Chapter 10

But the first glimpse of the slender girl who came quietly into the room and announced herself as Miss Sonnot steadied me. She was a "slip of a thing," as my mother would have dubbed her, with great, wistful brown eyes that illumined her delicate face. But there was an air of efficiency about her every movement that made you confident she would succeed in anything she undertook.

I have always been such a difficult, reserved sort of woman that I have very few friends. I did not understand the impulse that made me resolve to win this girl's friendship if I could.

One thing I knew. The grave, sweet face, the steady eyes told me. One could lay a loved one's life in those slim, capable hands and rest assured that as far as human aid could go it would be safe.

"Keep her quiet. Above all things, do not let her get excited over anything."

Miss Sonnot was giving me my parting instructions as to the care of my sick mother-in-law before taking the sleep which she so sorely needed, on the day that Dr. Pettit declared my mother-in-law had passed the danger point. Thanks to her ministrations I had been able to sleep dreamlessly for hours. Now refreshed and ready for anything, I had prepared my room for her, and had accompanied her to it that I might see her really resting.

She was so tired that her eyes closed even as she gave me the admonition. I drew the covers closer about her, raised the window a trifle, drew down the shades, and left her.

As I closed the door softly behind me, I heard the querulous voice of the invalid:

"Margaret! Margaret! Where are you?"

As I bent over my husband's mother she smiled up at me. Her illness had done more to bridge the chasm, between us than years of companionship could have done. One cannot cherish bitterness toward an old woman helplessly ill and dependent upon one. And I think in her own peculiar way she realized that I was giving her all I had of strength and good will.

"What can I do for you?" I asked, returning her smile.

"I want something to eat, and after that I want to have a talk with Richard. Where is he?"

"He is asleep," I answered mechanically. In a moment my thoughts had flown back to the day my mother-in-law and I had met Harry Underwood in trip Aquarium, and she had discovered he was Lillian Gale's husband.

What was it Dicky's mother had said that day in the Aquarium rest room?

"I have a duty to you to perform," she had declared, "a very painful duty, which involves the reviving of an old controversy with my son. I beg that you will not try to find out anything concerning its nature. It is better far that you do not."

She had wished to go home at once and talk to Dicky. I had persuaded her to go first to Fraunces's Tavern for luncheon. There she had been taken ill, and in the days that had intervened between that time and the moment I leaned over her bedside she and we around her had been fighting for her life. There had been no opportunity for a confidential talk between mother and son. And I was determined that there should be none yet.

In the first place, she was in no condition to discuss any subject, let alone one fraught with so many possibilities of excitement. In the second place, I was determined that no one should discuss that old secret with my husband before I had a chance to talk to him concerning it.

"Well, you needn't go to sleep just because Richard is."

My mother-in-law's impatient voice brought me back to myself. I apologized eagerly.

I have never seen any one enjoy food as my mother-in-law did the simple meal I had prepared for her. She ate every crumb, drank the wine, and drained the pot of tea before she spoke.

"How good that tasted!" she said gratefully as she finished, sinking back against my shoulder. I had not only propped her up with pillows, but had sat behind her as she ate, that she might have the support of my body.

"I think I can take a long nap now," she went on. "When I awake send Richard to me."

I laid her down gently, arranged her pillows, and drew up the covers over her shoulders. She caught my hand and pressed it.

"My own daughter could not have been kinder to me than you have been," she said.

"I am glad to have pleased you, Mrs. Graham," I returned. I suppose my reply sounded stiff, but I could not forget the day she came to us, and her contemptuous rejection of Dicky's proposal that I should call her "Mother."

She frowned slightly. "Forget what I said that day I came," she said quickly. "Call me Mother, that is, if you can."

For a moment I hesitated. The memory of her prejudice against me would not down. Then I had an illuminative look into the narrowness of my own soul. The sight did not please me. With a sudden resolve I bent down and kissed the cheek of my husband's mother.

"Of course, Mother," I said quietly.

It must have been two hours at least that I sat watching the sick woman. She left her hand in mine a long time, then, with a drowsy smile, she drew it away, turned over with her face to the wall, and fell into a restful sleep. I listened to her soft, regular breathing until the sunlight faded and the room darkened.

I must have dozed in my chair, for I did not hear Katie come in or go to the kitchen. The first thing that aroused me was a voice that I knew, the high-pitched tones of Lillian Gale Underwood.

"I tell you, Dicky-bird, it won't do. She's got to know the truth."

As Mrs. Underwood's shrill voice struck my ears, I sprang to my feet in dismay.

My first thought was of the sick woman over whom I was watching. Both Dr. Pettit and the nurse, Miss Sonnot, had warned us that excitement might be fatal to their patient.

And the one thing in the world that might be counted on to excite my mother-in-law was the presence of the woman whose voice I heard in conversation with my husband.

I rose noiselessly from my chair and went into the living room, closing the door after me. Then with my finger lifted warningly for silence I forced a smile of greeting to my lips as Lillian Underwood saw me and came swiftly toward me.

"Dicky's mother is asleep," I said in a low tone. "I am afraid I must ask you to come into the kitchen, for she awakens so easily."

Lillian nodded comprehendingly, but Dicky flushed guiltily as they followed me into the kitchen. Katie had left a few minutes before to run an errand for me.

Dicky's voice interrupted the words Lillian was about to speak to me. I hardly recognized it, hoarse, choked with feeling as it was.

"Lillian," he said, "you shall not do this. There is no need for you to bring all those old, horrible memories back. You have buried them and have had a little peace. If Madge is the woman I take her for she will be generous enough not to ask it, especially when I give her my word of honor that there is nothing in my past or yours which could concern her."

"You have the usual masculine idea of what might concern a woman," Lillian retorted tartly.

But I answered the appeal I had heard in my husband's voice even more than in his words.

"You do not need to tell me anything, Mrs. Underwood," I said gently, and at the words Dicky moved toward me quickly and put his arm around me.

I flinched at his touch. I could not help it. It was one thing to summon courage to refuse the confidence for which every tortured nerve was calling--it was another to bear the affectionate touch of the man whose whole being I had just heard cry out in attempt to protect this other woman.

Dicky did not notice any shrinking, but Mrs. Underwood saw it. I think sometimes nothing ever escapes her eyes. She came closer to me, gravely, steadily.

"You are very brave, Mrs. Graham, very kind, but it won't do. Dicky, keep quiet." She turned to him authoritatively as he started to speak. "You know how much use there is of trying to stop me when I make up my mind to anything."

She put one hand upon my shoulder.

"Dear child," she said earnestly, "will you trust me till tomorrow? I had thought that I must tell you right away, but your splendid generous attitude makes it possible for me to ask you this. I can see there is no place here where we can talk undisturbed. Besides, I must take no chance of your mother-in-law's finding out that I am here. Will you come to my apartment tomorrow morning any time after 10? Harry will be gone by then, and we can have the place to ourselves."

"I will be there at 10," I said gravely. I felt that her honesty and directness called for an explicit answer, and I gave it to her.

"Thank you." She smiled a little sadly, and then added: "Don't imagine all sorts of impossible things. It isn't a very pretty story, but I am beginning to hope that after you have heard it we may become very real friends."

Preposterous as her words seemed in the light of the things I had heard from the lips of my husband's mother, they gave me a sudden feeling of comfort.

XIX

LILLIAN UNDERWOOD'S STORY

"Well, I suppose we might as well get it over with."

Lillian Underwood and I sat in the big tapestried chairs on either side of the glowing fire in her library. She had instructed Betty, her maid, to bring her neither caller nor telephone message, until our conference should be ended. The two doors leading from the room were locked and the heavy velvet curtains drawn over them, making us absolutely secure from intrusion.

"I suppose so." The answer was banal enough, but it was physically impossible for me to say anything more. My throat was parched, my tongue thick, and I clenched my hands tightly in my lap to prevent their trembling.

Mrs. Underwood gave me a searching glance, then reached over and laid her warm, firm hand over mine.

"See here, my child," she said gently, "this will never do. Before I tell you this story there is something you must be sure of. Look at me. No matter what else you may think of me do you believe me to be capable of telling you a falsehood when a make a statement to you upon my honor?"

Her eyes met mine fairly and squarely. Mrs. Underwood has wonderful eyes, blue-gray, expressive. They shone out from the atrocious mask of make-up which she always uses, and I unreservedly accepted the message they carried to me.

"I am sure you would not deceive me," I returned quickly, and meant it.

"Thank you. Then before I begin my story I am going to assure you of one thing, upon--my--honor."

She spoke slowly, impressively, her eyes never wavering from mine.

"You have heard rumors about Dicky and me; you will hear things from me today which will show you that the rumors were justified in part, and yet--I want you to believe me when I tell you that there is nothing in any past association of your husband and myself which would make either of us ashamed to look you straight in the eyes."

I believed her! I would challenge anyone in the world to look into those clear, honest eyes and doubt their owner's truth.

There was a long minute when I could not speak. I had not known the full measure of what I feared until her words lifted the burden from my soul.

Then I had my moment, recognized it, rose to it. I leaned forward and returned the earnest gaze of the woman opposite to me.

"Dear Mrs. Underwood," I said. "Why tell me any more? I am perfectly satisfied with what you have just told me. Be sure that no rumors will trouble me again."

Her clasp of my hand tightened until my rings hurt my flesh. Into her face came a look of triumph.

"I knew it," she said jubilantly. "I could have banked on you. You're a big woman, my dear, and I believe we are going to be real friends."

She loosened her clasp of my hands, leaned back in her chair and looked for a long, meditative moment at the fire.

"You cannot imagine how much easier your attitude makes the telling of my story," she began finally.

"But I just assured you that there was no need for the telling," I interrupted.

"I know. But it is your right to know, and it will be far better if you are put in possession of the facts. It is an ugly story. I think I had better tell you the worst of it first."

I marvelled at the look that swept across her face. Bitter pain and humiliation were written there so plainly that I looked away. Then my eyes fell upon her strong, white, shapely hands which were resting upon the arms of the chair. They were strained, bloodless, where the fingers gripped the tapestried surface.

When she spoke, her voice was low, hurried, abashed. "Seven years ago," she said, "my first husband sued me for divorce, and named Dicky as a co-respondent."

I sprang from my seat.

"Oh, no, no, no," I cried, hardly knowing what I said. "Surely not. I remember reading the old story when you were married to Mr. Underwood, three years ago--I've always admired your work so much that I've read every line about you--and surely Dicky's name wasn't mentioned. I would have remembered it when I met him, I know."

"There, there." She was on her feet beside me and with a gentle yet compelling hand put me back in my chair. Her voice had the same tone a mother would use to a grieving child. "Dicky's name wasn't mentioned when the story was printed the last time, because at the time the divorce was granted, Mr. Morten withdrew the accusation that he had made against him."

"Why?" The question left my lips almost without volition. I sensed something tragic, full of meaning for me behind the statement she had made.

She did not answer me for a minute or two.

"I can only answer that question on your word of honor not to tell Dicky what I am going to tell you," she said. "It is something he suspects, but which I would never confirm."

She paused expectantly. "Upon honor, of course," I answered simply.

She rose and moved swiftly toward one of the built-in bookcases. I saw that she put her hand upon one of the sections and pulled upon it. To my astonishment it moved toward her, and I saw that behind it was a cleverly constructed wall safe. She turned the combination, opened the door and took from the safe an inlaid box which, as she came toward me, I saw was made of rare old woods.

She sat down again in the big chair and looked at the box musingly, tenderly. I leaned forward expectantly. Again I had the sense of tragedy near me.

Drawing the key from her dress she opened the box and took from it a miniature, gazed at it a minute, and then handed it to me.

"Oh, Mrs. Underwood," I exclaimed. "How exquisite."

The miniature was of the most beautiful child I had ever seen, a tiny girl of perhaps two years. She stood poised as if running to meet one, her baby arms outstretched. It was a picture to delight or break a mother's heart.

I looked up from the miniature to the face of the woman who had handed it to me.

"Yes," she answered my unspoken query, "my little daughter; my only child. She is the price I paid for Dicky's immunity from the scandal which the unjust man that I called husband brought upon me."

My first impulse was one of horror-stricken sympathy for her. Then came the reaction. A flaming jealousy enveloped me from head to foot.

"How she must have loved Dicky to do this for him!" The thought beat upon my brain like a sledge hammer.

"Don't think that, my dear, for it isn't true." I had not spoken, but with her almost uncanny ability to divine the thoughts of other people she had fathomed mine. "I was always fond of Dicky, but I never was in love with him."

"Then why did you make such a sacrifice?" I stammered.

"Why! There was absolutely no other way," she said, opening her wonderful eyes wide in amazement that I had not at once grasped her point of view. "Dicky was absolutely innocent of any wrongdoing, but through a combination of circumstances of which I shall tell you, my husband had gathered a show of evidence which would have won him the divorce if it had been presented."

"He bargained with me: I to give up all claim to the baby. He to withdraw Dicky's name, and all other charges except that of desertion. Thus Dicky was saved a scandal which would have followed and hampered him all his life, and I was spared the fastening of a shameful verdict upon me. Of course, everybody who read about the case and did not know me, believed me guilty anyway, but my friends stood by me gallantly, and that part of it is all right. But every time I look at that baby face I am tempted to wish that I had let honor, the righting of Dicky, everything go by the boards, and had taken my chance of having her, even if it were only part of the time."

Her voice was rough, uneven as she finished speaking, but that was the only evidence of the emotion which I knew must have her stretched upon the rack.

Right there I capitulated to Lillian Underwood. Always, through my dislike and distrust of her, there had struggled an admiration which would not down, even when I thought I had most cause to fear her.

But this revelation of the real bigness of the woman caught my allegiance and fixed it. She had sacrificed the thing which was most precious to her to keep her ideal of honor unsullied. I felt that I could never have made a similar sacrifice, but I mentally saluted her for her power to do it.

I realized, too, the reason for Dicky's deference to Mrs. Underwood, which had often puzzled and sometimes angered me. Once when she had given him a raking over for the temper he displayed toward me in her presence, he had said:

"You know I couldn't get angry at you, no matter what you said; I owe you too much."

I had wondered at the time what it was that my husband "owed" Mrs. Underwood. The riddle was solved for me at last.

I am not an impetuous woman, and I do not know how I ever mustered up courage to do it. But the sight of Lillian Underwood's face as she looked at her baby's picture was too much for me. Without any conscious volition on my part I found my arms around her, and her face pressed against my shoulder.

I expected a storm of grief, for I knew the woman had been holding herself in with an iron hand. But only a few convulsive movements of her shoulders betrayed her emotion and when she raised her face to mine her eyes were less tear-bedewed than my own.

Something stirred me to quick questioning.

"Oh, is there a chance of your having her again?"

"I am always hoping for it," she answered quietly. "When her father married again, several years ago--that was before my marriage to Harry--I hoped against hope that he would give her to me. For he knew--the hound--knew better than anybody else that all his vile charges were false."

Her eyes blazed, her voice was strident, her hands clasped and unclasped. Then, as if a string had been loosened, she sank back in her chair again.

"But he would not give her to me," she went on dully, "and he could not even if he would. For his mother, who has the child, is old and devoted to her. It would kill her to take Marion away from her."

"You saw my pink room?" she demanded abruptly.

I nodded. The memory of that rose-colored nest and the look in my hostess's eyes when on my other visit she had said she had prepared the room for a young girl was yet vivid.

"I spent weeks preparing it for her when I heard of her father's remarriage," she said, "When I finally realized that I could not have her, I lay ill for weeks in it. On my recovery I vowed that no one else but she or I should ever sleep there. I have another bedroom where I sleep most of the time. But sometimes I go in there and spend the night, and pretend that I have her little body snuggled up close to me just as it used to be."

The crackling of the logs in the grate was the only sound to be heard for many minutes.

With her elbow resting on the arm of her chair, her chin cupped in her hand, her whole body leaning toward the warmth of the fire, she sat gazing into the leaping flames as if she were trying to read in them the riddle of the future.

I patiently waited on her mood. That she would open her heart to me further I knew, but I did not wish to disturb her with either word or movement.

"I might as well begin at the beginning." There was a note in her voice that all at once made me see the long years of suffering which had been hers. "Only the beginning is so commonplace that it lacks interest. It is the record of a very mediocre stenographer with aspirations."

That she was speaking of herself her tone told me, but I was genuinely surprised. Mrs. Underwood was the last woman in the world one would picture as holding down a stenographer's position.

"I can't remember when I didn't have in the back of my brain the idea of learning to draw," she went on, "but it took years and years of uphill work and saving to get a chance. I was an orphan, with nobody to care whether I lived or died, and nothing but my own efforts to depend on. But I stuck to it, working in the daytime and studying evenings and holidays till at last I began to get a foothold, and then when I had enough to put by to risk it I went to Paris."

Her voice was as matter of fact as if she were describing a visit to the family butcher shop. But I visualized the busy, plucky years with their reward of Paris as if I had been a spectator of them.

"Of course, by the time I got there I was almost old enough to be the mother, or, at least, the elder sister of most of the boys and girls I met, and I had learned life and experience in a good, hard school. Some of the youngsters got the habit of coming to me with all their troubles, fancied or real. I made some stanch friends in those days, but never a stancher, truer one than Dicky Graham.

"Tell me, dear girl, when you were teaching those history classes, did any of your boy pupils fall in love with you?"

I answered her with an embarrassed little laugh. Her question called up memories of shy glances, gifts of flowers and fruit, boyish confidences--all the things which fall to the lot of any teacher of boys.

"Well, then, you will understand me when I tell you that in the studio days in Paris Dicky imagined himself quite in love with me."

There was something in her tone and manner which took all the sting out of her words for me. All the jealousy and real concern which I had spent on this old attachment of my husband for Mrs. Underwood vanished as I listened to her. She might have been Dicky's mother, speaking of his early and injudicious fondness for green apples.

"I shall always be proud of the way I managed Dicky that time." Her voice still held the amused maternal note. "It's so easy for an older woman to spoil a boy's life in a case like that if she's despicable enough to do it. But, you see, I was genuinely fond of Dicky, and yet not the least bit in love with him, and I was able, without his guessing it, to keep the management of the affair in my own hands. So when he woke up, as boys always do, to the absurdity of the idea, there was nothing in his recollections of me to spoil our friendship.

"Then there came the early days of my struggle to get a foothold in New York in my line. There were thousands of others like me. Six or seven of the strugglers had been my friends in Paris. We formed a sort of circle, "for offence and defence," Dicky called it; settled down near each other, and for months we worked and played and starved together. When one of us sold anything we all feasted while it lasted. I tell you, my dear, those were strenuous times but they had a zest of their own."

I saw more of the picture she was revealing than she thought I did. I could guess that the one who most often sold anything was the woman who was so calmly telling me the story of those early hardships. I knew that the dominant member of that little group of stragglers, the one who heartened them all, the one who would unhesitatingly go hungry herself if she thought a comrade needed it, was Lillian Underwood.

"And then I spoiled my life. I married."