Chapter 11

"Don't misunderstand me," she hastened to say. "I do not mean that I believe all marriages are failures. I believe tremendously in married happiness, but I think I must be one of the women who are temperamentally unfitted to make any man happy."

Her tone was bitter, self-accusing.

"You cannot make me believe that," I said stoutly. "I would rather believe that you were very unwise in your choice of husbands."

She laughed ironically.

"Well, we will let it go at that! At any rate there is only one word that describes my first marriage. It was hell from start to finish."

The look on her face told me she was not exaggerating. It was a look, only graven by intense suffering.

"When the baby came my feeling for Will changed. He had worn me out. The love I had given him I lavished upon the child. Will's mother came to live with us--she had been drifting around miserably before--and while she failed me at the time of the divorce, yet she was a tower of strength to me during the baby's infancy. I was very fond of her and I think she sincerely liked me. But Will, her only son, could always make her believe black was white, as I later found out to my sorrow.

"With the vanishing of the hectic love I had felt for Will, things went more smoothly with me. I worked like a slave to keep up the expenses of the home and to lay by something for the baby's future. My husband was away so much that the boys and girls gradually came back to something like their old term of intimacy. I never gave the matter of propriety a thought. My mother-in-law, a baby and a maid, were certainly chaperons enough.

"Afterward I found out that my husband, equipped with his legal knowledge, had set all manner of traps for me, had bribed my maid, and diabolically managed to twist the most innocent visits of the boys of the old crowd to our home to his own evil meanings.

"Then came the crash. Dicky came in one Sunday afternoon and I saw at once that he was really ill. You know his carelessness. He had let a cold go until he was as near pneumonia as he could well be. A sleet storm was raging outside, and when Dicky, after shivering before the fire, started to go back to his studio, Will's mother, who liked Dicky immensely, joined with me in insisting that he must not go out at all, but to bed. Dicky was really too ill to care what we did with him, so we got him into bed, and I took care of him for two or three days until he was well enough to leave.

"Of course, the greater part of his care fell on me, for Will's mother was old and not strong. I am not going to tell you the accusations which my unspeakable husband made against me, or the affidavits which the maid was bribed to sign about Dicky and me. You can guess. Worst of all, Will's mother turned against me, not because of anything she had observed, but simply because her son told her I was guilty.

"'I never would have thought it of you, Lillian,' she said to me with the tears streaming down her wrinkled, old face. 'I never saw anything out of the way, but of course Will wouldn't lie. And I loved you so.'

"Poor old woman. Those last few words of affection made it easier for me to give the baby up to her when the time came. She idolizes Marion. She gives her the best of care, and I do not think she will teach her to hate me as Will would.

"But there has never been a moment since I kissed Marion and gave her into the arms of her grandmother that I have not known exactly how she was treated," she said. "I have made it my business to know, and I have paid liberally for the knowledge. You see, about the time of the divorce Mr. Morten had a legacy left him, so that life has been easy for him financially. His mother had always kept a maid. Every servant she has had has been in my employ. There has scarcely been a day since I lost my baby that from some unobserved place I have not seen her in her walks. I know every line of her face, every curve of her body, every trick of movement and expression. I shall know how to win her love when the time comes, never fear."

Her voice was dauntless, but her face mirrored the anguish that must be her daily companion.

One thing about her recital jarred upon me. This paying of servants, this furtive espionage was not in keeping with the high resolve that had led the mother to "keep her word" to the man who had ruined her life. And yet--and yet--I dared not judge her. In her place I could not imagine what I would have done.

One thing I knew. Never again would I doubt Lillian Underwood. The ghost of the past romance between my husband and the woman before me was laid for all time, never to trouble me again. Remembering the sacrifice she had made for Dicky, considering the gallant fight against circumstances she had waged since her girlhood, I felt suddenly unworthy of the friendship she had so warmly offered me.

I turned to her, trying to find words, which should fittingly express my sentiments, but she forestalled me with a kaleidoscopic change of manner that bewildered me.

"Enough of horrors," she said, springing up and giving a little expressive shake of her shoulders as if she were throwing a weight from them. "I'm going to give you some luncheon."

"Oh, please!" I put up a protesting hand, but she was across the room and pressing a bell before I could stop her.

I thought I understood. The grave of her past life was closed again. She had opened it because she wished me to know the truth concerning the old garbled stories about herself and Dicky. Having told me everything, she had pushed the grisly thing back into its sepulchre again and had sealed it. She would not refer to it again.

One thing puzzled me, something to which she had not referred--why had she married Harry Underwood? Why, after the terrible experience of her first marriage, had she risked linking her life with an unstable creature like the man who was now her husband?

I put all questionings aside, however, and tried to meet her brave, gay mood.

XX

LITTLE MISS SONNOT'S OPPORTUNITY

My mother-in-law's convalescence was as rapid as the progress of her sudden illness had been. By the day that I gave my first history lecture before the Lotus Study Club she was well enough to dismiss Dr. Pettit with, one of her sudden imperious speeches, and to make plans that evening for the welcoming and entertaining of her daughter Harriet and her famous son-in-law Dr. Edwin Braithwaite, who were expected next day on their way to Europe, where Doctor was to take charge of a French hospital at the front.

That night I could not sleep. The exciting combination of happenings effectually robbed me of rest. I tried every device I could think of to go to sleep, but could not lose myself in even a doze. Finally, in despair, I rose cautiously, not to awaken Dicky, and slipping on my bathrobe and fur-trimmed mules, made my way into the dining-room.

Turning on the light, I looked around for something to read until I should get sleepy.

"What is the matter, Mrs. Graham? Are you ill?"

Miss Sonnet's soft, voice sounded just behind me. As I turned I thought again, as I had many times before, how very attractive the little nurse was. She had on a dark blue negligee of rough cloth, made very simply, but which covered her night attire completely, while her feet, almost as small as a child's, were covered with fur-trimmed slippers of the same color as the negligee. Her abundant hair was braided in two plaits and hung down to her waist.

"You look like a sleepy little girl," I said impulsively.

"And you like a particularly wakeful one," she returned, mischievously. "I am glad you are not ill. I feared you were when I heard you snap on the light."

"No, you did not waken me. In fact, I have been awake nearly an hour. I was just about to come out and rob the larder of a cracker and a sip of milk in the hope that I might go to sleep again when I heard you."

"Splendid!" I ejaculated, while Miss Sonnot looked at me wonderingly. "Can your patient hear us out here?"

"If you could hear her snore you would be sure she could not," Miss Sonnot smiled. "And I partly closed her door when I left. She is safe for hours."

"Then we will have a party," I declared triumphantly, "a regular boarding school party."

"Then on to the kitchen!" She raised one of her long braids of hair and waved it like a banner. We giggled like fifteen-year-old school girls as we tiptoed our way into the kitchen, turned on the light and searched refrigerator, pantry, bread and cake boxes for food.

"Now for our plunder," I said, as we rapidly inventoried the eatables we had found. Bread, butter, a can of sardines, eggs, sliced bacon and a dish of stewed tomatoes.

"I wish we had some oysters or cheese; then we could stir up something in the chafing dish," I said mournfully.

"Do you know, I believe I have a chafing dish recipe we can use in a scrap book which I always carry with me," responded Miss Sonnot. "It is in my suit case at the foot of my couch. I'll be back in a minute."

She noiselessly slipped into the living room and returned almost instantly with a substantially bound book in her hands. She sat down beside me at the table and opened the book.

"I couldn't live without this book," she said extravagantly. "In it I have all sorts of treasured clippings and jottings. The things I need most I have pasted in. The chafing dish recipes are in an envelope. I just happened to have them along."

She was turning the pages as she spoke. On one page, which she passed by more hurriedly than the others, were a number of Kodak pictures. I caught a flash of one which made my heart beat more quickly. Surely I had a print from the same negative in my trunk.

The tiny picture was a photograph of Jack Bickett or I was very much mistaken.

What was it doing in the scrap book of Miss Sonnot?

I put an unsteady hand out to prevent her turning the page.

It was Jack Bickett's photograph. I schooled my voice to a sort of careless surprise:

"Why! Isn't this Jack Bickett?"

She started perceptibly. "Yes. Do you know him?"

"He is the nearest relative I have," I returned quickly, "a distant cousin, but brought up as my brother."

Her face flushed. Her eyes shone with interest.

"Oh! then you must be his Margaret?" she cried.

As the words left Miss Sonnot's lips she gazed at me with a half-frightened little air as if she regretted their utterance.

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Graham," she said contritely; "you must think I have taken leave of my senses. But I have heard so much about you."

"From Mr. Bickett?" My head was whirling. I had never heard Jack speak the name of "Sonnot." Indeed, I would never have known he had met her, save for the accidental opening of her scrap book to his picture when she and I were searching for chafing dish recipes.

"Oh! No, indeed. I have never seen Mr. Bickett myself."

A rosy embarrassed flush stole over her face as she spoke. Her eyes were starry. Through my bewilderment came a thought which I voiced.

"That is his loss then. He would think so if he could see you now."

She laughed confusedly while the rosy tint of her cheeks deepened.

"I must explain to you," she said simply. "I have never seen Mr. Bickett, but my brother is one of his friends. They used to correspond, and I enjoyed his letters as much as Mark did. I think his is a wonderful personality, don't you?"

"Naturally," I returned, a trifle dryly. The little nurse was revealing more than she dreamed. There was romantic admiration in every note in her voice. I was not quite sure that I liked it.

But I put all selfish considerations down with an iron hand and smiled in most friendly fashion at her.

"Isn't it wonderful that after hearing so much of each other we should meet in this way?" I said heartily. "If only our brothers were here."

Miss Sonnet's face brightened again. "Is Mr. Bickett in this country? " she asked, her voice carefully nonchalant. "I have not heard anything about him for two or three years."

"He sailed for France a week ago," I answered slowly. "He intends to join the French engineering corps."

There was a long moment of silence. Then Miss Sonnot spoke slowly, and there was a note almost of reverence in her voice.

"That is just what he would do," and then, impetuously, "how I envy him!"

"Envy him?" I repeated incredulously.

"Yes, indeed." Her voice was militant, her eyes shining, her face aglow. "How I wish I were a man ever since this war started! I am just waiting for a good chance to join a hospital unit, but I do not happen to know any surgeon who has gone, and of course they all pick their own nurses. But my chance will come. I am sure of it, and then I am going to do my part. Why! my great-grandfather was an officer in Napoleon's army. I feel ashamed not to be over there."

* * * * *

I saw very little of Dicky's sister and her husband during the week they spent in New York before sailing for France. True, Harriet spent some portion of every day with her mother, but she ate at our table only once, always hurrying back to the hotel to oversee the menu of her beloved Edwin.

Reasoning that in a similar situation I should not care for the presence of an outsider, I left the mother and daughter alone together as much as I could without appearing rude. I think they both, appreciated my action, although, with their customary reserve, they said very little to me.

Dr. Braithwaite came twice during the week to see us, each time making a hurried call. Harriet appeared to wish to impress us with the importance of these visits from so busy and distinguished a man. But the noted surgeon himself was simple and unaffected in his manner.

One thing troubled me. I had done nothing, said nothing to further Miss Sonnot's desire to go to France as a nurse. She had left us the day after Dicky's sister and brother-in-law arrived, left with the admiration and good wishes of us all. The big surgeon himself, after watching her attention to his mother-in-law upon the day of arrival, made an approving comment.

"Good nurse, that," he had said. I took the first opportunity to repeat his words to the little nurse, who flushed with pleasure. I knew that I ought to at least inquire of the big surgeon or his wife about the number of nurses he was taking with him, but there seemed no fitting opportunity, and--I did not make one.

I did not try to explain to myself the curious disinclination I felt to lift a hand toward the sending of Miss Sonnot to the French hospitals. But every time I thought of the night she had told me of her wish I felt guilty.

Jack was already "somewhere in France." If Miss Sonnot entered the hospital service, there was a possibility that they might meet.

I sincerely liked and admired Miss Sonnot. My brother-cousin had been the only man in my life until Dicky swept me off my feet with his tempestuous wooing. My heart ought to have leaped at the prospect of their meeting and its possible result. But I felt unaccountably depressed at the idea, instead.

The last day of the Braithwaites' stay Harriet came unusually early to see her mother.

"I can stay only a few minutes this morning, mother," she explained, as she took off her heavy coat. "I know," in answer to the older woman's startled protest. "It is awful this last day, too. I'll come back toward night, but I must get back to Edwin this morning. He is so annoyed. One of his nurses has fallen ill at the last moment and cannot go. He has to secure another good one immediately, that he may get her passport attended to in time for tomorrow's sailing. And he will not have one unless he interviews her himself. I left him eating his breakfast and getting ready to receive a flock of them sent him by some physicians he knows. I must hurry back to help him through."

Miss Sonnet's opportunity had come! I knew it, knew also that I must speak to my sister-in-law at once about her. But she had finished her flying little visit and was putting on her coat before I finally forced myself to broach the subject.

"Mrs. Braithwaite"--to my disgust I found my voice trembling--"I think I ought to tell you that Miss Sonnot, the nurse your mother had, wishes very much to enter the hospital service. She could go tomorrow, I am sure. And I remember your husband spoke approvingly of her."

My sister-in-law rushed past me to the telephone.

"The very thing!" She threw the words over her shoulder as she took down the receiver. "Thank you so much." Then, as she received her connection, she spoke rapidly, enthusiastically.

"Edwin, I have such good news for you. Dicky's wife thinks that little Miss Sonnot who nursed mother could go tomorrow. She said while she was here that she wanted to enter the hospital service. Yes. I thought you'd want her. All right. I'll see to it right away and telephone you. By the way, Edwin, if she can go, you won't need me this forenoon, will you? That's good. I can stay with mother, then. Take care of yourself, dear. Good-by."

She hung up the receiver and turned to me.

"Can you reach her by 'phone right away, and if she can go tell her to go to the Clinton at once and ask for Dr. Braithwaite?"

I paid a mental tribute to my sister-in-law's energy as I in my turn took down the telephone receiver. I realized how much wear and tear she must save her big husband.

"Miss Sonnot!" I could not help being a bit dramatic in my news. "Can you sail for France tomorrow? One of Dr. Braithwaite's nurses is ill, and you may have her place, if you wish."

There was a long minute of silence, and then the little nurse's voice sounded in my ears. It was filled with awe and incredulity.

"If I wish!" and then, after a pregnant pause, "Surely, I can go. Where do I learn the details?"

I gave her full directions and hung up the receiver with a sigh.

She came to see me before she sailed, and after she had left me, I went into my bedroom, locked the door, and let the tears come which I had been forcing back. I did not know what was the matter with me. I felt a little as I did once long before when a cherished doll of my childhood had been broken beyond all possibility of mending. Unreasonable as the feeling was, it was as if a curtain had dropped between me and any part of my life that lay behind me.

XXI

LIFE'S JOG-TROT AND A QUARREL

Life went at a jog-trot with me for a long time after the departure for France of the Braithwaites and Miss Sonnot.

My mother-in-law missed her daughter, Mrs. Braithwaite, sorely. I believe if it had not been for her pride in her brilliant daughter and her famous son-in-law she would have become actually ill with fretting. I found my hands full in devising ways to divert her mind and planning dishes to tempt her delicate appetite.

Because of her frailty and consequent inability to do much sightseeing, or, indeed, to go far from the house, Dicky and I spent a very quiet winter.

Our evenings away from home together did not average one a week. And Dicky very rarely went anywhere without me.

"What a Darby and Joan we are getting to be!" he remarked one night as we sat one on each side of the library table, reading. His mother, as was her custom, had gone to bed early in the evening.

"Yes! Isn't it nice?" I returned, smiling at him.

"Ripping!" Dicky agreed enthusiastically. Then, reflectively, "Funniest thing about it is the way I cotton to this domestic stunt. If anyone had told me before I met you that I should ever stand for this husband-reading-to-knitting-wife sort of thing I should have bought him a ticket to Matteawan, pronto."

He stopped and frowned heavily at me, in mimic disapproval.

"Picture all spoiled," he declared, sighing. "You are not knitting. Why, oh, why are you not knitting?"

"Because I never shall knit," I returned, laughing, "at least not in the evening while you are reading. That sort of thing never did appeal to me. Either the wife who has to knit or sew or darn in the evening is too inefficient to get all her work done in daylight, or she has too much work to do. In the first case, her husband ought to teach her efficiency; in the second place, he ought to help do the sewing or the darning. Then they could both read."

"Listen to the feminist?" carolled Dicky; then with mock severity: "Of course, I am to infer, madam, that my stockings are all properly darned?"

"Your inference is eminently correct," demurely. "Your mother darned them today."

What I had told him was true. His mother had seen me looking over the stockings after they were washed, and had insisted on darning Dicky's. I saw that she longed to do some little personal service for her boy, and willingly handed them over.

Dicky threw back his head and laughed heartily. Then his face sobered, and he came round to my side of the table and sat down on the arm of my chair.

"Speaking of mother," he said, rumpling my hair caressingly, "I want to tell you, sweetheart, that you've made an awful hit with me the way you've taken care of her. Nobody knows better than I how trying she can be, and you've been just as sweet and kind to her as if she were the most tractable person on earth."

He put his arms around me and bent his face to mine.

"Pretty nice and comfy this being married to each other, isn't it?"

"Very nice, indeed," I agreed, nestling closer to him.

My heart echoed the words. In fact, it seemed almost too good to be true, this quiet domestic cove into which our marital bark had drifted. The storms we had weathered seemed far past. Dicky's jealousy of my brother-cousin, Jack Bickett; my unhappiness over Lillian Underwood--those tempestuous days surely were years ago instead of months.

Now Jack was "somewhere in France," and I had a queer little premonition that somewhere, somehow, his path would cross that of Miss Sonnot, the little nurse, who had gone with Dr. Braithwaite's, expedition, and who for years had cherished a romantic ideal of my brother-cousin, although she had never met him.

Lillian Underwood was my sworn friend. With characteristic directness she had cut the Gordian knot of our misunderstanding by telling me, against Dicky's protests, all about the old secret which her past and that of my husband shared. After her story, with all that it revealed of her sacrifice and her fidelity to her own high ideals, there never again would be a doubt of her in my mind. I was proud of her friendship, although, because of my mother-in-law's prejudice against them, Dicky and I could not have the Underwoods at our home.

Our meetings, therefore, were few. But I had an odd little feeling of safety and security whenever I thought of her. I knew if any terrible trouble ever came to me I should fly to her as if she were my sister.

My work at the Lotus Study Club was going along smoothly. At home Katie was so much more satisfactory than the maids I had seen in other establishments that I shut my eyes to many little things about which I knew my mother-in-law would have been most captious.

But my mother-in-law's acerbity was softened by her weakness. We grew quite companionable in the winter days when Dicky's absence at the studio left us together. Altogether I felt that life had been very good to me.

So the winter rolled away, and almost before we knew it the spring days came stealing in from the South, bringing to me their urgent call of brown earth and sprouting things.

I was not the only one who listened to the message of spring. Mother Graham grew restless and used all of her meagre strength in drives to the parks and walks to a nearby square where the crocuses were just beginning to wave their brave greeting to the city.

The warmer days affected Dicky adversely. He seemed a bit distrait, displayed a trifle of his earlier irritability, and complained a great deal about the warmth of the apartment.