CHAPTER XII

DORA BARRY sat at her easel absorbed in the painting of a picture, though the afternoon light was fading from her canvas in a way that made the work difficult, when her mother came to the door and glanced in.

“I have kept a lookout for fully an hour,” she announced, “but I haven’t once seen Lionel. I am getting old and silly, I suppose, but I can’t keep from worrying.”

Dora got up quickly, her face full of alarm, and the two went to the window of the dining-room and stood looking out for a moment.

“There! Isn’t that—I see him!” Mrs. Barry cried out in relief. “Why, he is with Kenneth Galt! He has him in his arms. There!—don’t you see?—just beyond the row of cedars. Thank Heaven! we had our scare for nothing.”

But Dora, wide-eyed and astonished, was silent; her face was very grave. Her mother ran eagerly to the door to meet the child, but Dora remained as if rooted to the spot, her gaze fixed on the receding form of Galt.

“Why did he have him?” she whispered to herself. “What can it mean? He was treating him kindly, and gently, too. I could see it in his face. It was glowing as it used to glow when he was true to himself and to me. It looked like Lionel’s arm was round his neck. What can it mean?”

When the child had come in, Dora sat down and drew him into her lap and held him fondly to her breast. “Mother was frightened,” she said, cooingly, her lips on his brow. “She missed her little boy, and was afraid something had happened to him.”

“Oh, I’m all right, mother,” Lionel said. “I can take care of myself; you must never be afraid.”

“But how did you happen to be with Mr. Galt?” Mrs. Barry asked. “I didn’t know you knew him.”

“Why, why—” but Lionel went no further. He had never lied, and the plan his sense of honor had laid for him was difficult to execute. His grandmother repeated her question in more positive tones, but, with eyes downcast, he refused to answer.

“Let him alone, mother,” Dora said, her face rigid. “It doesn’t make any difference.”

“It doesn’t, eh?” the old woman exclaimed, in surprise. “Well, I think you both are acting queerly. There is no reason why Lionel should not tell us when and how he met Mr. Galt. I can see by his face that he is keeping something back.”

But Dora was holding the child’s head against her throbbing breast, and she threw an almost commanding glance at her mother.

“Let him alone now,” she said, firmly, and with such a sharp tone of finality that her mother stared at her in surprise and left the room.

That evening Dora prepared the child for bed. As she undressed him she scanned each piece of his clothing most carefully. She found a green smudge made from strong pressure against the turf in a most unexpected place, high up on the child’s back; she discovered the imprint of soiled fingers on the broad white collar, and remarked the inconsistency of this with Lionel’s immaculately clean hands; the necktie had been loose and awkwardly retied; and, most conspicuous of all, was the uncouth way the golden hair was dressed. She noted all these things without comment; but when the white bed-covers were turned down, and Lionel had said his prayers and crawled in, Dora lowered the lamp and reclined beside him. Outwardly she was calm. To the child’s observation, no new thing had happened in her even life, and yet her whole being was aflame, her soul panting in suspense.

“Mother’s little boy never has told her a story in all his life,” she began, as soothingly as if she were crooning him to sleep. “Isn’t that nice? Some little boys tell fibs to their mothers, but my boy has always told the truth, and mother is so glad.”

Lionel lay still. She kissed him softly and waited. At any other time his little arms and lips would have responded, and she marked well the change to-night. Lionel did not move or speak, but simply lay with his old-young gaze gravely fixed on the ceiling where the lamp-chimney had focussed a ring of light.

“You would tell your mother everything that ever happened to you, wouldn’t you, darling?” she said, shyly pressing her cheek against his. She felt him nod impulsively, but second thought seemed to seal his lips. His was a tender age at which to begin the defence of a wronged parent by pretext and concealment, but the burden was on his shoulders, and little Lionel was manfully doing his best.

“There are two kinds of stories, and they are both bad,” Dora went on, desperate over the delay of the divulgence which she thought could mean so little to the child and yet so very much to her. “It is bad to tell a lie, and it is bad to keep back anything at all from your mother, because she is more to you than all the rest of the world. She is your mother; she works for you; she loves you; she would die for you; and if anybody—no matter who it is—were to want you to keep a secret from her, it would be wrong—very, very wrong. It would make your mother very unhappy; it would make her cry long after you were asleep to know that her little son was keeping anything from her.”

She felt the little white-robed figure quiver. He raised himself on his elbow and slowly sat up; his young face, in the dim light, was full of struggle.

“Is that so, mother?” he asked.

“Yes, darling,” she answered. “There can be no secrets at all between a mother and her boy. She must tell him everything, and he must not keep a thing back from her. How did you happen to meet—Mr. Galt this afternoon?”

“That’s what you want to know?”

“Yes, dear—that’s all. Surely, there can be no reason why your own dear mother should not know a little thing like that. Surely he—Mr. Galt—couldn’t have told you not to tell me?”

The child was still for a moment. He folded his little arms over his knee, clinched his hands, and sat avoiding her insistent eyes.

“Wait!” he said, finally. “I want to go to Granny.”

“You want to go to Granny, and leave your mother?” she asked, deeply perplexed. .

“Just a minute,” he said, as he crawled over her and got down on the floor. “I’ll be back. I’ll be right back, mother, dear.”

“It is something you will tell her, but can’t tell me!” Dora cried out, in half-assumed reproach. “Why, Lionel?”

“I’ll be back,” he said, evasively. “There is no hurry.” And she heard the patter of his bare feet along the corridor to his grandmother’s room.

Mrs. Barry always retired early, and she was now in her bed, but very wide awake. Something in the incident had set her to thinking on new lines. “Can it be? Can it be?” she kept asking herself, in great excitement. “Why didn’t I think of it?”

“Granny!” she heard Lionel call out from the dark, doorway.

“Yes, dear, what is it?” she asked.

“I want to come to your bed a minute—just a minute.”

“All right, come on, darling; don’t stumble over anything.”

She heard him groping through the dark, and then felt his little hands on her wrinkled face.

“Granny,” he said, a tremor in his voice, “you told me if anybody ever said anything mean about my mother, that I must not let her know about it—never at all.”

“Yes, darling, that would be a nice, brave little man, for you wouldn’t want to make her sad, would you?”

“Well, I had a terrible fight with Grover Weston over in Mr. Galt’s yard. Grover said a nasty, mean thing about her. You told me not to let her know anything like that, and so did Mr. Galt, but mamma is begging me so hard.”

“Oh!” The old woman lifted the boy over her into the bed, and put her arms about him tenderly. “You can tell Granny about it, and then if she thinks best perhaps you may tell your mother.”

He complied, and the wondering old woman, as she lay with the child in her arms, heard the whole beautiful story in every detail, even to Galt’s display of affection, and as she listened cold tears welled up in her old eyes and trickled down the furrows of her cheeks to her pillow. When it was over, she led the child back to his mother.

“Don’t ask him any more about it. Wait,” she said, in an undertone, and with a significant gesture in the direction of her room. “Don’t spoil a beautiful thing. God bless him! he is right—young as he is, he is right! The very angels of heaven are closing his sweet lips to-night. Don’t bother him.”

When Lionel was asleep Dora anxiously crept into her mother’s room. A lamp was now burning on a table, but Dora blew it out, and went and sat on the edge of her mother’s bed.

“I know your secret now,” Mrs. Barry faltered, with a suppressed sob in her pillow. “All these years I have wondered over your great trouble, and why you were not more open with me about it, but Lionel has made it clear. I understand now.”

“Did Kenneth Galt tell my child that—” Dora cried out, in a rasping undertone. “Did he dare to—”

“No, no, not that!” the old woman corrected. “He simply betrayed himself in his conduct toward the boy. Listen! Lionel need never suspect that you know what he did, but you must be told the truth. It is too beautiful for you to miss.”

She told the whole story as it had come from the child’s lips, together with other things she had culled as to happenings between him and his father on former occasions.

“Let them both alone,” she added, fervently, as she concluded. “The little fellow, nameless and cast out as he is, has of himself won the love God gave him the right to. It is his. Let him keep it, and I pray Heaven that it may drag that haughty spirit down into the mire of repentance. I’ve thought it all over. I remember the date well. I know now why he deserted you; he couldn’t face public exposure just at that particular time. His temptation was great, and he fell. I believe he loved you then, and that he does yet.”

“Does yet!” Dora sneered, and she put a protesting hand out to her mother’s as it lay on the coverlet. “Don’t say that. He couldn’t now—after all this time.”

“But he does, he does—a thousand times more than he did, too,” the old woman insisted. “He hasn’t married; he is leading a lonely, morbid life. He-is longing for you—though he may still dread public opinion—and is adoring the child. He may resist longer, but in the end he will succumb and crawl to your feet and beg for forgiveness. Watch my prophecy. He’ll do it!—he’ll do it!”

“You don’t know, mother,” Dora sighed, and she stood up and moved away in the darkness. “You don’t know.”

Dora went back to her room and stood looking down at her sleeping child. Suddenly her eyes filled and her breast heaved high.

“Mother’s little champion!” she cried, and she knelt down by the bed, covered her face, and wept.