"My dear," she said, "you are the first girl I ever knew deliberately to erect barriers between herself and the happiness that rightfully belongs to her. What, in Heaven's name, has your mother's departure from—from rule to do with you? How has it, how could it, ever involve you, or come between you and the man—the big-minded man—who loves you and whom you love? Tell me that."
"It could not come between us," replied Louise. "But the world—the very 'They-Sayers' you mention—could and would use it as a thong to punish him. And that is the one thing I could not have. I am the daughter of my mother. I am not very experienced, but I know how the world views these things. The world does not draw lines of demarcation where women are concerned. Its ostracism is a very long and heavy whip. Its condemnation does not take the least heed of mitigations. I can speak plainly to you, dear—you are of course the only living person to whom I would say these things. But, if I were to permit John Blythe to marry me, can you not hear the gruelling comment—comment that, while it might not actually reach my husband's ears, he could not fail to be conscious of? They would say that he had married a girl whose mother had been openly maintained by a man—a man in the public eye—whose wife was living. They would go farther and say—which of course is the simple truth—that I had lived for a time under the roof maintained by that man. And, with such things to go upon, how could the world possibly reach any other conclusion—granting, as you must, the knack the world has for leaping at conclusions—than that John Blythe, a growing man, a man destined for distinction, had made a tremendous mistake in his marriage? Of course you understand. I have been wanting to say these things to you for a long time, but I could not summon the courage. I wanted to say them to John on the day before we sailed; but I could not."
Her voice broke, and she gazed out of the window to hide the tears that stood in her eyes. Laura, so strongly moved that she deliberately forced herself to think of inconsequentialities to keep back her tears, wrapped her arms about the girl.
"My dear," she said, "I am not, I fear, as religious, as reverent a woman as I should be. But I do not believe that God will keep a woman like you and a man like John Blythe apart. That would be a deviation from His all-discerning rule in which I simply could not believe. I don't admit that you are right. I don't say now that you are wholly wrong. But, through the very nobility of the view you take, a way shall be found. Never doubt that, child. I know that in some ways—many ways—the world is awry enough. But I know, too, that there is not enough injustice in all the world to keep you from the arms of the man who loves you and is beloved by you."
There were two topics in John Blythe's letter to Laura that gave her more than a day's material for reflection. One of them concerned Louise's mother.
"Mrs. Treharne summoned me a few days ago, and in the evening I went to the house on the Drive," Blythe wrote. "There seemed to be nothing in particular as to which she wished to see me—except that she was good enough to intimate that she had noticed my 'interest' in Louise. (Interest!'—when that very evening I'd been cursing the slow progress of the art of aviation, which made it impossible for me to fly to London out of hand—out of wing, I mean.) Really, Laura, I think the depressed little woman merely wanted to have a talk with somebody about Louise, which was why she sent for me. She looks in shocking health. If I read aright, I think she is at least at the beginning of some sort of a decline. Better not tell Louise this—just yet. There are reasons why I think it would be better for Louise to remain abroad with you for a while longer. One of the reasons is this: I gather that Mrs. Treharne is pretty nigh through with Judd. She as much as told me so. I was touched by her lack of reserve in speaking to me of this matter. Louise was right. Her mother, as Louise prophesied to you, is undergoing the miseries of an awakening—a singularly bitter awakening in her case, I fear. I felt and feel intensely sorry for her—she was never wrong at heart, but was caught in the eddy of circumstance.
"She hinted, not vaguely, but quite directly, that she was upon the verge of a complete change in her environment—and the intertwined remarks denoted that her keenly-felt humiliation in the eyes of her daughter was at the bottom of the contemplated change, whatever it is to be. I am very confident that it is to be a withdrawal from the protection, if one could call it that, of Judd. It is too bad, isn't it, that this did not come just a few months earlier? But (here's a bromidiom for you!) better late than never! Think what distress such a withdrawal would have spared Louise if it had happened before the child quit school!
"But enough of if-it-had-beens. The point is that Louise, I feel very sure, has accomplished a wonderful regeneration—the regeneration of her own mother! Could there be anything more unheard-of, more marvelous, than that? But it is merely of a piece with the influence which Louise has upon everybody. You know that badly-batted-around modern word, 'uplift'? It applies actually, I think, to but one human being in the world: Louise. I mean that everybody who comes even slightly under her influence experiences that sense of 'uplift.' I know that I do! And even you, my dear Laura, even you ..."
("Of course the dear headlong creature is right," thought Laura when she read this, "but isn't it hard to picture the self-contained, occasionally even austere John Blythe raving so! But they're all alike. I suppose that even Alexander, Cæsar, and Charlemagne privately raved the same way over their sweethearts!")