His sacred family

With little swirls of sound released from durance—bodies pushing upward, feet thudding decorously, hymn book pages fluttering—the congregation rose for the last hymn. Constance gazed ahead, the corner of her mouth lifting in a faint curve as her only outer recognition that Lynn’s thumb pressed hers under the cover of the hymnal.

Constance did not sing. She heard, above the gray din of voices near her, the voices of her mother and John Barse, clear streaks of color over the ruck, her mother’s voice green, water-clear, John Barse’s purple, like deep water. By moving ever so little toward Lynn, she could see the choir loft, see her mother, a design in black and white. Triangles. Her white, pointed face, the long triangle of white net where her broadcloth jacket was pushed open, even a triangle of passive white hands. Queer that high and clear green shimmer could come from a design in black and white. She could not see John Barse; the shining pink baldness of Lynn’s uncle, two seats ahead of her, roundly obscured John. That was like Lynn Holt’s family, she thought, to shut from sight whatever they did not like. They were disturbed by John, for all he was Lynn’s cousin and part of them.

Her mother was singing well to-night. Constance’s thoughts escaped the slow rhythm of the hymn. “That’s because she is defiant at what I said.” What was her mother seeing from the choir loft? Constance wondered whether those neat proper backs had prying, hostile eyes. Everyone is talking about it, Lynn had told her. You should speak to your mother! My mother thinks so. She is terribly indiscreet, at least, seeing so much of John. Can’t you drop her a hint? Constance sighed. She had dropped the hint, clumsily, just before her mother started for church. Her mother had laughed, and started down the stairs to where John Barse stood waiting for her. Then, halfway down, she had called back, “I told you if I sang in church there would be trouble, Connie. Be sure you grow fat! That’s the real cause of their disapproval, all those good women! Don’t stay young when you are nearing forty! Slim hips are a deadly sin, aren’t they, John! And you’re marrying into the Holts, Connie! Grow fat and respectable. That’s your mother’s advice.”

Lynn drew the book from her hand. The voices had ceased, and the church was full of subdued movement and murmuring.

“Shall we wait for your mother, Constance?” Lynn held her coat for her, without the fleeting touch of fingers on her shoulder.

Constance shook her head. Without glancing at him, she knew just how he looked—his blue eyes worried, his sandy brows pulled together making one deep, abrupt wrinkle at the bridge of his nose, even his sandy hair someway more erect and agitated.

“I hear your cousin is leaving us, Lynn.” As they moved toward the aisle the seal coat in the pew ahead of them had turned. “We’ll miss his voice in the choir. So nice to have him singing the few months he’s stayed.” Constance caught the quick dab the woman’s eyes made at her. “He’ll be missed in many ways, Mr. Barse will.”

Constance wanted to run, to thrust her way violently among the sleek fur-draped figures, and escape. Her impulse edged her to the door in advance of Lynn, so that she had to stand for a moment on the steps, waiting for him. Her heart was beating dully; she could feel it under her chin. Oh, she had only imagined that the people were staring at her with curious eyes! Only read into casual glances the malice of that message from Lynn’s mother, Madam Holt.

“You were in a hurry!” Lynn took her arm, and they went silently along the village street, the shrill squeak of dry snow under their feet.

“Dear Lynn,” thought Constance, as the pulse in her throat slackened to the steady rhythm of their walk, “he’s so honest it’s as if he lived in a glass shell, and I could see into his very self.” She glanced up at his square shoulder, his profile faint in the half light of the street, and suddenly she hugged his arm. His face swung around above her.

“Don’t let’s argue about it again.” Constance pressed her shoulder against his arm. “Such a little way home! I’d rather just love you.”

“Anyway—” They were at a corner, where the street light made crisscrosses of shadows from the bare trees, like a net into which they walked. “Anyway, John is leaving town to-night. That ought to stop the talk.”

“Why doesn’t your mother blame him? Why is my mother to blame? We just were kind to him, a stranger, your cousin.”

“I wish he’d never shown his face here! Your mother’s a woman, and older, that’s why—”

“Oh! Oh!” Constance drew away, rigid, from his arm. “They just waited till they had a chance to jump on her, all the old women in this town! Because she was pretty and different—and hadn’t grown up here—and—”

“They’ve never liked her—any more than your mother liked me! Oh, I know! She sent you away to college, to forget me! You are a Holt—and I? Nobody!”

“See here, that’s all done with! I didn’t forget you, did I?” Lynn stopped, and with a quick movement swung Constance into the circle of his arm. “We’re going to get married next month, aren’t we? And mother does like you. And I—Connie!”

For an instant they stood there. Constance felt his words blown warm on her forehead; she peered up at his familiar, substantial shape, massed darkly against the distant light. She shivered.

“Yes, Lynn.” They went on quickly. “Sometimes I’m scared, I’m so happy. Scared of your mother, as I used to be when I was little. Scared to be so happy—Maybe that’s why....” She laid her cheek briefly on the rough sleeve. “Let’s not talk about it any more!” She slipped her gloved hand into his, and relaxed again into her thought, “Dear Lynn! Dear.”

The house was dark. Lynn unlocked the door, turned on the light in the narrow hall, and kissed her soberly. “Good-night. You’re tired. I’ll call you up to-morrow.”

“Lynn!” Constance moved her fingers along his sleeve. “Let’s run away, just you and me. Let’s—” She pulled herself to tiptoe against him. “A desert island, no folks, nothing but us!” She shivered; perhaps the cold night air from his coat—“There are so many people here!”

“Silly old dear!” Lynn kissed her again, and for an instant she clung to him, her eyes closed. “They don’t matter to us.”

“Oh, literal Lynn! I mean in the you and me part of life. No one outside of us could touch that—for me.”

“Sometimes I am frightened. There are so many—your mother, your important relatives, your business. Oh, I’m bad and jealous of them all!”

“I guess you know where my heart is!” Lynn drew himself up so seriously that Constance’s intensity dropped into a soft laugh.

“Yes, I do!” She pulled off her glove and pressed her hand against his breast, her fingers burrowing into the rough wool coat. “Right there, under my hand!”

He lifted her hand, and laid his lips on her wrist, a soft, devouring kiss, under which Constance felt her pulse singing, for a moment of delicate, tender happiness.

“Don’t forget that!” He moved reluctantly to the door. “Good-night, dear.”

“Good-night!” and Constance heard him crunch briskly along the walk. She heard other footsteps, and turned to run up the stairs, her softness gone into a hard thought, “Lynn wanted to hurry away! He was afraid they would come in before he had gone!”

In the upper hall she waited, her toe rubbing over the worn place in the runner, catching the coarse threads of the warp. Everything was shabby! Yes, John Barse had come in. She retreated toward her door at her mother’s, “Ah, Constance must have sent her young man straight home. That’s good. Come in, John.”

Constance closed her door softly. “I’m going to bed,” she thought. “Mother’s wound up. She’ll only make fun of Lynn if I am waiting for her. As she does when she is—upset. To-morrow John Barse will be gone. And in a few days father will be home.” She was slipping her dress down from her shoulders, and stopped, as if her thought had brought her father visibly to the door. A little man, with bright restless eyes, a nervous high voice, a constant artificial manner of cheerfulness. He was on the road most of the time, salesman for retail-store supplies. Clearly she could see him, running a hasty tongue over his lip, rubbing his hands—that awful, deprecating good humor! Poor father! Constance had a queer flash of understanding. He brought his salesman’s manner home, trying hopefully to “sell” himself in the face of her mother’s shifting, uncertain moods.

“She’s so much cleverer than we are,” thought Constance, “and unhappier, too. Brrr, I’m cold.” She hurried into her bathrobe, and sat in front of the chintz-covered dressing table, brushing out her soft dark hair. “I look like mother, a little—” Her hands drew the flying cloud into smooth bands, framing the pale oval of her face, and she leaned forward to stare at her reflection. Gray eyes under long lids, short wistful upper lip—it was a serious face except for the whimsical upward fling of the fine dark brows. Impatiently she rose, her fingers moving quickly down the braid. “But I don’t feel like her!”

When she had turned off the lights she hesitated a moment at the window before she let the shade spring up. Sometimes she was afraid of the pines outside! There they stood, the long, pointed black row, the nearest rising past her window. Lynn’s pine trees. The corner of the Holt estate touched her father’s lot—no, was divided from it by the wall of pines. For years Constance had looked out at them each night, and sometimes through their dark masses, had caught golden flickers of light from the windows of the Holt house. Only last fall that nearest tree, after years of straining toward her window, had reached it, touching it with a faint, slipping sound. She had been wakened by that touch night after night, until one night, when the fall rain beat down the pine smell and the wind drove the needles, she had leaned far out, trying to break the branch. She remembered her panic when, slipping, she had just caught herself against the sill and had lain there, the rain in her hair. She had tried to tell Lynn about her feeling. “I think they hate me! They stand between us! I think that tree tried to pull me out!” Lynn had laughed and said, “Silly girl! Pines have to grow.” But he had told his gardener to trim the branches.

To-night they were very black and still, except for patches of old snow caught in the branches. Constance could see no lights. “Lynn is sitting in the library,” she thought, “talking with his mother. He is telling her that he did as she asked. Told me that my mother was making herself conspicuous with John Barse, his cousin, a man years younger.” She shivered. “I won’t think that! I’ll think—how surprised the pines will be to see me living on the other side of them, in that great house.” With a little rush she pushed the window high and flew into bed, the frosty air sweeping after her with the cold, clean, dark smell of the pine needles. “Dear Lynn!” She curled a hand under her cheek and slept.

A sound, faint as smoke, drew her abruptly out of sleep. Like a cry! She fumbled for her bathrobe. Still drowsy, she pushed her door open and clung to the balustrade, peering down, brushing a hand across her eyes. At the end of the hall, indistinct in the light which blurred through the portieres from the living room, stood her mother and John Barse. “He’s going,” thought Constance. “I just heard them talking.” But as she turned, something in the quiet, rigid opposition of the two held her. Then her mother laughed.

Constance could see her mother lift her hands in a gesture implicit with struggle. John had not moved.

“You will come with me, Amy. So easy! Just walk out of this door with me, to-night. The boat sails at nine. To-morrow there’ll be ocean between you and all this you hate so. Europe ahead of us, love—”

“John! I can’t! I would only make you unhappy. And here—there is Constance.”

“You’ve given your life to her. Now she has her Lynn. That’s all she wants. She’s not like you! What have you if you stay!”

“No, I won’t go. I’m old!” She flung her arms wide, swaying backward, as if she fought against a vortex which was drawing her down.

Constance, straining wildly forward, saw him move between those wide flung arms, saw his dark head swoop downward, and could look no more. Her breath hoarse, she closed her door softly—as if they would hear her!—and stumbling on the cord of her bathrobe, felt her way toward her bed. She heard, a thin wail creeping under the door and then expanding, filling the darkness, her mother’s, “No! No! I can’t!”

She crept into bed and hid her face. She pressed her palms over her ears until the blood pounded like slow drums.

Her mother! And she had laughed at Lynn. She had said, “My mother is fine. You don’t understand her. She is generous, and reckless about—silly things. People don’t like her, here. But she is all fine, my mother.”

And John Barse! She had been afraid of him, when he had first come, last fall. He was like Mrs. Holt, Lynn’s mother, more like her than her own son. Dark, lean, a kind of fierceness—his hooked nose and dark sharp eyes seemed wrought by his own spirit. Just as Lynn’s mother made her feel. All her life she had stood out against Lynn’s mother, because she had loved Lynn. Now when that fight was won—Lynn had won, through his steadfastness, and Mrs. Holt had given in—this man had come.

Constance sat up, trembling. She heard no sound except that of wind rising and the pines moving in long sharp swishes outside the window.

“Mother’s always been unhappy.” She could see the dark gesture of a bough. “But this is wicked! She can’t run away—Mrs. Holt would hate me again. John is part of her family. And Lynn—”

She pushed aside the covers, thinking, “I must go down. I’ll tell them it is wrong. John will laugh. Mother—she would listen to me.”

She heard the door close with a sharp whine. She flung herself up on her knees. Slow, heavy, her mother’s feet climbed the stairs, dragged past her door to the end of the hall. Constance pressed the blanket against her lips, stifling the choking cry. Her mother had not gone!

The night was bewildering, like a sluggish stream with drifting flotsam. The past floated along with jagged bits above the surface and the rest submerged in sleep or oblivion. Constance and Lynn, children, playing under the pines, his mother calling him home. She always called him home. Constance in the stormy rebellion of fifteen, crying out, to her mother, “Well, Lynn says everybody thinks it’s crazy for you to stand on a bridge and watch sunsets! Why aren’t you like other mothers?” and her mother’s reply, “So you want my sunsets, too, Connie? You’d like me to play bridge—not stand on one, is that it?” Lynn, her mother, her father, Lynn’s mother—half-forgotten things—drifting along.

In the morning Constance stood at the head of the stairs, reluctant to go down. She was tired. The night clung to her like a heavy cloud.

“Oh, Connie!” Her mother stood below her, slender and crisp in green gingham. “Hulda wants your laundry. Bring it down, will you?”

“Hulda says we spoil you, letting you lie abed!” How clear and hard her mother’s voice was! Last night couldn’t be real, thought Constance. “But I told her that soon you would be living by system, rules, clockwork—everything we haven’t in this house. And Hulda agreed. ‘Let the pore thing sleep out,’ she said. ‘She’ll have to get up betimes when she moves in with the old Madam.’”

Constance looked fleetingly at her mother. Hadn’t she cared at all! Her lips were colorless and her long white eyelids had a nervous fluttering, but the girl’s glance could find no sure note of tragedy.

Over her breakfast Constance heard her mother’s voice, light, unemotional, giving directions to Hulda. With a faint resentment she felt that she had been dragged off a peak of intensity down on to the level of commonplace daily life. She never knew just what lay beneath the surface with her mother. Well—Constance stretched a little, into comfort. Good rolls. Her mother couldn’t have cared seriously and be so ordinary this morning. Everything was all right. She could think about Lynn—or read the morning paper. She propped it against the percolator.

The clock on the mantel began to strike, its sweet hurried notes tinkling nine o’clock. Then the hall clock sounded, deliberate and harsh. Constance lifted her eyes. Through the doorway she could see her mother standing in the hall, her face turned away. Something rigid in the straight, slender green figure caught at Constance’s throat. Her first thought, swift and irrelevant, was about the green dress. Her mother liked soft flowing things of chiffon; that gingham was a concession to Constance’s sense of morning propriety.

She saw one hand waver out and close about the edge of a step; she saw the cords of the white throat tauten into harsh, ugly lines. Nine o’clock! John Barse sailed at nine.

Constance shut her eyes until that clock had dragged to its ninth stroke. When she looked again, her mother had moved beyond the line of the door. The girl sat for a long time, motionless, her young mouth growing stubborn under her wide, pitying eyes. “There’s nothing else she could have done,” she thought, at last. “And there is nothing I can say to her. Nothing.”

She heard the postman’s shrill whistle, and immediately after, the opening of the front door. Her mother had been here in the hall all this time.

“A note for you, Connie.” Her mother flicked it to the table. “And a letter from Aunt Paul. She wants me to come for a few days.”

Constance lifted her eyes from the sheet of gray paper with its sprawling uncertain old writing, to her mother’s face. Her voice had dropped into a low vibrancy, disturbing. Her eyelids fluttered down over brilliant, dilated pupils.

“She’s not sick?” Constance fumbled in the dark. Just the old aunt who had brought up her mother. What had happened?

“Not exactly. She’s old. I haven’t seen her since summer. You know—” Her mother rolled the sheet over a finger. “I think I’ll go. You don’t need me this week. The dressmaker isn’t coming till next Monday.”

“Why don’t you?” Constance turned away, ostensibly to hang the checkered towel on the rack. “It would be a change.” If she goes to Springfield she can get used to his being gone—the girl’s thoughts darted at the relief—and I can get used to knowing!

“Yes, it would.” Under the sudden intent gaze Constance’s eyes filled with tears. Another instant and she would have cried out, “I know all about it. Don’t hate me because you gave him up! You couldn’t have gone.” But her mother added quietly, “Well, then, if you are sure you don’t mind, I think I’ll go this afternoon.”

Just after luncheon, as they waited for the taxi, Lynn telephoned. Did Constance want to go to a movie after dinner?

Constance smiled. That was one of Lynn’s silly and adorable jokes, that loud, dominant air of possession.

“Just to the station, Mister. With mother.” Silence. “Oh, Lynn, did you hear?” From the door her mother’s voice, “Coming, Constance?” “Lynn!” What was the matter with that wire?

As she stepped into the taxi beside her mother, she felt her face grow warm, and she stared uncomfortably through the dusty window. He hadn’t liked it! Suspicious—of what! She twisted her gloves between her fingers. She had not thought of that. He meant that it looked queer, her mother’s departure. As if she were running away. Not with John! He had gone. Just to hide—

“Your young man all right?” She felt an undertone of excitement in her mother’s light words.

“Heavens no! A telegram is the yellow peril itself to her, old dear. I’ll ’phone her from the station.”

“You’ll be back before father, won’t you?” The cold winter sun touched her mother’s face into luminous pallor; no sign of years there, except perhaps the faint crinkling at the outer corners of her dark eyes.

“I suppose so. I’d like never to come back.” Mrs. Sprague relinquished her bag to the porter. “But I don’t like Springfield, either, do I?” She smiled at Constance, a hesitant, wistful smile, and the girl bent toward her, half breathless, expectant. But the porter shouted, “All ’bo’d,” and with a faint shrug, Mrs. Sprague set her foot on the step.

“Good-by, dear,” Constance lifted her face, and her mother’s lips trembled briefly against hers. Then with a rush, the woman vanished into the car. Constance had a last glimpse of her moving along the aisle, a blurred impression of the white curve of her cheek against the long drooping feather.

“Mother got to talking—but you said you didn’t want to go out, anyway, didn’t you?”

“I don’t care. Brrr! You’re cold.” Constance slipped out of his arms back to her seat under the lamp. She gathered her sewing into her lap, soft gray silk, with a patterned border of small, transparent beads. Her fingers made flashing, uncertain stabs among the tiny, slipping beads.

“Nice picture, Connie!” Lynn’s wicker chair crackled as he settled himself near her.

Constance fumbled with a bead that wouldn’t slip over the needle. She saw uneasiness in the way he swung his foot; she knew that if she looked up she would find that abrupt, harassed wrinkle between his sandy eyebrows. With a faint sigh she pushed away the box of beads; they rustled like water.

“What is it, Lynn?” She shook out the silk, glancing at him over its shimmer.

“That’s good. Put it away. You never pay any attention to me if you sew. What’s that?” He turned his head quickly, at voices somewhere in the house.

The moodiness Constance had fought all day swirled again around her. I won’t talk about mother, she thought. I won’t! She sought hastily for something.

“Shall I get that curtain stuff to-morrow? I’m going into Boston, I think.”

“Oh, yes. I meant to speak of that.” Lynn pulled his fingers along the arm of his chair, stopping to snap a loose end of wicker. “I meant to speak of it.”

“She thinks they are pretty, very pretty. But—” He gave his upper lip an extra twist over the words, a grimace of embarrassment. “She wonders whether it is wise to change the color scheme. For temporary quarters, you know. It would look startling from the outside. Right next her parlor windows. Sort of bright, don’t you think? If we were going to live there always—”

“If you care about them—I mean, if they make much difference—I thought just curtains, you know—” Lynn stammered.

“Sometimes—” Constance tried vaguely to stop the words, but out they pushed—“sometimes I think next year can never come. I think I am trying to marry your mother, not you at all! I think—”

“To-night, as I waited for you, I thought—his mother is talking to him. Something she doesn’t like. Some day it will be me she doesn’t like. And Lynn will say, ‘Just my wife, of course. If you don’t mind, Constance—’”

Constance flung up her hand to hide quick tears, and Lynn with a lurch of his chair was close to her, reaching for her hand.

“Constance, look at me!” His face wavered, grew enormous, then blurred; as the tears rolled down her cheeks, his blue eyes were clear again, disturbed, steady. “That’s my girl. You know better than to talk that way. Go get the old curtains. I don’t care if they do look queer outside.”

“It’s not curtains.” Constance gulped. “It’s always something, and she has her way.”

“Now, Connie.” Lynn’s grasp was warm and firm about her quivering fingers. “You know I just want her to be happy. But I love you!”

“Suppose that some day—her being happy meant that she didn’t want me to marry you. What then?”

“Stuff and nonsense.” Lynn shifted uneasily, and Constance saw his eyebrows bulge over his frown. “Now, take these curtains. I gave in easy because she was worried. That’s all. She’s not so young, you know, and she has set ideas.”

“What was she worried about?” Constance felt a shiver contract her skin like a cold breath. “No, tell me! I think I know.”

“What business is it of hers!” Constance pulled her hands violently from Lynn’s grasp.

“How does it look?” Constance was on her feet, her own anxiety running as fuel to her anger. “How does it look for mother to go to Springfield to see Aunt Paul?”

“You see!” she cried softly. “They don’t matter to us, but they make me say things to you. Oh, Lynn! We’ve waited so long. We’ll wait too long!” She was clinging to him, her face on his shoulder. “Lynn, take me away! To-night. Let’s not wait—until it’s spoiled.”

Constance sighed and looked up at him. She could see him struggling for words, comforting, banal, easy words.

“I’ve got to go off for a few days, too.” His hand touched her hair gently. “When I come back you’ll feel better, what?”

“Connecticut, Philadelphia. Factory business. Got to see some of the directors.”

“Lynn!” Constance stretched up, her arms about his neck. “Lynn, take me with you!”

For an instant, as he held her there, suspended, she felt she had driven herself through him, like fine wire. His lips were harsh against hers. Then his arms grew slack.

“I don’t know! Any way! The town hall—where do people get married in a hurry? They do!”

“We couldn’t.” His voice was stern, as if his own brief flame had alarmed him. “It would be foolish, with everything planned. Undignified.”

“Yes. Foolish.” Constance moved away from him, her arms limp at her sides. “It would look queer.” She laughed.

“You shouldn’t suggest such things.” He followed her, but she would not lift her face. “I might do it!”

“I wonder. All these years I’ve loved you, Lynn, common sense has sat right on my love! Holding it under—so it couldn’t grow. We’ve waited so long—for common sense.”

“Oh, I know!” she broke into his protest. “I’m unreasonable. But I am afraid—we may wait too long.”

“But it’s only two weeks now, Connie. Good Lord! do you suppose I don’t want you?” He seized her shoulders; Constance felt his cheek on her hair. Suddenly she was laughing, softly.

“There!” She choked a little. “Poor Lynn! I’m bad to tease you when I know—it wouldn’t do.”

“No. No sense in it.” Constance sighed with laughter. “Kiss me, Lynn, and run home before I disgrace myself—any more.”

When he had gone she stood for a time where he had left her. The reading lamp threw softened light on her face, making a strange mask, catching in relief on all the oblique, downward planes of chin, cheekbones, eyelids. And the mask was fear.

Presently Hulda’s feet clumped up the back stairs. Constance stirred, bent to turn off the light.

“I am foolish.” Her lips formed the words deliberately. “Nothing is wrong. John Barse is miles out on the ocean. Mother is with Aunt Paul. And Lynn—why, Lynn just kissed me and went home. I won’t be frightened!” Her voice was a thread of defiance in the darkened room.

Two days later Constance unlocked the door and let herself into the dark, empty house. It was Hulda’s afternoon and evening out. Constance let her packages slip to the floor as she reached for the letters on the hall table. Mrs. Henry Sprague. That was from father. Miss Constance Sprague, from Lynn. Not very thick! And a third, in the black, abrupt writing of her mother. She would wash off the city grime and have the letters for company at her solitary dinner.

Lynn’s first. Just a note. He had decided to leave the Pennsylvania trip till later. Part of their wedding tour. They could stop at Philadelphia on their way south. So he would be home earlier than he had expected, perhaps as soon as his note. With haste and much love, Lynn.

Constance let her finger tips rest against his name, and her eyes dreamed a little. Dear Lynn! How foolish she had been, that evening, bothering him.

As she ran her finger under the flap of her mother’s letter, she noticed the postmark. New York. Hastily she drew out and unfolded the sheets.

Dear Constance,—Whether or not I deserve a hearing, I mean to ask for one. I didn’t intend this. Not now. I meant to wait until you were safe from any effect of my actions. I should have known that the Holt tribe was so numerous that nowhere could I escape them. And now that I have been seen, I might as well go on. You yourself will admit I am done for.

I honestly thought John had sailed that morning. I fought all night, minute by minute, until it should be nine o’clock. If I had known in time I might have fought a little longer. But how would you act if you went to your execution, and found your head still on! His letter came too quickly after I thought I was through. He had canceled his sailing and come on to New York. I could reach him until Wednesday, when he would leave.

What I planned in all sincerity was just to see him once more. It seemed so plausible, with Aunt Paul’s letter right there. I thought no one would know, and I could then grow old and die with one golden day in my life. I thought it couldn’t harm you. That little hotel seemed safe enough. And then to see old Mamie Barse and her dried-up daughter staring at us! No way to shut their mouths. You have heard the scandal before this reaches you, I know. So you see I might as well go on with John. I can’t be sorry. Not for that. I am sorry it happened this way.

I’ll write your father. It won’t make much difference to him. I know he’ll divorce me decently, so I can make John an honest man. And when you have married Lynn, you may forgive me for loving. I meant to go away as soon as you married. I have tried, Connie, to stay respectable as long it would touch you. Don’t let them bully you about me. Disown me! I want you to be happy, too—

At a sound in the hall Constance lifted her head slowly. She stared through the doorway. That slender figure, rigid, groping with one hand for support, the taut agony of denial in the line of throat and head! The figure moved, blurred, came toward her. Not her mother. Lynn, hatless, his sandy hair bristling, his upper lip twisting grotesquely about his words.

“Good God! What a mess!” He strode toward the table, opposite Constance. “What a frightful mess!”

“Heard! All the relatives in town are at the house pow-wowing! Worst scandal the family ever faced.” He dropped into a chair, his hands clapping violently on the table. “How could you, Constance! Telling me—why, you said they were just fools, the women, talking about her. You meant my mother, too! And all the time—you even helped her get away.”

“Oh!” Constance stared, her fingers rubbing over the pages of the letter. “You think that?”

“If you had only told me!” Lynn ground one fist into his other palm. “I could have stopped them. Your mother! My cousin! Why, the town will never be through talking about it.”

“What affair is it of theirs? Or ours?” Constance pushed unsteadily to her feet, and retreated slowly until she had backed against the window. She couldn’t breathe, sitting there. Outside was the slip, slip, slop, sl-slip of snow melting, dripping from the great pine trees. Lynn had risen, his face brick red.

“You think it’s all right, then! Fine!” He strode around the table toward her so abruptly that Constance moved her hands to her breast, palms outward, in a faint gesture of protection. “That’s what you meant, the other night! About going with me—You knew this would come out. You wanted to be safe.”

“Yes, I knew this would happen.” Her white eyelids folded down, shutting out his angry, bulging eyes. “I didn’t know just how. That doesn’t make any difference. You don’t have to marry me. You’re quite free. I couldn’t marry you! Live in the house with that old woman, your mother. Hear her thinking! Like a hawk, circling, waiting for a chance to pounce. She would say to you, ‘What can you expect of the daughter of such a woman? Blood will tell!’ Oh, she has already said that to you! I can see it.” Constance had seen; just a flicker of admission in the midst of his fumbling, confused anger.

“You sound as if we were to blame! As if we ought to be ashamed instead of—”

“You think I should be ashamed? You’d like me to cry and be humble and....” Constance turned away; the winter night, beyond the window, seemed to lay chill fingers on her cheek and throat; she heard the sl-slip of the melting snow beneath the pines. “You’d better go, Lynn,” she said, quietly. “Go tell them, your mother and the rest, the town, that you aren’t going to bring that woman’s daughter into the sacred family.”

“I haven’t asked you to break the engagement.” Lynn retreated a step; his truculence had a note of bewilderment. “I felt you hadn’t played fair.”

“You didn’t even have a doubt, did you?” Constance was motionless; only her voice reached out, living, with the leaping rhythm of a flame. “You didn’t wonder what I felt. You were sure. Listen, and I will tell you how I feel. Not ashamed. I have done nothing. My mother—for years I have seen her made wretched, by talk; by what people said of her. Because she was different. Gossip! Before she married she sang on the stage, and so she must be—well, you know what they have said, in this little, cruel town. And—of this I am ashamed—I have been on the side of the town, critical, trying to make her over, until I built a wall between us. I might have helped her. I didn’t. I think she has gone now as much because of things that people said as because she loved John Barse. Your mother! The Holts are important, aren’t they? It was such a pity you should take a fancy to me! But perhaps I wasn’t like my mother. That was what they said, wasn’t it? And I wanted people to think that of me. I wanted to be circumspect and conventional and respectable. But I loved you. I thought you were just and fair and fine. Then I began to be afraid. I was growing up and I did not know it. My fear was truth, and I have seen it for the first time to-night. The town has made you like itself. You don’t know what I mean, do you!” Constance faced him. “You came to-night, believing all they said of me. All the worst. In spite of love. Your mother has won out.”

“It isn’t what she said! It’s you, Constance! What you’ve said and done. If you can explain, for God’s sake, do it! Instead of standing there talking as if I’d done something.” He tugged at his collar, thrust his hand violently over his hair.

And Constance, standing so close to that abrupt gesture, had a strange moment. Her self had fled. Her hands, her lips, her throat, her breasts, were sentient, conscious beings, things of will and aching memory. Her hands wanted to touch his face, to feel the firm, warm, familiar contour, to pull him down, down, until her lips had their way beneath his mouth, hard, demanding. Her hands had floated upwards, fingers curling in their intensity, when he spoke again. With his voice, her hands stopped, clenched against her heart, and slowly, reluctantly, her self gathered up and integrated all those separate, clamorous wills.

“You must see that I was justified. Do you think I wanted to believe you had tricked me? That you could lie? Suggesting that we run off! Maybe you thought that would sidetrack attention from your mother. What else can I think?”

“Nothing else.” Constance’s hands drifted down, empty of desire. Her eyes strained with queer wonder; could this be Lynn! This harsh, flushed face, with the twisting cruel mouth! “You must believe what you like.” Her voice lagged.

“I could explain and explain, and you couldn’t hear my loudest word, because other voices make such din between us.”

“I don’t believe you ever loved me! Acting like this!” Lynn seized her wrists, swung her arms out in a wide arc. Constance swayed away from his rough breathing, away from his jerking eyelids.

“Let me go! Believe that too, if you can!” She fell back against the window frame as he released her. “There’s no use talking. Go tell them you are free. You don’t have to marry me. Let them say—of course he wouldn’t marry her! Taking her into his family after what happened! Good riddance!”

“You want that, too! That little sop—to your pride.” Constance laughed, her soft, wistful upper lip a thin line of crimson. “You may have it! I won’t marry you. Now go home!”

He wheeled and started across the room. His coat brushed a letter from the table. He stooped mechanically for it. Constance’s hand pushed against the cry which quivered at her lips. Was it her mother’s letter! If he should read it—But with an abrupt motion he tore the sheet across and the pieces fluttered behind him. One whirled to Constance’s feet. “With love, Lynn.” His own note. Then she heard his steps scrunching into the soft ice as he hurried past the house.

She slipped to her knees, her head against the window sill. Outside the slip—sl—slop came more infrequently, as the night grew colder. Suddenly the clock on the mantel whirred and hurried its tinkling strokes. Nine o’clock.

Transcriber’s Notes

Transcribed from Harper’s Magazine, vol. 145, Nov. 1922, pp. 711-723.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

The original spelling and punctuation were mostly preserved.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of His sacred family

His Sacred Family