instantly with a substantially bound book in her hands. She sat down
beside me at the table and opened the book.
"I couldn't live without this book," she said extravagantly. "In it I
have all sorts of treasured clippings and jottings. The things I need
most I have pasted in. The chafing dish recipes are in an envelope. I
just happened to have them along."
She was turning the pages as she spoke. On one page, which she passed
by more hurriedly than the others, were a number of Kodak pictures. I
caught a flash of one which made my heart beat more quickly. Surely I
had a print from the same negative in my trunk.
The tiny picture was a photograph of Jack Bickett or I was very much
mistaken.
What was it doing in the scrap book of Miss Sonnot?
I put an unsteady hand out to prevent her turning the page.
It was Jack Bickett's photograph. I schooled my voice to a sort of
careless surprise:
"Why! Isn't this Jack Bickett?"
She started perceptibly. "Yes. Do you know him?"
"He is the nearest relative I have," I returned quickly, "a distant
cousin, but brought up as my brother."
Her face flushed. Her eyes shone with interest.
"Oh! then you must be his Margaret?" she cried.
As the words left Miss Sonnot's lips she gazed at me with a
half-frightened little air as if she regretted their utterance.
"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Graham," she said contritely; "you must think
I have taken leave of my senses. But I have heard so much about you."
"From Mr. Bickett?" My head was whirling. I had never heard Jack speak
the name of "Sonnot." Indeed, I would never have known he had met her,
save for the accidental opening of her scrap book to his picture when
she and I were searching for chafing dish recipes.
"Oh! No, indeed. I have never seen Mr. Bickett myself."
A rosy embarrassed flush stole over her face as she spoke. Her eyes
were starry. Through my bewilderment came a thought which I voiced.
"That is his loss then. He would think so if he could see you now."
She laughed confusedly while the rosy tint of her cheeks deepened.
"I must explain to you," she said simply. "I have never seen
Mr. Bickett, but my brother is one of his friends. They used to
correspond, and I enjoyed his letters as much as Mark did. I think his
is a wonderful personality, don't you?"
"Naturally," I returned, a trifle dryly. The little nurse was
revealing more than she dreamed. There was romantic admiration in
every note in her voice. I was not quite sure that I liked it.
But I put all selfish considerations down with an iron hand and smiled
in most friendly fashion at her.
"Isn't it wonderful that after hearing so much of each other we should
meet in this way?" I said heartily. "If only our brothers were here."
Miss Sonnet's face brightened again. "Is Mr. Bickett in this country?
" she asked, her voice carefully nonchalant. "I have not heard
anything about him for two or three years."
"He sailed for France a week ago," I answered slowly. "He intends to
join the French engineering corps."
There was a long moment of silence. Then Miss Sonnot spoke slowly, and
there was a note almost of reverence in her voice.
"That is just what he would do," and then, impetuously, "how I envy
him!"
"Envy him?" I repeated incredulously.
"Yes, indeed." Her voice was militant, her eyes shining, her face
aglow. "How I wish I were a man ever since this war started! I am just
waiting for a good chance to join a hospital unit, but I do not happen
to know any surgeon who has gone, and of course they all pick their
own nurses. But my chance will come. I am sure of it, and then I
am going to do my part. Why! my great-grandfather was an officer in
Napoleon's army. I feel ashamed not to be over there."
* * * * *
I saw very little of Dicky's sister and her husband during the week
they spent in New York before sailing for France. True, Harriet spent
some portion of every day with her mother, but she ate at our table
only once, always hurrying back to the hotel to oversee the menu of
her beloved Edwin.
Reasoning that in a similar situation I should not care for the
presence of an outsider, I left the mother and daughter alone
together as much as I could without appearing rude. I think they both,
appreciated my action, although, with their customary reserve, they
said very little to me.
Dr. Braithwaite came twice during the week to see us, each time
making a hurried call. Harriet appeared to wish to impress us with the
importance of these visits from so busy and distinguished a man. But
the noted surgeon himself was simple and unaffected in his manner.
One thing troubled me. I had done nothing, said nothing to further
Miss Sonnot's desire to go to France as a nurse. She had left us the
day after Dicky's sister and brother-in-law arrived, left with the
admiration and good wishes of us all. The big surgeon himself, after
watching her attention to his mother-in-law upon the day of arrival,
made an approving comment.
"Good nurse, that," he had said. I took the first opportunity to
repeat his words to the little nurse, who flushed with pleasure. I
knew that I ought to at least inquire of the big surgeon or his wife
about the number of nurses he was taking with him, but there seemed no
fitting opportunity, and--I did not make one.
I did not try to explain to myself the curious disinclination I
felt to lift a hand toward the sending of Miss Sonnot to the French
hospitals. But every time I thought of the night she had told me of
her wish I felt guilty.
Jack was already "somewhere in France." If Miss Sonnot entered the
hospital service, there was a possibility that they might meet.
I sincerely liked and admired Miss Sonnot. My brother-cousin had been
the only man in my life until Dicky swept me off my feet with his
tempestuous wooing. My heart ought to have leaped at the prospect
of their meeting and its possible result. But I felt unaccountably
depressed at the idea, instead.
The last day of the Braithwaites' stay Harriet came unusually early to
see her mother.
"I can stay only a few minutes this morning, mother," she explained,
as she took off her heavy coat. "I know," in answer to the older
woman's startled protest. "It is awful this last day, too. I'll come
back toward night, but I must get back to Edwin this morning. He is
so annoyed. One of his nurses has fallen ill at the last moment and
cannot go. He has to secure another good one immediately, that he may
get her passport attended to in time for tomorrow's sailing. And he
will not have one unless he interviews her himself. I left him eating
his breakfast and getting ready to receive a flock of them sent him by
some physicians he knows. I must hurry back to help him through."
Miss Sonnet's opportunity had come! I knew it, knew also that I must
speak to my sister-in-law at once about her. But she had finished
her flying little visit and was putting on her coat before I finally
forced myself to broach the subject.
"Mrs. Braithwaite"--to my disgust I found my voice trembling--"I
think I ought to tell you that Miss Sonnot, the nurse your mother had,
wishes very much to enter the hospital service. She could go tomorrow,
I am sure. And I remember your husband spoke approvingly of her."
My sister-in-law rushed past me to the telephone.
"The very thing!" She threw the words over her shoulder as she took
down the receiver. "Thank you so much." Then, as she received her
connection, she spoke rapidly, enthusiastically.
"Edwin, I have such good news for you. Dicky's wife thinks that little
Miss Sonnot who nursed mother could go tomorrow. She said while she
was here that she wanted to enter the hospital service. Yes. I thought
you'd want her. All right. I'll see to it right away and telephone
you. By the way, Edwin, if she can go, you won't need me this
forenoon, will you? That's good. I can stay with mother, then. Take
care of yourself, dear. Good-by."
She hung up the receiver and turned to me.
"Can you reach her by 'phone right away, and if she can go tell her to
go to the Clinton at once and ask for Dr. Braithwaite?"
I paid a mental tribute to my sister-in-law's energy as I in my turn
took down the telephone receiver. I realized how much wear and tear
she must save her big husband.
"Miss Sonnot!" I could not help being a bit dramatic in my news. "Can
you sail for France tomorrow? One of Dr. Braithwaite's nurses is ill,
and you may have her place, if you wish."
There was a long minute of silence, and then the little nurse's voice
sounded in my ears. It was filled with awe and incredulity.
"If I wish!" and then, after a pregnant pause, "Surely, I can go.
Where do I learn the details?"
I gave her full directions and hung up the receiver with a sigh.
She came to see me before she sailed, and after she had left me, I
went into my bedroom, locked the door, and let the tears come which I
had been forcing back. I did not know what was the matter with me. I
felt a little as I did once long before when a cherished doll of
my childhood had been broken beyond all possibility of mending.
Unreasonable as the feeling was, it was as if a curtain had dropped
between me and any part of my life that lay behind me.
XXI
LIFE'S JOG-TROT AND A QUARREL
Life went at a jog-trot with me for a long time after the departure
for France of the Braithwaites and Miss Sonnot.
My mother-in-law missed her daughter, Mrs. Braithwaite, sorely. I
believe if it had not been for her pride in her brilliant daughter
and her famous son-in-law she would have become actually ill with
fretting. I found my hands full in devising ways to divert her mind
and planning dishes to tempt her delicate appetite.
Because of her frailty and consequent inability to do much
sightseeing, or, indeed, to go far from the house, Dicky and I spent a
very quiet winter.
Our evenings away from home together did not average one a week. And
Dicky very rarely went anywhere without me.
"What a Darby and Joan we are getting to be!" he remarked one night as
we sat one on each side of the library table, reading. His mother, as
was her custom, had gone to bed early in the evening.
"Yes! Isn't it nice?" I returned, smiling at him.
"Ripping!" Dicky agreed enthusiastically. Then, reflectively,
"Funniest thing about it is the way I cotton to this domestic stunt.
If anyone had told me before I met you that I should ever stand for
this husband-reading-to-knitting-wife sort of thing I should have
bought him a ticket to Matteawan, pronto."
He stopped and frowned heavily at me, in mimic disapproval.
"Picture all spoiled," he declared, sighing. "You are not knitting.
Why, oh, why are you not knitting?"
"Because I never shall knit," I returned, laughing, "at least not in
the evening while you are reading. That sort of thing never did appeal
to me. Either the wife who has to knit or sew or darn in the evening
is too inefficient to get all her work done in daylight, or she has
too much work to do. In the first case, her husband ought to teach her
efficiency; in the second place, he ought to help do the sewing or the
darning. Then they could both read."
"Listen to the feminist?" carolled Dicky; then with mock severity:
"Of course, I am to infer, madam, that my stockings are all properly
darned?"
"Your inference is eminently correct," demurely. "Your mother darned
them today."
What I had told him was true. His mother had seen me looking over the
stockings after they were washed, and had insisted on darning Dicky's.
I saw that she longed to do some little personal service for her boy,
and willingly handed them over.
Dicky threw back his head and laughed heartily. Then his face sobered,
and he came round to my side of the table and sat down on the arm of
my chair.
"Speaking of mother," he said, rumpling my hair caressingly, "I want
to tell you, sweetheart, that you've made an awful hit with me the way
you've taken care of her. Nobody knows better than I how trying she
can be, and you've been just as sweet and kind to her as if she were
the most tractable person on earth."
He put his arms around me and bent his face to mine.
"Pretty nice and comfy this being married to each other, isn't it?"
"Very nice, indeed," I agreed, nestling closer to him.
My heart echoed the words. In fact, it seemed almost too good to
be true, this quiet domestic cove into which our marital bark had
drifted. The storms we had weathered seemed far past. Dicky's jealousy
of my brother-cousin, Jack Bickett; my unhappiness over Lillian
Underwood--those tempestuous days surely were years ago instead of
months.
Now Jack was "somewhere in France," and I had a queer little
premonition that somewhere, somehow, his path would cross that of
Miss Sonnot, the little nurse, who had gone with Dr. Braithwaite's,
expedition, and who for years had cherished a romantic ideal of my
brother-cousin, although she had never met him.
Lillian Underwood was my sworn friend. With characteristic directness
she had cut the Gordian knot of our misunderstanding by telling me,
against Dicky's protests, all about the old secret which her past and
that of my husband shared. After her story, with all that it revealed
of her sacrifice and her fidelity to her own high ideals, there
never again would be a doubt of her in my mind. I was proud of her
friendship, although, because of my mother-in-law's prejudice against
them, Dicky and I could not have the Underwoods at our home.
Our meetings, therefore, were few. But I had an odd little feeling of
safety and security whenever I thought of her. I knew if any terrible
trouble ever came to me I should fly to her as if she were my sister.
My work at the Lotus Study Club was going along smoothly. At home
Katie was so much more satisfactory than the maids I had seen in other
establishments that I shut my eyes to many little things about which I
knew my mother-in-law would have been most captious.
But my mother-in-law's acerbity was softened by her weakness. We grew
quite companionable in the winter days when Dicky's absence at the
studio left us together. Altogether I felt that life had been very
good to me.
So the winter rolled away, and almost before we knew it the spring
days came stealing in from the South, bringing to me their urgent call
of brown earth and sprouting things.
I was not the only one who listened to the message of spring. Mother
Graham grew restless and used all of her meagre strength in drives to
the parks and walks to a nearby square where the crocuses were just
beginning to wave their brave greeting to the city.
The warmer days affected Dicky adversely. He seemed a bit distrait,
displayed a trifle of his earlier irritability, and complained a great
deal about the warmth of the apartment.
"I tell you I can't stand this any longer," he said one particularly
warm evening in April, as he sank into a chair, flinging his collar in
one direction and his necktie in another. "I'd rather be in the city
in August than in these first warm days of spring. What do you say
to moving into the country for the summer? Our month is up here the
first, anyway, and I am perfectly willing to lose any part of the
month's rent if we only can get away."
"But, Dicky," I protested, "unless we board, which I don't think
any of us would like to do, how are we going to find a house, to say
nothing of getting settled in so short a time?"
To my surprise, Dicky hesitated a moment before answering. Then,
flushing, he uttered the words which brought my little castle of
contentment grumbling about me and warned me that my marital problems
were not yet all solved.
"Why, you see, there won't be any bother about a house. Miss Draper
has found a perfectly bully place not far from her sister's home."
"Miss Draper has found a house for us!"
I echoed Dicky's words in blank astonishment. His bit of news was
so unexpected, amazement was the only feeling that came to me for a
moment or two.
"Well, what's the reason for the awful astonishment?" demanded Dicky,
truculently. "You look as if a bomb had exploded in your vicinity."
He expressed my feeling exactly. I knew that Miss Draper had become a
fixture in his studio, acting as his secretary as well as his model,
and pursuing her art studies under his direction. But his references
to her were always so casual and indifferent that for months I had not
thought of her at all. And now I found that Dicky had progressed to
such a degree of intimacy with her that he not only wished to move to
the village which she called home, but had allowed her to select the
house in which we were to live.
I might be foolish, overwrought, but all at once I recognized in
Dicky's beautiful protégé a distinct menace to my marital happiness.
I knew I ought to be most guarded in my reply to my husband, but I am
afraid the words of my answer were tipped with the venom of my feeling
toward the girl.
"I admit I am astonished," I replied coldly. "You see, I did not know
it was the custom in your circle for an artist's model to select a
house for his wife and mother. You must give me time to adjust myself
to such a bizarre state of things."
I was so furious myself that I did not realize how much my answer
would irritate Dicky. He sprang to his feet with an oath and turned on
me the old, black angry look that I had not seen for months.
"That's about the meanest slur I ever heard," he shouted. "Just
because a girl works as a model every other woman thinks she has
the right to cast a stone at her, and put on a
how-dare-you-brush-your-skirt-against-mine sort of thing. You worked
for a living yourself not so very long ago. I should think you would
have a little Christian charity in your heart for any other girl who
worked."
"It strikes me that there is a slight difference between the work of
a high school instructor in history, a specialist in her subject, and
the work of an artist's model," I returned icily. "But, laying all
that aside, I should have considered myself guilty of a very grave
breach of good taste if I had ventured to select a house for the wife
of my principal, unasked and unknown to her."
"Cut out the heroics, and come down to brass tacks," Dicky snarled
vulgarly. "Why don't you be honest and say you're jealous of the poor
girl? I'll bet, if the truth were known, it isn't only the house she
selected you'd balk at. I'll bet you wouldn't want to go to Marvin at
all for the summer, regardless that I've spent many a comfortable
week in that section, and like it better than any other summer place I
know."
Through all my anger at Dicky, my disgust at his coarseness, came
the conviction that he had spoken the truth. I was jealous of
Grace Draper, there was no use denying the fact to myself, however
strenuously I might try to hide the thing from Dicky. I told myself
that I hated Marvin because it held this girl, that instead of
spending the summer there I wished I might never see the place again.
I was angrier than ever when the knowledge of my own emotion forced
itself upon me, angry with myself for being so silly, angry with Dicky
for having brought such provocation upon me! I let my speech lash out
blindly, not caring what I said:
"You are wrong in one thing--right in another. I am not jealous of
Miss Draper. To tell you the truth, I do not care enough about what
you do to be jealous of you. But I would not like to live in Marvin
for this season--I never counted in my list of friends a woman who
possesses neither good breeding nor common sense, and I do not propose
to begin with Miss Draper."
Dicky stared at me for a moment, his face dark and distorted with
passion. Then, springing to his feet, he picked up his collar and tie
and went into his room. Returning with fresh ones, he snatched his hat
and stick and rushed to the door. As he slammed it after him I heard
another oath, one this time coupled with a reference to me. I sank
back in the big chair weak and trembling.
"Well, you have made a mess of it!" My mother-in-law's voice, cool and
cynical, sounded behind me. I felt like saying something caustic to
her, but there was something in her tones that stopped me. It was not
criticism of me she was expressing, rather sympathy. Accustomed as I
was to every inflection of her voice, I realized this, and accordingly
held my tongue until she had spoken further.
"I'll admit you've had enough to make any woman lose her control of
herself," went on Dicky's mother, with the fairness which I had found
her invariably to possess in anything big, no matter how petty and
fussy she was over trifles. "But you ought to know Richard better than
to take that way with him. Give Richard his head and he soon tires of
any of the thousand things he proposes doing from time to time. Oppose
him, ridicule him, make him angry, and he'll stick to his notion as a
dog to a bone."
She turned and walked into her own room again. I sat miserably huddled
in the big chair, by turn angry at my husband and remorseful over my
own hastiness.
"Vot I do about dinner, Missis Graham?" Katie's voice was subdued,
sympathetic and respectful. I realized that she had heard every word
of our controversy. The knowledge made my reply curt.
"Keep it warm as long as you can. I will tell you when to serve it."
Katie stalked out, muttering something about the dinner being spoiled,
but I paid no heed to her. My thoughts were too busy with conjectures
and forebodings of the future to pay any attention to trifles.
The twilight deepened into darkness. I was just nerving myself to
summon Katie and tell her to serve dinner when the door opened and
Dicky's rapid step crossed the room. He switched on the light, and
then coming over to me, lifted me bodily out of my chair.
"Was the poor little girl jealous?" he drawled, with his face pressed
close to mine. "Well, she shall never have to be jealous again. We
won't live in Marvin, naughty old town, full of beautiful models.
We'll just go over to Hackensack or some nice respectable place like
that."
At first my heart had leaped with victory. Dicky had come back, and he
was not angry. Then as his lips sought mine, and I caught his breath,
my victory turned to ashes. The regret or repentance which had driven
my husband back to my arms had not come from his heart but from the
depths of a whiskey glass.
XXII
AN AMAZING DISCOVERY
It was two days after our quarrel over Grace Draper and her selection
of a summer home for us before Dicky again broached the subject of
leaving the city for the summer.
"By the way," he said, as carelessly as if the subject had never been
a bone of contention between us, "that house I was speaking of the
other night; the one Miss Draper thought we would like, has been
rented, so we will have to look for something else."
I had no idea how he had managed to get rid of taking the house after
his protégé had gone to the trouble of hunting one up, nor did I care.
I told myself that as the girl's insolent assurance in selecting a
house for me had been put down I could afford to be magnanimous. So I
smiled at Dicky and said with an ease which I was far from feeling:
"But there must be other places in Marvin that are desirable. That day
we were out there I caught glimpses of streets that must be beautiful
in summer."
Into Dicky's eyes flashed a look of tender pleasure that warmed me.
Taking advantage of his mother's absorption in her fish he threw me a
kiss. I knew that I had pleased him wonderfully by tacitly agreeing to
go to Marvin, and that our quarrel was to him as if it had never been.
I wish I had his mercurial temperament. Long after I have forgiven a
wrong done to me, or an unpleasant experience, the bitter memory of it
comes back to torment me.
"That's my bully girl!" was all Dicky said in reply, but when the
baked fish had been discussed and we were eating our salad he looked
up, his eyes twinkling.
"This green stuff reminds me that if I'm going to get my garden sass
planted this year or you want any flower beds, we'll have to get busy.
Can you run out to Marvin with me tomorrow morning and look around? We
ought to be able to find something we want. Real estate agents are as
thick as fleas around that section."
We made an early start the next morning, Mother Graham, with
characteristic energy, spurring up Katie with the breakfast, and
successfully routing Dicky from the second nap he was bound to take. I
had been up since daylight, for it was a perfect spring morning, and I
was anxious to be afield.
As we neared the entrance of the Long Island station I thought of the
first trip we had taken to Marvin, and the unpleasantness which had
marred the day, and I plucked Dicky's sleeve timidly.
"Dicky!" I swallowed hard and stopped short.