Chapter 7

I put my arms around his neck. "Don't you know, foolish Dicky," I murmured, "that there's nobody else in the world for me but just you, you, you?"

XIII

"IF YOU AREN'T CROSS AND DISPLEASED"

Today my mother-in-law!

That was my thought when I awoke on the morning of the day which was to bring Dicky's mother to live with us.

I am afraid if I set down my exact thoughts I should have to admit that I had a distinct feeling of rebellion against the expected visit of Dicky's mother.

If it were only a visit! There was just the trouble. Then I could have welcomed my mother-in-law, entertained her royally, kept at top pitch all the time she was with us, guarded every word and action, and kept from her knowledge the fact that Dicky and I often quarrelled.

But Dicky's mother, as far as I could see, was to be a member of our household for the rest of her life. She herself had arranged it in a letter, the calm phrases of which still irritated me, as I recalled them. She had taken me so absolutely for granted, as though my opinion amounted to nothing, and only her wishes and those of her son counted.

But suddenly my cheeks flamed with shame. After all, this woman who was coming was my husband's mother, an old woman, frail, almost an invalid. I made up my mind to put away from me all the disagreeable features of her advent into my home, and to busy myself with plans for her comfort and happiness.

I hurried through my breakfast, for I wanted plenty of time for the last preparations before Dicky's mother should arrive. Dicky had gone to his studio for a while and then would go over to the station in time to meet her train, which was due at 11:30.

As I started to my room I heard the peal of the doorbell.

"I will answer it, Katie," I called back, and went quickly to the entrance. A special delivery postman stood there holding out a letter to me. As I signed his slip, I saw that the handwriting upon the letter was Jack's.

What could have happened? I dreaded inexpressibly some calamity.

Only something of the utmost importance, I knew, could have induced my brother-cousin to write to me. He was too careful of my welfare to excite Dicky's unreasoning jealousy by a letter, unless there was desperate need for it.

Finally, I sat down in an arm-chair by the window, and breaking the seal, drew out the letter.

"Dear Cousin Margaret:

"I have decided, suddenly, to go across the pond and get in the big mix-up. You perhaps remember that I have spoken to you frequently of my friend, Paul Caillard who has been with me in many a bit of ticklish work. He was with me in South America, and like me, heard of the war for the first time when he got out of the wilderness. He is a Frenchman, you know, and is going back to offer his services to the engineering corps."

"And I am going with him, Margaret. I think I can be of service over there. Paul Caillard is the best friend I have. As you know you are the only relative I have in the world, and you are happily and safely married, so I feel that I am harming no one by my decision.

"We sail tomorrow morning on the Saturn. It will be impossible for me to come to your home before then. So this is good-by. When I come back, if I come back, I want to meet your husband and see you in your home.

"And now I must speak of a little matter of which you are ignorant, but of which you must be told before I go. Before your mother died, I had made my will, leaving her everything I possessed, for you and she were all the family I had ever known. After her death I changed her name to yours. If anything should happen to me, my attorney, William Faye, 149 Broadway, will attend to everything for you. He is also my executor.

"Most of what I have, would have come to you by law, anyway, Margaret, for you are 'my nearest of kin'--isn't that the way the law puts it? But you might have some unpleasantness from those Pennsylvania cousins of ours, so I have protected you against such a contingency.

"And now, Margaret, good-by and God bless you.

"Your affectionate cousin, Jack."

I finished the letter with a numb feeling at my heart. It seemed to me as if one of the foundations of my life had given away.

When Jack had left me after that miserable reunion dinner where he had been hurt so cruelly by the news of my marriage during his year's absence, he had said--ah, how well I remembered the words--"I shall not see you again, dear girl, unless you need me, if you ever do. I can't be near you without loving you and hating your husband, whoever he may be, and that is a dangerous state of affairs. But wherever I am, a note or a wire to the Hotel Alfred will be forwarded to me, and if the impossible should happen, and your husband, ever fail you, remember Jack is waiting, ready to do anything for you."

I had not expected to see Jack for months, perhaps years, but the knowledge of his faithfulness, of his nearness, had been of much comfort to me. And now he was going away, probably to his death.

The most bitter knowledge of all, was that which forced itself upon my mind. Jack was going to the war because he was unhappy over my marriage. He had not said so, of course, in the letter which he knew my husband must read, but I knew it. The remembrance of his face, his voice, when I told him of my marriage was enough. I did not need written words to know that perhaps I was sending him to his death!

I glanced at the clock--11:15. Only three-quarters of an hour till the train which was bringing my mother-in-law to our home was due! She would be in the house within three-quarters of an hour! Would I have time to dress, go after the flowers and cream we needed for luncheon and be back in time to welcome her?

Common sense whispered to omit the flowers, and send Katie for the cream. But one of my faults or virtues--I never have been able to decide which--is the persistence with which I stick to a plan, once I have decided upon it. I made up my mind to take a chance on getting back in time.

I made my purchases and on my way back I stepped into the corner drug store and telephoned Jack. He would not hear of my seeing him sail, and he would not promise to write me. Then there was a long silence. I wondered what he was debating with himself.

"I am going to let you in on a little secret," he said at last. "I have provided myself with the means of knowing how you fare, and I suppose I ought to let you have the same privilege. You know Mrs. Stewart, who keeps the boarding house where you and your mother lived so many years?"

"Oh, yes."

"Well, she and I are going to correspond. Now, understand, Margaret, I am going to send no messages to you. I want none from you. Remember, you are married. Your husband objects to your friendship with me. I will do nothing underhand. But if anything happens to you I shall know it through Mrs. Stewart, and she will always know where I am and what I am doing."

"That is some comfort," I returned earnestly. "What time does the Saturn sail tomorrow?"

"At 10 o'clock. But, Madge, you must not come."

"I know," I returned meekly enough, although a daring plan was just beginning to creep into my brain. "And I will say good-by now, Jack. Good-by, dear boy, and good luck."

My voice was trembling, and there was a tremor in the deep voice that answered.

"Good-by, dear little girl. God bless and keep you." The next moment I was stumbling out of the booth with just one thought, to get home and bathe my eyes and pull myself together before the arrival of my mother-in-law.

I was just outside the drug store, and had realized that I'd left my purchases in the telephone booth, when I heard my name called excitedly.

From the window of a taxicab Dicky was gesturing wildly, while beside him a stately woman sat with a bored look upon her face.

My mother-in-law had arrived!

"Madge! What under the heavens is the matter?"

Dicky sprang out of the taxicab, which had drawn up before the door of the drug store, and seized my arm.

"Nothing is the matter," I said shortly. "I went out to get some cream for Katie's pudding and some flowers. I stopped here in the drug store to get some of my headache tablets, and left the flowers and cream. Some dust blew in my eyes. I suppose that's what makes you think I have been crying."

"That's you, all over," Dicky grumbled. "Risk not being at home to greet mother in order to have a few flowers stuck around. Here, come on and meet mother, and I'll go in and get your flowers." He took my arm and made a step toward the taxicab.

"No, no," I said hastily. "I know exactly where I left them. I won't be a minute."

Luckily the flowers and cream were where I had left them. I detest the idea of arranging any part of one's toilet in public, but I did not want the critical eyes of Dicky's mother to see my reddened eyes, and roughened hair, which had been slightly loosened in my hurry.

There was a mirror near the telephone booth at the back of the store. I took off my fur cap, smoothed back my hair and put on the cap again. From my purse I took a tiny powder puff and removed the traces of tears. Then I fairly snatched my parcels and hurried to the door. Dicky was just entering the store as I reached it. His face was black. I saw that he was in one of his rages.

"Look here, Madge," he said, and he made no pretense of lowering his voice, "do you think my mother enjoys sitting there in that taxicab waiting for you? She was so fatigued by her journey that she didn't even want to have her baggage looked after, something unusual for her. That is the reason we got here so early. And now she is positively faint for a cup of tea, and you are fiddling around here over a lot of flowers."

If he had made no reference to his mother's faintness, I should have answered him spiritedly. But I remembered my own little mother, and her longing when fatigued for a cup of hot tea.

"I'm awfully sorry, Dicky," I said meekly. "You see you arrived before I thought you would. I'll get the tea for her the moment we reach the house."

But Dicky was not mollified. He stalked moodily ahead of me until he reached the open door of the taxicab. Then his manner underwent a sudden change. One would have thought him the most devoted of husbands to see him draw me forward.

"Mother," he said, and my heart glowed even in its resentment at the note of pride in his voice, "this is my wife. Madge, my mother."

Mrs. Graham was leaning back against the cushions of the taxicab. If she had not looked so white and ill I should have resented the look of displeasure that rested upon her features.

"How do you do?" she said coldly. "You must pardon me, I am afraid, for not saying the usual things. I have been very much upset."

The studied insolence of the apology was infinitely worse than the coldness of her manner. I waited for a moment to control myself before answering her.

"I am afraid that you are really ill," I said as cordially as I could. "I am so sorry to have kept you waiting, but I did not expect you quite so soon, and I had some errands."

"It doesn't matter," she said indifferently. Her manner put me aside from her consideration as if I had been a child or a servant. She turned to Dicky.

"Are we almost there, dear?"

The warmth of her tones to him, the love displayed in every inflection, set out in more bitter contrast the coldness with which she was treating me.

"Right here now," as the taxi drew up to the door of the apartment house. There was a peculiar inflection in Dicky's voice. I stole a glance at him. He was gazing at his mother with a puzzled look. I fancied I saw also a trace of displeasure. But it vanished in another minute as he sprang to the ground, paid the driver and helped his mother and me out.

She leaned heavily on his arm as we went up the stairs to the third floor upon which our apartment was.

At the door, Katie, who evidently had heard the taxicab, stood smiling broadly.

"This is Katie, mother," Dicky said kindly. "She will help take care of you."

"How do you do, Katie?" The words were the same, but the tones were much kinder than her greeting to me.

Dicky assisted her into the living room. She sank into the armchair, and Dicky took off her hat and loosened her cloak. She leaned her head against the back of the chair, and her face looked so drawn and white that I felt alarmed.

"Katie, prepare a cup of strong tea immediately," I directed, and Katie vanished. "Is there nothing I can do for you, Mrs. Graham?" I approached her chair.

"Nothing, thank you. You may save the maid the trouble of preparing that tea if you will. I could not possibly drink it. I always carry my own tea with me, and prepare it myself. If it is not too much trouble, Dicky, will you get me a pot of hot water and some cream? I have everything else here."

I really felt sorry for Dicky. He caught the tension in the atmosphere, and looked from his mother to me with a helpless caught-between-two-fires-expression. With masculine obtuseness he put his foot in it in his endeavor to remedy matters.

"Why do you call my mother Mrs. Graham, Madge?" he said querulously. "She is your mother now as well as mine, you know."

"I am nothing of the kind." His mother spoke sharply. "Of all the idiotic assumptions, that is the worst, that marriage makes close relatives, and friends of total strangers. Your wife and I may learn to love each other. Then there will be plenty of time for her to call me mother. As it is, I am very glad she evidently feels as I do about it. Now, Dicky, if you will kindly get me that hot water."

"I will attend to it," I said decidedly "Dicky, take your mother to her room and assist her with her things. I will have the hot water and cream for her almost at once."

In the shelter of the dining room, where neither Dicky nor his mother nor Katie could see or hear me, I clenched my hands and spoke aloud.

"Call _her_ mother! Give that ill-tempered, tyrannical old woman the sacred name that means so much to me. _Never_ as long as I live!"

Dicky met me at the door of the dining room and took the tray I carried. It held my prettiest teapot filled with boiling water, a tiny plate of salted crackers, together with cup, saucer, spoon and napkin.

"Say, sweetheart," he whispered, "I want to tell you something. My mother isn't always like this. She can be very sweet when she wants to. But when things don't go to suit her she takes these awful icy 'dignity' tantrums, and you can't touch her with a ten-foot pole until she gets over them. She was tired, from the journey, and the fact that you kept her waiting in the taxicab made her furious. But she'll get over it. Just be patient, won't you, darling?"

If the average husband only realized how he could play upon his wife's heart-strings with a few loving words I believe there would be less marital unhappiness in the world. A few minutes before I had been fiercely resentful against Dicky's mother. And my anger had reached to Dicky, for I felt in some vague way that he must be responsible for his mother's rudeness.

But the knowledge that he, too, was used to her injustice and that he resented it when directed against me made all the difference in the world. I reached up my hand and patted his cheek.

"Dear boy, nothing in the world matters, if _you_ aren't cross and displeased."

XIV

A QUARREL AND A CRISIS

"Can you give me a few minutes' time, Dicky? I have something to tell you."

Dicky put down the magazine with a bored air. "What is it?" he asked shortly.

Involuntarily my thoughts flew back to the exquisite courtesy which had always been Dicky's in the days before we were married. There had been such a delicate reverence in his every tone and action. I wondered if marriage changed all men as it had changed my husband.

I went to my room and brought the letter back to Dicky. He read it through, and I saw his face grow blacker with each word. When he came to the signature, he turned back to the beginning and read the epistle through again. Then he crumpled it into a ball and threw it violently across the room.

"See here, my lady," he exploded. "I think it's about time we came to a show-down over this business. When I found that first letter from this lad, I asked you if he were a relative, and you said 'No.' Then you hand me this touching screed with its 'nearest of kin' twaddle, and speaking of leaving you a fortune. Now what's the answer?"

"Oh, hardly a fortune, Dicky," I returned quietly. "Jack has only a few thousand at the outside."

I fear I was purposely provoking, but Dicky's sneering, insulting manner roused every bit of spirit in me.

"A few thousand you'll never touch as long as you are my wife," stormed Dicky. "But you are evading my question."

"Oh, no, I'm not," I said coolly. "That real relationship between Jack and myself is so slight as to be practically nothing. He is the son of a distant cousin of my mother's. Perhaps you remember that on the day you made the scene about the letter you had just emphasized your very close friendship for Mrs. Underwood in a fashion rather embarrassing to me. I resolved that, to speak vulgarly, 'what was sauce for the gander,' etc., and that I would put my friendship for Jack upon the same basis as yours for Mrs. Underwood. So when you asked me whether or not Jack was a relative I said 'No.'"

"That makes this letter an insult both to you and to me," Dicky said venomously, his face black with anger.

I sprang to my feet, trembling with anger.

"Be careful," I said icily. "You don't deserve an explanation, but you shall have one, and that is the last word I shall ever speak to you on the subject of Jack. His letter is the truth. I am his 'nearest of kin,' save the cousins in Pennsylvania of whom he speaks. He was orphaned in his babyhood and my mother's only sister legally adopted him, and reared him as her own son. We were practically raised together, for my mother and my aunt always lived near each other. Jack was the only brother I ever knew. I the only sister he had.

"When my aunt died she left him her little property with the understanding that he would always look after my mother and myself. He kept his promise royally. My mother and I owed him many, many kindnesses. God forbid that I ever am given the opportunity to claim Jack's property. But if he should be killed"--I choked upon the word--"I shall take it and try to use it wisely, as he would have me do."

"Very touching, upon my word," sneered Dicky, "and very interesting--if true." He almost spat the words out, he was so angry.

"It does not matter to me in the least whether you believe it or not," I returned frigidly.

Dicky jumped up with an oath. "I know it doesn't matter to you. Nothing is of any consequence to you but this"--he ripped out an offensive epithet. "If he is so near and dear to you, it's a wonder you don't want to go over and bid him a fond farewell."

I was fighting to keep back the tears. As soon as I could control my voice I spoke slowly:

"The reason why I did not go is because I thought you might not like it. God knows, I wanted to go."

I walked steadily to my room, closed the door and locked it and fell upon the bed, a sobbing heap.

"Where are you going?" Dicky's voice was fairly a snarl as I faced him a little later in my street costume.

"I do not know," I replied truthfully and coldly. "I am going out for the rest of the afternoon. Perhaps you will be able to control yourself when I return."

It was not the most tactful speech in the world. But I was past caring whether Dicky were angry or pleased. I am not very quick to wrath, but when it is once roused my anger is intense.

"You know you are lying," he said loudly. "You are going to see this precious-cousin-brother-lover, whichever he may be."

My fear that Katie or his mother would hear him overcame the primitive impulse I had to avenge the insolent words with a blow, as a man would.

"You will apologize for that language to me when I come back," I said icily. "I do not know whether I shall go to bid Jack good-by or not. I have no idea what I shall do, save that I must get away from here for a little while. But if you have any sense of the ordinary decencies of life you will lower your voice. I do not suppose you care to have either your mother or Katie overhear this edifying conversation."

"Much you care about what my mother thinks," Dicky rejoined, and this time his voice was querulous, but decidedly lower. "Fine courteous treatment you're giving her, leaving her like this when she has been in the house but a couple of hours."

"Your mother has shown such eagerness for my society that no doubt she will be heartbroken if she awakens and finds that I am not here."

"That's right, slam my mother. Why didn't you say in the first place you couldn't bear to have her in the same house with you?"

"Dicky, you are most unjust," I began hotly, and then stopped horror-stricken.

"What is the matter, my son?" The incisive voice of my mother-in-law sounded from the door of her room.

"Go back to bed, mother," Dicky said hastily. "I'm awfully sorry we disturbed you."

"Disturbing me doesn't matter," she said decidedly, "but what you were saying does. I heard you mention me, and I naturally wish to know if I am the subject of this very remarkable conversation."

I know now where Dicky gets the sneering tone which sets me wild when he directs it against me. His mother's inflection is exactly like her son's. The contemptuous glance with which she swept me nerved me to speak to her in a manner which I had never dreamed I would use toward Dicky's mother.

"Mrs. Graham," I said, raising my head and returning her stare with a look equally cold and steady, "my husband"--I emphasized the words slightly--"and I are discussing something which cannot possibly concern you. You were not the subject of conversation, and your name was brought in by accident. I hope you will be good enough to allow us to finish our discussion."

My mother-in-law evidently knows when to stop. She eyed me steadily for a moment.

"Dicky," she said at last, and her manner of sweeping me out of the universe was superb, "in five minutes I wish to speak to you in my room."

"All right, mother." Dicky's tone was unsteady, and as his mother's door closed behind her I prepared myself to face his increased anger.

"How dared you to speak to my mother in that fashion?" he demanded hoarsely.

When I am most angry, a diabolically aggravating spirit seems to possess me. I could feel it enmeshing me.

"Please don't be melodramatic, Dicky," I said mockingly, "and if you have quite finished, I will go."

"No, you won't, at least not until I have told you something," he snarled.

He sprang to my side, and seized my shoulder in a cruel grip that made me wince.

"We'll just have this out once for all," he said. "If you go out of this door you go out for good. I don't care for the role of complacent husband."

The insult left me deadly cold. I knew, of course, that Dicky was so blinded by rage and jealousy that he had no idea of what he was saying. But ungovernable as I knew his temper to be, he had passed the limits of my forebearance.

"I will answer that speech in 10 minutes," I said and walked into my room again.

For I had come to a decision as startling as it was sudden. I hastily threw some most necessary things into a bag. Then I put a ten-dollar bill of the housekeeping money into my purse, resolving to send it back to Dicky as soon as I could get access to my own tiny bank account, the remnant of my teaching savings. Into a parcel I placed the rest of the housekeeping money, my wedding and engagement rings and the lavalliere which Dicky had given me as a wedding present. I put them in the back of the top drawer of my dressing table, for I knew if I handed them to Dicky in his present frame of mind he would destroy them. Then I walked steadily into the living room, bag in hand.