The flamboyant display Helen made of her baby shocked Shannon and finally conquered the willful suspicions entertained by her neighbors. Her diffidence and reserve vanished. She was exalted. She glowed. She had passed into another state of being. This child had related her to everybody. She would have Buck stop the car before the Shaw residence and summoned Mrs. Shaw forth to look at it and advise her about whether to keep stockings on it or not. Mrs. Shaw said she never did.
On the other hand, Mrs. Arnold said that would depend upon whether the baby was cutting her eye teeth. In that case she advised not only stockings, but a flannel band about the body. Did Mrs. Cutter know whether the little thing was approaching its second summer and stomach and eye teeth or not? This question was put very casually, but with a shrewd glance.
Helen said she would “see.” Whereupon she thrust an exploring finger into the squirming infant’s mouth, felt about in there, withdrew it, and announced that she could detect no heralding[255] signs of these malignant teeth, but they might be coming. This was an unusually precocious baby! Therefore she would get the bands and keep the stockings on.
Then she passed on, apparently with no compunctions about having defrauded Mrs. Arnold of legitimate information about the baby.
But that lady hurried across the street to tell Mrs. Flitch something. “It is not her own child, my dear; I am sure of that,” she said, after reporting what Helen had done.
“Well, it could be,” Mrs. Flitch insisted.
“But it isn’t. I don’t think she knows exactly how old the child is. And a real mother, you know, can feel when her baby is teething.”
Mrs. Flitch nodded emphatically, held her note of silence a moment, then added: “If it isn’t her own, there is no telling what kind of baby it is, nor how it will turn out.”
“Well, it is turning out happily for that poor girl anyway. She looks years younger, and happy,” Mrs. Arnold replied.
“If Mr. Flitch deserted me, I couldn’t be happy. I’d never hold up my head again.”
“She has courage.”
“And she seems to have money,” Mrs. Flitch put in.
[256]“Yes, Mr. Arnold thinks she has ample means.”
“Then it must be alimony.”
“We have heard nothing of a divorce.”
“I think, when people are married, they should live together until death parts them. And if they won’t, they should make a clean breast of it, and let folks know exactly where they stand, inside the law or out of it,” Mrs. Flitch announced virtuously.
“Nothing like that is ever hidden. In time I suppose something clarifying will happen.”
“Well, I hope it won’t be disgraceful.”
“It is not easy for scandal to touch a woman who devotes her life to bringing up children. Did you ever think of that?” Mrs. Arnold shot back. “I think we should stand by Mrs. Cutter and help her all we can with this baby,” she added.
“Oh, I’m willing to do my duty. But she never gives me the chance to do anything. I’m the mother of five healthy children, yet she will pass by my door and ask somebody about that baby’s diet who never had a child,” Mrs. Flitch complained.
Thus the wind of private opinion, which is more dangerous than public opinion, veered and changed toward Helen Cutter. Her skies cleared,[257] without her ever having suspected the fury with which they were charged against her. Of all the good women I have ever known, she was the least concerned for her reputation. And this is one of the weaknesses of that class, a craven, almost guilty fear of evil tongues, which more vulnerable women do not share.
There were broken hours, I suppose, when some fleeting vision of the past absorbed her peace and joy. We never do escape those whispering tongues of memory that make speech with us from the years behind us. Sometimes in the late summer afternoon Helen, walking in her garden, would halt, transfixed as if a blow had fallen upon her. For the briefest moment she would see her young husband swinging along the path that led through the old shrubbery to this garden, his eyes fixed brightly upon her, the dear object of his love and hopes. And her heart leaped as in those first happy years. Then she would close her eyes, not always in time to hold back the tears. But if one is proud enough, there are tears which leave no trace upon a woman’s face.
More frequently however, it was that last sight she had of him in the dining room of the Inn, held so firmly in the grasp of another woman that he dared not to rise when she, his wife, passed[258] so near her skirts almost brushed him. She would never forget the livid shame and horror when he looked back and caught her eye nor the woman&rsquo............