Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise | Page 7

from the sofa. "Is it a girl?"
Nora nodded. The young man looked downcast; he was realizing the
practical side of his victory for science--the consequences to the girl
child, to all the relatives.

"A girl!" moaned Fanny, sinking to the sofa again. "God have mercy on
us!"
Louder and angrier rose the wail. Fanny, after a brief struggle with
herself, hurried to the table, looked down at the tiny helplessness. Her
face softened. She had been a mother four times. Only one had
lived--her fair little two-year-old Ruth--and she would never have any
more children. The tears glistened in her eyes. "What ails you, Nora
Mulvey?" she demanded. "Why aren't you 'tending to this poor little
creature?"
Nora sprang into action, but she wrapped the baby herself. The doctor
in deep embarrassment withdrew to the farther window. She fussed
over the baby lingeringly, but finally resigned it to the nurse. "Take it
into the bathroom," she said, "where everything's ready to feed
it--though I never dreamed----" As Nora was about to depart, she
detained her. "Let me look at it again."
The nurse understood that Fanny Warham was searching for evidence
of the mysterious but suspected paternity whose secret Lorella, with
true Lenox obstinacy, had guarded to the end. The two women scanned
the features. A man would at a glance have abandoned hope of
discovering anything from a chart so vague and confused as that
wrinkled, twisted, swollen face of the newborn. Not so a woman. Said
Nora: "She seems to me to favor the Lenoxes. But I think--I kind o'
think--I see a trace of--of----" There she halted, waiting for
encouragement.
"Of Galt?" suggested Fanny, in an undertone.
"Of Galt," assented Nora, her tone equally discreet. "That nose is
Galt-like and the set of the ears--and a kind of something to the neck
and shoulders."
"Maybe so," said Fanny doubtfully. She shook her head drearily, sighed.
"What's the use? Lorella's gone. And this morning General Galt came
down to see my husband with a letter he'd got from Jimmie. Jimmie
denies it. Perhaps so. Again, perhaps the General wrote him to write

that, and threatened him if he didn't. But what's the use? We'll never
know."
And they never did.
When young Stevens was leaving, George Warham waylaid him at the
front gate, separated from the spacious old creeper-clad house by long
lawns and an avenue of elms. "I hear the child's going to live," said he
anxiously.
"I've never seen anything more alive," replied Stevens.
Warham stared gloomily at the ground. He was evidently ashamed of
his feelings, yet convinced that they were human and natural. A
moment's silence between the men, then Stevens put his hand on the
gate latch. "Did--did--my wife----" began Warham. "Did she say what
she calculated to do?"
"Not a word, George." After a silence. "You know how fond she is of
babies."
"Yes, I know," replied Warham. "Fanny is a true woman if ever there
was one." With a certain defiance, "And Lorella--she was a sweet,
womanly girl!"
"As sweet and good as she was pretty," replied Stevens heartily.
"The way she kept her mouth shut about that hound, whoever he is!"
Warham's Roman face grew savage, revealed in startling apparition a
stubborn cruelty of which there was not a trace upon the surface. "If I
ever catch the---- ----I'll fill him full of holes."
"He'd be lynched--whoever he is," said Stevens.
"That's right!" cried Warham. "This is the North, but it's near enough to
Kentucky to know what to do with a wretch of that sort." His face
became calmer. "That poor little baby! He'll have a hard row to hoe."
Stevens flushed a guilty red. "It's--it's--a girl," he stammered.

Warham stared. "A girl!" he cried. Then his face reddened and in a
furious tone he burst out: "Now don't that beat the devil for luck!. . . A
girl! Good Lord--a girl!"
"Nobody in this town'll blame her," consoled Stevens.
"You know better than that, Bob! A girl! Why, it's downright wicked. . .
I wonder what Fanny allows to do?" He showed what fear was in his
mind by wheeling savagely on Stevens with a stormy, "We can't keep
her--we simply can't!"
"What's to become of her?" protested Stevens gently.
Warham made a wild vague gesture with both arms. "Damn if I know!
I've got to look out for my own daughter. I won't have it. Damn it, I
won't have it!" Stevens lifted the gate latch. "Well----
"Good-by, George. I'll look in again this evening." And knowing the
moral ideas of the town, all he could muster by way of encouragement
was a half-hearted "Don't borrow trouble."
But Warham did not hear. He was moving up the tanbark walk toward
the house, muttering to himself. When Fanny, unable longer