The Kentons

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At luncheon the Bittridges could not join the Kentons, or be asked to do
so, because the table held only four, but they stopped on their way to
their own table, the mother to bridle and toss in affected reluctance,
while the son bragged how he had got the last two tickets to be had that
night for the theatre where he was going to take his mother. He seemed
to think that the fact had a special claim on the judge's interest, and
she to wish to find out whether Mrs. Kenton approved of theatre-going.
She said she would not think of going in Ballardsville, but she supposed
it was more rulable in New York.

During the afternoon she called at the Kenton apartment to consult the
ladies about what she ought to wear. She said she had nothing but a
black 'barege' along, and would that do with the hat she had on? She had
worn it to let them see, and now she turned her face from aide to side to
give them the effect of the plumes, that fell like a dishevelled
feather-duster round and over the crown. Mrs. Kenton could only say that
it would do, but she believed that it was the custom now for ladies to
take their hats off in the theatre.

Mrs. Bittridge gave a hoarse laugh. "Oh, dear! Then I'll have to fix my
hair two ways? I don't know what Clarence WILL say."

The mention of her son's name opened the way for her to talk of him in
relation to herself, and the rest of her stay passed in the celebration
of his filial virtues, which had been manifest from the earliest period.
She could not remember that she ever had to hit the child a lick, she
said, or that he had ever made her shed a tear.

When she went, Boyne gloomily inquired, "What makes her hair so much
darker at the roots than it is at the points?" and his mother snubbed him
promptly.

"You had no business to be here, Boyne. I don't like boys hanging about
where ladies are talking together, and listening."

This did not prevent Lottie from answering, directly for Boyne, and
indirectly for Ellen, "It's because it's begun to grow since the last
bleach."

It was easier to grapple with Boyne than with Lottie, and Mrs. Kenton
was willing to allow her to leave the room with her brother unrebuked.
She was even willing to have had the veil lifted from Mrs. Bittridge's
hair with a rude hand, if it world help Ellen.

"I don't want you to think, momma," said the girl, "that I didn't know
about her hair, or that I don't see how silly she is. But it's all the
more to his credit if he can be so good to her, and admire her. Would
you like him better if he despised her?"

Mrs. Kenton felt both the defiance and the secret shame from which it
sprang in her daughter's words; and she waited for a moment before she
answered, "I would like to be sure he didn't!"

"If he does, and if he hides it from her, it's the same as if he didn't;
it's better. But you all wish to dislike him."

"We don't wish to dislike him, Ellen, goodness knows. But I don't think
he would care much whether we disliked him or not. I am sure your poor
father and I would be only too glad to like him."

"Lottie wouldn't," said Ellen, with a resentment her mother found
pathetic, it was so feeble and aimless.

"Lottie doesn't matter," she said. She could not make out how nearly
Ellen was to sharing the common dislike, or how far she would go in
fortifying herself against it. She kept with difficulty to her negative
frankness, and she let the girl leave the room with a fretful sigh, as if
provoked that her mother would not provoke her further. There were
moments when Mrs. Kenton believed that Ellen was sick of her love, and
that she would pluck it out of her heart herself if she were left alone.
She was then glad Bittridge had come, so that Ellen might compare with
the reality the counterfeit presentment she had kept in her fancy; and
she believed that if she could but leave him to do his worst, it would be
the best for Ellen.

In the evening, directly after dinner, Bittridge sent up his name for
Mrs. Kenton. The judge had remained to read his paper below, and Lottie
and Boyne had gone to some friends in another apartment. It seemed to
Mrs. Kenton a piece of luck that she should be able to see him alone, and
she could not have said that she was unprepared for him to come in,
holding his theatre-tickets explanatorily in his hand, or surprised when
he began:

"Mrs. Kenton, my mother's got a bad headache, and I've come to ask a
favor of you. She can't use her ticket for to-night, and I want you to
let Miss Ellen come with me. Will you?"

Bittridge had constituted himself an old friend of the whole family from
the renewal of their acquaintance, and Mrs. Kenton was now made aware of
his being her peculiar favorite, in spite of the instant repulsion she
felt, she was not averse to what he proposed. Her fear was that Ellen
would be so, or that she could keep from influencing her to this test of
her real feeling for Bittridge. "I will ask her, Mr. Bittridge," she
said, with a severity which was a preliminary of the impartiality she
meant to use with Ellen.

"Well, that's right," he answered, and while she went to the girl's room
he remained examining the details of the drawing-room decorations in easy
security, which Mrs. Kenton justified on her return.

"Ellen will be ready to go with you, Mr. Bittridge."

"Well, that's good," said the young man, and while he talked on she sat
wondering at a nature which all modesty and deference seemed left out of,
though he had sometimes given evidence of his intellectual appreciation
of these things. He talked to Mrs. Kenton not only as if they were in
every-wise equal, but as if they were of the same age, almost of the same
sex.

Ellen came in, cloaked and hatted, with her delicate face excited in
prospect of the adventure; and her mother saw Bittridge look at her with
more tenderness than she had ever seen in him before. "I'll take good
care of her, Mrs. Kenton," he said, and for the first time she felt
herself relent a little towards him.

A minute after they were gone Lottie bounced into the room, followed by
Boyne.

"Momma!" she shouted, "Ellen isn't going to the theatre with that
fellow?"

"Yes, she is."

"And you let her, momma! Without a chaperon?"

Boyne's face had mirrored the indignation in his sister's, but at this
unprecedented burst of conventionality he forgot their momentary
alliance. "Well, you're a pretty one to talk about chaperons! Walking
all over Tuskingum with fellows at night, and going buggy-riding with
everybody, and out rowing, and here fairly begging Jim Plumpton to come
down to the steamer and see you off again!"

"Shut up!" Lottie violently returned, "or I'll tell momma how you've
been behaving with Rita Plumpton yourself."

"Well, tell!" Boyne defied her.

"Oh, it don't matter what a brat of a boy says or does, anyway," said
Lottie. "But I think Ellen is disgracing the family. Everybody in the
hotel is laughing at that wiggy old Mrs. Bittridge, with her wobbly eyes,
and they can see that he's just as green! The Plumptons have been
laughing so about them, and I told them that we had nothing to do with
them at home, and had fairly turned Bittridge out of the house, but he
had impudence enough for anything; and now to find Ellen going off to the
theatre with him alone!"

Lottie began to cry with vexation as she whipped out of the room, and
Boyne, who felt himself drawn to her side again, said, very seriously:
"Well, it ain't the thing in New York, you know, momma; and anybody can
see what a jay Bittridge is. I think it's too bad to let her."

"It isn't for you to criticise your mother, Boyne," said Mrs. Kenton, but
she was more shaken than she would allow. Her own traditions were so
simple that the point of etiquette which her children had urged had not
occurred to her. The question whether Ellen should go with Bittridge at
all being decided, she would, of course, go in New York as she would go
in Tuskingum. Now Mrs. Kenton perceived that she must not, and she had
her share of humiliation in the impression which his mother, as her
friend, apparently, was making with her children's acquaintances in the
hotel. If they would think everybody in Tuskingum was like her, it would
certainly be very unpleasant, but she would not quite own this to
herself, still less to a fourteen-year-old boy. "I think what your
father and I decide to be right will be sufficient excuse for you with
your friends."

"Does father know it?" Boyne asked, most unexpectedly.

Having no other answer ready, Mrs. Kenton said, "You had better go to
bed, my son."

"Well," he grumbled, as he left the room, "I don't know where all the
pride of the Kentons is gone to."

In his sense of fallen greatness he attempted to join Lottie in her room,
but she said, "Go away, nasty thing!" and Boyne was obliged to seek his
own room, where he occupied himself with a contrivance he was inventing
to enable you to close your door and turn off your gas by a system of
pulleys without leaving your bed, when you were tired of reading.

Mrs. Kenton waited for her husband in much less comfort, and when he
came, and asked, restlessly, "Where are the children?" she first told
him that Lottie and Boyne were in their rooms before she could bring
herself to say that Ellen had gone to the theatre with Bittridge.

It was some relief to have him take it in the dull way he did, and to say
nothing worse than, "Did you think it was well to have her!"

"You may be sure I didn't want her to. But what would she have said if I
had refused to let her go? I can tell you it isn't an easy matter to
manage her in this business, and it's very easy for you to criticise,
without taking the responsibility."

"I'm not criticising," said Kenton. "I know you have acted for the best."

"The children," said Mrs. Kenton, wishing to be justified further, "think
she ought to have had a chaperon. I didn't think of that; it isn't the
custom at home; but Lottie was very saucy about it, and I had to send
Boyne to bed. I don't think our children are very much comfort to us."

"They are good children," Kenton said, said--provisionally.

"Yes, that is the worst of it. If they were bad, we wouldn't expect any
comfort from them. Ellen is about perfect. She's as near an angel as a
child can be, but she could hardly have given us more anxiety if she had
been the worst girl in the world."

"That's true," the father sadly assented.

"She didn't really want to go with him to-night, I'll say that for her,
and if I had said a single word against it she wouldn't have gone. But
all at once, while she sat there trying to think how I could excuse her,
she began asking me what she should wear. There's something strange
about it, Rufus. If I believed in hypnotism, I should say she had gone
because he willed her to go."

"I guess she went because she wanted to go because she's in love with
him," said Kenton, hopelessly.

"Yes," Mrs. Kenton agreed. "I don't see how she can endure the sight of
him. He's handsome enough," she added, with a woman's subjective logic.
"And there's something fascinating about him. He's very graceful, and
he's got a good figure."

"He's a hound!" said Kenton, exhaustively.

"Oh yes, he's a hound," she sighed, as if there could be no doubt on that
point. "It don't seem right for him to be in the same room with Ellen.
But it's for her to say. I feel more and more that we can't interfere
without doing harm. I suppose that if she were not so innocent herself
she would realize what he was better. But I do think he appreciates her
innocence. He shows more reverence for her than for any one else."

"How was it his mother didn't go?" asked Kenton.

"She had a headache, he said. But I don't believe that. He always
intended to get Ellen to go. And that's another thing Lottie was vexed
about; she says everybody is laughing at Mrs. Bittridge, and it's
mortifying to have people take her for a friend of ours."

"If there were nothing worse than that," said Kenton, "I guess we could
live through it. Well, I don't know how it's going to all end."

They sat talking sadly, but finding a certain comfort in their mutual
discouragement, and in their knowledge that they were doing the best they
could for their child, whose freedom they must not infringe so far as to
do what was absolutely best; and the time passed not so heavily till her
return. This was announced by the mounting of the elevator to their
landing, and then by low, rapid pleading in a man's voice outside.
Kenton was about to open the door, when there came the formless noise of
what seemed a struggle, and Ellen's voice rose in a muffed cry: "Oh! Oh!
Let me be! Go away! I hate you!" Kenton the door open, and Ellen burst
in, running to hide her face in her mother's breast, where she sobbed
out, "He--he kissed me!" like a terrified child more than an insulted
woman. Through the open door came the clatter of Bittridge's feet as he
ran down-stairs.




VII.

When Mrs. Kenton came from quieting the hysterical girl in her room she
had the task, almost as delicate and difficult, of quieting her husband.
She had kept him, by the most solemn and exhaustive entreaty, from
following Bittridge downstairs and beating him with his stick, and now
she was answerable to him for his forbearance. "If you don't behave
yourself, Rufus," she had to say, "you will have some sort of stroke.
After all, there's no harm done."

"No harm! Do you call it no harm for that hound to kiss Ellen?"

"He wouldn't have attempted it unless something had led up to it, I
suppose."

"Sarah! How can you speak so of that angel?"

"Oh, that angel is a girl like the rest. You kissed me before we were
engaged."

"That was very different."

"I don't see how. If your daughter is so sacred, why wasn't her mother?
You men don't think your wives are sacred. That's it!"

"No, no, Sarah! It's because I don't think of you as apart from myself,
that I can't think of you as I do of Ellen. I beg your pardon if I
seemed to set her above you. But when I kissed you we were very young,
and we lived in a simple day, when such things meant no harm; and I was
very fond of you, and you were the holiest thing in the world to me. Is
Ellen holy to that fellow?"

"I know," Mrs. Kenton relented. "I'm not comparing him to you. And
there is a difference with Ellen. She isn't like other girls. If it had
been Lottie--"

"I shouldn't have liked it with Lottie, either," said the major, stiffly.
"But if it had been Lottie she would have boxed his ears for him, instead
of running to you. Lottie can take care of herself. And I will take
care of Ellen. When I see that scoundrel in the morning--"

"What will you do, an old man like you! I can tell you, it's something
you've just got to bear it if you don't want the scandal to fill the
whole hotel. It's a very fortunate thing, after all. It'll put an end
to the whole affair."

"Do you think so, Sarah? If I believed that. What does Ellen say?"

"Nothing; she won't say anything--just cries and hides her face.
I believe she is ashamed of having made a scene before us. But I know
that she's so disgusted with him that she will never look at him again,
and if it's brought her to that I should think his kissing her the
greatest blessing in the world to us all. Yes, Ellen!"

Mrs. Kenton hurried off at a faint call from the girl's room, and when
she came again she sat down to a long discussion of the situation with
her husband, while she slowly took down her hair and prepared it for the
night. Her conclusion, which she made her husband's, was that it was
most fortunate they should be sailing so soon, and that it was the
greatest pity they were not sailing in the morning. She wished him to
sleep, whether she slept herself or not, and she put the most hopeful
face possible upon the matter. "One thing you can rest assured of,
Rufus, and that is that it's all over with Ellen. She may never speak to
you about him, and you mustn't ever mention him, but she feels just as
you could wish. Does that satisfy you? Some time I will tell you all
she says."

"I don't care to hear," said Kenton. "All I want is for him to keep away
from me. I think if he spoke to me I should kill him."

"Rufus!"

"I can't help it, Sarah. I feel outraged to the bottom of my soul. I
could kill him."

Mrs. Kenton turned her head and looked steadfastly at him over her
shoulder. "If you strike him, if you touch him, Mr. Kenton, you will
undo everything that the abominable wretch has done for Ellen, and you
will close my mouth and tie my hands. Will you promise that under no
provocation whatever will you do him the least harm? I know Ellen better
than you do, and I know that you will make her hate you unless--"

"Oh, I will promise. You needn't be afraid. Lord help me!" Kenton
groaned. "I won't touch him. But don't expect me to speak to him."

"No, I don't expect that. He won't offer to speak to you."

They slept, and in the morning she stayed to breakfast with Ellen in
their apartment, and let her husband go down with their younger children.
She could trust him now, whatever form his further trial should take, and
he felt that he was pledging himself to her anew, when Bittridge came
hilariously to meet him in the reading-room, where he went for a paper
after breakfast.

"Ah, judge!" said the young man, gayly. "Hello, Boyne!" he added to
the boy, who had come with his father; Lottie had gone directly up-stairs
from the breakfast-room. "I hope you're all well this morning? Play not
too much for Miss Ellen?"

Kenton looked him in the face without answering, and then tried to get
away from him, but Bittridge followed him up, talking, and ignoring his
silence.

"It was a splendid piece, judge. You must take Mrs. Kenton. I know
you'll both like it. I haven't ever seen Miss Ellen so interested. I
hope the walk home didn't fatigue her. I wanted to get a cab, but she
would walk." The judge kept moving on, with his head down. He did not
speak, and Bittridge was forced to notice his silence. "Nothing the
matter, I hope, with Miss Ellen, judge?"

"Go away," said the judge, in a low voice, fumbling the head of his
stick.

"Why, what's up?" asked Bittridge, and he managed to get in front of
Kenton and stay him at a point where Kenton could not escape. It was a
corner of the room to which the old man had aimlessly tended, with no
purpose but to avoid him:

"I wish you to let me alone, sir," said Kenton at last. "I can't speak
to you."

"I understand what you mean, judge," said Bittridge, with a grin, all the
more maddening because it seemed involuntary. "But I can explain
everything. I just want a few words with you. It's very important; it's
life or death with me, sir," he said, trying to look grave. "Will you
let me go to your rooms with you?"

Kenton made no reply.

Bittridge began to laugh. "Then let's sit down here, or in the ladies'
parlor. It won't take me two minutes to make everything right. If you
don't believe I'm in earnest I know you don't think I am, but I can
assure you--Will you let me speak with you about Miss Ellen?"

Still Kenton did not answer, shutting his lips tight, and remembering his
promise to his wife.

Bittridge laughed, as if in amusement at what he had done. "Judge, let
me say two words to you in private! If you can't now, tell me when you
can. We're going back this evening, mother and I are; she isn't well,
and I'm not going to take her to Washington. I don't want to go leaving
you with the idea that I wanted to insult Miss Ellen. I care too much
for her. I want to see you and Mrs. Kenton about it. I do, indeed. And
won't you let me see you, somewhere?"

Kenton looked away, first to one side and then to another, and seemed
stifling.

"Won't you speak to me! Won't you answer me? See here! I'd get down on
my knees to you if it would do you any good. Where will you talk with
me?"

"Nowhere!" shouted Kenton. "Will you go away, or shall I strike you
with my stick?"

"Oh, I don't think," said Bittridge, and suddenly, in the wantonness of
his baffled effrontery, he raised his hand and rubbed the back of it in
the old man's face.

Boyne Kenton struck wildly at him, and Bittridge caught the boy by the
arm and flung him to his knees on the marble floor. The men reading in
the arm-chairs about started to their feet; a porter came running, and
took hold of Bittridge. "Do you want an officer, Judge Kenton?" he
panted.

"No, no!" Kenton answered, choking and trembling. "Don't arrest him.
I wish to go to my rooms, that's all. Let him go. Don't do anything
about it."

"I'll help you, judge," said the porter. "Take hold of this fellow," he
said to two other porters who came up. "Take him to the desk, and tell
the clerk he struck Judge Kenton, but the judge don't want him arrested."

Before Kenton reached the elevator with Boyne, who was rubbing his knees
and fighting back the tears, he heard the clerk's voice saying, formally,
to the porters, "Baggage out of 35 and 37" and adding, as mechanically,
to Bittridge: "Your rooms are wanted. Get out of them at once!"

It seemed the gathering of neighborhood about Kenton, where he had felt
himself so unfriended, against the outrage done him, and he felt the
sweetness of being personally championed in a place where he had thought
himself valued merely for the profit that was in him; his eyes filled,
and his voice failed him in thanking the elevator-boy for running before
him to ring the bell of his apartment.




VIII.

The next day, in Tuskingum, Richard, Kenton found among the letters of
his last mail one which he easily knew to be from his sister Lottie, by
the tightly curled-up handwriting, and by the unliterary look of the
slanted and huddled address of the envelope: The only doubt he could have
felt in opening it was from the unwonted length at which she had written
him; Lottie usually practised a laconic brevity in her notes, which were
suited to the poverty of her written vocabulary rather than the affluence
of her spoken word.

"Dear Dick" [her letter ran, tripping and stumbling in its course],
"I have got to tell you about something that has just happened here,
and you needent laugh at the speling, or the way I tell it, but just
pay attention to the thing itself, if you please. That disgusting
Bittridge has been here with his horrid wiggy old mother, and momma
let him take Ellen to the theatre. On the way home he tried to make
her promise she would marry him and at the door he kissed her. They
had an awful night with her hiseterics, and I heard momma going in
and out, and trying to comfort her till daylight, nearly. In the
morning I went down with poppy and Boyne to breakfast, and after I
came up, father went to the reading-room to get a paper, and that
Bittridge was there waiting for him, and wanted to speak with him
about Ellen. Poppa wouldent say a word to him, and he kept
following poppa up, to make him. Boyne says be wouldent take no for
an ansir, and hung on and hungon, till poppa threatened to hitt him
with his cane. Then he saw it was no use, and he took his hand and
rubbed it in poppa's face, and Boyne believes he was trying to pull
poppa's nose. Boyne acted like I would have done; he pounded
Bittridge in the back; but of course Bittridge was too strong for
him, and threw him on the floor, and Boyne scraped his knee so that
it bledd. Then the porters came up, and caught Bittridge, and
wanted to send for a policeman, but father wouldent let them, and
the porters took Bittridge to the desk and the clerk told him to get
out instantly and they left as soon as old Wiggy could get her
things on. I don't know where they went, but he told poppa they
were going home to-day any way. Now, Dick, I don't know what you
will want to do, and I am not going to put you up to anything, but I
know what I would do, pretty well, the first time Bittridge showed
himself in Tuskingum. You can do just as you please, and I don't
ask you to believe me if you're think I'm so exciteable that I cant
tell the truth. I guess Boyne will say the same. Much love to
Mary. Your affectionate sister,

"Lottie.

"P. S.--Every word Lottie says is true, but I am not sure he meant
to pull his nose. The reason why he threw me down so easily is, I
have grown about a foot, and I have not got up my strength. BOYNE.

"This is strictly confidential. They don't know we
are writing. LATTIE."


After reading this letter, Richard Kenton tore it into small pieces, so
that there should not be even so much witness as it bore to facts that
seemed to fill him with fury to the throat. His fury was, in agreement
with his temperament, the white kind and cold kind. He was able to keep
it to himself for that reason; at supper his wife knew merely that he had
something on his mind that he did not wish to talk of; and experience had
taught her that it would be useless to try making him speak.

He slept upon his wrath, and in the morning early, at an hour when he
knew there would be no loafers in the place, he went to an out-dated
saddler's shop, and asked the owner, a veteran of his father's regiment,
"Welks, do you happen to have a cowhide among your antiquities?"