FullReads

“My dear!” Mrs. Thorne took the girl’s cold hands in hers. “Do you mean that you are not your father’s heiress?”

“Only by mama’s last will and testament. We know what that would be if she made it now!”

“It was then you came home?”

“It was then, when I learned that one of my rejected suitors was to become my father. He might be my grandfather. But let us not be vulgar!”

“Aren’t you girls going to bed to-night?” Mr. Thorne inquired, with his usual leaning toward peace and quietness. “You can’t settle everything at one sitting.”

“Everything is settled, Mr. Thorne, and I am going to bed,” said Miss Benedet.

Mrs. Thorne did not release her hands. “I want to ask you one more question.”

“I know exactly what it is, and I will tell you to-morrow.”

“Tell me now; it is perfectly useless going to your room; the temperature over your bed is ninety-nine.”

“The question, then! Why did I allow your son to commit himself in ignorance?”

“No, no !” Mrs. Thorne protested.

“Yes, yes! You have asked that question, you must have. You are an angel, but you are a mother, too.”

“I have asked no questions since you began to tell your story; but I have wondered how Willy could have found courage, in one week, to offer himself to such gifts and possessions as yours.”

“A mother, and a worldly mother!” Miss Benedet apostrophized. “I did not look for such considerations from you. And you are troubled for the modesty of your son?”

“My dear, he has nothing, and he is–of course we think him everything he should be–but he is not a handsome boy.”

“Thank Heaven he is not.”

“And he does not talk”–

“About himself. No.”

“Ah, you do care for him! You understand him. You would”–

Miss Benedet rose to her feet with decision.

“You have not answered my question,” the unconscionable mother pursued. “Does he know–is it known that you are not the great heiress your name would imply?”

“Everything is known,” said the girl. “You do not read your society column, I see. Six weeks ago you might have learned the fate of my father’s millions.”

She stood by the balustrade and leaned out under the stars, taking a deep breath of the night’s growing coolness. A rose-spray touched her face. She put it back, and a shower of dry, scented petals fell upon her breast and sleeve.

“There is always one point in every true story,” she said in a tired voice, “where explanations cease to explain. The mysteries claim their share in us, deny them as we will. I don’t know why it was, but from the time I threw off all that bondage to society and struck out for myself, I felt made over. Life began again with life’s realities. I came home to earn my bread, and on that footing I felt sane and clean and honest. The question became not what I am or was, but what could I do? I discussed the question with your son.”

“You discussed!”

“We did, indeed. We went over the whole field. East and west we tested my accomplishments by the standards of those who want teachers for their children. I have gone rather further in music than anything else. Even Fraeulein would hardly say now I lacked an outlet. I was working things off one evening on the piano–many things beyond the power of speech–the help of prayer, I might say. There were whispers about me already in the house.”

“What do you mean?”

“People talking–my mother’s old friends. It was rather serious, as I had been thinking of their daughters for pupils. I thought I was alone, but your son–the ‘boy’ as you call him–was listening. He came and stood beside me. For a person who does not talk, he can make himself quite well understood. I tried to go on playing. My blinded eyes, the wrong notes, told him all. I lay and thought all night, and asked myself, why might I not be happy and give happiness, like other women of my age. I denied to my conscience that I was bound to tell him, since I was not, never had been, what that story in words would report me. Why should I affect a lie in order literally, vainly to be honest? So a day passed, and another sleepless night. And now I had his image of me to battle with. Then it became impossible, and yet more necessary, and each day’s silence buried me deeper beyond the hope of speech. So I gave it up. Why should he have in his wife less than I would ask for in my husband? I want none of your experienced men. Such a record as his, such a look in the eyes, the expression unawares of a life of sustained effort–always in one direction”–