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Revelations of a Wife

<h2 id="id02311" style="margin-top: 4em">XXXIII</h2> <h5 id="id02312">"MOTHER" GRAHAM HAS SOMETHING TO SAY</h5> It may have been the preparation we were making for an autumn vacation in the Catskills, or it may have been that Dicky 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 attitude 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 Dicky 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!" Dicky 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!" Dicky 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." Dicky'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!" Dicky 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," Dicky 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." 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 Dicky'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 Dicky 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!" Dicky 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. "Dicky, 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." Dicky 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 reassured 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 Dicky. "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 identity. 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, Dicky'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, Dicky," 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." Dicky'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 Dicky'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 Dicky, 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, Dicky," 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, Dicky, but I would so like to see Mr. Gordon occasionally." Dicky 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 Dicky's, were listening. Dicky 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. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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