The Obsession of Victoria Gracen E-Book

Grace Livingston Hill

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The straitlaced, conservative little town of Roslyn was shocked when Victoria Gracen opened her home to young Dick Gracen. Oh, they understood that he had just lost his mother and he needed a home… but everyone knew that Dick was a hopeless case—a reckless troublemaker who they were sure would bring gentle, lovely Victoria nothing but grief. Victoria ignored their dire predictions. Instead, she set about to tame the boy’s wild ways with tenderness and faith. Everyone knew she would fail… but they hadn’t counted on one thing: It would take a heart of stone to resist Victoria Gracen!

Leseprobe

Grace Livingston Hill

THE OBSESSION OF VICTORIA GRACEN

Copyright

First published in 1915

Copyright © 2019 Classica Libris

Chapter 1

The carriage turned the corner at a cheerful trot and drew up before the door of a smart brick house in a row of new houses on a little new street. The occupants, one by one, alighted on the sidewalk with an air of relief and of duty well done.

Mr. Miller, tall and heavy, with a thick, red neck and a coarse, red face, got out first, followed by his sharp-faced aspiring wife in borrowed mourning—because of course one wouldn’t want to wear mourning after the funeral for a mere sister-in-law who left nothing behind but a mortgage and a good-for-nothing son.

The three little Millers, Elsa, Carlotta, and Alexander, in black hair-ribbons and black hat-bands, who had gone along solely for the ride to the cemetery, spilled joyfully out, glad to be back home again; and finally the only mourner the carriage contained, Richard, the son of the dead woman, stepped awkwardly forth from his cramped position, and looked gloomily about him.

The setting sun was sending long, red rays across the pavement. It was good to the Millers to be back in every-day life again with thoughts of death put aside, and little, common, alive things going on everywhere—children calling to one another in the street, wagons and carts hurrying home after the day’s work, the clang of the crowded trolley, the weak light of the street-lamps suddenly blinking ineffectually into the ruby light of the setting sun. It was good to see one’s own house standing safe and homely in shining varnish and glowing painted brick, and to know that life could now go on in its regular pleasant monotony, which had been interrupted solemnly for four days by the sudden death of one who had been near without being particularly dear. The sister who had married above her station into a family who never received her or took any notice of her child; whose husband had the ill grace to die young and leave her to struggle on alone with their house only half paid for and a handsome, lazy boy whom she had allowed to grow up to have his own way, was not deeply mourned by any of them. They looked upon her son as almost irretrievably spoiled, but they intended to do their sensible best to make a man of him in their own way, though they felt that for his good his mother should have died ten years earlier.

They marshalled their forces on the sidewalk in front of the house, and looked closely at him now with a strange, new, possessive glance.

“Supper’ll be ready t’woncet,” said his aunt pointedly, “so don’t you go to goin’ off.”

Richard regarded her defiantly but said nothing. He was not hungry, but he had no relish for an argument with his aunt. He had always kept out of her way as much as possible. She knew he disliked her. He had once come upon her while she was in the midst of giving his mother some wholesome advice about his upbringing; and he had loomed darkly in the doorway and told her to go about her business, that his mother knew how to manage her own affairs. He had looked so big and fierce, with his fine, black brows drawn and his dark eyes blazing, that she had gone away, deferring her further advice until a more convenient season when he should not be by, but she knew that since then he had never liked her.

Richard looked furtively down the street; but his uncle’s heavy hand was upon his shoulder, and there was that in his uncle’s eye that made it apparent that the thing to do was to go into the house. The boy had no desire to make a scene. He wished to do all that was necessary to show respect to his mother, but his soul was raging at the necessity which made him a part of this group of unloved relatives. His uncle had once told a man in his presence that Richard resembled his father’s family, with an adjective describing that family which was anything but complimentary, and that if he had his way with the boy he would be taken from school and made to work to get the foolishness out of him. He had said that it usually took two generations at least to get the “fine-gentleman” strain out of a family, but he’d take it out of Richard in one if he had half a chance. Since then Richard had hated his uncle.

Entering the house, they found supper all ready; a good roast of beef with vegetables and three kinds of pie in honor of the occasion. The family ate with zest; for they felt the hard part of the day to be over, and they might now enjoy the gala part, which consisted mainly in eating the things prepared as for a wedding-feast This was a funeral-feast. Mrs. Miller had invited her two sisters to share it with them. It helped to pay a long-standing score of invitations, besides looking well to the neighbors that she went to so much trouble for just a sister-in-law.

The two sisters had brought their respective husbands and children, and arrived from the cemetery almost immediately, laughing and talking with discreetly crescendo voices. Altogether it was a jolly company that sat down to the table; and Richard, frowning, silent, was the only one out of accord. He ate little, and before the rest were half through, sat back with sullen gaze. His uncle talked much, with his mouth full of beef, to the two brothers-in-law, and laughed heartily. The funeral aspect was fast disappearing from the group. His uncle rallied the boy on his solemnity.

“It’s no more than natural,” said one of the aunt’s sisters, peering at him not unkindly with curious, mild eyes. “Of course the boy feels it. But then it ain’t as if he was all alone in the world. Richard, you’d really ought to be thankful you’ve got such a good home and such kind relatives to take care of you.”

Richard’s face flushed angrily. He was not in the least thankful, and he had no idea whatever of being taken care of by any of his kind relatives. He did not care for even the kindness in the eyes of this woman who was not a relative, for which latter fact he was very thankful. He wanted to tell her to attend to her own affairs, but it did not seem a wise remark to make just then. He was one against many. He knew he could not knock them all down.

“Have another piece of pie, Richard,” invited his aunt magnanimously, as if the second piece of pie were a panacea for all troubles. “His ma always let him have the second helping,” she explained portentously to her sisters, as if it had been a habit of the dead woman much to be deplored. Richard declined the piece of pie curtly. The soul within him was at the boiling-point. He had never been outwardly a very loving son to his mother, but it frenzied him to hear her spoken of in his aunt’s contemptuous tone.

“Richard goes to work at the slaughter-house tomorrow morning,” stated his uncle to the brothers-in-law, as if it were something quite understood between the uncle and nephew. “Work’ll take his mind off his loss. There’s nothing like work to make a man of a fellow.”

“That’s so!” declared the other two men, heartily, “that’s so! Right well do I remember when I first started out to work.”

“So you’re going to work in the slaughter-house, Richard,” said the mild sister, again turning her curious eyes on him approvingly. “That’s right. Your mother would ’a’ been really pleased at that. She was always awful troubled about your idle ways, your not getting on in school, nor hunting a job—”

But Richard interrupted her further remarks.

“Not much I ain’t going to work at the slaughter-house,” he blazed in a low angry tone that sounded like a rumble of thunder.

He shoved his chair back sharply and rose to his feet. He would stand this thing no longer.

“You sure are going to work at the slaughter-house, Richard,” declared his uncle, “and you’re going tomorrow morning. I got a job for you just yesterday and told ’em you’d be on hand. It’s a good job with reasonable pay right at the start, and you’ll be able to pay your board to your aunt like any young fellow that earns his own living. Of course you couldn’t get board that low anywhere else; but it’s a start, and when you get a raise we’ll expect you to pay more. It’s only reasonable. You’ll have a chance to rise and learn the whole business, and some day you may have a business of your own.”

“No, thanks!” said Richard curtly in the tone that offended because it was so like his fine-gentleman father’s manner.

“None of your airs, young man! I’m your guardian now. You’ll do as I say, and I don’t intend to have you loafing about the streets smoking cigarettes and learning to drink. You’ve got a man to deal with now. You’re not mamma’s pet any longer. You’ve got to go to work tomorrow morning, and you might just as well understand it right now.”

Richard was too angry to speak. His throat seemed to close over the furious words that rushed to his lips. He stood facing his great, red-faced, beefy uncle, whose work had been in the slaughter-house since he was a mere boy, who had early learned to drink the hot blood of the creatures he killed, and who looked like one of his own great oxen ready for slaughter. There was contempt and scorn in the fine, young face of the boy, fine in spite of the lines of self-indulgence which his dead mother had helped him to grave upon it. He was white and cool with anger. It was a part of his aristocratic heritage that he could control his manner and voice when he was angry, and it always made his tempestuous uncle still more furious that he could not break this youthful, contemptuous calm; therefore Richard had the advantage of him in an argument.

The boy looked his uncle defiantly in the eyes for a full minute, while the relatives watched in mingled surprise, interest, and disapproval the audacity of the youth; then he turned on his heel, and without a word walked toward the door.

“Where you goin’, Richard?” called out his cousin Elsa, disappointed that the interesting scene should be suddenly brought to a close by the disappearance of the hero. Elsa frequented moving-picture shows and liked to have her tragedies well worked out.

Richard had never really disliked Elsa. She had but too lately emerged from babyhood to have been in the least annoying to him. Her question was merely the question of a child.

“I’m going home,” he answered briefly, and his hand was on the door-knob; but his progress was stopped by the thundering voice of his uncle.

“Stop, you young jackanapes!” he roared. “Do you mean to defy me in my own house? Just come back to your seat at the table, and we’ll have it out. Now is as good as any time. You’ve got to understand that I’m your master, if it is the day of your mother’s funeral.”

“And your mother scarcely cold in her grave yet!” whimpered his aunt. “You’re going to run around town and disgrace us all, you know you are.”

“I am only going home, Aunt Sophia,” said Richard with the calm dignity that was like a red rag to the fury of his irate uncle.

“Home!” thundered the uncle. “You have no home but this. Don’t you know that the old house you called home was mortgaged to more than its worth, and that I hold the mortgage? Your mother was deep in debt to me when she died, and there wasn’t even enough left to pay her funeral expenses. It’s high time you understood how matters stand, young man. You have no home! You will have to come down off your high horse now and get right down to business. A boy that can’t even pay his mother’s funeral expenses has no room to walk around like a fine gentleman and talk about going home.”

Richard looked his uncle in the eyes again, a cold fury stealing over him, a desperate, lonely, heart-sinking horror taking possession of him. He felt that he could not and would not stay here another minute. He wanted to fly at his uncle and thrash him. He wanted to stop all their ugly, gloating voices, and show himself master of the situation; but he was only a lonely, homeless boy, penniless—so his uncle said—and without a friend in the world. But at least he would not stay here to give them the satisfaction of bullying him.

Suddenly he turned with a quick movement and bolted from the room and the house.

It was all done so quickly that they could not have stopped him. His uncle had not thought he would go after he heard the truth. His aunt began to cry over the disgrace she said he would bring upon the family, running around town the night of his mother’s funeral, and perhaps getting drunk and getting his name in the paper. She reproached her husband tearfully for not having used more tact in his dealings with the boy this first night.

The two visiting brothers-in-law advised not worrying and said the boy would be all right. He was just worked up over his loss. He would willingly come to terms next day when he was hungry and found he had no home. Just let him alone tonight. Elsa said she shouldn’t think Richard would want to go to his home. She should think he’d be afraid. She said she’d stay by the window and watch for him, and thus she stole out of the uncomfortable family debate.

Richard, meanwhile, was breathlessly running block after block toward his old home. It might be true or not that the house was mortgaged to his uncle. It probably was true, for he remembered his mother worrying about expenses when the boarders began to leave because the table was getting so poor they couldn’t stand it, and she got sick, and the cook left; but, true or not, they could not take him away from the house tonight. It was his refuge from the world by all that was decent. He would go back to his home, crawl in at a window, and think out what he would do with himself. His uncle would not pursue him there tonight, he was sure; and, if he did, it would be easy to hide. His uncle would never think to look on the roof, which had been his refuge more than once in a childish scrape.

He stole in through the little side-alley entrance to the tiny kitchen-yard where his mother’s ragged dish-cloth still fluttered disconsolately in the chill air of the evening. He was thankful it was too cold for the neighbors to be out on their front steps, and thus he had been able to slip in undetected.

It was quite dark now, and the distant flickering arclight on the next street gave little assistance to climbing in at the window; but Richard had been in the same situation hundreds of times before and found no difficulty in turning the latch of the kitchen window and climbing in over the sink. Many times in the small hours of the morning after a jolly time with the fellows he had stolen in softly this way; while his anxious mother kept fitful vigil at the front window, weak tears stealing down her cheeks, to be mildly and pleasantly surprised an hour or so later on visiting his room at finding him innocently asleep.

Richard always assured her the next morning that it had not been very late when he came in and joined in her wonder that she had not heard him; so she continued to have faith in him and to believe that she had been mistaken about thinking he was not in when she went upstairs from her nightly toil in the kitchen.

Oh, he had not been a model son by any means, but neither had she been a model mother. She was well-meaning and loving, but weak and inefficient; and the boy, loving her in his brusque way, while he half despised her weakness, had “guarded” her from a lot of what he considered “unnecessary worry” about himself. He was all right, he reasoned; and none of the dreadful things, like drowning, or getting drunk, or being arrested, that his mother feared, were going to happen to him. He would look out for that. He could take care of himself, but he was not going to be tied to her apron-string. There was something wild in him that called to be satisfied, and only by going out with the boys on their lawless good times could he satisfy it. There was nothing at home to satisfy. Women didn’t understand boys; boys had to go, and to know a lot of things that women did not dream about. He did not intend to do any dreadful thing, of course, but there was no need for her to bother about him the way she did; so he kept her politely blinded, and went on his careless free-and-easy way, deceiving her, yet loving her more than he knew.

As for his gentleman father, the boy worshipped his dim memory, the more, perhaps, because his mother’s family lost no occasion to cast scorn upon it.

But, as Richard climbed softly in over the sink, a kind of shame stole over him, and his cheeks grew hot in the darkness. He let down the window noiselessly and fastened it. There was no need to be so quiet now, for no mother waited up-stairs at the front window for his coming. It was wholly unnecessary for him to remove his shoes before he went up the stairs; for the ear that had listened for his steps through the years of his boyhood was dull in death and would listen no more for his coming.

But habit held him, and his heart beat with a new and painful remorse to think that he had ever deceived her. For the first time in his life his own actions seemed most reprehensible. Before this his deception had been to him only a sort of virtue, just a manly shielding of his mother from any unnecessary worry. It had never occurred to him that he might have denied himself some of the midnight revels.

They had been comparatively harmless revels, in a way. Temptations, of course, had beset him thickly, and to some he had yielded; but those of the baser sort had not appealed to him. The finer feelings of his nature had so far shielded him; a sense that his father would not have yielded to such things had held him. But he was young and had not felt the fulness of temptations that were to come. His character was yet in the balance and might turn one way or another; though most people would have said the probabilities were heavily in favor of the evil. He had taken a few steps in the downward course, and knew it, but was in no wise sure that he intended to keep on. He did not consider himself the bad boy that his mother’s relatives branded him, though he was defiantly aware of the bad reputation he bore, and haughtily declined to do anything to prove that it was much exaggerated.

He crept stealthily through the silent rooms, now so strangely in order, the rooms that he never remembered to have seen quite in order before. The chairs stood stiff and straight around the walls, shoved back by alien hands after the funeral. He shuddered as he passed the doorway of the dingy little parlor. He knew his mother’s casket was no longer there. He had stood by and seen them lower it into the grave; but somehow in his vision the still form, and white, strangely young, and miraculously pretty face of his dead mother seemed still to lie there. Quickly turning his head away from the doorway, he hurried up the stairs as though he might have been pursued.

He wondered about the youth and beauty that death had brought to his mother, of which he had never caught even a glimpse before. Now he understood how his father had picked her out from her uncomely family and been willing to alienate his own people for her sake. He felt a passing thrill of pride in his father that he had stuck to her for the two years until his death, in spite of the many temptations of his wealthy relatives, though it meant complete alienation from all he had before held dear.

“Father was ‘game’ all right, if he was used to different things,” he said to himself softly as he opened the door of his own room, and avoided the creaking board in his floor, as was his wont. “Pretty punk family they must have been, though, to let him!”

He stood looking about his own room by the light of the street-lamp that shone dimly in at the window. It looked unfamiliar. Someone had evidently been up here clearing up also. The baseball pictures from magazines, and the pennants that came as prizes with a certain number of cigarette packages, which had clumsily decorated the ugly little place, had been ruthlessly disposed of. He suspected that this had been done by his aunt’s orders; for she had once severely scored him for having such disreputable things about and had told his mother that she was to blame if he went wrong, if she allowed things like that on his wall. He frowned now in the darkness and wished he might find some way of getting even with his aunt. He resolved once more never to get within her power again—no, not if he had to run away before morning.

But his own room had an unfriendly look; his heart was sore, and his mind distressed. With a strange yearning that he could not understand he went out, closed the door quietly after him, and stole softly down the hall to his mother’s room.

This was cleared up, too; but still there were a number of things about that suggested her presence, and with a queer, choking feeling in his throat he suddenly turned the key in the lock of this door, flung himself full length upon his mother’s bed, and buried his face in her pillow. There was something about the old, woolen patchwork quilt with which the bed was covered—it being the back room, and consequently not on exhibition, there had been no necessity for a white spread—that touched his heart and took him back to his babyhood; and here he found that what he wanted was his mother.

The mother that he had grieved so sorely, deceived, neglected, disappointed, and worried into her grave! But she was all he had had in the world. He knew that she had loved him; and it was the loss of that love that made him feel so terribly alone in the world now that she had been taken from him.

Tears! Unmanly though they were, they stung their way into his eyes, and sobs such as never had been allowed to take possession of him since babyhood now shook his strong young frame. For a time his desolation rolled over him like the darkness of the bottomless pit.

Then suddenly, when he grew quieter, a loud peal from the door-bell sounded through the empty house and echoed up to him.

Chapter 2

Miss Victoria Gracen sat before the open fire in her pleasant library, under the light of a softly-shaded reading-lamp, with the latest magazine in her lap, ready for a luxurious evening alone.

Miss Gracen, always a pleasant picture to look upon, was especially lovely against the setting of this room. The walls were an indescribable color like atmosphere, with a dreamy border of soft oak-trees framing a distant, hazy sky and mountains. Against this background a few fine pictures stood out to catch the eye.

The floor was polished and strewn over with small moss-brown and green rugs, and the furniture was all green willow with soft green velvet cushions; even the luxurious couch with its pillows of bronze, old gold, and russet, and one scarlet one like a flaming berry in the woods. Every piece of furniture stood turning naturally toward the hearth as though that were the sun; the dancing flames of the bright wood fire played fitfully over the whole room, lighting up the long rows of inviting books behind the glass doors of the low, built-in book-cases.

Miss Gracen herself, in her soft lavender challis frock, with the glow of the lamplight on her abundant white hair, seemed like a violet on a mossy bank, a lovely, lovable human violet. Her face was beautiful as a girl’s, in spite of her years; and the brown eyes under the fine dark brows were large, luminous, and interested.

People said she lived an ideal life, with her fine, old house full of rare mahogany furniture, priceless pictures, and china; her carriage and horses; three old family servants—of whom the kind is now almost extinct—to keep all in order and wait upon her; and plenty of money to do what she would. She had nothing in the world to trouble her, and everything for which to be thankful.

Yet, as she settled herself to the reading of the latest chapter of her favorite serial, she was conscious of a sense of restless dissatisfaction and of an almost unreasonable longing to have a companion to enjoy with her the story she was about to read.

She looked up with a welcoming smile for old Hiram, who tapped and entered with the evening mail. It was a relief to speak even to the old servant when she was in this mood. A fleeting whim that perhaps, after all, she would run in and see some neighbor instead of reading just now passed through her mind as she held out her hand for the mail; but when Hiram said it had begun to rain a little, she put the thought aside and settled down to open her letters and enjoy the evening beside her own bright fire.

There were bills for putting the furnace in order for the winter, and for mending the slates on the roof where the big tree fell during a summer storm. There was the winter’s calendar for the Woman’s Club; a notice of the next Ladies’ Aid meeting, with a reminder that Miss Gracen was chairman of the refreshment committee; a request from the president of the missionary society that Miss Gracen would read a paper on “The New China” at the next monthly meeting; a request for a donation from a noted charity in the near-by city; and a letter from an old college-mate whom she had invited to take a three months’ trip abroad with her, saying that she could not possibly be spared from her family this winter.

There was also a single newspaper.

Miss Gracen went through them all hastily, keeping the letter from her friend till the last to enjoy; but she laid it down with a disappointed look. Somehow the letter was not what she had expected from her old chum. It expressed gratitude, of course, for the royal invitation; but it seemed by the answer that the possibility of accepting it had scarcely been considered; the mother’s heart was so full of her children that she had not even wanted to go with her old friend for three short months. The rest, the delight of travel, and the reunion with her friend, were as nothing to her compared with losing three whole months of care and toil and love out of her home life. Well, it was natural, of course. It must be great to have folks of one’s own; but then, they were also a care. One could not do as one pleased; still—and the wistful look lingered around Miss Gracen’s mouth as she reached out her hand for the newspaper in a soiled wrapper, wondering idly what it could be. It was not the night for either of the weekly papers she took regularly, and the daily evening paper from the city came to her door-step by the hand of a small boy at five o’clock in the afternoon.

“Marked Copy” was scrawled in the corner of the wrapper. What could it be? Some notice of her last paper at the club that had crept into a city paper and someone had sent to her? No, it was a Chicago paper. She had no intimate friends in Chicago. How strange! It must have got into her box by mistake.

She looked at the wrapper again, but her name was written quite plainly in a scrawling, cramped hand. There could be no mistake.

She hastily turned the crumpled pages to find a mark; and her heart gave one quick throb out of its natural course as she saw the black marking around a tiny notice in the column of deaths. Yet why should she be agitated? There could be no near friend in that locality. It was nearly fourteen years since the telegram had come telling of her brother Dick’s death, and since then Chicago had held no vital interest for her.

Yet there it was, her own name, Gracen, with the ink scrawls about it; and something tightened around her heart with a nameless fear she could not understand. Yet of course Dick’s wife—that wife that her father had not been willing to recognize because the family was a common one, and beneath his son socially, educationally, intellectually, every way—she was there. If Miss Gracen had thought anything at all about her, it had been with relief that the tie that bound the unknown girl to them was broken by her brother’s death. It would have been no more than natural for her to marry again, and the name of Gracen did not seem in any wise to belong to her.

There had been a child. After the death of her father and stricken mother, Victoria Gracen had written, offering to take the child and have him educated as befitted his father’s son; but the offer had been ungraciously declined. The illiterate scrawl of the mother had reminded Miss Gracen of the low growl of a mother lion she had once heard in the Zoological Gardens when another lion came near the cub. She could remember yet the wave of mortification that had rolled crimsonly over her face as she read, and resented the name signed to that refusal. That woman had no right to that name, no right to her handsome young brother, whose face they had never seen after he went from them in anger the day his father refused to recognize his marriage with the foolish, pretty girl.

Yet there the name stood in clear print, with all the dignity of death about it. Death, the leveler of all ranks and stations:

Lilly Miller Gracen, widow of the late Richard Pierson Gracen. Relatives and friends are invited to attend the funeral on Thursday at 2.30 from her late residence, 3452 Bristol Street. Interment in Laurel Cemetery.

It was a simple enough statement, in the time-worn terms of such notices; but it strangely stirred the soul of the woman who read. The very name “Lilly” in connection with the family name of Gracen was an offence. It brought to remembrance the photograph of the silly, pretty girl-bride that Dick, her brother, had sent home to them when he had written to tell them he was to be married. The name “Lilly,” with all its pretense and lack of dignity, seemed to express in a single word the sharpness of the sorrow of those bitter days.

Miss Gracen had come out from under the cloud of sorrow and had made her own life sweet and calm again; but she had never quite forgotten the beloved brother who had gone so suddenly out of it, nor had she ever forgiven the woman for whose sake that brother had left father and mother and sister.

And now the woman herself, it seemed, was gone! And what had become of the child, the child that was Dick’s as well as hers?

As if to answer her question, she noticed a rude hand pointing to another column, where a brief paragraph was also marked:

Mrs. Lilly Miller Gracen, widow of the late Richard Pierson Gracen, died on Wednesday at her home on Bristol Street after a brief illness. Mrs. Gracen was a sister of Peter Miller, of 18 Maple Street, head foreman in the slaughter-house of Haste Brothers and had since her husband’s death kept a lodging house on Bristol Street. She leaves one son; Richard.

It was a strange item to creep into a great city paper when one considered it to be about an obscure lodging-house keeper, but it never occurred to Miss Gracen that it might have been put into the paper and paid for by the obnoxious family of the dead woman just that it might reach her eyes. If Peter Miller had been well acquainted with Miss Gracen, he could not have well planned a paragraph which would have been more mortifying to her family pride. A slaughter-house! A lodging-house! And in connection with the historic name of Gracen. The haughty pride wounded, the blood mounted in rich waves to the roots of Miss Gracen’s white hair, and receded, leaving her pale and trembling, almost breathless.

For a few minutes she was filled with a strange weakness, as though she had been publicly brought to shame; for so bitter had her father been against the woman who had unwittingly come between him and his beloved son, that he had succeeded in making his whole family feel it more or less, although, as Miss Gracen in the silence of her thoughts had often owned, it was an utterly unfair prejudice; for she had never even seen the face of her sister-in-law, except in a photograph.

But now the woman was dead, and a strange sadness came into the heart of her patrician sister-in-law. False shame receded, and pity took its place. After all, the woman had been proud and had maintained a certain courageous attitude, not allowing them to give her money nor to take her child from her after the death of her husband. A boarding-house keeper! Miss Gracen in her sheltered home shuddered at the thought. It had surely been a hard life; and death had probably brought blessed relief.

And that child, a boy of sixteen now! What must he be? What was to become of him now? Would he go to live with that uncle who was foreman in a slaughter-house—horrible, brutal creature!—and sink back to the level of his mother’s family—if, indeed, he had ever been above it? Yet he was Dick’s child, Dick’s only son, and bore Dick’s name in full, the honored name of his ancestors for generations back—Richard Pierson Gracen. How dreadful to have Dick’s son grow up to be manager or something in a slaughter-house! There were even worse depths, of course, than that, to which he might descend.

Well, what could she do? It was dreadful, of course; but they had not accepted her offer of help when he was a little child and she might have really done something toward bringing him up rightly. Now he was probably impossible from every point of view. She couldn’t, of course, have him come to her now.

She looked around upon her pleasant room, the immaculate furniture, the spotless peace that reigned, and found it quite impossible to imagine a boy at home there. It seemed to be an invasion of her rights that she could not bring herself to endure.

And yet—her eye travelled back to the printed notice in the paper. “She leaves one son,” it spoke to her in reproachful tones from the coarse ink of the paper. “One son!” Left! And suddenly the boy seemed to have taken on the form and feature of his father as he was, bright-faced and happy, bidding her good-bye so long ago; and tears filled her eyes. Dear Dick! How she had loved him, and how much he and she had always been to each other until that strange girl-wife had come between them! How Dick would feel to have his boy grow up with such surroundings! Ought she not for her dead brother’s sake to try to do something for this orphaned boy of his?

But how? In that old, conservative town of her father how could she bring an alien grandson, who might, perhaps—very likely would—disgrace his memory and name? There were the servants, too, to consider; for they were getting old and had been faithful.

And there was her own life. She had a right to live it in peace, for had she not been faithful to her father and mother and given up bright hopes for their sakes? Now at least she had a right to enjoy herself as she chose. There was her trip to Europe. She would have to give that up, too, for of course she never could go off and leave a strange boy on the place with only the servants. No, that was entirely out of the question.

With a tightening of her sweet lips she folded the Chicago paper quite determinedly, put it on the under part of the table, and settled herself to her magazine serial.

She must have read fully half a column without letting her thoughts really stray from the story, when the pleading eyes of her brother Dick finally conquered, and made her look around the room again, as if she almost felt his presence there. She seemed to see a boy sitting across the table from her; and his eyes were the eyes of her brother, and somehow it suddenly seemed to be a very pleasant thing to have a boy there, and not nearly so incongruous as she at first had thought. With a warmer feeling at her heart she turned her mind back again to her story.

She had not finished the first page when she finally abandoned the magazine entirely and closed her eyes for serious thinking.

The little clock on the mantel was striking eight when Miss Gracen got up with decision and went over to her telephone to send a telegram, pausing on her way to reach under the table for the Chicago paper and search out the marked notice.

After a moment’s thought she first called up her local banker, who was also a personal friend, and told him she wanted to send some money to a friend in Chicago; could he advise her where and how to place it?

He gave her the name of a Chicago banker who was his friend and gave her all necessary directions for the sending. She thanked him and hung up the receiver with interested face. The first step in her project was now perfectly plain before her.

The telegraph office in Roslyn was closed for the night, but she could telephone a message to the city twenty-five miles away and have it sent through at once. Her mind had worked swiftly, and she knew just what she meant to say. Her voice was calm, almost eager, as she gave the call and waited for the operator to take her dictation for two telegrams.

When she hung up the receiver after the messages were taken, her hand was trembling; but her eyes were shining, and her lips had a sweet line of pleasant decision that was most charming.

She started over toward her chair and magazine once more but paused with a look of indecision. Somehow her chair and her magazine no longer fitted her present mood. She must do something to get used to her new arrangements. Her eyes travelled quickly about the room. How could she make that room look inviting to a boy? Suppose he came, and did not like it? It would be worse than if she had never brought him home at all. Was it possible for her now, at the age of forty-five, to take in a boy, any boy, even if he were a model, and assimilate him with her present life? And especially a boy against whom she was prejudiced; could she possibly be any kind of a guardian to him? Would it not have been better, after all, to have left him to his mother’s relatives?

But no; she could not, would not, retract now. What she had done, she had done. She realized that it had been the hasty action of an impulse; but she would stand by it to the best of her ability, come what would. Perhaps, after all, the boy would elect not to come, and settle the matter for her. Then she could feel that at least she had done her duty. But with this thought came one of anxiety. Was it possible that she really desired to have Dick’s boy come to her, invade her home, and fill her life with new cares and perplexities? A kind of pleasant wonder over herself began to dawn in her face.

With her eyes full of happy excitement she went quickly about the room, moving the chairs, drawing a big easy Morris-chair up to the light, throwing down a magazine open to a picture of a baseball field, as if a boy had left it for a moment; gathering the russet and green and crimson pillows out of their prim stiffness, and throwing them in pleasant confusion. But still she was not quite satisfied that it looked like a room where a young boy could live. She was trying to imagine how it would seem to him and was wondering whether he would like it.

She was too restless to sit down again, and with a look of quiet enthusiasm she went out to the hall and up-stairs, turning on the electric light in advance. Into each bed-room she went on her tour of inspection, looking at the house from a different viewpoint, the viewpoint of a boy of sixteen. The guest-rooms, with their fine old furniture and solemn air of rich gravity; he would never feel at home there. Her father’s and mother’s room. Not there! They had hated him. They would not have wanted him to come to their house, though of course they must feel differently now. There was but one other room on that floor besides the servants’ rooms; and that was the room next to her own, the room that had belonged to her brother Dick.

It was just as he had left it; his fishing-rods, books, balls, and pictures were there. All the things that a boy of twenty years before had cared for, the bird’s nest with three eggs that he had brought in when the old birds had been frightened away by the workmen when the house was repaired; the wasps’ nest from the east gable! She could remember the day when Dick rigged up a pole, and cautiously detached it from the house while she stood in the yard below and watched and gave advice. She could not give the stranger boy that room, Dick’s room! And yet he was Dick’s boy, and that was just what Dick would have wanted, she knew.

With one of her swift looks of determination she gave a glance of surrender around the room, and, turning, went down-stairs. Just an instant she paused in the wide doorway of the great, stately parlor, swept her glance about, and wondered whether that, too, would have to be sacrificed, then went on to her own library, and, pulling the cord that was still connected with the old-fashioned bell of the servants’ part of the house, she sat down with the magazine in her lap, but a sparkle of expectancy in her eyes.

In a moment old Hiram limped up to the door and opened it.

“Hiram,” she said with a pleasant smile, just as if she were going to ask him to put another stick on the fire, “I’m expecting my nephew to visit me. I wish you would tell Molly and Rebecca that I’d like my brother’s room got ready for him tomorrow. He may be here very soon; I am not sure yet—in a day or so, I think.”

There was nothing in Miss Gracen’s voice to indicate that she was saying an unusual thing, save the suppressed excitement in her eyes; and the old servant bowed quietly enough, and turned to go, though one might have noticed that his hand trembled as it touched the door-knob. But just as he was about to close the door he opened it a trifle wider, and, putting in his respectful gray head, said reverently, “Is it Mr. Dick’s child you’re expectin’, Miss Vic?”

“Yes, Hiram,” and Miss Gracen answered his look with a smile of indulgence. He and she had suffered together in the days of the elder Dick’s banishment; but it was not a matter to be discussed, both knew.