What can you possibly suppose? There might be a hundred girls----"
His voice fell. Alice was watching him expectantly.
"Mama felt it--saw it--as I do," she said. "You may be very sure that Mama wouldn"t have almost lost her mind, as she did, unless something had given her cause!"
They looked at each other in silence, in the utter silence of the lovely, cool-toned room.
"Alice," Chris said in a puzzled voice after awhile, "you suspect me of keeping something from you. But on my honour you know all that your mother told me--all that I know!"
"Oh, Chris," she said, with a sort of wail. "If I don"t know more!"
Her husband"s slow colour rose.
"How could you know more?" he asked, bewilderedly.
Alice was unhappily silent.
"Chris, if I tell you what I"m afraid of--what I fear," she said, presently, after anxious thought, "will you promise me never, never to speak of it--never even to think of it!--if it--if it proves not to be true?"
"I don"t have to tell you that, Alice," he said.
"No, of course you don"t--of course you don"t!" she echoed with a nervous laugh. "I"ll tell you what I think, Chris--what has been almost driving me mad--and you can probably tell me a thousand reasons why it can"t be so! You see, I"ve never understood Mama"s feverish distress these last weeks. She"s been to see me, she"s done what had to be done about Leslie"s engagement, but she"s not herself--you can see that!
Yesterday she began to cry, almost for nothing, and when I happened to mention--or rather when I mentioned very deliberately--that Miss Sheridan was coming here, she almost shrieked. Well, I didn"t know what to make of it, and even then I rather wondered----
"Even then," Alice began again, after a painful pause, and with her own voice rising uncontrollably, "I suspected something. But not this! Oh, Chris, if I"m wrong about this, I shall be on my knees for grat.i.tude for the rest of my life; I would die, I would die to have it just--just my wretched imagination!--A thing like this--to us--the Melroses--who have always been so straight--so respected!"
"Now, Alice--now, Alice!"
"Yes, I know!" she said, quickly. "I know!" And for a moment she lay back quietly, stroking his hand. "Chris," she resumed, composedly, after a moment, "you know the tragedy of Annie"s life?"
Chris, taken by surprise, frowned.
"Why, yes, I suppose so," he admitted, unwillingly.
"Chris, did it ever occur to you that she might have had a child--by that fiend?"
Chris looked at his wife a moment, and his eyes widened, and his mouth twitched humorously.
"Oh, come now, Alice--come now!"
"You think it"s folly!" she asked, eagerly.
"Worse!" he answered, briefly, his eyes smiling reproach.
Alice"s whole tense body relaxed, and she stared at him with light dawning in her eyes.
"Well, probably it is," she said, very simply.
"Of course it is," Chris said. "Now, you are dead tired, dear, and you have let the thing mill about in your head until you can"t see anything normally. I confess that I don"t understand your mother"s mysterious nervousness, but then I am free to say that I don"t by any means always understand your mother! You remember the pearl episode, and the time that she had Annie and Hendrick cabling from Italy--because Hendrick Junior had a rash! And then there was Porter--a boy nineteen years old, and she actually had everyone guessing exactly what she felt toward him----"
"Oh, Chris, no, she didn"t! She simply felt that he was a genius, and he hadn"t a penny," Alice protested, reproachful and hurt.
"Well, she had him there at the house until his mother came after him, and then, when he finally was sent abroad, she asked me seriously if I thought two hundred dollars a month was enough for his musical education!"
"Yes, I know!" Alice said, ruefully, shaking her head.
"Now this comes along," said Christopher, encouraged by the effect of his words, "and you begin to fret your poor little soul with all sorts of wild speculations. I wish to the Lord that your mother was a little bit more trusting with her confidences, but when it all comes out it"ll prove to be some sister of your grandfather who married a tailor or something, and left a line of pretty girls to work in Biretta"s----"
"But, Chris, she reminded me so of Annie to-day I almost felt _sick_,"
Alice said, still frightened and dubious.
"Well, that merely shows that you"re soft-hearted; it"s no reflection on Annie!" Chris said, giving her her paper, and opening his own. But Alice did not open her paper.
A maid came in, and moved about noiselessly setting chairs and rugs in order. Another soft light was lighted and the little square table set before the fire. The cool fresh air drifted in at the half-open window, and sent a delicate breath, from Alice"s great bowl of freesia lilies, through the peaceful room. The fire snapped smartly about a fresh log, and Alice"s great tortoise-sh.e.l.l cat came to make a majestic spring into her lap.
"Chris--I"m so worried!" said his wife.
"As a matter of fact," said Christopher, quietly, after a while, "did----Annie was very ill, I know, but was there--was there any reason to suppose that there might have been--that such a situation as to-day"s might have arisen?"
Alice looked at him with apprehension dawning afresh.
"Oh, yes--that is, I believe so. I didn"t know it then, of course."
"I never knew that," Christopher said, thoughtfully.
"Well, I didn"t at the time, you know. It was--of course it was sixteen--eighteen years ago," Alice said. And in a whisper she added, "Chris, that girl is eighteen!"
Christopher pursed his lips to whistle, but made no sound, and looked into the fire.
"You see I was only about thirteen or fourteen," Alice said. "I was going to Miss Bennet"s school, and we were all living in the Madison Avenue house. Papa had been dead only a year, or less, for I remember that Annie was eighteen, and wasn"t going out much, because of mourning.
Theodore had been worrying Mama to death, and had left the house then, and Mama was sending him and his wife money, I believe, but of course lots of that was kept from me. Annie was terribly wild and excitable then, always doing reckless things; I can remember when she and Belle Duer dressed up as boys and had their pictures taken, and once they put a matrimonial advertis.e.m.e.nt in the papers--of course they were just silly--at least that was. But then she began to rave about this man Muller----"
"The acrobat!" Christopher, who was listening intently, supplied.
"No, dearest! He was their riding master--I suppose that isn"t much better, really. But he was an extremely handsome man--really stunning.
Carry Winchester"s mother forbade her taking any more lessons because _she_ was so wild about him, and Annie told me once that that was why Ida Burnett was popped into a boarding school. He was big, and dark, and he had a slight foreign accent, and he was ever so much older than Annie--forty, at least. She began to spend all her time at the riding club; it used to make Mama wild--especially as Annie was so headstrong and saucy about it! Poor Mama, I remember her crying and complaining!"
"And how long did this go on?" Christopher asked.
"Oh, weeks! Well, and then one hot day, just before Easter vacation it was, I remember, I came home early from school with a headache, and when I reached the upper hall I could hear Mama crying, and Annie shouting out loud, and this Kate--this very same Kate Sheridan!--trying to quiet Mama, and everything in an uproar! Finally I heard Annie sobbing--I was frightened to death of course, and I sat down on the stairs that go up to the nursery--and I heard Annie say something about being eighteen--and she was eighteen the very day before; and she ran by me, in her riding clothes, with the derby hat that girls used to wear then, and her hair clubbed on her neck, and she ran downstairs, and I could hear her crying, and saying to herself: "I"ll show them; I"ll show them!" And that was the last I saw of her," Alice finished sadly, "for almost two years."
"She went out?" Christopher asked.
"Yes; she slammed the door. Mama fainted."
"Of course!"
"Oh, Chris," said his wife, half crying, "wasn"t that enough to make any one faint?--let alone Mama. Anyway, she was dreadfully ill, and they rather shut me up about it, and told everyone that Annie had gone abroad. We had been living very quietly, you know, and n.o.body cared much what Annie did, then. And she really had gone abroad, she wrote Mama from Montreal, and she had been married to Emil Muller in Albany. They had taken a train there, and were married that same afternoon. They went to London, and they were in Germany, and then--then it all broke up, you know about that!"