Chapter II: Part 2

We are usually punished both for our follies and our virtues, and Lynn was certainly severely punished for hers. Ricossia, as he was called, in Montreal, kept her on a constant rack of uncertainty and suspense. Daily, hourly, she expected to hear of his death and, sometimes, in moments of more than usual bitterness and grief, she almost wished that he were safe in the grave and incapable of doing himself or her more harm. The unworthiness of the loved object, moreover, made life proportionately bitter; the necessity for constant deceit and stealth was a cruel necessity to one of her nature, and the witty tales which helped to procure her brother the luxuries he craved were frequently written in anguish of heart and despair of spirit. Poor Punchinello, dancing gaily on the night his love died and his heart was broken, has many a modern prototype.

Yet through all the disgust and grief which his nature and actions caused her, her love never faltered. To her, the drinking, drug-crazed youth in whose degenerate nature there was not a trace of anything high or kind was the baby brother of early days; the baby brother whom she had tended, adored, sacrificed and been sacrificed for during the most impressionable years of her life. The tiny creature had crept into the lonely heart of the child, satisfying every want, sweetening every bitterness. There had been nothing else in Lynn's life that had held comparison with this.

*CHAPTER IV*

*A BRILLIANT MATCH*

"Love is a pastime for one's youth; marriage, a provision for
one's old age."--_Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler_.

"For life is not the thing we thought and not the thing we plan,
And woman, in a bitter world, must do the best she can."
--_Robert Service_.

In order that the reader may more fully understand the foregoing chapters and the predicament in which certain of the characters find themselves, it is necessary to ask him to return with us to a period some thirty years before, when a certain young lady, known as Clara Brooks, had just made a most sensible match.

Now, as this was the first sensible thing that Miss Brooks had ever been known to do, it naturally attracted some attention and created some discussion. For she was one of those impossible beings who want to be happy and who, instead of viewing happiness in the light of a series of discreetly conducted flirtations, ending in marriage with the most eligible of the flirtees, had persisted in prolonging these flirtations to a really indiscreet period of time and had even carried her folly so far as to refuse two or three really desirable offers. She had a vague yet fairly positive idea that marriage, in order to be at all happy or satisfactory, must be based on mutual love and esteem, and, because of this antiquated and most unfortunate notion, she had remained unmarried until the age of twenty-five.

This attitude of Clara's laid her open to much well-deserved censure. There were two opinions about it; the first being that she had no common sense, whatever; the second being that she was unfortunately romantic and fanciful, yet somewhat to be commended in that her ideals were of a slightly higher order than those of the average girl. There was not much truth in either of these views. Clara Brooks, like most of the rest of the world, was supremely selfish, though not unpleasantly so. She loved love; she also loved money; she wanted to be happy, whatever the price she paid for happiness; and she did not care to do anything that she thought likely to militate against her happiness. That was all.

It seemed very hard to Clara, who possessed beauty of quite an unusual order, a wheedling tongue, and a pretty taste in dress, that she could not marry both for love and money. She would have preferred to marry for love, however, if she had been obliged to make a choice. This was partly because she had never known poverty and could not compute its discomforts with any degree of accuracy; but, also, because she was one of those women who are capable of an overpowering infatuation and who are, therefore, instinctively on the watch for a possible object which may awaken it. The object had not appeared; Clara was twenty-five, and twenty-five, at the period of which I write, was not the twenty-five of to-day. Only people of unusual fascination and prettiness, such as Miss Brooks, dared to be unmarried at twenty-five. Already her enemies were beginning to brand her with the awful stigma of "old maid," already her friends were beginning to murmur plaintively, "What can she be thinking about?"

Clara's thoughts ended in a very usual fashion. As Prince Charming had not arrived; as the time was fast approaching when she would be relegated to the dreadful social lumber room where all such derelicts of love were stowed by grieving relatives in the "good old days"; as enemies were, as has before been said, beginning to murmur "old maid" behind her back, and friends, "silly girl" to her face; for all these reasons and for fifty others, Clara Brooks suddenly made up her mind to accept a well-to-do and silent man, by name Lowden Thayer, who for some time past had been obviously attracted by her undoubted charms. Now the sky brightened for Clara. She, as a bride-to-be, received many handsome wedding presents, a number of compliments on her most unexpected good sense, and a vast amount of eminently imbecile advice from well-meaning ignoramuses of both sexes.

The wedding was a fine one; all Clara's relatives were pleased to know that she was settled and would be provided for until the day of her death no matter how ugly or unpleasant or incapable she became with age; and all Lowden Thayer's relatives were pleased to think that he had married at all, though the majority of them felt that he had made a most unsuitable choice. Wherein they were undoubtedly right.

After the honeymoon, the Thayers took up their abode in a handsome house in a fashionable quarter of Montreal; the gentleman went to business every day and the lady began to receive and return calls from the elite of what is known as "society."

She had many calls of all kinds to return, for she had fulfilled the whole duty of civilized woman; she had married, and married well. Within a year she further absolved herself of blame by bringing into the world a little, helpless infant, bald and thin and red-faced, who howled most objectionably and seemed as indignant at having existence thus forced upon it as though it knew what existence really was. Probably it was no prophetic instinct but some more prosaic ailment that led Clara's infant daughter to make night hideous with her cries. Be that as it may, its mother conceived something that almost amounted to dislike for the ugly little voyager upon the sea of life for whose existence she was responsible. She loved men and boys; why then should she give birth to a daughter? She loved beauty; why should her first-born be devoid even of hair? Besides ... the baby resembled its father; the "good match" which Fate had compelled her to make, much against her wishes; the detested crumple in her bed of roses; the hated benefactor to whose unwise fancy she was indebted for board and clothing, place in society and honourable title of "married woman"; the loathed necessity which spoilt everything--even her child--for her.

This much, however, must be said for Clara Thayer; though the child meant less than nothing to her, she did not neglect it on that account. She may have been an unnatural mother, but she was not a soulless brute, and she therefore attended carefully to its wants and saw that it lacked for nothing that she could give it. What she could not give it, it necessarily went without; but she did her duty so far as she was able and was unexpectedly and munificently rewarded. For when her little girl was three years of age its father died, leaving her a wealthy and beautiful widow.

Now when Fortune is too kind to us Fate sometimes plays a grim joke, in order to level us with the vast mass of toiling, yearning, disappointed, suffering fellow-humans. This is what Fate did with Clara Thayer.

She was young, rich, beautiful, able to marry whom she pleased and live as she liked without let or hindrance. Fate had given her good coin with which to purchase anything her vagrant fancy might light upon. She might have chosen whom she would. Therefore she chose an extremely good-looking scoundrel whose Irish mother and Italian father had bequeathed to him, together with the light-hearted fascinations of their kindred natures, the sum total of every vice of which both lands are capable. The sweet kindness of heart and warm devotion to cause and kindred which characterize the Italian and Irish races lay in the softness of his dark eyes, the velvet smoothness of his voice, but were quite absent from his nature. This Clara Thayer did not know; and, had she known, it is more than probable that she would not have cared. For the first time in her life she was in the grip of a perfectly irrational fascination, an infatuation which drove her as a whirlwind might drive wheat. The infatuation ended, moreover, only when her life did.

This was, perhaps, a natural ending to Clara Thayer's career. It was natural, too, that people should refer to her as that poor girl who made "such a sensible first match" and "such an idiotic second one." As a matter of fact it would be difficult to determine which of Clara's two marriages was the more idiotic. Her first was for money, her second, for love. Her first supplied her with good food, pretty clothes and unlimited boredom. Her second gave her sharp rapture and equally poignant pain. Possibly, if she had remained unmarried she might have encountered worse things than any of these. Of the three wishes which the bad fairy, Life, gives the average woman it is difficult to say which is the least fraught with unhappiness.

"Woman in a bitter world must do the best she can." Clara Brooks did the best she could and bad was the best.

However she died at forty-five, and many women live to be old.

*CHAPTER V*

*"BLIND FOOLS OF FATE"*

"Blind fools of fate and slaves of circumstance,
Life is a fiddler and we all must dance."
--_Robert Service_.

When Clara Thayer gave birth to a daughter she was, as has been before stated, disappointed. When that daughter developed the appearance and characteristics of its father Clara began to dislike it. In vain she reasoned with herself, in vain upbraided herself, secretly and severely, in vain called herself "an unnatural mother." The sad fact remained that she did not care for the child. It had no pretty ways, no graceful tricks; its eyes were dull, its skin was pale, its hair ordinary. If it had resembled her she would have loved it; if it had resembled her mother, her father, anyone for whom she cared, she would have idolized it. It resembled no one, however, but her husband, and, although when Clara had married Lowden Thayer she had been supremely indifferent to him, that indifference had, unfortunately, deepened into a positively appalling dislike. Not dislike for his character which she respected; not dislike for his attitude toward her which left nothing to be desired; no, dislike for the man, himself, dislike for his personality, his manners, his way of entering a room, his way of brushing his hair, his way of walking, talking, breathing.

It is easy here for the reader to throw down this veracious account of a real woman with the single comment that she was unreasonable and ungrateful. It is true that she was unreasonable but not that she was ungrateful. She knew all that she owed to her husband, she sometimes hated herself for her lack of feeling, and she strove earnestly to hide her dislike and to do her duty in a way befitting a wife and mother. It was a bitter addition to what seemed to her an already difficult life when the child, to whose advent she had looked with so much hope and longing, turned out the counterpart of her husband. Instead of a distraction it was a perpetual reminder of the galling chain; instead of a delight it represented merely another disagreeable duty.

Clara was generally considered a model wife and mother; every domestic obligation was scrupulously performed, every connubial and matronly demand upon her time, health and patience, uncomplainingly complied with. When Mr. Thayer died, however, four years after their marriage, Clara felt only an unspeakable relief; and when, nine years later, Mr. Thayer's brother offered to adopt Lynn, on condition that her mother gave her up, entirely, Clara felt only that a burden had been lifted from her shoulders.

She had one child by her second husband after she had been married to him five years, and that child was a boy who combined his father's picturesque, foreign beauty with his mother's refinement and grace. To him, she was an adoring mother; he was second in her heart only to Guido Allardi. Just as Lynn had been the image of the man whom Clara had disliked, so Lionel was the image of the man whom she worshipped. There was no wish or choice in the matter; she always felt sorry that she could not care for Lynn, and she sometimes wished, in moments of bitterness, that Lionel did not resemble his father so closely. It was a rare retribution of Fate, this! the unloved child of the unloved father who was all that a mother could wish and the idolized child of the idolized father who inherited from him every trait that could break a mother's heart. If Lowden Thayer could have looked into the future he would have been amply revenged. It is improbable, however, that he wanted revenge; he wanted his wife's love and, failing that, he wanted rest. He never had the first but we may reasonably hope that he had the latter.

"Love's eyes are very blind," but they are never so blind as not to perceive dislike on the part of the loved object, however conscientiously that dislike may be hidden. Lowden Thayer was a just man; he saw that his wife did her best and he, on his part, did his best, hid his sorrow manfully, and, when he died, willed Clara all his property, unhampered by any galling restrictions.

The little daughter whom he left behind developed in a rather interesting fashion.

The widely diverse natures of Lowden Thayer and his wife mingled oddly in her. She had her father's face but her mother's pliant, graceful figure and movements. She inherited from her father a useful brain, capable of assimilating considerable knowledge and of reasoning accurately and carefully; but she had her mother's brilliancy and lively wit. She had her father's industry, business ability, and sense of justice, and her mother's love of popularity and social gayety. From both she inherited one thing in overwhelming measure; the capacity for any amount of silent, tenacious affection which no ill-treatment could shake, no disillusionment alter. Another thing, too, she had from both; the ability to suffer in silence, keeping a cool and careless front to the world and hiding a bleeding heart and a broken spirit behind a smiling face and manner. Lynn was thus, in many ways, not so unlike her mother as that mother supposed.

At the time when Lynn was adopted by her uncle Horace she was twelve years of age. The next seven years were very busy ones. Child though she was, she felt keenly the fact that her uncle had taken her into his home in fulfilment of a sense of duty, rather than from motives of affection. She determined that she would be indebted to him for nothing more than was absolutely necessary. In pursuance of this idea she begged to be allowed to train for a teacher and, on graduating, insisted on taking a position which offered itself. Her uncle made little objection; he cherished the common masculine delusion that women who live at home have nothing to do with their time and he thought it rather a good idea that some of this time should be occupied. The idea of his niece being a public school teacher did not exactly appeal to his sense of the fitness of things; but, after all, since the girl was bent on it, "let her do as she likes" was his ultimatum. Therefore Lynn did as she liked; and events which shortly afterwards transpired made her think with horror of the fact that, had she followed her aunt's wishes, she would have been without any money that she could call her own.

It was when she was nineteen that she received a letter in an unknown handwriting. Its contents were brief and pregnant. Her mother was dying; would Lynn visit her in New York before she died? as there was much that she had to say. The letter ended with an injunction to hide the matter from her uncle and aunt, who would never allow her to travel alone, and would insist on accompanying her, which her mother did not wish.

It would be difficult to describe the effect which this letter had upon Lynn. She had always known that she held no place in her mother's heart, and that knowledge was a settled grief, not an active sorrow. The letter gave her a dull pain, almost like the pain which one would experience, could the corpse of a dead friend whom one had mourned, then almost though not quite forgotten, suddenly come to life and demand recognition.

Lynn had held no communication with her mother since she had lived with her uncle in Montreal. To her literal and very punctilious mind the fact that this correspondence was debarred as a condition of adoption rendered it out of the question. Besides, it must be remembered that there had been no tender, anguished parting of mother and child; Clara had, as always, behaved prettily and politely, had kissed the plain little face, distorted with difficult feeling, and had inwardly congratulated herself that this child of Lowden Thayer had inherited his silent, unemotional nature. Otherwise she would have felt more hesitation about sending her among strangers. As it was--the child was a good child, who could be depended upon to give little or no trouble to her guardians, and she had so little feeling that one place was likely to be much like another place to her. True, Clara reflected with a slight qualm, true, the child was devoted to her little brother; but children soon forget. It would be a criminal sentimentality and one for which the girl would have a right to reproach her in the future, did she neglect this excellent chance of having her provided for. So she kissed her once again, trying to smile at her with affection and kindness, told her that she must not altogether forget her mother and her little brother, though it was not likely that she would see them again for a little while; and watched the train steaming out of the crowded station with mingled feelings of pity, relief, self-congratulation, and some faint stirring of sorrow that she could not feel more spontaneous affection for her own child. Her own child!--that recalled Lionel to her mind and her eyes brightened and gleamed. How beautiful he was! how dear! how sweet that Fate should give her this one lovely thing to offset her disappointment in the other direction! And how delightful that the six hundred which Horace Thayer had allowed her for the future should be tied up so tightly that only she could have access to it. Little Lionel need not lack for everything while she had that to fall back upon.

It may be asked if no thought of her dead husband, no perception of the difference between him and Allardi ever caused her to draw painful contrasts and inferences. Yes, these thoughts, these comparisons did occur to her sorrowfully enough at times; she frequently bewailed the ugly Fate which made the faithful dead abhorrent, the unprincipled and worthless living dear to her. But facts are facts. The dead was abhorrent, the living _was_ dear. So with her children. Despite the fact that, although at the time of which we write, Lionel was a baby, he already displayed traits which made her uneasy; despite the fact that Lynn had been almost pathetically "good" from babyhood, humbly devoted to her mother, utterly subservient to every whim of her baby brother; despite these facts, Clara had for Lynn, at best, a sort of affectionate tolerance, while for Lionel she had an overpowering love.

Do not, dear reader, wholly bury poor Clara under the weight of your virtuous indignation. She had an unfortunate disposition, that was all. The worthless attracted, the worthy annoyed her. She was no more to blame than the child who seizes some pernicious sweetmeat and refuses even to look at the nourishing and expensive meal which awaits his pleasure.

This much, at least, it is desired that the reader keep clearly in mind when judging Clara Allardi. Both in her "mariage de convenance" and in her "love-match" she made the best of what she had; tried not to visit upon Lowden Thayer the dislike which marriage with him had awakened; endeavoured to bear patiently with Guido Allardi's vagaries and steadily refused to leave him even when all her own money had been squandered and when he was incapable of making enough to support her, comfortably. This last, though, can scarcely be attributed to her for righteousness. The real reason that she stayed with the Italian was because she could not leave him; she was like a parasite, drawing her very breath through him and unable to exist away from him.

Poor Clara Allardi! "Blind fool of fate and slave of circumstance!" When her unloved daughter responded to the letter which had caused her such mingled pain and joy, she found the former favourite of fortune living--or, rather, dying--in the modern equivalent of the historic garret, a squalid tenement in an unfashionable and ragged quarter of the great city of New York. Her mother's husband, Lynn did not see; the strain of attending to his sick wife had proved unsupportable and, after a short time, he had taken his departure, leaving no address. Lynn hoped that he would not return until she had left New York; she felt, seeing her mother and remembering what that mother had been in the past, that she could scarcely have borne the burden of his presence. Her fears, however, were unnecessary; Clara Allardi had been dead several days before that husband returned and his absence had troubled Lynn more than his presence could have done; for it was from him that she was obliged to ask the boon which crippled her future yet filled her life for many years.

This, however, is anticipating. We must return to the time when Lynn took up her abode in her mother's "home" once more and did what she could for the comfort of that mother. She had complied with Clara's request in so far that she had told her guardians of her destination; she had gone to the principal of the school where she taught and had asked for leave of absence, offering to pay a substitute; then had packed a valise and left a note for her aunt, explaining her mother's condition and begging that her uncle would not follow or bother about her. This was merely a figure of speech on Lynn's part; Horace Thayer was a man who never bothered about anything in the universe but himself. Lynn realized, however, that her aunt, who had a real affection for her, ought to know her whereabouts and the object of her journey; though, in the face of her mother's strangely insistent entreaties, she was strongly tempted to use a long-standing New York invitation from a school friend, as a pretext.

She found her mother delirious and very weak. She talked incoherently, but recognized Lynn and greeted her with something like eagerness, in the way that one would greet a useful friend rather than in the way that one would greet a child whom one had not seen for many years. Lynn, however, had steeled herself to bear what she had anticipated would not be an especially joyous reunion and took stoically whatever arrows the joyous fates chose to drive in her direction.

Must the truth be confessed? It was not the thought of seeing her mother before she died that had formed Lynn's chief object in hastening to New York. While she would, in any case, have used every effort to further her mother's dying wish, it must be confessed that there was little more than a bitter, dull grief in the prospect of seeing the latter, again. But there was another, darling prospect. The child! the little boy who had been three when she left him, would be ten, now. Oh, to see him, again! the one being who had always clung to her, loved her, satisfied her. The dear, unutterably dear little mortal whose arrival into the world had changed the face of life for her. How had she lived without him all these years? she wondered; was he as beautiful as ever, as full of life and sweetness? and--had he come to resemble his father as much as he had promised to do? The thought depressed her for a moment; she remembered how, as a child, it had infuriated her to hear people remark upon the wonderful likeness between Allardi and his infant son. Then her brow cleared. He was really more like her mother than his father, she insisted to herself; as he had her high-bred clearness of outline, so he would inherit her delicate refinement, her ineradicable fastidiousness of mind. She lost herself in hopeful musing, almost forgetting in the joy of seeing her little brother once more that her mother's grave would probably be dug before she returned again to Montreal.

*CHAPTER VI*

*"LIFE AT ITS END"*

The April morning broke softly, implacably chill. There was a hint of cruelty in the frolicsome spring breeze that danced through the half-opened window, a hint of sorrow in the few faint tremulous notes of "half-awakened birds," preparing once more to face the strange world of which they knew so little. There was something ominous in the softness of the spring air, something that chilled one's blood with a faint terror.

Over the dreary tenements and horrible, rearing buildings of New York broke the pitiless day. The lovely rose of dawn softened all that was bare and bleak and gave it a semblance of tenderness and repose.

There was silence in the room where Death lay waiting. The body of Clara Allardi lay stretched upon a bed in slumber, her wasted hand, blue-veined, marble-white, plucking mechanically at the quilt, her restless voice muttering vaguely of things that had long since passed away; lips that had laughed, pulses that had leaped, hearts that had broken, long, long ago. Death, itself, might have laughed to hear her; but her daughter did not laugh.

Clara's face was blue-veined now and hollow-eyed, but, even so, was lovely; delicately, uselessly lovely, with the flawless pulchritude of a marble statue, the sickening, unearthly hue of ivory. Clara Allardi had been very beautiful in her day, had had her share of the kingdoms of this world and the glories of them; she lay dying in a New York tenement, unloved, uncared-for, an old woman at the age of forty-five.

Nature "red of tooth and claw" is sometimes more horrible in tender mood than in fierce; this riot of delicate colour and tremulous song in the face of grisly Death seemed to Lynn Thayer insulting and indecorous. The tragedy of the breaking day and of the ebbing life gnawed at her heart. She sat silent, watching the dying with hungry eyes that held no trace of personal grief, only a dumb heart-craving for something she had never known.

In the farther end of the room lay a child who slept peacefully, his scarlet lips half-parted in a smile, his delicate arms thrust outside the bed-clothes and half-bared. The long black lashes which lay on the glowing dusk of his cheek; the thickness of the clustering curls which shaded his low brow; the almost insolent regularity of his childish features: all proclaimed him to be Guido Allardi's son. He was an ideal and faithful representative of the old, Italian race to which his father belonged; before the family, ruined and disgraced, had sought refuge in America, many such a face had been seen in the family portrait gallery. Probably none quite so beautiful; beauty such as this child's is rare and the possessors of it are seldom quite human. Perhaps this fact may have given rise to the old Greek myths of the gods descending in human shape and proceeding to the performance of most ungodlike actions.

Lynn's thoughts wandered sometimes to the cot where the boy lay, looking as much out of place in the sordid setting which the room afforded as some strange tropical plant. As she thought of him, her face insensibly cleared. The baby brother of her childhood days had proved a fulfilled delight. As beautiful as in infancy and with the same caressing, clinging ways which had made him so dear to her then, he had justified, to her, her loving remembrance of him. She cherished a hidden thought of which she was half ashamed yet which held a very real sweetness; namely, that, in spite of the long years of separation, the boy loved and clung to her and, as of old, seemed to prefer her society to that of his mother. She failed to realize that the stock of bonbons and toys with which she had provided herself had induced the affection which the child showed so freely; she did not know that he would have left his dying mother with equal alacrity for anyone who would have fed him with chocolates. So little do we comprehend what is passing in the minds of those most near and dear to us; even in the crystal mind of a child there are depths which it is just as well not to probe too deeply.

In the bare and comfortless room where these three were congregated Life and Death were present and one more--Judgment. Judgment, the dread avenger who dogs the steps of Sin. Judgment which, after the fashion of Judgment, would fall most heavily on the innocent head, most cruelly on the undeserving. Could Lynn have looked into the future and seen the awful harvest of corruption which the sleeping child would reap it may be wondered whether she would not have killed him as he lay, out of sheer pity.

Ah, the tragedy of Life! Life that takes from us one by one all the glittering baubles with which she has amused our childish hours--the rose-hued hopes, the crimson loves, the golden ambitions--and gives us in their place--what? The dying moaned as though these thoughts had found an echo in her heart; then lay still, looking straight in front of her with eyes which, though glazed and uncertain, held a certain intelligence.

"Mother--are you better? do you understand me?" asked Lynn very softly, bending over the bed.

Clara Allardi turned her head slightly; her lips moved.

"There was something, something you wanted to say," cried Lynn, desperately. "If you could only tell me now; it will not take long, will it?"

Her mother's face brightened into life; an anxious gleam shone in her eyes which now held no uncertainty, but were the homes of an insistent purpose, a keen desire. She struggled a moment, then spoke, faintly.

"Your brother?"--

"Yes. Yes."

"Not really--only your half-brother--but you always cared just as much"--

"More. Oh, mother, a thousand times more. Don't waste time in saying all this. Is it something you want me to do for Lionel? Surely you know that anything I could do would be all too little--tell me, just tell me what it is. I swear to do it, whatever it may be."

"See to him. His father--you know"--

"I know."

"--Doesn't understand children--the little fellow may be hungry, cold"--Clara Allardi's voice broke into a pitiful quaver which shook Lynn's composure, terribly.

"Mother," she said, growing white and speaking distinctly, "you are wasting time and you may not have much more time. You know--you must know--that, while I live, Liol shall want for nothing that I can give him. He can never be cold--or hungry--or friendless--or--loveless--while I live. You must know all that. I have my teacher's salary; if that is not enough I will get money in some other way; I have some saved, I have some jewelry--oh, don't talk of anything so trivial, so absurd, as the idea of Lionel ever wanting for anything which I can give him. You understand all that, don't you, mother?"

Her mother's face cleared, then clouded.

"You may marry--change?" she muttered, looking wistfully at her daughter.

"Never!" said Lynn, choking. "You don't understand me, mother. I could never think of marriage while Liol was dependent on me; and, as for change--if that is all, you can die happy."

"Swear," said her mother, faintly.

Lynn hesitated. "I don't like swearing," she returned, reluctantly, "but, if it will make you any happier--I swear by everything in heaven and earth--by God Almighty--by the memory of my father--that I will do exactly as I have said. I will look after Lionel always, always, no matter what it costs me. _Now_ are you satisfied?"

"You won't be hard on him--he is," she winced, "he is--Guido's child. We don't--don't always understand foreigners--women don't always--understand--men. You will remember?--you will think of his heritage--and be merciful? I have always had to be." Her voice dropped and broke in a dry sob.

"If he develops into what your husband is," returned Lynn, quietly, "it will make no difference. You don't understand me, mother. Just as you never left the other one, because you couldn't, because you wouldn't have cared to live away from him; so I--I couldn't desert Liol. I have always loved him; how dearly you have never even guessed. I shall always love him and--and when he leaves his father and goes to a good school and knows only good people"--

"It's in his blood," said his mother, faintly. "Already--already it shows. You--you must make--allowances. Another thing!" she attempted to raise herself in the bed and her eyes shone with a feverish glitter, "another thing, Lynn! No one must know." Her voice grew firmer, her hand more steady. "You remember the conditions--when your uncle"--

"I remember them well. But, dear mother, you don't think Uncle Horace would hold me to them--now?"

"Horace is hard--a hard man. When--if--Liol did take after his father--they would never let you see him--or know him. No. If I am to die in peace you must swear never to tell a living soul that he is your brother. If anyone at all knew--your uncle might find out--oh, Lynn, promise?"

Lynn spoke, slowly. "You have not thought, mother. This secrecy will lead to all sorts of complications. Uncle Horace is a hard man, but he is just. He will grumble and think me a fool, but he can't refuse his consent. At present--for a while--it won't matter, not telling anyone about Liol; but later on--oh, mother, don't ask me to promise that. Let me use my discretion about it, won't you?"

Clara Allardi half raised herself in bed; her eyes shone with unnatural lustre, her delicate features thickened with a sort of fury and fever of determination.

"You refuse?" she said with terrible distinctness. "You refuse? Then--I curse you. _I curse you_. You--you're taking your revenge now when I'm dying and helpless for the years that I've put him before you. I curse you--why can't you let me die in peace? You'll tell--you'll tell the Thayers; they'll make you give him up or turn you out of doors. How will you look after him then on a miserable pittance that depends upon your strength anyway and may fail at any moment? Ah, you're your father in the flesh,"--she spoke, slowly and with a concentrated bitterness that appalled Lynn. "Good--hard--hateful! Why did I ever bring you into the world?"

"That I might look after the child whom you love, I suppose," returned Lynn with equal bitterness. "Have no fear, mother. You needn't curse me. If nothing else will make you happy, I'll swear. You know, of course, that you're making me deceive and lie to my guardians and all the rest of the world and that you may land me in hopeless confusion and trouble; but if you think that will benefit Liol and minimize the chances of his being deprived of anything or annoyed in any way--why, of course, there is nothing more to be said--is there?"

But Clara Allardi had sunk back with a look of satisfaction and relief at hearing her daughter's bitter promise to take the oath required, and it is doubtful whether she even heard the rest.

"Swear, then!" was all she answered.

Lynn hesitated; looked imploringly at her mother; then slowly and reluctantly repeated her former oath. "By God Almighty--by the memory of my father--by all I hold sacred in heaven and earth--mother, mother, mother!"

Clara's fair face had turned the colour of parchment; no breath of life seemed issuing from her blue lips. Struck by a deadly fear, a still more poignant longing, Lynn Thayer bent over her mother's death-bed, yearning with an intensity which surprised herself, for some word of kindness, of recognition, ere the poor dust turned to dust. It almost seemed as though her prayer had been answered, for Clara opened her eyes and looked at Lynn, a lovely light of longing in them. Her lips moved faintly.

"My child!"--the whisper came softly--"my boy--my only child!"

She did not realize, of course, what she was saying. Lynn understood that. She rose from her knees, with lips firmly set. Her face was a little white.

"You want to see him again," she said, in tones which sounded clearly. "I will bring him to you."

Mrs. Allardi's face brightened. Lynn had divined her inmost thought. She yearned for the child. She hungered to die, holding him. But Fate, implacable as iron to the profitless wishes of poor foolish, failing, mortal things, decreed otherwise. A change on the dying face, an ominous rattle and choking, arrested Lynn's footsteps and brought her hurriedly back.

Clara Allardi gasped a little, a very little, then lay quiet. Lynn stood and watched her, looking pinched and plain in the trying light of early dawn. The other woman lay with eyes that stared a little. Presently Lynn realized that she was dead; it did not come as a shock, only as an added desolation. She leaned forward and touched the cold cheek, timidly.

"Mother!" she said in a low voice, "Mother!"

There was a brief and bitter silence. Then Lynn took the cold head in her arms and held it for a moment while her tears fell fast and bitterly over it.

"She was my mother," she said, weeping, "she--was--my mother!" There was no complaint in her tones, only a dull pain. Her face held an unconscious desolation as she laid the fair head back on the pillow and settled it, decently. She shivered a little as one soft, scented tress fell against her hand. She had never touched her mother's hair in life and, oddly enough, this trifling remembrance cut her to the naked soul. She gasped and looked away, choking down her rising sobs with a species of horror and disgust. Life had taught her self-control, and she disliked noise in the presence of the dead.

Presently she rose and moved softly to the cot where the boy lay sleeping. She looked at him in silence. He stirred in his sleep and smiled a little. Her sallow face flamed into sudden life and beauty as she stood, watching him, an adoring smile curving her thin lips. She had forgotten the other silent inmate of the room who lay, smiling too, the dead eyes which her daughter had forgotten to close, gazing in front of her as though she saw nothing to fear in the eternity upon which she had entered.

Suddenly there was a burst of radiance, a riot of colour and fragrance and song. The chill, pink light of sunrise streamed through the window and lay on the dead face, making it very lovely. A delicate rose was reflected in the icy cheek, a brilliant gold in the faded hair. Lynn, who had turned, startled by the sudden light, was struck by her mother's beauty. Despite anxiety, illness, sorrow, Clara Allardi made rather an exquisite corpse; and, as her plain daughter sat watching her in the trying light of early dawn, she reflected with a smile that held no mirth that even in death it was well to have regular features and abundance of soft hair. Then her face changed and softened. She moved reverently to the side of the bed, veiled the staring eyes, crossed the thin hands. Then she knelt and prayed; while far, immeasurably far below, the slow wail of the sick child, the low moan of the hungry animal, smote on the deaf ear, the cold heart, of great New York.

*CHAPTER VII*

*A SHORT REPENTANCE*

"Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before
I swore--but was I sober when I swore?
And then and then came Spring and rose-in-hand
My thread-bare Penitence apieces tore."
--_The Rubaiyat_.

Nine years had passed since the events related in the last chapter. Lynn Thayer had developed from a girl of nineteen into a woman of twenty-eight. She had lived quietly in Montreal, never relinquishing her position in the school, though, as the years went by, her aunt had more than once begged her to remain at home and lead the life of an ordinary young woman of her class.

As has before been said, Lynn occupied a rather exceptional position in Montreal. The average girl who teaches in the public schools makes up her mind, sooner or later, to be a teacher, only. Her position is not considered in the light of a disgrace, but, on the other hand, she occupies a slightly lower grade than does the girl who remains at home. The latter, provided she has the social connections and the time, may go into any society she pleases. She may be unable to return any hospitality except in a very simple fashion, but she may still figure as a "society girl" and receive and accept invitations in the most exclusive houses.

Probably no other girl but Lynn, however, was ever successful in combining the duties of a public school teacher and of a society girl. Both her father and mother had been so well-to-do, so well-known in Montreal; both had had so many rich friends, so many influential connections, that their daughter was of necessity a figure of interest. Then, too, she was connected with the nobility; and, what was more important, her aunts on both sides of the family, who lived in Montreal, received and returned visits from the most exclusive Butchers, Bakers and Candlestick-Makers, and were generally accepted as "fixtures" in society. Therefore Lynn had invitations of all kinds, not only from people of gentle breeding, aristocratic birth and good character, but also from that far more important section of "society" who lived in big houses and got their clothes from Paquin. She never "came out," much to her aunt's grief; but she "went out," which was more to the point and which many girls who "come out" never succeed in doing. She was so popular, so generally liked, that her obstinate determination to spend her days in teaching was both admired and extolled.

Meanwhile, what of her brother?

On Mrs. Allardi's death Lynn had secured from his father, who appeared supremely indifferent to the child and to his fate, a promise that she was to have full control of him, on condition of paying for his board and education. Lynn, after considerable thought, made arrangements for him at a good but unfashionable school in the country, as far as possible removed from his father. She was struck by the attitude of father and son to one another. Allardi seemed to regard his small son as an amusing kind of dog, to be patted on the head if he were in a good humour, kicked out of the way if he were not; he was proud of him, in a way, devoted to him; yet, apparently, never thought anything of his present wants or of his future needs. He was quite capable of leaving the child alone for days while he sought distraction elsewhere, and of loading him with bonbons and caresses on his return.

He felt that if this queer, silent step-daughter of his chose to supplement a small allowance which Mr. Thayer had promised to make the boy, he would be very foolish to stand in the way. He could make any promise she chose to exact and break it with alacrity as soon as the keeping of it became inconvenient. Therefore the readiness with which he promised to see practically nothing of the boy in the future sprang really from a defective sense of the value of a promise, rather than from the total heartlessness with which Lynn credited him. He was really fond of Lionel--in his way; and fully intended to see all that he wished of him, whenever necessary.

So the child went to school and Lynn returned to Montreal and worked steadily for the extra sums which were needed for Lionel's maintenance. The next few years were comparatively restful and pleasant ones. The reports which she received of Lionel were not good, yet he seemed to be progressing fairly well, and Lynn, remembering her mother's dying words, tried not to expect too much in the beginning. When Lionel was fourteen, however, he ran away and joined his father in New York.

Lynn did not even know his whereabouts and had no way of discovering them. The boy did not assuage her anxiety by writing, feeling that his hiding-place might be ascertained if he gave any clue to it and that he would then be compelled to return. However, Allardi wrote to Lynn after a time, telling her that the boy was with him and asking that she would not withdraw her help as Lionel already needed much that he could not give him.

Lynn exhausted entreaties, reproofs, and even threats. Allardi was the boy's natural guardian in the eyes of the law; his will was absolute and he refused to send the boy from him unless well paid for so doing. This was out of the question. Lynn had already earned the reputation of a miser for the scantiness and plainness of the wardrobe which Mrs. Thayer felt herself constantly obliged to supplement. Naturally Mrs. Thayer could not see why a girl with fifty dollars a month to spend on herself alone--as she supposed--should lack for anything in reason.

Here the inconvenience and absurdity of the oath which Mrs. Allardi had made Lynn swear began to show itself most unpleasantly. The truth was so simple, the secrecy made the whole matter so difficult. Lynn had dreaded inquiries anent the boy when she first returned after her mother's death, but none had been forthcoming. Mr. Thayer had expected that Lynn would ask him to have an eye to the boy and see that the small allowance he had promised to make him was fairly spent; when nothing was said on the matter he assumed that Lynn disliked the child as she did the father and preferred never to think or speak of them, now that the one link between them and her was broken. Mr. Thayer was glad to forget the existence of his sister-in-law's other child. He had never even seen the father or the son; he had been intensely indignant at the second marriage contracted while Clara was visiting friends in the States; and, subsequent events having justified his indignation, he had sedulously avoided meeting any of the people concerned. His offer to adopt Lynn had been made by letter; he had sent money for the journey when that offer was accepted, and settled the amount agreed upon his sister-in-law; and had then endeavoured to drive the whole affair from his mind. However, upon Lynn's return from New York, he did make some gruff inquiries as to the child's whereabouts; and, on her replying that the boy was at a cheap but highly respectable boarding-school in the country, he had, with a feeling of relief, dismissed the whole matter from his mind, thinking that "that Italian blackguard" had some sense of decency after all.

There seemed little that Lynn could do, now that Lionel had taken matters into his own hands and openly declared his intention of remaining with his father. Of course the rational thing was to break her promise and take her relatives into her confidence. Only the most scrupulous moralist could hold her bound by an oath which her mother, could she have looked into the future, would have surely wished her to break. Ah, if only logic ruled life, how simple life would be. Unfortunately it does not.

Lynn had inherited from both father and mother an overstrained sense of honour and, though she had done her best to refrain from making the unfair and ridiculous promise, the possibility of breaking it when made never occurred to her.

The Roman Catholic system of confession has its advantages after all. Had Lynn gone to any confessional and asked for permission to break her oath, and absolution for the sin of so doing, what sensible man, priest or layman, would have refused to sanction such a procedure? Lynn, under the circumstances, had no confidant, no adviser, no one to show her the needlessness of her various sacrifices.

Besides, it is to be feared that Lynn's sense of honour was so deeply ingrained that it could not, under any conditions, have yielded to the dictates of common sense. She would probably have done, in any circumstances, just what she proceeded to do; kept the foolish oath in its entirety, continued to help the ungrateful boy, in spite of the fact that he, in defiance of her expressed wishes, continued to live in New York with his father, and generally have conducted herself as over-fond and irrational women do, under such circumstances.

When Lionel was sixteen, however, his father died of consumption in a tragic and horrible manner; and Lionel, temporarily sobered by the occurrence, suddenly "turned over a new leaf," as he expressed it, and wrote Lynn to that effect, declaring his intention of taking up literary work and "making his name in it." Although his manner of supporting himself did not seem very practicable to his sister, she hailed with joy this indication that her work and care had at last borne fruit.

And, for a short time, Lionel was a source of unmitigated joy and pride to her. There are but a few poets in the world and he was one of them. His work earned him instant recognition among a certain set and, although his earnings were paltry, he, at all events, did earn something and bade fair to earn more. All literary workers know how frequently a certain amount of fame may be gained with very small pecuniary success to back it.

Then Lionel decided to live in Montreal. He was ill; New York did not agree with him; he wanted new experiences and realized that Lynn could give him one thing that he had never known--the society of rich and fashionable people; and, more important than all, he knew well that he could wheedle every penny of her earnings from her, provided he lived in the same town. The boy was a degenerate, totally without gentle feeling of any kind, his only approach to it being a sort of sympathetic and artistic understanding of other people's emotions. His sister was, to him, merely a cow to be milked dry. He was, to his sister, a demi-god to be sacrificed to; she laid before him in the dust the burnt ashes of her heart and life--and received the fitting and inevitable reward of such folly.

By reason of the oath sworn by Lynn and also because Lionel had won fame under the name of Leo Ricossia, this was the name by which he chose to be known in Montreal. As Leo Ricossia he was received with open arms. He had secured letters of introduction to certain influential Montrealers and soon contrived to be formally presented to his sister at the home of one of these. His literary fame had preceded him, and this, in conjunction with his extraordinary beauty, his extreme youth, and the fact that he, already, lay under sentence of death made him, for the time being, "the rage." No social gathering was complete without him; all the debutantes cut out his poems, pasted them in albums, and entreated his signature on the opening page; all the older women of fashion petted, indulged and ran after him.