I sprang to my feet with my cheeks afire.
"Mother Graham, I have listened to you with respect as long as I can,"
I exclaimed. "Whatever else you have to say to my husband about me you can say in my absence. If he at any time wishes an explanation of any action of mine he has only to ask me for it."
White with rage I dashed out of the room, up the stairs and into my own room, locking the door behind me. In a few minutes d.i.c.ky"s step came swiftly up the stairs; his knock sounded on my door.
"Madge, let me in," he commanded, but the note of tenderness in his voice was the influence that hurried my fingers in the turning of the key.
As I opened the door he strode in past me, closed and locked the door again, and, turning, caught me in his arms.
"Don"t you dare to cry!" he stormed, kissing my reddened eyelids.
"Aren"t you ever going to get used to mother"s childish outbursts?
You know she doesn"t mean what she says in those tantrums of hers.
She simply works herself up to a point where she"s absolutely irresponsible, and she has to explode or burst. You wouldn"t like to see a perfectly good mother-in-law strewn in fragment all over the room, simply because she had restrained her temper, would you?" he added, with the quick transition from hot anger to whimsical good nature that I always find so bewildering in him.
I struggled for composure. My mother-in-law"s words had been too scathing, her insult too direct for me to look upon it as lightly as d.i.c.ky could, but the knowledge that he had come directly after me, and that he had no part in the resentment his mother showed, made it easy for me to control myself.
"I ought to remember that your mother is an old woman, and an invalid, and not allow myself to get angry at some of the unjust things she says," I returned, swallowing hard. "So we"ll just forget all about it and pretend it never happened."
"You darling!" d.i.c.ky exclaimed, drawing me closer, and for a moment or two I rested in his arms, gathering courage for the confession I meant to make to him.
"d.i.c.ky, dear," I murmured at last, "there is something I want to tell you about this miserable business, something I ought to have told you before, but I kept putting it off."
d.i.c.ky held me from him and looked at me quizzically, ""Confession is good for the soul,"" he quoted, "so unburden your dreadful secret."
He drew me to an easy chair and sat down, holding me in his arms as if I were a little child. "Now for it," he said, smiling tenderly at me.
"It isn"t so very terrible," I smiled at him rea.s.sured by his tenderness. "It is only that without telling you a deliberate untruth, that I gave both you and your mother the impression I had never seen Mr. Gordon before that night at the Sydenham."
"Is that all?" mocked d.i.c.ky. "Why, I knew that the moment you spoke as you did that night! You"re as transparent as a child, my dear, and besides, your elderly friend let the cat out of the bag when he said he feared he had annoyed you by trying to find out your ident.i.ty. I knew you must have seen him somewhere."
"You don"t know all," I persisted, and then without reservation I told him frankly the whole story of Mr. Gordon"s spying upon me. I omitted nothing.
When I had finished, d.i.c.ky"s face had lost its quizzical look. He was frowning, not angrily, but as if puzzled.
"Don"t think I blame you one bit," he said slowly; "but it looks to me as if mother"s dope might be right, as if the old guy is smitten with you after all."
"I cannot hope to make your understand, d.i.c.ky," I began, "how confused my emotions are concerning Mr. Gordon. I think perhaps I can tell you best by referring to something about which we have never talked but once--the story I told you before we were married of the tragedy in my mother"s life."
"I believe you told me that neither your mother nor you had ever heard anything of your father since he left." d.i.c.ky"s voice was casual, but there was a note in it that puzzled me.
"That is true," I answered, and then stopped, for the conviction had suddenly come to me that while I had never seen nor heard from my father since he left us--indeed, I had no recollection of him--yet I was not sure whether or not my mother had ever received any communication from him. I had heard her say that she had no idea whether he was living or dead, and I had received my impression from that. But even as I answered d.i.c.ky"s question there came to my mind the memory of an injunction my mother had once laid upon me, an injunction which concerned a locked and sealed box among her belongings.
I felt that I could not speak of it even to d.i.c.ky, so put all thought of it aside until I should be alone.
"I do not think I can make you understand," I began, "how torn between two emotions I have always been when I think of my father. Of course, the predominant feeling toward him has always been hatred for the awful suffering he caused my mother. I never heard anything to foster this feeling, however, from my mother. She rarely spoke of him, but when she did it was always to tell me of the adoration he had felt for me as a baby, of the care and money he had lavished on me. But while with one part of me I longed to hear her tell me of those early days, yet the hatred I felt for him always surged so upon me as to make me refuse to listen to any mention of him.
"But since she went away from me the desire to know something of my father has become almost an obsession with me. My hatred of his treachery to my mother is still as strong as ever, but in my mother"s last illness she told me that she forgave him, and asked me if ever he came into my life to forget the past and to remember only that he was my father. I am afraid I never could do that, but yet I long so earnestly to know something of him.
"So now you see, d.i.c.ky," I concluded, "why Mr. Gordon has such a fascination for me. He knew my father and my mother--from his own words I gather that he was the nearest person to them. He is the only link connecting me with my babyhood, for Jack Bickett, my nearest relative, was but a young boy himself when my father left, and remembered little about it. I don"t want to displease you, d.i.c.ky, but I would so like to see Mr. Gordon occasionally."
d.i.c.ky held me close and kissed me.
"Why, certainly, sweetheart," he exclaimed. "Whenever you wish I"ll arrange a little dinner down-town for Mr. Gordon. What do you think about inviting the Underwoods, too? They could entertain me while you"re talking over your family history."
"That would be very nice," I agreed, but I had an inward dread of talking to Robert Gordon with the malicious eyes of Harry Underwood upon me. Indeed, I felt intuitively that if ever Mr. Gordon were to reveal the history of his friendship for my mother to me, it would be when no other ears, not even d.i.c.ky"s, were listening.
d.i.c.ky kissed me again and then he rose and went out of the room quickly, closing the door behind him. I waited until I heard his footsteps descending the stairs before turning the key in the lock.
Then I went directly to a little old trunk which I had kept in my own room ever since my mother"s death, and, kneeling before it unlocked it with reverent fingers.
x.x.xIV
A MESSAGE FROM THE PAST
It was my mother"s own girlhood trunk, one in which she had kept her treasures and mementoes all her life. The chief delight of my childhood had been sitting by her side when she took out the different things from it and showed them to me.
Dear, thoughtful, little mother of mine! Almost the last thing she did before her strength failed her utterly was to repack the little trunk, wrapping and labeling each thing it contained, and putting into it only the things she knew I would not use, but wished to keep as memories of her and of my own childhood.
"I do not wish you to have to look over these things while your grief is still fresh for me," she had said, with the divine thoughtfulness that mothers keep until the last breath they draw. "There is nothing in it that you will have to look at for years if you do not wish to do so--that is, except one package that I am going to tell you about now."
She stopped to catch the breath which was so pitifully short in those torturing days before her death, and over her face swept the look of agony which always accompanied any mention by her of my father.
"In the top tray of this trunk," she said, "you will find the inlaid lock box that was your grandmother"s and that you have always admired so much. I do not wish to lay any request or command upon you concerning it--you must be the only judge of your own affairs after I leave you--but I would advise you not to open that box unless you are in desperate straits, or until the time has come when you feel that you no longer harbor the resentment you now feel toward your father."
The last words had come faintly through stiffened white lips, for her labor at packing and the emotional strain of talking to me concerning the future had brought on one of the dreaded heart attacks which were so terribly frequent in the last weeks of her life. We had never spoken of the matter afterward, for she did not leave her bed again until the end.
At one time she had motioned me to bring from her desk the old-fashioned key ring on which she kept her keys. She had held up two, a tiny key and a larger one, and whispered hoa.r.s.ely: "These keys are the keys to the lock box and the little trunk--you know where the others belong." Then she had closed her eyes, as if the effort of speaking had exhausted her, as indeed it had.
In the wild grief which followed my mother"s death there was no thought of my unknown father except the bitterness I had always felt toward him. I knew that the terrible sorrow he had caused my mother had helped to shorten her life, and my heart was hot with anger against him.
I had never opened the trunk since her death. The exciting, almost tragic experiences of my life with d.i.c.ky had swept all the old days into the background. I could not a.n.a.lyze the change that had come over me. As I lifted the lid of the trunk and took from the top tray the inlaid box which my mother"s hands had last touched, my grief for her was mingled with a strange new longing to find out anything I could concerning the father I had never known.
"For my daughter Margaret"s eyes alone."
The superscription on the envelope which I held in my hand stared up at me with all the sentience of a living thing. The letters were in the crabbed, trembling, old-fashioned handwriting of my mother--the last words that she had ever written. It was as if she had come back from the dead to talk to me.
With the memory of my mother"s advice, I hesitated for a long time before breaking the seal. With the letters pressed close against my tear-wet cheeks I sat for a long time, busy with memories of my mother and debating whether or not I had the right to open the letter.
I certainly was not in desperate straits, and I could not conscientiously say that I no longer harbored any resentment toward^the father of whom I had no recollection. I felt that never in my life could I fully pardon the man who had made my mother suffer so terribly. But the longing to know something of my father, which I had felt since the coming into my life of Robert Gordon, had become almost an obsession, with me.
"Little mother," I whispered, "forgive me if I am doing wrong, but I must know what is in this letter to me."
With trembling fingers I broke the seal and drew out the closely written pages which the envelope contained.
"Mother"s Only Comfort," the letter began, and at the sight of the dear familiar words, which I had so often heard from my mother"s lips--it was the name she had given me when a tiny girl, and which she used until the day of her death--tears again blinded my eyes.