THE HONOR GIRL (10 page)

“But, my dear!” said her husband. “She’s their daughter and sister, you know. She owes them something. I think it’s perfectly right she should go to see them often. In fact, I’m not altogether sure we’re justified in keeping her here any longer. She’s a woman, you know, and they are lonely men. Elsie could do a lot for her brothers if she wanted to. Suppose somebody should take Bettina and Katharine away from me.”

“The idea!” said his wife. “As if anybody would dare! As if that was a parallel case!
You!
Don’t for pity’s sake compare yourself to George Hathaway. You! Why, of course you would take care of your children. But we have cared for Elsie as if she were our own, and now just when she has reached the age where we can enjoy her—”

“My dear, you didn’t take Elsie so that you would be able to get personal enjoyment out of her some day, did you? I thought you took her to bring her up right.”

“Of course, James! How you do quibble! But she has become like my own child, and I can’t bear to have her spoiled now. Remember she’s my dear sister’s little girl.”

“But, my dear, if your bringing-up of Elsie has been of any sort of use at all, she won’t go back on it. SHE ought to be able to go on growing finer and better, and begin doing something in the world. I can’t see that she could find anything much better or more natural than to make a pleasant home for her two brothers and her old father.”

“Nonsense! She has her work in the world. The principal tells me she is going to be brilliant in several directions. He says she’s doing a world of good among those dear girls of her class in high school. That’s where she belongs. Not with old, hardened men who don’t know in the least how to appreciate her.”

“I’m not so sure her father and brothers couldn’t appreciate her.” This from the uncle. “George told me last winter that he was looking forward to the time when she would come back and make a real home in the old house again. He said it seemed as though life wasn’t worth living without a woman there.”

“The idea! As if he thought that lovely girl was going to spoil all her prospects in life going back to live with him! Why, he’s nothing but a common working man, and he’s fast getting to be a drunkard too. I don’t see why you don’t see that he has no business with her. I should think you’d see what it would do for her, just now when she’s beginning to have a good deal of attention, and all. What kind of place would that be for her young men friends to visit her bye and bye and see that kind of a home and a father, and those wild brothers of hers? Any young man would stop and think twice before he went again after a girl to a place like that.”

“My dear! If a young man cares no more for a girl than that, that he is scared away by her surroundings, I should say it would be a good try-out to see whether he is a real man or not.”

“The very idea that that would be a test of manliness! I’m sure I think a young man would be entirely justified in leaving a girl if she didn’t have proper relatives and a decent place to live. He would naturally think she wasn’t of much account herself.”

“Hush, Mamma!” warned Bettina, tiptoeing over to the sitting-room door. “Elsie has come in. I heard the front door shut some minutes ago. She will hear you.”

An ominous silence succeeded, in the midst of which Elsie opened the sitting-room door. She had been slowly coming up the stairs, and had heard almost the whole conversation. Coming as she did fresh from the tenderer thoughts of her own family, it struck her like a sharp wind. She almost shivered when she heard her aunt’s tone with regard to her brothers. Perhaps her aunt had reason to speak of her father in that tone for causes that that she knew nothing about, but the brothers were children of her own sister as much as she herself was. Why should her aunt have that attitude toward them? Something true and keen rose up in her soul—was it her conscience?—and told her that Aunt Esther was wrong and Uncle James was right. For the first time, as she approached that sitting-room door, making no sound with her slow footsteps on the thick carpet, her own resolution crystallized, and she knew in her soul that she meant to go back to that other home, at least for a time, and see what she could do to make it happier for those who lived there. Having recognized her own position, she opened the door, and walked into the room.

It was not like Elsie to mince matters once she had decided; so now, though she saw the hostile attitudes of both aunt and cousins, she determined to speak out and have the matter over.

Katharine and Bettina, at the two front windows from which they had been watching for her coming, turned and looked at her. They knew her regal air, and understood that Elsie was about to throw down the gauntlet. Even in their annoyance with her they could but admire the grace and frankness with which she came straight to the point.

She walked over to her uncle, and stood beside him, feeling that he of them all would be most likely to understand her and take her part.

“Aunt Esther,” she said gently, “I’m very sorry to be late tonight. I ought to have phoned you; but it got late before I realized it, and there wasn’t any phone near by when I discovered the time. I supposed you would know where I have been, though, and would understand that I was all right.”

“I’m sure I don’t know why I would understand that if you have been out to Morningside. You certainly know I do not approve of your going there, and that it distresses me greatly to have you do as you have been doing the last three weeks.”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Esther.” Elsie drew a long sigh, and plunged in. “I’m very sorry. You and Uncle James have been just beautiful to me, and I don’t like to think of distressing you; but sometimes there are things you just have to do, you know. I had to do this. I did indeed. And—I guess I better tell you the rest now. I’m afraid it will distress you still more, but you’ll have to know it. Aunt Esther, I’ve got to go away from this beautiful home you’ve lent me the last five years. I’ve got to go back to my father’s house. They need me there, and it’s right that I should go. I’ve been thinking it over for three weeks now, and tonight I’ve decided. I hope you won’t make it any harder for me than it already is.”

She almost choked with a sudden sob that came into her throat as she thought of the pleasantness of all she was leaving, and she looked piteously now toward the aunt who had been like a mother to her since she lost her own. But her aunt’s face was hard and bitter.

“It doesn’t seem to have been so hard,” she answered coldly, “when you can decide so easily.”

“Oh, it hasn’t been easy!” exclaimed the girl with a catch of her breath. “You don’t know how hard it has been to think of leaving you all and going away from the things I love. But I couldn’t get away from the thought of my father and my brothers living the way they are doing; and Auntie, if you could see the house as I have seen it, you would understand. You
couldn’t
leave them that way. You know my mother wouldn’t have wanted me to.”

“It is all their own fault!” declared the relentless voice of the aunt. “Your father makes enough to have a comfortable home. There are plenty of servants and housekeepers that could be hired who would run the house and make things far more comfortable than you, an inexperienced young girl, could possibly do. Your father could have a good home if he chose to take the trouble to do so. If he doesn’t choose, I don’t see that you are called upon to give up your opportunities in life, and tie yourself down to living that way. You have your own life to live and yourself to think of. You can’t do your schoolwork justice if you take on the burdens of housekeeping. You surely are not going to give up and become a slave in your father’s house.”

“No, I am not going to give up school. I am going to have a good servant, and give her directions. I have got to go out there and make that place over, and have a cheerful home for my father and brothers.”

The look her mother used to wear when she insisted on marrying the man they did not like came over the girl’s face, reminding her aunt warningly of former years.

“Why, certainly, that is commendable, of course, if it doesn’t take too much time from your other work. I’d be willing to secure a good servant for your father, and go out there occasionally and give her directions, say once a month, myself; and you might run out occasionally—motor out with some of your friends and drop in, just to show the maid there is somebody to watch her. But the idea of your going out there to live is ridiculous. It is impossible. I couldn’t consent to it for a moment. That is no place for a young girl to be, in a house with three irresponsible grown men who wouldn’t have an idea how to look after her comfort. It is what I took you away from, and I certainly do not intend that you shall return to it. Your uncle and I wish you to stay with us until such time as you see fit to go out and make your own home somewhere when the right time comes.”

Elsie dropped into a chair, and took a deep breath; but her firm little lips had not relaxed. She knew she must fight the battle to the finish, now that she had begun.

“Auntie, you do not understand,” she said gently, speaking low. “It is not just a servant to keep the house in order they need. It is a woman in the house to love them and make things cheerful evenings when they come home. Have you ever stopped to think what there has been in Jack’s life to make him want to grow up to be a good man? Did you ever realize what Eugene does with his evenings? Can you possibly know what it would be for my father to come home night after night to a dark, empty house, and have nobody there to be glad he had come? I’ve been there now for several Saturdays, and you can’t think how desolate, how utterly dreary—”

“I can imagine how desolate and utterly dreary it will be for
you
,” interrupted her aunt pointedly.

“Well, why shouldn’t I bear a part of it if I can’t make it better?” responded the girl quickly. “But I don’t intend to bear it. I intend to make a change in it. I’m going to have the old piano tuned, and play a good deal, and sing with the boys; and I’m going to read to them sometimes; and we’re going to make fudge, and have in some young people, and see if we can’t make the old house cheerful again. Why, Auntie, it would have broken your heart if you could have seen my father’s face when he found I was going to stay to supper tonight. I’ve
got
to go! I couldn’t stand it not to go. It wouldn’t be
right;
and, if you could just understand it all, you would say so too.”

“Let her go!” said Katharine crossly. “Let her go try it, Mamma; it’ll cure her quicker than anything else. Let her see what it is to stay at home evening after evening. No symphony concerts, no automobile rides, no invitations, no friends running in, no boxes of candy and American Beauty Roses! No Halsey Kennedy coming after her any more. He was sore as could be this morning because she wouldn’t go motoring with us, and he hardly spoke all day. He’ll go back to Celia Baxter if she doesn’t look out. But let her go and try it. You’ll see her back here again before the week’s out, or I’ll miss my guess.”

Then Bettina.

“Elsie, I think you’re just carried away with the idea of keeping house yourself and having two big brothers to see you around. But you’ll find they won’t pay you a bit of attention after you’ve been there a week. They likely have their girls and their friends, and you’ve grown apart in all these years you’ve been separated. You can’t possibly get together again just by going back there to live.”

“Then we’re going to grow together again,” said Elsie with that firm little set of her lips like her mother. “Bettina, I thought after I got things settled you and Katharine and some of our friends in town here would come out often and help me.”

There was a wistfulness in her tone, which her cousins did not fail to notice and take advantage of.

“No, indeed!” tossed Katharine, flinging herself into a big chair indifferently. “You can’t count on us. We’re not foreign missionaries. I’m not going to give up my good times to go out to Morningside. If you can cut us out so easily, you’ll have to get on without us. I might come out and call sometime, but I haven’t time to spend bothering out there. You haven’t any idea what you’re doing, of course. You’ll just have to go and try it, but anybody else could see with half an eye that you and your brothers are not going to hit it off together after you’ve been separated this way, you with an education and they with
none
.”

It was right then and there that Elsie, noting the curl of her cousin’s lip, resolved in her heart to change Katharine’s opinion of her brothers or die in the attempt. Her eyes flashed and her lips quivered, but she held her ground firmly. She arose with a kind of sad finality in her manner, and gathered up her things.

“Well, you’re all against me!” she said bravely with a tremble in her voice. “I had a feeling you would be, but I have to do it, anyway. He’s my father, and they’re my brothers, and they need me and want me; and I’ve
got
to go. I should
hate
myself if I didn’t. And, besides, I really want to go.”

Then her uncle spoke up. He had been watching her keenly all through the conversation. Now there was a light in his eyes as if he were pleased.

“No, we’re not all against you, Elsie,” he said. “I’m with you. I think you are doing just right. If you’ve got it in your heart to make a home for those who are your own flesh and blood, it would be criminal in us to stop you. It’s your right and your privilege. And, much as we shall miss you, we ought to help you to do what you think is right. It’s a beautiful thing you have chosen to do, and I’m proud of you for wanting to do it. Remember, though, that you have a second home here whenever you want it, and a place in all our hearts just the same as ever; and, if you ever get to a tight place where you need some one to help you or advise you, come to me, and I’ll do my best. A girl that is willing to tackle a job like that is some girl, I tell you, and I’m proud to be uncle to her.”

Then suddenly Elsie’s courage gave way, and she went and flung her arms around her uncle’s neck, and buried her face on his shoulder, while the tears took rapid possession of her. Her uncle patted her shoulder comfortingly, and it was all very still in the room. When her face lifted apologetically, there was no one else there but her uncle and herself. They had all stolen out quietly. Elsie knew it was because they did not approve of her uncle’s course toward her, and because they were unwilling to show her how sorry they were for her. They thought it would be better to let her suffer now, and so break down her purpose.