Chapter III: The Way of the World

GILBERT RAND, in his office, considered the boy sympathetically. “How do you feel now?” he asked.

“Still in a sort of a daze,” Norman confessed.

Gilbert took from his desk drawer a bottle and glasses. “A little shot of this will help steady your nerves.” He poured and they drank.

“You realize,” said Gilbert, “that all this is merely a guess; there may be nothing to it whatever.”

Norman shook his head. “It’s only too damned true,” he said. “I’m not going to try to fool myself about that.”

“At any rate, we have to face it as a possible truth just now,” said Gilbert, “and think of ways and means to handle it. And if I seemed to take it lightly, it isn’t that I don’t understand the seriousness of the situation for you. You have a career ahead of you; you’re your father’s son; and you’re going to be married. This thing will have to be fixed up very quietly. But that’s not so difficult as you might think. I want you to know that I’m with you in this, and I’ll see you through it.”

“It’s awfully good of you,” said Norman. “But what is there to do? You must forgive me if I seem stupid. I feel as though the roof of the world had fallen in.”

“The first thing we have to do is to go over the facts of the case. With them in my mind, I will be able to deal with the situation, whatever it is, in Chicago. And I’ll be back here day after to-morrow--probably with everything all straightened out. All you have to do in the meantime is to keep smiling, and behave as if nothing had happened.... Now what’s the matter?”

“I just remembered,” said Norman, “that I’ve got to see Madge to-night.”

“Yes, that may be a little difficult,” said Gilbert.

“I’m sorry to be such a fool,” said Norman. “But I don’t see how I can face her.”

“Now don’t lose your nerve, my boy,” said old Gilbert kindly. “Just sit tight and keep mum--that’s all you have to do.”

“That’s just the trouble,” said Norman.

“I know how you feel,” said Gilbert. “But you won’t come wearing your secret on your face. You can easily invent some discouragement in your law practice to account for your jumpiness. Besides, it’s getting very near the time of your wedding; she’ll have her mind on a thousand other things besides your state of nerves. Women aren’t such good thought-readers as you might imagine.” Then, when Norman remained silent, he said sharply: “You wouldn’t be such an idiot as to tell her?”

“I was thinking that I ought to,” said Norman. “She’ll have the right to know--a thing like this.”

“Nonsense!” said Gilbert, and secretly cursed these modern ideas of frankness. Aloud he said: “There’ll be plenty of time to consider what there is to tell--if anything. There may be nothing, you know. You wouldn’t want to upset her needlessly.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ve guessed it right,” said Norman dully. “It will be only a question of sooner or later when she’ll have to know. I simply couldn’t get married with a thing like that hanging over us. It would come out some time--and I’d rather know the worst at once. If things are going to smash, it had better be before we are married.”

“Now, now,” said Gilbert soothingly. “Nothing is going to smash. You’re all worked up and incapable of seeing things clearly. Everything is coming out all right, I tell you.”

“You mean that this thing can be hushed up, I suppose.”

“Yes, if there’s anything to hush up.”

“That’s all very well. So far as the world at large is concerned, perhaps it could be hushed up. But--why should two people be married, with a secret like that between them? What kind of marriage would that be?”

“Why, not so unusual a kind of marriage, I should say,” replied Gilbert coolly. “You don’t think men have to tell their wives everything, do you? By the way, have you told your fiancée anything at all about this Cambridge girl?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“You see, you’ve kept your little secret so far without any difficulty.”

“But it didn’t really concern her--or it didn’t seem to--until now. It was only a part of my past, then--but now it affects our whole future.”

“It won’t affect her future, if you keep a decent silence and let me attend to it,” said Gilbert. “Why didn’t you tell her anything about the Cambridge girl?”

“Because it didn’t seem of any great importance,” said Norman. “And because she might be supposed to take something of that sort for granted. Perhaps I should have told her. It would make it easier now. But it would have hurt her feelings. I suppose that’s the reason why I didn’t.”

“And a very good reason, too,” said Gilbert. “You did as any lover would do. And you still love her, don’t you?”

“Madge? Of course I do!”

“Yet now you seem to think the proper way to treat her is to inflict pain on her. I’d hate to believe you were that kind of moral weakling.”

“I’m doubtless all sorts of moral weakling,” said Norman, “but I don’t know what you mean. It would take courage to tell her the truth.”

“It will take more courage to keep your mouth shut,” said Gilbert. “It’s only the coward, the man who can’t bear the burden of his own sins, that has to go and blab them to his wife or sweetheart. If they’re his sins, he ought to be the one to suffer for them--not she.”

Their minds, Norman realized, didn’t meet in this talk. There was a gulf of years between them. Old Gilbert was thinking of property and respectability, and not of human rights. And now he was talking about “sins.” No doubt if one believed that an illegitimate child was a sin, one repented it--and forgot it. But it wasn’t a sin to him; it was a fateful fact that had somehow to be faced.

“Why,” old Gilbert was asking, “should a man want to drag the girl he loves into a thing like that--unless he wishes to hurt her?”

“I don’t wish to hurt Madge. But she has a right to know what she’s getting into,” Norman insisted.

“And if she decided not to marry you--as she easily might, if you came blurting it out like that--?”

“That would be her privilege,” said Norman, tonelessly.

“A nice privilege,” Gilbert commented. “A choice between a humiliation and an outrage--a marriage broken off at the last moment, or a secret scandal.”

“It’s something she’ll have to decide about in any case, sooner or later,” said Norman. “And until she knows, the thing will be on my mind every moment. I shall feel like a dog, keeping it from her. She’ll go on making plans for our marriage--and all the while there’ll be this secret holding us apart.”

“Do you think it would bring you together if you told her?” Gilbert asked ironically.

“I don’t know. That’s what I don’t know. And I’ve got to find out.... Perhaps not ... not unless she loved me a very great deal--more than I deserve. More than I’ve any right to expect.”

“You’d like to give her a chance to prove how noble she is--how much she does love you: is that the idea? You’d throw her love for you into the gutter, to see whether she’d stoop and pick it up. I’m no psychologist, but I’d call that vanity.”

Norman was silent.

“Or else mere inexperience,” Gilbert went on. “You’ve just found out that some secrets are hard to keep. And because it hurts to keep a secret from the girl you love, you want to turn the world’s morality upside down.” That stab seemed to go home to its mark and Gilbert added:

“Misery loves company. You’d like to share your unhappiness. Natural enough, perhaps. But heroic? No. Selfish.”

“Oh, you’re probably right,” said Norman, suddenly weary. “I suppose it wouldn’t do to tell her....”

Gilbert waited.

“Everything seems to me--smashed,” said Norman. “But maybe something can be saved out of the wreck.”

“If you’ll follow my advice, quite a number of things can be saved out of the wreck,” said Gilbert. “Your marriage, your career, your father’s pride.”

“All right,” said Norman quietly. “I’ll do what you say. Just tell me what to do.”

“I’m glad that you realize that you’re in no state of mind to decide on anything final right now,” said Gilbert. “I’ll be very glad to take charge of your destinies for a few days. Then you’ll feel differently.”

“I’ve no doubt I shall. And I’ll be able to thank you properly. Just now it seems scarcely to matter....”

“That’s all right. The thanks can wait. We’ll proceed to the other aspects of the case--if it’s settled that you are to be guided by me, and will say nothing about this to your fiancée till I get back from Chicago?”

“Yes, that’s settled,” said Norman. “You’ve made it clear to me what a lie and sham marriage is. The trouble with me, I guess, is that I’ve not quite grown up; I seem to have some remnants of boyish idealism left in my mind. I had thought that this marriage was going to be real--that we weren’t going to have to lie to one another. I can see it’s nonsense.”

“Men,” said Gilbert, “have lied to women since the dawn of history. The more they love them, the more they lie to them. You’ll be surprised to find how easy it comes. But just the same, I don’t think I had better trust that boyish idealism of yours too far right now. If I leave you here while I go to Chicago to straighten things out, you’ll have got them into some frightful mess by the time I’m back. I think I’d better take you along with me and keep an eye on you.”

“I think that would be a good idea,” said Norman. “I’ll know the worst sooner. And if we could take the early train, I wouldn’t have to see Madge to-night.” In a shamefaced way he explained:

“We were going to go over to see our new house that my father’s building for us: it’s nearly finished. I don’t think I could stand it.”

“Very well,” said Gilbert. “Make your apologies by telephone, and we’ll take the six o’clock train this afternoon. Legal business in connection with the Ostrander case. I’ll reserve a compartment, and we can talk all the way. There’s still a lot to be gone over. And now you had better go home and pack.”