Chapter 4

My first emotion was resentment against my husband.

Why, I asked myself passionately, had Dicky insisted upon my friendship with these people? Suppose they were his most intimate friends? I was his wife, and I had nothing whatever in common with them. Knowing them as well as he did, he must have known Harry Underwood's propensities. He must also have known the gossip that connected his own name with Lillian's. He should have guarded me from any contact with them. I felt my anger fuse to a white heat against both my husband and Lillian.

An ugly suspicion crossed my mind. Lillian Gale's absolute calmness in the face of her husband's wayward affections was unique in my experience of women. Was the secret of her indifference, a lack of interest in her own husband or an excess of interest in mine? Did she hope perhaps to gain ground with Dicky with the development of this situation? Was her warning to me only part of a cunningly constructed plan, whereby she would stimulate my interest in Harry Underwood?

I was ashamed of my thoughts even as they came to me. Lillian Gale seemed too big a woman, too frank and honest of countenance for such a subterfuge. But I could not help feeling all my old distrust and dislike of the woman rush over me. I had a struggle to keep my voice from being tinged with the dislike I felt as I answered her:

"I am sure you must be mistaken, Mrs. Underwood. Such a possibility as that would be unspeakably annoying We will not consider it."

"I think you will find you will have to consider it," she returned brusquely, with a curious glance at me "But we do not need to spoil our afternoon discussing it."

VIII

A TRAGEDY AVERTED

It was well after 7 o'clock when the ringing of the door bell told me that the Lesters had come. Dicky welcomed them and introduced me to them. Mrs. Lester was a pretty creature, birdlike, in her small daintiness, and a certain chirpy brightness. I judged that her mentality equalled the calibre of a sparrow, but I admitted also that the fact did not detract from her attractiveness. She was the sort of woman to be protected, to be cherished.

"I'm afraid I shall be very dull tonight. I am so worried about leaving the baby. She's only six months old, you know, and, I have had my mother with me ever since she was born until two weeks ago, so I have never left her with a maid before. This girl we have appears very competent, says she is used to babies, but I just can't help being as nervous as a cat."

"Are you still worrying about that baby?" Mrs. Underwood's loud voice sounded behind us. "Now, look here, Daisy, have a little common sense. You have had that maid over a year; she has been with your mother and you since the baby was born; there's a telephone at her elbow, and you are only five blocks away from home. Wasn't the child well when you left?"

"Sleeping just like a kitten," the proud mother answered. "You just ought to have seen her, one little hand all cuddled up against her face. I just couldn't bear to leave her."

Over Lillian Gale's face swept a swift spasm of pain. So quickly was it gone that I would not have noticed it, had not my eyes happened to rest on her face when Mrs. Lester spoke of her baby. Was there a child in that hectic past of hers? I decided there must be.

"Why don't you telephone now and satisfy yourself that the baby is all right, and instruct the maid to call you if she sees anything unusual about her?" I queried.

"Tell her you are going to telephone every little while. Then she will be sure to keep on the job," cynically suggested Mrs. Underwood.

"Oh, that will be just splendid," chirped Mrs. Lester. "Thank you so much, Mrs. Graham. Where is the telephone?"

"Dicky will get the number for you," said Mrs. Underwood, ushering her into the living room. I heard her shrill voice.

"Oh, Dicky-bird, please get Mrs. Lester's apartment for her. She wants to be sure the baby's all right."

Then I heard a deeper voice. "For heaven's sake, Daisy, don't make a fool of yourself. The kid's all right." That was Mr. Lester's voice, of course. Neither the tones of Dicky nor Harry Underwood had the disagreeable whining timbre of this man's.

Lillian's retort made me smile, it was so characteristic of her.

"Who unlocked the door of your cage, anyway? Get back in, and if you growl again tonight there will be no supper for you."

We all laughed and I went to help Katie put the finishing touches to our dinner. When I returned Mrs. Lester was seated in an armchair in the corner as if on a throne, with Harry Underwood in an attitude of exaggerated homage before her.

I felt suddenly out of it all, lonely. These people were nothing to me, I said to myself. They were not my kind. I had a sudden homesickness for the quiet monotony of my life before I married Dicky. I thought of the few social evenings I had spent in the days before I met Dicky, little dinners with the principals and teachers I had known, when I had been the centre of things, when my opinions had been referred to, as Lillian Gale's were now.

I went through the rest of the evening in a daze of annoyance and regret from which I did not fully emerge until we were all at the dinner table, with Dicky officiating at the chafing dish. Then suddenly Mrs. Lester turned to me, her face filled with nervous fears.

"Oh, Mrs. Graham, I don't believe I can wait for anything. I am getting so nervous about baby. I know it's awful to be so silly, but I just can't help it."

"Daisy!" Her husband's voice was stern, his face looked angry. "Do stop that nonsense. We are certainly not going home now."

His wife seemed to shrink into herself. Her pretty face, with its worried look, was like that of a little girl grieving over a doll. I felt a sudden desire to comfort her.

"I think you are worrying yourself unnecessarily, Mrs. Lester," I said in an undertone. We were sitting next each other, and I could speak to her without her husband overhearing. "When you telephoned the maid an hour ago, the baby was all right, wasn't she?"

"Yes, I know," she returned dejectedly. "But I have heard such dreadful things about maids neglecting babies left in their care. Suppose she should leave her alone in the apartment, and something should catch fire and--"

"See here, Daisy!" Lillian Gale joined our group, coffee cup in hand. "Drink your coffee and your cordial. Then pretty soon, if you feel you really must go, I'll gather up Harry and start for home. Then you can make Frank go."

"You are awfully good, Lillian." Mrs. Lester looked gratefully up at the older woman. "I know I am as silly as I can be, but you can't know how I am imagining every dreadful thing in the calendar."

"I know all about it," Mrs. Underwood returned shortly, almost curtly, and walked away toward the group of men at the other side of the apartment.

"I never knew that she ever had a child." Mrs. Lester's eyes were wide with amazement as they met mine.

"Neither did I." Purposely I made my tone non-committal. From the look in Lillian Gale's eyes when Mrs. Lester told us in my room of the way the baby looked asleep, I knew that some time she must have had a baby of her own in her arms.

But I detest gossip, no matter how kindly--if, indeed, gossip can ever be termed kindly. I could not discuss Mrs. Underwood's affairs with any one, especially when she was a guest of mine.

"But she must have had a baby some time," persisted little Mrs. Lester. Her anxiety about her own baby appeared to be forgotten for the moment. "It must have been a child of that awful man she divorced, or who divorced her. I never did get that story right."

I looked around the room. How I wished some one would interrupt our talk. I could not listen to Mrs. Lester's prattle without answering her, and I did not wish to express any opinion on the subject.

As if answering my unspoken wish, Harry Underwood rose and came toward me.

"Were you looking for me?" he queried audaciously.

I had a sudden helpless, angry feeling that this man had been covertly watching me. Annoyed as I was, I was glad that he had interrupted us, for his presence would effectually stop Mrs. Lester's surmises concerning his wife.

"Indeed I was not looking for you," I replied spiritedly. "But I am glad you are here. Please talk to Mrs. Lester while I go to the kitchen. I must give some directions to Katie."

"Of course that's a terribly hard task"--he began, smiling mischievously at Mrs. Lester.

But he never finished his sentence. A loud, prolonged ringing of the doorbell startled us all. It was the sort of ring one always associates with an urgent summons of some sort.

"Oh! my baby. I know something's happened to the baby and they've come to tell me."

Mrs. Lester's words rang high and shrill. They changed to a shriek as Dicky opened the door and fell back startled.

For past him rushed a girl with a fear-distorted face holding in her arms a baby that to my eyes looked as if it were dead.

But I had presence of mind enough to quiet Mrs. Lester's hysterical fears.

"That is not your baby," I said sharply, grasping her by the arm. "It is the child from across the hall!"

There is nothing in the world so pitiful to witness as the suffering of a baby.

We all realized this as the maid held out to us the tiny infant, rigid and blue as if it were already dead.

"Is the baby dead?" she gasped, her face convulsed with grief and fear. "My madam is at the theatre, and the baby has been fretty for two hours, and just a minute ago he stiffened out like this. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" she began to sob.

"Stop that!" Lillian Gale's voice rang out like a trumpet. "The baby is not dead. It is in a convulsion. Give it to me and run back to your apartment and bring me some warm blankets."

Of the six people at our little chafing dish supper, so suddenly interrupted, she was the only one who knew what to do. I had been able to, quiet Mrs. Lester's hysteria by telling her at once that the baby was not her own, as she had so widely imagined, but was helpless before the baby's danger.

Lillian's orders came thick and fast. She dominated the situation and swept us along in the fight to save the baby's life until the doctor, who had been summoned, arrived.

The physician was a tall, thin, young man, with a look of efficiency about him. He looked at the baby carefully, laid his hand upon the tiny forehead, then straightened himself.

"Is there any way in which the child's parents can be found?" Mr. Underwood evidently had told him of the nature of the seizure and the absence of the parents on the way up.

Lillian Gale's face grew pale under her rouge.

"There is danger, doctor?" she asked quietly

"There is always danger in these cases," he returned quietly, but his words were heard by a wild-eyed woman in evening dress who rushed through the open door followed by a man as agitated as she.

I said an unconscious prayer of thankfulness.

The baby's mother had arrived.

It seemed a week, but it was in reality only two hours later when Lillian Gale returned from the apartment across the hall, heavy eyed and dishevelled, her gown splashed with water, her rouge rubbed off in spots, her whole appearance most disreputable.

"The baby?" we all asked at once.

"Out of any immediate danger, the doctor says. The nurse came an hour ago, but the child had two more of those awful things, and I was able to help her. The mother is no good at all, one of those emotional women whose idea of taking care of a baby is to shriek over it."

Her voice held no contempt, only a great weariness. I felt a sudden rush of sympathetic liking for this woman, whom I had looked upon as an enemy.

"What can I get you, Mrs. Underwood?" I asked. "You look so worn out."

"If Katie has not thrown out that coffee," she returned practically, "let us warm it up."

I felt a foolish little thrill of housewifely pride. A few minutes before her appearance I had gone into the kitchen and made fresh coffee, anticipating her return. Katie, of course, I had sent to bed after she had cleared the table and washed the silver. I had told her to pile the dishes for the morning.

"I have fresh coffee all ready," I said. "I thought perhaps you might like a cup. Sit still, and I'll bring it in."

Harry Underwood sprang to his feet. "I'll carry the tray for you."

I thought I detected a little quiver of pain on Mrs. Underwood's face. Her husband had expressed no concern for her, but was offering to carry my tray. Truly, the tables were turning. I had suffered because of the rumors I had heard concerning this woman's regard for Dicky. Was I, not meaning it, to cause her annoyance?

"Indeed you will do no such thing," I spoke playfully to hide my real indignation at the man. "Dicky is the only accredited waiter around this house."

"Card from the waiters' union right in my pocket," Dicky grinned, and stretched lazily as he followed me to the kitchen.

We served the coffee, and Lillian and her husband went home. As the door closed behind them Dicky came over to me and took me in his arms.

"Pretty exciting evening, wasn't it, sweetheart?" he said. "I'm afraid you are all done out."

He drew me to our chair and we sat down together. I found myself crying, something I almost never do. Dicky smoothed my hair tenderly, silently, until I wiped my eyes. Then his clasp tightened around me.

"Tonight has taught me a lesson," he said. "Sometimes I have dreamed of a little child of our own, Madge. But I would rather never have a child than go through the suffering those poor devils had tonight. It must be awful to lose a baby."

I hid my face in his shoulder. Not even to my husband could I confess just then how the touch of the naked, rigid little body of that other woman's child had sent a thrill of longing through me for a baby's hands that should be mine.

IX

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN

"Well, we are in plenty of time."

We were seated, Dicky and I, in the waiting room of the Long Island railroad a week after my dinner party that had almost ended in tragedy. Dicky had bought our tickets to Marvin, the little village which was to be the starting point of our country ramble, and we were putting in the time before our train was ready in gazing at the usual morning scene in a railroad station.

There were not many passengers going out on the island, but scores of commuters were hurrying through the station on their way to their offices and other places of employment.

"You don't see many of the commuters up here," Dicky remarked. "There's a passage direct from the trains to the subway on the lower level, and most of them take that. Some of the women come up to prink a bit in the waiting room, and some of the men come through here to get cigars or papers, but the big crowd is down on the train level."

I hardly heard him, for I was so interested in a girl who had just come into the waiting room. I had never seen so self-possessed a creature in my life. She was unusually beautiful, with golden hair that was so real the most captious person could not suspect that hair of being dyed. Her eyes were dark, and the unusual combination of eyes and hair fitted a face with regular features and a fair skin. I had seen Christmas and Easter cards with faces like hers. But I had never seen anyone like her in real life, and I am afraid I stared at her as hard as did everyone else in the waiting room.

"By jove!" Dicky drew in a deep breath. "Isn't she the most ripping beauty you ever saw?"

His eyes were following her lithe, perfect figure as she walked down the waiting room. I have never seen a pretty girl appear so utterly unconscious of the glances directed toward her as she did. But with a woman's intuition I knew that underneath her calm exterior she was noticing and appraising every admiring look she received. I could not have told how I knew this, but I did know it.

She sat down a little distance from us, and Dicky frankly turned quite around to stare at her.

"I wonder if she's going on our train," he mused. "By George, I never saw anything like her in my life."

I looked at him in open amazement, tinged not a little with resentment. He was with me, his bride of less than a month, for our first day's outing since our marriage, and yet his eyes were following this other woman with the most open admiration. I felt hurt, neglected, but I was determined he should not think me jealous.

"Yes, isn't she beautiful," I said as enthusiastically as I could. "I never have seen just that combination of eyes and hair."

"It's her features and figure that get me. I'd like to get a glimpse of her hands and feet. Perhaps she will sit near us in the train. If she does, I promise you I am going to stare at her unmercifully."

As luck would have it, just as we seated ourselves in the train, the girl we had seen in the railway station came through the door with the same air of regal unconsciousness of her surroundings that she had shown while running the gauntlet of the admiring and critical eyes in the waiting room.

She carried in her hand a small traveling bag, which, while not new, had received such good care that it was not at all shabby. She spent no time in selecting a seat, but with an air of taking the first one available sat down directly opposite Dicky and me, depositing her bag close to her feet.

As she sat down she calmly crossed her knees, something which I hate to see a woman do in a public place.

"Gee, she has the hands and the feet all right!"

Dicky has a trick of mumbling beneath his breath, so that no one can detect that he is talking save the person whose ear is nearest to him. It is convenient sometimes, but at other times it is most embarrassing, especially when he is making comments upon people near us.

"I don't blame her for elevating one foot above the other," Dicky rattled on. "Not one woman in a thousand can wear those white spats. She must have mighty small, well-shaped tootsies under them."

The girl sat looking straight ahead of her. The crossing of her knees revealed a swirl of silken petticoat, and more than a glimpse of filmy silk stockings.

Her shoes were patent leather pumps, utterly unsuitable for a trip to the country. Over them she wore spats of the kind affected by so many girls.

I had a sudden remembrance of times in my own life when a new pair of shoes was as impossible to attain as a whole wardrobe. I had a sudden intuition that the unsuitable pumps were like the rest of her clothes, left over from some former affluence. She had bravely made the best of them by covering them with spats, which I knew she could obtain quite cheaply at some bargain sale.

"Looks like ready money, doesn't she?" mumbled Dicky in my ear.

I did not answer, and suddenly Dicky stared at me.

"A trifle peeved, aren't you?" Dicky's voice was mocking. But he saw what I could not conceal, that tears were rising to my eyes. I was able to keep from shedding them, and no one but Dicky could possibly have guessed I was agitated.

He changed his tone and manner on the instant.

"I know I have been thoughtless, sweetheart," he said earnestly, "but I keep forgetting that you are not used to my vagaries yet. Tell me honestly, would you have been so resentful if I had been interested in some old man with chin whiskers as I was in the beautiful lady?"

A light broke upon me. How foolish I had been. I looked at Dicky shamefacedly.

"You mean--"

"That she's exactly the model I've been looking for to pose for those outdoor illustrations Fillmore wants. One of the series is to be a girl on a step ladder, picking apple blossoms. She is to be on her knees, and one foot is to be stretched out behind her. The picture demands a perfect foot and ankle, and this girl has them. Her features and hair, too, are just the type I want. She would know how to pose, too. You can see that from her air as she sits there. And that's half the battle. If they do not have the faculty of posing naturally they could never be taught."

I felt much humiliated, and I was very angry, but I must remember, I told myself, that I had married an artist. I foresaw, however, many complications in our lives together. If every time we took a trip anywhere, Dicky was to spend his time planning to secure the services of some possible model I could see very little pleasure for me in our outings.

But I knew an apology was due Dicky, and I gathered courage to make it.

"I am sorry to have annoyed you, Dicky," I said at last. "But I did not dream that you were looking at her as a possible model."

"And looked at from any other standpoint it was rather raw of me," admitted Dicky. "But let's forget it. She'll probably drop off the train at Forest Hills or Kew Gardens, she looks like the product of those suburbs, and I'll never see her again."

But his prediction was not fulfilled.

"Marvin!"

The conductor shouted the word as the train drew up to one of the most forlorn looking railroad stations it was ever my lot to see.

Dicky and I rose from our seats, he with subdued excitement, I with a feeling of depression. For the girl who had claimed so much of our attention was getting off at Marvin after all.

I remembered the bargain I had made with my conscience.

"What do you know about that?" Dicky exclaimed, as he saw her go down the aisle ahead of us. "She also is getting off here. I wonder who she is?"

"Listen, Dicky," I said rapidly. "Walk ahead, see in which direction she goes, and ask the station master if he knows who she is. I know something which I will tell you when you have done that. Perhaps you may have her for a model, after all."

Dicky gave me one swift glance of mingled surprise and admiration, then did as I asked. As I followed him down the aisle and noted the eagerness with which he was hurrying, I felt a sudden qualm of doubt. Was I really doing the wisest thing?

I waited quietly on the station platform until Dicky rejoined me.

"Her name's Draper," he said. "The station agent doesn't know much about her, except that she visits a sister, Mrs. Gorman, here every summer. He never saw her here in the winter before. I got Mrs. Gorman's address, 329 Shore Road, called Shore Road because it never gets anywhere near the shore. Much good the address will do me, though. Queer she doesn't take the bus. It must be a mile to her sister's home. She's probably one of those walking bugs."

"She didn't take the bus because she could not afford it," I said quietly.

Dicky stared at me in amazement.

"How do you know?" he said finally. "Do you know her? No, of course you don't. But how in creation--"

"Listen, Dicky," I interrupted. "I've turned too many dresses of my own not to recognize makeshifts when I see them. Everything that girl has on except her stockings and gloves has been remodelled from her old stuff. Her pumps are not suitable at all for walking; they are evening pumps, of a style two years old at that. But she has covered them with spats, so that no one will suspect that she wears them from necessity, not choice."

"Well, I'll be--" Dicky uttered his favorite expletive. "It takes one woman to dissect another. She looked like the readiest kind of ready money to me. Why, say, if what you say is true, she ought to be glad to earn the money I could pay her for posing. I could get her lots of other work, too."

"Perhaps she wouldn't like to do that sort of thing."

"What sort of thing? What's wrong with it?" Dicky asked belligerently. "Oh, you mean figure posing! She wouldn't have to do that at all if she didn't want to. Plenty of good nudes. It's the intangible, high-bred look and ability to wear clothes well that's hard to get."

We had walked past the unpainted little shack that but for the word "Marvin" in large letters painted across one end of it would never have been taken for a railroad station. Without looking where we were going we found ourselves in front of an immense poster on a large board back of the station. The letters upon it were visible yards away.