It may have been the preparation we were making for an autumn vacation in the Catskills, or it may have been that Dicky was becoming more the master of himself, that he did not voice to me the very real uneasiness with which I knew he viewed Robert Gordon's attitude toward me. But whatever may have been the cause, the fact is that during the preparations for our trip and during the vacation itself in the gorgeous autumn-clad mountains Dicky did not refer to Robert Gordon.
It was my mother-in-law who brought his name up the day of our return. She had moved from the hotel where we had left her in the city to the house at Marvin, and when we arrived there her greeting of me was almost icy. As soon as we had taken off our wraps, she explained her departure from the hotel without any questioning from us.
"I never have been so insulted and annoyed in my life," she began abruptly, "and it is all your fault, Richard. If you never had brought the unspeakable person over he would not have had the chance to annoy me. And as for you, Margaret, I cannot begin to tell you what I think of your conduct in leading your husband to believe you had never seen the man before—"
"For heaven's sake, mother!" Dicky exploded, his slender patience evidently worn to its last thread by his mother's incoherence, "what on earth are you talking about?"
"Don't pretend ignorance," she snapped. "You introduced the man to me yourself the night before you went on your trip. You cannot have forgotten his name so soon."
"Robert Gordon!" Dicky exclaimed in amazement.
"Yes, Robert Gordon!" his mother returned grimly. "And let me tell you, Richard Graham, that if you do not settle that man he will make you the laughing stock and the scandal of everybody. The way he talks of Margaret is disgusting."
Dicky's face became suddenly stern and set.
"He didn't exhibit his lack of good taste the first time he came over to my table in the dining room," my mother-in-law went on. "But the second time he sat down with me he began to talk of Margaret in the most fulsome, extravagant manner. From that time his sole topic of conversation was Margaret, the wonderful woman she had grown into, the wonderful attraction she has for him. You would have thought him a man who had discovered his lost sweetheart after years of wandering. Imagine the lack of decency and good taste the man must have to say such things to me, the mother of Margaret's husband!"
"Is that all you have to say, mother?" he asked.
She looked at him in amazement.
"Are you lost to all decency that you do not resent such extravagant praise and admiration of your wife from the lips of another man?" she demanded, and then in the same breath went on rapidly:
"Richard, you are perfectly hopeless! The man may have been in love with Margaret's mother, I do not doubt that he was, but have you never heard of such men falling in love with the daughters of the women they once loved hopelessly?"
"Don't make the poor man out a potential Mormon, mother!" Dicky jibed.
"Jeer at your old mother if you wish, Richard," his mother went on icily, "but let me tell you that Mr. Gordon is madly in love with Margaret and if you do not look out you will have a scandal on your hands."
"You are going a bit too far in your excitement, mother," Dicky said sternly. "You may not realize it, but you are insinuating that there might be a possible chance of Madge's returning the man's admiration."
"I am not insinuating anything," his mother returned, white-lipped with anger, "but I certainly think Margaret owes both you and me an explanation of the untruth she told us at the supper table the night you introduced Mr. Gordon to us."
I sprang to my feet with my cheeks afire.
"Mother Graham, I have listened to you with respect as long as I can," I exclaimed. "Whatever else you have to say to my husband about me you can say in my absence. If he at any time wishes an explanation of any action of mine he has only to ask me for it."
White with rage I dashed out of the room, up the stairs and into my own room, locking the door behind me. In a few minutes Dicky's step came swiftly up the stairs; his knock sounded on my door.
"Madge, let me in," he commanded, but the note of tenderness in his voice was the influence that hurried my fingers in the turning of the key.
As I opened the door he strode in past me, closed and locked the door again, and, turning, caught me in his arms.
"Don't you dare to cry!" he stormed, kissing my reddened eyelids. "Aren't you ever going to get used to mother's childish outbursts? You know she doesn't mean what she says in those tantrums of hers. She simply works herself up to a point where she's absolutely irresponsible, and she has to explode or burst. You wouldn't like to see a perfectly good mother-in-law strewn in fragment all over the room, simply because she had restrained her temper, would you?" he added, with the quick transition from hot anger to whimsical good nature that I always find so bewildering in him.
I struggled for composure. My mother-in-law's words had been too scathing, her insult too direct for me to look upon it as lightly as Dicky could, but the knowledge that he had come directly after me, and that he had no part in the resentment his mother showed, made it easy for me to control myself.
"I ought to remember that your mother is an old woman, and an invalid, and not allow myself to get angry at some of the unjust things she says," I returned, swallowing hard. "So we'll just forget all about it and pretend it never happened."
"You darling!" Dicky exclaimed, drawing me closer, and for a moment or two I rested in his arms, gathering courage for the confession I meant to make to him.
"Dicky, dear," I murmured at last, "there is something I want to tell you about this miserable business, something I ought to have told you before, but I kept putting it off."
Dicky held me from him and looked at me quizzically, "'Confession is good for the soul,'" he quoted, "so unburden your dreadful secret."
He drew me to an easy chair and sat down, holding me in his arms as ifI were a little child. "Now for it," he said, smiling tenderly at me.
"It isn't so very terrible," I smiled at him reassured by his tenderness. "It is only that without telling you a deliberate untruth, that I gave both you and your mother the impression I had never seen Mr. Gordon before that night at the Sydenham."
"Is that all?" mocked Dicky. "Why, I knew that the moment you spoke as you did that night! You're as transparent as a child, my dear, and besides, your elderly friend let the cat out of the bag when he said he feared he had annoyed you by trying to find out your identity. I knew you must have seen him somewhere."
"You don't know all," I persisted, and then without reservation I told him frankly the whole story of Mr. Gordon's spying upon me. I omitted nothing.
When I had finished, Dicky's face had lost its quizzical look. He was frowning, not angrily, but as if puzzled.
"Don't think I blame you one bit," he said slowly; "but it looks to me as if mother's dope might be right, as if the old guy is smitten with you after all."
"I cannot hope to make your understand, Dicky," I began, "how confused my emotions are concerning Mr. Gordon. I think perhaps I can tell you best by referring to something about which we have never talked but once—the story I told you before we were married of the tragedy in my mother's life."
"I believe you told me that neither your mother nor you had ever heard anything of your father since he left." Dicky's voice was casual, but there was a note in it that puzzled me.
"That is true," I answered, and then stopped, for the conviction had suddenly come to me that while I had never seen nor heard from my father since he left us—indeed, I had no recollection of him—yet I was not sure whether or not my mother had ever received any communication from him. I had heard her say that she had no idea whether he was living or dead, and I had received my impression from that. But even as I answered Dicky's question there came to my mind the memory of an injunction my mother had once laid upon me, an injunction which concerned a locked and sealed box among her belongings.
I felt that I could not speak of it even to Dicky, so put all thought of it aside until I should be alone.
"I do not think I can make you understand," I began, "how torn between two emotions I have always been when I think of my father. Of course, the predominant feeling toward him has always been hatred for the awful suffering he caused my mother. I never heard anything to foster this feeling, however, from my mother. She rarely spoke of him, but when she did it was always to tell me of the adoration he had felt for me as a baby, of the care and money he had lavished on me. But while with one part of me I longed to hear her tell me of those early days, yet the hatred I felt for him always surged so upon me as to make me refuse to listen to any mention of him.
"But since she went away from me the desire to know something of my father has become almost an obsession with me. My hatred of his treachery to my mother is still as strong as ever, but in my mother's last illness she told me that she forgave him, and asked me if ever he came into my life to forget the past and to remember only that he was my father. I am afraid I never could do that, but yet I long so earnestly to know something of him.
"So now you see, Dicky," I concluded, "why Mr. Gordon has such a fascination for me. He knew my father and my mother—from his own words I gather that he was the nearest person to them. He is the only link connecting me with my babyhood, for Jack Bickett, my nearest relative, was but a young boy himself when my father left, and remembered little about it. I don't want to displease you, Dicky, but I would so like to see Mr. Gordon occasionally."
Dicky held me close and kissed me.
"Why, certainly, sweetheart," he exclaimed. "Whenever you wish I'll arrange a little dinner down-town for Mr. Gordon. What do you think about inviting the Underwoods, too? They could entertain me while you're talking over your family history."
"That would be very nice," I agreed, but I had an inward dread of talking to Robert Gordon with the malicious eyes of Harry Underwood upon me. Indeed, I felt intuitively that if ever Mr. Gordon were to reveal the history of his friendship for my mother to me, it would be when no other ears, not even Dicky's, were listening.
Dicky kissed me again and then he rose and went out of the room quickly, closing the door behind him. I waited until I heard his footsteps descending the stairs before turning the key in the lock. Then I went directly to a little old trunk which I had kept in my own room ever since my mother's death, and, kneeling before it unlocked it with reverent fingers.
It was my mother's own girlhood trunk, one in which she had kept her treasures and mementoes all her life. The chief delight of my childhood had been sitting by her side when she took out the different things from it and showed them to me.
Dear, thoughtful, little mother of mine! Almost the last thing she did before her strength failed her utterly was to repack the little trunk, wrapping and labeling each thing it contained, and putting into it only the things she knew I would not use, but wished to keep as memories of her and of my own childhood.
"I do not wish you to have to look over these things while your grief is still fresh for me," she had said, with the divine thoughtfulness that mothers keep until the last breath they draw. "There is nothing in it that you will have to look at for years if you do not wish to do so—that is, except one package that I am going to tell you about now."
She stopped to catch the breath which was so pitifully short in those torturing days before her death, and over her face swept the look of agony which always accompanied any mention by her of my father.
"In the top tray of this trunk," she said, "you will find the inlaid lock box that was your grandmother's and that you have always admired so much. I do not wish to lay any request or command upon you concerning it—you must be the only judge of your own affairs after I leave you—but I would advise you not to open that box unless you are in desperate straits, or until the time has come when you feel that you no longer harbor the resentment you now feel toward your father."
The last words had come faintly through stiffened white lips, for her labor at packing and the emotional strain of talking to me concerning the future had brought on one of the dreaded heart attacks which were so terribly frequent in the last weeks of her life. We had never spoken of the matter afterward, for she did not leave her bed again until the end.
At one time she had motioned me to bring from her desk the old-fashioned key ring on which she kept her keys. She had held up two, a tiny key and a larger one, and whispered hoarsely: "These keys are the keys to the lock box and the little trunk—you know where the others belong." Then she had closed her eyes, as if the effort of speaking had exhausted her, as indeed it had.
In the wild grief which followed my mother's death there was no thought of my unknown father except the bitterness I had always felt toward him. I knew that the terrible sorrow he had caused my mother had helped to shorten her life, and my heart was hot with anger against him.
I had never opened the trunk since her death. The exciting, almost tragic experiences of my life with Dicky had swept all the old days into the background. I could not analyze the change that had come over me. As I lifted the lid of the trunk and took from the top tray the inlaid box which my mother's hands had last touched, my grief for her was mingled with a strange new longing to find out anything I could concerning the father I had never known.
"For my daughter Margaret's eyes alone."
The superscription on the envelope which I held in my hand stared up at me with all the sentience of a living thing. The letters were in the crabbed, trembling, old-fashioned handwriting of my mother—the last words that she had ever written. It was as if she had come back from the dead to talk to me.
With the memory of my mother's advice, I hesitated for a long time before breaking the seal. With the letters pressed close against my tear-wet cheeks I sat for a long time, busy with memories of my mother and debating whether or not I had the right to open the letter.
I certainly was not in desperate straits, and I could not conscientiously say that I no longer harbored any resentment toward^the father of whom I had no recollection. I felt that never in my life could I fully pardon the man who had made my mother suffer so terribly. But the longing to know something of my father, which I had felt since the coming into my life of Robert Gordon, had become almost an obsession, with me.
"Little mother," I whispered, "forgive me if I am doing wrong, but I must know what is in this letter to me."
With trembling fingers I broke the seal and drew out the closely written pages which the envelope contained.
"Mother's Only Comfort," the letter began, and at the sight of the dear familiar words, which I had so often heard from my mother's lips—it was the name she had given me when a tiny girl, and which she used until the day of her death—tears again blinded my eyes.
"When you read this I shall have left you forever. It is my prayer that when the time comes for you to read it, it will be because you have forgiven your father, not because you are in desperate need. How I wish I could have seen you safe in the shelter of a good man's love before I had to go away from you forever!"
"Safe in the shelter of a good man's love," I repeated the words thoughtfully. Had my mother been given her wish when she could no longer witness its fulfilment? I was angry and humiliated at myself that I could not give a swift, unqualified assent to my own question. A "good man" Dicky certainly was, and I was in the "shelter of his love" at present. But "safe" with Dicky I was afraid I could never be. Mingled always with my love for him, my trust in him, was a tiny undercurrent of uncertainty as to the stability of my husband's affection for me.
As I turned to my mother's letter again, there was a tiny pang at my heart at the thought that by my marriage with Dicky I had thwarted the dearest wish of my little mother's heart.
For between the lines I could read the unspoken thought that had been in her mind since I was a very young girl. "Safe in the shelter of a good man's love" meant to my mother only one thing. If she had written the words "safe in the shelter of Jack Bickett's love," I could not have grasped her meaning more clearly.
But my mother's wish must forever remain ungranted. Jack was "somewhere in France," and for me, safe or not safe, stable or unstable, Dicky was "my man," the only man I had ever loved, the only man I could ever love. "For better or worse," the dear old minister had said who performed our wedding ceremony, and my heart reaffirmed the words as I bent my eyes again to the closely written pages I held in my hands.
"Because you have always been so bitter, Margaret, against your father, and because it has always caused me great anguish to speak of him, I have allowed you to rest under the impression that I had never heard anything concerning him since his disappearance, and that I do not know whether he be living or dead. The last statement is true, for years ago I definitely refused to receive any communication from him, but I must tell you that I believe him to be living, and that I know that living or dead he has provided money for your use if you should ever wish to claim it.
"The address he last sent me, and that of the firm of lawyers who has the management of the property intended for you, are sealed in envelopes in this box. In it also are all the things necessary to establish your identity, my marriage certificate, your birth record, pictures of your father and of me, and of the three of us taken when you were two years old, before the shadow of the awful tragedy that came later had begun to fall."
I sprang from my chair, dropping the pages of the letter unheeded in the shock of the revelation they brought me. My father had planned for me; had provided for me; had tried to communicate with my mother! He must have been repentant; he was not all the heartless brute I had thought him. As though a cloud had been lifted, from my life and a weary weight had rolled from my heart, I turned again to mother's letter.
"Remember, it is my last wish, Margaret, that if your father be living, sometime you may be reconciled, to him. I have been weak and bitter enough during all these years to be meanly comforted by your stanch championship of me, and your detestation of the wrong your father did me. But death brings clearer vision, my child, and I cannot wish that your father's last years,—if, indeed, he be living—should be desolated by not knowing you. I want you to know that there were many things which, while they did not extenuate your father, yet might in some measure explain his action.
"I was much to blame—I can see it now, for not being able to hold his love. You are so much like me, my darling, that I tremble for your happiness if you should happen to marry the wrong kind of man. I have wondered often if the story of my tragedy, terrible as it is for me to think of it, might not help you. And yet—it might do more harm than good. At any rate, I have written it all out, and put it with the other things in the box. I feel a curious sort of fatalism concerning this letter. It is borne in upon me that if you ever need to read it you will read it. It will help you to understand your father better. It may help you to understand your husband; although, God grant, knowledge like mine may never come to you.
"Of one thing I am certain, you will never have anything to do with the woman who abused my friendship and took your father from me. I cannot carry my forgiveness far enough, even in the presence of death, to bid you go to him if she be still a part of his life.
"I can write no more, my darling. I want you to know that you have been the dearest child a mother could have, and that you have never given me moment's uneasiness in my life. God bless and keep you.
I did not weep when I had finished the letter. There was that in its closing words that dried my tears. I put the pages reverently in the envelope, laid it in the old box, closed and locked the lid, and replaced it in the trunk. For my mother's bitter mention of the woman who had stolen my father from her had brought back the old, wild hatred I had felt for so many years.
"Whatever Robert Gordon can tell me of you, mother darling, I will gladly hear," I whispered, as I locked her old trunk, "but I never want to hear him talk of the woman who so cruelly ruined your life."
"O, pray do not let me disturb you."
Mother Graham drew back from the open door of the living room with a little affected start of surprise at seeing me sitting before the fire. Her words were courteous, but her manner brought the temperature of the room down perceptibly.
She had managed to keep out of my way in clever fashion since the scene of the day before, when she had attacked me concerning the interest taken in me by Robert Gordon.
"You are not disturbing me in the least," I said, pleasantly, "I was simply watching the fire. Jim certainly has outdone himself in the matter of logs this time."
"Yes, he has," she admitted, grudgingly, as she came forward slowly and took the chair I proffered her. "I only hope he doesn't set the house afire with such a blaze. I must tell Richard to speak to him about it."
Always the pin prick, the absolute ignoring of me as the mistress of the house. I could not tell whether she had deliberately done it, or whether long usage to dominance in a household had made her speak as she did unconsciously.
I made no reply, and, for a long time, we sat staring at the fire until Dicky's entrance came as a welcome interruption.
I went sedately to the door to meet him, although I was so glad to see him that a dance step would more appropriately have expressed my feelings, and returned his warm kiss and greeting. He kept my hand in his as he came down to the fire, not even releasing it when he kissed his mother, who still maintained the rigid dignity with which she surrounded herself when displeased.
"Well," Dicky said, manfully ignoring any hint of unpleasantness, "this is what I call comfortable, coming home to a fire and a welcome like this on a dreary day."
There was a note of forced jollity in his voice that made me look up quickly into his eyes. As they looked into mine, I caught a glimpse of something half-hidden, half-revealed, something fiercely sombre, which frightened me.
"What had happened," I asked myself, with a little clutch at my heart, "to make Dicky look at me in this way?" I had a longing to take him away where we could be alone.
I was glad when my mother-in-law rose stiffly from her chair.
"If you are too much occupied, Margaret," she remarked, icily, "I will go and tell Katie that Richard is here, and that she may serve dinner immediately."
She swept out of the room majestically, and as the door closed after her Dicky caught me in his arms and clasped me so closely that I was frightened.
"Tell me you love me," he said tensely, "better than anybody in the world or out of it." His eyes were glowing with some emotion I could not understand. I felt my vague uneasiness of his first entrance deepen into real foreboding of something unknown and terrible coming to me.
"Why, of course, you know that, sweetheart," I replied. "There is no one for me but just you! But what is the matter? Something must be the matter."
"Where did you get that idea?" he evaded. "I just wanted to be sure, that's all. Wait here for me—I'll dash up and get some of the dust off in a jiffy before dinner."
I spent an anxious interval before, he came down, for, despite his denials, I felt that something out of the ordinary must have happened to cause his queer, passionate outburst.
When he returned to, the living room, it was with no trace of any emotion, and throughout the dinner, while not so given to conversation as usual, he showed no indication that he was at all disturbed.
But I was very glad when the dinner was over, and we returned to the living-room fire. And when, after a few minutes, my mother-in-law yawned sleepily and went to her room, I drew a deep breath of relief.
Dicky drew my chair close to his, and we sat for a long time looking at the leaping flames, only occasionally speaking.
It was at the end of a long silence that Dicky turned toward me, with eyes so troubled that all my fears leaped up anew. I sprang to my feet.
"What is it, Dicky?" I entreated, wildly. "Oh! I know something terrible is the matter!"
He rose from his chair, and clasped my hands tightly.
"I suppose I'd better tell you quickly, dear," he replied. "Your cousin, Jack Bickett, is reported killed."
"Killed!" I repeated faintly. "Jack Bickett killed! Oh, no, no,Dicky; no, no, no!"
I heard my own voice rise to a sort of shriek, felt Dicky release my hands and seize my shoulders, and then everything went black before me, and I knew nothing more.
When I came to myself, I was lying on the couch before the fire, with my face and the front of my gown dripping with water, the strong smell of hartshorn in the room, and Dicky with stern, white face, and Katie in tears, hovering over me.
Dicky was trying to force a spoon between my teeth when I opened my eyes. He promptly dropped it, and the brandy it contained trickled down my neck. I raised my hand to wipe it away, and Dicky uttered a low, "Thank God!"
"Oh, she no dead, she alive again!" Katie cried out, and threw herself on her knees by my side, sobbing.
"Get up, Katie, and stop that howling!" Dicky spoke sternly. "Do you want to get my mother down here? Go upstairs at once and prepare Mrs. Graham's bed for her. I will carry her up directly. Are you all right now, Madge?"
His tone was anxious, but there was a note of constraint in it, which I understood even through the returning anguish at Dicky's terrible news, which was possessing me with returning consciousness.
He believed that my feeling for my brother-cousin, Jack Bickett, was a deeper one than that which I had always professed, a sisterly love for the only near relative I had in the world. This was the reason for his sudden, passionate embrace of me when he entered the house, his demand that I tell him I loved him better than anybody in the world or out of it.
He had been jealous of Jack living, he would still be jealous of him dead! But as the realization again swept over me that Jack, steadfast, manly Jack, the only near relative I had, was no longer in the same world with me, that never again would I see his kind eyes, hear his deep, earnest voice, all thoughts of anything else but my loss fled from me, and I gave a little moan.
I felt Dicky's arm which was around my shoulders shrink away instinctively, then tighten again. He turned my face against his shoulder, and, gathering me in his arms, lifted me from the couch.
"Oh, Dicky, I am sure I can walk," I protested faintly.
He stopped and looked at me fixedly.
"Don't you want my arms around you?" he asked, and there was that in his voice which made me answer hastily:
"Of course I do, but I am afraid I am too heavy."
"Let me be the judge of that," he returned sternly, and forthwith carried me up the stairs, down the hall, and laid me on the bed in my own room.
"Now you must get that wet gown off," he said practically. "Katie emptied nearly a gallon of water over you in her fright."
He smiled constrainedly, and I made a brave effort to return the smile, but I could not accomplish it. Indeed, I was glad to be able to keep back the tears, which I knew instinctively would hurt him.
He undressed me as tenderly as a woman could have done, and, wrapping a warm bathrobe over my nightdress, for I was shivering as if from a chill, tucked me in between the blankets of my bed. Then he drew a chair to the bedside and sat down.
"Are you sure you are all right now?" he asked. "Your color is coming back."
"Perfectly sure," I returned, "and I am so sorry to have made you so much trouble."
"Don't say that," he returned, a trifle sharply. "It is so meaningless. Try to sleep a little, can't you?"
"Not yet, Dicky," I returned. "I am feeling much better, however. Of course, the shock was terrible at first, for, as you know, Jack was the only brother I ever knew. But I am all right now and I want you to tell me how you learned the news."
"Mrs. Stewart telephoned to me," he said. "It seems your cousin gave her as the 'next of kin,' to be notified in case of his death, and she received the notice this morning. There was nothing but the usual official notification."
I caught my breath, stifling the moan that rose to my lips. Somewhere in France lay buried the tenderest heart, the manliest man God ever put into the world. And I had sent him to his death. Despite the comforting assurance Jack had written me, just before his departure for France, that his discovery of my marriage, with the consequent blasting of the hope he had cherished for years, had not been the cause of his sailing, I knew he would never have left me if I had not been married.
I think Dicky must have read my thoughts in my face, for, after a moment, he said gently, yet with a tenseness which told me he was putting a rigid control over his voice:
"You must not blame yourself so harshly. Your cousin would probably have gone to the war even if—circumstances had been different."
There was that in Dicky's voice and eyes which told me that he, too, was suffering. I gathered my strength together, made a supreme effort to put the sorrow and remorse I felt behind me until I could be alone. I knew that I must strive at once to eradicate the false impression my husband had gained as a result of my reception of the news of my brother-cousin's death.
So I forced my lips to words which, while not utterly false, yet did not at all reveal the truth of what I was feeling.
"I know that, Dicky," I returned, and I tried to hold my voice to a conversational tone. "He went with his dearest friend, a Frenchman, you know. I had nothing to do with his going. It isn't that which makes me feel as I do. It is because his death brings back my mother's so plainly. He was always so good to her, and she loved him so much."
Dicky bent his face so quickly to mine that I could not catch his expression. He kissed me tenderly, and, kneeling down by the side of the bed, gathered my head up against his shoulder.
"Cry it all out, if you want to, sweetheart," he said, and I fancied the tension was gone from his voice. "It will do you good."
So, "cry it out" I did, against the blessed shelter of my husband's shoulder. And the tears seemed to wash away all the shock of the news I had, heard, all the bitter, morbid remorse I had felt, all the secret wonder as to whether I might have loved and married my brother-cousin if Dicky had not come into my life. There was left only a sane, sisterly sorrow for a loved brother's death, and a tremendous surge of love for my husband, and gratitude for his tenderness.
"Try to sleep if you can," he said.
I tried to obey his injunction, but I could not. I could see the hands of my little bedroom clock, and after the longest quarter of an hour I had ever known I turned restlessly on my pillow.
"It's no use, Dicky," I said, "I cannot go to sleep. I would rather talk. Tell me, did Mrs. Stewart's voice sound as if she were much upset? She is an old woman, you know, and she was very fond of Jack."
Dicky hesitated, and a curious, intent expression came into his eyes.
"Yes, I think she was pretty well broken up," he answered, "but the thing about which she seemed most anxious was that you should not lose any time in attending to the property your cousin left. I believe he wrote you concerning his disposition of it before he sailed."
I looked up, startled. Dicky's words brought something to my mind that I had completely forgotten. I was the heiress to all that Jack possessed, not great wealth, it is true, but enough to insure me a modest competence for the rest of my life.
"Do you object to my taking this money, Dicky?" I asked, and my voice was tense with emotion.
"Object!" the words came from Dicky's mouth explosively, then he jumped to his feet and paced up and down the room rapidly for a moment or two, his jaw set, his eyes stern. When he stopped by the bed he had evidently recovered his hold on himself, but his words came quickly, jerkily, almost as if he were afraid to trust himself to speak.
"You are in no condition to discuss this tonight," he said, dropping his hand on my hair, "we will speak of it again tomorrow, when you have somewhat recovered. Now you must try to go to sleep. I shall have to call a physician if you don't."
I lay awake for hours, debating the problem which had come to me. I saw clearly that Dicky did not wish me to take this bequest of Jack's. Indeed, I knew that he expected me to refuse it, and that he would be bitterly disappointed if I did not do so.
My heart was hot with rebellion. It seemed like a profanation of Jack's last wish, like hurling a gift into the face of the dead, to do as Dicky wished.
And yet—Dicky was my husband. I had sworn to love and honor him. I knew that he felt sincerely, however wrongly, that my acceptance of Jack's gift would be a direct slap at him. I felt as if my heart were being torn in two, with my desire to do justice both to the living and the dead. It was not until nearly daylight that the solution of my problem came to me. Then I fell asleep, exhausted, and did not awaken until Dicky came into the room, dressed for the journey which he took daily to the city.
"I wouldn't disturb you, sweetheart," he said, "only it's time for me to go in to the studio, and I did not want to leave you without knowing how you are."
"Oh, have I slept so late?" I returned, contritely, springing up in bed.
Dicky put me back with a firm hand.
"Lie still," he commanded, gently. "Katie will bring you up some breakfast shortly, and there is no need of your getting up for hours."
He bent down to kiss me good-by. There was a restraint in both his voice and his caress that told me he was still thinking of the conversation of the night before. I put my arms about his neck and drew his face down to mine.
"Sweetheart," I whispered, "I want to tell you what I've decided aboutJack's property."
"Not now," Dicky interrupted hurriedly.
"Yes, now," I returned decidedly. "I am going to accept it"—I gripped his hands firmly as I felt them drawing away from mine, "but I am not going to use any of it for myself. I will see that it all goes to the orphaned kiddies of the soldiers with whom Jack fought."
Dicky started, looked at me a bit wildly, then stooped, and, gathering me to him convulsively, pressed a long, tender kiss upon my lips.
"My own girl!" he murmured. "I shall not forget that you have done this for me!"
"What's the big idea?"
Dicky looked up from the breakfast table with a mildly astonished air as I came hurriedly into the room dressed for the street, wearing my hat, and carrying my coat over my arm.
"I'm going into town with you," I returned quietly.
"Shopping, I suppose." The words sounded idle enough, but I, who knewDicky so well, recognized the note of watchfulness in the query.
"I shall probably go into some of the shops before I return," I said carelessly, "but the real reason of my going into the city is Mrs. Stewart. I should have gone to see her yesterday."
Dicky frowned involuntarily, but his face cleared again in an instant.It was the second day after he had brought me the terrible news thatJack Bickett, my brother-cousin, was reported killed "somewhere inFrance." I knew that Dicky, in his heart, did not wish me to go to seeMrs. Stewart, but I also knew that he was ashamed to give voice to hisreluctance.
When Dicky spoke at last, it was with just the right shade of cordial acquiescence in his voice.
"Of course you must go to see her," he said, "but are you sure you're feeling fit enough? It will try your nerves, I imagine."
Far better than Dicky could guess I knew what the day's ordeal would be. Mrs. Stewart had been very fond of my brother-cousin. With my mother, she had hoped that he and I would some day care for each other. With her queer partisan ideas of loyalty, when Dicky had been so cruelly unjust to me about Jack, she had wished me to divorce Dicky and marry Jack, even though Jack himself had never whispered such a solution of my life's problem. That she believed me to be responsible for his going to the war I knew. I dreaded inexpressibly the idea of facing her.
But when, after a rather silent trip to the city with Dicky, I stood again in Mrs. Stewart's little upstairs sitting-room, I found only a very sorrowful old woman, not a reproachful one.
"I thought you'd come today," she said, and her voice was tired, dispirited. I felt a sudden compunction seize me that my visits to her had been so few since Jack's going.
"I couldn't have kept away," I said, and then my old friend dropped my hand, which she had been holding, and, sinking into a chair, put her wrinkled old hands up to her face. I saw the slow tears trickling through her fingers, and I knelt by her side and drew her head against my shoulder, comforting her as she once had comforted me.
Mrs. Stewart was never one to give way to emotion, and it was but a few moments before she drew herself erect, wiped her eyes, and said quietly:
"I'll show you the cablegram."
She went to her desk, and drew out the message, clipped, abbreviated in the puzzling fashion of cablegrams:
"Regret inform you, Bickett killed, action French front. Detailslater."
(Signed) "CAILLARD."
"Caillard? Caillard?" Where had I heard that name? Then I suddenly remembered. Paul Caillard was the friend with whom Jack had gone across the ocean to the Great War. I examined the paper carefully.
"I thought Dicky said you received the usual official notification," I remarked.
"That's what I told him," she replied. "That's it."
"But this isn't an official message," I persisted.
"Why isn't it?"
I explained the difference haltingly, and spoke of the wonderful system of identification in the French army, with every man tagged with a metal identification check.
"You will probably receive the official notification in a few days," I commented.
A queer, startled expression flashed into her face. She opened her mouth, as if to speak, and then, looking at me sharply, closed it again. Reaching out her hand for the cablegram, she folded it mechanically, as if thinking of something far away, then going to her desk, put it away, and stood as if thinking deeply for two or three minutes, which seemed an hour to me.
At last I saw her body straighten. She gave a little shake of her shoulders, as if rousing herself, and, turning from the desk, came toward me. I saw that she held in her hand a bundle of letters.
"I understand that you and Jack made some fool agreement that he was not to write to you, and that you were not even to read his letters to me. I'm not expressing my opinion about it, but now that he's gone, I'm going to turn these letters over to you. I'm not blind, you know. Most of them were all really written to you, even if I did receive them. Poor lad! It seems such a pity he should be struck down just as a little happiness seemed coming his way."
She put the letters in my hands, and, turning swiftly, went out of the room. I knew her well enough to realize that she would not return until I had read the messages from Jack. But what in the world did she mean by her last words?
I drew a big, easy chair to the fireside, and began to read the missives. Some were short, some were long, but all were filled with a quiet courage and cheerfulness that I knew had illuminated not only Jack's letters to his old friend, but his life and the lives of others wherever he had been. Every one of them had some reference to me—an inquiry after my health, an injunction to Mrs. Stewart to be sure to keep track of my happiness, a little kodak print or other souvenir marked "For Margaret if I do not come back."
I felt guilty, remorseful, that I had seen so little of Mrs. Stewart since his departure. My own affairs, especially my long, terrible summer's experience with Grace Draper, had shut everything else from my mind.
One letter in particular made my eyes brim with sudden tears. The first of it had been cheery, with entertaining little accounts of the few poor bits of humor which the soldiers in the trenches extracted from their terrible every day round. Along toward the end a sudden impulse seemed to have swept the writer's pen into a more sombre channel.
"I have been thinking much, dear old friend," he wrote, "of the futility of human desires. Life in the trenches is rather conducive to that form of mediation, as you may imagine. You know, none better, how I loved Margaret, how I wanted to make her my wife—I often wonder whether if I had not delayed so long, 'fearing my fate too much,' I might not have won her. But thoughts, like that are worse than useless.
"Instead, there has come to me a clearer understanding of Margaret, a better insight into the golden heart of her. If she had never met the other man, or some one like him, I believe I could have made her happy, kept her contented. But I realize fully that having met him there could never be any other man for her but him. Her love for him is like a flame, transforming her. I could never have called forth such passion from her. I see clearly now how foolish it was in me to have hoped it. There was nothing in the humdrum, commonplace brotherly affection which she thought I gave her to arouse the romance which I know slumbers under that calm, cold exterior of hers.
"Sometimes I query, too, whether my love for Margaret had that flame-like quality which characterizes her love for her husband. Margaret has always been so much a part of my life that my love for her began I could not tell when, and grew and strengthened with the years. There never has been any other woman but Margaret in my life. Even if I should ever come out of this living hell, which I doubt, I do not believe there ever will be another.
"And yet—"
"I have just been summoned for duty. Good-by, dear friend, until the next time. Lovingly yours, Jack Bickett."
I laid the letter aside with a queer little startled feeling at my heart.
Those two little words, "and yet," at the end of Jack's letter gave me much food for thought. Was it possible that before his death Jack had realized that his love for me was not the consuming passion he had thought it, but partook more of the fraternal affection that I had had for him?
I hoped for Jack's sake that this was so.
"And yet—"
I ran through the rest of the letters rapidly. One, the third from the last, arrested my attention sharply.
"Such a pleasant thing happened to me today," Jack wrote, "one of the unexpected gleams of sunlight that are so much brighter because of the general gloom against which they are reflected.
"I was given a week's furlough last Saturday and went up to Paris with my friend, Paul Caillard. He had a friend in a hospital on the way there, headed by Dr. Braithwaite, the celebrated surgeon of Detroit."
I caught my breath. As well as if I had already read the words, I knew what was coming.
"At an unexpected turn in the corridor I almost knocked over a little nurse who was hurrying toward the office. She looked up at me startled, out of the prettiest brown eyes I ever saw, and then stopped, staring at me as if I had been a ghost. I stared back, frankly, for her face was familiar to me, although for the moment I could not tell where I had seen her before.
"Then, half-shyly, she spoke, and her voice matched her eyes.
"'You are Mr. Bickett, are you not, Mrs. Graham's cousin?'
"For a moment I did not realize that 'Mrs. Graham' was Margaret. But that gave me no clue to the identity of the girl. Then all at once it came to me.
"'I know you now,' I said. 'You are Mark Earle's little sister,Katherine.'"
So they had met at last, Jack Bickett, my brother-cousin, and Katherine Sonnot, the little nurse who had taken care of my mother-in-law, and whom I had learned to love as a dear friend.
Was I glad or sorry, I wondered, as I picked up Jack's letter again that I had crushed any feeling I might have had in the matter, and had spoken the word to Dr. Braithwaite that resulted in Katharine's joining the eminent surgeon's staff of nurses? It seemed a pity to have these two meet only to be torn apart so soon by death.
"I cannot begin to tell you how delighted I was when we recognized each other. You can imagine over here that to one American the meeting with another American, especially if both have the same friends, is an event. Luckily, Miss Sonnot was just about to have an afternoon off when we met, and if she had an engagement—which she denied—she was kind enough to break it for me. I need not tell you that I spent the most delightful afternoon I have had since coming over here.
"You can be sure that I at once exerted all the influence I had through my friend, Caillard, and his friend in the hospital to secure as much free time for Miss Sonnot as possible for the time I was to be on furlough. It is like getting home after being away so long to talk to this brave, sensible, beautiful young girl—for she deserves all of the adjectives."
In the two letters which were the last ones numbered by Mrs. Stewart, Jack spoke again and again of the little nurse. Almost the last line of his last letter, written after he returned to the front, spoke of her.
"Little Miss Sonnot and I correspond," he wrote, "and you can have no idea how much good her letters do me. They are like fresh, sweet breezes glowing through the miasma of life in the trenches."
I folded the letters, put them back into their envelopes, and arranged them as Mrs. Stewart had given them to me. When she came back into the room she found me still holding them and staring into the fire.
"Did you read them all?" she asked.
"Yes," I replied.
"Don't you think those last ones sounded as if he were really getting interested in that little nurse?" she demanded.
There was a peculiar intonation in her voice which told me that in her own queer little way she was trying to punish me for my failure to come to see her oftener with inquiries about Jack. She evidently thought that my vanity would be piqued at the thought of Jack becoming interested in any other woman after his life-long devotion to me.
But I flatter myself that my voice was absolutely non-committal as I answered her.
"Yes, I do," I agreed, "and what a tragedy it seems that he should be snatched away from the prospect of happiness."
The words were sincere. I was sure.
And yet—
"Well, children, have you made any plans for Dicky's birthday yet?"
I nearly fell off my chair in astonishment at the friendliness in my mother-in-law's tones. She had been sulky ever since we had come home from our autumn outing in the Catskills, a sulkiness caused by her resentment of what she chose to consider the indiscreet interest taken in me by Robert Gordon, the mysterious millionaire whom I had discovered to be an old friend of my parents. I shrewdly suspected, however, that her continued resentment was more because Dicky chose to take my part in the matter against her, than because of any real feeling toward Mr. Gordon.
Nearly a year's experience, however, had taught me how best to manage my mother-in-law. When she indulged herself in one of her frequent "tantrums" I adopted a carefully courteous, scrupulously formal attitude toward her, and dismissed her from my mind. Thus I saved myself much worry and irritation, and deprived her of the pleasure of a quarrel, something which I knew she would be glad to bring on sometimes for the sheer pleasure of combat.
Her question was so sudden, her cordiality so surprising, that I could frame no answer. Instead I looked helplessly at Dicky. To tell the truth, I rather distrusted this sudden amiability. From past experiences, I knew that when Mother Graham made a sudden change from sulkiness to cheerfulness, she had some scheme under way.
Dicky's answer was prompt.
"That's entirely up to Madge, mother," he said, and smiled at me.
Although his mother tried hard she could not keep the acerbity out of her tones as she turned to me. She always resented any deference of Dicky to my opinion.
"Well, as Richard has no opinion of his own, what are your plans,Margaret?"
"Why, I have made none so far," I stammered, wishing with all my heart that I had made some definite plan for Dicky's birthday. I could see from my mother-in-law's manner that she had some cherished scheme in mind, and my prophetic soul told me that it would be something which I would not particularly like.
"Good," she returned. "Then I shall not be interfering with any plan of yours. I have already written to Elizabeth asking them to come out here for a week's visit. This is an awful shack, of course, but it is the country, and the children will enjoy the woods and brooks and fields, even if it is cold."
Dicky turned to her abruptly, his brow stormy, his eyes flashing.
"Mother, do you mean to say that you have already written to Elizabeth without first consulting Madge as to whether it would be convenient?"
I trod heavily on his toes under the table in the vain hope that I would be able to stop him from saying the words which I knew would inflame his mother's temper. Failing in that, I hastened to throw a sentence or two of my own into the breach in the desire to prevent further hostilities.
"Dicky, stop talking nonsense!" I said sharply. "I am sure Mother Graham," turning to my mother-in-law who sat regarding her son with the most traditional of "stony stares," "we shall be delighted to have your daughter and her family. You must tell me how many there are so we can arrange for beds and plenty of bedding. This is a rather draughty house, you know."
"I am better aware of that than you are," she returned, ungraciously making no response to my proffer of hospitality. Then she turned her attention to Dicky.
"Richard," she said sternly, "I have never been compelled to consult anybody yet, before inviting guests to my home, whether it be a permanent or a temporary one. I am too old to begin. I do not notice that you or Margaret take the trouble to consult me before inviting your friends here."
Dicky opened his mouth to reply, but I effectually stopped him, by a swift kick, which I think found a mark, for he jumped perceptibly and flashed me a wrathful look. I knew that he was thinking of the strenuous objection his mother had made to our entertaining the Underwoods, and to the proposed visit of Robert Gordon to our home. But I knew also that it was no time to rake up old scores. I foresaw trouble enough in this proposed visit of my relatives-in-law whom I had never seen, without having things complicated by a row between Dicky and his mother.
There was trouble, too, in all the housecleaning, the re-arrangement of our rooms and in the laying in of a stock of provisions to meet the requirements of the menu for each meal that Mother Graham insisted upon deciding in advance to please her daughter and the children. And then, the day they were to arrive, she received a special delivery letter calmly announcing that they were not coming. But my annoyance was forgotten in Mother Graham's very apparent and utter disappointment.
When I broke the news to Dicky he suggested that we have a party anyway, and Mother Graham sweetly acquiesced in our plans to invite the Underwoods.
Lillian's voice over the telephone, however, made me forget all my contentment, and filled me with misgiving. It was tense, totally unlike her usual bluff, hearty tones, and with an undercurrent in it that spelled tragedy.
"What is the trouble, Lillian?" I asked, as soon as I had heard her greeting; "I know something is the matter by your voice."
"Yes, there is," she replied, "but nothing of which I can speak over the 'phone. Tell me, are you going to have any strangers there tomorrow?"
How like Lillian the bluff, honest speech was! Almost any other woman would have hypocritically assured me that nothing was the matter. But not Lillian Underwood!
"Nobody but the Durkees," I assured her. "They have already promised to be here. But, Lillian, you surely must get here as soon as you can. I shall be so worried until I see you. If you don't get here early tomorrow morning I shall come in after you."
"You couldn't keep me away, you blessed child, if you are going to have no strangers there," Lillian returned. "I don't mind the Durkees. But I need you, my dear, very much. Now I must tell you something, don't be shocked or surprised when you see me, for I shall be somewhat changed in appearance. Run along to Dicky now. I'll be with you some time tomorrow forenoon. Good-by."
I almost forgot to hang up the telephone receiver in my bewilderment. What trouble could have come to Lillian that she needed me? She was the last person in the world to need any one, I thought—she, whose sterling good sense and unfailing good-nature had helped me so many times. And what change in her appearance did she mean when she cautioned me against being shocked and surprised at seeing her?
My anxiety concerning Lillian stayed with me all through the evening. I awoke in the night from troubled dreams of her to equally troubled thoughts concerning her. And my concern was complicated by a message which Dicky received the next forenoon.
We had barely finished breakfast when the telephone rang and Dicky answered.
"Hello," I heard him say. "Yes, this is Graham. Oh! Mr. Gordon! how do you do?"
My heart skipped a beat.
"Why! that's awfully kind of you," Dicky was saying, "but we couldn't possibly accept, because we have guests coming ourselves. We expect to have a regular old-fashioned country dinner here at home. But, why do you not come out to us? Oh, no, you wouldn't disturb any plans at all—they've been thoroughly upset already. We had planned to have my sister and her family, six in all, spend this holiday with us, but yesterday we found they could not come. So we're inviting what friends we can find who are not otherwise engaged to help us eat up the turkey. You will be more than welcome if you will join us. All right, then. Do you know about trains? Yes, any taxi driver can tell you where we are. Good-by."
I did not dare to look at my mother-in-law as Dicky came toward us after answering Robert Gordon's telephone message.
I think Dicky was a trifle afraid, also, of his mother's verdict, for his attitude was elaborately apologetic as he explained his invitation to me.
"Your friend, Gordon, has just gotten in from one of those mysterious voyages of his to parts unknown," he said. "He was delayed in reaching the city, only got in last night, too late to telephone us. Seems he had some cherished scheme of having us his guests at a blowout. Wouldn't mind going if we hadn't asked these people here, for they say his little dinners are something to dream about, they're so unique. Of course, there was nothing else for me to do but to invite him out. I thought you wouldn't mind."
In Dicky's tone there was a doubtful inflection which I read correctly. He knew of my interest in the elderly man of mystery who had known my parents so well, and I was sure that he thought I would be overjoyed because he had extended the invitation.
I was glad that I could honestly disabuse his mind of this idea, for I had a curious little feeling that Dicky disliked more than he appeared to do the attentions paid to me by Mr. Gordon.
It was less than an hour before the taxi bearing the first of our guests swung into the driveway and Lillian and Harry Underwood stepped out.
Lillian's head and face were so swathed in veils that I did not realize what the change in her appearance of which she had warned me was until I was alone with her in my room, which I intended giving up to her and her husband while they stayed. Then, as she took off her hat and veils, I almost cried out in astonishment—for at my first, unaccustomed glance, instead of the rouged and powdered face, and dyed hair, which to me had been the only unpleasant things about Lillian Underwood, the face of an old woman looked at me, and the hair above it was gray!
There were the remnants of great youthful beauty in Lillian's face. Nay, more, there were wonderful possibilities when the present crisis in her life, whatever it might be, should have passed. But the effect of the change in her was staggering.
"Awful, isn't it?" she said, coming up to me. "No, don't lie to me," as she saw a confused, merciful denial rise to my lips. "There are mirrors everywhere, you know. There's one comfort, I can't possibly ever look any worse than I do now, and when my hair gets over the effect of its long years of dyeing, and my present emotional crisis becomes less tense I probably shall not be such a fright. But oh, my dear, how glad I am to be with you. I need you so much just now."
She put her head on my shoulder as a homesick child might have done, and I felt her draw two or three long, shuddering breaths, the dry sobs which take the place of tears in the rare moments when Lillian Underwood gives way to emotion. I stroked her hair with tender, pitiful fingers, noticing as I did so what ravages her foolish treatment of her hair had made in tresses that must once have been beautiful. Originally of the blonde tint she had tried to preserve, her locks were now an ugly mixture of dull drab and gray. As I stood looking down at the head pillowed against my shoulder I realized what this transformation in Lillian must mean to Harry Underwood.
He it was who had always insisted that she follow the example of the gay Bohemian crowd of which he was a leader, and disguise her fleeting youth, with dye and rouge. It was to please him, or, as she once expressed it to me, "to play the game fairly with Harry" that she outraged her own instincts, her sense of what was decent and becoming, and constantly made up her face into a mask like that of a woman of the half-world. No one could deny that it disguised her real age, but her best friends, including Dicky and myself, had always felt that the real mature beauty of the woman was being hidden.
"Of course, this is terribly rough on Harry," Lillian said at last, raising her head from my shoulder, and speaking in as ordinary and unruffled a tone as if she had not just gone through what in any other woman would have been a hysterical burst of tears.
"It really isn't fair to him, and under any other conditions in the world I would not do it. He's pretty well cut up about it, so much so that he cannot always control his annoyance when he is speaking about it. But I know you will overlook any little outbreaks of his, won't you? He wanted to come down here with me, you know he's always anxious to see you, or I would have run away by myself."
Her tone was anxious, wistful, and my heart ached for her. I could guess that when Harry Underwood could not "control his annoyance" he could be very horrid indeed. But I winced at her casual remark that her husband was always anxious to see me. Harry Underwood held in restraint by his very real admiration for his brilliant wife had been annoying enough to me. I did not care to think what he might be when enraged at her as I knew he must be now.
Nothing of my feeling, however, must I betray to the friend who had come to me for help and comfort. I drew closer the arms that had not yet released her.
"Dear girl," I said softly, "don't worry any more about your husband or anything else. Just consider that you've come home to your sister. I'm going to keep you awhile now I've got you, and we'll straighten everything out. Don't even bother to tell me anything about it until you are fully rested. I can see you've been under some great strain."
"No one can ever realize how great," she returned. "You see—"
What revelation she meant to make to me I did not then learn, for just at that moment a knock sounded on the door, and in answer to my "come in," Katie appeared and announced the arrival of the Durkees and Richard Gordon.