Part 56 (1/2)
This was what she was undergoing, this experience of seeing her husband turn away his eyes from her, as if the very sight of her was painful to him.
d.i.c.ky would never do that, I knew. He had not the capacity for cruelty which Harry Underwood possessed. But I was sure it would torture me more to know that he was disguising his aversion than to see him openly express it.
x.x.xIX
HARRY CALLS TO SAY GOOD-BY
Lillian Underwood kept her promise to d.i.c.ky that I should suffer no scar as the result of the burns I received when my dress caught fire on the night of my dinner.
Never patient had a more faithful nurse than Lillian. She had a cot placed in my room where she slept at night, and she rarely left my side.
I found my invalidism very pleasant in spite of the pain and inconvenience of my burns. Everyone was devoted to my comfort. Even Mother Graham's acerbity was softened by the suffering I underwent in the first day or two following the accident, although I soon discovered that she was actually jealous because Lillian and not she was nursing me.
”It is the first time in my life that I have ever found my judgment in nursing set aside as of no value,” she said querulously to me one day when she was sitting with me while Lillian attended to the preparation of some special dish for me in the kitchen.
”Oh, Mother Graham,” I protested, ”please don't look at it that way.
You know how careful you have to be about your heart. We couldn't let you undertake the task of nursing me, it would have been too much for you.”
”Well, if your own mother were alive I don't believe any one could have kept her from taking care of you,” she returned stubbornly.
There was a wistful note in her voice that touched and enlightened me. Beneath all the crustiness of my mother-in-law's disposition there must lie a very real regard--I tremulously wondered if I might not call it love--for me.
My heart warmed toward the lonely, crabbed old woman as it had never done before. I put out my uninjured hand, clasped hers, and drew her toward me.
”Mother dear,” I said softly, ”please believe me, it would be no different if my own little mother were here. She, of course, would want to take care of me, but her frailness would have made it impossible. And I want you to know that I appreciate all your kindness.”
She bent to kiss me.
”I'm a cantankerous old woman, sometimes,” she said quaveringly, ”but I am fond of you, Margaret.”
She released me so abruptly and went out of the room so quickly that I had no opportunity to answer her. But I lay back on my pillows, warm with happiness, filled with grat.i.tude that in spite of the many controversies in which my husband's mother and I had been involved, and the verbal indignities which she had sometimes heaped upon me, we had managed to salvage so much real affection as a basis for our future relations with each other.
The reference to my own little mother, which I had made, brought back to me the homesickness, the longing for her which comes over me often, especially when I am not feeling well. When Lillian returned she found me weeping quietly.
”Here, this will never do!” she said kindly, but firmly. ”I'm not going to ask you what you were crying about, for I haven't time to listen. I must fix you up to see two visitors. But”--she forestalled the question I was about to ask--”before you see one of them I must tell you that Harry and I have about come to the parting of the ways.”
”The parting of the ways!” I gasped. ”Harry and you?”
Lillian Underwood nodded as calmly as if she had simply announced a decision to alter a gown or a hat, instead of referring to a separation from her husband.
”It will have to come to that, I am afraid,” she said, and looking more closely at her I saw that her calmness was only a.s.sumed, that humiliation and sadness had her in their grip.
”I have always feared that when the time came for me to be 'my honest self' instead of a 'made-up daisy'”--she smiled wearily as she quoted the childish rhyme--”Harry would not be big enough to take it well.
Of course I could and would stand all his unpleasantness concerning my altered appearance, but the root of his actions goes deeper than that, I am afraid. He dislikes children, and I fear that he will object to my having my little girl with me. And if he does--”
Her tone spelled finality but I had no time to bestow upon the probable fate of Harry Underwood. With a glad little cry, I drew Lillian down to my bedside and kissed her.
”Oh! Lillian!” I exclaimed, ”are you really going to have your baby girl after all?”
She nodded, and I held her close with a little prayer of thanksgiving that fate had finally relented and had given to this woman the desire of her heart, so long kept from her.