At the Sign of the Fox: A Romance

by Mabel Osgood Wright

It was impossible to deny that the Cub was behind-hand in his work, and that, instead of being within two years of college, according to his father’s schedule, he was little more than in sight of it; but her mother’s heart told her that the rigidity of his father’s methods was quite as much to blame as her son’s stupidity. Coming of ancestors whose training on both sides had been for and of the out-of-door life, the forcing system of surveillance under which he had lived, summer and winter alike, since his eleventh year, had developed only the evil in him.

Vainly she had suggested, nay almost fought, to have him sent to a famous ranch school, where the sons of several of her friends had learned self-reliance and books at one and the same time. Adam Lawton would not hear of it, saying the dangers of the life and the distance were too great.

In Brooke his measure of fatherly affection was complete and satisfied, and that she should never put her hand in an empty pocket his chief desire; but still all his hopes of the future of his race theoretically centred in this only son, as in an asset of both flesh and money, and every hair of his tawny head and freckle on his face was more precious than his own life-blood; yet he had the narrowness of the self-made man, the financier in particular, and he could see honour and success in one path only—that in which he himself had trodden.

Adam Lawton senior, now halfway between sixty and seventy, though he did not allow it even to himself, often felt the lack of academic knowledge, and therefore Adam junior must undergo a certain polishing system perforce, even if the substance to be polished lost its identity and crumbled to chalk in the process. For only two things had Adam evinced any liking,—for out-of-door life and a horse, while his backwardness with his lessons had cut off these outlets by keeping him at school or under tutelage the entire season through.

If Adam Lawton loved his son as a matter of heredity, Pamela Lawton loved him as a human being, as her baby, and her maternal passion gained fierceness by repression. The letter was an appeal for permission to go home, and contained a doctor’s certificate saying that the boy had, in his opinion, outgrown his strength, and needed several months of outdoor life, etc., etc. Mrs. Lawton crushed the paper in her hand. The last time such a missive had been received it had resulted in the Cub’s being sent to travel with a tutor. One human being the boy did love, and that was herself,—he must have her care now or never!

Without realizing that the hotel was no place for the boy, or what the result might be, she went to her desk, wrote a few emphatic words, enclosed a ten-dollar bill in the envelope (it chanced to be the last money in her purse), and, quickly putting on coat and bonnet, took it herself to the post-box on the street corner, not trusting it to the hotel box; then she returned to her room with flushed cheeks, feeling as guilty as a girl slipping out with a love-letter instead of a mother daring to tell her own son to come home. At that moment she fairly hated the motiveless comfort by which she was surrounded; passivity had become almost a disease, she must shake it off; she would speak that night, and have an understanding about the Cub, no matter how busy her husband might be.

When she had laid aside her things, no maid yet appearing, the Gilead letter claimed her attention, and she was soon absorbed in it. It told of Keith’s resolution to go to Boston, and gave an inventory of the property on the farm that had been bought with Adam Lawton’s money.

She had also, she said, written for instructions as to its future care; would he take charge, or should she look for some suitable person in the neighbourhood? Receiving no answer, and judging that the letter had either been lost, or else that her cousin had been too busy to consider it, Miss Keith had made a second careful copy and enclosed it in a letter to Mrs. Lawton, saying that time pressed, and she must rely upon her to “jog” Cousin Adam’s memory, or perhaps, as the farm at least stood in Brooke’s name, that she might have some wishes in the matter.

Mrs. Lawton had almost finished reading the inventory of simple furnishings, etc., when Brooke entered. Her mother at once noticed a strange expression in her always candid features, and a new light in her wide-open eyes; but the letters in her lap caught Brooke’s attention, and after she had given a brief history of the doings of the afternoon, the two women, seated side by side, bent their heads over the Cub’s epistle, though the elder already knew it by heart, word for word.