Ushered by Lillian, Harry Underwood came into my room with all his usual breeziness, and stood looking down at me as I lay propped against the pillows Lillian had piled around me. It was the first time I had seen him since the night of our dinner, when with the wild idea of punishing d.i.c.ky for his foolishness regarding elderly Mr. Gordon I had carried on a rather intense flirtation with Harry Underwood.
I had been heartily sorry for and ashamed of the experiment before the dinner was half over, and many times since the accident which interrupted the evening I had wondered, half-whimsically, whether my dress catching fire was not a "judgment on me." I had deeply dreaded seeing Mr. Underwood again, but as I looked into his eyes I saw nothing but friendly cheeriness and pity.
Lillian drew a chair for him to my bedside, and for a few moments he chatted of everything and nothing in the entertaining manner he knows so well how to use.
"You may have just three minutes more, Harry," Lillian said at last. "Stay here while I go down to telephone. Then you will have to vamoose. Mr. Gordon is coming over, and I can"t have her too tired."
Her husband gave a low whistle, and I saw a quick look of understanding pa.s.s between him and Lillian. I did not have time to wonder about it, however, for Lillian went out of the room, and the moment she closed the door he said tensely:
"Tell me you forgive me. If I had not teased you that night you would not have moved toward the fire, and your dress would not have caught.
Why! you might have been killed or horribly disfigured. I"ve been suffering the tortures of Hades ever since. But you will forgive me, won"t you? I"ll do any penance you name."
Through all the extravagance of his speech there ran a deeper note than I had believed Harry Underwood to be capable of sounding. As his eyes met mine and I saw that there was something as near suffering in them as the man"s self-centred careless nature was capable of feeling I saw my opportunity.
"Yes, I"ll forgive you--everything--if you"ll promise me one thing, which will make me very happy."
He bit his lip savagely--I think he guessed my meaning--but he did not hesitate.
"Name it," he said shortly.
"Don"t hurt Lillian any more about the change in her appearance or object to her having her child with her," I pleaded.
He thought a long minute, then with a quick gesture he caught my uninjured hand in his, carried it to his lips, and kissed it, then laid it gently back upon the bed again.
"Done," he said gruffly. "It won"t bother me much for awhile anyway.
Your friend Gordon, wants me to go with him on a long trip to South America. I"m the original white-haired boy with him just now for some reason or other, and it"s just the chance I have wanted to look up the theatrical situation down there. Perhaps I can persuade the old boy to loosen up on some of his bank roll and play angel. But anyway I"m going to be gone quite a stretch, and when I come back I"ll try to be a reformed character. But remember, wherever I am "me art is true to Poll.""
He bowed mockingly with his old manner, and walked toward the door, meeting Lillian as she came in.
"So long, Lil," he said carelessly. "I"m going for a long walk. See you later."
She looked at him searchingly. "All right," she answered laconically, and then came over to me.
"Mr. Gordon will be here in a half-hour," she said. "Please try to rest a little before he comes."
She lowered the shades, and my pillows, kissed me gently, and left the room. But I could neither rest nor sleep. The wildest conjectures went through my brain. Who was Robert Gordon, and why was he so strangely interested in me?
XL
MADGE FACES THE PAST AND HEARS A DOOR SOFTLY CLOSE
It seemed a very long time to me, as I tossed on my pillows, beset by the problem that even the name Robert Gordon always presents to me, before Lillian came back to my room. But when she entered she said that Mr. Gordon would soon arrive and that I must be prepared to see him, so she bathed my hands and face and gave me an egg-nog before propping me up against my pillows to receive my visitor.
"Of course you will stay with me, Lillian, while he is here," I said.
She smiled enigmatically. "Part of the time," she said.
But when Mr. Gordon came, bringing with him an immense sheaf of roses, she left the room almost at once, giving as an excuse her wish to arrange the flowers.
My visitor"s eyes were burning with a light that almost frightened me as he sat down by my bedside and took my hand in his.
"My dear child," he said, and though the words were such as any elderly man might address to a young woman, yet there was an intensity in them that made me uncomfortable. "Are you sure everything is all right with you?"
"Very sure," I replied, smiling. "If Mrs. Underwood would permit me to do so, I am certain I could get up now."
"You must not think of trying it," he returned sharply, and with a note in his voice, almost like authority, which puzzled me.
"Thank G.o.d for Mrs. Underwood!" he went on. "She is a woman in a thousand. I am indebted to her for life."
I shrank back among my pillows, and wished that Lillian would return to the room. I began to wonder if Mr. Gordon"s brain was not slightly turned. Surely, the fact that he had once known and loved my mother was no excuse for the extravagant att.i.tude he was taking.
He saw the movement, and into his eyes flashed a look so mournful, so filled with longing that I was thrilled to the heart. The next moment he threw himself upon his knees by the side of my bed, and cried out tensely:
"Oh, my darling child, don"t shrink from me. You will kill me. Don"t you see? Can"t you guess? I am your father!"
My father! Robert Gordon my father!
I looked at the elderly man kneeling beside my bed, and my brain whirled with the unreality of it all. The "man of mystery," the "Quester" of Broadway, the elderly soldier of fortune, about whose reputed wealth and constant searching of faces wherever he was the idle gossip of the city"s Bohemia had whirled--to think that this man was the father I had never known, the father, alas! whom I had hoped never to know.
Everything was clear to me now--the reason for his staring at me when he first caught sight of me in the Sydenham Hotel, his trailing of my movements until he had found out my name and home, the introduction he obtained to d.i.c.ky, and through him to me, his emotion at hearing my mother"s name, his embarra.s.sing attentions to me ever since--the explanation for all of which had puzzled me had come in the choking words of the man whose head was bowed against my bed, and whose whole frame was shaking with suppressed sobs.
I felt myself trembling in the grip of a mighty surge of longing to gather that bowed gray head into my arms and lavish the love he longed for upon my father. My heart sang a little hymn of joy. I, who had been kinless, with no one of my own blood, had found a father!
And then, with my hand outstretched, almost touching my father"s head, the revulsion came.
True, this man was my father, but he was also the man who had made my mother"s life one long tragedy. All my life I had schooled myself to hate the man who had deserted my mother and me when I was four years old, who had added to the desertion the insult of taking with him the woman who had been my mother"s most intimate friend. My love for my mother had been the absorbing emotion of my life, until she had left me, and because of that love I had loathed the very thought of the man who had caused her to suffer so terribly.
My father lifted his head and looked at me, and there was that in his eyes which made me shudder. It was the look of a prisoner in the dock, waiting to receive a sentence.
"Of course, I know you must hate the very sight of me, Margaret," he said brokenly. "I had not meant to tell you so soon. But I have to go away almost at once to South America, and it is very uncertain when I shall return. I could not bear to go without your knowing how I have loved and longed for you.
"Never so great a sinner as I, my child," the weary old voice went on, "but, oh, if you could know my bitter repentance, my years of loneliness."
His voice tore at my heart strings, but I steeled myself against him.
One thing I must know.
"Where is the person with whom--" I could not finish the words.
"I do not know." The words rang true. I was sure he was not lying to me. "I have not seen or heard of her in over twenty years."
Then the a.s.sociation had not lasted. I had a sudden clairvoyant glimpse into my father"s soul. My mother had been the real love of his life. His infatuation for the other woman had been but a temporary madness. What long drawn out, agonized repentance must have been his for twenty years with wife, child and home lost to him!
I leaned back and closed my eyes for a minute, overwhelmed with the problem which confronted me. And then--call it hallucination or what you will--I heard my mother"s voice, as clearly as I ever heard it in life, repeating the words I had read weeks before in the letter she had left for me at her death.