They reached a Saturday. Business was taking Whitelaw to Boston. Tom went with him to the station, to carry his brief-case, to hand him his ticket, to check his bags, and perform the other small services of a clerk for the man of importance.
"I shall come back on Wednesday," the banker explained to him, before entering the train. "On Thursday I shall not be at the office. It's a day on which I never leave my wife. Though I often have to go abroad and leave her behind, I always manage it so that we may have that particular day together. I shall see you then on Friday."
[Pg 463]
He saw him, however, on Thursday, since Mr. Phips willed it so. At least, it was Mr. Phips who willed it, as far as Tom ever knew. About three on that day he came to Tom with a brief-case stuffed with documents.
"The Chief may want to run his eyes over these before he comes to the office to-morrow. Ask for himself. Don't leave them with anybody else."
To the best of Tom's belief there was no staging of what happened next beyond that which was set by Phips's intuitions.
By the time he rang at the house in Fifth Avenue it was a little after four. Admitted to the big dim hall, he heard a hum of voices coming from the sitting room. In Dadd's manner there was some constraint7.
"Will you step in here, sir, and I'll tell the master that you've come?"
The library was on the same side of the house as the dining room, but it got the afternoon sun. The sun woke its colors to a burnished8 softness in which red and blue and green and gold melted into each other lovingly. A still, well-ordered room, little used by anyone, it gave the impression of a place of rest for ancient beauty and high thought. Rich and reposeful9, there was nothing in it that was not a masterpiece, but a masterpiece which there was no one but some chance visitor to care anything about. In the four who made up the Whitelaw family there were too many aching human cares for knowledge or art to comfort.
Tom's eyes studied absently the profile of a woman on an easel. She might have been a Botticelli; he
[Pg 464]
didn't know. She only reminded him of Hildred—neatly piled dark hair, long slanting10 eyes, a small snub nose, and lips deliciously moqueur. The colors she wore were also Hildred's, subdued11 and yet ardent12, umber round the shoulders, with a chain of emeralds that almost sparkled in the westering light.
Whitelaw entered with his quick and eager tread, his quick and eager seizing of the young man's hand. Again the left hand rested on his shoulder; again there was the deep and earnest searching of the eyes, as if a lost secret had not yet been found; again there was the little weary push.
"Come."
Taking the brief-case into his own hands, he left Tom nothing to do but follow him. Diagonally crossing the hall, Tom noticed that the hum of voices had died down. Without knowing why he nerved himself for a test.
The test came at once. Whitelaw, having preceded him into the room, had carried his brief-case to a table, and at once went to work on the contents. Perhaps he did this purposely, to throw Tom on his own resources. In any case, it was on his own resources that he felt himself thrown the instant he appeared on the threshold. He judged from the face of anguish13 and protest which Mrs. Whitelaw turned on him that he was not expected. Dimly he perceived that Tad and Lily were in the room, and some one else whom as yet he hadn't time to see. All his powers were focused on the meeting of the woman who was not his mother, and didn't want him there.
He thought quickly. He would be on the safest
[Pg 465]
side. He had come there as a clerk; as a clerk shown in among the family he would conduct himself. He bowed to Mrs. Whitelaw, who let him take her hand, though that too seemed to suffer at his touch; he bowed to Lily; he nodded respectfully to Tad. He turned to salute14 distantly the other person in the room, and found her coming towards him.
He knew her free swinging motion before he had time to see her face.
"Oh, Tom!"
"Why, Hildred!"
Her manner was the protecting one he had often seen in other years, when she thought he might be hurt, or be ignorant of small usages. She was subtle, tactful, and ready, all at once.
"Come over here." She drew him to a seat on a sofa, beside herself. "Mrs. Whitelaw won't mind, will you, Mrs. Whitelaw? You know, Tom and I are the greatest friends—have been for years."
He forgot everyone else who was present in the joy and surprise of seeing her. "When did you come? Why didn't you let me know?"
"I didn't know myself till late last night, did I, Mrs. Whitelaw? Mrs. Whitelaw only wired to invite me after Mr. Whitelaw came back from Boston. Of course I wasn't going to miss a chance like that. I don't see New York oftener than once in two years or so. Then there was the chance of seeing you. I was ready in an hour. I took the ten o'clock train this morning, and have just this minute arrived."
Only when these first few bits of information had been given and received did Tom feel the return of his
[Pg 466]
embarrassment. He was in a room where three of the five others were troubled by his presence. He wasn't there of his own free will, and since he was a clerk he couldn't leave till he was dismissed. He would not have known what to do if Hildred hadn't kept a small conversation going, drawing into it first one and then another, till presently all were discussing the weather or something of equal importance. In spite of her emotion Mrs. Whitelaw did her best to sustain her rôle of hostess, Tad and Lily speaking only when they were spoken to. At a given minute Tad got up, sauntering toward the door.
He was stopped by his father. "Don't go, Tad. Tea will be here in a minute." The voice grew pleading. "Stay with us to-day."
Lighting18 a cigarette, Tad sank back into his chair, doing it rather sulkily. Whitelaw continued to draw papers from the brief-case, arranging them before him on the table.
When Dadd appeared with the tea-tray Tom made a push for escape. "If you've nothing else for me to do, sir...."
Whitelaw merely glanced up at him. "Wait a minute. Sit down again."
Tom went back to his seat beside Hildred, where he watched Mrs. Whitelaw as she poured the tea. It was the first time he had seen her in indoor dress, all lace and soft lavender, her pearls twisted once around her neck and descending19 to her waist, a great jewel on her breast. It was the first time, too, that he had seen her hair, which was fair and crinkly, like his own. Except for a slight portliness, she was
[Pg 467]
too young to seem like the mother of Lily and Tad, while she was still less like his. That she should be his mother, this woman who had never known anything but what love and money could enrich her with, was too incongruous with everything else in life to call for so much as denial.
And as for the hundredth time he was saying this to himself Whitelaw spoke17. He spoke without looking up from his papers except to take a sip20 of tea from the cup on the table beside him. He spoke casually21, too, as if broaching22 something not of much importance.
"Now that we're all here I think that perhaps it's as good a time as any to go over the matter we've talked about separately—and settle it."
There was no one in the room who didn't know what he meant. Tad smoked listlessly; Lily set down her cup and lighted a cigarette; Mrs. Whitelaw's jeweled fingers played among the tea-things, as if she must find something for her hands to do or shriek23 aloud. Tom's heart seemed turned to stone, to have no power of emotion. Hildred was the only one who said anything.
"Hadn't I better go, Mr. Whitelaw? I haven't been up to my room yet."
"No, Hildred. I'd rather that you stayed, if you don't mind. It's the reason we've asked you to come."
He looked at no one. His face was a little white, though he was master of himself.
"This is the tenth of May. It's twenty-three years ago to-day since we lost our little boy. I want to ask
[Pg 468]
the family, now that we're all together, what they think of the chances of our having found him again."
Though he knew it was an anniversary in the family, it was Tom's first recollection of the date. In as far as it was his birthday, birthdays had been meaningless to him, except as he remembered that they had come and gone, and made him a year older.
"Personally," Whitelaw went on, "I've fought this off so long that I can't do it any longer. It will be five years this summer since I first saw him, at Dublin, New Hampshire, and was struck with his looks and his name, as well as with the little I learned of his history."
"Why didn't you do something about it then," Tad put in, peevishly24, "if you were going to do anything at all?"
"You're quite right, Tad. It's what I should have done. I was dissuaded25 by the rest of you. I must confess, too, that I was afraid to take it up myself. We'd followed so many clues that led to nothing! But perhaps it's just as well, as it's given me time to make all the investigation26 that, it seems to me, has been possible."
Apart from the motion of Tad's and Lily's hands as they put their cigarettes to their lips, everyone sat motionless and tense. Even Mrs. Whitelaw tamed her feverish27 activity to a more feverish stillness. Hildred put her hand lightly on Tom's sleeve to remind him that she was there, but the power of feeling anything had gone out of him. While Whitelaw told his facts he listened as if the case had nothing to do with himself.
[Pg 469]
His agents, so the banker said, had probably unearthed28 every detail in the story that was now to be known.
On August 5, 1895, Thomas Coburn had been married in The Bronx, to Lucy Speight. Coburn was a carpenter who had fallen from a roof in the following October, and had died a few days later of his injuries. Their child, Grace Coburn, had been born in The Bronx on March 5, 1896, and had died on April 21, 1897. After that all trace of the mother had been lost, though a woman who killed herself by poisoning in the Female House of Detention29 in the suburb of New Rotterdam, after having been arrested for shop-lifting, on December 24, 1904, might be considered as the same person. This woman had been known to such neighbors as could remember her as Mrs. Lucy Coburn, though at the time of her arrest she had claimed to be the widow of Theodore Whitelaw, after having married Thomas Coburn as her first husband. The wardress who had talked to her on taking her to a cell recalled that she had been incoherent and contradictory30 in all her statements about herself, her husband, and her child.
As a matter of fact, the early history of Lucy Speight had been traced. She was the daughter of a laboring31 man at Chatham, in the neighborhood of Albany. Her mental inheritance had been poor. Her father had been the victim of drink, her mother had died insane. One of her sisters had died insane, and a brother had been put at an early age in a home for the feeble-minded. A brother and two sisters still lived either at Chatham or at Pittsfield. He had in his
[Pg 470]
hand photographs of all the living members of the family, and copies of photographs of those deceased, including two of Lucy Speight as she was as a young girl.
He turned toward Tom. "Would you like to look at them?"
The power of emotion came back to him with a rush. He remembered his mother, vividly32 in two or three attitudes or incidents, but otherwise faintly. A flush that stained his cheek with the same dark red which dissipation stamped on Tad's made the brothers look more than ever alike as he crossed the room to take the pictures from his father's hand.
There were a dozen or fourteen of them, all of poor rustic33 boys and girls, or men and women, feebleness in the cast of their faces, the hang of their lips, the vacancy34 of their eyes. Standing35 to sort them out, he put aside quickly the two of Lucy Speight. One of them must have dated from 1894, or thereabouts, because of the big sleeves; the other, with skin-tight shoulders, was that of a girl perhaps in 1889. In their faded simper there was almost nothing of the wild dark prettiness with which he saw her in memory, and yet he could recreate it.
He stood and gazed long, all eyes fixed36 on him. Moving to the table where Mrs. Whitelaw sat behind the tray, he held the two pictures before her.
"That's my mother."
Though he said this without thought of its significance, and only from the habit of thinking of Lucy Speight as really his mother, he saw her shrink. With a glance at the photographs, she glanced up at him,
[Pg 471]
piteously, begging to be spared. Even such contact as this, remote, pictorial37 only, with people of a world she had never so much as touched, hurt her fastidiousness. That the son of this poor half-witted creature, this Lucy Speight, should also be her son ... but the only protest she could make was in her eyes.
Tom did not sit down again as Whitelaw continued with his facts; he stood at the end of the mantelpiece, with its candelabra in biscuit de Sèvres. Leaning with his elbow on the white marble edge, he had all the others facing him, as all the others had him. The attitude seemed best to accord with the position in which he felt himself, that of a prisoner at the bar.
"We've found no record in any State in the union," Whitelaw went on, "or in any Province in Canada, of a marriage between a Theodore Whitelaw and a Lucy Coburn or Speight. The search has been pretty thorough. Moreover, we find no birth recorded in The Bronx of any Thomas Whitelaw during all the decade between 1890 and 1900. No such birth is recorded in any other suburb of New York, or in Manhattan. In years past I've been on the track of three men of the name of Theodore Whitelaw, one in Portland, Maine, one in New Orleans, and one in Vancouver; but there's reason for thinking that all three were one and the same man. He was a Scotch38 sailor, who died on the Pacific coast, and was never known to be in or about New York longer than the two or three days in which his ship was in port."
He came to the circumstances, largely gathered from Tom himself, of the association of the woman
[Pg 472]
with the child. She had harped39 on the statements, first, that she had not stolen him; secondly40, that he was not to think that his name was Whitelaw. And yet on the night before her death she had not only given him that very name, but claimed it as legally her own. The boy—the man, as he was now—could remember that at different times she had called herself by different names, chiefly to escape detection for her thefts; but never before that night had she taken that of Whitelaw.
Those who had worked on the case, the most skilful41 investigators42 in the country, were driven to a theory. It was a theory based only on the circumstantial, but so broadly based that the one unproven point, that which absolutely showed identity, seemed to prove itself.
Lucy Coburn, feeble in mind from birth, half demented by the death first of her husband and then of her child, had prowled about the Park, looking for a baby that would satisfy her thwarted43 mother-love. Any baby would have done this, though she preferred a girl.
"My son, Henry Elphinstone Whitelaw, was born on September 24, 1896. He was eight months old when on May 10, 1897, he was wheeled into the Park by Miss Nash, who is still with us. What happened after, as she supposed, she wheeled him back, we all know about."
But the theory was that, at some minute when Miss Nash's attention was diverted, the prowling woman got possession of the child, through means which were still a matter of speculation44. She had money,
[Pg 473]
since it was known that five thousand dollars had been paid to her by a life-insurance company on her husband's death, and, therefore, the power of flitting about, and covering up her traces. Discovering that she had a boy and not a girl, she had given him the first name she could think of, which was that of her late husband. She could easily have learned from the papers that the child she had stolen was the son of Henry Theodore Whitelaw, though the full name may or may not have remained in a memory probably not retentive45 at its best. But on the night of her arrest, knowing that she was about to forsake46 the child for whom she had come to feel a passionate47 affection, she had made one last wild effort to connect him with his true inheritance. Why she had done this but partially48 was again a matter of conjecture49. She may have given all of the name she remembered; she may have been kept from giving the full name through fear. It was impossible to tell. But she gave the name—with some errors, it was true—but still the name. The name taken with the extraordinary family resemblance—everyone would admit that—was one of the main points in the reconstruction50 of the history.
He reviewed a few more of the proofs and the half-proofs, asking at last, timidly, and as if afraid of the family verdict:
"Well, what does everyone say?"
The silence was oppressive. The only movement on anyone's part came when Lily stretched out her hand to a tray and with her little finger knocked off the ash from her cigarette. It seemed to Tom as if
[Pg 474]
none of them would speak, as if he himself must speak first.
"I vote we take him in." This was Tad. "Since we all know you want him, father—well, that settles it. As far as I'm concerned I'll—I'll crawl down."
Lily shrugged51 her slim shoulders. "I don't care one way or another. I've got my own affairs to think of. If he doesn't interfere52 with me I won't interfere with him." Again she knocked off the ash of her cigarette. "Have him, if you want to."
It was Mrs. Whitelaw's turn. She sat still, pensive53. The clock could be heard ticking. Her husband gazed at her as if his life would depend on what she had to say. Tom himself went numb54 again. She spoke at last.
"If you're satisfied, Henry, I'm satisfied. All I ask in the world is that you—" she gasped55 her little sob—"is that you shall be happy." Rising she walked straight up to Tom. "I want to kiss you."
When he had bent57 his head she kissed him on the forehead, formally, sacramentally. She went back to her seat.
Without moving from his place at the table, Whitelaw smiled across the room at Tom, a smile of relief and tenderness.
"Well, what do you say?"
Tom looked down at Hildred, noting her strange expression. It was not a satisfied expression; rather it was challenging, defiant58 of something, he didn't know of what. But he couldn't now consider Hildred; he couldn't consider anyone but himself. He did not change his position, leaning on the white
[Pg 475]
marble mantelpiece; nor was his tone other than conversational59.
"I'm awfully60 sorry, sir—I'm sorry to say it to you especially—but it's—it's not good enough."
With the slightest possible movement of the head Hildred made him a sign of proud approval. Whitelaw's smile went out.
"What's not good enough?"
"The—the welcome—home."
Tad spluttered, indignantly. "What the devil do you want? Do you expect us to put up an arch?"
"No; I don't expect anything. I should only like you to understand that though it isn't easy for you, it's easier for you than for me."
Tad turned to his father. "Now you're getting it! I could have told you beforehand, if you'd consulted me."
"You see," Tom continued, paying no attention to the interruption, "you're all different from me. You're used to different things, to different standards and ways of thinking. If I were to come in among you the only phrase that would describe me is the homely61 one of the fish out of water. I should be gasping62 for breath. I couldn't live in your atmosphere."
Tad was again the only one to voice a comment. "Well, I'll be damned!"
Tom's legs which had quaked at first, began to be surer under him. "Please don't think I'm venturing to criticize anyone or anything. This is your life, and it suits you. It wouldn't suit me because it isn't mine. The past makes me as it makes you, and it's too late now to unmake us. It's possible that I may
[Pg 476]
be Harry63 Whitelaw. When I hear the evidence that can be produced I can almost think I am. But if I am Harry Whitelaw by birth, I'm not Harry Whitelaw by life and experience. I can't go back and be made over. I'm myself as I stand." Still having in his hand the pictures of Lucy Speight, he held them out. "To all intents and purposes this is—my mother."
"And I kissed you!"
Tom smiled. "Yes, but you don't know how she kissed me. I do. She loved me. I loved her. I've tried—I've tried my very best—to turn my back on her—to call her a thief—and any other name that would blacken her—and—and I can't do it."
The sleeping lioness in the mother was roused suddenly. Leaving her place behind the tea-table, she advanced near enough to him to point to the two photographs.
"Do you mean to say that—having the choice between—that—and me—you choose—that?"
"I don't choose. I can't do anything else. It isn't what you think that rules your life; it's what you love. I'm one of the people to whom love means more than anything else. I daresay it's a weakness—especially in a man—but that's the way it is."
"If your first stipulation64 is love...."
"Wouldn't it be yours, Onora?"
"I'd try to be reasonable—when so many concessions65 have been made."
"Yes," Tom hastened to say, "but that's just my point. I'm not asking for concessions. The minute
[Pg 477]
they must be made—well, I'm not there. I couldn't come into your family—on concessions."
Whitelaw spoke up again. "I don't blame you."
Tom tried to make his position clearer. "It's a little like this. A long time ago I was coming along by the Hudson in the train. I was on my way to New York with the man who had adopted me, after I'd been a State ward15. There was a steamer on the river, and I watched her—coming from I didn't know where—going to I didn't know where. And it came to me then that she was something like myself. I didn't know what port I'd sailed from; nor what port I was making for. But now that I'm twenty-three—if that's my age—I see this: that once in so often I touched at some happy isle66, where the people took me in and were good to me. It was what carried me along."
The mother broke in, reproachfully. "Happy isles—full of convicts and murderers!"
"Yes; but they were happy. The convicts and murderers were kind. A homeless boy doesn't question the moral righteousness of the people who give him food and shelter and clothes, and, what's more, all their best affection. What it comes to is this, that having lived in those happy isles—awhile in one, awhile in another—I don't want to go ashore67 at an unhappy one, even though I was born there."
Springing to his feet, Tad bore down on him. "Do you know what I call you? I call you an ass16."
"Very likely. I'm only trying to explain to you why I can't be your brother—even if I am—your brother."
[Pg 478]
"It's because you don't want to be—and you damn well know it."
"That may be another way of putting it; but I'm not putting it that way."
Lily rose languidly, throwing out her words to nobody in particular. "I think he's a good sport, if you ask me. I wouldn't come into a family like us—not the way we are."
"Wait, Lily," Whitelaw cried, as she was sauntering out. He too got to his feet. "You've all spoken. You've done the best you could. I'm not blaming anyone. Now I want you all to understand—" He indicated Tom—"that this is my son. I know he's my son. I claim him as my son. Not even what he says himself can make any difference to me."
Tom strode across the room, grasping the other's hand. "Yes, sir; and you're my father. I know that too, and I claim you on my side. But we'll stop right there. It's as far as we can go. I'll be your son in every sense but that of—" He looked round about on them all—"but that of being your heir or a member of your family. I can't do that; but—between you and me—everything is understood."
He got out of the room with dignity. Passing Tad, he nodded, and said, "Thanks!" To Lily he said, "Thank you too. It was bully68, what you said." Reaching the mother whom he didn't know and who didn't know him, he bowed low. Sitting again behind the tea-table, she lifted her hand for him to take it. He took it and kissed it. Her little soblike gasp56 followed him as he passed into the big dim hall.
He had taken no leave of Hildred, because he knew
[Pg 479]
she would do what actually she did; but he didn't know that she would speak the words he heard spoken.
"I'm going with him, dear Mrs. Whitelaw; but I shan't be long. I just don't want him to go away alone because—because I mean to marry him."
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joyous
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| adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的 | |
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stimulating
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scudding
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porcelains
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ecstasy
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vigor
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constraint
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burnished
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| adj.抛光的，光亮的v.擦亮（金属等），磨光( burnish的过去式和过去分词 )；被擦亮，磨光 | |
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reposeful
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slanting
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subdued
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ardent
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anguish
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salute
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ward
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ass
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spoke
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descending
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casually
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broaching
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shriek
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peevishly
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dissuaded
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investigation
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feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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unearthed
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| 出土的（考古） | |
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detention
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| n.滞留，停留；拘留，扣留；(教育)留下 | |
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contradictory
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| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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laboring
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| n.劳动，操劳v.努力争取(for)( labor的现在分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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vacancy
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| n.（旅馆的）空位，空房，（职务的）空缺 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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pictorial
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| adj.绘画的；图片的；n．画报 | |
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scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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harped
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| vi.弹竖琴（harp的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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secondly
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| adv.第二，其次 | |
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skilful
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| (=skillful)adj.灵巧的，熟练的 | |
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investigators
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| n.调查者，审查者( investigator的名词复数 ) | |
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thwarted
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| 阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
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speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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retentive
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| v.保留的，有记忆的；adv.有记性地，记性强地；n.保持力 | |
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forsake
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| vt.遗弃，抛弃；舍弃，放弃 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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conjecture
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| n./v.推测，猜测 | |
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reconstruction
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| n.重建，再现，复原 | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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pensive
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| a.沉思的,哀思的,忧沉的 | |
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numb
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| adj.麻木的，失去感觉的；v.使麻木 | |
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gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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conversational
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| adj.对话的，会话的 | |
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awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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stipulation
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| n.契约，规定，条文；条款说明 | |
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concessions
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| n.（尤指由政府或雇主给予的）特许权( concession的名词复数 )；承认；减价；（在某地的）特许经营权 | |
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isle
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| n.小岛，岛 | |
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ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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bully
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| n.恃强欺弱者，小流氓；vt.威胁，欺侮 | |
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