But at other times, if by chance the house was quiet by day, or at night when she was unable to sleep, the shamefulness of her position came back upon her like an attacking pain. The more she grew to appreciate Wully’s mother, the more intolerable his deception of her seemed to her. Every time a visitor came into the kitchen, and Isobel McLaughlin stood like a high wall between Chirstie and the possibility of even a slighting insinuation, Chirstie hated more the part Wully had forced upon her. It was the only thing about which she dreamed then of disagreeing with him. She begged him, she entreated him, she really prayed him to let her tell the truth. But he would not. The only way to keep a secret was to tell not even his mother! Some way always he overpowered her with foolish arguments. She wouldn’t do just the only one thing he had ever asked her not to, would she? The only one thing that could make him hate her, would be to betray him, now, after it was all over. It wasn’t over, not for his mother, she argued. She pointed out that some day it would be all known, some way. It was sin. And were they not to be sure their sin would find them out? How could he grin, and make such an unbelieving face about such a thing! She was helpless before him. He wouldn’t even let her talk about telling anyone. Her only comfort was that some time it would all come out. And then he would have to say to his mother that every day she had begged him to tell her the truth! He would have to take all the blame of this unkindness, this cruelty. …
It was only a few days before her confinement that one afternoon she sat knitting; in that house of destructive boys not even pregnant hands might lie idle. She had been talking with her mother-in-law about Aunt Libby, whom they were expecting almost any moment. All the neighbors were talking about Libby Keith. She had been away again searching for Peter—in Chicago, this time, on a clue so slender, so foolish, that even the most malicious tongues wagged with a sigh. Her husband, to satisfy her, had gone searching for the son, to Iowa City, and there he had met a man who said that one day in Chicago he had seen a lad in a livery stable, who afterwards he thought might be Peter. He hadn’t recognized the boy at the time, only knowing him slightly. And he didn’t remember exactly where the stable was. He had been passing an odoriferous door, from which men were pitching out steaming manure.
Thereupon Libby Keith had gone to Chicago. And now she was futilely home again. And she was coming to Isobel McLaughlin to pour out her restlessness. Even winter weather could not keep her at home. She went from house to house seeking reassurance from those who could have none to give. She had had no letter from her boy, and that proved to her that he was lying in some place ill, unable to write. The neighbors scarcely dared suggest to her that Peter might be—well, the least bit careless. Boys were, at times, and thoughtless about writing. But she would never believe that her boy was like that. It was not like him. He would write her, that she knew, if he was able, because he had always been such a good laddie—such an exceeding good laddie that in decency they seemed to have to agree with her. Whoever went to town, went laden with her instructions for inquiry. They must ask everywhere if anyone had heard about a sick laddie trying to get back to his home.
Not a quiet woman, the neighbors reflected. Not one of dignity. One who never would scruple to disturb a world for her son. Some of them recalled Isobel McLaughlin when the news of Wully’s death had come to her. They had gone to her carrying their consolation, and she had rejected it with a gesture, going softly about her work with a face that none of them forgot. But Libby Keith took thankfully the crumbs of comfort they saved for her, and begged for more. She humbled herself to ask their incredulous aid. She had no pride left. She had nothing left but her anxiety for her worthless Peter.
She had had three children there in Scotland when her brother John’s letters from the new world began stirring her kinsmen. She lay bedridden reading them. She had not moved from her bed for two months even when John had taken his departure. Nor would she ever again, the doctors said. She lay there suffering when her second brother, Squire McLaughlin, came to say his last words to her before leaving for America. Then her sisters said farewell to her there, one after another, and her cousins and her friends. And when she would say she would soon be joining them over there, they were kind, and saw no harm in saying that they hoped so. For two years she lay fighting, crying for pain, making her absurd plans. Her neighbors tried
