Chapter 22

"I have always feared that when the time came for me to be 'my honest self' instead of a 'made-up daisy'"--she smiled wearily as she quoted the childish rhyme--"Harry would not be big enough to take it well. Of course I could and would stand all his unpleasantness concerning my altered appearance, but the root of his actions goes deeper than that, I am afraid. He dislikes children, and I fear that he will object to my having my little girl with me. And if he does--"

Her tone spelled finality but I had no time to bestow upon the probable fate of Harry Underwood. With a glad little cry, I drew Lillian down to my bedside and kissed her.

"Oh! Lillian!" I exclaimed, "are you really going to have your baby girl after all?"

She nodded, and I held her close with a little prayer of thanksgiving that fate had finally relented and had given to this woman the desire of her heart, so long kept from her.

I saw now, and wondered why I had not realized before the reason for Lillian's sudden abandonment of the rouge and powder and dyed hair which she had used so long. Once she had said to me, "When my baby comes home, she shall have a mother with a clean face and pepper and salt hair, but until that time, I shall play the game with Harry."

And so for Harry's sake, for the man who was not worthy to tie her shoes, she had continued to crucify her real instincts in an effort to hide the worst feminine crime in her husband's calendar--advancing age.

"When will she come to you?" I asked, and then with a sudden remembrance of the only conditions under which Lillian's little daughter could be restored to her, I added, "then her father is--"

"Not dead, but dying," Lillian returned gravely, "but oh, my dear, he sent for me two weeks ago and acknowledged the terrible wrong he did me. I am vindicated at last, Madge--at last."

Her voice broke, and as she laid her cheek against my hand, I felt the happy tears which she must have kept back all through the excitement of my accident. How like her to put by her own greatest experiences as of no consequence when weighed against another's trouble!

I kissed her happily. "Do you feel that you can tell me about it?" I asked.

"You and Dicky are the two people I want most to know," she returned. "Will confessed everything to me, and better still, to his mother. I would have been glad to have spared the poor old woman, for she idolizes her son, but you remember I told you that although she loved me, he had made her believe the vile things he said of me. It was necessary that she should know the truth, if after Will's death I was to have any peace in my child's companionship.

"Marion loves her grandmother dearly, and the old woman fairly idolizes the child, although her feebleness has compelled her to leave most of the care of the child to hired nurses. There is where I am going to have my chance with my little girl. I never shall separate her from her grandmother while the old woman lives, but from the moment she comes to me, no hireling's hand shall care for her--she shall be mine, all mine."

Her voice was a paean of triumphant love. My heart thrilled in sympathy with hers, but underneath it all I was conscious of a strong desire to have Harry Underwood reconciled to this new plan of Lillian's. The calmness with which she had spoken of their parting had not deceived me. I knew that Lillian's pride, already dragged in the dust by her first unhappy marital experience, would suffer greatly if she had to acknowledge that her second venture had also failed. I tried to think of some manner in which I could remedy matters. Unconsciously Lillian played directly into my hands.

"But here I am bothering you with all of my troubles," she said, "when all the time gallant cavaliers wait without, anxious to pay their devoirs."

Her voice was as gay, as unconcerned, as if she had not just been sounding the depths of terrible memories. I paid a silent tribute to her powers of self-discipline before answering curiously.

"Gallant cavaliers?" I repeated. "Who are they?"

"Well, Harry is at the door, and Mr. Gordon at the gate," she returned merrily. "In other words, Harry is downstairs, waiting patiently for me to give him permission to see you, while Mr. Gordon took up quarters at a country inn near here the day after your accident and has called or telephoned almost hourly since. He begged me this morning to let him know when you would be able to see him. If Harry's call does not tire you, I think I would better 'phone him to come over."

"Lillian!" I spoke imperatively, as a sudden recollection flashed through my mind. "Was I delirious, or did I hear Mr. Gordon exclaim something very foolish the night of my accident?"

She looked at me searchingly.

"He said, 'My darling, have I found you only to lose you again?'" she answered.

"What did he mean?" I gasped.

"That he must tell you himself, Madge," she said gravely. "For me to guess his meaning would be futile. Shall I telephone him to come over, and will you see Harry for a moment or two now?"

"Yes! to both questions," I answered.

"Well, lady fair, they haven't made you take the count yet, have they? By Jove, you're prettier than ever."

Ushered by Lillian, Harry Underwood came into my room with all his usual breeziness, and stood looking down at me as I lay propped against the pillows Lillian had piled around me. It was the first time I had seen him since the night of our dinner, when with the wild idea of punishing Dicky for his foolishness regarding elderly Mr. Gordon I had carried on a rather intense flirtation with Harry Underwood.

I had been heartily sorry for and ashamed of the experiment before the dinner was half over, and many times since the accident which interrupted the evening I had wondered, half-whimsically, whether my dress catching fire was not a "judgment on me." I had deeply dreaded seeing Mr. Underwood again, but as I looked into his eyes I saw nothing but friendly cheeriness and pity.

Lillian drew a chair for him to my bedside, and for a few moments he chatted of everything and nothing in the entertaining manner he knows so well how to use.

"You may have just three minutes more, Harry," Lillian said at last. "Stay here while I go down to telephone. Then you will have to vamoose. Mr. Gordon is coming over, and I can't have her too tired."

Her husband gave a low whistle, and I saw a quick look of understanding pass between him and Lillian. I did not have time to wonder about it, however, for Lillian went out of the room, and the moment she closed the door he said tensely:

"Tell me you forgive me. If I had not teased you that night you would not have moved toward the fire, and your dress would not have caught. Why! you might have been killed or horribly disfigured. I've been suffering the tortures of Hades ever since. But you will forgive me, won't you? I'll do any penance you name."

Through all the extravagance of his speech there ran a deeper note than I had believed Harry Underwood to be capable of sounding. As his eyes met mine and I saw that there was something as near suffering in them as the man's self-centred careless nature was capable of feeling I saw my opportunity.

"Yes, I'll forgive you--everything--if you'll promise me one thing, which will make me very happy."

He bit his lip savagely--I think he guessed my meaning--but he did not hesitate.

"Name it," he said shortly.

"Don't hurt Lillian any more about the change in her appearance or object to her having her child with her," I pleaded.

He thought a long minute, then with a quick gesture he caught my uninjured hand in his, carried it to his lips, and kissed it, then laid it gently back upon the bed again.

"Done," he said gruffly. "It won't bother me much for awhile anyway. Your friend Gordon, wants me to go with him on a long trip to South America. I'm the original white-haired boy with him just now for some reason or other, and it's just the chance I have wanted to look up the theatrical situation down there. Perhaps I can persuade the old boy to loosen up on some of his bank roll and play angel. But anyway I'm going to be gone quite a stretch, and when I come back I'll try to be a reformed character. But remember, wherever I am 'me art is true to Poll.'"

He bowed mockingly with his old manner, and walked toward the door, meeting Lillian as she came in.

"So long, Lil," he said carelessly. "I'm going for a long walk. See you later."

She looked at him searchingly. "All right," she answered laconically, and then came over to me.

"Mr. Gordon will be here in a half-hour," she said. "Please try to rest a little before he comes."

She lowered the shades, and my pillows, kissed me gently, and left the room. But I could neither rest nor sleep. The wildest conjectures went through my brain. Who was Robert Gordon, and why was he so strangely interested in me?

XL

MADGE FACES THE PAST AND HEARS A DOOR SOFTLY CLOSE

It seemed a very long time to me, as I tossed on my pillows, beset by the problem that even the name Robert Gordon always presents to me, before Lillian came back to my room. But when she entered she said that Mr. Gordon would soon arrive and that I must be prepared to see him, so she bathed my hands and face and gave me an egg-nog before propping me up against my pillows to receive my visitor.

"Of course you will stay with me, Lillian, while he is here," I said.

She smiled enigmatically. "Part of the time," she said.

But when Mr. Gordon came, bringing with him an immense sheaf of roses, she left the room almost at once, giving as an excuse her wish to arrange the flowers.

My visitor's eyes were burning with a light that almost frightened me as he sat down by my bedside and took my hand in his.

"My dear child," he said, and though the words were such as any elderly man might address to a young woman, yet there was an intensity in them that made me uncomfortable. "Are you sure everything is all right with you?"

"Very sure," I replied, smiling. "If Mrs. Underwood would permit me to do so, I am certain I could get up now."

"You must not think of trying it," he returned sharply, and with a note in his voice, almost like authority, which puzzled me.

"Thank God for Mrs. Underwood!" he went on. "She is a woman in a thousand. I am indebted to her for life."

I shrank back among my pillows, and wished that Lillian would return to the room. I began to wonder if Mr. Gordon's brain was not slightly turned. Surely, the fact that he had once known and loved my mother was no excuse for the extravagant attitude he was taking.

He saw the movement, and into his eyes flashed a look so mournful, so filled with longing that I was thrilled to the heart. The next moment he threw himself upon his knees by the side of my bed, and cried out tensely:

"Oh, my darling child, don't shrink from me. You will kill me. Don't you see? Can't you guess? I am your father!"

My father! Robert Gordon my father!

I looked at the elderly man kneeling beside my bed, and my brain whirled with the unreality of it all. The "man of mystery," the "Quester" of Broadway, the elderly soldier of fortune, about whose reputed wealth and constant searching of faces wherever he was the idle gossip of the city's Bohemia had whirled--to think that this man was the father I had never known, the father, alas! whom I had hoped never to know.

Everything was clear to me now--the reason for his staring at me when he first caught sight of me in the Sydenham Hotel, his trailing of my movements until he had found out my name and home, the introduction he obtained to Dicky, and through him to me, his emotion at hearing my mother's name, his embarrassing attentions to me ever since--the explanation for all of which had puzzled me had come in the choking words of the man whose head was bowed against my bed, and whose whole frame was shaking with suppressed sobs.

I felt myself trembling in the grip of a mighty surge of longing to gather that bowed gray head into my arms and lavish the love he longed for upon my father. My heart sang a little hymn of joy. I, who had been kinless, with no one of my own blood, had found a father!

And then, with my hand outstretched, almost touching my father's head, the revulsion came.

True, this man was my father, but he was also the man who had made my mother's life one long tragedy. All my life I had schooled myself to hate the man who had deserted my mother and me when I was four years old, who had added to the desertion the insult of taking with him the woman who had been my mother's most intimate friend. My love for my mother had been the absorbing emotion of my life, until she had left me, and because of that love I had loathed the very thought of the man who had caused her to suffer so terribly.

My father lifted his head and looked at me, and there was that in his eyes which made me shudder. It was the look of a prisoner in the dock, waiting to receive a sentence.

"Of course, I know you must hate the very sight of me, Margaret," he said brokenly. "I had not meant to tell you so soon. But I have to go away almost at once to South America, and it is very uncertain when I shall return. I could not bear to go without your knowing how I have loved and longed for you.

"Never so great a sinner as I, my child," the weary old voice went on, "but, oh, if you could know my bitter repentance, my years of loneliness."

His voice tore at my heart strings, but I steeled myself against him. One thing I must know.

"Where is the person with whom--" I could not finish the words.

"I do not know." The words rang true. I was sure he was not lying to me. "I have not seen or heard of her in over twenty years."

Then the association had not lasted. I had a sudden clairvoyant glimpse into my father's soul. My mother had been the real love of his life. His infatuation for the other woman had been but a temporary madness. What long drawn out, agonized repentance must have been his for twenty years with wife, child and home lost to him!

I leaned back and closed my eyes for a minute, overwhelmed with the problem which confronted me. And then--call it hallucination or what you will--I heard my mother's voice, as clearly as I ever heard it in life, repeating the words I had read weeks before in the letter she had left for me at her death.

"Remember it is my last wish, Margaret, that if your father be living sometime you may be reconciled to him."

I opened my eyes with a little cry of thanksgiving. It was as if my mother had stretched out her hand from heaven to sanction the one thing I most longed to do.

"Father!" I gasped. "Oh, my father, I have wanted you so."

He uttered a little cry of joy, and then my father's arms were around me, my face was close to his, and for the first time since I was a baby of four years I knew my father's kisses.

A smothered sound, almost like a groan, startled me, and then the door slammed shut.

"What was that?" I asked. "Is there any one there?"

My father raised his head. "No, there is no one there," he said. "See, the wind is rising. It must have been that which slammed the door. I think I would better shut the window."

He moved over to the window, which Lillian had kept partly ajar for air, and closed it. Then he returned to my bedside.

"There is one thing I must ask you to do, my child," he said hesitatingly, "and that is to keep secret the fact that instead of being Robert Gordon, I am in reality Charles Robert Gordon Spencer, and your father. Of course your husband must know and Mrs. Underwood, as her husband is going with me to South America. But I should advise very strongly against the knowledge coming into the possession of any one else.

"I cannot explain to you now, why I dropped part of my name, or why I exact this promise," he went on, "but it is imperative that I do ask it, and that you heed the request. You will respect my wishes in this matter, will you not, my daughter?"

It was all very stilted, almost melodramatic, but my father was so much in earnest that I readily gave the promise he asked. With a look of relief he took a package from his pocket and handed it to me.

"Keep this carefully," he said. "It contains all the data which you will need in case of my death. Rumor says that I am a very rich man. As usual rumor is wrong, but I have enough so that you will always be comfortable. And for fear that something might happen to you in my absence I have placed to your account in the Knickerbocker money enough for any emergency, also for any extra spending money you may wish. The bank book is among these papers. I trust that you will use it. I shall like to feel that you are using it. And now good-by. I shall not see you again."

He kissed me, lingeringly, tenderly, and went out of the room. I lay looking at the package he had given me, wondering if it were all a dream.

XLI

WHY DID DICKY GO?

"Margaret, I have the queerest message from Richard. I cannot make it out."

My mother-in-law rustled into my room, her voice querulous, her face expressing the utmost bewilderment.

"What is it, mother?" I asked nervously. It was late afternoon of the day in which Robert Gordon had revealed his identity as my father, and my nerves were still tense from the shock of the discovery.

"Why, Richard has left the city. He telephoned me just now that he had an unexpected offer at an unusual sum to do some work in San Francisco, I think, he said, and that he would be gone some months. If he accepted the offer he would have no time to come home. He said he would write to both of us tonight. What do you suppose it means?"

"I--do--not--know," I returned slowly and truthfully, but there was a terrible frightened feeling at my heart. Dicky gone for months without coming to bid me good-by! My world seemed to whirl around me. But I must do or say nothing to alarm my mother-in-law. Her weak heart made it imperative that she be shielded from worry of any kind.

I rallied every atom of self-control I possessed. "There is nothing to worry about, mother," I said carelessly. "Dicky has often spoken recently about this offer to go to San Francisco. It was always tentative before, but he knew that when it did come he would have to go at a minute's notice. You know he always keeps a bag packed at the studio for just such emergencies."

The last part of my little speech was true. Dicky did keep a bag packed for the emergency summons he once in a while received from his clients. But I had never heard of the trip to San Francisco. But I must reassure my mother-in-law in some way.

"Well, I think it's mighty queer," she grumbled, going out of the room.

"You adorable little fibber!" Lillian said tenderly, rising, and coming over to me. Her voice was gay, but I who knew its every intonation, caught an undertone of worry.

"Lillian!" I exclaimed sharply. "What is it? Do you know anything?"

"Hush, child," she said firmly. "I know nothing. You will hear all about it tomorrow morning when you receive Dicky's letters. Until then you must be quiet and brave."

It was like her not to adjure me to keep from worrying. She never did the usual futile things. But all through my wakeful night, whenever I turned over or uttered the slightest sound, she was at my side in an instant.

Never until death stops my memory will I forget that next morning with its letters from Dicky.

There was one for my mother-in-law, none for me, but I saw an envelope in Lillian's hand, which I was sure was from my husband, even before I had seen the shocked pallor which spread over her face as she read it.

"Oh, Lillian, what is it?" I whispered in terror.

"Wait," she commanded. "Do not let your mother-in-law guess anything is amiss."

But when Mother Graham's demand to know what Dicky had written to me had been appeased by Lillian's offhand remark that country mails were never reliable, and that my letter would probably arrive later, the elder woman went to her own room to puzzle anew over her son's letter, which simply said over again what he had told her over the telephone.

When she had gone Lillian locked the door softly behind her, then coming over to me, sank down by my bedside and slipped her arm around me.

"You must be brave, Madge," she said quietly. "Read this through and tell me if you have any idea what it means."

I took the letter she held out to me, and read it through.

"Dear Lil," the letter began. "You have never failed me yet, so I know you'll look after things for me now.

"I am going away. I shall never see Madge again, nor do I ever expect to hear from her. Will you look out for her until she is free from me? She can sue me for desertion, you know, and get her divorce. I will put in no defence.

"Most of her funds are banked in her name, anyway. But for fear she will not want to use that money I am going to send a check to you each month for her which you are to use as you see fit, with or without her knowledge. I am enclosing the key of the studio. The rent is paid a long ways ahead, and I will send you the money for future payments and its care. Please have it kept ready for me to walk in at any time. Mother always goes to Elizabeth's for the holidays, anyway. Keep her from guessing as long as you can. I'll write to her after she gets to Elizabeth's.

"I guess that's all. If Madge doesn't understand why I am doing this I can't help it. But it's the only thing to do. Yours always. DICKY."

The room seemed to whirl around me as I read. Dicky gone forever, arranging for me to get a divorce! I clung blindly to Lillian as I moaned: "Oh, what does it mean?"

"Think, Madge, Madge, have you and Dicky had any quarrel lately?"

"Nothing that could be called a quarrel, no," I returned, "and, not even the shadow of a disagreement since my accident."

"Then," Lillian said musingly, "either Dicky has gone suddenly mad--"

She stopped and looked at me searchingly. "Or what, Lillian," I pleaded. "Tell me. I am strong enough to stand the truth, but not suspense."

"I believe you are," she said, "and you will have to help me find out the truth. Now remember this may have no bearing on the thing at all, but Harry saw Grace Draper talking to Dicky the other day. He said Dicky didn't act particularly well pleased at the meeting, but that the girl was, as Harry put it, 'fit to put your eyes out,' she looked so stunning. But it doesn't seem possible that if Dicky had gone away with her he would write that sort of a note to me and leave no word for you."

"Fit to put your eyes out!" The phrase stung me. With a quick movement, I grasped the hand mirror that lay on the stand by my bed, and looked critically at the image reflected there. Wan, hollow-eyed, with one side of my face and neck still flaming from my burns, I had a quick perception of the way in which my husband, beauty-lover that he is, must have contrasted my appearance with that of Grace Draper.

Lillian took the mirror forcibly from me, and laid it out of my reach.

"This sort of thing won't do," she said firmly. "It only makes matters worse. Now just be as brave as you possibly can. Remember, I am right here every minute."

I could only cling to her. There seemed in all the world no refuge for me but Lillian's arms.

The weeks immediately following Dicky's departure are almost a blank memory to me. I seemed stunned, incapable of action, even of thinking clearly.

If it had not been for Lillian, I do not know what I should have done. She cared for me with infinite tenderness and understanding, she stood between me and the imperative curiosity and bewilderment of my mother-in-law, and she made all the arrangements necessary for my taking up my life as a thing apart from my husband.