Chapter XIV: Homecoming

HE decided to walk home from the station. A soft breeze tossed him its faint, acrid, earthy scents. The stars were hidden and revealed by the fleecy scud of clouds. The moon, dwindling to its last quarter, had just lifted itself above the hills. Back in those hills, among the trees, was his home. All was peaceful there. They didn’t know the trouble he was bringing them....

The moon had been large and low when he and Isabel had gone together into the wood, last year. What was there about the moon that made people think they had to make love? And afterward the moon sailed on serenely, not giving a damn, leaving them to worry about the consequences. Usually, though, it was the girl who did the worrying....

If he were a girl--would his folks understand? Better, perhaps, than as it was now. They’d have to take the baby....

He had passed the old brick building where he used to go to school as a boy. And here was the house where the Snyders had lived. He had not noticed the house for years. He had forgotten the mystery that it once contained for him. But now he remembered. The little boy playing about the Snyder yard was really (it was whispered on the way home from school) not Sally Snyder’s little brother but her own bastard child. Norman had occasionally caught a glimpse of Sally Snyder--a tall, pale, quiet girl. She never went anywhere, it was said....

That secret hadn’t been very well kept. And now Norman wondered how the little Snyder boy had got along in school. He himself had gone on to high school, ceasing to pass the house, and had forgotten the story. But had the other boys referred to Sally’s son, behind his back, as a bastard? (Or to his face?...) Norman counted up the years. Sally’s boy would be about eighteen now. Did he still live here? Did this dark house still shelter him and his tall, pale, silent sister-mother? Or had the family moved to some other town, where the story wasn’t known?

That was one good thing about being poor. Poverty gave you, in a new town, a kindly obscurity.... But it wouldn’t be any use for the Overbecks to move away. (Or so it seemed to Norman, accustomed as he was to being a member of one of the chief families of Vickley.) They would have to stay and face what they would call their shame....

He turned the corner. There was a light in his father’s study. Was his father waiting up for him? That would not be unlikely, if his father had known he was coming to-night. Anyway, it would be a good chance to tell his father everything. The sooner the better.

He ran up the steps and went in. His father’s voice from the study asked in surprise and disapproval: “Who’s that?”

So he wasn’t expected. But who of the family could be out at this hour? “Early to bed” was a rule strictly enforced in the Overbeck household. “It’s me,” he answered, and went into the study, where his father was sitting at a table, somewhat ostentatiously waiting. He sat stiffly in his chair, with an upright, severe bearing. People spoke with admiration of the old man’s soldierly carriage. Well, he had been a soldier, back in the years before Norman was born, in the Spanish war. But anybody else would have forgotten that. Not that that had anything to do with it. He must always have been a martinet--born with discipline in his blood. Here he was, the General, seeing that the little Overbeck army got safely to bed.

“Oh,” said his father, “it’s you. I am waiting up for Doris.”

Doris? Oh, yes, of course. This was the night of the spring “hop” of her high-school sorority. She had a new frock for the occasion. She had brought it in to show him the other day while he was packing to go to Chicago....

“There she is now,” said his father, as a car stopped noisily at the curb.

Doris! He hadn’t taken her into his calculations at all.... No, he had simply not thought of her--and his baby here in the house. Would they talk at school about her being the aunt of a ----? Or (Good God!) would they think it was really _hers_? His fists clenched, and his forehead was suddenly wet with perspiration....

Out on the porch Doris and her boy friend were giggling....

No--that was absurd. But just the same she would be involved in the scandal. It would poison her friendships, humiliate and hurt her. It might spoil her whole life. Oh, it was altogether out of the question. He couldn’t inflict that on her....

“Good night, Peter!”

“Good night, Doris!”

Young voices....

The front door opened and shut, and Doris came straight to the lighted room, saying in exasperated protest: “I _do_ wish, Father, you wouldn’t wait up for me! I can--”

She paused in the doorway, seeing her brother. “Oh, _you’re_ home!” she cried. Then she walked in, with a little self-conscious swagger. She was showing herself off in her new frock to her big brother.

“You look,” he said, “like a million dollars! How was the dance?”

“I had a swell time,” she answered.

There was a time when Mr. Overbeck would have reproved any child of his for using such vulgar expressions. But not even J. J. Overbeck could sweep back the rising tide. All he said was: “Doris, go up to bed. It’s nearly one o’clock.”

“Oh, all rightie!” she replied, and swaggered out.

“How did you come out with the supreme court?” asked Norman.

“I think my arguments may have impressed them,” his father admitted. And then he asked: “How did you come to go to Chicago so suddenly?”

Now, if ever, was the time to confess. But what was the use?

And so Norman repeated what he had already told Medway to tell his father: “Old Gilbert got it into his head that I could help him--seeing some people in a will case. I didn’t think I’d really be of much use, but he insisted on my going along.”

His father nodded. “That’s all right,” he said. “It won’t do you any harm to work with Gilbert Rand. There’s a good deal you can learn from him.”

Norman’s chance had passed....

“I’ll lock up,” said his father.

“Good night,” said Norman.

“Good night.”

Upstairs, a door opened as he passed, and a whisper called him. “Norman!”

It was his sister Lucinda, in wrapper and archaic curl-papers. He paused.

“I just wanted to ask you--did you look at my puppy for me?”

“Your puppy?” said Norman, wrenching his mind loose from his own thoughts.

“Yes--you know you promised to go and look at him yesterday--the one with the black spot over his left eye. And I wasn’t here when you came home to pack, so I didn’t know whether you had or not.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was so rushed I couldn’t get around to Schwartz’s. I’ll go to-morrow if you want me to.”

“Oh, I wish you would, Norman! I just can’t decide by myself!”

How, he asked himself, as he went into his room, could he bring the truth into such a world as this? It couldn’t be done!

But what was he going to do?

He felt suddenly very tired--too tired to think.... He would decide to-morrow.