The Green Jacket/Chapter 19
XIX
Stephen Mason finished his cigar and tossed away the end and entered the house. A little later Milly heard him talking with his father; the voices were relaxed and easy, the little note of constraint seemed to have vanished. Then the car appeared and they went toward the steps. The son looked back and saw the mother in the doorway and sprang to escort her to the car. There was something very winning in the air of devotion with which he led her across the terrace. Her hand on his arm seemed to rest with a little weight, and the figure bending to her was full of affectionate care.
He placed her in the car and stood waiting for his father, one hand on the door of the car, the other thrust carelessly into his pocket, laughing and talking with her. Mr. Mason, who had turned back to the house for a minute, came quickly down the steps and got in. The son closed the door upon them and stood back, watching them drive away. He waved his hand to them and returned it to his pocket and watched the car out of sight. Then he turned and came slowly up the steps. . . . On the terrace near the French windows, at the side of the house, a gray figure was seated in a wicker chair, knitting busily.
He scanned it with a little start of surprise. Then he crossed the terrace and stood looking off. Presently he turned and strolled toward the front of the house.
The woman who was knitting looked up from her work and bowed slightly and beckoned him with a little motion of her hand.
He returned the bow formally and came forward with a puzzled look, smiling a little. "I am wondering who you are," he said courteously. "You look so at home sitting there with your knitting! I could almost fancy you had always been there—and I had never seen you till now."
"An invisible lady!" she laughed. "Oh, no! I weigh a hundred and thirty-two. . . . I wanted to speak to you—will you sit down, please?"
He took the chair she motioned to, and the little look of bewilderment and half-amusement waited on her wishes.
"My mother did not tell me we were to have a guest in the house," he said courteously.
"I am not a guest. I am the seamstress."
Her eyes were on the needles flying through the green wool.
He surveyed her with a look of pleasure. His figure in the chair relaxed. "I remember now—mother did say something about a seamstress helping her. But"—he turned a little and let his glance rest on her—"she did not tell me what you would look like."
She lifted her eyes. "I look like a seamstress, I hope," she returned easily.
"Well—perhaps." He seemed to consider it. "I've never seen many seamstresses. Perhaps."
There was silence between them for a minute. The man was wondering about this quiet, self-contained working woman who had summoned him so unconventionally. And the woman was noting that the face opposite to her was lined and sad. The face of the youth in the picture in the library up-stairs was care free; its openness seemed to have nothing to conceal or regret. But this face opposite her held in its tense lines something a little tragic. It was the face of a man who had suffered deeply—who perhaps was suffering now under the quiet look of reserve.
She turned with a little gesture of revealment. "I am not a seamstress," she said quietly.
"No?" His glance held it.
"I am here to help your mother." . . . Her eyes were on his face. "You know she is in trouble?"
He bent his head without speaking. His face was a little wondering—perhaps a little watchful.
"Will you explain to me how you are helping her?" he asked. The reserve in his voice had deepened, but it was not unfriendly.
"I want to tell you. That is why I spoke to you. I want to talk with you about your mother. She came to me in my office the other day"
"You are not a doctor!" he broke in. "Or a nurse?" he added doubtfully.
She smiled. "I might be called a mind nurse, perhaps."
He stared.
"I help people who are in trouble—they often come to me. . . . I am a detective."
The hand on the arm of his chair gripped it suddenly. He sat looking off across the hills, the little smile on his lips regarding them slowly.
Her hurrying needles purled a double stitch, and another, and finished the row before she looked up. "I am very glad you came just now. I think you can help—more than any one in the world, perhaps, to solve the trouble."
He turned and looked at her. "Yes?" he said inquiringly.
"You are very near to your mother in spirit, I think, and you will have seen things that no one else, perhaps, would have noticed—or remembered."
He threw out a hand with a quick gesture. "I know nothing!" he said with emphasis. "I wish to God I did!" The last words were under his breath.
"You know your mother is not well?"
He looked away, as if he would not have her see the pain her words caused him.
"She is well enough to be about," he said. "Well enough to go motoring!" He moved restlessly.
"She does not say she is ill!" He broke off.
"What is it you want of me?" he asked in a low voice. He had sat up in his chair and was leaning forward, his arms resting on his knees, looking down at the brick pavement between his feet.
She studied the downcast face a minute.
"Will you tell me everything you can remember that happened here—about two years ago? . . . Your mother has told me that the trouble, whatever it is, began at that time. If I can see things as they looked to you, it may help me to understand—everything."
He looked at her queerly for a minute. Then a look of resolution crossed his face.
"All right!" He said it quickly—and paused, as if considering where to begin. A thought touched his face and stayed him.
"Why didn't my mother tell me who you are?" he asked keenly.
Milly smiled back to him. "You may trust me. Your mother did not tell you, because she has given everything into my hands."
"May I speak to her about it, later?"
"If you like. But I advise you not to. If you will all go on living as if I were not here—as if nothing had happened—or were going to happen, I can finish my work sooner—and go away." Her fingers adjusted the flying wool and shook it free, and the man's eyes followed it thoughtfully.
"It is hard to begin," he said, "because nothing happened. We simply became unhappy. Two years ago we were the happiest family in the world—father and mother and Marian—" He turned with a swift look. "You knew there was an adopted daughter, my—sister?"
"Yes. Your mother spoke of her. But tell me whatever comes to you. I want to see it all through your eyes. . . . What was she like?"
"Marian?" He seemed to hold the name a moment, as if it echoed a little sadly to him. "She was beautiful!" he said slowly. "The most beautiful woman in the world, I think. . . ." The sadness lingered in the words. He turned to her. "You know she is dead?"
"Yes."
He remained lost in thought, looking down at the brick pavement, and the sadness in his face deepened to sternness. He roused himself and shook his head impatiently.
"The strange thing is, I do not know what happened!" he said. "We were all happy together—always planning things, never away from each other, never a thought we did not all share, and then—something changed. . . ."
"What was it?"
He hesitated, and went on. "I think it was my mother's feeling for—my adopted sister. She became almost harsh to her. . . . My mother!" He seemed to dwell on it wonderingly. "My mother would not harm the smallest thing in the world! Yet she suddenly became harsh with Marian—cruel almost!"
"And there was no reason for it?" The question was searching and gentle. And again he hesitated slightly.
"Yes—there was a reason. But it seemed incredible to me—I have never been able to believe it! . . . I loved Marian," he said slowly, "and my mother discovered it. From that moment, it seemed to me, everything changed."
"But why did she object?" The question pressed home again; but he shook his head, and the puzzled look between his eyes deepened. "I do not know. I have never been able to solve it. I only know she fought it bitterly. . . . She had thought I would marry some one else," he said half reluctantly. "Elise Marshall—where they have gone this afternoon. But I never cared for Elise—except as a jolly good friend. There has been no one but Marian for me—always." He sat looking at something irrevocable, and again the stern lines settled in his face.
"And there was nothing else that happened?" asked Milly gently.
He shook his head. "Nothing," he said confidently, "absolutely nothing!"
"Nothing about you that might have worried her?"
A little disconcerted look crossed his face. "There was something," he admitted, "but nothing that worried her. She did not know it, in fact, until it was practically over." He spoke with an ease that even to Milly's watchful sense had no note of concealment. His mind seemed running back to the events of that time, gathering them up.
"I'd been in debt, you know. I had to borrow a lot of money from different friends. I finally borrowed from the bank I was in—three thousand dollars."
"Borrowed it?"
"Yes." He looked at her.
"Did you give security?"
He turned as if startled that she should ask him. He hesitated—then he laughed a little. "The truth is, no one knew that I had borrowed it. It was only a temporary loan. I expected to pay it back in two days."
"Of course," said Milly. He smiled at the dryness of her tone.
"You understand," he assented. "I was caught. But it would have been all right—if things had gone as I expected."
"You did not make the money, you mean?"
"I made it. But not till long after. . . . I knew the bank-examiner was due and the money must be there."
"Perhaps that was what troubled your mother?" she suggested.
He stared at her. "Mother? Oh, no. She never had a suspicion!" He shook his head.
"She knew you were in debt?"
"Yes. We talked about it sometimes—it was only half a joke with us. She used to try to make me promise to save and pay up and start straight, and I was always meaning to—after this one more time!" He smiled ruefully. . . . "Then finally I had the chance. It was a curious thing!" He seemed to recall it a little wonderingly.
"I found one morning, in the pocket of my coat, a roll of bills—five thousand dollars. Enough to repay the bank and put everything straight."
"You 'found' it?" echoed Milly, incredulous. "People do not 'find' five thousand dollars in their pockets, do they?"
"I did," he said stoutly.
"But who put it there? Did you ever know?"
"There was a note with it. A friend wanted me to have the money. But he did not want it to come between us. The money was mine—to pay my debts with."
"Did you do it?"
He nodded. "Pretty glad to! I went to mother first—I always told her anything pleasant that came to me—and that was pretty pleasant, I thought. But I wasn't quite sure it might not be a trap of some kind. So I talked it over with her. She said to use it, and perhaps some time I would find out who it was, and could pay it back."
"You never have?"
"No."
"Nor have any idea who it was?"
"Well, there is a friend I often think might have done it—Alan Sargent. We were great chums and he knew I owed a good deal. He had a chance at the coat—it was at his tailor's being cleaned. I know he was in the shop the afternoon before it came home. I've talked with him, but he swore he knew nothing about it. . . . He knew I hadn't the money to pay back anyway. . . . Perhaps, now I have some, he'll own up to it. He's coming out to-morrow, I hope."
The swift-flying needles made a sudden little jump and click, and settled again to even rhythm.
"Did he know you had 'borrowed' the three thousand from the bank?"
"No." The tone was sober.
"Did any one know?"
"No one in the world but my father. I went to him as soon as I found I might need the money."
"You expected he would get it for you?"
He laughed shortly. "I did not expect—I knew! There is no one in the world like my father!" he added. His shoulders straightened a little.
"You didn't dread to tell him then?"
He shook his head proudly. "There is nothing I would mind telling him. . . . He is not like other men," he added slowly. And through Milly's mind there flashed another voice. "My husband is not like other men. He is a poet."
"How is he different?" she asked curiously.
He paused, seeming to try for words—and shook his head. He looked at her. "You do not know him?" he asked.
"I have only seen him at a distance."
"Then you cannot know. He looks like a business man, doesn't he—commonplace?"
"There is nothing striking about him, surely."
"And yet—when you know him. . . . I cannot put it in words. . . . Perhaps it will tell you better than anything I can say, that when I was in trouble I went to him."
"Was he angry?"
"I have never known my father to be angry with me." He spoke slowly, as if he were thinking of it, and his voice was full of affection. . . . "He told me not to worry. He could get it for me—if worst came to worst, he would sell a block of houses—I should have the money. . . . I felt sure I should make it speculating."
"Did you?"
"Yes. But that was later—I have more than enough—now that I have no use for it," he said soberly. He seemed lost in thought, and the look of sadness returned to his face.
Milly glanced at it and then at the hand that half reached to his breast-pocket and drew back.
"You may smoke," she said quietly. He smiled gratefully and drew the cigar from his pocket. He lighted it and sat watching the smoke drift away.
"What happened then—after you had the money?"
"Nothing that I expected," he said bitterly. "I had thought we should all be happy again. I had made up my mind to give up my extravagances and cut out speculating. I was going to marry Marian and settle down. I thought we should be happier than we had ever been. . . . I seemed to see things in a clear light. All life seemed larger and things opened out. I began to notice children on the street, and to think of them here in the old house—scampering through the halls and calling out when I came home. I could always see my mother with them—he worships children!" he said wistfully. . . . "I got to seeing the house like that—filled with children and new life and happiness. . . . And now—" He motioned to the empty rooms behind them. He sat smoking in silence.
The landscape stretched away, serene in the late sunshine. And behind them rose the gracious house—with the secret in its empty rooms. The man stirred a little and glanced at the gray figure knitting with quiet fingers.
"It's curious I should be telling you all this!" he said consideringly. "They are things I have never said, even to myself, before. I shut the door on them and locked it—when I went away from home."
"Why did you go?" asked Milly. She did not tell him that many doors that had been shut and locked on secrets, had opened to her touch, and that confidences gave them selves almost as freely to her as the wool that was slipping quietly by her needles, and weaving its strange little pattern in the stitches of green wool. Instead, she turned as she withdrew the amber needle from a last stitch, and glanced at him. He was lost in thought.
"Why did you go away?" she repeated gently.
He roused himself. "I was restless—afraid I would slip back into my old ways. . . . The house was too lonely after Marian went. I got the bank to transfer me to their branch house in Brockton. I told my mother it was a better opportunity. . . . It was. But I really went because of Marian. She was never out of my thoughts." He looked down at the cigar between his fingers and knocked a bit of ash from its tip.
"I could not understand mother's feeling about Marian. It was almost as if she were afraid to have me marry her—some taint in the blood. She never spoke openly, only in vague hints. We did not know what kind of people she came from, she said. We did not know what she might do some day."
"Did she say this to Marian?"
"Not in words," he said quickly. "But Marian knew that in some way she was standing between my mother and me. . . . I have tried to think it was only a kind of mother jealousy," he said slowly. He raised his glance to her. "Do you think a mother could be like that?"
Milly shook her head. "Not your mother," she replied.
"No." He seemed to muse on it. "How well you understand her! Thank you!" He leaned forward. "What was it then? Why should she have been so cruel to her?"
Milly waited for him to go on.
"I thought then I would never forgive her for what she did," he said slowly. "But I have forgiven it—long since. . . . I have learned how to forgive, I guess." The lines of suffering in his face deepened a little.
"She did not oppose your going?"
"No. She did not suspect. The bank offer was a good opportunity, and I think she began to be afraid for me—I was so restless and moody. She even urged my going. . . . And my father wanted it, too."
Milly looked up. "He knew?"
"Everything," said the young man. "It was he who advised me to find Marian and marry her. . . . 'Your mother was hard on the child,' he said to me, one night when we had been sitting in his study a long time, talking. 'If you love her, marry her,' he said; 'make her happy.' I shall never forget his words nor the look in his face as he said them. 'There is no joy in life like that of a happy marriage, with mutual love and trust, and no hell on earth like marriage without it.' He said it with such intense bitterness that I was startled. . . . I left home a few days later and joined Marian. She was my wife for nearly a year before she died." He glanced about him, and off to the distant hills, and moved his shoulders a little, as if a burden rested on them.
"I cannot tell you how strange it seems to be here—just as when I was a boy—alone with my father and mother—and that year of happiness between. It almost seems like a dream to me. . . .
"It was dream-like in its perfect happiness—and in its awakening," he added under his breath. "There was not a shadow on it—except Marian's longing to be friends with my mother—and even that came, just before she died." He glanced at her.
"Yes, your mother told me—and how happy it made her."
"Marian was devoted to her. She would never let me be depressed about the trouble. She said it would all come right some day. She was always saying: 'You will be with them again, and happier than you have ever been.' Even when she was dying, she said it, and she made me promise to come home soon.
"So I am here." He looked about him a little wearily. "But she is not here—she will never be here again!"
"Are you sure?" said Milly gently.
He tossed away his cigar a little impatiently. "Oh, I have thought and wondered—till I am not sure of anything!" he cried. "We burn out and are tossed aside!" He motioned to the bit of cigar smouldering at the edge of the bricks. He reached into his pocket for another and cut the end with a grim look on his lips.
"Yet even I have felt her presence in the house," returned Milly.
He looked at her under his lowered brows, and the hand that was lighting the cigar trembled a little.
"My mother said something like that this morning." He threw away the match. "Perhaps it is true. I would give a great deal to believe it. . . . And yet you, who never saw her—are the one!" He stared at it, and put his cigar to his lips and blew away a cloud of smoke. "I cannot believe it!" he said.
There was a faint, burring sound in the distance. He bent his head to listen—and looked toward the drive.
"They are coming!" He got up. Milly reached a quick hand to him.
"I must see you again," she said swiftly. "What you have told me is very important. Will you make an excuse to see me again, as soon as you can—when your father is not here?"
He glanced at her keenly and nodded. Then he turned and moved toward the steps and stood smoking and looking off at the approaching car. As it drew near he ran down the steps and opened the door. He came up the steps between the two, laughing and talking gayly.
In the open sunshine, the great house before them, the car driving rapidly away, vines and flowers all about, the little group made a pretty picture. No one could have fancied that a shadow rested on them or on the house, as they passed within the gracious doorway open to receive them.
After dinner they all sat on the terrace for a while, the father and son smoking, the mother resting back in her chair and looking at them contentedly. Presently she left them and went into the house. Milly saw her enter the doorway and hesitate a moment, and then go slowly up the stairs.
In the half-dusk of the sewing-room, she sat listening to the voices of the two men. She could not hear the words, but the voices had a friendly, relaxed sound, and there were long spaces of companionable silence. . . . She watched the stars come out above the two figures and the ends of the cigars gleam in little points of light through the dusk. She did not light the gas in the sewing-room, but sat knitting and waiting, on the chance that the son would make an opportunity to come to her.
Up-stairs she could hear Margaret's footsteps going through the hall and her wheezy voice, and then at last Mrs. Mason's voice bidding her good night. And the house settled to silence.
Outside the two cigars still gleamed faintly, and the terrace was wrapped in darkness. Only along the sky to the east an even light spread itself—the moon would be rising soon.
Milly rolled up her knitting and put it away. She was tired. A night's rest was imperative if she was to be ready for her work to-morrow. She wanted to take these things that Stephen Mason had told her and carry them into the world of sleep. . . . She would not dream of them—but somewhere in the night, she knew, they would arrange themselves in orderly sequence, and when she woke, something would lie ready to her hand. Almost, even now, she could reach out and touch it. But each time something shifted beneath her fingers and escaped her. . . . She would go to bed. She put her work into its bag and gave another glance at the two figures on the terrace and went up-stairs.
The long halls seemed very light as she came out of the dimness of the sewing-room. And at the top of the stairs she saw a bright light in Mrs. Mason's room. The door stood open to the hall.
The next minute, as if her step had been hearkened for, Mrs. Mason appeared in the doorway. She stepped quickly into the hall, and Milly moved toward her.
The face questioned her as she came toward it, and a gesture of the hands reached out to her.
"Did you have your talk with Stephen?" she breathed.
"Yes. A good talk."
"Did he tell you anything?"
"A great deal."
The woman seemed almost to withdraw a step. "What was it?" she asked.
"He gave me a clew—almost the first thing I have felt sure of." Milly paused a moment. "I think we are very close to discovering who took your emeralds."
"Oh!" She seemed to shrink from her. Her lifted eyes gave a swift, questioning look. Then she passed into her room and closed the door. In that moment's look her face had gone white, but beneath it was a look of trust—a trust that gave itself and everything it held into the unquestioned care of the woman before her.