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Revelations of a Wife

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<h2 id="id02718" style="margin-top: 4em">XL</h2> <h5 id="id02719">MADGE FACES THE PAST AND HEARS A DOOR SOFTLY CLOSE</h5> 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 God 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 attitude 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 Dicky, and through him to me, his emotion at hearing my mother's name, his embarrassing 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 association 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. "Remember it is my last wish, Margaret, that if your father be living sometime you may be reconciled to him." I opened my eyes with a little cry of thanksgiving. It was as if my mother had stretched out her hand from heaven to sanction the one thing I most longed to do. "Father!" I gasped. "Oh, my father, I have wanted you so." He uttered a little cry of joy, and then my father's arms were around me, my face was close to his, and for the first time since I was a baby of four years I knew my father's kisses. A smothered sound, almost like a groan, startled me, and then the door slammed shut. "What was that?" I asked. "Is there any one there?" My father raised his head. "No, there is no one there," he said. "See, the wind is rising. It must have been that which slammed the door. I think I would better shut the window." He moved over to the window, which Lillian had kept partly ajar for air, and closed it. Then he returned to my bedside. "There is one thing I must ask you to do, my child," he said hesitatingly, "and that is to keep secret the fact that instead of being Robert Gordon, I am in reality Charles Robert Gordon Spencer, and your father. Of course your husband must know and Mrs. Underwood, as her husband is going with me to South America. But I should advise very strongly against the knowledge coming into the possession of any one else. "I cannot explain to you now, why I dropped part of my name, or why I exact this promise," he went on, "but it is imperative that I do ask it, and that you heed the request. You will respect my wishes in this matter, will you not, my daughter?" It was all very stilted, almost melodramatic, but my father was so much in earnest that I readily gave the promise he asked. With a look of relief he took a package from his pocket and handed it to me. "Keep this carefully," he said. "It contains all the data which you will need in case of my death. Rumor says that I am a very rich man. As usual rumor is wrong, but I have enough so that you will always be comfortable. And for fear that something might happen to you in my absence I have placed to your account in the Knickerbocker money enough for any emergency, also for any extra spending money you may wish. The bank book is among these papers. I trust that you will use it. I shall like to feel that you are using it. And now good-by. I shall not see you again." He kissed me, lingeringly, tenderly, and went out of the room. I lay looking at the package he had given me, wondering if it were all a dream. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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