“But you put no weight on Morgan’s words?” she asked.
“I know Morgan. And I know you.” He smiled at her—that flashing smile in which there was a sweetness that was peculiarly his.
“But there’s more,” she said, and she could not yet return his smile. She told him of Adam finding her hideaway in the Hume place today, and of Morgan spying, reporting to his mother.
“And you are disturbed about all this?” Wade asked when she had finished.
“Naturally. I—I wanted you to know what had been said. I wanted you to know my side, in case there are those who—who might try to prejudice you against me.”
He came to her then and put his hands on her shoulders, swung her toward the light. “Look at me, Lora.” His hand was beneath her chin, tilting her face toward him. “Do you think I believe in you so little? Mind—I won’t blame you if you’ve lost your heart to Adam. But I trust you completely. I can only feel sorry because I was so blind as to coax you into this poor mockery of a marriage. When I had so little to give, do you think I could blame you if—”
She drew her head away from his touch, unreasonably angry. For a moment she sought futilely for words, then turned and ran out of the room and up the stairs. She shut the door of her own room in a manner that was not entirely ladylike, and then leaned against the panel listening, wondering if he would come after her. But there was only the sound of the closing library door, followed by silence.
She drew the back of her hand across her eyes and went to fumble in the bureau drawer for a handkerchief. Her clumsy fingers went beneath the pile of linen and found a small hard something that she drew out wonderingly—a little sea shell, creamy with brown speckles. Something out of another life—a memory of Martin. For a long moment she stared at it without emotion and then thrust it away again in the drawer. It belonged to another Lora of long ago. She herself could be moved by it only as one might be moved hearing a sad story about another person.
Adam had been right. And she could almost hate him now for the truth he had told her. It was a truth she would rather have kept even from herself. Then she need not have recognized the reason for her vague unhappiness and longing. She blew her nose angrily and dabbed at her eyes. What irony there was in such a situation!—that she must live in this house married to a man whom she had begun to love, but who was as far removed from her, as cool and remote as if they were strangers who had just met.
If he had been hurt just now, or angry, if he had feared that Morgan’s accusations might be true … But he had taken his wife calmly for granted as an upright individual who would never deceive him, no matter what she might feel. His own emotions had been in no way involved.
She flung herself across her bed and cried as she had wanted to cry her very first night in this house—and had not. She had been strong then and even in grief sure of her own strength. Now it was as if her position and Wade’s had been somehow reversed—though how she was not sure—and she was now the weaker of the two.
XXVII
June dreamed itself into its last week, and now it seemed sure that the draft was imminent. It might be announced at any moment and the grumblings against it were louder than ever. There was reason enough for some of the dissatisfaction, as Wade explained at the dinner table one night.
New York’s quota was inordinately high and there was still further inequity between various sections of the city. The burden would fall heavily on the poor, for a man who could pay the required three hundred dollars to the government might be exempted from draft. Thus the man whose family needed his earnings most was very likely the one who must go to war. The heavy Irish and German population in New York did not help the situation. These people had fled from trouble in their own countries and they had, many of them, not been in America long enough to make its troubles their own. They had no desire to risk their lives in battles for which they had no heart.
In spite of the fact that feeling ran high among certain elements, the papers took a calm view of the matter. After all, they pointed out, the police, aided by the militia, and if necessary the army, would promptly put down any effort at resistance. The grumblers knew this and would be unlikely to risk the more immediate punishment which would befall them if they resisted the draft.
Wade was not sure this sanguine attitude was justified. A few mornings later he bundled up the papers he had been working on for so long in the seclusion of the library and announced that he was going to Washington for a few days. Under no circumstances, he told Lora, was she to let this fact be known.
She ventured anxiously into his room as he packed a bag.
“Tell me, Wade—are you acting on your own, or as an agent for the government, or is this Circle business you’re on?”
“Circle business? Hardly. I thought you realized that I gave that up long ago, once I’d had a real taste of what was going on.”
“Then—this is evidence of some sort you are taking to Washington?”
“Lora dear,” he said gently, “the less you know of what I am doing the better. There are the desperate, the unscrupulous, to be reckoned with. I want you and Mother kept free of all this.”
She was silenced for the moment, but she went with him to the door, still anxious. They stood on the veranda waiting as Peter brought the carriage around.
“What has become of the way you used to hate the war?” she asked almost timidly.
“My feelings about that have not changed,” he said. “But there are times when a man must do what is necessary for the good of many, instead of a few. For the future good of many.”
She brought up the old argument which had always served her before in her own mind. “But these are our brothers we are fighting against, Wade.”
“And if our brother behaves in a wayward manner which threatens our home and family, do we stand by and let him destroy the very roof over our heads? Do we lay down our arms and watch him ruin the home that has belonged to us all and which we want to preserve for our children?”
There was somehow a moving quality about him as he spoke. He could be compelling when he was as much in earnest as this.
“Good luck then,” she told him as he turned to go. “Come home safely.”
He kissed her cheek lightly and went down the steps. As Peter drove away, Wade leaned from the carriage to wave to her reassuringly. When he had gone she sat for a little while on the veranda, thinking of Wade as he had been and as he was now.
She recalled the thought that had come to her mind some months before—that there were only two choices. Either you loved a person as he was and forgave him his faults, or you could not forgive those faults and tried to make him into something else. Neither course had seemed entirely satisfactory to her. Now she was beginning to see that there was still a third. Sometimes a man could change and grow of his own accord when the urge was great enough. He could become his true self in the best possible way.
At length she rose and went back to Mrs. Tyler’s sitting room. Wade had not told his mother he was leaving, knowing the storm of questions which would arise, and Lora had promised to meet the torrent and deal with it herself. Since the day of Morgan’s visit she had seldom intruded her company upon the old woman. There had been something of an armed truce between them—cold civility, nothing more. Whether Mrs. Tyler had talked to her son about Morgan’s visit, or what Wade might have said to her, Lora had no idea. The subject had never been mentioned again.
So now she was not expected in the rear sitting-room, though the door stood ajar. She pushed it open quietly and looked in. The wheel chair was empty and she wondered if Mother Tyler had become ill and been put to bed. There was a sound from the bedroom beyond and she went halfway across the room before she realized what it was. Someone was moving about the bedroom. There was the click of shoes upon the bare floor, then a muffling of the sound as a rag rug was reached, then the click again.
“Is that you, Ellie?” Lora inquired.
There was an instant of complete
silence before Mrs. Tyler’s voice answered her.
“It is not,” said the old woman, and stepped into view in the doorway.
She leaned on Wade’s discarded cane, but otherwise stood firmly erect. With careful, unwavering steps she came toward Lora.
“You look very silly with your mouth open like that,” she said. “After all, there’s no reason to gape.”
“But”—Lora was too surprised to find words easily—“but you walk very well. You couldn’t just—”
“Of course I couldn’t,” Mother Tyler snapped. “Not at first But I’ve been practicing every day and sometimes at night for quite a while now. I’ve decided that it was high time I took my proper place as mistress of this house. Everything has gotten too much out of hand.”
Lora recovered her power of movement. She ran across the room and put strong young arms about the frail shoulders and hugged them hard.
“You’re wonderful!” she cried. “Wade will be so pleased and proud.”
“You’re throwing me off balance,” Mrs. Tyler said, pushing Lora away. But her eyes were bright and for once there was no malice in them.
Lora released her and made no effort to help as she walked to a chair by the window and sat down.
“You wanted to speak to me about something?” she asked Lora.
Swiftly Lora made a decision, feeling with all her instincts that it was the right thing to do. She dropped onto a footstool at the old lady’s feet and looked up at her with shining eyes.
“Yes! I came here to tell you that Wade was going to be away for a few days. I was going to give you a story that would have been only partly true about his going away to see about some writing he has been doing. He felt the truth would only distress you and it was better to keep it from you.”
“What gibberish is this?”
“Only that I think there is no need to treat you like an invalid or a child, when you are neither.”
Quietly she explained about Morgan’s involvement with the Golden Circle, and of Murray Norwood’s request for Wade’s help. She could supply few details herself, since Wade had never wholly confided in her, but she had heard enough from other sources to surmise the rest. Wade had discovered that the movement was not, after all, a peaceful effort to halt hostilities, but a destructive movement which bored at the Union government from within and might, if it was not stopped, cause the entire North to crumble upon itself, defeated by its own inner rot. Wade had apparently written an account of these activities, drawn up his evidence, and was acting on his own initiative in taking the material to Washington.
Mrs. Tyler listened without betraying emotion, except for the gleam in her eyes. When Lora concluded her story, she sat still more erectly in her chair.
“My son has done the right thing. Though I must confess, Lora, that I am surprised. I would not have expected such courageous action from him.”
“I think he has never lacked courage, Mother,” Lora said. “What chance have you given him to exercise such a quality? You always wanted him to follow a different pattern from his own nature. Virginia shielded him. And I—all I gave him was a shoulder to lean upon. But now he is relying on himself alone and that is the way it should be.” She stood up. “Well, I’ve work to do. I must get to it.”
But Mrs. Tyler stopped her. “I have not told Wade what Morgan said. I thought you might like to know that.”
“Thank you,” said Lora gravely. “But it wouldn’t have mattered. I told him myself and he believed me.”
She went off then to the task ahead of her. Today would be perfect for readying the upstairs sitting room for final use—the room which had once been Virginia’s. And such occupation would keep her busy, shut out the worry concerning Wade which would tug at her until he was home again.
Four days went by before he returned—on the very day that the framed picture of Virginia was delivered to the Tyler house. He arrived, in fact, while Lora was unwrapping the picture in Mother Tyler’s sitting room. It was evening, shortly before Jemmy’s bedtime, and Jemmy was there too, watching with interest.
When she heard Wade’s step in the hallway, Lora ran to greet him and saw at once the discouragement that weighed him down.
“Your mother knows where you’ve been,” she whispered. “It’s all right to talk before her.”
This assurance obviously did not cheer him.
“Lora shouldn’t have told you, Mother,” he said. “This is one concern you could have been spared.”
“Nonsense. Lora has more sense than you. Tell us quickly, did you get to see the President?”
“I didn’t expect to go that high,” Wade said. “But neither did I expect to be shunted around through so many lesser hands. You’d have thought I was an enemy spy trying to get through the lines. In any event I’ve been assured that my papers will reach the proper hands and I can only hope they will act upon them.”
“That was all you could do?” Lora asked.
Wade shrugged. “It was suggested that I go to Albany with this. But I can imagine how far I’d get with Governor Seymour. Rumor has it he favors the work of the Circle. And he has announced himself as being against the draft.”
Jemmy had listened round-eyed, not understanding all this, but now his attention returned to the package Lora had started to open.
“It’s Mama’s picture that Morgan Le Fay brought down here,” he told his father. “Go ahead and open it, Lorie.”
Lora glanced at Wade and he nodded, so she took the picture from its wrappings and leaned it against a chair. It was only a fraction of the original size, since the wasted background above the head of the seated figure had been cropped. Because of the ugly gash which had cut through the skirt of Virginia’s full dress, it had been necessary to reduce the whole to a head and shoulders portrait, and as such it seemed an entity in itself. Virginia’s lips smiled sweetly and her gaze was turned dreamily out of the picture so that three quarters of her face was to be seen.
“It looks better than I expected,” Mrs. Tyler said. “But now I’m wondering where to hang it.”
Remembering the old lady’s previous announcement that the picture was to hang in the parlor, Lora looked at her in surprise. It was not like Mother Tyler to soften like this about a decision once given. Before anyone could make a suggestion, Jemmy picked the picture up almost fiercely.
“It’s my mother and I want it for my room.”
Wade decided the matter. “You shall have it there if you want it, boy.”
“Come along then,” said Lora to Jemmy. “Let’s go see how it will look.” She did not glance again at Wade, afraid to read his reaction to the picture.
Jemmy carried it upstairs at once and Lora hurried after him. While he sat on the bed and watched, she tried the effect for him by holding it up against the wall in various places. After several tries, he decided where he liked it and she marked the place so they could hang it there tomorrow. Then she propped it upon his dresser temporarily and turned to find that his eyes were misted with tears.
“Are you sure you want the picture here, Jemmy?” she asked doubtfully.
He nodded, blinking hard. “Please, Lorie. So I won’t ever forget. Sometimes I do forget a little. Then do you know what I do? I go back up the hill to the pool and look at the water until I remember—everything.”
She sat beside him on the bed and put an arm about his shoulders. “You mustn’t do that, Jemmy. It’s not wrong to forget grief. If the picture helps you to remember happy times, then it’s fine to have it here. But if it only hurts you, she wouldn’t want you to look at it. Think about that, Jemmy. And now suppose I go out so you can get ready for bed. Call me when you’re ready and I’ll come tuck you in.”
The door stood ajar and when she stepped into the hall she found Wade waiting for her. His face was shadowy in the twilight and she could not read his expression. To her surprise he reached for her two hands and raised them to his lips.
“You are very good to my son,” he said. “I’m
more grateful than you know, my dear.”
But she did not need gratitude from him and she was glad for the shadows which hid what she did not want him to read in her own eyes.
“Jemmy has become very dear to me,” she said. “Now what about you? If you’ve had dinner, perhaps I can at least get you a cup of tea.”
He did not release her hands but continued to hold them almost awkwardly in his until she drew them gently away.
“Your mother is walking again,” she went on. “Do let her know how pleased you are when she shows you. She’s like a child about the achievement, she’s so proud.”
“This is your doing, too, Lora. You’ve done something for all of us in this house. We can never thank you enough.”
Again there was unwanted gratitude in his voice, but before she could make her escape, Jemmy called to her.
“I’m ready, Lorie!”
“Come with me,” she said to Wade on sudden impulse, and drew him into Jemmy’s bedroom.
The candle on the dresser guttered at a breeze from the window and a moth flew in to circle the flame recklessly.
“We’ve come to say good night, Jemmy,” she said casually.
When she pulled the sheet over him and bent to tuck him in, he reached up suddenly and drew her down, kissed her quickly on the cheek. It was the first time he had made such a gesture and she found that her eyes were moist. She turned to Wade, beseeching him without words. He leaned above the bed and touched the boy’s cheek with his fingers.
“I’ve never told you,” he said, “how proud I was to have Hamlin named after the hero of my story. Good night, son. Sleep well.”
There was no more than that, yet Lori saw happiness spring up in Jemmy’s eyes, and love for his father. She blew out the candle before the moth could make up its mind, and Wade followed her out of the room.
“I’ll get you that tea now,” she said matter-of-factly. “The upstairs sitting room is ready, so I’ll bring it to you there. I know you must be tired.”
“That would be fine,” he agreed, as impersonal as she.
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