"No one shall touch you but me," she said decisively, and then turning
to the physician, said demurely:
"Do you think I can be trusted with the case, doctor?"
"Most assuredly," the physician returned heartily. "Indeed, if you can
stay it is most fortunate for Mrs. Graham. Good trained nurses are at
a premium just now, and great care will be necessary in this case to
prevent disfigurement!"
A quick, stifled exclamation of dismay came from Dicky.
"Is there any danger of her face being scarred?" he asked worriedly.
"Not while I'm on the job," Lillian returned decisively, and there was
no idle boasting in her statement, simply quiet certainty.
But there was another note in her voice, or so it seemed to my
feverish imagination, a note of scorn for Dicky, that he should be
thinking of my possible disfigurement when my very life had been in
question but a moment before.
A sick terror crept over me. Did my husband love me only for what poor
claims to pulchritude I possessed? Suppose the physician should be
mistaken, and I be hideously scarred, after all, as I had seen fire
victims scarred, would I see the love light die in his eyes, would I
never again witness the admiring glances Dicky was wont to flash at me
when I wore something especially becoming?
I had often wondered since my marriage whether Dicky's love for me was
the real lasting devotion which could stand adversity. I knew that no
matter how old or gray or maimed or disfigured Dicky might become he
would be still my royal lover. I should never see the changes in him.
But if I should suddenly turn an ugly scarred face to Dicky would he
shrink from me?
An epigram from one of the sanest and cleverest of our modern
humorists flashed into my mind. Dicky and I had read it together only
a few weeks before.
"Heaven help you, madam, if your husband does not love you because of
your foibles instead of in spite of them."
Did all women have this experience I wondered, and then as Lillian's
face bent over me I caught my breath in an understanding wave of pity
for her.
This was what she was undergoing, this experience of seeing her
husband turn away his eyes from her, as if the very sight of her was
painful to him.
Dicky would never do that, I knew. He had not the capacity for cruelty
which Harry Underwood possessed. But I was sure it would torture
me more to know that he was disguising his aversion than to see him
openly express it.
XXXIX
HARRY CALLS TO SAY GOOD-BY
Lillian Underwood kept her promise to Dicky that I should suffer no
scar as the result of the burns I received when my dress caught fire
on the night of my dinner.
Never patient had a more faithful nurse than Lillian. She had a cot
placed in my room where she slept at night, and she rarely left my
side.
I found my invalidism very pleasant in spite of the pain and
inconvenience of my burns. Everyone was devoted to my comfort. Even
Mother Graham's acerbity was softened by the suffering I underwent
in the first day or two following the accident, although I soon
discovered that she was actually jealous because Lillian and not she
was nursing me.
"It is the first time in my life that I have ever found my judgment in
nursing set aside as of no value," she said querulously to me one day
when she was sitting with me while Lillian attended to the preparation
of some special dish for me in the kitchen.
"Oh, Mother Graham," I protested, "please don't look at it that way.
You know how careful you have to be about your heart. We couldn't let
you undertake the task of nursing me, it would have been too much for
you."
"Well, if your own mother were alive I don't believe any one could
have kept her from taking care of you," she returned stubbornly.
There was a wistful note in her voice that touched and enlightened
me. Beneath all the crustiness of my mother-in-law's disposition there
must lie a very real regard--I tremulously wondered if I might not
call it love--for me.
My heart warmed toward the lonely, crabbed old woman as it had never
done before. I put out my uninjured hand, clasped hers, and drew her
toward me.
"Mother dear," I said softly, "please believe me, it would be no
different if my own little mother were here. She, of course, would
want to take care of me, but her frailness would have made it
impossible. And I want you to know that I appreciate all your
kindness."
She bent to kiss me.
"I'm a cantankerous old woman, sometimes," she said quaveringly, "but
I am fond of you, Margaret."
She released me so abruptly and went out of the room so quickly that
I had no opportunity to answer her. But I lay back on my pillows,
warm with happiness, filled with gratitude that in spite of the many
controversies in which my husband's mother and I had been involved,
and the verbal indignities which she had sometimes heaped upon me,
we had managed to salvage so much real affection as a basis for our
future relations with each other.
The reference to my own little mother, which I had made, brought back
to me the homesickness, the longing for her which comes over me often,
especially when I am not feeling well. When Lillian returned she found
me weeping quietly.
"Here, this will never do!" she said kindly, but firmly. "I'm not
going to ask you what you were crying about, for I haven't time to
listen. I must fix you up to see two visitors. But"--she forestalled
the question I was about to ask--"before you see one of them I must
tell you that Harry and I have about come to the parting of the ways."
"The parting of the ways!" I gasped. "Harry and you?"
Lillian Underwood nodded as calmly as if she had simply announced
a decision to alter a gown or a hat, instead of referring to a
separation from her husband.
"It will have to come to that, I am afraid," she said, and looking
more closely at her I saw that her calmness was only assumed, that
humiliation and sadness had her in their grip.
"I have always feared that when the time came for me to be 'my honest
self' instead of a 'made-up daisy'"--she smiled wearily as she quoted
the childish rhyme--"Harry would not be big enough to take it well.
Of course I could and would stand all his unpleasantness concerning my
altered appearance, but the root of his actions goes deeper than that,
I am afraid. He dislikes children, and I fear that he will object to
my having my little girl with me. And if he does--"
Her tone spelled finality but I had no time to bestow upon the
probable fate of Harry Underwood. With a glad little cry, I drew
Lillian down to my bedside and kissed her.
"Oh! Lillian!" I exclaimed, "are you really going to have your baby
girl after all?"
She nodded, and I held her close with a little prayer of thanksgiving
that fate had finally relented and had given to this woman the desire
of her heart, so long kept from her.
I saw now, and wondered why I had not realized before the reason for
Lillian's sudden abandonment of the rouge and powder and dyed hair
which she had used so long. Once she had said to me, "When my baby
comes home, she shall have a mother with a clean face and pepper and
salt hair, but until that time, I shall play the game with Harry."
And so for Harry's sake, for the man who was not worthy to tie her
shoes, she had continued to crucify her real instincts in an effort
to hide the worst feminine crime in her husband's calendar--advancing
age.
"When will she come to you?" I asked, and then with a sudden
remembrance of the only conditions under which Lillian's little
daughter could be restored to her, I added, "then her father is--"
"Not dead, but dying," Lillian returned gravely, "but oh, my dear, he
sent for me two weeks ago and acknowledged the terrible wrong he did
me. I am vindicated at last, Madge--at last."
Her voice broke, and as she laid her cheek against my hand, I felt the
happy tears which she must have kept back all through the excitement
of my accident. How like her to put by her own greatest experiences as
of no consequence when weighed against another's trouble!
I kissed her happily. "Do you feel that you can tell me about it?" I
asked.
"You and Dicky are the two people I want most to know," she returned.
"Will confessed everything to me, and better still, to his mother.
I would have been glad to have spared the poor old woman, for she
idolizes her son, but you remember I told you that although she loved
me, he had made her believe the vile things he said of me. It was
necessary that she should know the truth, if after Will's death I was
to have any peace in my child's companionship.
"Marion loves her grandmother dearly, and the old woman fairly
idolizes the child, although her feebleness has compelled her to leave
most of the care of the child to hired nurses. There is where I am
going to have my chance with my little girl. I never shall separate
her from her grandmother while the old woman lives, but from the
moment she comes to me, no hireling's hand shall care for her--she
shall be mine, all mine."
Her voice was a paean of triumphant love. My heart thrilled in
sympathy with hers, but underneath it all I was conscious of a
strong desire to have Harry Underwood reconciled to this new plan of
Lillian's. The calmness with which she had spoken of their parting had
not deceived me. I knew that Lillian's pride, already dragged in the
dust by her first unhappy marital experience, would suffer greatly
if she had to acknowledge that her second venture had also failed.
I tried to think of some manner in which I could remedy matters.
Unconsciously Lillian played directly into my hands.
"But here I am bothering you with all of my troubles," she said, "when
all the time gallant cavaliers wait without, anxious to pay their
devoirs."
Her voice was as gay, as unconcerned, as if she had not just been
sounding the depths of terrible memories. I paid a silent tribute to
her powers of self-discipline before answering curiously.
"Gallant cavaliers?" I repeated. "Who are they?"
"Well, Harry is at the door, and Mr. Gordon at the gate," she returned
merrily. "In other words, Harry is downstairs, waiting patiently
for me to give him permission to see you, while Mr. Gordon took up
quarters at a country inn near here the day after your accident
and has called or telephoned almost hourly since. He begged me this
morning to let him know when you would be able to see him. If Harry's
call does not tire you, I think I would better 'phone him to come
over."
"Lillian!" I spoke imperatively, as a sudden recollection flashed
through my mind. "Was I delirious, or did I hear Mr. Gordon exclaim
something very foolish the night of my accident?"
She looked at me searchingly.
"He said, 'My darling, have I found you only to lose you again?'" she
answered.
"What did he mean?" I gasped.
"That he must tell you himself, Madge," she said gravely. "For me to
guess his meaning would be futile. Shall I telephone him to come over,
and will you see Harry for a moment or two now?"
"Yes! to both questions," I answered.
"Well, lady fair, they haven't made you take the count yet, have they?
By Jove, you're prettier than ever."
Ushered by Lillian, Harry Underwood came into my room with all his
usual breeziness, and stood looking down at me as I lay propped
against the pillows Lillian had piled around me. It was the first time
I had seen him since the night of our dinner, when with the wild idea
of punishing Dicky for his foolishness regarding elderly Mr. Gordon I
had carried on a rather intense flirtation with Harry Underwood.
I had been heartily sorry for and ashamed of the experiment before
the dinner was half over, and many times since the accident which
interrupted the evening I had wondered, half-whimsically, whether my
dress catching fire was not a "judgment on me." I had deeply dreaded
seeing Mr. Underwood again, but as I looked into his eyes I saw
nothing but friendly cheeriness and pity.
Lillian drew a chair for him to my bedside, and for a few moments he
chatted of everything and nothing in the entertaining manner he knows
so well how to use.
"You may have just three minutes more, Harry," Lillian said at
last. "Stay here while I go down to telephone. Then you will have to
vamoose. Mr. Gordon is coming over, and I can't have her too tired."
Her husband gave a low whistle, and I saw a quick look of
understanding pass between him and Lillian. I did not have time to
wonder about it, however, for Lillian went out of the room, and the
moment she closed the door he said tensely:
"Tell me you forgive me. If I had not teased you that night you would
not have moved toward the fire, and your dress would not have caught.
Why! you might have been killed or horribly disfigured. I've been
suffering the tortures of Hades ever since. But you will forgive me,
won't you? I'll do any penance you name."
Through all the extravagance of his speech there ran a deeper note
than I had believed Harry Underwood to be capable of sounding. As his
eyes met mine and I saw that there was something as near suffering in
them as the man's self-centred careless nature was capable of feeling
I saw my opportunity.
"Yes, I'll forgive you--everything--if you'll promise me one thing,
which will make me very happy."
He bit his lip savagely--I think he guessed my meaning--but he did not
hesitate.
"Name it," he said shortly.
"Don't hurt Lillian any more about the change in her appearance or
object to her having her child with her," I pleaded.
He thought a long minute, then with a quick gesture he caught my
uninjured hand in his, carried it to his lips, and kissed it, then
laid it gently back upon the bed again.
"Done," he said gruffly. "It won't bother me much for awhile anyway.
Your friend Gordon, wants me to go with him on a long trip to South
America. I'm the original white-haired boy with him just now for some
reason or other, and it's just the chance I have wanted to look up the
theatrical situation down there. Perhaps I can persuade the old boy
to loosen up on some of his bank roll and play angel. But anyway I'm
going to be gone quite a stretch, and when I come back I'll try to be
a reformed character. But remember, wherever I am 'me art is true to
Poll.'"
He bowed mockingly with his old manner, and walked toward the door,
meeting Lillian as she came in.
"So long, Lil," he said carelessly. "I'm going for a long walk. See
you later."
She looked at him searchingly. "All right," she answered laconically,
and then came over to me.
"Mr. Gordon will be here in a half-hour," she said. "Please try to
rest a little before he comes."
She lowered the shades, and my pillows, kissed me gently, and left the
room. But I could neither rest nor sleep. The wildest conjectures went
through my brain. Who was Robert Gordon, and why was he so strangely
interested in me?
XL
MADGE FACES THE PAST AND HEARS A DOOR SOFTLY CLOSE
It seemed a very long time to me, as I tossed on my pillows, beset by
the problem that even the name Robert Gordon always presents to me,
before Lillian came back to my room. But when she entered she said
that Mr. Gordon would soon arrive and that I must be prepared to see
him, so she bathed my hands and face and gave me an egg-nog before
propping me up against my pillows to receive my visitor.
"Of course you will stay with me, Lillian, while he is here," I said.
She smiled enigmatically. "Part of the time," she said.
But when Mr. Gordon came, bringing with him an immense sheaf of roses,
she left the room almost at once, giving as an excuse her wish to
arrange the flowers.
My visitor's eyes were burning with a light that almost frightened me
as he sat down by my bedside and took my hand in his.
"My dear child," he said, and though the words were such as any
elderly man might address to a young woman, yet there was an intensity
in them that made me uncomfortable. "Are you sure everything is all
right with you?"
"Very sure," I replied, smiling. "If Mrs. Underwood would permit me to
do so, I am certain I could get up now."
"You must not think of trying it," he returned sharply, and with a
note in his voice, almost like authority, which puzzled me.
"Thank God for Mrs. Underwood!" he went on. "She is a woman in a
thousand. I am indebted to her for life."
I shrank back among my pillows, and wished that Lillian would return
to the room. I began to wonder if Mr. Gordon's brain was not slightly
turned. Surely, the fact that he had once known and loved my mother
was no excuse for the extravagant attitude he was taking.
He saw the movement, and into his eyes flashed a look so mournful, so
filled with longing that I was thrilled to the heart. The next moment
he threw himself upon his knees by the side of my bed, and cried out
tensely:
"Oh, my darling child, don't shrink from me. You will kill me. Don't
you see? Can't you guess? I am your father!"
My father! Robert Gordon my father!
I looked at the elderly man kneeling beside my bed, and my brain
whirled with the unreality of it all. The "man of mystery," the
"Quester" of Broadway, the elderly soldier of fortune, about whose
reputed wealth and constant searching of faces wherever he was the
idle gossip of the city's Bohemia had whirled--to think that this man
was the father I had never known, the father, alas! whom I had hoped
never to know.
Everything was clear to me now--the reason for his staring at me when
he first caught sight of me in the Sydenham Hotel, his trailing of my
movements until he had found out my name and home, the introduction
he obtained to Dicky, and through him to me, his emotion at hearing
my mother's name, his embarrassing attentions to me ever since--the
explanation for all of which had puzzled me had come in the choking
words of the man whose head was bowed against my bed, and whose whole
frame was shaking with suppressed sobs.
I felt myself trembling in the grip of a mighty surge of longing to
gather that bowed gray head into my arms and lavish the love he longed
for upon my father. My heart sang a little hymn of joy. I, who had
been kinless, with no one of my own blood, had found a father!
And then, with my hand outstretched, almost touching my father's head,
the revulsion came.
True, this man was my father, but he was also the man who had made my
mother's life one long tragedy. All my life I had schooled myself to
hate the man who had deserted my mother and me when I was four years
old, who had added to the desertion the insult of taking with him the
woman who had been my mother's most intimate friend. My love for my
mother had been the absorbing emotion of my life, until she had left
me, and because of that love I had loathed the very thought of the man
who had caused her to suffer so terribly.
My father lifted his head and looked at me, and there was that in his
eyes which made me shudder. It was the look of a prisoner in the dock,
waiting to receive a sentence.
"Of course, I know you must hate the very sight of me, Margaret," he
said brokenly. "I had not meant to tell you so soon. But I have to go
away almost at once to South America, and it is very uncertain when I
shall return. I could not bear to go without your knowing how I have
loved and longed for you.
"Never so great a sinner as I, my child," the weary old voice went
on, "but, oh, if you could know my bitter repentance, my years of
loneliness."
His voice tore at my heart strings, but I steeled myself against him.
One thing I must know.
"Where is the person with whom--" I could not finish the words.
"I do not know." The words rang true. I was sure he was not lying to
me. "I have not seen or heard of her in over twenty years."
Then the association had not lasted. I had a sudden clairvoyant
glimpse into my father's soul. My mother had been the real love of
his life. His infatuation for the other woman had been but a temporary
madness. What long drawn out, agonized repentance must have been his
for twenty years with wife, child and home lost to him!
I leaned back and closed my eyes for a minute, overwhelmed with the
problem which confronted me. And then--call it hallucination or what
you will--I heard my mother's voice, as clearly as I ever heard it in
life, repeating the words I had read weeks before in the letter she
had left for me at her death.
"Remember it is my last wish, Margaret, that if your father be living
sometime you may be reconciled to him."
I opened my eyes with a little cry of thanksgiving. It was as if my
mother had stretched out her hand from heaven to sanction the one
thing I most longed to do.
"Father!" I gasped. "Oh, my father, I have wanted you so."
He uttered a little cry of joy, and then my father's arms were around
me, my face was close to his, and for the first time since I was a
baby of four years I knew my father's kisses.
A smothered sound, almost like a groan, startled me, and then the door
slammed shut.
"What was that?" I asked. "Is there any one there?"
My father raised his head. "No, there is no one there," he said. "See,
the wind is rising. It must have been that which slammed the door. I
think I would better shut the window."
He moved over to the window, which Lillian had kept partly ajar for
air, and closed it. Then he returned to my bedside.
"There is one thing I must ask you to do, my child," he said
hesitatingly, "and that is to keep secret the fact that instead of
being Robert Gordon, I am in reality Charles Robert Gordon Spencer,
and your father. Of course your husband must know and Mrs. Underwood,
as her husband is going with me to South America. But I should advise
very strongly against the knowledge coming into the possession of any
one else.
"I cannot explain to you now, why I dropped part of my name, or why I
exact this promise," he went on, "but it is imperative that I do ask
it, and that you heed the request. You will respect my wishes in this
matter, will you not, my daughter?"
It was all very stilted, almost melodramatic, but my father was so
much in earnest that I readily gave the promise he asked. With a look
of relief he took a package from his pocket and handed it to me.
"Keep this carefully," he said. "It contains all the data which you
will need in case of my death. Rumor says that I am a very rich man.
As usual rumor is wrong, but I have enough so that you will always
be comfortable. And for fear that something might happen to you in
my absence I have placed to your account in the Knickerbocker money
enough for any emergency, also for any extra spending money you may
wish. The bank book is among these papers. I trust that you will use
it. I shall like to feel that you are using it. And now good-by. I
shall not see you again."
He kissed me, lingeringly, tenderly, and went out of the room. I lay
looking at the package he had given me, wondering if it were all a
dream.
XLI
WHY DID DICKY GO?
"Margaret, I have the queerest message from Richard. I cannot make it
out."
My mother-in-law rustled into my room, her voice querulous, her face
expressing the utmost bewilderment.
"What is it, mother?" I asked nervously. It was late afternoon of the
day in which Robert Gordon had revealed his identity as my father, and
my nerves were still tense from the shock of the discovery.
"Why, Richard has left the city. He telephoned me just now that he
had an unexpected offer at an unusual sum to do some work in San
Francisco, I think, he said, and that he would be gone some months. If
he accepted the offer he would have no time to come home. He said he
would write to both of us tonight. What do you suppose it means?"
"I--do--not--know," I returned slowly and truthfully, but there was a
terrible frightened feeling at my heart. Dicky gone for months without
coming to bid me good-by! My world seemed to whirl around me. But I
must do or say nothing to alarm my mother-in-law. Her weak heart made
it imperative that she be shielded from worry of any kind.
I rallied every atom of self-control I possessed. "There is nothing
to worry about, mother," I said carelessly. "Dicky has often spoken
recently about this offer to go to San Francisco. It was always
tentative before, but he knew that when it did come he would have to
go at a minute's notice. You know he always keeps a bag packed at the
studio for just such emergencies."
The last part of my little speech was true. Dicky did keep a bag
packed for the emergency summons he once in a while received from his
clients. But I had never heard of the trip to San Francisco. But I
must reassure my mother-in-law in some way.
"Well, I think it's mighty queer," she grumbled, going out of the
room.
"You adorable little fibber!" Lillian said tenderly, rising, and
coming over to me. Her voice was gay, but I who knew its every
intonation, caught an undertone of worry.