suddenly whimsical--"that I could forget all about her?"

"I never wonder at anything you do, Ross," replied his wife. Her tone was grave. "I gave that up a long time ago. But I would call your behaviour, in this instance, heartless; if I didn't know you well enough to know you wouldn't really be consciously harsh to a fly."

"Heartless!" he echoed.

"Yes, heartless!" she repeated firmly. "Your own child! And eighteen whole years! Oh, Ross!"

"But she's been well taken care of," he protested, though somewhat feebly.

"Very probably she has. But you're her father. I verily believe, Ross Worthington," she added suddenly, "that you haven't even told her you were going to be married!"

The pendulum of Ross's moods swung very rapidly, as rapidly as ever that of his daughter. The little softness aroused by the thought of Arethusa's mother had pa.s.sed, and now his eyes were full of unmistakable fun.

"No," he replied, "I will have to confess that I haven't. I didn't think she would be very much interested. And 'Where ignorance is bliss,' you know."

"Ross!"

"Oh, come now, Elinor, do make some allowances! You ought to be feeling flattered, instead of getting all up in the air about it. It shows such a complete absorption in you, I think. But I did mean to write, if it will make you feel any less convinced that I'm a hardened wretch with no natural affections. I've really never seen her, in a sense, and writing to a person you've never seen is.... Don't look so stern, Woman, I do write her often. I'll have you to know my daughter and I are very good friends."

"How often?" pursued Elinor, remorselessly.

"Once or twice, or maybe three times a year. I never make a point of counting letters with anyone. It seems so terribly small!"

Elinor shook her head helplessly. "Oh, Ross, Ross," she sighed. "Thank heaven, there's only one of you!"

"Yes," he answered, very placidly. "Thank heaven! I was never in the least ambitious to be a twin!"

And now it was the wife's turn to stare out at the sea and think of Arethusa.

She was even more vexed with Ross for this dreadful neglect of his daughter than she had shown him. Elinor had a very high ideal of parenthood. Her own happy childhood, with a father and mother who had included her as the third in all their pleasures and even in every day commonplaces, as naturally as they had included themselves, had given her no hazy picture of what a very beautiful thing such a relation could be. She could not understand how Ross could take the idea of his fatherhood so very indifferently. Surely he must love his child!

When Elinor loved, she gave royally of herself. If she spoiled the objects of her affection a bit, along with this giving, it was not a sort of spoiling that hurt. So now her heart went straight across the miles that still separated them and found Arethusa. That she was Ross's daughter was reason enough by itself, thought Ross's wife, to love her, had not the story of that blue-eyed girl who had died so long ago, also drawn Elinor's heart to the motherless baby the girl had left. And the motherless baby was grown!

Elinor could not help wondering how Arethusa would feel about her father's re-marriage; she was bound to have some ideas on such a subject. It was cruel of Ross to leave her so long in ignorance. He had been married over a month; six whole weeks in fact. He should have written to the Farm as soon as his marriage was a settled fact. But he would not have been Ross if he had. A slight smile flitted across Elinor's face at this thought of the consistency of the whole performance.

She felt as if it had devolved upon her to make all of this neglect up to Arethusa, and to love down the resentment, if there was any at all.

And so she could not know the girl a moment too soon.

"Ross, what were you going to do about Arethusa? Did you think of going down to see her when we got home?"

"I haven't had time to think very much about any of it yet. I had left her out of things altogether until just this afternoon, by forgetting about her. Why?"

"Well, then," Elinor's voice trembled slightly, "please let me write and ask her to come and see us, in Lewisburg. Away from the aunts. So we can get acquainted by ourselves. And.... And then.... Ross ... if she likes us, we can keep her with us and make three in the family."

"Does any one wonder," he murmured, apparently to the world at large, "that I love this woman as much as I do? Elinor, dearest, it is very plain to me that I am going to be very jealous of my own daughter."

"Do be serious, Ross."

"I am, never was more so in my life."

"You mean.... I may write her to come? You ought to write to her too,"

she was as eager as any girl. "And I shall send her the money for the trip. It will be my first gift to my new daughter."

"No," said Ross, very decidedly, to the end of this speech, "I can't let you do that."

And all the eagerness died out of Elinor's face.

"Oh, Ross, now please don't spoil it all by being a mule," she pleaded.

"We have so many of these disagreeable arguments about money, and it is so very foolish! Why can't I send Arethusa a little check without your behaving so!"

"Because I won't have you, that's why. Arethusa isn't your inc.u.mbrance, in any way. She's _my_ daughter, and I'm not such a pauper that I can't manage to support her, for I most certainly did not marry you to have you caring for my various relatives. You write your letter, and I'll enclose the check."

"You haven't been treating her very much as if she were your daughter."

The gentle Elinor could not help saying this and saying it quite sharply.

She so rarely let her temper slip for even the fraction of a moment, but Ross was always so horrid and obstinate about this question of money. He never seemed to realize her side of it; that one of the greatest joys of its possession was what she could do for him and others that she loved by means of it. To say that she should not have the very simple pleasure of sending a trifle of her abundance to Arethusa, was almost too much! The little thought had caused such a glow when it had come.

"I shall do just what I please with my own money," she continued, "and send every bit of it to Arethusa if I wish. You have no earthly right to forbid me any natural use of it."

But this money of his wife's was a thing about which Ross Worthington was almost foolishly sensitive. The fact that Elinor's monetary possession far exceeded his had kept him a great many months from asking her to marry him, when the most casual observer might have read his secret with the greatest ease. So enormous was the discrepancy between their quotas of this world's good that more than one spiteful minded person had intimated it had had something to do with his choice.

He knew this only too well, and the thought rankled. Elinor had so much; she could do so much; she could do so much more for herself than he could ever do for her that it was a great sore spot. They were to live in Elinor's house; ride about in Elinor's expensive automobile; be waited upon like royalty, as he phrased it, by Elinor's servants; they were even now, after a lengthy argument about it, traveling home with Elinor's wealth in a far more luxurious manner than he had ever been able to travel on his own money.

The most foolish sort of false pride considered this offer to send a check to Arethusa a sort of finishing straw. He would keep all expenditure for his daughter strictly for himself.

"I wish you would! I wish you would send it all to somebody! I wish to goodness you didn't have a cent of the money!" He rose, his jaw set savagely, and turned away. "I didn't marry you for it, though from the way you spend it on me I'm not at all surprised that a great many people say I did!"

And he was off down the deck in an almost blind rage. Arethusa's temper came not so much from the fact that her hair was red, as right straight from her father.

Elinor stared after him, too hurt to want to follow him, or to try to call him back. They had had many a heated discussion as to which portion of the expense she was to bear and what was to be left for him, but none had gone so far; never degenerated into as real a quarrel as this.

But Ross was too tempestuously moody to remain angry long. It needed only one turn of the deck for him to be back at her feet, ready to humble himself in the dirt in the abjectness of his apology.

The outcome of it was that Ross himself wrote a letter to enclose Elinor's check, that letter Arethusa had kissed under the hollow tree.

It required much persuasion on the part of his wife to keep him from describing the whole affair in detail, how abominably he had acted about the check, and how badly he had made her feel. It would make his abas.e.m.e.nt more complete and lasting in effect, he said, if some one else were to know about it. Ross, like Arethusa, did nothing by halves.

Yet Miss Eliza unwittingly disappointed Elinor's eagerness to see Arethusa, by announcing that Arethusa could not come until the fall. It was far more of a disappointment to his wife than it was to Ross. Ross was very happy with things just as they were.

Elinor made a room ready for the girl to be her very own, when doing over the rest of her house; and she put into it all the love and little personal touches that Arethusa's own mother might have given it.

"She might not be," she said, thoughtfully considering when selecting the wall-paper, "a pink or blue person at all. Ross doesn't know the color of her eyes or hair or anything that he ought to. He's been woefully remiss as a parent. White might perhaps be safest."

Which choice was surely most fortunate.