第6章

Damn it, I won't have it!" Stevens lifted the gate latch."Well----"Good-by, George.I'll look in again this evening." And knowing the moral ideas of the town, all he could muster by way of encouragement was a half-hearted "Don't borrow trouble."But Warham did not hear.He was moving up the tanbark walk toward the house, muttering to himself.When Fanny, unable longer to conceal Lorella's plight, had told him, pity and affection for his sweet sister-in-law who had made her home with them for five years had triumphed over his principles.He had himself arranged for Fanny to hide Lorella in New York until she could safely return.But just as the sisters were about to set out, Lorella, low in body and in mind, fell ill.Then George--and Fanny, too--had striven with her to give them the name of her betrayer, that he might be compelled to do her justice.Lorella refused."I told him," she said, "and he--Inever want to see him again." They pleaded the disgrace to them, but she replied that he would not marry her even if she would marry him; and she held to her refusal with the firmness for which the Lenoxes were famous.They suspected Jimmie Galt, because he had been about the most attentive of the young men until two or three months before, and because he had abruptly departed for Europe to study architecture.Lorella denied that it was he."If you kill him," she said to Warham, "you kill an innocent man." Warham was so exasperated by her obstinacy that he was at first for taking her at her offer and letting her go away.But Fanny would not hear of it, and he acquiesced.

Now--"This child must be sent away off somewhere, and never be heard of again," he said to himself."If it'd been a boy, perhaps it might have got along.But a girl----"There's nothing can be done to make things right for a girl that's got no father and no name."The subject did not come up between him and his wife until about a week after Lorella's funeral.But he was thinking of nothing else.At his big grocery store--wholesale and retail--he sat morosely in his office, brooding over the disgrace and the danger of deeper disgrace--for he saw what a hold the baby already had upon his wife.He was ashamed to appear in the streets; he knew what was going on behind the sympathetic faces, heard the whisperings as if they had been trumpetings.And he was as much afraid of his own soft heart as of his wife's.But for the sake of his daughter he must be firm and just.

One morning, as he was leaving the house after breakfast, he turned back and said abruptly: "Fan, don't you think you'd better send the baby away and get it over with?""No," said his wife unhesitatingly--and he knew his worst suspicion was correct."I've made up my mind to keep her.""It isn't fair to Ruth."

"Send it away--where?"

"Anywhere.Get it adopted in Chicago--Cincinnati--Louisville.""Lorella's baby?"

"When she and Ruth grow up--what then?"

"People ain't so low as some think."

"`The sins of the parents are visited on the children unto----'""I don't care," interrupted Fanny."I love her.I'm going to keep her.Wait here a minute."When she came back she had the baby in her arms."Just look,"she said softly.

George frowned, tried not to look, but was soon drawn and held by the sweet, fresh, blooming face, so smooth, so winning, so innocent.

"And think how she was sent back to life--from beyond the grave.

It must have been for some purpose."

Warham groaned, "Oh, Lord, I don't know _what_ to do! But--it ain't fair to our Ruth.""I don't see it that way....Kiss her, George."Warham kissed one of the soft cheeks, swelling like a ripening apple.The baby opened wide a pair of wonderful dark eyes, threw up its chubby arms and laughed--such a laugh!...There was no more talk of sending her away.