"May I ask your name before you were married, Mrs. Graham?"
"Margaret Spencer," I returned steadily.
There was a cry of astonishment from d.i.c.ky. Mr. Gordon had reeled in his chair as if he were about to faint, then, with closed eyes and white lips, he sat motionless, gripping the table as if for support.
"Do not be alarmed--I am all right--only a momentary faintness, I a.s.sure you."
Mr. Gordon opened his eyes and smiled at us wanly.
I knew that d.i.c.ky was as much relieved as I at our guest"s return to self-command. That he was resentful as well as mystified at the singular behavior of Mr. Gordon I also gleaned from his darkened face, and a little steely glint in his eyes.
"I hope that you will forgive me," Mr. Gordon went on, and his rich voice was so filled with regret and humility that I felt my heart soften toward him.
"I trust you have not gained the impression that my momentary faintness had anything to do with your name," he said. "My attack at that time was merely a coincidence. I am subject to these spells of faintness. I hope this one did not alarm you."
He looked at me directly, as if expecting an answer.
"I am not easily alarmed," I returned, trying hard to keep out of my voice anything save the indifferent courtesy which one would bestow upon a stranger, for the atmosphere of mystery seemed deepening about this stranger and me. I did not believe he had spoken the truth, when he said that my utterance of my maiden name, in response to his question, had nothing to do with his faintness. I was as certain as I was of anything that it was the utterance of that name, the revelation of my ident.i.ty thus made to him, that caused his emotion. I sat thrilled, tense, in antic.i.p.ation of revelations to follow.
Mr. Gordon"s voice was quiet, but a poignant little thrill ran through it, which I caught as he spoke again.
"Was not your mother"s name Margaret Bickett and your father"s, Charles Spencer?" he asked.
"You are quite correct." I forced the words through lips stiffened by excitement.
I saw d.i.c.ky look at me curiously, almost impatiently, but I had no eyes, no ears, save for the mysterious stranger who was quizzing me about my parents.
One of Mr. Gordon"s hands was beneath the table; as he was sitting next to his I saw what no one else did--that the long, slender, sensitive fingers pressed themselves deeply, quiveringly, into the palm at my affirmation of his question. But except for that momentary grip there was no evidence of excitement in his demeanor as he turned to me.
"I thought so," he said quietly. "I have found the daughter of the dearest friends I ever had. Your resemblance to your mother is marvelous. I remember that you looked much like her when you were a tiny girl."
"You were at our home in my childhood, then?" I asked, wondering if this might be the explanation of my uncanny notion that I had sometime in my life seen this man bending over his demita.s.se as he had done a few minutes before.
"Oh, yes," he said, "your mother, as I have told you, was the dearest friend I ever had. And your father was my other self--then--"
His emphasis upon the word "then" gave me a quick stab of pain, for it recalled the odium with which every one who had known my childhood seemed to regard the memory of my father.
I, myself, had no memories of my father. My mother had never spoken of him to me but once, when she had told me the terrible story of his faithlessness.
When I was four years old he had run away from us both with my mother"s dearest friend, and neither she, nor any of his friends, had ever heard of him afterward. I had always felt a sort of hatred of my unknown father, who had deserted me and so cruelly treated my mother, and the knowledge that this man was an intimate of his turned me faint.
But if Mr. Gordon"s inflection meant anything it meant that even if he had been my father"s "other self," my mother"s desertion had aroused in him the same contempt for my father that all the rest of our little world had felt. I felt my indefinable feeling of repulsion against the man melt into warm approval of him. He had loved the mother I had idolized, had resented her wrongs, and I felt my heart go out to him.
"I cannot tell you what this finding of your wife means to me,"
said Mr. Gordon, turning to d.i.c.ky. The inflection of his voice, the movement of his hand, spelled a subtle appeal to the younger man.
"I have been a wanderer for years," the deep, rich voice went on. "I have no family ties"--he hesitated for a moment, with a curious little air of indecision--"no wife, no child. I am a very lonely man. I wonder if it would be asking too much to let me come to see you once in a while and renew the memories of my youth in this dear child?"
He turned to me with the most fascinating little air of deferential admiration I had ever seen.
But I looked in vain for any answer to his appeal in d.i.c.ky"s eyes. My husband still retained the air of formal, puzzled courtesy with which he had brought Mr. Gordon to our table and introduced him to us. I could see that the mysterious stranger"s appeal to be made an intimate of our home did not meet with d.i.c.ky"s approval.
I could not understand the impulse that made me turn toward the stranger and say, earnestly: "I shall be so glad to have you come to see us, Mr. Gordon. I want you to tell me about my mother"s youth."
x.x.xIII
"MOTHER" GRAHAM HAS SOMETHING TO SAY
It may have been the preparation we were making for an autumn vacation in the Catskills, or it may have been that d.i.c.ky was becoming more the master of himself, that he did not voice to me the very real uneasiness with which I knew he viewed Robert Gordon"s att.i.tude toward me. But whatever may have been the cause, the fact is that during the preparations for our trip and during the vacation itself in the gorgeous autumn-clad mountains d.i.c.ky did not refer to Robert Gordon.
It was my mother-in-law who brought his name up the day of our return.
She had moved from the hotel where we had left her in the city to the house at Marvin, and when we arrived there her greeting of me was almost icy. As soon as we had taken off our wraps, she explained her departure from the hotel without any questioning from us.
"I never have been so insulted and annoyed in my life," she began abruptly, "and it is all your fault, Richard. If you never had brought the unspeakable person over he would not have had the chance to annoy me. And as for you, Margaret, I cannot begin to tell you what I think of your conduct in leading your husband to believe you had never seen the man before--"
"For heaven"s sake, mother!" d.i.c.ky exploded, his slender patience evidently worn to its last thread by his mother"s incoherence, "what on earth are you talking about?"
"Don"t pretend ignorance," she snapped. "You introduced the man to me yourself the night before you went on your trip. You cannot have forgotten his name so soon."
"Robert Gordon!" d.i.c.ky exclaimed in amazement.
"Yes, Robert Gordon!" his mother returned grimly. "And let me tell you, Richard Graham, that if you do not settle that man he will make you the laughing stock and the scandal of everybody. The way he talks of Margaret is disgusting."
d.i.c.ky"s face became suddenly stern and set.
"He didn"t exhibit his lack of good taste the first time he came over to my table in the dining room," my mother-in-law went on. "But the second time he sat down with me he began to talk of Margaret in the most fulsome, extravagant manner. From that time his sole topic of conversation was Margaret, the wonderful woman she had grown into, the wonderful attraction she has for him. You would have thought him a man who had discovered his lost sweetheart after years of wandering.
Imagine the lack of decency and good taste the man must have to say such things to me, the mother of Margaret"s husband!"
"Is that all you have to say, mother?" he asked.
She looked at him in amazement.
"Are you lost to all decency that you do not resent such extravagant praise and admiration of your wife from the lips of another man?" she demanded, and then in the same breath went on rapidly:
"Richard, you are perfectly hopeless! The man may have been in love with Margaret"s mother, I do not doubt that he was, but have you never heard of such men falling in love with the daughters of the women they once loved hopelessly?"
"Don"t make the poor man out a potential Mormon, mother!" d.i.c.ky jibed.
"Jeer at your old mother if you wish, Richard," his mother went on icily, "but let me tell you that Mr. Gordon is madly in love with Margaret and if you do not look out you will have a scandal on your hands."
"You are going a bit too far in your excitement, mother," d.i.c.ky said sternly. "You may not realize it, but you are insinuating that there might be a possible chance of Madge"s returning the man"s admiration."
"I am not insinuating anything," his mother returned, white-lipped with anger, "but I certainly think Margaret owes both you and me an explanation of the untruth she told us at the supper table the night you introduced Mr. Gordon to us."