“I don’t like the woman,” Haskett
was repeating with mild persistency. “She
ain’t straight, Mr. Waythorn—she’ll
teach the child to be underhand. I’ve noticed
a change in Lily—she’s too anxious
to please—and she don’t always tell
the truth. She used to be the straightest child,
Mr. Waythorn—” He broke off, his voice
a little thick. “Not but what I want her
to have a stylish education,” he ended.
Waythorn was touched. “I’m sorry,
Mr. Haskett; but frankly, I don’t quite see
what I can do.”
Haskett hesitated. Then he laid his hat on the
table, and advanced to the hearth-rug, on which Waythorn
was standing. There was nothing aggressive in
his manner; but he had the solemnity of a timid man
resolved on a decisive measure.
“There’s just one thing you can do, Mr.
Waythorn,” he said. “You can remind
Mrs. Waythorn that, by the decree of the courts, I
am entitled to have a voice in Lily’s bringing
up.” He paused, and went on more deprecatingly:
“I’m not the kind to talk about enforcing
my rights, Mr. Waythorn. I don’t know as
I think a man is entitled to rights he hasn’t
known how to hold on to; but this business of the
child is different. I’ve never let go there—and
I never mean to.”
The scene left Waythorn deeply shaken. Shamefacedly,
in indirect ways, he had been finding out about Haskett;
and all that he had learned was favorable. The
little man, in order to be near his daughter, had
sold out his share in a profitable business in Utica,
and accepted a modest clerkship in a New York manufacturing
house. He boarded in a shabby street and had
few acquaintances. His passion for Lily filled
his life. Waythorn felt that this exploration
of Haskett was like groping about with a dark-lantern
in his wife’s past; but he saw now that there
were recesses his lantern had not explored. He
had never inquired into the exact circumstances of
his wife’s first matrimonial rupture. On
the surface all had been fair. It was she who
had obtained the divorce, and the court had given her
the child. But Waythorn knew how many ambiguities
such a verdict might cover. The mere fact that
Haskett retained a right over his daughter implied
an unsuspected compromise. Waythorn was an idealist.
He always refused to recognize unpleasant contingencies
till he found himself confronted with them, and then
he saw them followed by a special train of consequences.
His next days were thus haunted, and he determined
to try to lay the ghosts by conjuring them up in his
wife’s presence.
When he repeated Haskett’s request a flame of
anger passed over her face; but she subdued it instantly
and spoke with a slight quiver of outraged motherhood.
“It is very ungentlemanly of him,” she
said.
The word grated on Waythorn. “That is neither
here nor there. It’s a bare question of
rights.”
She murmured: “It’s not as if he
could ever be a help to Lily—”
Waythorn flushed. This was even less to his taste.
“The question is,” he repeated, “what
authority has he over her?”
