XXIV
A SUMMER OF HAPPINESS THAT ENDS IN FEAR
I do not believe I shall ever know greater happiness than was mine in the weeks following Grace Draper's first visit to our Marvin home. Many times I looked back to that night when I had lain sobbing on my bed, fighting the demon of jealousy and gasped in amazement at my own folly.
That evening had ended in Dicky's arms on our moonlight veranda, and ever since he had been the royal lover of the honeymoon days, which had preceded our first quarrel. I wondered vaguely sometimes if he had guessed the wild grief and jealousy which had consumed me on that night, but if he had any inkling of it he made no sign.
Grace Draper had gone out of our lives temporarily.
If I had needed reassurance as to Dicky's real feeling for her, the manner in which he told me the news of her going would have given it to me.
"Blast the luck," he growled one evening, after reading a manuscript which he had been commissioned to illustrate. "Here's something I'll need Draper for, and she's 200 miles away. I ought to have known better than to let her go."
The tone and words were exactly what he would have used if the girl had been a man or boy in his employ. Even in my surprise at his news, I recognized this, and my heart leaped exultantly. I was careful, however, to keep my voice nonchalant.
"Why, has Miss Draper gone away?" I asked.
"Oh, that's so, I didn't tell you," he returned carelessly, looking up from the manuscript. "Yes, she went away two days ago. She has a grandmother, or aunt, or old party of some kind, down in Pennsylvania, who is sick and has sent for her. Guess the old girl has scads of coin tucked away somewhere, and Draper thinks she'd better be around when the aged relative passes in her checks. Bet a cooky she won't die at that, but if she's going to, I wish she'd hurry up about it. I need Draper badly, and she won't be back until the old girl either croaks or gets better."
Under other circumstances, the callousness of this speech, the coarseness of some of the expressions, the calling of Miss Draper by her surname, would have grated upon me. But I was too rejoiced both at the girl's departure and the matter of fact way in which Dicky took it to be captious about the language in which he couched the news of her going.
"Grace Draper is gone, is gone." The words set themselves to a little tune, which lilted in my brain. I felt as if the only obstacle to my enjoyment of our summer in the country had been removed.
How I did revel in the long, beautiful summer days! Dicky appeared to have a great deal of leisure, in contrast to the days crowded with work, which had been his earlier in the spring.
"Each year I work like the devil in the spring so as to have the summer, June especially, comparatively free," he exclaimed one day when I commented on the fact that he had been to his studio but twice during the week.
I had dreamed in my girlhood of vacations like the one I was enjoying, but the dream had never been fulfilled before. Dicky had fixed up a tennis court on the, grassy stretch of lawn at the left of the house, and we played every day. Two horses from the livery were brought around two mornings each week, and, after a few trials, I was able to take comparatively long rides with Dicky through the exquisite country surrounding Marvin.
Our motor boat trips were frequent also, although Dicky found that it was more convenient to rent one when he wished it than to enter into any ownership arrangement with any one else.
Automobile trips, in which his mother joined us, long rambles through the woods and meadows which we took alone, little dinners at the numberless shore resorts, all these made a whirl of enjoyment for me unlike anything I had ever known.
I was careful to cater to my mother-in-law's wishes in every way I could. Either because of my attentions or of the beautiful summer days, she was much softened in manner, so that there was no unpleasantness anywhere.
"This is the bulliest vacation I ever spent," Dicky said one evening, after a long tramp through the woods. It was one of the frequent chilly evenings of a Long Island summer, when a fire is most acceptable. Katie had built a glorious fire of dry wood in the living room fireplace, and after dinner we stretched out lazily before it, Mother Graham and I in arm chairs, Dicky on a rug with cushions bestowed comfortably around him.
"I am naturally very glad to hear that," I said, demurely, and Dicky laughed aloud.
"That's right, take all the credit to yourself," he said, teasingly. Then as he saw a shadow on my face, for I never have learned to take his banter lightly, he added in a tone meant for my ear alone:
"But you are the real reason why it's so bully, old top."
The very next day, Dicky and I went for a long walk.
We had nearly reached the harbor, when I saw Dicky start suddenly, gaze fixedly at some one across the road, and then lift his hat in a formal, unsmiling greeting. My eyes followed his, and met the cool, half-quizzical ones of Grace Draper. She was accompanied by a tall, very good-looking youth, who was bending toward her so assiduously that he did not see us at all.
"Why! I didn't know Miss Draper had returned," I said, wondering why
Dicky had kept the knowledge from me.
"I didn't know it myself," Dicky answered, frowning. "Queer, she wouldn't call me up. Wonder who that jackanapes with her is, anyway."
Dicky was moody all the rest of the trip. I know that he has the most easily wounded feelings of any one in the world, and naturally he resented the fact that the beautiful model, whom he had befriended and who was his secretary and studio assistant, had returned from her trip without letting him know she was at home.
If I only could be sure that pique at an employee's failure to report to him was at the bottom of his sulkiness! But the memory of the good-looking youth who hung over the girl so assiduously was before my eyes. I feared that the reason for Dicky's moody displeasure was the presence of the unknown admirer of his beautiful model.
Of course, all pleasure in the day's outing was gone for me also, and we were a silent pair as we wandered in and out through the sandy beaches. Dicky conscientiously, but perfunctorily, pointed out to me all the things which he thought I would find interesting, and in which, under any other circumstances, I should have revelled.
In my resolution to be as chummy with Dicky as possible, I determined to put down my own feelings toward Grace Draper. But it was an effort for me to say what I wished to Dicky. We had chatted about many things, and were nearly home, when I said timidly:
"Dicky, now that Miss Draper is back, don't you think you and I ought to call on her and her sister, and have them over to dinner?"
Dicky frowned impatiently:
"For heaven's sake, don't monkey with that old cat, Mrs. Gorman. She is making trouble enough as it is."
He bit his lip the next instant, as if he wished the words unsaid, and, for a wonder, I was wise enough not to question him as to the meaning of the little speech. But into my heart crept my own particular little suspicious devil—always too ready to come, is this small familiar demon of mine—and once there he stayed, continually whispering ugly doubts and queries concerning the "trouble" that Mrs. Gorman was making over her sister's intimate studio association with my husband.
My constant brooding affected my spirits. I found myself growing irritable. The next day after Dicky and I had seen Miss Draper and her attendant cavalier on the road to Marvin harbor, Dicky made a casual reference at the table to the fact that she had returned to the studio and her work as his secretary and model.
"She said she called up the studio when she got in, and again yesterday morning, but I was not in," he said. I realized that the girl had cleverly soothed his resentment at her failure to notify him that she had returned from her trip.
Whether it was the result of my own irritability or not I do not know, but Dicky seemed to grow more indifferent and absent-minded each day. He was not irritable with me, he simply had the air of a man absorbed in some pursuit and indifferent to everything else.
Grace Draper's attitude toward me puzzled me also. She preserved always the cool but courteous manner one would use to the most casual acquaintance, yet she did not hesitate to avail herself of every possible opportunity to come to the house. Then, two or three times during the latter part of the summer, I found that she had managed to join outings of ours. Whether this state of affairs was due to Dicky's wishes or her own subtle planning I could not determine.
I struggled hard with myself to treat the girl with friendliness, but found it impossible. My manner toward her held as much reserve as was compatible with formal courtesy. Of course, this did not please Dicky.
Dicky was also developing an unusual sense of punctuality. I always had thought him quite irresponsible concerning the keeping of his appointments, and he never had any set time for arriving at his studio. But he suddenly announced one morning that he must catch the 8:21 train every morning without fail.
"The next one gets in too late," he said, "and I have a tremendous amount of work on hand."
The explanation was plausible enough, but there was something about it that did not ring true. However, the solution of his sudden solicitude for punctuality did not come to me until Mrs. Hoch, one of my neighbors, called with her daughter, Celie, and enlightened me.
"We just heard something we thought you ought to know," Celie began primly, "so Ma and I hurried right over, so as to put you on your guard."
"Yes," sighed Mrs. Hoch, rocking vigorously as she spoke, "everybody knows I'm no gossip. I believe if you can't say nothing good about nobody, you should keep your mouth shut, but I says to Celie as soon as I heard this, 'Celie,' says I, 'it's our duty to tell that poor thing what we know.'"
I started to speak, to stop whatever revelation she wished to make, but I might as well have attempted to stem a torrent with a leaf bridge.
"We've heard things for a long time," Mrs. Hoch went on, "but we didn't want to say nothin', 'specially as you seemed such friends, her runnin' here and all. But we noticed she hain't been comin' lately, and then our Willie, he hears things a lot over at the station, and he says it's common talk over there that your husband and that Draper girl are planning to elope. They take the same train every morning together, come home on the same one at night, and they are as friendly as anything."
"Mrs. Hoch," I snapped out, "if I had known what you were going to say, I would not have allowed you to speak. Your words are an insult to my husband and myself. You will please to remember never to say anything like this to me again."
Mrs. Hoch rose to her feet, her face an unbecoming brick red. Her daughter's black eyes snapped with anger.
"Come, Celie," the elder woman said, "I don't stay nowhere to be insulted, when all I've tried to do is give a little friendly warning to a neighbor."
Mother and daughter hurried down the path, chattering to each other, like two angry squirrels.
"Horrid, stuck-up thing," I heard Celie say spitefully, as they went through the fence. "I hope Grace Draper does take him away from her. She's got a nerve, I must say, talkin' to us like that. I don't believe she cares anything about her husband, anyway."
She might have changed her mind had she seen me fly to my room as soon as she was safely out of sight, lock the door, and bury my face in the pillows, that neither my mother-in-law nor Katie should hear the sobs I could not repress.
"Dicky! Dicky! Dicky!" I moaned. "Have I really lost you?"
Of course I knew better than to believe the statement of the elopement. I had seen and heard enough of village life to realize how the slightest circumstance was magnified by the community loafers. That Dicky and the girl took the same train, going and coming from the city, was a fact borne out by my own observations. I had remarked Dicky's regularity in catching the 8:21 in the mornings, something so opposed to his usual unpunctual habits, and wondered why. Now I had the solution.
I told myself, dully, that I was not surprised; that I had really known all along something like this was coming. My thoughts went back to the night, a few weeks before, when I had suffered a similar paroxysm of grief over Dicky's evident interest in the girl. Then all my doubts and fears had been swept away in Dicky's arms on the moonlit veranda. I caught my breath as I realized in all its miserable certainty the impossibility of any such tender scene now. Dicky and I seemed as far apart emotionally as the poles.
But the determination I had reached that other night, before Dicky's voice and caresses dispelled my doubts, I made my own again. There was nothing for me to do but to wait quietly, with dignity, until I was absolutely certain that Dicky no longer loved me. Then I would go out of his life without scenes or recriminations. I would not lift a finger to hold him.
By the time I had gained control of myself once more, Dicky came home.
"Letter for you," he said, "from the office of your old principal."
He tossed it into my lap, eyeing it and me curiously. I knew that his desire to know what was in it had made him remember to give it to me. His mother, who had opened her door at his step, came forward eagerly. I opened the letter, to find an offer of my old school position. My principal wrote that the woman who was appointed to the position had been suddenly taken ill and could not possibly fill it. He asked me to write him my decision at once, as it was within a few days of the opening of the school.
Mechanically, I read it aloud. My brain was whirling. I wondered if, perhaps, this was the way out for me. If Dicky really did not love me any longer, I ought to accept this position, even if by taking it I broke my agreement with the Lotus Study Club.
I did not like the thought of leaving the women who had thus honored me, but, on the other hand, if Dicky and I were to come to the parting of the ways, I could not refuse this rare chance to get back into the work I had left for his sake.
I decided to be guided by his attitude. If he were opposed to my course, I would know that my actions had ceased to be resentful to him, and I would accept the position. But if he showed willingness at the proposition—
I did not have long to wait. As I lifted my eyes to his face, when I had finished reading the letter I saw the old familiar black frown on his face. I never had thought that my heart would leap with joy at the sight of Dicky's frown, but it did. Before either of us could say anything, his mother spoke:
"Isn't it splendid? You are a most fortunate woman, Margaret, to be able to step back into a position like that. If it had come earlier, when my health was so poor, you could not have taken it. Now you can accept it, for I am perfectly able to run the house. You, of course, will write your acceptance at once."
She paused. I knew she expected me to reply. But I closed my lips firmly. Dicky should be the one to decide this. He did it with thoroughness.
"I thought we settled all this rot last spring," he said. "Mother, I don't want to be disrespectful, but this is my business and Madge's, not yours. You will refuse, of course, Madge."
He turned to me in the old imperious manner. Months before I should have resented it. Now I revelled in it. Dicky cared enough about me, whether from pride or love, to resent my going back to my work.
"If you wish it, Dicky," I said quietly. He turned a grateful look at me. Then his mother's voice sounded imperiously in our ears.
"I think you have said quite enough, Richard," she said, with icy dignity. "Will you kindly telegraph Elizabeth that I shall start for home tomorrow? I certainly shall not stay in a house where I am flouted as I have been this morning."