The Able McLaughlins/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
CHIRSTIE used to say afterwards, when Wully's younger orphaned brothers and sisters would try to thank her for making her home their own, that she had never spent a happier winter in her life than the one during which she lived with her mother-in-law. That partly explained to them her detestation of all mother-in-law jokes. She would never try to conceal her contempt for any low person—proved low by the very act—who repeated one in her hearing. She had never realized until that winter what a shadow her mother's tragedy had cast over her childhood—until she came to live among the hilarious young McLaughlins. It was as if, set free from the fear and shame of the summer, her life expanded in all directions to make room for the three great loves that came to her—the first and greatest, her redeeming husband, the second, her little son, and the third her mother-in-law, who overcame her by the most insidious kindness, by such a simplicity that the charitableness of her deeds became apparent only upon later reflection. There were even hours when she sang with the children and laughed in such self-forgetfulness that hear eyes grew demure and saucy again.
But at other times, if by chance the house was quiet by day, or at night when she was unable to sleep, the shamefulness of her position came back upon her like an attacking pain. The more she grew to appreciate Wully's mother, the more intolerable his deception of her seemed to her. Every time a visitor came into the kitchen, and Isobel McLaughlin stood like a high wall between Chirstie and the possibility of even a slighting insinuation, Chirstie hated more the part Wully had forced upon her. It was the only thing about which she dreamed then of disagreeing with him. She begged him, she entreated him, she really prayed him to let her tell the truth. But he would not. The only way to keep a secret was to tell not even his mother! Some way always he overpowered her with foolish arguments. She wouldn't do just the only one thing he had ever asked her not to, would she? The only one thing that could make him hate her, would be to betray him, now, after it was all over. It wasn't over, not for his mother, she argued. She pointed out that some day it would be all known, some way. It was sin. And were they not to be sure their sin would find them out? How could he grin, and make such an unbelieving face about such a thing! She was helpless before him. He wouldn't even let her talk about telling anyone. Her only comfort was that some time it would all come out. And then he would have to say to his mother that every day she had begged him to tell her the truth! He would have to take all the blame of this unkindness, this cruelty. . .
It was only a few days before her confinement that one afternoon she sat knitting; in that house of destructive boys not even pregnant hands might lie idle. She had been talking with her mother-in-law about Aunt Libby, whom they were expecting almost any moment. All the neighbors were talking about Libby Keith. She had been away again searching for Peter—in Chicago, this time, on a clue so slender, so foolish, that even the most malicious tongues wagged with a sigh. Her husband, to satisfy her, had gone searching for the son, to Iowa City, and there he had met a man who said that one day in Chicago he had seen a lad in a livery stable, who afterwards he thought might be Peter. He hadn't recognized the boy at the time, only knowing him slightly. And he didn't remember exactly where the stable was. He had been passing an odoriferous door, from which men were pitching out steaming manure.
Thereupon Libby Keith had gone to Chicago. And now she was futilely home again. And she was coming to Isobel McLaughlin to pour out her restlessness. Even winter weather could not keep her at home. She went from house to house seeking reassurance from those who could have none to give. She had had no letter from her boy, and that proved to her that he was lying in some place ill, unable to write. The neighbors scarcely dared suggest to her that Peter might be—well, the least bit careless. Boys were, at times, and thoughtless about writing. But she would never believe that her boy was like that It was not like him. He would write her, that she knew, if he was able, became he had always been such a good laddie—such an exceeding good laddie that in decency they seemed to have to agree with her. Whoever went to town, went laden with her instructions for inquiry. They must ask everywhere if anyone had heard about a sick laddie trying to get back to his home.
Not a quiet woman, the neighbors reflected. Not one of dignity. One who never would scruple to disturb a world for her son. Some of them recalled Isobel McLaughlin when the news of Wully's death had come to her. They had gone to her carrying their consolation, and she had rejected it with a gesture, going softly about her work with a face that none of them forgot But Libby Keith took thankfully the crumbs of comfort they saved for her, and begged for more. She humbled herself to ask their incredulous aid. She had no pride left. She had nothing left but her anxiety for her worthless Peter.
She had had three children there in Scotland when her brother John's letters from the new world began stirring her kinsmen. She lay bed-ridden reading than. She had not moved from her bed for two months even when John had taken his departure. Nor would she ever again, the doctors said. She lay there suffering when her second brother, Squire McLaughlin, came to say his last words to her before leaving for America. Then her sisters said farewell to her there, one after another, and her cousins and her friends. And when she would say she would soon be joining them over there, they were kind, and saw no harm in saying that they hoped so. For two years she lay fighting, crying for pain, making her absurd plans. Her neighbors tried to turn her mind away from such wild ideas by ridicule. They hooted at her in disgust. How was she to go to a new place—where there were no houses—nor any doctors—nor any beds! Her brothers wrote her, sternly forbidding her to think of such a thing. But were the children of others to lord it over Utopian acres in a new world, while hers, because she had married somewhat poorly, slaved along in an old one—apprentices of some half-fed mechanic? Her husband resisted with all his might. He was no farmer. He felt no drawings toward pioneer hardships, But his lack of them was in vain. She rose and took him and her three, and journeyed stoutly to her brother's house in Iowa, where she was received with an awe that would have been greater if he could have known she was to die at the fairly mature age of ninety-two.
She had come thus for her children's sake to the new world. Her oldest son, her Davie, a lad well liked by all, was the first of those who fell before the plague of typhoid. That bowed her down. She was nothing but a mother, a woman who nowadays would be called rotten with tenderness. Maternity was her whole life. Then her one daughter married, her Flora, and shortly died in childbirth. These things ought not to be. . . . Then Peter, who was all she had left to spend her love on, disappeared, leaving in his place a scribbled paper. No wonder, after all, that she sought him through cold cities.
When she came into the McLaughlin kitchen, she bent over and patted Chirstie on the shoulder commiseratingly, sighing a sigh that recalled to the girl all the agony of Flora's death in labor. She was a large woman, heavily built, without grace, and with the long upper lip and heavy face that John McLaughlin and his children had, and keen, deep-set, very dark blue eyes, like theirs. Since that long illness of hers, her heavy cheeks hung pale and flabby.
"So you're back, Libby!" Isobel was constrained to speak to her softly, as one speaks to a mourner. She deserted her spinning wheel, and took her knitting, for a visit.
"I'm back."
"You've no word of him?"
"No word." Each of her answers was accompanied by a sigh most long and deep.
"I suppose you looked everywhere?"
"I went about the whole city asking for him."
"How could you know how to go, Libby?"
"That was no trouble. Men in barns is that kind to a body. I asked them in every one where the next one was, and they told me. Sometimes they drove me in some carriage. And there was the cars. I just said I was looking for my Peter who was sick in some stable. James McWhee went to the police and to the hospitals. There's none better than the McWhees, Isobel. They have a fine painted house with trees about it. They would have me stay longer. James said he would be always looking for him." She gave another great sigh.
"Ah, weel, Libby, some day he'll find him. Some day you'll get word from him, no doubt. It's a fine place, Chicago. The sick'll be well cared for there. It wouldn't be like New Orleans, now. Wully says the lake is just like the ocean. Did you see the lake, Libby?"
"I did'na see the lake. I was aye seeking Peter."
Isobel was determined to have a change of subject.
"They say it beats all the great buildings they have now in Chicago. It'll be changed since we saw it."
"I saw no buildings but the barns. It passes me why they have so many. There was a real old gentleman standing by the door in one, waiting for something done to his carriage. His son went to California in '49, and he still seeks him. He said he would be looking for my Peter. Yon was a fine old man."
Isobel tried to talk about the train, which was nothing common yet. Libby told her in reply what each man and woman in her car had answered when she asked if any had seen her poor sick laddie. Isobel was constrained to tell what one and another of the neighbors hoped about the lost. The Squire had said that he would be coming back in the spring. The boy could never stay in the city when the spring came, he prophesied. Whereupon his mother replied that he wouldn't stay away now if he could by any means get back to his home. And then she wailed, through a moment of silence;
"If I but knew he was dead, Isobel! Not wanting, some place! Not grieving!"
"That's true, Libby. I know that well. I felt that way when I knew Allen was dead. There was—rest, then. No fear, then."
They sat silent. Chirstie bestirred herself guiltily to offer her bit of hope. She felt always in a way responsible for Peter's departure, however much Wully scouted the idea. Wully hadn't told him not to write to his silly mother, had he? Hadn't Peter always been whining about going west? He would have gone, Chirstie or no Chirstie. Wully told her she naturally blamed herself for everything that happened. And she acknowledged that in some moods it did seem to her that she was the cause of most of the pain she saw about her. She began now about the uncertainty of the mails. Didn't her auntie know that Wully never got but a few of the letters that had been sent him during the war? It was Chirstie's opinion that Peter had written home, maybe many times, and the letters had miscarried. Maybe he had written what a good place he had to work, and how much wages he was getting. They considered this probability from all sides.
And Libby's attention was diverted to the girl. Isobel McLaughlin was not one of those, by any means, who saw in Libby's search something half ridiculous. Her boys had been away too many months for that. She had deep sympathy for her, and for that reason Libby came to her more often than to others nearer of kin. But now she did wish Libby would stop asking Chirstie those pointed, foreboding questions about her condition; stop sighing terribly upon each answer. She was making the girl nervous, and in that house there was no place for nervousness. Libby dwelt pathetically upon the details of her daughter's death, upon the symptoms of her abnormal pregnancy. She kept at it, in spite of all Isobel's attempts to divert her until she was about to go. She rose then, and gave a sigh that surpassed all her other sighs, adequate to one oppressed by the whole scheme of life. She said;
"It oughtn't to be. There should be some other way of them being born, without such suffering and pain. With the danger divided between the two. I think———"
But what she thought was too much for Isobel, who had no patience with those who fussed about the natural things of life.
"Havers, Libby!" she exclaimed. "How can you say such things!" And, thinking only of herself and the woman before her, she cried passionately,
"How can you say that it's the bearing of them that hurts! It's the evil they do when they're grown that's the great pain! We want them to be something great, and they won't even be decent! Can you share that with anyone?"
Her words, so poorly aimed, missed their mark, and struck Chirstie. She bowed her head on the back of the chair in front of her. Isobel, returning from seeing Libby away, found her sitting that way, sobbing.
She began comforting her. Chirstie wasn't to listen to what that poor daft body said! Why, Auntie Libby scarcely knew what she was saying. No fear of Chirstie dying. She was doing fine! And well as a woman ever was. But Chirstie couldn't stop crying. She sobbed a long time.
Isobel was putting cobs into the fire when at last Chirstie lifted her red face from her arms, and sat erect, trying to speak.
"I don't care! I might die! I'm going to tell you something!" And she fell to crying again.
Isobel came and stood over her. A fierce hope gleamed uncertainly for a moment in her mind, and went out again.
"What you going to tell me, Chirstie?" she asked kindly.
"If ever you tell I told you, I suppose you'll break up everything between us!" she sobbed. "I don't know what Wully'll do if he finds it out. Maybe he won't have me! Maybe he'll turn me out!"
Her excitement excited Isobel. Chirstie wasn't just hysterical, she saw.
"You needn't fear I'll tell!" she exclaimed loftily. "I don't go about telling secrets!"
"Oh, it would never be the same between us again if he finds out I told you!"
"He'll never find out from me!"
Then Chirstie sat up, sobbing heroically.
"You needn't say Wully's doing evil! He isn't! He couldn't! This isn't any fault of his! It isn't his disgrace!"
"I never supposed it was his fault!" said his mother.
Chirstie never heeded the insinuation.
"I mean—it isn't his! It isn't his baby!"
Years might have been seen falling away from Isobel McLaughlin. She sat down slowly on the chair against which Chirstie was leaning. She could scarcely find her voice.
"Are you telling me it's not Wully's wee'un?" she asked at length.
"It's not Wully's!"
Bewildered she asked;
"Whose is it?"
"I can't tell you that. It's not his."
"And you let us think it was!"
"Oh, mother, I couldn't help it! Oh, I didn't know what to do! And he just did whatever he wanted to. He has everything his own way! He wouldn't let me tell you! Every day I've told him he ought to tell you. But he wouldn't, mother. And if he finds out I have told you, he might even— Oh, I don't know what he'll do!" She sobbed passionately.
Isobel put out her hand and began stroking her hair.
"He'll never find it out from me! Oh, I canna sense it!" she cried. "What ever made him do it?"
"He did it to help me, mother! To help me out! Oh, I wanted him to tell you before we were married. It just seemed as if I couldn't marry him without telling you. But he didn't want anyone to know he wasn't—like me! He says———"
"What does he say, Chirstie?"
"He says he doesn't want anyone to know it isn't his! He doesn't want them to know about—the other one! Mother, I'll make this right some time! You trust me! Some day I'm going to tell how good he is!"
Isobel began kissing her.
"Oh, Chirstie! Oh, you did well to tell me. You needn't fear I'll ever let him know! His own mother! This is the best day of my life, Chirstie!" She rose, and began walking about the house in her excitement, unable to contain her delight. "He never was an ill child, Chirstie! He wanted to help you out, I see. There never was one of the boys as good as Wully, and so gentle-like." She began poking the fire, not realizing what she did. "He'll never know you told me. Don't you cry! I knew he was good. I never believed that story of his! It wasn't like him to do such a thing! It was like him to help you!" She went to the door presently, and called in the children who were playing outside, and when they came in, she took little Sarah passionately up in her arms. "Your mother's young again!" she cried to the surprised child. "Young again!" She gave them both cookies. She comforted Chirstie, stopping in her turns about the room to stroke her hair. She sang snatches of Psalms. "He was never an ill child!" she kept repeating. She began making tea for the girl's refreshment. She looked out of the window. She clasped and unclasped her hands excitedly. She shone.
An hour later John McLaughlin drove into the yard with a load of wood, and Wully was with him. Isobel threw a shawl over her head, and went out through the winter nightfall to meet them.
"Aunt Libby's been here, Wully, talking to Chirstie about Flora till she's having a great cry. You needn't be frightened. She's lying on the bed, but there's nothing wrong with her."
Then, as Wully started hastily for the house, she drew close to her husband. He had begun to unhitch his horses. She said;
"John!"
At the sound of her voice he turned startled towards her. "What ails you?" he had begun to ask, but she was saying;
"Yon's no child of Wully's!"
His hands fell from the horse's side.
"I kent it all the time!" she cried triumphantly.
"No child of Wully's?" he repeated.
"He never done it. I said so all the time! Now she's told me herself!"
He peered at her through the blue half-darkness that rose from the snow.
"Not his! God be thankit! Whosever is it?"
"It's Peter Keith's. Whose would it be, and her in Libby's house half the winter? And Peter running away the very day they were married! Libby's that slack, thinking him such an angel!"
"Did she tell you that?"
"She did not. But I kent it! Did I not say Wully never did so ill a thing?"
"You did not!"
"It was a grand thing for him to do. But I can't think what possessed him ever to take all that blame on us!"
"Can you not?" meditated her husband.
"She says he doesn't want folks to know it isn't his."
"He wouldn't."
"Why wouldn't he, indeed? Would he be wanting to disgrace us all?"
"He wouldn't want folks to know Peter had her. That's but natural."
"It's but natural I shouldn't want folks to think he'd shamed Jeannie's Chirstie."
"So it is," he agreed. "The thing looked well to the Lord, I'm thinking," he added.
"I wish it looked better to the neighbors," she retorted. "This is a strange thing, John." She gave a sore sigh. "Libby grieving herself daft about that gomeril a'ready, so that we won't can say a word to anybody till he's found. Any more sorrow'd kill her. But when he comes back, I'll have her tell the whole thing. She says she's been wanting to clear Wully! She's a good girl, John. But we'll have just to bide our time. I'm glad I've no son like that lad Peter!"
She had had to forget how he had sacrificed her pride for that girl. She had to idealize her son again. She could see that he had done a generous thing. And she would see that the world saw that. She could run to meet Jeannie, now, across the floor of heaven, unashamed. Her husband stood enjoying her face. He said;
"It's early for boasting, woman. You'd best wait twenty years!"
"Little I fear twenty years!" she retorted. A light shone down the path from the house. Wully had opened the door, and shut it, and was coming towards them. She wished she could take him up in her arms and cuddle him against her neck, kissing him as she had done in her youth. She said quietly to him;
"You needn't worry. It's only Auntie Libby that's upset her. There's nothing ails her."
He said anxiously;
"Honestly, mother?"
Wonder welled up within her as she looked at him. There he stood before her, demanding honesty of her, while for months he had been lying great fundamental lies about her very life, which was his honor. "Honestly?" indeed! But there he was before her, beautiful and unrealized, risen to new life in her great expectations for him. She said only;
"Honestly! There's nothing wrang!"