the flamboyant display helen made of her baby shocked shannon and finally conquered the willful suspicions entertained by her neighbors. her diffidence and reserve vanished. she was exalted. she glowed. she had passed into another state of being. this child had related her to everybody.
she would have buck stop the car before the shaw residence and summoned mrs. shaw forth to look at it and advise her about whether to keep stockings on it or not. mrs. shaw said she never did.
on the other hand, mrs. arnold said that would depend upon whether the baby was cutting her eye teeth. in that case she advised not only stockings, but a flannel band about the body. did mrs. cutter know whether the little thing was approaching its second summer and stomach and eye teeth or not? this question was put very casually, but with a shrewd glance.
helen said she would “see.” whereupon she thrust an exploring finger into the squirming infant’s mouth, felt about in there, withdrew it, and announced that she could detect no heralding[255] signs of these malignant teeth, but they might be coming. this was an unusually precocious baby! therefore she would get the bands and keep the stockings on.
then she passed on, apparently with no compunctions about having defrauded mrs. arnold of legitimate information about the baby.
but that lady hurried across the street to tell mrs. flitch something. “it is not her own child, my dear; i am sure of that,” she said, after reporting what helen had done.
“well, it could be,” mrs. flitch insisted.
“but it isn’t. i don’t think she knows exactly how old the child is. and a real mother, you know, can feel when her baby is teething.”
mrs. flitch nodded emphatically, held her note of silence a moment, then added: “if it isn’t her own, there is no telling what kind of baby it is, nor how it will turn out.”
“well, it is turning out happily for that poor girl anyway. she looks years younger, and happy,” mrs. arnold replied.
“if mr. flitch deserted me, i couldn’t be happy. i’d never hold up my head again.”
“she has courage.”
“and she seems to have money,” mrs. flitch put in.
[256]“yes, mr. arnold thinks she has ample means.”
“then it must be alimony.”
“we have heard nothing of a divorce.”
“i think, when people are married, they should live together until death parts them. and if they won’t, they should make a clean breast of it, and let folks know exactly where they stand, inside the law or out of it,” mrs. flitch announced virtuously.
“nothing like that is ever hidden. in time i suppose something clarifying will happen.”
“well, i hope it won’t be disgraceful.”
“it is not easy for scandal to touch a woman who devotes her life to bringing up children. did you ever think of that?” mrs. arnold shot back. “i think we should stand by mrs. cutter and help her all we can with this baby,” she added.
“oh, i’m willing to do my duty. but she never gives me the chance to do anything. i’m the mother of five healthy children, yet she will pass by my door and ask somebody about that baby’s diet who never had a child,” mrs. flitch complained.
thus the wind of private opinion, which is more dangerous than public opinion, veered and changed toward helen cutter. her skies cleared,[257] without her ever having suspected the fury with which they were charged against her. of all the good women i have ever known, she was the least concerned for her reputation. and this is one of the weaknesses of that class, a craven, almost guilty fear of evil tongues, which more vulnerable women do not share.
there were broken hours, i suppose, when some fleeting vision of the past absorbed her peace and joy. we never do escape those whispering tongues of memory that make speech with us from the years behind us. sometimes in the late summer afternoon helen, walking in her garden, would halt, transfixed as if a blow had fallen upon her. for the briefest moment she would see her young husband swinging along the path that led through the old shrubbery to this garden, his eyes fixed brightly upon her, the dear object of his love and hopes. and her heart leaped as in those first happy years. then she would close her eyes, not always in time to hold back the tears. but if one is proud enough, there are tears which leave no trace upon a woman’s face.
more frequently however, it was that last sight she had of him in the dining room of the inn, held so firmly in the grasp of another woman that he dared not to rise when she, his wife, passed[258] so near her skirts almost brushed him. she would never forget the livid shame and horror when he looked back and caught her eye nor the woman’s crackling laugh. sometimes this scene flared before her, and she saw herself, with her hand still pressed to her breast, making her blind, staggering escape. it was a kind of insurance she carried against the awakening of the old tenderness for her husband.
a year had gone by, another spring was at hand; and little helen was learning to toddle on her sturdy legs, a pink rose of a baby with short, dark curls.
“she is so good. are all little children good?” helen asked, smiling at mrs. arnold, who was paying one of her frequent visits.
“at this age, yes,” the elder woman replied dryly.
“and i have so little time to devote to her, now that the other baby has come,” helen sighed.
“the other baby!” mrs. arnold gasped.
“why, don’t you know? haven’t you heard? i have just got a lovely boy,” helen informed her.
“here? you have him now?”
helen nodded. “come and see him. he is too young to bring out yet,” she explained.
[259]she led the way to the small crib in the nursery, where a very young infant lay asleep.
“it is a fine child,” mrs. arnold announced gravely. “how many do you expect to—have?” she asked.
“i don’t know yet. it will depend on how i get on with these; but at least three. this is little samuel, named for father. the next one will be a girl, named mary elizabeth, for mother. i had to call the first one helen. and i am afraid i shall always love her best. she was my first happiness, you see, after—after,” she repeated, “unhappiness. i doubt if the others will mean so much to me. do they?” she asked anxiously. “i mean do mothers grow to love all their children alike?”
“i don’t know, my dear; but you will,” mrs. arnold answered, her eyes filling with tears.
“they are treasures i am laying up for my old age. they will be my life and joy and hope, when i shall have grown too old to achieve these things. their laughter will lift me. their love will be my perpetual spring. and we shall have weddings in this house,” she concluded.
“you believe in marriage?” the other could not refrain from asking.
“oh, yes. even in my own.”
[260]“you would go back to your husband?”
“never.”
there was a silence.
“but if he comes back to you?”
“he will not come,” she returned.
when i came to know her later, she must have been confirmed in this opinion. for i had lived a year in shannon before i learned that george cutter was not a dead and buried man. he had passed with that flotsam and jetsam tide created by the great war. and the house of helen had become the center of social life in shannon. she was a sedate hostess, always garnished with her children. she had declared this kind of natural peace, and kept it in a world rocking with the confusion which followed the war.
she belonged to the deep furrow of life, where the soil is rich and strong. if she had been an herb of the fields, she would have been an evergreen herb. if she had been a tree, her boughs would never have shed their leaves. if she had been a rose, she would have bloomed fairest above a hoarfrost. the lives of many of us, who were drawn to her during this time by one sort of distress or another, took root in her quiet heart, and it was her wish that not one of these should suffer or perish.
[261]the ignobly wise believe that this opulence of kindness is no more than the manifestation of the nature of women, not a virtue, but the maternal instinct common to all mammals.
if you ask me, i should point to the prevailing type of modern woman as an example of what mere nature does for a woman. she is a brilliant creature, ready to show the iridescent wings of her charms to all men, not one man; a childless wife, ready to sue for her liberty and alimony on the slightest provocation; an ambitious person, futilely active, who farms out her home to servants that she may become the dupe and handmaiden of politicians. she belongs to the fashionable scrubwoman class, who take the job of cleaning up the town and setting the table for the next convention. she is subsidized by compliments and favors. there is nothing permanent in her; and she will not increase nor multiply after the manner of her kind. she is the lightest, most transient phase of her sex we have yet seen. but she is astonishingly natural.
few tales end with the death of the principal characters. they usually end just as the heroes and heroines begin to live happy ever after. and you are obliged to take the author’s word for that,[262] because the statement is contrary to all human experience.
still you must expect the approaching end of this chronicle, because the house of helen has been established. there remains one last scene.
