the dearest friends I ever had. Your resemblance to your mother is
marvelous. I remember that you looked much like her when you were a
tiny girl."
"You were at our home in my childhood, then?" I asked, wondering if
this might be the explanation of my uncanny notion that I had sometime
in my life seen this man bending over his demitasse as he had done a
few minutes before.
"Oh, yes," he said, "your mother, as I have told you, was the dearest
friend I ever had. And your father was my other self--then--"
His emphasis upon the word "then" gave me a quick stab of pain, for
it recalled the odium with which every one who had known my childhood
seemed to regard the memory of my father.
I, myself, had no memories of my father. My mother had never spoken
of him to me but once, when she had told me the terrible story of his
faithlessness.
When I was four years old he had run away from us both with my
mother's dearest friend, and neither she, nor any of his friends, had
ever heard of him afterward. I had always felt a sort of hatred of my
unknown father, who had deserted me and so cruelly treated my mother,
and the knowledge that this man was an intimate of his turned me
faint.
But if Mr. Gordon's inflection meant anything it meant that even if he
had been my father's "other self," my mother's desertion had aroused
in him the same contempt for my father that all the rest of our little
world had felt. I felt my indefinable feeling of repulsion against
the man melt into warm approval of him. He had loved the mother I had
idolized, had resented her wrongs, and I felt my heart go out to him.
"I cannot tell you what this finding of your wife means to me,"
said Mr. Gordon, turning to Dicky. The inflection of his voice, the
movement of his hand, spelled a subtle appeal to the younger man.
"I have been a wanderer for years," the deep, rich voice went on. "I
have no family ties"--he hesitated for a moment, with a curious little
air of indecision--"no wife, no child. I am a very lonely man. I wonder
if it would be asking too much to let me come to see you once in a
while and renew the memories of my youth in this dear child?"
He turned to me with the most fascinating little air of deferential
admiration I had ever seen.
But I looked in vain for any answer to his appeal in Dicky's eyes. My
husband still retained the air of formal, puzzled courtesy with which
he had brought Mr. Gordon to our table and introduced him to us. I
could see that the mysterious stranger's appeal to be made an intimate
of our home did not meet with Dicky's approval.
I could not understand the impulse that made me turn toward the
stranger and say, earnestly: "I shall be so glad to have you come to
see us, Mr. Gordon. I want you to tell me about my mother's youth."
XXXIII
"MOTHER" GRAHAM HAS SOMETHING TO SAY
It may have been the preparation we were making for an autumn vacation
in the Catskills, or it may have been that Dicky was becoming more
the master of himself, that he did not voice to me the very real
uneasiness with which I knew he viewed Robert Gordon's attitude toward
me. But whatever may have been the cause, the fact is that during
the preparations for our trip and during the vacation itself in the
gorgeous autumn-clad mountains Dicky did not refer to Robert Gordon.
It was my mother-in-law who brought his name up the day of our return.
She had moved from the hotel where we had left her in the city to
the house at Marvin, and when we arrived there her greeting of me was
almost icy. As soon as we had taken off our wraps, she explained her
departure from the hotel without any questioning from us.
"I never have been so insulted and annoyed in my life," she began
abruptly, "and it is all your fault, Richard. If you never had brought
the unspeakable person over he would not have had the chance to annoy
me. And as for you, Margaret, I cannot begin to tell you what I think
of your conduct in leading your husband to believe you had never seen
the man before--"
"For heaven's sake, mother!" Dicky exploded, his slender patience
evidently worn to its last thread by his mother's incoherence, "what
on earth are you talking about?"
"Don't pretend ignorance," she snapped. "You introduced the man to
me yourself the night before you went on your trip. You cannot have
forgotten his name so soon."
"Robert Gordon!" Dicky exclaimed in amazement.
"Yes, Robert Gordon!" his mother returned grimly. "And let me tell
you, Richard Graham, that if you do not settle that man he will make
you the laughing stock and the scandal of everybody. The way he talks
of Margaret is disgusting."
Dicky's face became suddenly stern and set.
"He didn't exhibit his lack of good taste the first time he came over
to my table in the dining room," my mother-in-law went on. "But the
second time he sat down with me he began to talk of Margaret in the
most fulsome, extravagant manner. From that time his sole topic of
conversation was Margaret, the wonderful woman she had grown into, the
wonderful attraction she has for him. You would have thought him a
man who had discovered his lost sweetheart after years of wandering.
Imagine the lack of decency and good taste the man must have to say
such things to me, the mother of Margaret's husband!"
"Is that all you have to say, mother?" he asked.
She looked at him in amazement.
"Are you lost to all decency that you do not resent such extravagant
praise and admiration of your wife from the lips of another man?" she
demanded, and then in the same breath went on rapidly:
"Richard, you are perfectly hopeless! The man may have been in love
with Margaret's mother, I do not doubt that he was, but have you never
heard of such men falling in love with the daughters of the women they
once loved hopelessly?"
"Don't make the poor man out a potential Mormon, mother!" Dicky jibed.
"Jeer at your old mother if you wish, Richard," his mother went on
icily, "but let me tell you that Mr. Gordon is madly in love with
Margaret and if you do not look out you will have a scandal on your
hands."
"You are going a bit too far in your excitement, mother," Dicky said
sternly. "You may not realize it, but you are insinuating that there
might be a possible chance of Madge's returning the man's admiration."
"I am not insinuating anything," his mother returned, white-lipped
with anger, "but I certainly think Margaret owes both you and me an
explanation of the untruth she told us at the supper table the night
you introduced Mr. Gordon to us."
I sprang to my feet with my cheeks afire.
"Mother Graham, I have listened to you with respect as long as I can,"
I exclaimed. "Whatever else you have to say to my husband about me you
can say in my absence. If he at any time wishes an explanation of any
action of mine he has only to ask me for it."
White with rage I dashed out of the room, up the stairs and into my
own room, locking the door behind me. In a few minutes Dicky's step
came swiftly up the stairs; his knock sounded on my door.
"Madge, let me in," he commanded, but the note of tenderness in his
voice was the influence that hurried my fingers in the turning of the
key.
As I opened the door he strode in past me, closed and locked the door
again, and, turning, caught me in his arms.
"Don't you dare to cry!" he stormed, kissing my reddened eyelids.
"Aren't you ever going to get used to mother's childish outbursts?
You know she doesn't mean what she says in those tantrums of hers.
She simply works herself up to a point where she's absolutely
irresponsible, and she has to explode or burst. You wouldn't like to
see a perfectly good mother-in-law strewn in fragment all over the
room, simply because she had restrained her temper, would you?" he
added, with the quick transition from hot anger to whimsical good
nature that I always find so bewildering in him.
I struggled for composure. My mother-in-law's words had been too
scathing, her insult too direct for me to look upon it as lightly as
Dicky could, but the knowledge that he had come directly after me, and
that he had no part in the resentment his mother showed, made it easy
for me to control myself.
"I ought to remember that your mother is an old woman, and an invalid,
and not allow myself to get angry at some of the unjust things she
says," I returned, swallowing hard. "So we'll just forget all about it
and pretend it never happened."
"You darling!" Dicky exclaimed, drawing me closer, and for a moment or
two I rested in his arms, gathering courage for the confession I meant
to make to him.
"Dicky, dear," I murmured at last, "there is something I want to tell
you about this miserable business, something I ought to have told you
before, but I kept putting it off."
Dicky held me from him and looked at me quizzically, "'Confession is
good for the soul,'" he quoted, "so unburden your dreadful secret."
He drew me to an easy chair and sat down, holding me in his arms as if
I were a little child. "Now for it," he said, smiling tenderly at me.
"It isn't so very terrible," I smiled at him reassured by his
tenderness. "It is only that without telling you a deliberate untruth,
that I gave both you and your mother the impression I had never seen
Mr. Gordon before that night at the Sydenham."
"Is that all?" mocked Dicky. "Why, I knew that the moment you spoke
as you did that night! You're as transparent as a child, my dear, and
besides, your elderly friend let the cat out of the bag when he said
he feared he had annoyed you by trying to find out your identity. I
knew you must have seen him somewhere."
"You don't know all," I persisted, and then without reservation I told
him frankly the whole story of Mr. Gordon's spying upon me. I omitted
nothing.
When I had finished, Dicky's face had lost its quizzical look. He was
frowning, not angrily, but as if puzzled.
"Don't think I blame you one bit," he said slowly; "but it looks to me
as if mother's dope might be right, as if the old guy is smitten with
you after all."
"I cannot hope to make your understand, Dicky," I began, "how confused
my emotions are concerning Mr. Gordon. I think perhaps I can tell you
best by referring to something about which we have never talked but
once--the story I told you before we were married of the tragedy in my
mother's life."
"I believe you told me that neither your mother nor you had ever heard
anything of your father since he left." Dicky's voice was casual, but
there was a note in it that puzzled me.
"That is true," I answered, and then stopped, for the conviction had
suddenly come to me that while I had never seen nor heard from my
father since he left us--indeed, I had no recollection of him--yet
I was not sure whether or not my mother had ever received any
communication from him. I had heard her say that she had no idea
whether he was living or dead, and I had received my impression from
that. But even as I answered Dicky's question there came to my mind
the memory of an injunction my mother had once laid upon me,
an injunction which concerned a locked and sealed box among her
belongings.
I felt that I could not speak of it even to Dicky, so put all thought
of it aside until I should be alone.
"I do not think I can make you understand," I began, "how torn between
two emotions I have always been when I think of my father. Of course,
the predominant feeling toward him has always been hatred for the
awful suffering he caused my mother. I never heard anything to foster
this feeling, however, from my mother. She rarely spoke of him, but
when she did it was always to tell me of the adoration he had felt for
me as a baby, of the care and money he had lavished on me. But while
with one part of me I longed to hear her tell me of those early days,
yet the hatred I felt for him always surged so upon me as to make me
refuse to listen to any mention of him.
"But since she went away from me the desire to know something of
my father has become almost an obsession with me. My hatred of his
treachery to my mother is still as strong as ever, but in my mother's
last illness she told me that she forgave him, and asked me if ever he
came into my life to forget the past and to remember only that he
was my father. I am afraid I never could do that, but yet I long so
earnestly to know something of him.
"So now you see, Dicky," I concluded, "why Mr. Gordon has such a
fascination for me. He knew my father and my mother--from his own
words I gather that he was the nearest person to them. He is the only
link connecting me with my babyhood, for Jack Bickett, my nearest
relative, was but a young boy himself when my father left, and
remembered little about it. I don't want to displease you, Dicky, but
I would so like to see Mr. Gordon occasionally."
Dicky held me close and kissed me.
"Why, certainly, sweetheart," he exclaimed. "Whenever you wish I'll
arrange a little dinner down-town for Mr. Gordon. What do you think
about inviting the Underwoods, too? They could entertain me while
you're talking over your family history."
"That would be very nice," I agreed, but I had an inward dread of
talking to Robert Gordon with the malicious eyes of Harry Underwood
upon me. Indeed, I felt intuitively that if ever Mr. Gordon were to
reveal the history of his friendship for my mother to me, it would be
when no other ears, not even Dicky's, were listening.
Dicky kissed me again and then he rose and went out of the room
quickly, closing the door behind him. I waited until I heard his
footsteps descending the stairs before turning the key in the lock.
Then I went directly to a little old trunk which I had kept in my own
room ever since my mother's death, and, kneeling before it unlocked it
with reverent fingers.
XXXIV
A MESSAGE FROM THE PAST
It was my mother's own girlhood trunk, one in which she had kept
her treasures and mementoes all her life. The chief delight of my
childhood had been sitting by her side when she took out the different
things from it and showed them to me.
Dear, thoughtful, little mother of mine! Almost the last thing she did
before her strength failed her utterly was to repack the little trunk,
wrapping and labeling each thing it contained, and putting into
it only the things she knew I would not use, but wished to keep as
memories of her and of my own childhood.
"I do not wish you to have to look over these things while your grief
is still fresh for me," she had said, with the divine thoughtfulness
that mothers keep until the last breath they draw. "There is nothing
in it that you will have to look at for years if you do not wish to
do so--that is, except one package that I am going to tell you about
now."
She stopped to catch the breath which was so pitifully short in those
torturing days before her death, and over her face swept the look of
agony which always accompanied any mention by her of my father.
"In the top tray of this trunk," she said, "you will find the inlaid
lock box that was your grandmother's and that you have always
admired so much. I do not wish to lay any request or command upon you
concerning it--you must be the only judge of your own affairs after I
leave you--but I would advise you not to open that box unless you are
in desperate straits, or until the time has come when you feel that
you no longer harbor the resentment you now feel toward your father."
The last words had come faintly through stiffened white lips, for her
labor at packing and the emotional strain of talking to me concerning
the future had brought on one of the dreaded heart attacks which
were so terribly frequent in the last weeks of her life. We had never
spoken of the matter afterward, for she did not leave her bed again
until the end.
At one time she had motioned me to bring from her desk the
old-fashioned key ring on which she kept her keys. She had held up
two, a tiny key and a larger one, and whispered hoarsely: "These keys
are the keys to the lock box and the little trunk--you know where
the others belong." Then she had closed her eyes, as if the effort of
speaking had exhausted her, as indeed it had.
In the wild grief which followed my mother's death there was no
thought of my unknown father except the bitterness I had always felt
toward him. I knew that the terrible sorrow he had caused my mother
had helped to shorten her life, and my heart was hot with anger
against him.
I had never opened the trunk since her death. The exciting, almost
tragic experiences of my life with Dicky had swept all the old days
into the background. I could not analyze the change that had come over
me. As I lifted the lid of the trunk and took from the top tray the
inlaid box which my mother's hands had last touched, my grief for her
was mingled with a strange new longing to find out anything I could
concerning the father I had never known.
"For my daughter Margaret's eyes alone."
The superscription on the envelope which I held in my hand stared up
at me with all the sentience of a living thing. The letters were in
the crabbed, trembling, old-fashioned handwriting of my mother--the
last words that she had ever written. It was as if she had come back
from the dead to talk to me.
With the memory of my mother's advice, I hesitated for a long time
before breaking the seal. With the letters pressed close against my
tear-wet cheeks I sat for a long time, busy with memories of my mother
and debating whether or not I had the right to open the letter.
I certainly was not in desperate straits, and I could not
conscientiously say that I no longer harbored any resentment
toward^the father of whom I had no recollection. I felt that never in
my life could I fully pardon the man who had made my mother suffer so
terribly. But the longing to know something of my father, which I had
felt since the coming into my life of Robert Gordon, had become almost
an obsession, with me.
"Little mother," I whispered, "forgive me if I am doing wrong, but I
must know what is in this letter to me."
With trembling fingers I broke the seal and drew out the closely
written pages which the envelope contained.
"Mother's Only Comfort," the letter began, and at the sight of the
dear familiar words, which I had so often heard from my mother's
lips--it was the name she had given me when a tiny girl, and which she
used until the day of her death--tears again blinded my eyes.
"When you read this I shall have left you forever. It is my prayer
that when the time comes for you to read it, it will be because you
have forgiven your father, not because you are in desperate need. How
I wish I could have seen you safe in the shelter of a good man's love
before I had to go away from you forever!"
"Safe in the shelter of a good man's love," I repeated the words
thoughtfully. Had my mother been given her wish when she could no
longer witness its fulfilment? I was angry and humiliated at myself
that I could not give a swift, unqualified assent to my own question.
A "good man" Dicky certainly was, and I was in the "shelter of his
love" at present. But "safe" with Dicky I was afraid I could never
be. Mingled always with my love for him, my trust in him, was a
tiny undercurrent of uncertainty as to the stability of my husband's
affection for me.
As I turned to my mother's letter again, there was a tiny pang at my
heart at the thought that by my marriage with Dicky I had thwarted the
dearest wish of my little mother's heart.
For between the lines I could read the unspoken thought that had been
in her mind since I was a very young girl. "Safe in the shelter of a
good man's love" meant to my mother only one thing. If she had written
the words "safe in the shelter of Jack Bickett's love," I could not
have grasped her meaning more clearly.
But my mother's wish must forever remain ungranted. Jack was
"somewhere in France," and for me, safe or not safe, stable or
unstable, Dicky was "my man," the only man I had ever loved, the only
man I could ever love. "For better or worse," the dear old minister
had said who performed our wedding ceremony, and my heart reaffirmed
the words as I bent my eyes again to the closely written pages I held
in my hands.
"Because you have always been so bitter, Margaret, against your
father, and because it has always caused me great anguish to speak of
him, I have allowed you to rest under the impression that I had never
heard anything concerning him since his disappearance, and that I do
not know whether he be living or dead. The last statement is true, for
years ago I definitely refused to receive any communication from him,
but I must tell you that I believe him to be living, and that I know
that living or dead he has provided money for your use if you should
ever wish to claim it.
"The address he last sent me, and that of the firm of lawyers who
has the management of the property intended for you, are sealed in
envelopes in this box. In it also are all the things necessary to
establish your identity, my marriage certificate, your birth record,
pictures of your father and of me, and of the three of us taken when
you were two years old, before the shadow of the awful tragedy that
came later had begun to fall."
I sprang from my chair, dropping the pages of the letter unheeded in
the shock of the revelation they brought me. My father had planned for
me; had provided for me; had tried to communicate with my mother! He
must have been repentant; he was not all the heartless brute I had
thought him. As though a cloud had been lifted, from my life and a
weary weight had rolled from my heart, I turned again to mother's
letter.
"Remember, it is my last wish, Margaret, that if your father be
living, sometime you may be reconciled, to him. I have been weak and
bitter enough during all these years to be meanly comforted by your
stanch championship of me, and your detestation of the wrong your
father did me. But death brings clearer vision, my child, and I cannot
wish that your father's last years,--if, indeed, he be living--should
be desolated by not knowing you. I want you to know that there were
many things which, while they did not extenuate your father, yet might
in some measure explain his action.
"I was much to blame--I can see it now, for not being able to hold
his love. You are so much like me, my darling, that I tremble for your
happiness if you should happen to marry the wrong kind of man. I have
wondered often if the story of my tragedy, terrible as it is for me to
think of it, might not help you. And yet--it might do more harm than
good. At any rate, I have written it all out, and put it with the
other things in the box. I feel a curious sort of fatalism concerning
this letter. It is borne in upon me that if you ever need to read it
you will read it. It will help you to understand your father better.
It may help you to understand your husband; although, God grant,
knowledge like mine may never come to you.
"Of one thing I am certain, you will never have anything to do with
the woman who abused my friendship and took your father from me. I
cannot carry my forgiveness far enough, even in the presence of death,
to bid you go to him if she be still a part of his life.
"I can write no more, my darling. I want you to know that you have
been the dearest child a mother could have, and that you have never
given me moment's uneasiness in my life. God bless and keep you.
"MOTHER."
I did not weep when I had finished the letter. There was that in its
closing words that dried my tears. I put the pages reverently in
the envelope, laid it in the old box, closed and locked the lid, and
replaced it in the trunk. For my mother's bitter mention of the woman
who had stolen my father from her had brought back the old, wild
hatred I had felt for so many years.
"Whatever Robert Gordon can tell me of you, mother darling, I will
gladly hear," I whispered, as I locked her old trunk, "but I never
want to hear him talk of the woman who so cruelly ruined your life."
XXXV
THE WORD OF JACK
"O, pray do not let me disturb you."
Mother Graham drew back from the open door of the living room with
a little affected start of surprise at seeing me sitting before the
fire. Her words were courteous, but her manner brought the temperature
of the room down perceptibly.
She had managed to keep out of my way in clever fashion since the
scene of the day before, when she had attacked me concerning the
interest taken in me by Robert Gordon.
"You are not disturbing me in the least," I said, pleasantly, "I was
simply watching the fire. Jim certainly has outdone himself in the
matter of logs this time."
"Yes, he has," she admitted, grudgingly, as she came forward slowly
and took the chair I proffered her. "I only hope he doesn't set the
house afire with such a blaze. I must tell Richard to speak to him
about it."