Part 50 (1/2)
”When you read this I shall have left you forever. It is my prayer that when the time comes for you to read it, it will be because you have forgiven your father, not because you are in desperate need. How I wish I could have seen you safe in the shelter of a good man's love before I had to go away from you forever!”
”Safe in the shelter of a good man's love,” I repeated the words thoughtfully. Had my mother been given her wish when she could no longer witness its fulfilment? I was angry and humiliated at myself that I could not give a swift, unqualified a.s.sent to my own question.
A ”good man” d.i.c.ky certainly was, and I was in the ”shelter of his love” at present. But ”safe” with d.i.c.ky I was afraid I could never be. Mingled always with my love for him, my trust in him, was a tiny undercurrent of uncertainty as to the stability of my husband's affection for me.
As I turned to my mother's letter again, there was a tiny pang at my heart at the thought that by my marriage with d.i.c.ky I had thwarted the dearest wish of my little mother's heart.
For between the lines I could read the unspoken thought that had been in her mind since I was a very young girl. ”Safe in the shelter of a good man's love” meant to my mother only one thing. If she had written the words ”safe in the shelter of Jack Bickett's love,” I could not have grasped her meaning more clearly.
But my mother's wish must forever remain ungranted. Jack was ”somewhere in France,” and for me, safe or not safe, stable or unstable, d.i.c.ky was ”my man,” the only man I had ever loved, the only man I could ever love. ”For better or worse,” the dear old minister had said who performed our wedding ceremony, and my heart reaffirmed the words as I bent my eyes again to the closely written pages I held in my hands.
”Because you have always been so bitter, Margaret, against your father, and because it has always caused me great anguish to speak of him, I have allowed you to rest under the impression that I had never heard anything concerning him since his disappearance, and that I do not know whether he be living or dead. The last statement is true, for years ago I definitely refused to receive any communication from him, but I must tell you that I believe him to be living, and that I know that living or dead he has provided money for your use if you should ever wish to claim it.
”The address he last sent me, and that of the firm of lawyers who has the management of the property intended for you, are sealed in envelopes in this box. In it also are all the things necessary to establish your ident.i.ty, my marriage certificate, your birth record, pictures of your father and of me, and of the three of us taken when you were two years old, before the shadow of the awful tragedy that came later had begun to fall.”
I sprang from my chair, dropping the pages of the letter unheeded in the shock of the revelation they brought me. My father had planned for me; had provided for me; had tried to communicate with my mother! He must have been repentant; he was not all the heartless brute I had thought him. As though a cloud had been lifted, from my life and a weary weight had rolled from my heart, I turned again to mother's letter.
”Remember, it is my last wish, Margaret, that if your father be living, sometime you may be reconciled, to him. I have been weak and bitter enough during all these years to be meanly comforted by your stanch champions.h.i.+p of me, and your detestation of the wrong your father did me. But death brings clearer vision, my child, and I cannot wish that your father's last years,--if, indeed, he be living--should be desolated by not knowing you. I want you to know that there were many things which, while they did not extenuate your father, yet might in some measure explain his action.
”I was much to blame--I can see it now, for not being able to hold his love. You are so much like me, my darling, that I tremble for your happiness if you should happen to marry the wrong kind of man. I have wondered often if the story of my tragedy, terrible as it is for me to think of it, might not help you. And yet--it might do more harm than good. At any rate, I have written it all out, and put it with the other things in the box. I feel a curious sort of fatalism concerning this letter. It is borne in upon me that if you ever need to read it you will read it. It will help you to understand your father better.
It may help you to understand your husband; although, G.o.d grant, knowledge like mine may never come to you.
”Of one thing I am certain, you will never have anything to do with the woman who abused my friends.h.i.+p and took your father from me. I cannot carry my forgiveness far enough, even in the presence of death, to bid you go to him if she be still a part of his life.
”I can write no more, my darling. I want you to know that you have been the dearest child a mother could have, and that you have never given me moment's uneasiness in my life. G.o.d bless and keep you.
”MOTHER.”
I did not weep when I had finished the letter. There was that in its closing words that dried my tears. I put the pages reverently in the envelope, laid it in the old box, closed and locked the lid, and replaced it in the trunk. For my mother's bitter mention of the woman who had stolen my father from her had brought back the old, wild hatred I had felt for so many years.
”Whatever Robert Gordon can tell me of you, mother darling, I will gladly hear,” I whispered, as I locked her old trunk, ”but I never want to hear him talk of the woman who so cruelly ruined your life.”
x.x.xV
THE WORD OF JACK
”O, pray do not let me disturb you.”
Mother Graham drew back from the open door of the living room with a little affected start of surprise at seeing me sitting before the fire. Her words were courteous, but her manner brought the temperature of the room down perceptibly.
She had managed to keep out of my way in clever fas.h.i.+on since the scene of the day before, when she had attacked me concerning the interest taken in me by Robert Gordon.
”You are not disturbing me in the least,” I said, pleasantly, ”I was simply watching the fire. Jim certainly has outdone himself in the matter of logs this time.”
”Yes, he has,” she admitted, grudgingly, as she came forward slowly and took the chair I proffered her. ”I only hope he doesn't set the house afire with such a blaze. I must tell Richard to speak to him about it.”
Always the pin p.r.i.c.k, the absolute ignoring of me as the mistress of the house. I could not tell whether she had deliberately done it, or whether long usage to dominance in a household had made her speak as she did unconsciously.