ALL through the afternoon at La Siesta, Merle was in a meditative mood.
After luncheon Mrs. Darlington had returned to her letter-writing and
her book-keeping. Munson and Grace had departed for a walk through the
pine woods, after vain but not too strenuous endeavors to get Merle to
accompany them. Left to her own resources she had retired to the drawing
room, had tried to interest herself at the piano, but after a little
while had given up the attempt; and, coiled in a big chair, had
surrendered herself to a “big think,” as she mentally termed it.
In that momentary searching of the eyes between her and Mr. Robles
just before their parting in the rose garden, there had come a flash of
revelation to her soul. She had divined a yearning in his gaze that was
surely more than the affection of an old and devoted friend. There was
passionate tenderness that belied the gentle yet almost perfunctory kiss
on the brow that he had finally bestowed at parting. Nor had she failed
to notice the restraint which the strong man had imposed upon himself.
And strangely enough, her own momentary impulse had been to throw her
arms around his neck and kiss him, just as a fond daughter might
have kissed a father at such an emotional moment—on the eve of a long
journey, the whither unrevealed, the return all so uncertain.
She recalled, too, their previous conversation while she was gathering
the roses—his words of kindly wisdom, his little bits of advice that now
seemed to be weighted by more than mere friendly interest in her future
happiness. Then her mind traveled back slowly, step by step, all the way
to childhood days—a long vista marked by his comings and his goings, his
prolonged absences, his unexpected but always welcome reappearances, his
numberless acts of thoughtful kindness. Once she had been seriously ill,
when a little girl, and the memory of that illness had ever been the
memory of his face hovering over her cot, night and day, till the crisis
had been passed and she had been on the way to assured convalescence.
There had always been an air of mystery about Mr. Robles, but she had
never sought to penetrate it, instinctively recognizing that there had
been some great sorrow in his life, and almost unconsciously accepting
the affectionate regard he had lavished on Grace and herself as some
sort of consolation for him in his loneliness. She knew that Grace
was only her sister in name, but none the less Grace was to her a real
sister, just as Mrs. Darlington was a real mother—the only mother she
had ever known. Weaving together now the threads of memory, she became
conscious of the mystery in her own life. There was assuredly some
fuller story than the story she had been told in the past and had always
tacitly accepted—that her parents had been neighbors and dear friends of
Mrs. Darlington in the long ago, and when they had died, the baby girl
left behind had been bequeathed to her motherly care.
At this stage in her ruminations Merle sat bolt upright in her chair.
The shadows of evening were beginning to close around her, but the dawn
of revelation was in her heart.
Would Mrs. Darlington still be alone in her boudoir? Merle answered the
unspoken thought by stealing from the room.
Yes, Mrs. Darlington was at her writing table, lighted now by candles
on each side which, covered by little red shades, only dimly illuminated
the apartment. Merle flitted in without her coming being observed.
Mrs. Darlington was no longer writing—her elbows were resting on the
table and both hands were covering her eyes in an attitude of deep
thought, perhaps of sleep, as Merle for a moment imagined when she had
noiselessly gained her side.
“Mother dear,” she said softly, laying a hand on her shoulder.
“You here, my child?” exclaimed Mrs. Darlington. There was no trace of
slumber in her eyes.
“Yes, and I want to have a little talk with you—all alone,” said
Merle, as she dropped into a chair, the very chair which Mr. Robles had
previously occupied.
The look of vague sadness and anxiety in Mrs. Darlington’s face
deepened.
“What about, dear?” she asked.
Merle’s mind had been made up, and she came to the issue with
point-blank abruptness.
“Is Mr. Robles my father?”
The startled look on the other’s face was almost in itself an admission
of the truth—Mrs. Darlington had been caught off her guard. But she made
a desperate attempt to parry the question.
“What makes you fancy such a thing?” she faltered.
“Because there is certainty in my heart,” replied
Merle bravely. “It came to me first when he bade me good-bye in the
garden. And now I see it in your face.”
The young girl dropped on her knees, and, an arm around her mother’s
waist, gazed up imploringly.
Eyes met eyes. Falsehood was impossible in either case. Mrs. Darlington
stooped and folded the kneeling girl in a fond embrace. Both were
weeping now. No word had been spoken, but Merle knew that she had
correctly divined.
It was a few minutes before there was sufficient self-control for the
conversation to be resumed. But then, Merle still kneeling by her side,
Mrs. Darlington spoke:
“I had promised to keep this secret, dear,” she began, fondling the
girl’s tresses. “But you have gained your knowledge apart from me, so
I cannot be held to have betrayed my trust. Yes, Mr. Robles is your
father—your loving and devoted father. Your real name is his—Merle
Robles you should always have been called.”
“And why not?” asked Merle. “Oh, I am proud and overjoyed to think of
him as my father.”
“Because he has some important reason to have the world think otherwise.
I know you will believe me, dear Merle, when I say I do not know that
reason. He is too grand and honorable a man for me to have ever pressed
for an explanation. I just accepted you as a gift from his hands—his
child and the child of my girlhood chum, named Merle, as you know, like
yourself.”
“So, if I have solved one mystery, there is still another mystery
beyond,” murmured Merle.
She rose, seated herself, and remained silent for a moment, her hands
locked across her knees, her brows knit in thought.
“But why distress your heart over unknown things?” said Mrs. Darlington.
“As you have learned by your today’s experience, mysteries solve
themselves in due time.”
“Yes,” replied Merle, “but somehow I feel that this is the due time that
I should know everything—for my dear father’s sake,” she added, “not for
my own. Oh, mother, you should have seen his face of anguish just before
he parted from me this afternoon. It was revealed to me only for
an instant. But now I feel sure that something terrible is going to
happen—to him.”
She was sobbing again, as she flung her arms impulsively around Mrs.
Darlington’s neck and sat in her lap, just as if once again she had
become a little child.
“Oh, mother mine—I shall always call you mother mine, for you have been
a dear, sweet, kind mother to me ever since I can remember. But don’t
you see that today I have also found a father whom I deeply love?
Nothing must happen to him.”
“Why should anything happen to him?”
“I do not know. Where is Tia Teresa?”
The question came with startling suddenness as Merle started up with
another ray of illumination in her mind.
“I haven’t seen her since morning,” replied Mrs. Darlington.
“Nor have I,” said Merle, standing erect, wiping away the traces of her
tears, and with a few pats adjusting her rumpled hair. “That is very
strange.”
“No. I happen to know that this day, the eleventh of October, is always
a sad anniversary for Tia Teresa—the death of some dear friend who
lies buried in the little Mexican cemetery on the hill. She has always
refused to tell me the story. But early this morning she went, as usual,
to place flowers upon the grave.”
“Flowers—for a grave!” exclaimed Merle. She was thinking of the roses
she had gathered that afternoon for Mr. Robles—for her father—because
he specially wanted the most beautiful blooms. But she did not give her
thought to Mrs. Darlington.
“It is all so strange,” continued Merle. Then her air of decisiveness
returned. “I’ll go and see if Tia Teresa is in her room.”
Mrs. Darlington was gravely perturbed at this persistency. Oh, if only
the mysteries of the past could be left alone, the joys of the present
accepted for themselves! Probing into trouble cannot but lead to further
trouble—that, for her, had been the secret of contentment. But she was
powerless to intervene. Merle had already departed on her mission of
enquiry.