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Revelations of a Wife

<h2 id="id02843" style="margin-top: 4em">XLII</h2> <h5 id="id02844">DAYS THAT CREEP SLOWLY BY</h5> It was not from the sky, however, but from across the ocean that the help Lillian had longed for in solving the mystery of Dicky's abandonment of me, finally came. It was less than a week after the receipt of Grace Draper's message, that Lillian and I, sitting in her wonderful white and scarlet living room, one evening after little Marion had gone to bed, heard Betty ushering in callers. "Betty must know them or she wouldn't bring them in unannounced," Lillian murmured, as she rose to her feet, and then the next moment there was framed in the doorway the tall figure of Dr. Pettit. And with him, wonder of wonders! the slight form, the beautiful, wistful, tired face of Katharine Sonnot, whose ambition to go to France as a nurse I had been able to further. "My dear, what has happened to you?" Katherine exclaimed solicitously. "I received no answer to my letter saying I was coming home, so when I reached New York, I went to Dr. Pettit. He thought you were at Marvin, but when he telephoned out there, Katie said you had had a terrible accident, and that you had left Marvin. I was not quite sure, for she was half crying over the telephone, but I thought she said 'for keeps.'" She stopped and looked at me with a hint of fright in her manner. I knew she wanted to ask about Dicky's absence, and did not dare to do so. "Everything you heard is true, Katherine," I returned, a trifle unsteadily, as her arms went around me warmly. I was more than a trifle upset by her coming, for associated with her were memories of my brother-cousin, Jack Bickett, who had gone to the great war when he had learned that I was married, and of whose death "somewhere in France," I had heard through Mrs. Stewart. "Where is your husband?" Dr. Pettit demanded, and there was that in his voice which told me that he was putting an iron hand upon his own emotions. Now the stock answer which Lillian and I returned to all inquiries of this sort was "In San Francisco upon a big commission." It was upon my lips, but some influence stronger than my will made me change it to the truth. "I do not know," I said faintly. "He left the city very abruptly several weeks ago, sending word in a letter to Mrs. Underwood that he would never see me again. It is a terrible mystery." Dr. Pettit muttered something that I knew was a bitter anathema against Dicky, and then folded his arms tightly across his chest, as if he would keep in any further comment. But I had no time to pay any attention to him, for Katherine Sonnot was uttering words that bewildered and terrified me. "Oh! how terrible!" she said. "Jack will be so grieved. He had so hoped to find you happy together when he came home." Was the girl's brain turned, I wondered, because of grief for my brother-cousin's death? I had known before I secured the chance for her to go to France that she was romantically interested in the man who had been her brother's comrade, although she had never seen him. And from Jack's letters to Mrs. Stewart, I had learned of their meeting in the French hospital, and of the acquaintance which promised to ripen—which evidently had ripened—into love. I looked at her searchingly, and then I spoke, hardly able to get the words out for the wild trembling of my whole body. "Jack grieved?" I said. "Why! Jack is dead! We had the notice of his death weeks ago from his friend, Paul Caillard." I saw them all look at me as if frightened. Dr. Pettit reached me first and put something under my nostrils which vitalized my wandering senses. I straightened myself and cried out peremptorily. "What is it, oh! what is it?" I saw Katherine look at Dr. Pettit, as if for permission, and the young physician's lips form the words, "Tell her." "No, dear. Jack isn't dead," she said softly. "He was missing for some time, and was brought into our hospital terribly wounded, but he is very much alive now, and will be here in New York in two weeks." I felt the pungent revivifier in Dr. Pettit's hand steal under my nostrils again, but I pushed it aside and sat up. "I am not at all faint," I said abruptly, and then to Katherine Sonnot. "Please say that over again, slowly." She repeated her words slowly. "I should have waited to come over with him," she added, "for he is still quite weak, but Dr. Braithwaite had to send some one over to attend to business for the hospital. He selected me, and so I had to come on earlier." So it was true, then, this miracle of miracles, this return of the dead to life! Jack, the brother-cousin on whom I had depended all my life, was still in the same world with me! Some of the terrible burden I had been bearing since Dicky's disappearance slipped away from me. If anyone in the world could solve the mystery of Dicky's actions, it would be Jack Bickett. Dr. Pettit's voice broke into my reverie. I saw that Lillian and Katherine Sonnot were deep in conversation. The young physician and I were far enough away from them so that there was no possibility of his low tones being heard. He bent over my chair, and his eyes were burning with a light that terrified me. "Tell me," he commanded, "do you want your husband back again. Take your time in answering. I must know." There was something in his voice that compelled obedience. I leaned back in my chair and shut my eyes, while I looked at the question he had put me fairly and squarely. The question seemed to echo in my ears. I was surprised at myself that I did not at once reply with a passionate affirmative. Surely I had suffered enough to welcome Dicky's return at any time. Ah! there was the root of the whole thing. I had suffered, how I had suffered at Dicky's hands! As my memory ran back through our stormy married life, I wondered whether it were wise—even though it should be proved to me that Dicky had not gone away with Grace Draper—to take up life with my husband again. And then, woman-like, all the bitter recollections were shut out by other memories which came thronging into my brain, memories of Dicky's royal tenderness when he was not in a bad humor, of his voice, his smile, his lips, his arms around me, I knew, although my reason dreaded the knowledge, that unless my husband came back to me, I should never know happiness again. I opened my eyes and looked steadily at the young physician. "Yes, God help me. I do!" I said. Dr. Pettit winced as if I had struck him. Then he said gravely: "Thank you for your honesty, and believe that if there be any way in which I can serve you, I shall not hesitate to take it." "I am sure of that," I replied earnestly, and the next moment, without a farewell glance, a touch of my hand, he went over to Katherine, and, in a voice very different in volume than the suppressed tones of his conversation to me, I heard him apologize to her for having to go away at once, heard her laughing reply that after the French hospitals she did not fear the New York streets, and then the door had closed after the young physician, whose too-evident interest in me had always disturbed me. I hastened to join Lillian and Katherine. I did not want to be left alone. Thinking was too painful. "Just think!" Katherine said as I joined them, "I find that I'm living only a block away. I'm at my old rooming place—luckily they had a vacant room. Of course, I shall be fearfully busy with Dr. Braithwaite's work, but being so near, I can spend every spare minute with you—that is, if you want me," she added shyly. "Want you, child!" I returned, and I think the emphasis in my voice reassured her, for she flushed with pleasure, and the next minute with embarrassment as I said pointedly: "I imagine you have some unusually interesting and pleasant things to tell me, especially about my cousin." But, after all, it was left for Jack himself to tell me the "interesting things." Katherine became almost at once so absorbed in the work for Dr. Braithwaite that she had very little time to spend with us. There was another reason for her absence, of which she spoke half apologetically one night, about a week after her arrival. "There's a girl in the room next mine who keeps me awake by her moaning," she said. "I don't get half enough sleep, and the result is that when I get in from my work I'm so dead tired I tumble into bed, instead of coming over here as I'm longing to do. The housekeeper says she's a student of some kind, and that she's really ill enough to need a physician, although she goes to her school or work each morning. I've only caught glimpses of her, but she strikes me as being rather a stunning-looking creature. I wish she'd moan in the daytime, though. Some night I'm going in there and give her a sleeping powder. Joking aside, I'm rather anxious about her. Whatever is the matter with her, physical or mental, it's a real trouble, and I wish I could help her." The real Katherine Sonnot spoke in the last sentence. Like many nurses, she had a superficial lightness of manner, behind which she often concealed the wonderful sympathy with and understanding for suffering which was hers. I knew that if the poor unknown sufferer needed aid or friendship, she would receive both from Katherine. It was shortly after this talk that I noticed the extraordinary intimacy which seemed to have sprung up between Katherine and Lillian. I seemed to be quite set aside, almost forgotten, when Katherine came to the apartment. And there was such an air of mystery about their conversation! If they were talking together, and I came within hearing, they either abruptly stopped speaking, or shifted the subject. I was just childish and weak enough from my illness to be a trifle chagrined at being so left out, and I am afraid my chagrin amounted almost to sulkiness sometimes. Lillian and Katherine, however, appeared to notice nothing, and their mysterious conferences increased in number as the days went on. There came a day at last when my morbidness had increased to such an extent that I felt there was nothing more in the world for me, and that there was no one to care what became of me. I was huddled in one of Lillian's big chairs before the fireplace in the living room, drearily watching the flames, through eyes almost too dim with tears to see them. I could hear the murmur of voices in the hall, where Katherine and Lillian had been standing ever since Katherine's arrival, a few minutes before. Then the voices grew louder, there was a rush of feet to the door, a "Hush!" from Lillian, and then, pale, emaciated, showing the effects of the terrible ordeal through which he had gone, my brother-cousin, Jack Bickett, who, until Katherine came home, I had thought was dead, stood before me. "Oh! Jack, Jack. Thank God! Thank God!" As I saw my brother-cousin, Jack Bickett, whom I had so long mourned as dead, coming toward me in Lillian Underwood's living room, I stumbled to my feet, and, with no thought of spectators, or of anything save the fact that the best friend I had ever known had come back to me, I rushed into his arms, and clung to him wildly, sobbing out all the heartache and terror that had been mine since Dicky had left me in so cruel and mysterious a manner. I felt as a little child might that had been lost and suddenly caught sight of its father or mother. The awful burden that had been mine lifted at the very sight of Jack's pale face smiling down at me. I knew that someway, somehow, Jack would straighten everything out for me. "There, there, Margaret." Jack's well-remembered tones, huskier, weaker by far than when I had last heard them, soothed me, calmed me. "Everything's going to come out all right. I'll see to it all. Sit down, and let me hear all about it." There was an indefinable air of embarrassment about him which I could not understand at first. Then I saw beyond him the lovely flushed face of Katharine Sonnot, and in her eyes there was a faintly troubled look. I read it all in a flash. Jack was embarrassed because I had so impetuously embraced him before Katherine. I withdrew myself from his embrace abruptly, and drew a chair for him near my own. "Are you sure you are fully recovered?" I asked, and I saw Jack look wonderingly at the touch of formality in my tone. "No, I cannot say that," he returned gravely, "but I am so much better off than so many of the other poor chaps who survived, that I have no right to complain. Mine was a body wound, and while I shall feel its effects on my general health for years, perhaps all my life, yet I am not crippled." His tone was full of thankfulness, and all my pettiness vanished at the sudden, swift vision of what he must have endured. The next moment he had turned my thoughts into a new channel. "Margaret," he said gravely, "I am terribly distressed to hear from Katherine that your husband has gone away in such a strange manner." So she had already told him! The little pang of unworthy jealousy came back, but I banished it. "Now, there must be no more time lost," he went on. "You have had no man to look after things for you, but remember now, your old brother, Jack, is on the job. First, I must know everything that occurred on that last day. Did you notice anything extraordinary in his demeanor on that last morning you saw him?" This was the old Jack, going directly to the root of the matter, wasting no time on his own affairs or feelings, when he saw a duty before him. I felt the old sway of his personality upon me, and answered his questions as meekly as a child might have done. "He was just the same as he had been every morning since my accident," I returned. "H-m." Jack thought a long minute, then began again. "Tell me everything that happened that day, every visitor you had; don't omit the most trifling thing," he commanded. He listened attentively as I recalled Harry Underwood's visit, and Robert Gordon's. At my revelation that Robert Gordon had said he was my father, his calm, judicial manner broke into excitement. "Your father!" he exclaimed, and then, after a pause; "I always knew he would come back some day. But go on. What happened when he told you he was your father?" I went on with the story of my struggle with my own rancor against my father, of my conviction that I had heard my mother's voice urging my reconciliation with him, of my father's first embrace and kisses, even of the queer smothered sound like a groan and the slamming of a door which I had heard. Then I told him of my father's gift of money to me, which I had not yet touched, but I noticed that toward the last of my narrative Jack seemed preoccupied. "Did your husband come home to Marvin at all that day?" he asked. "No, he never came back from the city after he had once gone in, until evening." "But are you sure that this day he did not return to Marvin?" he persisted. "How do you know?" "Because no one saw him," I returned, "and he could hardly have come back without someone in the house seeing him." He said no more, as Lillian and Katherine came up just then, and the conversation became general. To my great surprise, I did not see him again after that first visit. Katherine explained to me that he had been called out of town on urgent business, but the explanation seemed to me to savor of the mysterious excitement that seemed to possess everybody around me. Finally one morning, Lillian came to me, her face shining. "I want you to prepare to be very brave, Madge," she said. "There is some one coming whom I fear it will tax all your strength to meet." "Dicky!" I faltered, beginning to tremble. "No, child, not yet," she said, her voice filled with pity, "but someone who has done you a great wrong, Grace Draper." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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