Part 54 (1/2)

I shall be so worried until I see you. If you don't get here early tomorrow morning I shall come in after you.”

”You couldn't keep me away, you blessed child, if you are going to have no strangers there,” Lillian returned. ”I don't mind the Durkees.

But I need you, my dear, very much. Now I must tell you something, don't be shocked or surprised when you see me, for I shall be somewhat changed in appearance. Run along to d.i.c.ky now. I'll be with you some time tomorrow forenoon. Good-by.”

I almost forgot to hang up the telephone receiver in my bewilderment.

What trouble could have come to Lillian that she needed me? She was the last person in the world to need any one, I thought--she, whose sterling good sense and unfailing good-nature had helped me so many times. And what change in her appearance did she mean when she cautioned me against being shocked and surprised at seeing her?

My anxiety concerning Lillian stayed with me all through the evening.

I awoke in the night from troubled dreams of her to equally troubled thoughts concerning her. And my concern was complicated by a message which d.i.c.ky received the next forenoon.

We had barely finished breakfast when the telephone rang and d.i.c.ky answered.

”h.e.l.lo,” I heard him say. ”Yes, this is Graham. Oh! Mr. Gordon! how do you do?”

My heart skipped a beat.

”Why! that's awfully kind of you,” d.i.c.ky was saying, ”but we couldn't possibly accept, because we have guests coming ourselves. We expect to have a regular old-fas.h.i.+oned country dinner here at home. But, why do you not come out to us? Oh, no, you wouldn't disturb any plans at all--they've been thoroughly upset already. We had planned to have my sister and her family, six in all, spend this holiday with us, but yesterday we found they could not come. So we're inviting what friends we can find who are not otherwise engaged to help us eat up the turkey. You will be more than welcome if you will join us. All right, then. Do you know about trains? Yes, any taxi driver can tell you where we are. Good-by.”

I did not dare to look at my mother-in-law as d.i.c.ky came toward us after answering Robert Gordon's telephone message.

I think d.i.c.ky was a trifle afraid, also, of his mother's verdict, for his att.i.tude was elaborately apologetic as he explained his invitation to me.

”Your friend, Gordon, has just gotten in from one of those mysterious voyages of his to parts unknown,” he said. ”He was delayed in reaching the city, only got in last night, too late to telephone us. Seems he had some cherished scheme of having us his guests at a blowout.

Wouldn't mind going if we hadn't asked these people here, for they say his little dinners are something to dream about, they're so unique. Of course, there was nothing else for me to do but to invite him out. I thought you wouldn't mind.”

In d.i.c.ky's tone there was a doubtful inflection which I read correctly. He knew of my interest in the elderly man of mystery who had known my parents so well, and I was sure that he thought I would be overjoyed because he had extended the invitation.

I was glad that I could honestly disabuse his mind of this idea, for I had a curious little feeling that d.i.c.ky disliked more than he appeared to do the attentions paid to me by Mr. Gordon.

It was less than an hour before the taxi bearing the first of our guests swung into the driveway and Lillian and Harry Underwood stepped out.

Lillian's head and face were so swathed in veils that I did not realize what the change in her appearance of which she had warned me was until I was alone with her in my room, which I intended giving up to her and her husband while they stayed. Then, as she took off her hat and veils, I almost cried out in astonishment--for at my first, unaccustomed glance, instead of the rouged and powdered face, and dyed hair, which to me had been the only unpleasant things about Lillian Underwood, the face of an old woman looked at me, and the hair above it was gray!

There were the remnants of great youthful beauty in Lillian's face.

Nay, more, there were wonderful possibilities when the present crisis in her life, whatever it might be, should have pa.s.sed. But the effect of the change in her was staggering.

”Awful, isn't it?” she said, coming up to me. ”No, don't lie to me,”

as she saw a confused, merciful denial rise to my lips. ”There are mirrors everywhere, you know. There's one comfort, I can't possibly ever look any worse than I do now, and when my hair gets over the effect of its long years of dyeing, and my present emotional crisis becomes less tense I probably shall not be such a fright. But oh, my dear, how glad I am to be with you. I need you so much just now.”

She put her head on my shoulder as a homesick child might have done, and I felt her draw two or three long, shuddering breaths, the dry sobs which take the place of tears in the rare moments when Lillian Underwood gives way to emotion. I stroked her hair with tender, pitiful fingers, noticing as I did so what ravages her foolish treatment of her hair had made in tresses that must once have been beautiful. Originally of the blonde tint she had tried to preserve, her locks were now an ugly mixture of dull drab and gray. As I stood looking down at the head pillowed against my shoulder I realized what this transformation in Lillian must mean to Harry Underwood.

He it was who had always insisted that she follow the example of the gay Bohemian crowd of which he was a leader, and disguise her fleeting youth, with dye and rouge. It was to please him, or, as she once expressed it to me, ”to play the game fairly with Harry” that she outraged her own instincts, her sense of what was decent and becoming, and constantly made up her face into a mask like that of a woman of the half-world. No one could deny that it disguised her real age, but her best friends, including d.i.c.ky and myself, had always felt that the real mature beauty of the woman was being hidden.

”Of course, this is terribly rough on Harry,” Lillian said at last, raising her head from my shoulder, and speaking in as ordinary and unruffled a tone as if she had not just gone through what in any other woman would have been a hysterical burst of tears.

”It really isn't fair to him, and under any other conditions in the world I would not do it. He's pretty well cut up about it, so much so that he cannot always control his annoyance when he is speaking about it. But I know you will overlook any little outbreaks of his, won't you? He wanted to come down here with me, you know he's always anxious to see you, or I would have run away by myself.”