I told him just what I had seen. When I got through he said there was "nothing in it."

"That bit about her head being among the toast and cake," he went on, "would be convincing circ.u.mstantial evidence of a tragedy if it had been any other woman's head, but it doesn't count with Lorraine--I mean it doesn't represent the complete abandonment to grief which would be implied if it happened in the case of any one else. You must remember that when Lorraine wants to have a comfortable cry she's got to choose between putting her head in the jam on the sofa, or among the wet paint and brushes in the easy-chair, or among the crumbs on the tea-table.

As for that photograph, it probably fell off the mantel-piece to the tea-table, instead of falling, as usual, into the coal-hod. To sum up, my dear Clarry, if you had remembered the extreme emotionalism of your sister Lorraine's temperament and the--er--eccentricity of her housekeeping, you would not have permitted yourself to be so sadly misled. Not remembering it, you've done a lot of mischief. All these things being so, no one will believe them. And to-night, when you are safely tucked into your little bed, if you hear the tramping of many feet on the asphalt walks you may know what it will mean. It will mean that your mother and father, and Elizabeth, and Grandma Evarts and Maria and Peggy will be dropping in on Lorraine, each alone and quite casually, of course, to find out what there really is in this terrible rumor. And some of them will believe to their dying day that there was something in it."

Well, that made me feel very unhappy. For I could see that under Tom's gay exterior and funny way of saying things he really meant every word. Of course I told him that I had wanted to help Lorraine and Peggy because they were so wretched, and he made me promise on the spot that if ever I wanted to help him I'd tell him about it first. Then he went off to the hotel looking more cheerful, and I was left alone with my sad thoughts.

When I got into the house the first thing I saw was Billy sneaking out of the back door. I had meant to have a long and earnest talk with Billy the minute he got home, and point out some of his serious faults, but when I looked at him I saw that mamma or grandma had just done it. He looked red eyed and miserable, and the minute he saw me he began to whistle. Billy never whistles except just before or just after a whipping, so my heart sank, and I was dreadfully sorry for him. I started after him to tell him so, but he made a face at me and ran; and just then Aunt Elizabeth came along the hall and dragged me up to her room and began to ask me all over again about Mr. Goward and all that he said--whether I was perfectly SURE he didn't mention any name. She looked worried and unhappy. Then she asked about Lorraine, but in an indifferent voice, as if she was really thinking about something else.

I told her all I knew, but she didn't say a word or pay much attention until I mentioned that the man in the photograph was Mr. Lyman Wilde.

Then--well, I wish you had seen Aunt Elizabeth! She made me promise afterwards that I'd never tell a single soul what happened, and I won't.

But I do wish sometimes that Billy and I lived on a desert island, where there wasn't anybody else. I just can't bear being home when everybody is so unhappy, and when not a single thing I do helps the least little bit!

VI. THE SON-IN-LAW, by John Kendrick Bangs

On the whole I am glad our family is no larger than it is. It is a very excellent family as families go, but the infinite capacity of each individual in it for making trouble, and adding to complications already sufficiently complex, surpa.s.ses anything that has ever before come into my personal or professional experience. If I handle my end of this miserable affair without making a break of some kind or other, I shall apply to the Secretary of State for a high place in the diplomatic service, for mere international complications are child's-play compared to this embroglio in which Goward and Aunt Elizabeth have landed us all.

I think I shall take up politics and try to get myself elected to the legislature, anyhow, and see if I can't get a bill through providing that when a man marries it is distinctly understood that he marries his wife and not the whole of his wife's family, from her grandmother down through her maiden aunts, sisters, cousins, little brothers, et al., including the latest arrivals in kittens. In my judgment it ought to be made a penal offence for any member of a man's wife's family to live on the same continent with him, and if I had to get married all over again to Maria--and I'd do it with as much delighted happiness as ever--I should insist upon the interpolation of a line in the marriage ceremony, "Do you promise to love, honor, and obey your wife's relatives," and when I came to it I'd turn and face the congregation and answer "No,"

through a megaphone, so loud that there could be no possibility of a misunderstanding as to precisely where I stood.

If anybody thinks I speak with an unusual degree of feeling, I beg to inform him or her, as the case may be, that in the matter of wife's relations I have an unusually full set, and, as my small brother-in-law says when he orates about his postage-stamp collection, they're all uncancelled. Into all lives a certain amount of mother-in-law must fall, but I not only have that, but a grandmother-in-law as well, and maiden-aunt-in-law, and the Lord knows what else-in-law besides. I must say that as far as my mother-in-law is concerned I've had more luck than most men, because Mrs. Talbert comes pretty close to the ideal in mother-in-legal matters. She is gentle and unoffending. She prefers minding her own business to a.s.suming a trust control of other people's affairs, but HER mother--well, I don't wish any ill to Mrs. Evarts, but if anybody is ambitious to adopt an orphan lady, with advice on tap at all hours in all matters from winter flannels to the conversion of the Hottentots, I will cheerfully lead him to the goal of his desires, and with alacrity surrender to him all my right, t.i.tle, and interest in her. At the same time I will give him a quit-claim deed to my maiden-aunt-in-law--not that Aunt Elizabeth isn't good fun, for she is, and I enjoy talking to her, and wondering what she will do next fills my days with a living interest, but I'd like her better if she belonged in some other fellow's family.

I don't suppose I can blame Maria under all the circ.u.mstances for standing up for the various members of her family when they are attacked, which she does with much vigorous and at times aggressive loyalty. We cannot always help ourselves in the matter of our relations.

Some are born relatives, some achieve relatives, and others have relatives thrust upon them. Maria was born to hers, and according to all the rules of the game she's got to like them, nay, even cherish and protect them against the slings and arrows of outrageous criticism. But, on the other hand, I think she ought to remember that while I achieved some of them with my eyes open, the rest were thrust upon me when I was defenceless, and when I find some difficulty in adapting myself to circ.u.mstances, as is frequently the case, she should be more lenient to my incapacity. The fact that I am a lawyer makes it necessary for me to toe the mark of respect for the authority of the courts all day, whether I am filled with contempt for the court or not, and it is pretty hard to find, when I return home at night, that another set of the judiciary in the form of Maria's family, a sort of domestic supreme court, controls all my private life, so that except when I am rambling through the fields alone, or am taking my bath in the morning, I cannot give my feelings full and free expression without disturbing the family entente; and there isn't much satisfaction in skinning people to a lonesome cow, or whispering your indignant sentiments into the ear of a sponge already soaked to the full with cold water. I have tried all my married life to agree with every member of the family in everything he, she, or it has said, but, now that this Goward business has come up, I can't do that, because every time anybody says "Booh" to anybody else in the family circle, regarding this duplex love-affair, a family council is immediately called and "Booh" is discussed, not only from every possible stand-point, but from several impossible ones as well.

When that letter of Goward's was rescued from the chewing-gum contingent, with its address left behind upon the pulpy surface of Sidney Tracy's daily portion of peptonized-paste, it was thought best that I should call upon the writer at his hotel and find out to whom the letter was really written.

My own first thought was to seek out Sidney Tracy and see if the superscription still remained on the chewing-gum, and I had the good-fortune to meet the boy on my way to the hotel, but on questioning him I learned that in the excitement of catching a catfish, shortly after Alice had left the lads, Sidney had incontinently swallowed the rubber-like substance, and nothing short of an operation for appendicitis was likely to put me in possession of the missing exhibit.

So I went on to the hotel, and ten minutes later found myself in the presence of an interesting case of nervous prostration. Poor Goward!

When I observed the wrought-up condition of his nerves, I was immediately so filled with pity for him that if it hadn't been for Maria I think I should at once have a.s.sumed charge of his case, and, as his personal counsel, sued the family for damages on his behalf. He did not strike me as being either old enough, or sufficiently gifted in the arts of philandery, to be taken seriously as a professional heart-breaker, and to tell the truth I had to restrain myself several times from telling him that I thought the whole affair a tempest in a teapot, because, in wanting consciously to marry two members of the family, he had only attempted to do what I had done unconsciously when I and the whole tribe of Talberts, remotely and immediately connected, became one.

Nevertheless, I addressed him coldly.

"Mr. Goward," I said, when the first greetings were over, "this is a most unfortunate affair."

"It is terrible," he groaned, pacing the thin-carpeted floor like a poor caged beast in the narrow confines of the Zoo. "You don't need to tell me how unfortunate it all is."

"As a matter of fact," I went on, "I don't exactly recall a similar case in my experience. You will doubtless admit yourself that it is a bit unusual for a man even of your age to flirt with the maiden aunt of his fiancee, and possibly you realize that we would all be very much relieved if you could give us some reasonable explanation of your conduct."

"I'll be only too glad to explain," said Goward, "if you will only listen."

"In my own judgment the best solution of the tangle would be for you to elope with a third party at your earliest convenience," I continued, "but inasmuch as you have come here it is evident that you mean to pursue some course of action in respect to one of the two ladies--my sister or my aunt. Now what IS that course? and which of the two ladies may we regard as the real object of your vagrom affections? I tell you frankly, before you begin, that I shall permit no trifling with Peggy.

As to Aunt Elizabeth, she is quite able to take care of herself."

"It's--it's Peggy, of course," said Goward. "I admire Miss Elizabeth Talbert very much indeed, but I never really thought of--being seriously engaged to her."

"Ah!" said I, icily. "And did you think of being frivolously engaged to her?"

"I not only thought of it," said Goward, "but I was. It was at the Abercrombies', Mr. Price. Lily--that is to say, Aunt Elizabeth--"

"Excuse me, Mr. Goward," I interrupted. "As yet the lady is not your Aunt Elizabeth, and the way things look now I have my doubts if she ever is your Aunt Elizabeth."

"Miss Talbert, then," said Goward, with a heart-rending sigh. "Miss Talbert and I were guests at the Abercrombies' last October--maybe she's told you--and on Hallowe'en we had a party--apple-bobbing and the mirror trick and all that, and somehow or other Miss Talbert and I were thrown together a great deal, and before I really knew how, or why, we--well, we became engaged for--for the week, anyhow."

"I see," said I, dryly. "You played the farce for a limited engagement."

"We joked about it a great deal, and I--well, I got into the spirit of it--one must at house-parties, you know," said Goward, deprecatingly.

"I suppose so," said I.

"I got into the spirit of it, and Miss Talbert christened me Young Lochinvar, Junior," Goward went on, "and I did my best to live up to the t.i.tle. Then at the end of the week I was suddenly called home, and I didn't have any chance to see Miss Talbert alone before leaving, and--well, the engagement wasn't broken off. That's all. I never saw her again until I came here to meet the family. I didn't know she was Peggy's aunt."

"So that in reality you WERE engaged to both Peggy and Miss Talbert at the same time," I suggested. "That much seems to be admitted."

"I suppose so," groaned Goward. "But not seriously engaged, Mr. Price. I didn't suppose she would think it was serious--just a lark--but when she appeared that night and fixed me with her eye I suddenly realized what had happened."

"It was another case of 'the woman tempted me and I did eat,' was it, Goward?" I asked.

Goward's pale face Hushed, and he turned angrily.

"I haven't said anything of the sort," he retorted. "Of all the unmanly, sneaking excuses that ever were offered for wrong-doing, that first of Adam's has never been beaten."

"You evidently don't think that Adam was a gentleman," I put in, with a feeling of relief at the boy's att.i.tude toward my suggestion.

"Not according to my standards," he said, with warmth.

"Well," I ventured, "he hadn't had many opportunities, Adam hadn't. His outlook was rather provincial, and his a.s.sociations not broadening.

You wouldn't have been much better yourself brought up in a zoo.

Nevertheless, I don't think myself that he toed the mark as straight as he might have."

"He was a coward," said Goward, with a positiveness born of conviction.

And with that remark Goward took his place in my affections. Whatever the degree of his seeming offence, he was at least a gentleman himself, and his unwillingness to place any part of the blame for his conduct upon Aunt Elizabeth showed me that he was not a cad, and I began to feel pretty confident that some reasonable way out of our troubles was looming into sight.

"How old are you, Goward?" I asked.

"Twenty-one," he answered, "counting the years. If you count the last week by the awful hours it has contained I am older than Methuselah."

At last I thought I had it, and a feeling of wrath against Aunt Elizabeth began to surge up within me. It was another case of that intolerable "only a boy" habit that so many women of uncertain age and character, married and single, seem nowadays to find so much pleasure in. We find it too often in our complex modern society, and I am not sure that it is not responsible for more deviations from the path of rect.i.tude than even the offenders themselves imagine. Callow youth just from college is susceptible to many kinds of flattery, and at the age of adolescence the appeal which lovely woman makes to inexperience is irresistible.

I know whereof I speak, for I have been there myself. I always tell Maria everything that I conveniently can--it is not well for a man to have secrets from his wife--and when I occasionally refer to my past flames I find myself often growing more than pridefully loquacious over my early affairs of the heart, but when I thought of the serious study that I once made in my twentieth year of the dozen easiest, most painless methods of committing suicide because Miss Mehitabel Flanders, aetat thirty-eight, whom I had chosen for my life's companion, had announced her intention of marrying old Colonel Barrington--one of the wisest matches ever as I see it now--I drew the line at letting Maria into that particular secret of my career. Miss Mehitabel was indeed a beautiful woman, and she took a very deep and possibly maternal interest in callow youth. She invited confidence and managed in many ways to make a strong appeal to youthful affections, but I don't think she was always careful to draw the line nicely between maternal love and that other which is neither maternal, fraternal, paternal, nor even filial. To my eye she was no older than I, and to my way of thinking nothing could have been more eminently fitting than that we should walk the Primrose Way hand in hand forever.

While I will not say that the fair Mehitabel trifled with my young affections, I will say that she let me believe--nay, induced me to believe by her manner--that even as I regarded her she regarded me, and when at the end she disclaimed any intention to smash my heart into the myriad atoms into which it flew--which have since most happily reunited upon Maria--and a.s.serted that she had let me play in the rose-garden of my exuberant fancy because I was "only a boy," my b.u.mp upon the hard world of fact was an atrociously hard one. Some women pour pa.s.ser le temps find pleasure in playing thus with young hopes and hearts as carelessly as though they were mere tennis-b.a.l.l.s, to be whacked about and rallied, and volleyed hither and yon, without regard to their const.i.tuent ingredients, and then when trouble comes, and a catastrophe is imminent, the refuge of "only a boy" is sought as though it really afforded a sufficient protection against "responsibility." The most of us would regard the hopeless infatuation of a young girl committed to our care, either as parents or as guardians, for a middle-aged man of the world with such horror that drastic steps would be taken to stop it, but we are not so careful of the love-affairs of our sons, and view with complaisance their devotion to some blessed damozel of uncertain age, comforting ourselves with the reflection that he is "only a boy"

and will outgrow it all in good time. (There's another mem. for my legislative career--a Bill for the Protection of Boys, and the Suppression of Old Maids Who Don't Mean Anything By It.)

I don't mean, in saying all this, to reflect in any way upon the many helpful friendships that exist between youngsters developing into manhood and their elders among women who are not related to them. There have been thousands of such friendships, no doubt, that have worked for the upbuilding of character; for the inspiring in the unfolding consciousness of what life means in the young boy's being of a deeper, more lasting, respect for womanhood than would have been attained to under any other circ.u.mstances, but that has been the result only when the woman has taken care to maintain her own dignity always, and to regard her course as one wherein she has accepted a degree of responsibility second only to a mother's, and not a by-path leading merely to pleasure and for the idling away of an unoccupied hour.

Potential manhood is a difficult force to handle, and none should embark upon the parlous enterprise of arousing it without due regard for the consequences. We may not let loose a young lion from its leash, and, when dire consequences follow, excuse ourselves on the score that we thought the devastating feature was "only a cub."

These things flashed across my mind as I sat in Goward's room watching the poor youth in his nerve-distracting struggles, and, when I thought of the tangible evidence in hand against Aunt Elizabeth, I must confess if I had been juryman sitting in judgment of the case I should have convicted her of kidnapping without leaving the box. To begin with, there was the case of Ned Temple. I haven't quite been able to get away from the notion that however short-sighted and gauche poor Mrs. Temple's performance was in going over to the Talberts' to make a scene because of Aunt Elizabeth's attentions to Temple, she thought she was justified in doing so, and Elizabeth's entire innocence in the premises, in view of her record as a man-s.n.a.t.c.her, has not been proven to my satisfaction.

Then there was that Lyman Wilde business, which I never understood and haven't wanted to until they tried to mix poor Lorraine up in it.