A FAMILY SCENE
While Mr. Lawton still strove to regain his self-control he saw, passing out through the further gate, the big chestnut, the battered looking livery buggy, and the gorgeous William Henry Bulkley, whose cowed, dispirited "man" was driving, while he—W. H.—gave himself the pleasure of vigorously damning the entire outfit, individually and collectively. A little later the doctor drove his lightly built, dark bays out—full sisters they were, with faces so kind and manners so gentle as always to suggest a pair of nurses. After that John Lawton thought he might then go up to the house and get a quiet peep at Dorothy, whose face he half expected to see changed somehow since she had given him her morning kiss. "She had been a child then, and now, yes now, she was a woman." He did not realize that the sudden change had been but in his point of view.
Walking slowly up the steep rise to the porch, he thought he heard high voices, and, opening the door, he stood amazed. Looking up, where at the stair-top German Lena stood, one outstretched hand against the wall, the other on the bannister, both feet braced firm and wide apart, her small blue eyes a-light, a girl on guard! And just beneath her, hair disarranged, face crimson, and eyes snapping, Mrs. Lawton, in high, piercing tones, was spitting and hissing abusive epithets:
"You! how dare you? You German steerage rat! You stupid wooden-headed, wooden-shod thing! How dare you—dare you! In my days of wealth, my housekeeper, my cook, wouldn't have allowed you to care for my pots and pans! My daughter's nothing to you! I can say what I please to her, and say it how I please! How dare you interfere! You shall feel the law for your Dutch insolence! Stand aside, and let me into that room!"
"Nein! nein!" said Lena, savagely. "Nein! I don't stand on my sides! I make by Herr Doctor's orders, und I keep my Miss Lady quiet uf I can!" Then, catching sight of John Lawton, she cried: "Oh, my Herr Mister! is dat you? Oh, you vas velcome as never vas!"
"John Lawton!" cried Mrs. Lawton, at the same time, "if you have one spark of manhood in you, if you even dimly remember your promise to protect and cherish me, you will order this crazy Dutch slattern to the scullery!"
"Letitia! Letitia!" remonstrated the mortified and bewildered man, "come away, I beg of you, and explain quietly what has happened."
But a perfect shriek of rage leapt from the woman's throat: "What has happened? Do you know, that thing there has struck me—me—a lady!"
"Nein! nein!" stoutly protested Lena, "I don't strike nobodys, my Herr Mister! She com' mad by me! for dat—dat doctor mans—ven he have put der sticks und shplinters on der Miss Lady's arm, dat com' got break by der Bergamots man, he com' say dat I must make for der quiet! Und two time he tell me dot! He say she make of der fever rite avay quick uf she com' get excite! und nobody shall com' by her, for much talk! Und I shall vatch until der odder vun, der Miss Sybells com', und take care by her! Und—und—I tell you true now, Herr Boss, he say der mutter downstair seem very hy-strikle like, und not fit to com' by der sickroom! Und den he go und der Frau Mistress, she com' fly in der room, und she com' mad like a vitch! Und she say some tings at my Miss Lady 'how she dare do sometings?' Und my Miss Lady, she com' vite, com' red, und begin shake! Und I say, 'Blease for go!' Und she say, 'Miss Doroty is a God-forsakens simpletons!' und I say vonce more, 'Blease!' und—und den I don't strike, I don't shuf der Frau Mistress, I youst pick her round by der waist, und I histe her out of der room! Und she shmack me on der cheek und try to come by der room again! Und I lock der door, und now I stand here und keep my Miss Lady quiet, youst so long as I have der legs to shtand by! Ja! So!"
The old man's face was a study of pained bewilderment. He slowly ascended the stairs, and taking by the arm the dishevelled creature, in whom it was hard for him to recognize his wife, he said: "Come to your room, Letitia. You will bring upon yourself an attack of nerves if this continues. You need some drops." And the innocently spoken words wrung a cry of rage from the woman, as she recalled how, down-stairs, a few minutes before, William Henry Bulkley had hurled the bottle across the room to the sofa, with the courteous words: "There's your damned old drops! Much good they've done us, haven't they!"
"Come!" continued John. Then, looking back, he added to Lena: "Open Miss Dorothy's door and tell her 'my love' and I'll be with her directly, and will read a little out of Sybbie's play to her while you get tea ready."
"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Mrs. Lawton. "When you hear of her outrageous conduct it will be a lecture, not Sybil's play, that you will read! Anything, anything but slyness in a girl!"
"Letitia!" The tone rather startled the angry woman. She allowed herself to be led into her room, where John filled the basin with water, added a little cologne, and opened out a fresh towel ready for use. For though Letitia had had no maid for years past, she had not been without trained service. Now, however, she could not put aside her grievance even to lave her burning face. She went on: "Never have I been so—so discredited, so lowered, so belittled! One does not often meet two such hypocrites on the same day! She, with her pretended coyness and shyness! That any child of mine should be capable of such deception, such concealment!"
"My dear! my dear!" interrupted John Lawton, "you are not stopping to consider the force of your words. There has been no deception, no concealment. Our young people have been learning to love each other, wife, and we were too blind to see what was going on."
"W-why! w-why! do you know about it?" surprisedly questioned Mrs. Lawton. "Did Mr. Bulkley tell you, too, before he drove away?"
"Mr. Bulkley?" frowned Lawton, "I don't see what on earth Mr. Bulkley has to do with our affairs. Besides, he has been most unpleasant in his manner toward Leslie Galt."
"It's a pity that we have not followed his example—the young hypocrite! with his suave tone and underhand conduct!"
"No! no!" interrupted Lawton, "there has been nothing underhand in Leslie Galt's conduct. He loves Dorothy; there's no crime in that, surely, and he has come like a man and asked for her, and——"
"And you! Have you presumed to encourage that mere salaried clerk to hope to marry a Lawton? Understand this, if any child of mine ever went to live in a flat, I would not recognize her though she lay upon her death-bed! To be dragged down to poverty by another [the old man winced] is no crime, but to deliberately choose poverty is a vulgarity that is worse than crime! You will forbid this thing at once! What—love? They love each other? Bah! He's got a straight, flat back and good teeth and eyes—will they make up for a shabby wardrobe and no visiting list? Love? Love in poverty is an impossibility! I ought to know by this time!" she sneered, bitterly. "I've had plenty of opportunity for experimenting!" Without noticing the quivering of her husband's chin and mouth, she went on: "She's mad or a fool to throw away money and position for some hole-in-a-corner existence with a good-looking lawyer's clerk!"
"Letitia," broke in her husband very gently, "I don't just know what you mean, my dear, but I suppose you are speaking figuratively of money and position; but if you will let me explain all about young Galt's present standing and his future prospects, I think you will yourself sanction an engagement."
"The prospects of a mere clerk!" she jeered. "What a poor-spirited, broken thing you have become, calmly permitting one daughter to go upon the public stage, and giving the other to the first poverty-stricken applicant that asks for her! No! I'm not speaking figuratively of money and position! They are within her reach, and she shall accept them! She has no right to keep me in poverty, because she prefers it for herself! The time will come when she will thank me for my interference—that is, if she has not driven the man off forever! Perhaps even I may not be able to whistle back a Mr. Bulkley, once he is gone!"
"My God!" the words came in a sort of choking gasp. The man's pale eyes stared at her with a sort of questioning horror. "You do not mean—you can not mean?"
"I mean," recklessly responded the woman, "that with a few smiles and half promises from Dorothy and a little veiled management on my part, her well-ringed fingers might this moment be holding the strings of the Bulkley purse!"
"She must be mad!" interjected the trembling voice of the husband, as if thinking aloud. "It is a charity to believe her mad!"
"Then I'm mad from disappointment and wasted effort. Any opportunity is thrown away upon you! And Sybil hated him and opposed me at every turn! Yet with a little more time my finesse would have brought William Henry Bulkley to the point of marrying Dorothy!"
"Damnation!" cried John Lawton, as he sprang to his feet and stood a hard, breathing moment, holding fast to the corner of the dressing-table for support. His pale eyes shone with the phosphorescent glare of the angry cat. His long fingers opened and closed convulsively. For the first time in all her life, Letitia saw danger in him.
"You—are—an—infamous woman!" The words came slowly and with effort from his tremulous lips. "You have forgotten your motherhood, your womanhood! But you never forget the sweetly spicy savor of the flesh-pots of Egypt! No!" he cried with increasing anger, "nor have you forgotten the nature, the gross brutality, of this man, who has control of the flesh-pots you still dream of! You have not forgotten either the long, slow dying of his faithful wife, whom he crowned with public infamies! And since that time you know, as all people know, he has been one of the mightiest in a very sink of iniquity—know him to be a walking danger to unprotected innocence and a vainglorious 'friend' of fashionable vice! Yet to this immorality add an uncontrollably violent temper, impaired health, and a grandfather's years; and for a few fripperies and gew-gaws, a wrap or two of fur and velvet for the satisfaction of your vanity, you would fling, without a thought of her pure soul's fate—fling the white, sweet body of your innocent child into his foul embrace, relying on the name of wife to cover the iniquity! Dorothy, my little white-souled woman-child, and Bulkley? I—I wonder—I don't kill you, Letitia!"
He advanced toward her so fiercely that she shrank back, crying out in terror: "John! John! don't hurt me!"
"Why not?" he asked, savagely. "Why not? Do you know what you have done for me? You have dragged down the woman I have loved and honored as my wife—down, down to within one step of being a procu——!"
Her sharp scream of shame and terror cut across the hideous word.
"No, I won't hurt you; but oh, God! oh, God! to wake and find the wife you have pillowed on your breast for twenty years is, after all, a stranger to you! That hurts!—yes, that hurts!"
He passed his hand across his eyes, then he said, sternly: "Never bring that man into Dorothy's presence again—I forbid it! Yes, I told you you would make yourself ill!"
But as she lapsed into a faint she was dimly conscious that John was leaving the room. She had gone too far—her slave had rebelled for once. He who always had waited upon her himself in her previous attacks, now called on Lena to attend her and get her to bed, while he went to Dorothy's room and kissed and blessed her and made her very soul sing for joy, because he praised her beloved.
And in the silence, when his cheek rested on her piled-up sunny hair, she did not know of the bitter tears creeping down his face—tears of disapppointment and sorrow, because he had that day learned that the wife he believed to be but frivolous was in truth a personified selfishness.