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.
"Marvin," it read, "the prettiest, quaintest village on the south
shore. Please don't judge the town by the station."
He took my arm and turned me away from the billboard toward a wide,
dusty road winding away from the station to the eastward.
"But, Dicky," I protested. "I thought you wanted to see about securing
that girl as a model."
"Oh, that can wait," said Dicky carelessly.
My heart sang as I slipped my arm in Dicky's. It was going to be an
enjoyable day after all.
X
"GRACE BY NAME AND GRACE BY NATURE"
"What's the matter, Madge? Got a grouch or something?"
Dicky faced me in the old hall of the deserted Putnam Manor Inn, where
we had expected to find warmth and food and the picturesqueness of a
century back. Instead of these things we had found the place in the
hands of a caretaker. Dicky had asked to go through the house on the
pretence of wishing to rent it.
"I haven't a bit of a grouch." I tried to speak as cheerfully as I
could, for I dreaded Dicky's anger when I told him my feeling upon the
subject of going over the house under false pretences. "But I don't
think it is right for us to go through the rooms. The woman wouldn't
have let us come in if you hadn't said we wished to rent it. It's
deception, and I wish you wouldn't insist upon my going any further. I
can't enjoy seeing the rooms at all."
Dicky stared at me for a moment as if I were some specimen of humanity
he had never seen before. Then he exploded.
"Another one of your scruples, eh? By Jove, I wonder where you keep
them all. You're always ready to trot one out just in time to spoil
any little thing I'm trying to do for your pleasure or mine."
"Please hush, Dicky," I pleaded. I was afraid the woman in the next
room would hear him, he spoke in such loud tones.
"I'll hush when I get good and ready." I longed to shake him, his tone
and words were so much like those of a spoiled child. But he lowered
his tone, nevertheless, and stood for a minute or two in sulky silence
before the empty fireplace.
"Well! Come along," he said at last. "I'm sure there is no pleasure
to me in looking over this place. I've seen it often enough when old
Forsman had it filled with colonial junk, and served the best meals to
be found on Long Island. It's like a coffin now to me. But I thought
you might like to look it over, as you had never seen it. But for
heaven's sake let us respect your scruples!"
I knew better than to make any answer. I wished above everything
else to have this day end happily, this whole day to ourselves in the
country, upon which I had counted so much. I feared Dicky would be
angry enough to return to the city, as he had threatened to do when
he found the inn closed. So it was with much relief that after we had
gone back into the other room I heard him ask the caretaker if there
were some place in the neighborhood where we could obtain a meal.
"Do you know where the Shakespeare House is?" she asked.
"Never heard of it," Dicky answered, "although I've been around here
quite a bit, too."