Chapter XIX: Parents in Darkness

UPON its conclusion, he went so far as to pace the floor of the library, and make what his wife called an attack upon herself.

“I’ve done everything anybody could,” she protested in defence. “How could _I_ help it if he _has_ been here a few times when you weren’t in the house? It’s all very simple for _you_! You merely write him a letter and then sit in your office, miles away, and expect me to do the rest! You don’t have to go through the scenes with Lily when it comes to keeping him out. I believe it would be better, instead of making an attack on your wife, if you’d put your mind on what’s to be done about it.”

He shook his head gloomily. “I’m not so sure it was wise to write him that letter. I’m not sure we haven’t been mistaken in our whole policy with Lily.”

“Well, you’ve always overruled me,” Mrs. Dodge returned, defensively. “What mistake do you think you’ve made?”

“I think we’ve probably been wrong from the start,” he said. “Looking back over all our struggles with Lily, it’s begun to seem to me that we never once accomplished anything whatever by opposing her.”

“What! Don’t you realize that she’s still a child, and that children have to be opposed for their own good?”

“Not when they’re nineteen, and it’s opposition about their love affairs or their friendships,” he returned, frowning; and he continued to walk up and down the room, his hands clasped behind him. “I mean open opposition, of course. I’ve begun to believe it never does the slightest good.”

“Why doesn’t it?” she asked, challengingly. “Are mothers and fathers supposed to sit aside with folded hands and calmly watch their children ruin their lives?”

He shook his head again, and sighed. “Sometimes it seems to me that fathers and mothers might just as well do that very thing. Certainly you and I could have saved ourselves a great waste of voice and gesticulation ever since Lily’s babyhood if we’d never opposed her. And so far as I can see, results would have been just the same. Suppose we go on struggling with her about this Gleason nuisance; trying to keep him away from her, arguing with her, and all the rest of it. Will it change her in the slightest? Will it do any good to anybody?”

“You mean to say that we have no effect whatever upon our own child?”

“No,” he answered. “We _might_ have an effect. That’s just what I’m afraid of.”

“You mean we shouldn’t keep on telling Lily the _truth_ about Price Gleason?” his wife cried, incredulously.

“Yes; I’ve almost come to that conclusion. It doesn’t seem to her to be the truth about him when we tell it. She only sees it as an attack on him. We spoil our own cause by making her his defender, and a defender can’t help idealizing what he defends. I’ve come to believe that’s where we parents make a lot of our worst mistakes—we’re always throwing our children into the camp of our enemies. And in particular, when a girl is showing signs of being in love with a worthless young _poseur_, like this Gleason, I believe that all our denouncing and arguing and bossing only puts a glamour about the fellow in the girl’s eyes, and makes her more certain she’s in love with him and wants to marry him.”

“Why, no,” Mrs. Dodge returned, triumphantly demolishing him at a stroke. “Look at Ada Corey. Her father and mother told her the truth about Price Gleason and declined to let her see him. That was enough for Ada. She just quietly gave him up.”

“I know—I know,” Mr. Dodge admitted; but clung to his point. “Ada isn’t like most girls of her age. I understand her, because she’s sensible, and I _don’t_ understand most of ’em—particularly my own daughter; but I’ve grown pretty sure of one thing and that is this: If we want to throw Lily into this bounder’s arms, we’ll keep on telling her the truth about him. Our one chance is to let her alone and see if she won’t find it out for herself.”

“In other words, you intend to revoke our whole policy toward him?”

“In a manner, yes, I believe we should,” Mr. Dodge admitted. “I don’t go so far as to say I mean to tell Lily I consent to his coming to the house again; but I propose that we stop mentioning him at all in her presence, and that if she speaks of him we say nothing in dispraise of him. That is, from now on we’re no longer actively and openly opposing her; and if you’re going with her to that country club affair to-morrow night, and he’s there, I suggest that you do and say nothing to make her think you object to her being with him. Let her dance with him all she wants.”

“It won’t work,” Lily’s mother predicted ominously. “Ada Corey’s father took the right course; he simply put his foot down and that ended the matter. Why can’t you do as Mr. Corey did?”

Mr. Dodge uttered sounds of rueful laughter. “I’ve put my foot down with Lily so many times I’ve worn the sole off my shoe. Remember, too, it’s not so long ago since she cured herself of another infatuation because you thought it would be better for us to withdraw our opposition.”

“That was utterly different, and the whole Osborne affair was a mere childish absurdity. Lily’s older now, and you’re proposing a terribly dangerous thing.”

“Nevertheless, let’s try it. What else _can_ we do but try it?”

“I suppose we’ve got to, since you’ve made up your mind,” his wife said, stubbornly. “But I consent to it under protest. She’s absolutely infatuated, and we’re throwing her straight in his arms. You’ll see!”

This tragic prophecy of hers was in a fair way to be fulfilled almost immediately, she thought, the next evening, as she sat in the little gallery of the Blue Hills Country Club ballroom and looked down upon the dancers. The radiant Lily danced again and again with the picturesque Gleason; and her posture, as they moved gracefully together, was significant—her vivid, delicate face was always uplifted, so that her happy eyes, sweetly confident, seemed continuously engaged with pretty messages to her partner. The poetically handsome Price, on his part, bent his dark head above her ardently; and a stranger would have guessed them at first sight to be a pair newly betrothed. In fact, Mrs. Dodge was disquieted by much such a guess of her own, and her heart sank as she watched them. Moreover, while her heart sank, her indignation rose. This, then, was the result of Mr. Dodge’s new policy! And she wished that he had been beside her to see its result—and to hear her opinion of it!

Her guess, however, like that of the supposititious stranger, was not quite accurate. Lily was not engaged to Mr. Gleason—not “absolutely” so, to report her own feeling in the matter. But she would have admitted being “almost”—almost engaged—that night. The Mexican hero had never definitely proposed marriage, any more than she had felt herself prepared for a definite consent to such a proposal; but his every persuasive word and look and all her own reciprocal coquetry pointed to that end. And as the evening continued and they danced and danced together, murmuring little piquancies to each other meanwhile, the haziness implied in “almost” seemed more and more on the point of being dispersed. Lily preferred that it be not quite; but her partner was “wonderful” to look up to, and to listen to as she looked. He had warmly appreciative dark eyes and a stirring mellow voice; and he danced, if not like a Mordkin, then at least like a Valentino, which may sometimes be preferable. All in all, she might have been swept away if he had pressed the sweeping.

She was the happier because he did not—the indefinite “almost” was so much pleasanter and more exciting—and she had what she defined as a simply magnificent time. Now and then she knew, in an untroubled, hazy way, that a mute doomfulness hovered above her in the gallery; but she felt that her mother was behaving excellently—most surprisingly, too—in not interfering at all. The one thing to bother Lily—and that only a little, and because it puzzled her—came at the very end of the evening. It was something her friend Ada said to her as they were alone together in the corner of a cloakroom, preparing to go home after the last dance.