"Phone me about Sunday. Perhaps Mrs. Graham can come over after dinner and meet you there. Good-by."
She hurried out to the door, this time without d.i.c.ky"s stopping her.
d.i.c.ky came toward me.
"If I say I am very, very sorry, Madge?" he said, smiling apologetically at me.
"Of course it"s all right, d.i.c.ky," I forced myself to say.
Curiously enough, after all, my resentment was more against Lillian than against d.i.c.ky. Probably she meant well, but how dared she talk to my husband as if he were her personal property, and what was it he "owed her" that made him take such a raking over at her hands?
XII
LOST AND FOUND
"Margaret!"
"Jack!"
It was, after all, a simple thing, this meeting with my cousin-brother that I had so dreaded. Save for the fact that he took both my hands in his, any observer of our meeting would have thought that it was but a casual one, instead of being a reunion after a separation of a year.
But this meeting upset me strangely. I seemed to have stepped back years in my life. My marriage to d.i.c.ky, my life with him, my love for him, seemed in some curious way to belong to some other woman, even the permission to meet him in this way, which I had wrested from d.i.c.ky, seemed a need of another. I was again Margaret Spencer, going with my best friend to the restaurant where we had so often dined together.
And yet in some way I felt that things were not the same as they used to be. Jack was the same kindly brother I had always known, and yet there seemed in his manner a tinge of something different. I did not know what. I only knew that I felt very nervous and unstrung.
As I sank into the padded seat and began to remove my gloves I was confronted by a new problem.
My wedding ring, guarded by my engagement solitaire, was upon the third finger of my left hand. Jack would be sure to see them if I kept them on.
I told myself fiercely that I did not wish Jack to know I was married until after we had had this dinner together. With my experience of d.i.c.ky"s jealousy I had not much hope that Jack and I would ever dine together in this fashion again.
On the other hand, I had a strong aversion to removing my wedding ring even for an hour or two. Besides being a silent falsehood, the act would seem almost an omen of evil. I am not generally superst.i.tious, but something made me dread doing it.
However, I had to choose quickly. I must either take off the rings or tell Jack at once that I was married. I was not brave enough to do the latter.
Taking my silver mesh bag from my m.u.f.f, I opened it under the table, and, quickly stripping off my gloves, removed my rings, tucked them into a corner of the bag and put gloves and bag back in my m.u.f.f. Jack, man-like, had noticed nothing.
Now to keep the conversation in my own hands, so that Jack should suspect nothing until we had dined.
The waiter stood at attention with pencil pointed over his order card.
Jack was studying the menu card, and I was studying Jack.
It was the first chance I had had to take a good look at this cousin-brother of mine after his year"s absence. Every time I had attempted it I had met his eyes fixed upon me with an inscrutable look that puzzled and embarra.s.sed me. Now, however, he was occupied with the menu card, and I stared openly at him.
He had changed very little, I told myself. Of course he was terribly browned by his year in the tropics, but otherwise he was the same handsome, well-set-up chap I remembered so well.
I knew Jack"s favorite dish, fortunately. If he could sit down in front of just the right kind of steak, thick, juicy, broiled just right, he was happy.
"How about a steak?" I inquired demurely. "I haven"t had a good one in ages."
"I"m sure you"re saying that to please me," Jack protested, "but I haven"t the heart to say so. You can imagine the food I"ve lived on in South America. But you must order the rest of the meal."
"Surely I will," I said, for I knew the things he liked. "Baked potatoes, new asparagus, b.u.t.tered beets, romaine salad, and we"ll talk about the dessert later."
The waiter bowed and hurried away. "You"re either clairvoyant, Margaret or--"
"Perhaps I, too, have a memory," I returned gayly, and then regretted the speech as I saw the look that leaped into Jack"s eyes.
"I wish I was sure," he began impetuously, then he checked himself. "I wonder whether we are too early for any music?" he finished lamely.
"I am afraid so," I said.
"It doesn"t matter anyway. We want to talk, not to listen. I"ve got something to tell you, my dear, that I"ve been thinking about all this year I"ve been gone."
I did not realize the impulse that made me stretch out my hand, lay it upon his, and ask gently:
"Please, Jack, don"t tell me anything important until after dinner. I feel rather upset anyway. Let"s have one of our care-free dinners and when we"ve finished we can talk."
Jack gave me a long curious look under which I flushed hot. Then he said brusquely, "All right, the weather and the price of flour, those are good safe subjects, we"ll stick to them."
The dinner was perfect in every detail. Jack ate heartily, and although I was too unstrung to eat much I managed to get enough down to deceive him into thinking I was enjoying the meal also.
The coffee and cheese dispatched, I leaned back and smiled at Jack.
"Now light your cigar," I commanded.
"Not yet. We"re going to talk a bit first, you and I."
I felt that same little absurd thrill of apprehension. Jack was changed in some way. I could not tell just now. He took my fingers in his big, strong hand.
"Look at me, Margaret."
Jack"s voice was low and tense. It held a masterful note I had never heard. Without realizing that I did so, I obeyed him, and lifted my eyes to his.
What I read in them made me tremble. This was a new Jack facing me across the table. The cousin-brother, my best friend since my childhood, was gone.
I did not admit to myself why, but I wished, oh! so earnestly, that I had told Jack over the telephone of my marriage during his year"s absence in the South American wilderness, where he could neither send nor receive letters.
I must not wait another minute, I told myself.
"Jack," I said brokenly, "there is something I want to tell you--I"m afraid you will be angry, but please don"t be, big brother, will you?"
"There is something I"m going to tell you first," Jack smiled tenderly at me, "and that is that this big brother stuff is done for, as far as I"m concerned. In fact, I"ve been just faking the role for two or three years back, because I knew you didn"t care the way I wanted you to. But this year out in the wilderness has made me realize just what life would be to me without you. I"ve been kicking myself all over South America that I didn"t try to make you care. I"ve just about gone through Gehenna, too, thinking you might fall in love with somebody while I was gone. But I saw you didn"t wear anybody"s ring anyway, so I said to myself, "I"m not going to wait another minute to tell her I love her, love her, love her.""
Jack"s voice, pitched to a low key anyway, so that no one should be able to hear what he was saying, sank almost to a whisper with the last words.
I sat stunned, helpless, grief-stricken.