The Able McLaughlins

by Margaret Wilson

  McNair was telling something about the passage across when Wully opened the door. He paused a moment, seeing the room full. He looked at them in surprise, and they looked at him with various degrees of admiration. He came from cutting and hauling home wood for the winter and the wind had made his cheeks as red as the fringe of the scarf around his neck, and his eyes as blue as the knit wool of it. In the old coat wrapped about him, he filled the door, a huge young man one would not like for an enemy. His mother had just begun to tell the strange woman that this was her son, when Alex rose and stretched out his hand.

  “Come away, man! Come away!” he cried cordially. It was not the kind of meeting Wully had anticipated. But what could he do, with his mother and the women right there, but acknowledge the little woman’s salutation, and give his hand to Chirstie’s father? And taking his cue from his mother, he smiled so warmly down upon the wee body, that then and there she began liking her step-son-in-law. His mother began at once giving him instructions. He and Chirstie had best begin packing their things. His father would be along any minute now, and they would all go home together. Wully would no longer be needed at McNair’s, and with all that work to be done on his own house——

  McNair interrupted her decidedly,

  “Huts, Isobel! Ye canna take Chirstie away the night!” One would almost think she was the McLaughlins’ daughter to hear Isobel! That manipulator of events smothered the retort that came to her, upon this. She simply enlarged innocently upon the inconvenience of Wully’s having to ride every day from this place to his own, such a distance. McNair could understand that, but nevertheless they weren’t going one step to-night. Wully winked slyly at his wife. He didn’t know exactly how his mother had worked it all, but it did him good to hear his father-in-law begging for the privilege of his company for a while—that man he had expected to have such a time with! Isobel yielded gracefully at length. They might stay the night with Alex, but they mustn’t stay longer. With her big girls both away at school, she was that lonely for Chirstie!

  Then the elder McLaughlin came in and the greetings were all gone over again, with this difference, that John McLaughlin, being less quick at taking hints from his wife than his son had been, showed just enough coldness to McNair to let him see that Isobel’s account of the clan’s opinion of him was not exaggerated. Naturally after the worthy McLaughlins had departed with so little of the old cordiality, Alex was more eager than ever to placate Wully, who, divining that Chirstie dreaded her father’s outburst against her, stood very much upon his dignity, a rather forbidding son-in-law.

  When the young two were alone in the kitchen that night, Chirstie said, weary with the day’s excitement, and her first taste of shame before strangers;

  “Whatever’ll she say in the morning, when you’re not here, Wully?”

  He answered;

  “What do you care what she says? Anyway, she don’t look like she’d say anything. Just you hold your head high, and she won’t dare!”

  “It’s well enough for you to talk of holding your head high! But how can I?”

  “I’ll stay about in the morning, and in the afternoon we’ll go home. I’ll say we must go.”

  So they planned, little knowing how useless it was to fear the wee body. In the next room, she was saying to her husband;

  “Ye never telt me you lived in a sty!”

  “Huts, woman! ’Tis no sty!”

  “And I thinking you like a laird, with so many fine acres!”

  “It’s a new country!”

  “It’s an old sty!” Had she not from the train seen many a little snug place among comforting hills, livable little places! But that had been, to be sure, far from this, in the east. The further west they came, the more they traveled into desolation. Lonely enough places she had seen, but none so unpromising as this sty. Could it be expected that a man with so disconsolate a bride would add to her woe by rehearsing the fresh scandal of the family into which she had come? She remarked at length that it was a terrible thing for a lassie with the baby coming. Why had he not told her of that before? He hadn’t remembered to. It was a fine place for bairns. Just let her wait till the spring came. She remarked that it was many months till spring. He snored, more or less successfully.

  The next morning the new mother unpacked the great list to get out the presents she had brought for her stepchildren. She unpacked till the poor room lay heaped high and hidden under richness. Wee Jeannie had a fine doll. Dod had fur-lined mittens. Chirstie had a collar of lace more soft and fine than she had ever seen. And the wee body presented these things with that timid, conciliatory air that made her career later so hard to understand. She apologized for having nothing for the baby. If she had known about that, she would have brought it something good. When was it to be born, she asked, point-blank.

  Chirstie, blushing to the unruly little curls about her forehead, said in December. This seemed to relieve her stepmother greatly. By that time, she declared, she could make a fine little dress for it, out of stuff she had in another box. Another box! Were there then other boxes? Of course brides bring dowries to their husbands, the girl remembered with a pang. But she had brought hers only disgrace! But the wee body talked on, in a kindly way. Chirstie watched her making friends with little Jeannie. She liked her, very much. That woman could never be anything but kind to the little sister who was to be left in her charge. Oh, Chirstie could have coveted that woman’s love for herself. But, of course, when the truth about herself became known—and when she thought of going to the McLaughlins, to live in that house, full always of children and cousins and visitors, the center, as it were, and rallying place of the neighborhood, her spirits sank lower and lower.

  Wully had learned before now to conquer her depression, and he talked the cold hours cunningly away as they rode towards his father’s. His reward, that evening, was to see his wife sitting there at the table, long after the meal was over, forgetful of herself, telling his ejaculating mother of the dresses, the capes, the mantles, the ribbons and feathers, reds and browns and greens and blues, puffs and ruffles and tucks, all of these out of one box, and besides the one there were three others left at the station to be brought out, full of—whatever did they suppose? They couldn’t imagine! Isobel was trying to fancy how Alex had enticed a woman so obviously rich to the wilderness. She was disappointed in this marriage. She had hoped when Alex married again, he would get a woman who would show him how to treat a wife. But that timid, wee body! Meek like! With faded red hair, and mild light blue eyes! There would be no hope of her ever separating him from the price of a milk-crock! Anyone could see that. The poor wee thing, married to Alex McNair!

  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 her 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, because 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 bedridden reading them. 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 repli
ed 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;