Revelations of a Wife Part 8

"Oh, that will be just splendid," chirped Mrs. Lester. "Thank you so much, Mrs. Graham. Where is the telephone?"

"d.i.c.ky will get the number for you," said Mrs. Underwood, ushering her into the living room. I heard her shrill voice.

"Oh, d.i.c.ky-bird, please get Mrs. Lester's apartment for her. She wants to be sure the baby's all right."

Then I heard a deeper voice. "For heaven's sake, Daisy, don't make a fool of yourself. The kid's all right." That was Mr. Lester's voice, of course. Neither the tones of d.i.c.ky nor Harry Underwood had the disagreeable whining timbre of this man's.

Lillian's retort made me smile, it was so characteristic of her.

"Who unlocked the door of your cage, anyway? Get back in, and if you growl again tonight there will be no supper for you."

We all laughed and I went to help Katie put the finis.h.i.+ng touches to our dinner. When I returned Mrs. Lester was seated in an armchair in the corner as if on a throne, with Harry Underwood in an att.i.tude of exaggerated homage before her.

I felt suddenly out of it all, lonely. These people were nothing to me, I said to myself. They were not my kind. I had a sudden homesickness for the quiet monotony of my life before I married d.i.c.ky.

I thought of the few social evenings I had spent in the days before I met d.i.c.ky, little dinners with the princ.i.p.als and teachers I had known, when I had been the centre of things, when my opinions had been referred to, as Lillian Gale's were now.

I went through the rest of the evening in a daze of annoyance and regret from which I did not fully emerge until we were all at the dinner table, with d.i.c.ky officiating at the chafing dish. Then suddenly Mrs. Lester turned to me, her face filled with nervous fears.

"Oh, Mrs. Graham, I don't believe I can wait for anything. I am getting so nervous about baby. I know it's awful to be so silly, but I just can't help it."

"Daisy!" Her husband's voice was stern, his face looked angry. "Do stop that nonsense. We are certainly not going home now."

His wife seemed to shrink into herself. Her pretty face, with its worried look, was like that of a little girl grieving over a doll. I felt a sudden desire to comfort her.

"I think you are worrying yourself unnecessarily, Mrs. Lester," I said in an undertone. We were sitting next each other, and I could speak to her without her husband overhearing. "When you telephoned the maid an hour ago, the baby was all right, wasn't she?"

"Yes, I know," she returned dejectedly. "But I have heard such dreadful things about maids neglecting babies left in their care.

Suppose she should leave her alone in the apartment, and something should catch fire and--"

"See here, Daisy!" Lillian Gale joined our group, coffee cup in hand.

"Drink your coffee and your cordial. Then pretty soon, if you feel you really must go, I'll gather up Harry and start for home. Then you can make Frank go."

"You are awfully good, Lillian." Mrs. Lester looked gratefully up at the older woman. "I know I am as silly as I can be, but you can't know how I am imagining every dreadful thing in the calendar."

"I know all about it," Mrs. Underwood returned shortly, almost curtly, and walked away toward the group of men at the other side of the apartment.

"I never knew that she ever had a child." Mrs. Lester's eyes were wide with amazement as they met mine.

"Neither did I." Purposely I made my tone non-committal. From the look in Lillian Gale's eyes when Mrs. Lester told us in my room of the way the baby looked asleep, I knew that some time she must have had a baby of her own in her arms.

But I detest gossip, no matter how kindly--if, indeed, gossip can ever be termed kindly. I could not discuss Mrs. Underwood's affairs with any one, especially when she was a guest of mine.

"But she must have had a baby some time," persisted little Mrs.

Lester. Her anxiety about her own baby appeared to be forgotten for the moment. "It must have been a child of that awful man she divorced, or who divorced her. I never did get that story right."

I looked around the room. How I wished some one would interrupt our talk. I could not listen to Mrs. Lester's prattle without answering her, and I did not wish to express any opinion on the subject.

As if answering my unspoken wish, Harry Underwood rose and came toward me.

"Were you looking for me?" he queried audaciously.

I had a sudden helpless, angry feeling that this man had been covertly watching me. Annoyed as I was, I was glad that he had interrupted us, for his presence would effectually stop Mrs. Lester's surmises concerning his wife.

"Indeed I was not looking for you," I replied spiritedly. "But I am glad you are here. Please talk to Mrs. Lester while I go to the kitchen. I must give some directions to Katie."

"Of course that's a terribly hard task"--he began, smiling mischievously at Mrs. Lester.

But he never finished his sentence. A loud, prolonged ringing of the doorbell startled us all. It was the sort of ring one always a.s.sociates with an urgent summons of some sort.

"Oh! my baby. I know something's happened to the baby and they've come to tell me."

Mrs. Lester's words rang high and shrill. They changed to a shriek as d.i.c.ky opened the door and fell back startled.

For past him rushed a girl with a fear-distorted face holding in her arms a baby that to my eyes looked as if it were dead.

But I had presence of mind enough to quiet Mrs. Lester's hysterical fears.

"That is not your baby," I said sharply, grasping her by the arm. "It is the child from across the hall!"

There is nothing in the world so pitiful to witness as the suffering of a baby.

We all realized this as the maid held out to us the tiny infant, rigid and blue as if it were already dead.

"Is the baby dead?" she gasped, her face convulsed with grief and fear. "My madam is at the theatre, and the baby has been fretty for two hours, and just a minute ago he stiffened out like this. Oh, dear!

Oh, dear!" she began to sob.

"Stop that!" Lillian Gale's voice rang out like a trumpet. "The baby is not dead. It is in a convulsion. Give it to me and run back to your apartment and bring me some warm blankets."

Of the six people at our little chafing dish supper, so suddenly interrupted, she was the only one who knew what to do. I had been able to, quiet Mrs. Lester's hysteria by telling her at once that the baby was not her own, as she had so widely imagined, but was helpless before the baby's danger.

Lillian's orders came thick and fast. She dominated the situation and swept us along in the fight to save the baby's life until the doctor, who had been summoned, arrived.

The physician was a tall, thin, young man, with a look of efficiency about him. He looked at the baby carefully, laid his hand upon the tiny forehead, then straightened himself.

"Is there any way in which the child's parents can be found?" Mr.

Underwood evidently had told him of the nature of the seizure and the absence of the parents on the way up.

Lillian Gale's face grew pale under her rouge.

"There is danger, doctor?" she asked quietly

"There is always danger in these cases," he returned quietly, but his words were heard by a wild-eyed woman in evening dress who rushed through the open door followed by a man as agitated as she.

I said an unconscious prayer of thankfulness.

The baby's mother had arrived.

It seemed a week, but it was in reality only two hours later when Lillian Gale returned from the apartment across the hall, heavy eyed and dishevelled, her gown splashed with water, her rouge rubbed off in spots, her whole appearance most disreputable.