"You have heard rumors about d.i.c.ky and me; you will hear things from me today which will show you that the rumors were justified in part, and yet--I want you to believe me when I tell you that there is nothing in any past a.s.sociation of your husband and myself which would make either of us ashamed to look you straight in the eyes."
I believed her! I would challenge anyone in the world to look into those clear, honest eyes and doubt their owner"s truth.
There was a long minute when I could not speak. I had not known the full measure of what I feared until her words lifted the burden from my soul.
Then I had my moment, recognized it, rose to it. I leaned forward and returned the earnest gaze of the woman opposite to me.
"Dear Mrs. Underwood," I said. "Why tell me any more? I am perfectly satisfied with what you have just told me. Be sure that no rumors will trouble me again."
Her clasp of my hand tightened until my rings hurt my flesh. Into her face came a look of triumph.
"I knew it," she said jubilantly. "I could have banked on you. You"re a big woman, my dear, and I believe we are going to be real friends."
She loosened her clasp of my hands, leaned back in her chair and looked for a long, meditative moment at the fire.
"You cannot imagine how much easier your att.i.tude makes the telling of my story," she began finally.
"But I just a.s.sured you that there was no need for the telling," I interrupted.
"I know. But it is your right to know, and it will be far better if you are put in possession of the facts. It is an ugly story. I think I had better tell you the worst of it first."
I marvelled at the look that swept across her face. Bitter pain and humiliation were written there so plainly that I looked away. Then my eyes fell upon her strong, white, shapely hands which were resting upon the arms of the chair. They were strained, bloodless, where the fingers gripped the tapestried surface.
When she spoke, her voice was low, hurried, abashed. "Seven years ago," she said, "my first husband sued me for divorce, and named d.i.c.ky as a co-respondent."
I sprang from my seat.
"Oh, no, no, no," I cried, hardly knowing what I said. "Surely not. I remember reading the old story when you were married to Mr. Underwood, three years ago--I"ve always admired your work so much that I"ve read every line about you--and surely d.i.c.ky"s name wasn"t mentioned. I would have remembered it when I met him, I know."
"There, there." She was on her feet beside me and with a gentle yet compelling hand put me back in my chair. Her voice had the same tone a mother would use to a grieving child. "d.i.c.ky"s name wasn"t mentioned when the story was printed the last time, because at the time the divorce was granted, Mr. Morten withdrew the accusation that he had made against him."
"Why?" The question left my lips almost without volition. I sensed something tragic, full of meaning for me behind the statement she had made.
She did not answer me for a minute or two.
"I can only answer that question on your word of honor not to tell d.i.c.ky what I am going to tell you," she said. "It is something he suspects, but which I would never confirm."
She paused expectantly. "Upon honor, of course," I answered simply.
She rose and moved swiftly toward one of the built-in bookcases. I saw that she put her hand upon one of the sections and pulled upon it. To my astonishment it moved toward her, and I saw that behind it was a cleverly constructed wall safe. She turned the combination, opened the door and took from the safe an inlaid box which, as she came toward me, I saw was made of rare old woods.
She sat down again in the big chair and looked at the box musingly, tenderly. I leaned forward expectantly. Again I had the sense of tragedy near me.
Drawing the key from her dress she opened the box and took from it a miniature, gazed at it a minute, and then handed it to me.
"Oh, Mrs. Underwood," I exclaimed. "How exquisite."
The miniature was of the most beautiful child I had ever seen, a tiny girl of perhaps two years. She stood poised as if running to meet one, her baby arms outstretched. It was a picture to delight or break a mother"s heart.
I looked up from the miniature to the face of the woman who had handed it to me.
"Yes," she answered my unspoken query, "my little daughter; my only child. She is the price I paid for d.i.c.ky"s immunity from the scandal which the unjust man that I called husband brought upon me."
My first impulse was one of horror-stricken sympathy for her. Then came the reaction. A flaming jealousy enveloped me from head to foot.
"How she must have loved d.i.c.ky to do this for him!" The thought beat upon my brain like a sledge hammer.
"Don"t think that, my dear, for it isn"t true." I had not spoken, but with her almost uncanny ability to divine the thoughts of other people she had fathomed mine. "I was always fond of d.i.c.ky, but I never was in love with him."
"Then why did you make such a sacrifice?" I stammered.
"Why! There was absolutely no other way," she said, opening her wonderful eyes wide in amazement that I had not at once grasped her point of view. "d.i.c.ky was absolutely innocent of any wrongdoing, but through a combination of circ.u.mstances of which I shall tell you, my husband had gathered a show of evidence which would have won him the divorce if it had been presented."
"He bargained with me: I to give up all claim to the baby. He to withdraw d.i.c.ky"s name, and all other charges except that of desertion.
Thus d.i.c.ky was saved a scandal which would have followed and hampered him all his life, and I was spared the fastening of a shameful verdict upon me. Of course, everybody who read about the case and did not know me, believed me guilty anyway, but my friends stood by me gallantly, and that part of it is all right. But every time I look at that baby face I am tempted to wish that I had let honor, the righting of d.i.c.ky, everything go by the boards, and had taken my chance of having her, even if it were only part of the time."
Her voice was rough, uneven as she finished speaking, but that was the only evidence of the emotion which I knew must have her stretched upon the rack.
Right there I capitulated to Lillian Underwood. Always, through my dislike and distrust of her, there had struggled an admiration which would not down, even when I thought I had most cause to fear her.
But this revelation of the real bigness of the woman caught my allegiance and fixed it. She had sacrificed the thing which was most precious to her to keep her ideal of honor unsullied. I felt that I could never have made a similar sacrifice, but I mentally saluted her for her power to do it.
I realized, too, the reason for d.i.c.ky"s deference to Mrs. Underwood, which had often puzzled and sometimes angered me. Once when she had given him a raking over for the temper he displayed toward me in her presence, he had said:
"You know I couldn"t get angry at you, no matter what you said; I owe you too much."
I had wondered at the time what it was that my husband "owed" Mrs.
Underwood. The riddle was solved for me at last.
I am not an impetuous woman, and I do not know how I ever mustered up courage to do it. But the sight of Lillian Underwood"s face as she looked at her baby"s picture was too much for me. Without any conscious volition on my part I found my arms around her, and her face pressed against my shoulder.
I expected a storm of grief, for I knew the woman had been holding herself in with an iron hand. But only a few convulsive movements of her shoulders betrayed her emotion and when she raised her face to mine her eyes were less tear-bedewed than my own.
Something stirred me to quick questioning.
"Oh, is there a chance of your having her again?"
"I am always hoping for it," she answered quietly. "When her father married again, several years ago--that was before my marriage to Harry--I hoped against hope that he would give her to me. For he knew--the hound--knew better than anybody else that all his vile charges were false."
Her eyes blazed, her voice was strident, her hands clasped and unclasped. Then, as if a string had been loosened, she sank back in her chair again.
"But he would not give her to me," she went on dully, "and he could not even if he would. For his mother, who has the child, is old and devoted to her. It would kill her to take Marion away from her."
"You saw my pink room?" she demanded abruptly.
I nodded. The memory of that rose-colored nest and the look in my hostess"s eyes when on my other visit she had said she had prepared the room for a young girl was yet vivid.
"I spent weeks preparing it for her when I heard of her father"s remarriage," she said, "When I finally realized that I could not have her, I lay ill for weeks in it. On my recovery I vowed that no one else but she or I should ever sleep there. I have another bedroom where I sleep most of the time. But sometimes I go in there and spend the night, and pretend that I have her little body snuggled up close to me just as it used to be."