Chapter 18

Finally I temporized by resolving to say nothing to Dicky unless the man's tracking of me reached the point of attempting to speak to me. But the consciousness of keeping a secret from Dicky made me pre-occupied during our dinner.

Dicky reached home an hour after I did, and all through the dinner hour I noticed him casting curious glances at me from time to time.

"What's the matter?" he asked, as after dinner he and I went out to the screened porch to drink our coffee.

"Why, nothing," I responded guiltily. "Why do you ask?"

"You act as if you thought you had the responsibility of the great war on your shoulders," Dicky returned.

"I haven't a care in the world," I assured him gayly, and arousing myself from my depression I spent the next hour in gay, inconsequential chatter in an attempt to prove to Dicky that I meant what I said.

In the kitchen I heard the voices of Jim and Katie. They were raised earnestly as if discussing something about which they disagreed. Presently Katie appeared on the veranda.

"Plees, Missis Graham, can you joost coom to kitchen, joost one little meenit."

"Certainly, Katie," I replied, rising, while Dicky mumbled a half-laughing, half-serious protest.

"I'll be back in a minute, Dicky," I promised, lightly.

It was full five before I returned, for Jim had something to tell me, which confirmed my impression that the mysterious stranger's spying upon me was something to be reckoned with.

"I didn't think I ought to worry you with this, Mrs. Graham, but Katie thinks you ought to know it, and what she says goes, you know." He cast a fatuous smile at the girl, who giggled joyously. "To-night, down at Crest Haven, I overheard one of the taxi drivers telling another about a guy that had come down there and described a woman whom he said must have gotten off at Crest Haven and taken a taxi back to Marvin. The description fitted you all right, and the driver gave him your name and address. He said he got a five spot for doing it."

My face was white, my hands cold, as I listened to Jim, but I controlled myself, and said, quietly:

"Thank you, Jim, very much for telling me, but I do not think it amounts to anything."

XXXII

"THE DEAREST FRIEND I EVER HAD"

Dinner with Dicky in a public dining room is almost always a delight to me. He has the rare art of knowing how to order a perfect dinner, and when he is in a good humor he is most entertaining. He knows by sight or by personal acquaintance almost every celebrity of the city, and his comments on them have an uncommon fascination for me because of the monotony of my life before I met Dicky.

But the very expression of my mother-in-law's back as I followed her through the glittering grill room of the Sydenham told me that our chances for having a pleasant evening were slender indeed.

"Well, mother, what do you want to eat?" Dicky began genially, when an obsequious waiter had seated us and put the menu cards before us.

"Please do not consider me in the least," my mother-in-law said with her most Christian-martyr-like expression. "Whatever you and Margaret wish will do very well for me."

Dicky turned from his mother with a little impatient shrug.

"What about you, Madge?" he asked.

"Chicken a la Maryland in a chafing dish and a combination salad with that anchovy and sherry dressing you make so deliciously," I replied promptly. "The rest of the dinner I'll leave to you."

My mother-in-law glared at me.

"It strikes me there isn't much left to leave to him after an order of that kind," she said, tartly.

"You haven't eaten many of Dicky's dinners then," I said audaciously, with a little moue at him. "He orders the most perfect dinners of any one I know."

"Of course, with your wide experience, you ought to be a critical judge of his ability," my mother-in-law snapped back.

Her tone was even more insulting than her words. It tipped with cruel venom her allusion to the quiet, almost cloistered life of my girlhood.

I drew a long breath as I saw my mother-in-law adjust her lorgnette and proceed to gaze through it with critical hauteur at the other diners. I hoped that her curiosity and interest in the things going on around her would make her forget her imaginary grievances, but my hope was destined to be short lived.

It was while we were discussing our oysters, the very first offered of the season, that she spoke to me, suddenly, abruptly:

"Margaret, do you know that man at the second table back of us? He hasn't taken his eyes from you for the last ten minutes."

My heart almost stopped beating, for my intuition told me at once the identity of the gazer. It must be the man whose uncanny, mournful look had so distressed me when I was waiting for Lillian Underwood in the little reception room at the Sydenham the preceding Monday, the man who had followed us to the little tea room, who had even taken the same train to Marvin with me.

I felt as if I could not lift my eyes to look at the man my mother-in-law indicated, and yet I knew I must glance casually at him if I were to avert the displeased suspicion which I already saw creeping into her eyes.

When my eyes met his he gave not the slightest sign that he knew I was looking at him, simply continued his steady gaze, which had something of wistful mournfulness in it. I averted my eyes as quickly as possible, and tried to look absolutely unconcerned.

"I am sure he cannot be looking at me," I said, lightly. "I do not know him at all."

I hoped that my mother-in-law would not notice my evasion, but she was too quick for me.

"You may not know him, but have you ever seen him before?" she asked, shrewdly.

"Really, mother," Dicky interposed, his face darkening, "you're going a little too far with that catechism. Madge says she doesn't know the man, that settles it. By the way, Madge, is he annoying you? If he is, I can settle him in about two seconds."

"Oh, no," I said nervously, "I don't think the man's really looking at me at all; he's simply gazing out into space, thinking, and happens to be facing this way. It would be supremely ridiculous to call him to account for it."

My mother-in-law snorted, but made no further comment, evidently silenced by Dicky's reproof.

I may have imagined it, but it seemed to me that Dicky looked at me a little curiously when I protested my belief that the man was simply absorbed in thought and not looking at me at all.

When we were dallying with the curiously moulded ices which Dicky had ordered for dessert, I saw his eyes light up as he caught sight of some one he evidently knew.

"Pardon me just a minute, will you?" he said, turning to his mother and me, apologetically, "I see Bob Simonds over there with a bunch of fellows. Haven't seen him in a coon's age. He's been over across the pond in the big mixup. Didn't know he was back. I don't want any more of this ice, anyway, and when the waiter comes, order cheese, coffee and a cordial for us all."

He was gone in another instant, making his way with the swift, debonair grace which is always a part of Dicky, to the group of men at a table not far from ours, who welcomed him joyously.

My mother-in-law's eyes followed mine, and I knew that for once, at least, we were of one mind, and that mind was full of pride in the man so dear to, us both. He was easily the most distinguished figure at the table full of men who greeted him so joyously. I knew that his mother noted with me how cordial was the welcome each man gave Dicky, how they all seemed to defer to him and hang upon his words.

Then across my vision came a picture most terrifying to me. It was as if my mother-in-law and I were spectators of a series of motion picture films. Toward the table, where Dicky stood surrounded by his friends, there sauntered the mysterious stranger, who had attracted my mother-in-law's attention by his scrutiny of me.

But he was no stranger to the men surrounding Dicky. Most of them greeted him warmly. Of course, I was too far away to hear what was said, but I saw the pantomime in which he requested an introduction to Dicky of one of his friends!

Then I saw the stranger meet Dicky and engage him in earnest conversation. I did not dare to look at my mother-in-law. I knew she was gazing in open-mouthed wonder at her son, but I hoped she did not know the queer mixture of terror and interest with which I watched the picture at the other table.

For it was no surprise to me when, a few minutes later, Dicky came back toward our table. With him, talking earnestly, as if he had been a childhood friend, walked the mysterious stranger. I told myself that I had known it would be so from the first.

From the moment I had first seen this man's haunting eyes gazing at me in the reception room of the Sydenham I had felt that a meeting with him was inevitable. How or where he would touch my life I did not know, but that he was destined to wield some influence, sinister or favorable, over me, I was sure, and I trembled with vague terror as I saw him drawing near.

"Mother, may I present Mr. Gordon? My wife, Mr. Gordon."

Dicky's manner was nervous, preoccupied, as he spoke. His mother's face showed very plainly her resentment at being obliged to meet the man upon whose steady staring at me she had so acidly commented a few minutes before.

For my own part, I was so upset that I felt actually ill, as the eyes of the persistent stranger met mine. How had this man, who had so terrified me by his persistent pursuit and scrutiny, managed to obtain an introduction to Dicky?

Dicky made a place for the man near me, and signalled the waiter.

"I know you have dined," he said, courteously, "but you'll at least have coffee and a cordial with us, will you not?"

"Thank you," Mr. Gordon said, in a deep, rich voice, "I have not yet had coffee. If you will be so kind, I should like a little apricot brandy instead of a cordial."

Dicky gave the necessary order to the waiter, and we all sat back in our chairs.

I, for one, felt as though I were a spectator at a play, waiting for the curtain to run up upon some thrilling episode. For the few minutes while we waited for our coffee, Dicky had to carry the burden of the conversation. His mother, with her lips pressed together in a tight, thin line, evidently had resolved to take no part in any conversation with the stranger. I was really too terrified to say anything, and, besides the briefest of assents to Dicky's observations, the stranger said nothing.

There was something about the man's whole personality that both attracted and repelled me. With one breath I felt that I had a curious sense of liking and admiration for him, and was proud of the interest in me, which he had taken no pains to conceal. The next moment a real terror and dislike of him swept over me.

I waited with beating heart for him to finish his coffee. It seemed to me that I could hardly wait for him to speak. For I had a psychic presentiment that before he left the table he would make known to us the reason for his rude pursuit of me.

His first words confirmed my impression:

"I am afraid, Mrs. Graham," he said, courteously, turning to me, as he finished his coffee, "that I have startled and alarmed you by my endeavor to ascertain your identity."

I did not answer him. I did not wish to tell him that I had been frightened; neither could I truthfully deny his assertion. And I wished that I had not evaded my mother-in-law's query concerning him.

He did not appear to heed my silence however, but went on rapidly:

"It is a very simple matter, after all," he said. "You see, you resemble so closely a very dear friend of my youth, in fact, the dearest I ever had, that when I caught sight of you the other day in the reception room of the Sydenham, it seemed as if her very self stood before me."

There was a vibrant, haunting note in his voice that told me, better than words, that, whoever this woman of his youth might have been, her memory was something far more to him than of a mere friend.

"I could not rest until I found out your identity, and secured an introduction to you," he went on. "You will not be offended if I ask you one or two rather personal questions, will you?"

"Indeed, no," I returned mechanically.

Mr. Gordon hesitated. His suave self-possession seemed to have deserted him. He swallowed hard twice, and then asked, nervously:

"May I ask your name before you were married, Mrs. Graham?"

"Margaret Spencer," I returned steadily.

There was a cry of astonishment from Dicky. Mr. Gordon had reeled in his chair as if he were about to faint, then, with closed eyes and white lips, he sat motionless, gripping the table as if for support.

"Do not be alarmed--I am all right--only a momentary faintness, I assure you."

Mr. Gordon opened his eyes and smiled at us wanly.

I knew that Dicky was as much relieved as I at our guest's return to self-command. That he was resentful as well as mystified at the singular behavior of Mr. Gordon I also gleaned from his darkened face, and a little steely glint in his eyes.

"I hope that you will forgive me," Mr. Gordon went on, and his rich voice was so filled with regret and humility that I felt my heart soften toward him.

"I trust you have not gained the impression that my momentary faintness had anything to do with your name," he said. "My attack at that time was merely a coincidence. I am subject to these spells of faintness. I hope this one did not alarm you."

He looked at me directly, as if expecting an answer.

"I am not easily alarmed," I returned, trying hard to keep out of my voice anything save the indifferent courtesy which one would bestow upon a stranger, for the atmosphere of mystery seemed deepening about this stranger and me. I did not believe he had spoken the truth, when he said that my utterance of my maiden name, in response to his question, had nothing to do with his faintness. I was as certain as I was of anything that it was the utterance of that name, the revelation of my identity thus made to him, that caused his emotion. I sat thrilled, tense, in anticipation of revelations to follow.

Mr. Gordon's voice was quiet, but a poignant little thrill ran through it, which I caught as he spoke again.

"Was not your mother's name Margaret Bickett and your father's, Charles Spencer?" he asked.

"You are quite correct." I forced the words through lips stiffened by excitement.

I saw Dicky look at me curiously, almost impatiently, but I had no eyes, no ears, save for the mysterious stranger who was quizzing me about my parents.

One of Mr. Gordon's hands was beneath the table; as he was sitting next to his I saw what no one else did--that the long, slender, sensitive fingers pressed themselves deeply, quiveringly, into the palm at my affirmation of his question. But except for that momentary grip there was no evidence of excitement in his demeanor as he turned to me.

"I thought so," he said quietly. "I have found the daughter of the dearest friends I ever had. Your resemblance to your mother is marvelous. I remember that you looked much like her when you were a tiny girl."

"You were at our home in my childhood, then?" I asked, wondering if this might be the explanation of my uncanny notion that I had sometime in my life seen this man bending over his demitasse as he had done a few minutes before.

"Oh, yes," he said, "your mother, as I have told you, was the dearest friend I ever had. And your father was my other self--then--"

His emphasis upon the word "then" gave me a quick stab of pain, for it recalled the odium with which every one who had known my childhood seemed to regard the memory of my father.

I, myself, had no memories of my father. My mother had never spoken of him to me but once, when she had told me the terrible story of his faithlessness.

When I was four years old he had run away from us both with my mother's dearest friend, and neither she, nor any of his friends, had ever heard of him afterward. I had always felt a sort of hatred of my unknown father, who had deserted me and so cruelly treated my mother, and the knowledge that this man was an intimate of his turned me faint.

But if Mr. Gordon's inflection meant anything it meant that even if he had been my father's "other self," my mother's desertion had aroused in him the same contempt for my father that all the rest of our little world had felt. I felt my indefinable feeling of repulsion against the man melt into warm approval of him. He had loved the mother I had idolized, had resented her wrongs, and I felt my heart go out to him.

"I cannot tell you what this finding of your wife means to me," said Mr. Gordon, turning to Dicky. The inflection of his voice, the movement of his hand, spelled a subtle appeal to the younger man.

"I have been a wanderer for years," the deep, rich voice went on. "I have no family ties"--he hesitated for a moment, with a curious little air of indecision--"no wife, no child. I am a very lonely man. I wonder if it would be asking too much to let me come to see you once in a while and renew the memories of my youth in this dear child?"

He turned to me with the most fascinating little air of deferential admiration I had ever seen.

But I looked in vain for any answer to his appeal in Dicky's eyes. My husband still retained the air of formal, puzzled courtesy with which he had brought Mr. Gordon to our table and introduced him to us. I could see that the mysterious stranger's appeal to be made an intimate of our home did not meet with Dicky's approval.

I could not understand the impulse that made me turn toward the stranger and say, earnestly: "I shall be so glad to have you come to see us, Mr. Gordon. I want you to tell me about my mother's youth."

XXXIII

"MOTHER" GRAHAM HAS SOMETHING TO SAY

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 if I were a little child. "Now for it," he said, smiling tenderly at me.