The Eddy: A Novel of To-day

by Clarence Louis Cullen

"What I cannot understand," she said, not in any tone of reproach, but earnestly enough, "is the fact that I was not told, particularly after I left school, that I was so intolerably indebted to—to that man. My impression always was so different. I never doubted that my father was providing for me. I was given to understand that when I was a young girl, and I never thought anything different. It would have been difficult, of course I know, to tell me any such a thing while I was at school; but I can't help but believe that I should have been told when I went to live in that house. I doubt if I could have stayed there had I known, even to be near my mother; I should have found some other way of meeting her. It is unthinkable that I should be in that man's debt. I shall not remain in his debt, at any rate, to the extent of the amount my father sent me recently. I shall use that, at all events, to help rid myself of such an intolerable obligation."

Blythe then explained it all to her: how her father had never ceased to make provision for her, even after Blythe had informed him that his remittances were being rejected; how, when he had seen her father in Honolulu, he had been instructed to deposit the remittances as a fund for Louise's future use, and he named the amount which he was holding for her. Louise's eyes lighted up when she heard this.

"I shall send the entire amount to that man," she said, in precipitate decision, "to reimburse him for what he has expended for me."

Blythe was forced to repress a smile.

"That decision does you credit, Louise," he said quietly. "But it is out of the question. The man not only would not accept the reimbursement, but, in offering it, you would simply give him another opportunity to mortify you by returning it. That is what he would do. He is very rich, and he has the porcine pride of riches. He would keenly enjoy the flourish of thrusting back at you the offered reimbursement, just enjoy as he enjoyed—I hate to say it, but I must to make matters clear—thrusting back the quarterly remittances of your father."

"But why did you not tell me these things when my father asked you to become my guardian?" Louise asked him. A natural curiosity, but no reproof, marked her tone.

"Because I did not feel up to it," Blythe replied plainly enough. "That would have involved telling you the whole miserable story. I could not do that. Nor could Laura. We talked it over and we found that neither of us was equal to so gruelling a task. It seemed better to let you gradually grasp the facts yourself. Our telling you would not have helped matters. Moreover, so far as I was concerned, I did not feel that I had the right to touch upon matters so intimate. It is different now—today. The proscription has been removed. I am now your guardian."

Louise gave a little start at his last words, and Blythe, trained in observation, did not fail to notice the increased lustre of her wide eyes, any more than he neglected to see that she was at some pains to quell words which he felt assured would have been phrases of gladness had she permitted herself to utter them. Why was she thus repressing her impulses? Blythe immediately concentrated an acute mentality upon the problem. The answer, and the right one, came to him in a flash, as if by telepathic revelation: he understood the reason underlying her new restraint, which he perceived, not without pleasure, she was having difficulty in maintaining. It was from a keener realization of her mother's position: Blythe felt so sure of it that he smiled inwardly and was comforted. Her mother's position was nothing to him! But how to convince Louise of that? He made poor progress of this factor of the problem in trying to study it while talking with Louise. He told her that he had only been notified that morning that the court had appointed him her guardian.

"Are you prepared to be severely disciplined?" he asked her. He felt in vastly better spirits since arriving at what he felt assured was the correct solution as to Louise's manifestly changed manner toward him. "I rather believe I shall insist upon your permitting me to pick out your frocks and hats. I think I shall have you change at once to Quaker garb."

Louise could not repress a smile at that. She caught herself longing to be on her former plane with him. But her fancied ineligibility, her somewhat morbid consciousness that she was hedged in by circumstances which she had no right even to tacitly ask him to share with her, put a damper upon her temptation to resume her former manner with him.