It was a small place of some half-dozen rooms, and it served now, as it had for these twenty years, as home and workshop alike for its tenant. Aurora Lane had lived here so long that most folk thought she owned the place. As a matter of fact, she owned only a vast sheaf of receipted bills for rent paid to Nels Jorgens, the wagon-maker across the street. In all these twenty years her rent had been paid promptly, as were all her other bills.
Aurora Lane was a milliner, who sometimes did dress-making as well—the only milliner in Spring Valley—and had held that honor for many years. A tiny sign above the door announced her calling. A certain hat, red of brim and pronounced of plume, which for unknown years had reposed in the front window of the place—the sort of hat which proved bread-winning among farmers' wives and in the families of villagers of moderate income—likewise announced that here one might find millinery.
When she first had moved into these quarters so many years ago, scarce more than a young girl, endeavoring to make a living in the world, the maples had not been quite so wide, the grass along the sidewalk not quite so dusty.
It was here that for twenty years Aurora Lane had made her fight against the world. It had been the dream, the fierce, flaming ambition of all her life, that her son, her son beloved, her son born out of holy wedlock, might after all have some chance in life.
It was for this that she aided in his disappearance in his infancy, studiously giving out to all—without doubt even to the unknown father of the boy—the word that the child had died, still in its infancy, in a distant state, among relatives of her own. She herself, caught in the shallows of poverty and unable to travel, had not seen him in all these years—had not dared to see him—had in all the dulled but not dead agony of a mother's yearning postponed her sweet dream of a mother's love, and with unmeasurable bravery held her secret all these awful years. Schooling here and there, at length the long term in college, had kept the boy altogether a stranger to his native town, a stranger even to his own mother. He did not know his own past, nor hers. He did not dream how life had been made smooth for him, nor at what fearful cost. Shielded about always by a mother's love, he had not known he had a mother.
This was as his mother had wished. As for him, in some way he received the requisite funds. He wondered only that he knew so little of his own people, half orphan though he was. He had been told that his father, long since dead, had left a certain sum for the purpose of his education, although further of his own history he knew nothing. That he was not of honorable birth he never once had dreamed. And now he had heard this charge for the first time—heard it made publicly, openly, before all the world, on this which was to have been the happiest day in all his life.
But if Don Lane knew little about himself, there lacked not knowledge of his story, actual or potential, here in Spring Valley, once his presence called up the past to Spring Valley's languid mind. There had not yet been excitement enough for one day. Everyone, male and female, surging here and there in swift gossiping, now called up the bitter story so long hid in Aurora Lane's bosom.
As for Aurora, she had before this well won her fight of all these years. She was known as the town milliner, a woman honorable in her business transactions and prompt with all her bills. Socially she had no place. She was not invited to any home, any table. The best people of the town, the banker's wife, the families of the leading merchants, bought bonnets of her. Ministers—while yet new in their pulpits—had been known to call upon her sometimes—one had even offered to kneel and pray with her in her workroom, promising her salvation even yet, and telling her the story of the thief upon the cross. Once Aurora Lane went to church and sat far back, unseen, but she did so no longer now, had not for many years, feeling that she dared not appear in the church—the church which had not ratified her nuptial night!
She had her place, definite and yet indefinite, accepted and yet rejected, here in this village. But gradually, dumbly, doggedly she had fought on; and she had won. Long since, Spring Valley had ceased openly to call up her story. If once she had been wearer of the scarlet letter, the color thereof had faded these years back. She was the town milliner, a young woman under suspicion always, but no man could bring true word against her character. She had sinned—once—no more. If she had known opportunity for other sins than her first one, she held her peace. Human nature were here as it is elsewhere—women as keen; men as lewd. But the triumph of Aurora Lane might now have been called complete. She had "lived it down."
This long and terrible battle of one woman against so many strangely enough had not wholly embittered her life, so strong and sweet and true and normal had it originally been. She still could smile—smile in two fashions. One was a pleasant, sunny and open smile for those who came in the surface affairs of life. The other was deeper, a slow, wry smile, very wise, and yet perhaps charitable, after all. Aurora Lane knew!