A fortnight passed. Yvonne held the destiny of three persons in her
hand. They were like figures on a chess-board, and she moved them with
the sureness, the unerring instinct of any skilled disciple of the
philosopher's game. They were puppets; she ranged them about her stage
in swift-changing pictures, and applauded her own effectiveness. There
were no rehearsals. The play was going on all the time, whether tragedy,
comedy, or chess.
Brood's uneasiness increased. His moody eyes were seldom lifted to meet
the question that he knew lurked in hers. She had given him a tremendous
shock. There was seldom a moment in which he was not making strange
inquiries of himself.
Was it possible that she had spoken the truth about him? Could such
a condition of mind exist without his knowledge? Was this love he
professed to feel for her but the flame springing into life from those
despised embers of long ago? Was it true that his inner self, his
subconscious being, recognised no other claim to his love than the one
held so insecurely by its original possessor? Was it true that his soul
went back to her the instant slumber came to close up the gap of years?
This strange, new wife of his had uttered amazing words; she had spoken
without rancour; she had called his dreams to life; she had told him how
he lived while asleep!
He arose in the mornings, haggard from lack of reposeful sleep. In a
way, he slept with one ear open, constantly striving to catch himself
with the dream-name on his lips. He would awake with a start many times
in the night, and always there seemed to be the vague, ghostlike
whisper of a name dying away in the stillness that greeted his return to
wakefulness.
Now he confessed to himself that his dreams were of Matilde, as they
had been during all the years. Heretofore they had been mere impressions
upon his intelligence, and seldom remembered. They did not represent
pictures or incidents in which she appeared as a potent factor, but
brief monodies, with her name as the single note, her face a passing,
yet impressive, vision. He had not realised how frequent, how real these
dreams were until now.
He sometimes lay perfectly still after these awakenings, wondering if
Yvonne was listening at his closed door, straining his ears for the
sound of a creaking board that would betray her presence as she stole
back to her own bed.
What surprised and puzzled him most was her serenity in the face of
these involuntary revelations. She did not appear to be disturbed by the
fact that his dreams, his most secret thoughts, were of another woman.
There was nothing in her manner to indicate that she suffered any of the
pangs of jealousy, humiliation, dismay, or doubt that might reasonably
have been expected under the circumstances. She seemed to put the matter
entirely out of her mind as trivial, unimportant, unvexing. He found
himself wondering what his own state of mind would be if the conditions
were reversed and it was she who cried out in her sleep.
Frederic was alert, shifty, secretive. He knew himself to be the link in
the chain that would offer the least resistance of any if it came to the
question of endurance. He realised that the slightest tug at the chain
would cause it to snap, and that the break would never be repaired. His
stepmother for the present fortified the weak spot in the chain; but
would her strength be sufficient to support the strain that was to be
imposed upon both links in the end?
He watched her like a hawk, ever on the lookout for the slightest
signs of commendation, reproof, warning, encouragement. She alone stood
between him and what appeared to be the inevitable. The truce was a mask
that hid none of the real features of the situation. When would it be
discarded?
After that illuminating hour in her boudoir he saw himself in a far from
noble position. The situation was no longer indefinite. He had taken a
step that could not be recalled. His loyalty to Lydia had been tested,
and the sickening truth came out--he was a traitor! He knew in his soul
that he loved the girl. His conscience told him so. But his conscience
suddenly had become an elastic thing that stretched over a pretty wide
scope of emotions. These he tried to analyse and, failing to do so with
credit to himself, settled back into a state of apathy better described
as sullen self-pity. He even went so far as to blame his father for the
new blight that had been put upon him.
Of the three, Lydia alone faced the situation with courage. She was
young, she was good, she was inexperienced, but she saw what was
going on beneath the surface with a clarity of vision that would have
surprised an older and more practised person; and, seeing, was favoured
with the strength to endure pain that otherwise would have been
insupportable.
She knew that Frederic was infatuated. She did not try to hide the truth
from herself. The boy she loved was slipping away from her, and only
chance could set his feet back in the old path from which he blindly
strayed. Her woman's heart told her that it was not love he felt for
Yvonne. The strange mentor that guides her sex out of the ignorance of
youth into an understanding of hitherto unpresented questions revealed
to her the nature of his feeling for this woman.
He would come back to her in time, she knew, chastened; the same instinct
that revealed his frailties to her also defended his sense of honour.
The unthinkable could never happen!
She judged Yvonne, too, in a spirit of fairness that was amazing,
considering the lack of perspective that must have been hers to contend
with. Despite a natural feeling of antagonism, present even before she
saw the new wife of James Brood, and long before her influence affected
Brood's son, Lydia found herself confronted by a curious faith in
Yvonne's goodness of heart. It never entered the girl's mind to question
the honour of this woman--no more than she would have questioned her
own.
Vanity, love of admiration, the inherent fear of retrogression, greed
for attention--any one of these might have been responsible for her
conduct covering the past three months. There was certainly a reckless
disregard for consequences on her part so far as others--notably
Frederic--were concerned. She could not be blind to his plight, and
yet it was her pleasure to drag him out beyond his depth where he might
struggle or drown while she, sirenlike, looked on for the moment and
then turned calmly to the more serious business of combing her hair.
Her mother saw the suffering in the girl's eyes, but saw also the proud
spirit that would have resented sympathy from one even so close as she.
Down in the heart of that quiet, reserved mother smouldered a hatred for
Yvonne Brood that would have stopped at nothing had it been in her power
to inflict punishment for the wrong that was being done. She, too, saw
tragedy ahead, but her vision was broader than Lydia's. It included the
figure of James Brood.
Lydia worked steadily, almost doggedly, at the task she had undertaken
to complete for the elder Brood. Every afternoon found her seated at
the desk in the study opposite the stern-faced man who laboured with her
over the seemingly endless story of his life. Something told her that
there were secret chapters which she was not to write. She wrote those
that were to endure; the others were to die with him.
He watched her as she wrote, and his eyes were often hard. He saw the
growing haggardness in her gentle, girlish face; the wistful, puzzled
expression in her dark eyes. A note of tenderness crept into his voice
and remained there through all the hours they spent together.
The old-time brusqueness disappeared from his speech; the sharp,
authoritative tone was gone. He watched her with pity in his heart, for
he knew it was ordained that one day he, too, was to hurt this loyal,
pure-hearted creature even as the others were wounding her now.
He frequently went out of his way to perform quaint little acts of
courtesy and kindness that would have surprised him only a short time
before. He sent theatre and opera tickets to Lydia and her mother. He
placed bouquets of flowers at the girl's end of the desk, obviously for
her alone. He sent her home--just around the corner--in the automobile
on rainy or blizzardy days.
But he never allowed her an instant's rest when it came to the work in
hand, and therein lay the gentle shrewdness of the man. She was better
off busy. There were times when he studied the face of Lydia's mother
for signs that might show how her thoughts ran in relation to the
conditions that were confronting all of them. But more often he searched
the features of the boy who called him father.
Not one of them knew that there were solemn hours in all the days when
Yvonne sat shivering in her room and stared, dry-eyed and bleak, at the
walls which surrounded her, seeing not them, but something far beyond.
Often she sat before her long cheval-glass, either with lowering eyes
or in a sort of wistful wonder, never removing her steady gaze from the
face reflected there. There were other times when she stood before the
striking photograph of her husband on the dressing-table, studying
the face through narrowed lids, as if she searched for something that
baffled, yet impressed her.
Always, always there was music in the house. Behind the closed doors
of his distant study James Brood listened in spite of himself to the
persistent thrumming of the piano downstairs. Always were the airs light
and seductive; the dreamy, plaintive compositions of Strauss, Ziehrer,
and others of their kind and place.
Frederic, with uncanny fidelity to the preferences of the mother he had
never seen, but whose influence directed him, affected the same general
class of music that had appealed to her moods and temperament. Times
there were, and often, when he played the very airs that she had loved,
and then, despite his profound antipathy, James Brood's thoughts leaped
back a quarter of a century and fixed themselves on love-scenes and
love-times that would not be denied.
And again there were the wild, riotous airs that she had played with
Feverelli, her soft-eyed music-master! Accursed airs--accursed and
accusing!
He gave orders that these airs were not to be played, but failed to make
his command convincing for the reason that he could not bring himself to
the point of explaining why they were distasteful to him. When Frederic
thoughtlessly whistled or hummed fragments of those proscribed airs he
considered himself justified in commanding him to stop on the pretext
that they were disturbing, but he could not use the same excuse for
checking the song on the lips of his gay and impulsive wife. Sometimes
he wondered why she persisted when she knew that he was annoyed. Her
airy little apologies for her forgetfulness were of no consequence, for
within the hour her memory was almost sure to be at fault again.
Mr Dawes fell ill. He ventured out one day when the winds of March were
fierce and sharp, and, being an adventurer, caught the most dangerous
sort of a cold. He came in shivering and considerably annoyed because
Jones or Ranjab or some other incompetent servant had failed to advise
him to wear an overcoat and galoshes. To his surprise Mrs Brood ordered
a huge, hot drink of whisky and commanded him to drink it--“like a good
boy.” Then she had him stowed away in bed with loads of blankets about
him.
Just before dinner she came up to see him. He was still shivering.
So was Mr Riggs, for that matter, but Mr Riggs failed to shiver
convincingly and did not receive the treatment he desired. Their
unexpected visitor felt the pulse and forehead of the sick man, uttered
a husky little cry of dismay, and announced that he had a fever.
Whereupon Mr Dawes said, rather shamefacedly, that he would be all right
in the morning and that it was nothing at all.
“We will have the doctor at once, Mr Dawes,” said she, and instructed Mr
Riggs to call Jones.
“I don't want a doctor,” said Mr Dawes stoutly.
“I know you don't,” said she, with her rarest smile; “but I _do_, you
see.”
“They're no good,” said Mr Dawes.
“Better have one,” advised Mr Riggs with sudden solemnity.
“Never had one in my life,” said Mr Dawes. “Don't believe in 'em. I'll
take a couple of stiff drinks before I go to bed and------”
“But you've gone to bed, you old dear,” cried she, stroking his burning
hand gently.
He was too astonished to say a word.
“Jumping Jees----” began Mr Riggs, completely staggered. “I mean, what
doctor, Mrs Brood?”
“Jones will know. Now, Mr Dawes, you must do just as I tell you to do.
You are nothing but a child, you know. If------”
“Hey, Joe!” called out the sick man desperately, but his comrade was
gone. “Don't let him call a--doctor, Mrs Brood; please don't!” he
implored.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, holding his hand between her soft,
cool palms, and smiled at him so tenderly that he stared for a moment in
utter bewilderment and then gulped mightily. “Hush!” she said.
“I--I don't want to be sick here, bothering you and upsetting
everything------” he blubbered.
“We will have you up and about in a day or two,” she said.
“But it's such an infernal nuisance. You oughtn't to be sitting here,
either. It may be catching.”
“Nonsense! I'm not afraid.”
“It's--it's mighty good of you,” he muttered, his eyes blinking.
“What are friends for, Mr Dawes, if they can't be depended upon in times
of sickness?”
“Friends?” he gasped.
“Certainly. Am I not your friend?”
“I--I--well, by gosh!” he exploded. “I--I must tell this to Joe.
He'll--I beg your pardon, I guess I'm a little flighty. Maybe I'm worse
than I think. Delirious or something like that. Say, you don't think
it's--it's serious, do you?”
“Of course not. A heavy cold, that's all. The doctor will break it up
immediately.”
“Maybe it's the grippe, eh?”
“Possibly.”
“What's my temperature?”
“You mustn't worry, Mr Dawes. It's all right.”
He was silent for a moment, steadfastly regarding the hand that stroked
his wrinkled old paw so gently.
“If--if it should turn out to be pneumonia or lung fever, I wish you
wouldn't let on to Joe,” said he anxiously. “It would worry him almost
to death. He's not very strong, you see. Nothing like me. I'm as strong
as a bull. Never been sick in my------”
“I know,” she said quietly. “He isn't half so strong as you, Mr Dawes.
You are so strong you will be able to throw off this cold in a jiffy, as
Jones would say. It won't amount to anything.”
“If I get much worse you'd better send me to a hospital. Awful nuisance
having a sick man about the place. Spoils everything. Don't hesitate
about sending me off, Mrs Brood. I wouldn't be a trouble to you or Jim
for------”
“You poor old dear! You shall stay right where you are, no matter what
comes to pass, and I shall take charge of you myself.”
“You?” She nodded her head briskly. “Well, by jiggers, I--I don't know
what Joe'll say when I tell him this. Blast him; I'll bet my head he
calls me a liar. If he does, blast him, I'll--oh, I beg your pardon! I
don't seem to be able to get over the habit of------”
“Here is Mr Riggs--and my husband,” she interrupted, as the door opened
and the two men strode into the room. “Is Jones telephoning?”
“Yes,” said Brood. “Why, what's gone wrong, old man?”
“It's all my fault,” groaned Mr Riggs, sitting down heavily on the
opposite side of the bed. “I let him go out without his overcoat. He's
not a strong man, Jim. Least breath of air goes right through----”
“See here, Riggs, you know better than that,” roared the sick man
wrathfully. “I can stand more------”
“There, there!” cried Mrs Brood reprovingly. “It isn't fair to quarrel
with Mr Riggs. He can't very well abuse you in return, Mr Dawes, can
he?”
“You may be on your death-bed,” said Mr Riggs mournfully, as if that
were reason enough for not abusing him.
“Nonsense,” said Brood; but it was an anxious look that he shot at
Yvonne. Mr Dawes's face was fiery hot.
“I shall come back to see you immediately after dinner, Mr Dawes,” said
she, and again stroked his hand.
The two old men stared after her rather blankly as she left the room.
They couldn't believe their ears.
“She says she'll look after me herself,” murmured Mr Dawes hazily.
Mr Riggs tucked the covers about his chin. “Don't do that, Joe! Leave
things alone, darn you. She fixed 'em as they ought to be.” Mr Riggs
obediently undid his work. “That's right. Now don't you do anything
without askin' her, d'ye hear?”
“I was only trying to make you------”
“Well, don't do it. Leave everything to her.” The upshot of it all was
that Mr Dawes came near to dying. Pneumonia set in at once, and for
many days he fought what appeared to be a losing fight. Then came the
splendid days of convalescence, the happiest days of his life. The
amazing Mrs Brood did “look after him.” Nurses there were, of course,
and doctors in consultation, but it was the much-berated mistress of the
house who “pulled him through,” as he afterward and always declared in
acrimonious disputes with Mr Riggs who, while secretly blessing the wife
of Brood, could not be driven into an open admission that she had
done “anything more than anybody else would have done under the
circumstances,”--and not “half as much, for that matter, as he could have
done had he been given a chance.”
It may be well to observe here that Mr Riggs was of no earthly use
whatever during the trying days. Indeed, he gave up hope the instant
the doctor said “pneumonia,” and went about the house saying “My God” to
himself and everybody else in sepulchral whispers, all the while urging
Heaven to “please do something.” He was too pathetic for words.
A new and totally unsuspected element in Yvonne's make-up came to light
at this troublous period. She forsook many pleasures, many comforts in
her eagerness to help the suffering old man who, she must have known, in
his heart had long despised her. She did not interfere with the nurses,
yet made herself so indispensable to old Mr Dawes in the capacity of
“visiting angel” that his heart overflowed with gratitude and love.
Even when death hung directly above his almost sightless eyes he saw
her smile of encouragement in the shadows, and his spirit responded with
what might justly have been called the battle-cry of life.
To Brood this new side to Yvonne's far from understandable character
was most gratifying. Seeing her in the rôle of good Samaritan was not
so surprising to him as the real, unaffected sincerity with which she
ministered to the wants of the querulous old man.
Even the nurses, habitually opposed to the good offices of “the family,”
were won over by this woman whose unparalleled sweetness levelled them
into a condition of respect and love that surprised not only themselves
but the doctors. They were quite docile from the start, and seldom, if
ever, spoke of Mr Dawes as “the patient” or of his state as “the case.”
They got into the habit of alluding to him as the “dear old man,” and
somehow envied each other the hours “on duty.” They were never sour.
And so, when it came time for Mr Dawes to thank the Lord for his escape,
he refused to commit himself to anything so ridiculous! He even went so
far as to declare that the doctor had nothing to do with it, a statement
which rather staggered the nurses.
For hours Yvonne read to the blissful old chap. Sometimes she read to
him in French, again in Russian, and occasionally in German. It was all
one to him. He did not understand a word of it, but he was happy. He
felt surprisingly young.
She gave up a month to him and he was prepared to give up his life to
her. To his utter amazement, however, she did not exact anything so
valuable as that. Indeed, when his recovery was quite complete, she
calmly forgot his existence and he sank back into the oblivion from
which calamity had dragged him; sank back to the unhappy level of
Mr Riggs and all the others who failed to interest her; and there he
dreamed of exalted days when she wanted him to live, contrasting them
with these days in which he might just as well be dead for all she
seemed to care! He was one of the “old men” again.
Mr Riggs, writhing with jealousy, repeatedly remarked, “I told you
so,” and somehow felt revenged for the insolent orders she had given to
Jones, depriving him of the right to even approach the door of the room
in which his lifelong friend was dying. It had been a hard week for Mr
Riggs. He hated her as he had never hated anyone in his life before.
And yet he thanked God for her, and would have died for her! Nothing,
nothing in the world would have given him more pleasure than to be
critically ill for her!