Chapter 19

"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.

XXXIV

A MESSAGE FROM THE PAST

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.

"MOTHER."

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."

XXXV

THE WORD OF JACK

"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."