IV
John Moore had not crossed Grace’s vision since the afternoon of Christmas day, when his unexpected appearance in the highway near The Shack proved so disconcerting. She suspected that he was avoiding her, probably from a generous wish to spare her the embarrassment of explaining herself.
When she left Shipley’s at the closing hour of a day early in April she was surprised to see him waiting at the door.
“Good evening, Grace! Hope you don’t mind being held up, but I wanted to see you and this seemed the easiest way. Got time to walk home?”
Grace had meant to take the car but she decided instantly that in view of the glimpse he had got of her in Trenton’s arms on the memorable day at The Shack it would be poor diplomacy to refuse.
“Of course, I’ll walk, John,” she replied cordially. “I’ve been wanting to see you.” She waited till they were out of the crowd, then said with a preluding laugh:
“You must be thinking the awfulest things of me, and that’s why you’ve given me the go-by. That was an awful fib I told you Christmas about going to a matinee. The truth of the matter was that I had promised to go with some people into the country for the afternoon and didn’t want the family to know; and I couldn’t explain over the telephone. And out there we all got to cutting up and well—you saw me! I’m terribly ashamed of myself!”
“Oh, pshaw, you needn’t be! I didn’t think anything about it. I always know you’re all right. I’m for you, Grace—you know that. I’ve been so busy since I moved to town that I’ve kept my nose right on the grindstone.”
His words lacked the usual John Moore flavor, and in spite of his protest she guiltily attributed his unusual restraint to reservations as to the Christmas day episode. But his next speech quickly shifted the ground of her apprehensions.
“I’ve just been down to Bloomington to see Roy,” he said, doggedly blurting out the sentences. “The boy sent for me; he’d got into a bad scrape—about a girl. You can guess the rest of it.”
“Oh!” she gasped, feeling the earth whirling. “Not that!”
“Roy was in a blue funk and threatened to run away but I talked him out of that. The girl’s name is Sadie Denton; she’s not really a bad girl. I had a talk with her and went down to Louisville with them yesterday and saw them married. Her folks live there and they’ll look out for her till Roy finishes at the law school. I guess that’s about all. He didn’t want any of you to know about it just yet; but I sat down on that and he agreed I should tell you. I was sure you’d handle it right at home.”
“Oh, it will break mother’s heart! She’s counted everything on Roy.”
“Well, everything isn’t lost yet,” he replied. “I hope you think I did right.”
“It was the only thing, of course, John. It was just like you to see it straight and do the right thing.”
She wormed from him the fact that he had given Roy a hundred dollars, and that certain payments for the support of Roy’s wife had been agreed on.
“You’re certainly a friend, John. We’ll return the money at once; that’s the least we can do.”
When he protested that he did not need the money immediately she explained that her father’s affairs were looking brighter and that the return of the sum advanced would work no hardship.
The bad news having been delivered, Moore exerted himself to cheer her, but a vast gloom had settled upon her. As he shook hands at the gate her sense of his tolerance, kindness and wisdom brought tears to her eyes but, left alone, her only emotion was one of fury against Roy. She stood on the doorstep pondering. Again, as after Roy’s appeal for money to cover his share of the expense of his automobile escapade, she thought of her own weakness in yielding to temptation. But for John’s advice that it would be better for the rest of the family to know at once of Roy’s tragedy—this being the only word that fitly described this new and discouraging blight upon her brother’s future—she would have lacked the courage to communicate the evil tidings to the household.
It was not until they had all settled in the living room after supper that she broke the news. Her father sat at the table, reading a technical journal, with Ethel near by preparing her Sunday-school lesson. Mrs. Durland had established herself by the grate with the family darning in her lap. Since Durland’s removal to Kemp’s establishment a new cheer and hope had lightened the atmosphere of the home, and Grace, moving restlessly about the room, dreaded to launch her thunderbolt upon the tranquil scene.
“I have something to tell you; please listen,—you too, father,” she began quietly.
She used much the same blunt phrases in which Moore had condensed the story, watching with a kind of fascination a long black stocking slip from her mother’s hand, pause at her knee and then crawl in a slow serpentine fashion down her apron to her feet.
“Oh, Roy!” Mrs. Durland moaned, her face white.
Mr. Durland coughed, took off his glasses, breathed on the lenses and began slowly rubbing them with the corner of the linen table cover. He desisted suddenly, remembering that Ethel had once rebuked him for mussing the cover.
“I guess that’s all there is to say about it,” Grace concluded when she had told everything, not omitting their financial obligation to Moore. “We’ve all got to make the best of it.”
Grace picked up the fallen stocking and handed it to her mother, who made a pretense of carefully inspecting a hole in the heel.
“What time’s the first train down in the morning?” she asked. “I must see Roy—and——”
Ethel, who had sunk back helplessly in her chair, jumped to her feet, her eyes blazing.
“You shan’t go one step mother! It’s enough that Roy’s brought this disgrace on the family without you going down there to pet him. It’s your spoiling him that’s made him what he is. John Moore had no business meddling in our affairs. What Roy should have done was to go away and never show his face to any of us again. Father, you tell mother to keep away from Roy!”
The appeal to Durland, who had so rarely found himself a court of last resort in the whole course of his life, was not without its humor and Grace smiled bitterly as she watched her sister, who stood before her, white, her lips set in hard lines, her hands clenched at her sides. Durland cleared his throat and recrossed his legs.
“I guess your mother’ll do the right thing, Ethel,” he said.
“I think you’re all crazy!” Ethel flared. “What will Osgood think of me, with my brother forced to marry a girl off the street.”
“I didn’t say she was off the street,” Grace corrected her. “I’d show the girl a little mercy if I were you, and I wouldn’t make it any harder than necessary for father and mother. You’re not the only one of us who has feelings.”
“I’ll leave! The rest of you may do as you please, but I’ll not let Osgood think I don’t feel the shame of my brother’s sin.”
“If Osgood reads his Testament he may not see it in quite that light.”
Ethel breathed hard in the effort to think of some withering retort. The best she could do, however, was not especially brilliant.
“Osgood,” she announced grandly, “is a gentleman!”
“He might be that and still be a Christian,” Grace replied tartly.
“What did you say about trains, Grace,” asked Mrs. Durland, who, deep in thought, had scarcely heard the colloquy between her daughters.
“I’ll call the station and find out. And I’ll get Irene on the ’phone and tell her I won’t be at the store tomorrow. I’m going with you, mother.”
“Irene!”
Ethel caught up and flung back the name as though it were some hateful and obscene thing.
“Ethel,” said Mrs. Durland serenely, “If you’ve got nothing better to do you might help me with the darning. I don’t like to go away without clearing it up.”