I had thought that I must tell you right away, but your splendid
generous attitude makes it possible for me to ask you this. I can see
there is no place here where we can talk undisturbed. Besides, I must
take no chance of your mother-in-law's finding out that I am here.
Will you come to my apartment tomorrow morning any time after 10?
Harry will be gone by then, and we can have the place to ourselves."
"I will be there at 10," I said gravely. I felt that her honesty and
directness called for an explicit answer, and I gave it to her.
"Thank you." She smiled a little sadly, and then added: "Don't imagine
all sorts of impossible things. It isn't a very pretty story, but I am
beginning to hope that after you have heard it we may become very real
friends."
Preposterous as her words seemed in the light of the things I had
heard from the lips of my husband's mother, they gave me a sudden
feeling of comfort.
XIX
LILLIAN UNDERWOOD'S STORY
"Well, I suppose we might as well get it over with."
Lillian Underwood and I sat in the big tapestried chairs on either
side of the glowing fire in her library. She had instructed Betty,
her maid, to bring her neither caller nor telephone message, until our
conference should be ended. The two doors leading from the room
were locked and the heavy velvet curtains drawn over them, making us
absolutely secure from intrusion.
"I suppose so." The answer was banal enough, but it was physically
impossible for me to say anything more. My throat was parched, my
tongue thick, and I clenched my hands tightly in my lap to prevent
their trembling.
Mrs. Underwood gave me a searching glance, then reached over and laid
her warm, firm hand over mine.
"See here, my child," she said gently, "this will never do. Before I
tell you this story there is something you must be sure of. Look at
me. No matter what else you may think of me do you believe me to be
capable of telling you a falsehood when a make a statement to you upon
my honor?"
Her eyes met mine fairly and squarely. Mrs. Underwood has wonderful
eyes, blue-gray, expressive. They shone out from the atrocious mask of
make-up which she always uses, and I unreservedly accepted the message
they carried to me.
"I am sure you would not deceive me," I returned quickly, and meant
it.
"Thank you. Then before I begin my story I am going to assure you of
one thing, upon--my--honor."
She spoke slowly, impressively, her eyes never wavering from mine.
"You have heard rumors about Dicky and me; you will hear things from
me today which will show you that the rumors were justified in part,
and yet--I want you to believe me when I tell you that there is
nothing in any past association of your husband and myself which would
make either of us ashamed to look you straight in the eyes."
I believed her! I would challenge anyone in the world to look into
those clear, honest eyes and doubt their owner's truth.
There was a long minute when I could not speak. I had not known the
full measure of what I feared until her words lifted the burden from
my soul.
Then I had my moment, recognized it, rose to it. I leaned forward and
returned the earnest gaze of the woman opposite to me.
"Dear Mrs. Underwood," I said. "Why tell me any more? I am perfectly
satisfied with what you have just told me. Be sure that no rumors will
trouble me again."
Her clasp of my hand tightened until my rings hurt my flesh. Into her
face came a look of triumph.
"I knew it," she said jubilantly. "I could have banked on you. You're
a big woman, my dear, and I believe we are going to be real friends."
She loosened her clasp of my hands, leaned back in her chair and
looked for a long, meditative moment at the fire.
"You cannot imagine how much easier your attitude makes the telling of
my story," she began finally.
"But I just assured you that there was no need for the telling," I
interrupted.
"I know. But it is your right to know, and it will be far better if
you are put in possession of the facts. It is an ugly story. I think I
had better tell you the worst of it first."
I marvelled at the look that swept across her face. Bitter pain and
humiliation were written there so plainly that I looked away. Then
my eyes fell upon her strong, white, shapely hands which were resting
upon the arms of the chair. They were strained, bloodless, where the
fingers gripped the tapestried surface.
When she spoke, her voice was low, hurried, abashed. "Seven years
ago," she said, "my first husband sued me for divorce, and named Dicky
as a co-respondent."
I sprang from my seat.
"Oh, no, no, no," I cried, hardly knowing what I said. "Surely not. I
remember reading the old story when you were married to Mr. Underwood,
three years ago--I've always admired your work so much that I've read
every line about you--and surely Dicky's name wasn't mentioned. I
would have remembered it when I met him, I know."
"There, there." She was on her feet beside me and with a gentle yet
compelling hand put me back in my chair. Her voice had the same tone
a mother would use to a grieving child. "Dicky's name wasn't mentioned
when the story was printed the last time, because at the time the
divorce was granted, Mr. Morten withdrew the accusation that he had
made against him."
"Why?" The question left my lips almost without volition. I sensed
something tragic, full of meaning for me behind the statement she had
made.
She did not answer me for a minute or two.
"I can only answer that question on your word of honor not to tell
Dicky what I am going to tell you," she said. "It is something he
suspects, but which I would never confirm."
She paused expectantly. "Upon honor, of course," I answered simply.
She rose and moved swiftly toward one of the built-in bookcases. I saw
that she put her hand upon one of the sections and pulled upon it. To
my astonishment it moved toward her, and I saw that behind it was a
cleverly constructed wall safe. She turned the combination, opened the
door and took from the safe an inlaid box which, as she came toward
me, I saw was made of rare old woods.
She sat down again in the big chair and looked at the box musingly,
tenderly. I leaned forward expectantly. Again I had the sense of
tragedy near me.
Drawing the key from her dress she opened the box and took from it a
miniature, gazed at it a minute, and then handed it to me.
"Oh, Mrs. Underwood," I exclaimed. "How exquisite."
The miniature was of the most beautiful child I had ever seen, a tiny
girl of perhaps two years. She stood poised as if running to meet one,
her baby arms outstretched. It was a picture to delight or break a
mother's heart.
I looked up from the miniature to the face of the woman who had handed
it to me.
"Yes," she answered my unspoken query, "my little daughter; my only
child. She is the price I paid for Dicky's immunity from the scandal
which the unjust man that I called husband brought upon me."
My first impulse was one of horror-stricken sympathy for her. Then
came the reaction. A flaming jealousy enveloped me from head to foot.
"How she must have loved Dicky to do this for him!" The thought beat
upon my brain like a sledge hammer.
"Don't think that, my dear, for it isn't true." I had not spoken, but
with her almost uncanny ability to divine the thoughts of other people
she had fathomed mine. "I was always fond of Dicky, but I never was in
love with him."
"Then why did you make such a sacrifice?" I stammered.
"Why! There was absolutely no other way," she said, opening her
wonderful eyes wide in amazement that I had not at once grasped her
point of view. "Dicky was absolutely innocent of any wrongdoing, but
through a combination of circumstances of which I shall tell you, my
husband had gathered a show of evidence which would have won him the
divorce if it had been presented."
"He bargained with me: I to give up all claim to the baby. He to
withdraw Dicky's name, and all other charges except that of desertion.
Thus Dicky was saved a scandal which would have followed and hampered
him all his life, and I was spared the fastening of a shameful verdict
upon me. Of course, everybody who read about the case and did not know
me, believed me guilty anyway, but my friends stood by me gallantly,
and that part of it is all right. But every time I look at that baby
face I am tempted to wish that I had let honor, the righting of Dicky,
everything go by the boards, and had taken my chance of having her,
even if it were only part of the time."
Her voice was rough, uneven as she finished speaking, but that was the
only evidence of the emotion which I knew must have her stretched upon
the rack.
Right there I capitulated to Lillian Underwood. Always, through my
dislike and distrust of her, there had struggled an admiration which
would not down, even when I thought I had most cause to fear her.
But this revelation of the real bigness of the woman caught my
allegiance and fixed it. She had sacrificed the thing which was most
precious to her to keep her ideal of honor unsullied. I felt that I
could never have made a similar sacrifice, but I mentally saluted her
for her power to do it.
I realized, too, the reason for Dicky's deference to Mrs. Underwood,
which had often puzzled and sometimes angered me. Once when she had
given him a raking over for the temper he displayed toward me in her
presence, he had said:
"You know I couldn't get angry at you, no matter what you said; I owe
you too much."
I had wondered at the time what it was that my husband "owed" Mrs.
Underwood. The riddle was solved for me at last.
I am not an impetuous woman, and I do not know how I ever mustered
up courage to do it. But the sight of Lillian Underwood's face as
she looked at her baby's picture was too much for me. Without any
conscious volition on my part I found my arms around her, and her face
pressed against my shoulder.
I expected a storm of grief, for I knew the woman had been holding
herself in with an iron hand. But only a few convulsive movements of
her shoulders betrayed her emotion and when she raised her face to
mine her eyes were less tear-bedewed than my own.
Something stirred me to quick questioning.
"Oh, is there a chance of your having her again?"
"I am always hoping for it," she answered quietly. "When her father
married again, several years ago--that was before my marriage to
Harry--I hoped against hope that he would give her to me. For he
knew--the hound--knew better than anybody else that all his vile
charges were false."
Her eyes blazed, her voice was strident, her hands clasped and
unclasped. Then, as if a string had been loosened, she sank back in
her chair again.
"But he would not give her to me," she went on dully, "and he could
not even if he would. For his mother, who has the child, is old and
devoted to her. It would kill her to take Marion away from her."
"You saw my pink room?" she demanded abruptly.
I nodded. The memory of that rose-colored nest and the look in my
hostess's eyes when on my other visit she had said she had prepared
the room for a young girl was yet vivid.
"I spent weeks preparing it for her when I heard of her father's
remarriage," she said, "When I finally realized that I could not have
her, I lay ill for weeks in it. On my recovery I vowed that no one
else but she or I should ever sleep there. I have another bedroom
where I sleep most of the time. But sometimes I go in there and spend
the night, and pretend that I have her little body snuggled up close
to me just as it used to be."
The crackling of the logs in the grate was the only sound to be heard
for many minutes.
With her elbow resting on the arm of her chair, her chin cupped in her
hand, her whole body leaning toward the warmth of the fire, she sat
gazing into the leaping flames as if she were trying to read in them
the riddle of the future.
I patiently waited on her mood. That she would open her heart to me
further I knew, but I did not wish to disturb her with either word or
movement.
"I might as well begin at the beginning." There was a note in her
voice that all at once made me see the long years of suffering which
had been hers. "Only the beginning is so commonplace that it lacks
interest. It is the record of a very mediocre stenographer with
aspirations."
That she was speaking of herself her tone told me, but I was genuinely
surprised. Mrs. Underwood was the last woman in the world one would
picture as holding down a stenographer's position.
"I can't remember when I didn't have in the back of my brain the idea
of learning to draw," she went on, "but it took years and years of
uphill work and saving to get a chance. I was an orphan, with nobody
to care whether I lived or died, and nothing but my own efforts to
depend on. But I stuck to it, working in the daytime and studying
evenings and holidays till at last I began to get a foothold, and then
when I had enough to put by to risk it I went to Paris."
Her voice was as matter of fact as if she were describing a visit to
the family butcher shop. But I visualized the busy, plucky years with
their reward of Paris as if I had been a spectator of them.
"Of course, by the time I got there I was almost old enough to be the
mother, or, at least, the elder sister of most of the boys and girls
I met, and I had learned life and experience in a good, hard school.
Some of the youngsters got the habit of coming to me with all their
troubles, fancied or real. I made some stanch friends in those days,
but never a stancher, truer one than Dicky Graham.
"Tell me, dear girl, when you were teaching those history classes, did
any of your boy pupils fall in love with you?"
I answered her with an embarrassed little laugh. Her question called
up memories of shy glances, gifts of flowers and fruit, boyish
confidences--all the things which fall to the lot of any teacher of
boys.
"Well, then, you will understand me when I tell you that in the studio
days in Paris Dicky imagined himself quite in love with me."
There was something in her tone and manner which took all the sting
out of her words for me. All the jealousy and real concern which I had
spent on this old attachment of my husband for Mrs. Underwood vanished
as I listened to her. She might have been Dicky's mother, speaking of
his early and injudicious fondness for green apples.
"I shall always be proud of the way I managed Dicky that time." Her
voice still held the amused maternal note. "It's so easy for an older
woman to spoil a boy's life in a case like that if she's despicable
enough to do it. But, you see, I was genuinely fond of Dicky, and
yet not the least bit in love with him, and I was able, without his
guessing it, to keep the management of the affair in my own hands.
So when he woke up, as boys always do, to the absurdity of the idea,
there was nothing in his recollections of me to spoil our friendship.
"Then there came the early days of my struggle to get a foothold in
New York in my line. There were thousands of others like me. Six or
seven of the strugglers had been my friends in Paris. We formed a sort
of circle, "for offence and defence," Dicky called it; settled down
near each other, and for months we worked and played and starved
together. When one of us sold anything we all feasted while it lasted.
I tell you, my dear, those were strenuous times but they had a zest of
their own."
I saw more of the picture she was revealing than she thought I did.
I could guess that the one who most often sold anything was the woman
who was so calmly telling me the story of those early hardships. I
knew that the dominant member of that little group of stragglers, the
one who heartened them all, the one who would unhesitatingly go hungry
herself if she thought a comrade needed it, was Lillian Underwood.
"And then I spoiled my life. I married."
"Don't misunderstand me," she hastened to say. "I do not mean that I
believe all marriages are failures. I believe tremendously in
married happiness, but I think I must be one of the women who are
temperamentally unfitted to make any man happy."
Her tone was bitter, self-accusing.
"You cannot make me believe that," I said stoutly. "I would rather
believe that you were very unwise in your choice of husbands."
She laughed ironically.
"Well, we will let it go at that! At any rate there is only one word
that describes my first marriage. It was hell from start to finish."
The look on her face told me she was not exaggerating. It was a look,
only graven by intense suffering.
"When the baby came my feeling for Will changed. He had worn me out.
The love I had given him I lavished upon the child. Will's mother came
to live with us--she had been drifting around miserably before--and
while she failed me at the time of the divorce, yet she was a tower of
strength to me during the baby's infancy. I was very fond of her and
I think she sincerely liked me. But Will, her only son, could always
make her believe black was white, as I later found out to my sorrow.
"With the vanishing of the hectic love I had felt for Will, things
went more smoothly with me. I worked like a slave to keep up the
expenses of the home and to lay by something for the baby's future. My
husband was away so much that the boys and girls gradually came back
to something like their old term of intimacy. I never gave the matter
of propriety a thought. My mother-in-law, a baby and a maid, were
certainly chaperons enough.
"Afterward I found out that my husband, equipped with his legal
knowledge, had set all manner of traps for me, had bribed my maid, and
diabolically managed to twist the most innocent visits of the boys of
the old crowd to our home to his own evil meanings.
"Then came the crash. Dicky came in one Sunday afternoon and I saw at
once that he was really ill. You know his carelessness. He had let a
cold go until he was as near pneumonia as he could well be. A sleet
storm was raging outside, and when Dicky, after shivering before the
fire, started to go back to his studio, Will's mother, who liked Dicky
immensely, joined with me in insisting that he must not go out at all,
but to bed. Dicky was really too ill to care what we did with him,
so we got him into bed, and I took care of him for two or three days
until he was well enough to leave.
"Of course, the greater part of his care fell on me, for Will's mother
was old and not strong. I am not going to tell you the accusations
which my unspeakable husband made against me, or the affidavits which
the maid was bribed to sign about Dicky and me. You can guess. Worst
of all, Will's mother turned against me, not because of anything she
had observed, but simply because her son told her I was guilty.
"'I never would have thought it of you, Lillian,' she said to me with
the tears streaming down her wrinkled, old face. 'I never saw anything
out of the way, but of course Will wouldn't lie. And I loved you so.'
"Poor old woman. Those last few words of affection made it easier for
me to give the baby up to her when the time came. She idolizes Marion.
She gives her the best of care, and I do not think she will teach her
to hate me as Will would.
"But there has never been a moment since I kissed Marion and gave her
into the arms of her grandmother that I have not known exactly how
she was treated," she said. "I have made it my business to know, and I
have paid liberally for the knowledge. You see, about the time of the
divorce Mr. Morten had a legacy left him, so that life has been easy
for him financially. His mother had always kept a maid. Every servant
she has had has been in my employ. There has scarcely been a day since
I lost my baby that from some unobserved place I have not seen her
in her walks. I know every line of her face, every curve of her body,
every trick of movement and expression. I shall know how to win her
love when the time comes, never fear."
Her voice was dauntless, but her face mirrored the anguish that must
be her daily companion.
One thing about her recital jarred upon me. This paying of servants,
this furtive espionage was not in keeping with the high resolve that
had led the mother to "keep her word" to the man who had ruined her
life. And yet--and yet--I dared not judge her. In her place I could
not imagine what I would have done.
One thing I knew. Never again would I doubt Lillian Underwood. The
ghost of the past romance between my husband and the woman before
me was laid for all time, never to trouble me again. Remembering
the sacrifice she had made for Dicky, considering the gallant fight
against circumstances she had waged since her girlhood, I felt
suddenly unworthy of the friendship she had so warmly offered me.
I turned to her, trying to find words, which should fittingly express
my sentiments, but she forestalled me with a kaleidoscopic change of
manner that bewildered me.
"Enough of horrors," she said, springing up and giving a little
expressive shake of her shoulders as if she were throwing a weight
from them. "I'm going to give you some luncheon."
"Oh, please!" I put up a protesting hand, but she was across the room
and pressing a bell before I could stop her.
I thought I understood. The grave of her past life was closed again.
She had opened it because she wished me to know the truth concerning
the old garbled stories about herself and Dicky. Having told me
everything, she had pushed the grisly thing back into its sepulchre
again and had sealed it. She would not refer to it again.
One thing puzzled me, something to which she had not referred--why had
she married Harry Underwood? Why, after the terrible experience of
her first marriage, had she risked linking her life with an unstable
creature like the man who was now her husband?
I put all questionings aside, however, and tried to meet her brave,
gay mood.
XX
LITTLE MISS SONNOT'S OPPORTUNITY
My mother-in-law's convalescence was as rapid as the progress of
her sudden illness had been. By the day that I gave my first history
lecture before the Lotus Study Club she was well enough to dismiss Dr.
Pettit with, one of her sudden imperious speeches, and to make plans
that evening for the welcoming and entertaining of her daughter
Harriet and her famous son-in-law Dr. Edwin Braithwaite, who were
expected next day on their way to Europe, where Doctor was to take
charge of a French hospital at the front.
That night I could not sleep. The exciting combination of happenings
effectually robbed me of rest. I tried every device I could think of
to go to sleep, but could not lose myself in even a doze. Finally, in
despair, I rose cautiously, not to awaken Dicky, and slipping on my
bathrobe and fur-trimmed mules, made my way into the dining-room.
Turning on the light, I looked around for something to read until I
should get sleepy.
"What is the matter, Mrs. Graham? Are you ill?"
Miss Sonnet's soft, voice sounded just behind me. As I turned I
thought again, as I had many times before, how very attractive the
little nurse was. She had on a dark blue negligee of rough cloth, made
very simply, but which covered her night attire completely, while
her feet, almost as small as a child's, were covered with fur-trimmed
slippers of the same color as the negligee. Her abundant hair was
braided in two plaits and hung down to her waist.
"You look like a sleepy little girl," I said impulsively.
"And you like a particularly wakeful one," she returned,
mischievously. "I am glad you are not ill. I feared you were when I
heard you snap on the light."
"No, you did not waken me. In fact, I have been awake nearly an hour.
I was just about to come out and rob the larder of a cracker and a sip
of milk in the hope that I might go to sleep again when I heard you."
"Splendid!" I ejaculated, while Miss Sonnot looked at me wonderingly.
"Can your patient hear us out here?"
"If you could hear her snore you would be sure she could not," Miss
Sonnot smiled. "And I partly closed her door when I left. She is safe
for hours."
"Then we will have a party," I declared triumphantly, "a regular
boarding school party."
"Then on to the kitchen!" She raised one of her long braids of hair
and waved it like a banner. We giggled like fifteen-year-old school
girls as we tiptoed our way into the kitchen, turned on the light and
searched refrigerator, pantry, bread and cake boxes for food.
"Now for our plunder," I said, as we rapidly inventoried the eatables
we had found. Bread, butter, a can of sardines, eggs, sliced bacon and
a dish of stewed tomatoes.
"I wish we had some oysters or cheese; then we could stir up something
in the chafing dish," I said mournfully.
"Do you know, I believe I have a chafing dish recipe we can use in a
scrap book which I always carry with me," responded Miss Sonnot. "It
is in my suit case at the foot of my couch. I'll be back in a minute."