The crackling of the logs in the grate was the only sound to be heard for many minutes.
With her elbow resting on the arm of her chair, her chin cupped in her hand, her whole body leaning toward the warmth of the fire, she sat gazing into the leaping flames as if she were trying to read in them the riddle of the future.
I patiently waited on her mood. That she would open her heart to me further I knew, but I did not wish to disturb her with either word or movement.
"I might as well begin at the beginning." There was a note in her voice that all at once made me see the long years of suffering which had been hers. "Only the beginning is so commonplace that it lacks interest. It is the record of a very mediocre stenographer with aspirations."
That she was speaking of herself her tone told me, but I was genuinely surprised. Mrs. Underwood was the last woman in the world one would picture as holding down a stenographer"s position.
"I can"t remember when I didn"t have in the back of my brain the idea of learning to draw," she went on, "but it took years and years of uphill work and saving to get a chance. I was an orphan, with n.o.body to care whether I lived or died, and nothing but my own efforts to depend on. But I stuck to it, working in the daytime and studying evenings and holidays till at last I began to get a foothold, and then when I had enough to put by to risk it I went to Paris."
Her voice was as matter of fact as if she were describing a visit to the family butcher shop. But I visualized the busy, plucky years with their reward of Paris as if I had been a spectator of them.
"Of course, by the time I got there I was almost old enough to be the mother, or, at least, the elder sister of most of the boys and girls I met, and I had learned life and experience in a good, hard school.
Some of the youngsters got the habit of coming to me with all their troubles, fancied or real. I made some stanch friends in those days, but never a stancher, truer one than d.i.c.ky Graham.
"Tell me, dear girl, when you were teaching those history cla.s.ses, did any of your boy pupils fall in love with you?"
I answered her with an embarra.s.sed little laugh. Her question called up memories of shy glances, gifts of flowers and fruit, boyish confidences--all the things which fall to the lot of any teacher of boys.
"Well, then, you will understand me when I tell you that in the studio days in Paris d.i.c.ky imagined himself quite in love with me."
There was something in her tone and manner which took all the sting out of her words for me. All the jealousy and real concern which I had spent on this old attachment of my husband for Mrs. Underwood vanished as I listened to her. She might have been d.i.c.ky"s mother, speaking of his early and injudicious fondness for green apples.
"I shall always be proud of the way I managed d.i.c.ky that time." Her voice still held the amused maternal note. "It"s so easy for an older woman to spoil a boy"s life in a case like that if she"s despicable enough to do it. But, you see, I was genuinely fond of d.i.c.ky, and yet not the least bit in love with him, and I was able, without his guessing it, to keep the management of the affair in my own hands.
So when he woke up, as boys always do, to the absurdity of the idea, there was nothing in his recollections of me to spoil our friendship.
"Then there came the early days of my struggle to get a foothold in New York in my line. There were thousands of others like me. Six or seven of the strugglers had been my friends in Paris. We formed a sort of circle, "for offence and defence," d.i.c.ky called it; settled down near each other, and for months we worked and played and starved together. When one of us sold anything we all feasted while it lasted.
I tell you, my dear, those were strenuous times but they had a zest of their own."
I saw more of the picture she was revealing than she thought I did.
I could guess that the one who most often sold anything was the woman who was so calmly telling me the story of those early hardships. I knew that the dominant member of that little group of stragglers, the one who heartened them all, the one who would unhesitatingly go hungry herself if she thought a comrade needed it, was Lillian Underwood.
"And then I spoiled my life. I married."
"Don"t misunderstand me," she hastened to say. "I do not mean that I believe all marriages are failures. I believe tremendously in married happiness, but I think I must be one of the women who are temperamentally unfitted to make any man happy."
Her tone was bitter, self-accusing.
"You cannot make me believe that," I said stoutly. "I would rather believe that you were very unwise in your choice of husbands."
She laughed ironically.
"Well, we will let it go at that! At any rate there is only one word that describes my first marriage. It was h.e.l.l from start to finish."
The look on her face told me she was not exaggerating. It was a look, only graven by intense suffering.
"When the baby came my feeling for Will changed. He had worn me out.
The love I had given him I lavished upon the child. Will"s mother came to live with us--she had been drifting around miserably before--and while she failed me at the time of the divorce, yet she was a tower of strength to me during the baby"s infancy. I was very fond of her and I think she sincerely liked me. But Will, her only son, could always make her believe black was white, as I later found out to my sorrow.
"With the vanishing of the hectic love I had felt for Will, things went more smoothly with me. I worked like a slave to keep up the expenses of the home and to lay by something for the baby"s future. My husband was away so much that the boys and girls gradually came back to something like their old term of intimacy. I never gave the matter of propriety a thought. My mother-in-law, a baby and a maid, were certainly chaperons enough.
"Afterward I found out that my husband, equipped with his legal knowledge, had set all manner of traps for me, had bribed my maid, and diabolically managed to twist the most innocent visits of the boys of the old crowd to our home to his own evil meanings.
"Then came the crash. d.i.c.ky came in one Sunday afternoon and I saw at once that he was really ill. You know his carelessness. He had let a cold go until he was as near pneumonia as he could well be. A sleet storm was raging outside, and when d.i.c.ky, after shivering before the fire, started to go back to his studio, Will"s mother, who liked d.i.c.ky immensely, joined with me in insisting that he must not go out at all, but to bed. d.i.c.ky was really too ill to care what we did with him, so we got him into bed, and I took care of him for two or three days until he was well enough to leave.
"Of course, the greater part of his care fell on me, for Will"s mother was old and not strong. I am not going to tell you the accusations which my unspeakable husband made against me, or the affidavits which the maid was bribed to sign about d.i.c.ky and me. You can guess. Worst of all, Will"s mother turned against me, not because of anything she had observed, but simply because her son told her I was guilty.
""I never would have thought it of you, Lillian," she said to me with the tears streaming down her wrinkled, old face. "I never saw anything out of the way, but of course Will wouldn"t lie. And I loved you so."
"Poor old woman. Those last few words of affection made it easier for me to give the baby up to her when the time came. She idolizes Marion.
She gives her the best of care, and I do not think she will teach her to hate me as Will would.
"But there has never been a moment since I kissed Marion and gave her into the arms of her grandmother that I have not known exactly how she was treated," she said. "I have made it my business to know, and I have paid liberally for the knowledge. You see, about the time of the divorce Mr. Morten had a legacy left him, so that life has been easy for him financially. His mother had always kept a maid. Every servant she has had has been in my employ. There has scarcely been a day since I lost my baby that from some un.o.bserved place I have not seen her in her walks. I know every line of her face, every curve of her body, every trick of movement and expression. I shall know how to win her love when the time comes, never fear."
Her voice was dauntless, but her face mirrored the anguish that must be her daily companion.
One thing about her recital jarred upon me. This paying of servants, this furtive espionage was not in keeping with the high resolve that had led the mother to "keep her word" to the man who had ruined her life. And yet--and yet--I dared not judge her. In her place I could not imagine what I would have done.
One thing I knew. Never again would I doubt Lillian Underwood. The ghost of the past romance between my husband and the woman before me was laid for all time, never to trouble me again. Remembering the sacrifice she had made for d.i.c.ky, considering the gallant fight against circ.u.mstances she had waged since her girlhood, I felt suddenly unworthy of the friendship she had so warmly offered me.
I turned to her, trying to find words, which should fittingly express my sentiments, but she forestalled me with a kaleidoscopic change of manner that bewildered me.
"Enough of horrors," she said, springing up and giving a little expressive shake of her shoulders as if she were throwing a weight from them. "I"m going to give you some luncheon."
"Oh, please!" I put up a protesting hand, but she was across the room and pressing a bell before I could stop her.
I thought I understood. The grave of her past life was closed again.
She had opened it because she wished me to know the truth concerning the old garbled stories about herself and d.i.c.ky. Having told me everything, she had pushed the grisly thing back into its sepulchre again and had sealed it. She would not refer to it again.
One thing puzzled me, something to which she had not referred--why had she married Harry Underwood? Why, after the terrible experience of her first marriage, had she risked linking her life with an unstable creature like the man who was now her husband?
I put all questionings aside, however, and tried to meet her brave, gay mood.
XX
LITTLE MISS SONNOT"S OPPORTUNITY
My mother-in-law"s convalescence was as rapid as the progress of her sudden illness had been. By the day that I gave my first history lecture before the Lotus Study Club she was well enough to dismiss Dr.
Pett.i.t with, one of her sudden imperious speeches, and to make plans that evening for the welcoming and entertaining of her daughter Harriet and her famous son-in-law Dr. Edwin Braithwaite, who were expected next day on their way to Europe, where Doctor was to take charge of a French hospital at the front.
That night I could not sleep. The exciting combination of happenings effectually robbed me of rest. I tried every device I could think of to go to sleep, but could not lose myself in even a doze. Finally, in despair, I rose cautiously, not to awaken d.i.c.ky, and slipping on my bathrobe and fur-trimmed mules, made my way into the dining-room.
Turning on the light, I looked around for something to read until I should get sleepy.