Mary Ware in Texas
by Annie F. Johnston · English · Gutenberg #40366 · 507,038 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Mary Ware in Texas
Author: Annie F. Johnston
Illustrator: Frank T. Merrill
Release date: July 29, 2012 [eBook #40366]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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MARY WARE IN TEXAS
* * * * *
Works of ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
The Little Colonel Series
(_Trade Mark, Reg. U. S. Pat. Of._)
Each one vol., large 12mo, cloth, illustrated
The Little Colonel Stories $1.50
(Containing in one volume the three stories, "The
Little Colonel," "The Giant Scissors," and "Two Little
Knights of Kentucky.")
The Little Colonel's House Party 1.50
The Little Colonel's Holidays 1.50
The Little Colonel's Hero 1.50
The Little Colonel at Boarding-School 1.50
The Little Colonel in Arizona 1.50
The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation 1.50
The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor 1.50
The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding 1.50
Mary Ware: The Little Colonel's Chum 1.50
Mary Ware in Texas 1.50
The above 11 vols., _boxed_ with The Little Colonel Good
Times Book, as a set of 12 vols. 18.00
The Little Colonel Good Times Book 1.50
The Little Colonel Doll Book 1.50
Illustrated Holiday Editions
Each one vol., small quarto, cloth, illustrated, and printed in colour
The Little Colonel $1.25
The Giant Scissors 1.25
Two Little Knights of Kentucky 1.25
Big Brother 1.25
Cosy Corner Series
Each one vol., thin 12mo, cloth, illustrated
The Little Colonel $.50
The Giant Scissors .50
Two Little Knights of Kentucky .50
Big Brother .50
Ole Mammy's Torment .50
The Story of Dago .50
Cicely .50
Aunt 'Liza's Hero .50
The Quilt that Jack Built .50
Flip's "Islands of Providence" .50
Mildred's Inheritance .50
Other Books
Joel: A Boy of Galilee $1.50
In the Desert of Waiting .50
The Three Weavers .50
Keeping Tryst .50
The Legend of the Bleeding Heart .50
The Rescue of the Princess Winsome .50
The Jester's Sword .50
Asa Holmes 1.00
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
53 Beacon Street Boston, Mass.
* * * * *
[Illustration: It would have been joy to her soul could she have seen
herself----
MARY WARE IN TEXAS Chap XIII]
MARY WARE IN TEXAS
by
ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
Author of "The Little Colonel Series," "Big Brother,"
"Ole Mammy's Torment," "Joel: A Boy of
Galilee," "Asa Holmes," etc.
Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill
[Illustration]
Boston * L. C. Page
& Company * MDCCCCX
Copyright, 1910,
By L. C. Page & Company
(Incorporated)
Entered at Stationer's Hall, London
All rights reserved
First Impression, October, 1910
Electrotyped and Printed by
The Colonial Press
C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U.S.A.
TO
F. V. P.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. IN SAN ANTONIO 1
II. IN SEARCH OF A HOME 25
III. THE LITTLE TOWN OF BAUER 51
IV. MARY FINDS GAY 71
V. AT FORT SAM HOUSTON 93
VI. ON THE CREEK-BANK 116
VII. CHRISTMAS 139
VIII. "DIE KLEINEN TEUFEL" 171
IX. AT THE BARNABY RANCH 198
X. IN JOYCE'S STUDIO 230
XI. PHIL GOES TO WARWICK HALL 259
XII. IN "BLUE-BONNET" TIME 284
XIII. JACK 308
XIV. SAN JACINTO DAY 329
XV. NEW TRAILS 353
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"IT WOULD HAVE BEEN JOY TO HER SOUL COULD SHE HAVE
SEEN HERSELF" (_See page 308_) _Frontispiece_
"'WHAT AN ADORABLE LITTLE CURL!'" 7
"A DASHING GIRL IN KHAKI AND A COWBOY HAT, ASTRIDE
A FIERY LITTLE MUSTANG" 59
"HE . . . SEATED HIMSELF BESIDE HER, COFFEE-CUP
IN HAND" 113
"SHE SENT THE BOAT DOWN STREAM WITH LONG, SWIFT
STROKES" 134
"THREE ALERT AND EXPECTANT LITTLE FIGURES SAT IN
A ROW ON THE STEPS" 198
"LEANING AGAINST THE MANTEL, LOOKED DOWN AT HER,
THOUGHTFULLY" 263
"'WELL, I'M GOING AWAY AND I MAY NOT SEE YOU AGAIN'" 375
MARY WARE IN TEXAS
CHAPTER I
IN SAN ANTONIO
THE musicians were tuning their instruments somewhere behind the palms
in the hotel courtyard. It was one of the older hotels of San Antonio,
much sought by Northern tourists on account of that same inner garden,
around which the big building stretched itself. The rooms opening on to
it had vine-covered balconies, and, looking down from them into the
tropical growth of palms and banana trees and roses, one felt that it
was summer time, no matter what the calendar said.
It was on one of the second floor balconies at the close of a November
day that Mary Ware stood looking around her with eager eyes. Queen's
wreath and moon-vines made such a thick screen that no one could see
her, so she might lean over the railing as far as she pleased to watch
the brilliantly lighted scene below. Electric bulbs were strung through
the cacti and devil's ivy like elfin lamps. There was a shine of brass
buttons as colored bell boys scudded across the open space with clinking
ice-pitchers or jingling keys, and through the glass doors beyond came
the gleam of silver and flowers where the waiters were arranging the
tables for dinner.
There was to be a military banquet in one of the private dining-rooms,
and already the guests were beginning to arrive for the reception which
was to precede it. So much bunting was draped over the arch between the
office corridors and this inner court, that the view was somewhat
obscured, but, by leaning dangerously far over the railing, Mary could
catch a glimpse of the legs of a uniform now and then, strolling along
beside the trailing skirt of a dainty evening gown.
All this warmth and life and color was in sharp contrast to the dreary
solitudes of the snow covered mining camp which she had just left. It
had been winter for nearly a month up in the hills of Arizona, and Lone
Rock in the winter was such a barren waste socially that her present
surroundings seemed wildly exciting. In Lone Rock it was a matter of
comment whenever a human being passed the house, and even a stray mule,
stumbling along with a bell on its neck, was enough to call one to the
windows.
The orchestra behind the palms having finished its tuning, swung into a
gay two-step. At the sudden burst of music Mary drew a long breath and
stood up straight, her pulses a-tingle. Something delightful was
beginning to happen. Two girls, one in white and one in pale
lemon-yellow, attended by a young lieutenant and a still younger man in
civilian's evening dress, came out under the bunting-draped arch and
strolled along past the banana trees to the garden seat just below her.
From her hiding place behind the moon-vines, Mary watched them as only a
sociable little soul could watch, who for months had been hungering for
such companionship. She clutched the railing with both hands, hoping
fervently that they would stop.
They did pause for a few moments, just under the balcony, so near that
for the little while they stood there she could almost feel herself to
be one of the party. She could even smell the white violets that the
girl in white wore on her corsage, and was close enough to see that an
amber comb was slipping out of the soft auburn-bronze hair arranged so
becomingly on the graceful little head. Each laugh and gesture sent it
slipping lower and lower till involuntarily Mary's hand went out to stop
it. Then she drew back in confusion. She had almost called attention to
herself by speaking aloud.
"Let's go into the other court," insisted the girl in yellow. "I want to
show you the alligators in the fountain, Mr. Wade, to convince you that
you're really in the sunny South. Some people can't appreciate
alligators--Bogey there, for instance."
Her disdainful glance indicated the lieutenant. "He jeers at me for
liking them, but I think they are more interesting than half the people
one meets."
"_Bogey!_ What a nickname for such a dignified officer," thought Mary,
peeping over the railing to see how such banter was received. Evidently
the lieutenant was accustomed to it, for he smiled indulgently as one
would at a spoiled child.
"'Birds of a feather,' you know," was his answer. "Go on, Roberta. _I_
don't care to flock with alligators myself, but if you do we'll follow
and see it done."
Roberta deigned no reply but a glance intended to be withering, which
failed in its purpose because it was only counterfeit. Her eyes were as
dark as a gypsy's and she had the curliest lashes Mary had ever seen. A
boyish straightforwardness of manner contradicted their coquettish
curliness, however. She had an air that comes only from being brought up
in a houseful of teasing brothers. The man in civilian dress, whom she
called Mr. Wade, watched her as if he had found a new species of girl,
uncertain what she might say or do next. He was familiar with the
coquettish kind and with the tom-boy kind, but this combination puzzled
him.
Mary longed to follow as the four went slowly away together into the
adjoining court, wholly unconscious that they had left an indelible
memory behind them, or that they had revealed anything of themselves and
their affairs to an unseen listener. But to Mary it was as if a new book
had been opened before her and she had been allowed a glimpse of one
page and the attractive picture that illustrated it. It was never
necessary for her to begin at the first chapter of a book. Often,
attracted by some paragraph in the middle, she would plunge into a
story, only turning back for the beginning after she had pursued it
eagerly through to the last word and found "how it all ended."
[Illustration: "MARY WARE in TEXAS"
"What an adorable little curl"]
Now as the interesting group walked away she fervently hoped that fate
would send them across her path sometime again during her sojourn in
San Antonio, that she might piece together the rest of the story. All
that she knew now was that the girl in white was a daughter of one of
the majors at Fort Sam Houston, that the lieutenant had known Roberta
ever since he was a cadet at the West Texas Military School, and that it
was her brothers who had dubbed him Bogey. She had learned also that
this was Mr. Wade's first visit to Texas, and that Roberta was trying to
impress him with it by marvelous tales, so that he would decide to spend
the winter in San Antonio instead of going on to Mexico.
But if the conversation revealed little, the picture they made as they
stood against the tropical background of palms and banana trees held
many suggestions. Mary felt that she knew all about lieutenants, having
met two at a Kentucky house-party where she had gone to be flower-girl
at a wedding when she was only fourteen. Fashions evidently had not
changed in lieutenants, since these looked as if they might have been
taken out of the same box that furnished the first soldiers of her
acquaintance; but the girls--there had been many changes in girls since
she last saw any of this kind. It was eight months since she had left
school at the end of the Easter vacation, and none of the girls at
Warwick Hall were doing their hair then as Roberta and the Major's
daughter were doing theirs. Each had a very elaborate coiffure with a
cluster of little short curls escaping to nestle against their white
necks.
Her attention was especially called to this new style by Roberta's
escort, whom Mary had classified in her mind as a "callow youth with a
habit of making gallant little personal speeches."
When they first stepped into the court Roberta had thrown a white scarf
about her, almost as light as thistledown, and glistening with crystal
beads which spangled its soft meshes like dewdrops. As they turned to go
it slipped from her shoulders, and Mr. Wade sprang forward to replace
it. Drawing it around her shoulders he said with a melting glance at her
dark hair, "What an adorable little curl!
"'Ringlet, O Ringlet, she blushed a rosy red,
When Ringlet, O Ringlet, she clipped you from her head!'"
Mary, who knew her Tennyson like her multiplication table, recalled the
next lines,
"Ringlet, O Ringlet, she gave you me and said,
'Come kiss it, love, and put it by,
If this can change, why, so can I.'"
Roberta only laughed, not in the least impressed by his manner nor
embarrassed by the inference of his quotation. Mary knew that she could
not copy the curls, but she decided to try the rest of the coiffure in
the morning. Not a single twist or wave had escaped her sharp eyes. In
the darkness of her retreat, after they had gone, she put her hands to
her head, rehearsing in pantomime each move she would have to make to
produce the result she admired.
Suddenly her hands dropped and one clutched the railing, as the window
shutters of the next room were thrown open with a bang and some one
stepped out on to the balcony adjoining hers. The intruder was a large
and elderly woman in a rustling black dress. The light from the room
streaming out behind her showed that she was portly and gray-haired, and
the way she peered through the vines, changing quickly from one
view-point to another, showed that she was impatient.
When she turned, Mary saw that her dress, which was made to fasten in
the back, was open from collar to belt, and she readily guessed the
trouble. Forgetting that her presence was unknown to the anxious
watcher, she leaned forward through the dark, saying politely, "Can I
help you, Madam?"
If a hand had reached out and grabbed her, the old lady could not have
been more startled. With a stifled shriek she backed up against the wall
to hide her open bodice, and stood there limp and panting.
"Merciful _fathers_! how you scared me!" she breathed as Mary's face
appeared in the full light. When she saw only a little school-girl of
seventeen or thereabouts her relief found vent in a hysterical giggle.
It shook her plump shoulders until they both started to laughing so hard
that she could barely find voice to explain, or Mary to apologize.
"I just couldn't get my dress hooked up the back," she finally managed
to say. "I rang half a dozen times for a chambermaid, but the ones on
this floor all seem to be off duty this time of evening, and I won't ask
a bell-boy as some of the ladies do. I don't think it's decent. So I
just thought I'd look down into the court and see if I couldn't catch
sight of James. He did it yesterday and I vowed I'd never ask him again.
He's willing enough, but he kept me standing a solid half hour by the
clock, and we were both tuckered out when he got through."
"Let me come and do it for you," said Mary with her usual alacrity for
following up promising beginnings.
"Oh, if you only would!" was the grateful answer. "I'll go in and unlock
the door--"
Before she could finish her sentence Mary had climbed lightly over the
railing which divided their balconies, and was following her into her
room through the long windows that opened to the floor.
"Do you know," confided the old lady while Mary deftly fastened the
hooks, "I think a hotel is the lonesomest place on the face of the globe
for a woman. I come down here once a year or so with my husband, and he
has a good time sitting around in the lobby smoking and making friends
with stockmen like himself, but by the end of the second day I'm
homesick for the ranch. Of course I enjoy the stores and the crowds on
the street, and seeing all the finely dressed tourists at meal-times,
but we've been down here three days now, and you're the first person
I've spoken to besides the chambermaid and James. It's all right for
strangers to keep themselves to themselves I suppose, but I must say
it's a sort of strain when it comes to being the stranger yourself. I
want somebody to neighbor with."
"So do I," responded Mary with such heartiness that the old lady
instantly expanded into warm friendliness. Before she was fairly
fastened into her rustling black and purple gown she had confided to
Mary that it was her very best one, and that it just wouldn't wear out,
because it was too fine for church and she had no occasion to put it on
save when she made her rare visits to San Antonio. The sleeves had been
changed so many times to keep it in fashion, that her dressmaker had
refused to alter it another time, even if the lace on it did cost five
dollars a yard. James said why didn't she wear it at home and get done
with it. But she told him much comfort a body would take around home in
the tight gear a dressmaker boned you up in. But she'd have to do
something, for full skirts were clear out now, and she felt like a
balloon when other people were going around as slim and lank as starved
snakes.
"It doesn't take long to get out of date," she added, "when you're
living up in the hills in the back-woods."
"Oh, I know that," agreed Mary. "I've been living in a lonesome little
spot out in Arizona for so long that I've nearly forgotten what
civilization is like."
"You don't look like it," was the frank comment as the still franker
gaze of her listener travelled over her dress from top to bottom, noting
every detail.
"Oh, this," answered Mary, as if the eyes had spoken. "This is a dress
that I got in New York last Easter vacation. I was in school at
Washington, but as I had to leave at the end of the term and go back
home I've had no occasion to wear it since. That's why it looks so new."
"Now do sit down and tell me about it," urged her hostess hospitably.
"I've always wanted to go to Washington."
She pushed forward a low rocker, and took the arm chair opposite with
such a look of pleasurable anticipation on her kindly old face, that
Mary obeyed. She knew how it felt to be fairly bursting with a
sociability for which there was no outlet. She had experienced that same
sensation a few minutes before when she watched Roberta and the Major's
daughter go by with their friends. Besides, she felt a real liking for
this companionable old lady who introduced herself as Mrs. Barnaby of
Bauer, Texas. Mrs. James Barnaby.
"She's the real, comfortable, homey sort," thought Mary, who had been
much given of late to classifying people. "She's like mission
furniture--plain and simple and genuine. She'd be her simple
unpretentious self no matter what gilt and veneer she found herself
among."
Mary was proud of her insight afterward when she learned more about Mrs.
Barnaby's family. They had come out from Ohio over fifty years before
when she was so young that she could barely remember the great prairie
schooner that brought them. They had suffered all the hardships of the
early Texas settlers, gone through the horrors of the Indian uprisings,
and fought their way through with sturdy pioneer fortitude to the place
where they could fold their hands and enjoy the comforts of the
civilization they had helped to establish.
She told Mary little of this now, however, but led her on with many
questions to talk of herself. Mrs. Barnaby had a lively curiosity and
always took the most straightforward means to gratify it.
"She's interested in people, no matter who they are, just as I am,"
thought Mary, instantly recognizing the spirit which prompted the
questions, and for that reason was led on to tell more than she would
have told to most strangers. She did not take the world at large into
her confidence now as she had done in her chatterbox days. In just a few
moments Mrs. Barnaby had a very fair snapshot picture of the Ware
family in her mind. Mary had given it very simply.
"I had gone from school at Warwick Hall to New York, to spend the Easter
vacation with my sister Joyce. She's an artist and has her studio there.
And we got word that my oldest brother, Jack, had been dreadfully hurt
in an accident at the mines where he was manager--that it had made him a
cripple for life. We all just adore Jack, so of course I packed up and
went straight back to Arizona. It wasn't possible for Joyce to leave
just then, and my brother Holland is in the navy, and of course he
couldn't get away. Except the trained nurse there was nobody with mamma
at the time but my youngest brother Norman, and as he is only fourteen I
felt that I had to go."
"I hope he got better right away," interrupted Mrs. Barnaby eagerly.
"Yes, he did for awhile. He even got so that he could wheel himself
around in his chair and go down to the office awhile every morning. But
as soon as the cold weather set in he began to have such dreadful
rheumatism that the doctor said the only thing to do was to take him to
a milder climate. So we got ready right away and brought him down
here."
"It must have been a hard trip for him," commented Mrs. Barnaby with a
sympathetic shake of the head. "Arizona always did seem to me like the
jumping-off place. I don't see how you managed it, him in a wheeled
chair and so helpless."
"Oh, we came in a private car," Mary made haste to explain, "and Jack
really enjoyed the trip. Waffles, the old colored cook on the car, you
know, just laid himself out to please him, and the porter was so strong
and helpful."
"H'm!" exclaimed her interested listener. "I've always thought I'd like
to travel in a private car. It must be such a nice way to get over the
country. But it isn't everybody that can afford it."
It was on the tip of Mary's honest little tongue to explain that it was
not their car. They had come as guests of Mr. Robeson, one of the mine
owners. But Mrs. Barnaby interrupted her with a question.
"Didn't you all go out in a big red automobile this afternoon? I've been
trying to think ever since you came in here where it was I'd seen you
before, and I believe it was with that party. There was a little lady in
black and a boy and a rather heavy-set man with iron gray whiskers. I
heard him giving orders to the chauffeur to go out to the missions."
"Yes," agreed Mary, "that was Mr. Robeson, one of the owners of the
mine. He's so fond of Jack and has been so lovely to all of us on his
account. His valet stayed with Jack while we went out to see the town.
He's going on to Mexico this afternoon."
Again she was on the point of saying that it was as Mr. Robeson's guests
they had enjoyed the outing in the expensive car, but another question
switched her off to another subject and left Mrs. Barnaby with the
impression that the Wares were wealthy beyond computation. Mary had the
manner of one always accustomed to luxury, and her easy way of referring
to the studio in New York and the private car and the valet made one
think she was born to purple and fine linen.
The impression was deepened later, when the Barnabys found themselves at
the same table with Mary and Norman in the dining-room. "Mrs. Ware was
having dinner in her rooms with Jack," Mary explained. He was sensitive
about being wheeled into a public dining-room, so she and her mother
would take turns staying with him.
With a brief glance at the menu card Mary ordered dinner for herself and
brother before Mr. Barnaby had adjusted his glasses on his long nose and
stumbled half-way through the menu. He always read the bill of fare
aloud to his wife, pronouncing the French words exactly as they were
spelled, and they paused to discuss the nature of each unfamiliar dish
with the amused waiter before ordering.
The ease with which Mary ordered gave further evidence to Mrs. Barnaby
that the Wares had always been accustomed to sumptuous living, and to
being "waited on, hand and foot." And it was proof to Mary that "James"
was as genuine and primitive as his wife when he made no attempt to
cover his ignorance of French menus. Looking up with a twinkle in his
eyes he said to the waiter, "Just bring me the same as my wife ordered."
Then he added with an odd one-sided smile that gave an irresistible
expression of humor to his face, "I always take the blazed trail when
there is one. It's a heap sight safer than striking out for yourself
when you're in tall timber."
Evidently Mrs. Barnaby had told him all that she had learned of the Ware
family, for he at once began making minute inquiries about Arizona and
the mines, with the interest of a shrewd, genial old man who kept pace
with the times and liked the companionship of young people. They were
warm friends before the meal was over, and Mary hurried up-stairs
afterward, to report all she could remember to Jack. She had fallen into
the habit of making the most of everything she saw and heard, for his
entertainment.
She found him in his chair, out on the balcony with her mother, looking
down on the same scene she had watched earlier in the evening. Mrs. Ware
had just tucked a lap-robe around him and drawn a wrap over her own
shoulders when Mary opened the door of the room behind them, and started
across the floor to join them.
Some letters had been sent up while she was at dinner and seeing one on
the table addressed to herself, she paused to read it before joining
them. It was just a note from one of the girls at Warwick Hall, who,
knowing Mary's fondness for the beautiful old garden there, always
enclosed some leaf or flower from it every time she wrote. This time
several violets fell out, withered but still sweet. As Mary stooped to
pick them up she heard Jack say in a voice so full of hearty enjoyment
that she scarcely recognized it for his: "This certainly is great! What
a world of things we've been missing all these years, little mother! I
never realized just how much we have missed till I went East last
year. Then afterwards the days were so full of work and the new
responsibilities that I didn't have time to think about it much. But I
can see now what a dull gray existence _you've_ had, for as far back as
I can remember there's only been three backgrounds for you: a little
Kansas village, a tent on the edge of the Arizona desert, and a lonely
mining camp. How long has it been since you've seen a sight like this?"
The scattered violets were all picked up now, but Mary still stood by
the table, waiting for her mother's reply.
"It's so long ago I'll have to stop and count up. Let me see. You're
twenty-two and Joyce twenty-three--really it's almost a quarter of a
century since I've been in a large city, and seen anything like this in
the way of illuminations, with music and crowds. Your father took me to
New York the winter after we were married. Before that I'd always had my
full share. I'd visited a great deal and travelled with Cousin Kate and
her father. And I'm sure that no one could want anything brighter and
sweeter and more complete than life as I found it as a girl, in 'my old
Kentucky home.' As I had so much more than most people the first part of
my life I couldn't complain when I had less afterwards. But I certainly
do enjoy this," she added earnestly, as the orchestra began the
haunting air of the Mexican "Swallow Song," _La Golondrina_, and the
odor of roses stole up from below. The court was filled now with gay
little groups of people who had the air of finding life one continual
holiday.
The cheeriness of the reply almost brought tears to Mary's eyes, as she
realized for the first time how much more than any of them her mother
must have suffered from the hardships of their early poverty, because it
was in such sharp contrast to what she had known before. To hide the
little quiver that wanted to creep into her voice Mary laughed as she
joined them, dragging a chair through the French window after her.
"Here you sit like two comfortable cats in the lap of luxury," she said.
"You'll begin to purr soon."
"That's exactly what we're doing now," answered Jack. "We're
congratulating ourselves on being in this land of summer with every
comfort at hand and a free show to entertain us. This is as good as
being in a box-party at the opera."
Mary settled herself with her chair tipped back on its rockers, and
looked down on the court below. "I wish we could stay at this hotel all
winter," she exclaimed. "I wish we could be as rich all the time as I
feel to-night. Ever since we started South in Mr. Robeson's car I've
felt as opulent and as elegant as if we owned the earth, and I've
noticed that you and mamma take to luxury quite as readily as I do--like
ducks to water. Norman is learning fast, too, for one of his
opportunities. He's having the time of his life now, down in the lobby,
just 'seein' things at night.' He asked me for a quarter when I left
him, to get some postcards of the Alamo and the plaza to send home."
"Well?" queried Jack as she paused. Mary had had the family finances in
hand since his illness, and her economical clutch had earned her the
title of "Watch-dog of the Treasury."
"Oh, I gave it to him," she answered. "Gave it with a lordly sweep of
the hand, as if bestowing millions were a daily habit of mine. But
to-morrow it will be a different story. To-morrow a copper cent may be
too great a boon for my family to ask me to part with. To-morrow we go
house-hunting, with the sad realization that we're all as poor as Job's
old blue turkey hen."
"What's the odds so long as you're happy," quoted Jack. There was a long
pause in which they listened to the music, each enjoying to the fullest
the novelty of being in such a place. Then Jack asked, "Didn't you have
any adventures down in the dining-room? We rather expected that you'd
have a series of them to report."
"Mercy, yes! I've had half a dozen since I saw you last, very mild ones
though. I've seen some most interesting people, a major's daughter and a
lieutenant from the Post, called Bogey, and I overheard the beginning of
a romance, a most sentimental request for an 'adorable little curl,' and
I've hooked Mrs. James Barnaby of Bauer, Texas, up in her best black and
purple gown, and James himself has invited me to take 'pot luck' with
them up at the Barnaby ranch any time I choose to go. He's a dear and so
is she, and if you'd only--"
Her chatter was stopped by a sudden exclamation from Jack, and following
his gaze into the court below she saw two of the group in which she had
been so interested earlier in the evening.
"That's the lieutenant I told you about!" she exclaimed excitedly.
"That's Bogey, and the other is the major's daughter. I don't wonder
that you're stunned at the sight of a pretty girl like that when it's
been such ages since you have seen one."
"I'm stunned because it happens to be a girl I know," exclaimed Jack in
a tone almost as excited as her own. "That's Gay Melville, and I met her
at The Locusts the night I stopped in Lloydsboro Valley with the
Shermans."
"Are you sure?" gasped Mary.
"Dead sure! She played the violin that evening, and you can't take your
eyes off her face when she plays, it's so sweet, and you could never
forget it after you'd watched her through one performance. Then her
hair--there's no mistaking _that_, and that little trick of lifting her
chin. Besides, it's no surprising matter to see her. She lives here and
she's a popular girl."
"Oh, I know it!" exclaimed Mary, "and I've known all the time that her
home is in San Antonio. Haven't I heard the Warwick Hall seniors talk of
her by the hour? But somehow I never put two and two together and got it
through my head that we're in the same town. Really I'd forgotten her in
the excitement of our sudden coming. But now it just takes me off my
feet to know that we're under the same roof, and to remember that she
lived a whole summer in Lloydsboro Valley and is such a dear friend of
the Little Colonel and Betty. Why, we're _bound_ to meet her some time
this winter. Oh, I know we're going to have a good time here, and I
think that San Antonio is just the dearest, most charming old place in
the world."
"It is certainly a good place to be to-night," answered Jack, following
with intent gaze the vanishing figure of the major's pretty daughter.
"And to-morrow--"
He did not finish the sentence, for the violins were throbbing through
that last refrain of _La Golondrina_ so softly and sweetly that he did
not want to lose a note. When it was done Mary took up his last word,
quoting with a dramatic sweep of the hand, "To-morrow do thy worst, for
I have lived to-day!"
CHAPTER II
IN SEARCH OF A HOME
IT was with the vision of a charming little bungalow in her mind that
Mary started on her search for a house next morning; a little white
bungalow half hidden in vines, and set among heuisach and mesquite
trees, or maybe in the shelter of one giant pecan. As they had whirled
around the city in the touring car the day before, she had seen several
of that kind which she thought would suit both their taste and their
purse.
She had not yet reached the point of picturing to herself the inside
furnishings. They would have to be of the simplest sort, of course. But
one picture seemed to rise up of its own accord whenever she thought of
the new home. She saw a big living-room, the centre of a cheery
hospitality, where girls fluttered in and out at all hours of the day.
Bright, fun-loving, interesting girls like Gay Melville and Roberta. Her
wistful little face grew very sweet and eager at the mere thought of
such companionship, and there was such a dancing light in her gray eyes
and such a happy glow of expectancy on her cheeks that more than one
passer-by took a second glance and felt the morning brighter because of
it.
Mrs. Ware had expected to accompany her, leaving Jack to Norman's care
for the morning, but a neuralgic headache, an old enemy of hers, seized
her on awakening, and she was obliged to shift the responsibility to
Mary's willing shoulders. Although it doubled the car-fare, Mary took
Norman with her for company. Armed with a map of the city and a list of
houses, clipped from the morning paper, they started gaily out on their
quest. It was good just to be alive on such a morning, and out in the
brilliant sunshine, with the air so fresh and sweet, and the plaza as
green and flowery as if it were mid-summer instead of the week before
Thanksgiving.
They walked at first, wanting a closer view than the cars afforded of
the fascinating old curio shops. Mexicans were no novelty to them as
they were to Northern tourists. They had seen too many in Phoenix and at
the mining camp to care for a second look at the tall, peaked hats of
the men or the rebosa-draped heads of the women. But the narrow streets
of the Mexican quarter with their chili and tamale stands interested
them. It was some kind of a fête day, and flags were flying and a
festive spirit was in the air; a spirit that seems to belong peculiarly
to this alluring old Spanish city, where fête days come often and one
soon learns to say "mañana" with the rest.
Norman, who picked up bits of information here and there as a magnet
draws needles and nails, imparted some of it to Mary as he trudged along
beside her. Everything was making a deep impression on his mind because
this was his first journey of any consequence.
"This is the third oldest city in the United States, the guide book
says," he began, then paused before a shop window, attracted by the
sign, "Dressed Fleas, 35 cents," to exclaim, scornfully, "Who'd be fool
enough to want one of _those_ things, dead or alive!" With a skip or two
to catch up with Mary, he continued, "And there's thirteen miles of
river twisting in and out among the streets, with seventeen bridges over
it."
"It surely is the twistiest, crookedest river that I ever saw on a map,"
answered Mary, "but that's what makes the town so lovely--all those
graceful bends with the green banks and tropical foliage and the little
boats tied up here and there to the landings. I wish we could find the
kind of a place we want somewhere along the river. Maybe we could manage
to get a boat. Anyhow, if we couldn't do any better we could make a
raft. I'd love to pole one, and it would be just like doing it in our
own back yard if the river ran right behind our place."
"Say! Let's!" exclaimed Norman, explosively. "Mary Ware, you've got a
head on you that's worth something! And I'll tell you something else I
wish we could manage to do,--that's to get a house out near Brackenridge
park. They've got antelope and buffalo and elk, and all sorts of wild
animals out there. I'd like to see them often."
"We'd better get down to business, then," said Mary, "instead of
loitering along this way. We can look at the shops after we've found a
house."
"Stop just a minute at the Alamo," begged Norman. "I want to see the
place where Travis and Davy Crockett and Bowie put up such a desperate
fight against Santa Anna. This is just as interesting a place to me as
Bunker Hill or Plymouth Rock would be, and I want to write home to Billy
Downs about it."
"But it isn't the _exact_ spot," objected Mary, who wanted to lose no
more time and was sometimes provokingly literal. "This is only the
little chapel, and the real fight took place in a court that was away
over yonder, and the walls were pulled down long ago."
Norman planted himself at the entrance and proceeded to argue the
matter. "But the chapel was part of it, and it stands for the whole
thing now--a sort of monument, you know, and there's relics inside
and--"
"Oh, well, come on, then," said Mary, "if you're _that_ anxious, but
just for a minute. You can come here some other time by yourself and
prowl around all day."
She followed him into the dim interior, still insisting at every step
that they must hurry. It was so early no one but the care-taker was in
sight. She knew how Norman liked history, and what enthusiastic
admiration he had for the heroes of frontier times, but she was
surprised to see how deeply he was impressed by the venerable building.
He took off his hat as they entered and walked around as reverently as
if they were in a church. As they gazed up at the narrow, iron-barred
windows which had witnessed such a desperate struggle for liberty, he
said, in an awed tone, which made even Mary feel solemn:
"'Here, for ten days, took place the most memorable, thrilling, tragic,
and bloody siege in American history. One hundred and seventy-nine
indomitable American frontier riflemen against an army of six thousand
brave and disciplined troops led by veteran officers!'"
"_Where_ did you get all that?" demanded Mary, in surprise.
"I saw it in a little pamphlet, in the reading-room last night, and it
told about the Comanche Indians that came here about seventy years ago.
The fiercest fighting you ever heard of--thirty-two Indian warriors
killed right out there in the street that we came across just now, and
seven Texans."
"Goodness, Norman!" she answered, with a shrug. "What do you want to
resurrect all those old horrors for? It doesn't make the place any more
attractive to me to know that its streets once ran red with blood. I'd
rather think of them as they will be in the Spring on San Jacinto Day,
red with roses after the Battle of Flowers. Think of our being here to
see that!" she added, exultingly.
As they emerged from the dimly-lighted chapel into the blinding sunshine
of the street, Norman remarked thoughtfully, "Of course I'm sorry that
Jack had the rheumatism so badly that he had to get out of Lone Rock,
but as long as we did have to leave home, I'm jolly glad it brought us
to San Antonio. Think of the times we'll have going out to Fort Sam
Houston to guard-mounts and parade. It's something just to be within
walking distance of the largest army post of the United States."
"I'm thinking of the public library," was her rejoinder. "Jack can have
all the books he wants to read this winter; and I'm thinking of the
friends we'll have; the real, satisfying kind, that do things, and go
places, and think, and keep you from sinking to the level of a cabbage.
I've always wanted to live in the thick of things, and here we are at
last!"
They paused on the curb to wait for a long string of vehicles to pass.
An army ambulance came first, drawn by sleek mules, driven by a soldier
in khaki and carrying several ladies and children from the Post. Close
behind it came a riding party, clattering in on horseback from a
breakfast at the Country Club. Then followed close on each other's
heels, a dilapidated prairie schooner, three boys on a burro, a
huckster's wagon, and a carriage with liveried coachman and prancing,
thoroughbred horses. The clang of a long line of electric cars whizzing
past, the honk of many automobiles, and the warning sound of bicycle
bells, as their owners wheeled in and out through the bewildering maze
of vehicles and pedestrians, made Norman exclaim, joyfully, "Gee! I'm
glad we're out of Lone Rock! There's something to see here every single
minute."
Mary signalled a passing car, and as soon as they were seated, drew out
her newspaper clippings. "Mrs. Barnaby said for us to go to Laurel
Heights first," she remarked, "so I believe we'll find it best to try
this one. It sounds all right."
She read the advertisement aloud: "A five-room bungalow, never been
occupied, all modern conveniences, one block from car-line, rent
reasonable, inquire next door."
Then she unfolded the map and studied it as they whirled along, now and
then repeating the name of a street as she came across one which sounded
particularly pleasing and story-bookish, as she called it, to Norman:
"King William Street, Mistletoe Avenue, Dolorosa and San Pedro."
When a little later they alighted from the car and found the place
described in the advertisement, it was almost the bungalow of Mary's
dreams. The vines were lacking and the lawn was still strewn with the
débris of building, but that could soon be remedied.
"What good, wide porches to hang a hammock on!" exclaimed Norman, as
they mounted the steps and walked around, peering through the windows.
"You'll have to say gallery," corrected Mary. "Everybody down here calls
a porch a gallery. They won't know what you mean."
They walked all around the house, exclaiming over each attractive
feature, as each window revealed a new one. The electric lights, the
convenient little bathroom, the open fire-place in the living-room, the
built-in china closet. Norman's only complaint was that the house was
nowhere near the river. That was a drawback in Mary's eyes also, for
ever since they had thought of a boat it had begun to take its place in
that mental picture in which those alluring girls were always fluttering
in and out.
"Of course we'll look farther," she said. "It wouldn't do to take the
first one we came to when there are so many to choose from. I'll just
run in next door and inquire the price, and tell them we'll make up our
minds later."
But when she had made her inquiries her decision followed immediately.
What might seem reasonable rent to the owner and to the people of that
neighborhood was entirely out of the reach of the Ware pocket-book. "You
won't find anything cheaper in this part of town," the woman assured
her, and after several more experiences of the same kind, Mary believed
her.
They passed all sorts of beautiful homes in their wanderings; stately
Colonial mansions, comfortable wide-spreading houses with broad
galleries and hospitable doors, picturesque bungalows in the mission
style, little white-winged cottages over-run with tangles of Maréchal
Niel roses, their fragrant buds swinging from the very eaves. The
farther they searched the more Mary longed to find a home among them,
and it was with a feeling of deep disappointment that she turned back to
the hotel for lunch.
Mrs. Ware had spent part of the morning telephoning to different real
estate offices recommended by Mr. Barnaby, and had a small list of
houses sifted down from those offered her.
"They tell me we are too late to get much of a choice," she reported.
"People have been pouring into the city for a month, and the freight
stations and ware-houses are piled up with household goods. It is this
way every fall, they say. No matter how many homes they build there are
always more families clamoring to occupy them than can be accommodated.
It would be easier for us to find one if we could afford to pay more,
but I had to cut out all the high-priced ones from the lists that they
gave me."
Mary took the slip of paper from her mother, saying, "So far the ones we
have seen have been too big or too expensive, or else far too small. I
wonder what will be the matter with these?"
She began to find out almost as soon as she and Norman resumed their
search again after lunch. The lists they had led them into older parts
of the town, where the rented houses had seen several generations of
transitory occupants. Some of the places they visited made her shrink
back in dismay. A long procession of careless tenants had passed
through, each leaving some contribution to the evidences of their slack
housekeeping. Nearly every family had had its share of disease and
death, and Mary hurried away with a wry face and the single exclamation,
"germs!" Mrs. Barnaby had spoken of that class of houses. "You want to
be careful," she told her. "Even the nicest looking may have had
dreadfully sick tenants in them, and although there is a law requiring
landlords to fumigate, and all that sort of thing, you can't be sure
that it has been done as thoroughly as it should."
"This is getting monotonous," Mary exclaimed, wearily, when they had
walked block after block to no purpose, and the end of the day found
them with nothing accomplished. The morning freshness of the atmosphere
had given place to such enervating heat that she had been carrying her
coat on her arm for several hours. The sky was overcast with clouds,
when fagged and inwardly cross she climbed on the car that was to take
them back to the hotel, vowing that she couldn't drag herself another
step.
At the next corner half a dozen people hurried down the street, waving
frantically for the car to wait. As they crowded into the aisle,
laughing and out of breath, Mary heard a lady exclaim, "We certainly
were lucky to catch this car. If we'd had to wait for the next one the
'Norther' surely would have caught us, and this is going to be a nasty,
wet one, too."
Even as she spoke there was a sense of sudden chill in the air. A cold
gale swept down the street, setting flags and awnings to flapping, and
blinding pedestrians with whirling clouds of dust. The conductor
hurried to close the car windows, and the passengers began struggling
into their wraps.
The sudden freshening of the air had such a bracing effect that Mary
straightened up, feeling that after all she might be able to walk the
half block from the car to the hotel. When the time came, she found that
she could even run the distance, for the few big drops of rain that
splashed in her face were the fore-runner of a downpour, and they had no
umbrella. Just as they reached the entrance such a mighty deluge began
that Mary's disappointment in house-hunting was somewhat softened by the
fact that her beloved hat had escaped a wetting which must have ruined
it.
"Never mind, little Vicar," said Jack, consolingly, when she had made
her report to the assembled family. "The proverbial turn in our fortune
is bound to come. It's never failed us yet, you know."
"But we've simply got to get out of this expensive hotel," she answered,
desperately. "Do you realize that we could keep house for a week on what
it costs the four of us to stay here just one day?"
Mrs. Ware broke the long silence that followed, by suggesting, "Maybe
for the present we'd better try to get a few rooms somewhere, just for
light housekeeping. It's a last resort, I know, but Mary is right. Every
day we spend here is taking a big mouthful out of our little capital."
Nobody liked the suggestion, for whatever else they had lacked in their
Arizona homes there had been no lack of space, but they all saw the
wisdom of Mrs. Ware's suggestion, and agreed to try it until they could
look around and do better.
"How lovely it must be to have an ancestral roof-tree," thought Mary
that night, as she tossed, restlessly, kept awake by the noises of the
big hotel. "I can't think of anything more heavenly than to always live
in the house where you were born, and your fathers and grandfathers
before you, as the Lloyds do at The Locusts. It must be so delightful to
feel that you've got an attic full of heirlooms and that everything
about the place is connected with some old family tradition, and to know
that you can take root there, and not have to go wandering around from
pillar to post as we Wares have always had to do. I wonder if Lloyd
Sherman knows how much she has to be thankful for!"
Next day in her shortest skirt and rain-coat, and under a dripping
umbrella, Mary started to look for rooms. She was alone this time.
Company was too expensive a luxury to afford more than one day, since it
meant extra car-fare. She paddled blithely off, however, never minding
the weather. This rain made the little home she was seeking seem all the
more desirable. Whenever a window showed her a cozy interior with the
light of an open fire shining cheerily over it, she thought it would not
be long till she would be making afternoon tea over just such a fire, or
popping corn or toasting marsh-mallows. She could think of a dozen ways
to make it attractive for the girls when they dropped in of rainy
afternoons.
Occupied with such plans she tramped along through the mud and slush as
happily as she had gone through the sunshine the day before. But by the
end of the morning repeated failures began to bring a worried line
between her eyes and a sharp note of anxiety into her voice when she
made her inquiries. Once, finding herself in the neighborhood of a house
which she had refused the day before because it did not quite measure up
to the standards she had set, she went to look at it again, thinking,
after all, they might manage to be more comfortable in it than in a few
rooms. To her disappointment she found a family already moving in. It
had been rented almost immediately after her refusal to take it.
In her search for rooms a new difficulty faced her. Invariably one of
the first questions asked her was, "Anyone sick in your family?"
"Yes, my brother," she would say. "He has rheumatism. That is why we are
particular about getting a sunny south room for him."
"Well, we can't take sick people," would be the positive answer, and she
would turn away with an ache in her throat and a dull wonder why Jack's
rheumatism could make him objectionable in the slightest degree as a
tenant. The morning was nearly gone before she found the reason. She was
shown into a dingy parlor by a child of the family, and asked to wait a
few moments. Its mother had gone around the corner to the bakery, but
would be right back.
There were two others already waiting when Mary entered the room, a
stout, middle-aged woman and a delicate-looking girl. The woman looked
up with a nod as Mary took a chair near the stove and spread out her
damp skirts to dry.
"I reckon you're on the same errand as us," said the woman, "but it's
first come, first served, and we're ahead of you."
"Yes," answered Mary, distantly polite, and wondering at the aggressive
tone. When the child left the room the woman rose and shut the door
behind it, and then came back to Mary, lowering her voice
confidentially.
"It's just this way. We're getting desperate. We came down here for my
daughter's health--the doctor sent us, and we've gone all over town
trying to get some kind of roof over our heads. We can't get in anywhere
because Maudie has lung trouble. People have been coming down here for
forty years to get cured of it, and folks were glad enough to rent 'em
rooms and take their money, till all this talk was stirred up in the
papers about lung trouble being a great white plague, and catching, and
all that. Now you can't get in anywhere at a price that poor folks can
pay. I've come to the end of my rope. The landlady at the boarding-house
where we've been stopping, told me this morning that she couldn't keep
us another day, because the boarders complained when they found what
ailed Maudie. I was a fool to tell 'em, for she doesn't cough much. It's
only in the first stages. After this I'm just going to say that I came
down here to look for work, and goodness knows, _that's_ the truth! What
I want to ask of you is that you won't stand in the way of our getting
in here by offering more rent or anything like that."
"Certainly not," Mary answered, drawing back a little, almost
intimidated by the fierceness which desperation gave to the other's
manner.
The landlady bustled in at that moment, and as she threw the rooms open
for inspection, she asked the question that Mary had heard so often that
morning,--"Any sick in your family?"
"No," answered the woman, glibly. "I'm down in the city looking for
work. I do plain sewing, and if you know of any likely customers I'd be
glad if you'd mention me."
The landlady glanced shrewdly at Maudie, who kept in the background.
"She does embroidery," explained her mother. "Needle-work makes her a
little pale and peaked, sitting over it so long. I ain't going to let
her do so much after I once get a good start."
"Well, a person in my place can't be too careful," complained the
landlady. "We get taken in so often letting our rooms to strangers. They
have all sorts of names for lung trouble nowadays, malaria and a weak
heart and such things. The couple I had in here last said it was just
indigestion and shortness of breath, but she died all the same six
weeks later, in this very room, and he had to acknowledge it was her
lungs all the time, and he knew it."
Mary looked around the room with a shiver. Its old wallpaper, dingy
paint and worn carpet proclaimed too plainly that its renovation since
the last lodgers' departure had been only a superficial one, barely what
the law demanded.
"No, thank you," she replied to the landlady, who had turned to her with
the hope of finding a more desirable tenant. "I couldn't consider these
rooms at all. There are only two, and we need three at least."
Out on the street again a tear or two splashed down and mingled with the
rain on her face as she walked away. She was growing desperate herself.
If two rooms had been all they needed, she could have found them a
number of times over. Or, if they could have afforded some of the flats
or the sunny suites she discovered on pleasant streets, her search would
have been soon over. But it was the same old circle she kept coming back
to. When the rooms were large enough and within their means, either they
were unsanitary or the owners objected to invalids. In vain she
explained that Jack's helplessness was due to an accident, and that
rheumatism is not contagious. Too many people like Maudie's mother had
been ahead of her and bred suspicion of all strangers in quest of rooms
for light housekeeping.
Mary had told her mother not to expect her back for lunch. She would go
into some tea-room or restaurant wherever she happened to be. But one
o'clock found her in a part of the town where nothing of the kind was in
sight. She bought an apple and some crackers at a grocery, and ate them
under cover of her umbrella while she stood on a corner, waiting for a
car to take her to another part of the city.
What a different place it seemed to be from the one they had seen the
day of their arrival! Then it was a world of hospitable homes and
sunshine and kindly faces. The very shop windows looked friendly and
inviting. Now, plodding along in the wet, to the tired, homesick girl it
seemed only a great, desolate place full of lonely, discouraged
strangers and sick people and dingy boarding-houses, whose doors shut
coldly in anxious faces.
All afternoon she kept up the search. The electric lights were beginning
to gleam through the rain, throwing long, quivering reflections in the
puddles when she finally turned back to the hotel, bedraggled and
utterly discouraged.
"I _won't_ cry!" she said, fiercely, to herself. "I can't! For Jack
would see that I had been at it, and he is getting so sensitive lately.
It would hurt him dreadfully to know that we are barred out of all the
desirable places because he is an invalid."
The habit of years is strong. Mary had persisted so long in applying the
good Vicar of Wakefield's motto to her childish difficulties and
disappointments, that it had taught her remarkable self-control. Instead
of bursting impulsively into the room as so many girls of her age would
have done, and giving vent to her over-taxed nerves and discouragement
in a tearful report of the day's adventures, she walked slowly from the
elevator to her room, trying to think of some careless way in which to
announce her failure. She paused with her hand on the knob, thinking,
"I'll just tell them that I've come back like Noah's dove did the first
time it was sent out from the ark, because I could find no rest for the
sole of my foot; at least a rest which fitted both our ideas and our
income."
To her relief, the room was empty when she entered. The only light
streamed through the transom and keyhole from Jack's room, where a low
murmur told that her mother was reading aloud. Opening the door just a
crack so that her face was not visible, she called, gaily, "I'm back,
mamma, but you can just go on with your reading; I'll not tell a single
thing till I'm all dried and dressed. I'm as wet as a frog."
"Oh, I was afraid you'd be," came the anxious answer. "I'll come and
get--"
"No," interrupted Mary, decidedly. "I don't want anything but time."
Closing the door between the rooms, she switched on the light and began
slipping out of her wet clothes into dry ones. In a moment or two she
was in her soft, warm kimona and Turkish slippers, standing on the
threshold of the bathroom, intending to plunge her face into a basin of
hot water. It was the best thing she could think of to remove the traces
of tears, and she was so tired that now she was safe in the harbor of
her own room the tears _would_ come, no matter how hard she tried to
keep them back.
But before she could turn the faucet, a tap at the hall door made her
dab her handkerchief hastily across her eyes, for Mrs. Barnaby's voice
followed the tap.
"I surely hate to trouble you," she began, apologetically, as soon as
Mary had admitted her, "but if you could only hook me up this one more
time--I've been waiting for James with this shawl over my shoulders for
nearly half an hour. Then I heard you come in and I thought maybe you
wouldn't mind doing it once more. We're going home in the morning."
Then with a keen look into Mary's face, she added, kindly, "Why, you
poor child, what's the matter? Your brother isn't worse, I hope!"
There was such a note of real concern in the sympathetic voice that
Mary's lip trembled and her eyes brimmed over again. When the next
moment she found herself drawn into Mrs. Barnaby's capacious embrace
with a plump hand patting her soothingly on the back, the story of her
discouragement seemed to sob itself out of its own accord. The
performance left Mary's eyes very red and tear-swollen, but the outburst
brought such relief that she could laugh the moment it was over. It was
Mrs. Barnaby's surprise which brought the laugh.
"I can't get over it!" she kept exclaiming. "To think that all this time
I supposed that you were enormously wealthy--actually rolling in riches!
Well, well!"
"I didn't know that my 'short and simple annals of the poor' would be so
upsetting," giggled Mary, hysterically. "You were so sweet and
sympathetic I couldn't help telling you. But don't take it to heart,
please. We Wares never stay discouraged long. I'll be all right now
after I get my face washed. As soon as I fasten your dress I'll run in
and turn on the hot water."
The hooking proceeded in silence, Mrs. Barnaby so absorbed in thought
that she forgot her usual sigh of relief and expression of thanks at the
end. Instead she said, abruptly, "You come and go up on the train with
us in the morning to Bauer. It's only thirty miles from here and it's up
in the hills, high and dry, and there's the Metz cottage I'm sure you
can get, all freshly scrubbed and ready to move into. Mrs. Metz is the
cleanest little German woman you ever saw,--scrubs even the under sides
of her tables as white as the tops. It wasn't rented when we came down
here last Saturday. Let me talk to your mother about it. I'm sure it is
just the place for you."
"Oh, no," began Mary. "We couldn't possibly go there! We've counted so
much on living here in San Antonio this winter and meeting some of our
friends' friends--"
Then she stopped with a little gasp, and after an instant's pause said,
apologetically, "I didn't mean to refuse so abruptly, and now I take it
all back. Changing plans so suddenly is somewhat of a shock to one's
system, isn't it! After all, I'm like a drowning man catching at straws,
and I'd be very glad, indeed, if you would talk to mamma about it. You
can go right in now while I finish dressing, if you like."
It was not the first time Mrs. Barnaby had been ushered into Jack's
room. Their acquaintance had begun over the railing of their adjoining
balconies the first day of Mary's house-hunting, and had rapidly
deepened into a mutual liking. So strongly had Mrs. Barnaby been
attracted to the young fellow who bore his crippled condition so lightly
that he made others forget it, that she induced James to go in and make
his acquaintance also. The two men had spent several hours of the long,
rainy morning together, each greatly interested in the other's
conversation.
Mary, who had been gone all day, did not know of this, but she knew that
her mother had met and liked Mrs. Barnaby, and that the story of the
day's unsuccessful search would not sound half so serious if that
cheerful old lady told it, especially if it were followed immediately
by her offer to find them a home in Bauer.
Bauer was an uncharted country on Mary's map, but if Mrs. Barnaby
thought of it as their desired haven, she could trust her capable hands
to take them safely into it. So it was with a sigh of relief that she
opened the door between the rooms, saying, "Here's Mrs. Barnaby, mamma,"
and left her to make explanations while she finished dressing.
CHAPTER III
THE LITTLE TOWN OF BAUER
MARY was the only one to whom the change of plans made a vital
difference. She had built such lovely dream-castles of their winter in
San Antonio that it was hard to see them destroyed at one breath.
"Of course it's the only thing to do," she said, in a mournful aside to
Norman, "but did you ever dream that there was a dish of rare, delicious
fruit set down in front of you, so tempting that you could hardly wait
to taste it, and just as you put out your hand it was suddenly snatched
away? That's the way I feel about leaving here. And I've dreamed of
getting letters, too; big, fat letters, that were somehow going to
change my whole life for the better, and then just as I started to read
them I always woke up, and so never found out the secret that would make
such a change in my fortunes."
"Maybe it won't be so bad after all," encouraged Norman. "Maybe we can
have a boat. There's a creek running through the town and the Barnaby
ranch is only seven miles out in the country. We'll see them often."
Mary wanted to wail out, "Oh, it isn't boats, and ranches, and old
people I want! It's girls, and boys, and something doing! Being in the
heart of things, as we would be if we could only stay here in this
beautiful old city!"
The wail found no voice, however, for even in the midst of her
disappointment Mary remembered Jack, and could not let him feel that
this change in their plans meant any sacrifice for her. Besides, she had
to acknowledge that the creek and the ranch _did_ hold out some
compensations, and she was deeply grateful to these two kind old people
who had come to their rescue in such cordial, neighborly fashion. Mr.
Barnaby had been called into the family council also, and had spent the
evening with them discussing prices and prospects.
Even Norman was impressed by their offers of assistance, and spoke of it
as he sat slowly unlacing his shoes after they had gone. Mary was in the
next room, repacking her trunk, for it had been decided that she and
Norman were to go to Bauer on the early accommodation train when the
Barnabys left for home. The door between the rooms was still open, and
she heard him say, thoughtfully:
"What do you suppose makes them so rattling good to us when we're just
strangers?"
Jack laughed and quoted, teasingly:
"'What makes the lamb love Mary so?'
The eager children cry.
'Oh, Mary loves the lamb, you know,'
The teacher did reply."
"Aw, talk sense!" was Norman's disgusted answer. "I don't know what you
mean by that."
An understanding smile flashed between Jack and his mother, who had
stayed to help him prepare for the night, and she answered for him.
"Jack only means that we get just what we give in this world, dear. From
the days of Solomon it's been a proverb that the man who would have
friends 'must show himself friendly.' And that's what you and Mary did
the first night you met the Barnabys. You made them feel that you found
them genuinely interesting, and that awakened a liking for you."
"But anybody'd find that old man interesting," Norman explained,
gravely. "You never heard such Indian stories as he can tell,--true
ones that he's been in himself,--and hunting--Gee! you ought to hear
him! I bid to sit next to him going up on the train."
"You're welcome to him!" called Mary. "I'll take Mrs. B." Then she came
to the doorway, a pile of folded garments in her hands. "I declare,
she's just an old dear! She's thought of so many ways to save us expense
since she found out that we have to economize. She even offered to have
our two extra trunks checked on their tickets. They only brought
suit-cases. So we'll have no extra baggage to pay for."
The sun was shining next morning, and although the chill of the Norther
was still in the air, the rain-washed plazas were greener than ever, and
new roses were opening to take the places of the old ones that the storm
had beaten off the day before. Mary's spirits seemed to have passed
through the same freshening process, for there was no trace of tears or
regrets on the bright face that greeted her travelling companions.
The only morning train was an accommodation, which carried much freight
and took its own time for the journey. This happened to be a day when it
was four hours on the road, but none of the little party felt that time
dragged. Ordinarily, Mary would have enjoyed keeping close to the old
ranchman, as Norman did, hopping off the car every time they stopped on
a side-track, to investigate everything along the way,--the lime works,
the rock quarry, the station where the mail was put off for the soldiers
who were camped at the Government reservation for target practise. Even
the little oil-burning engine would have been of as much interest to her
as it was to Norman, had she not been so busily occupied otherwise.
As they wound higher and higher into the hills she looked out now and
then with a quick exclamation of pleasure at the view, but for the most
part she was "visiting" with Mrs. Barnaby, as that good soul expressed
it. Their acquaintance took long strides forward that morning. Part of
the time Mary chattered along just as if her listener had been one of
the Warwick Hall girls, and part of the time she listened to elderly
views and confidences with the seeming sympathy of middle age. A bit of
personal history from one called out a corresponding scrap from the
other, and they had exchanged views on many subjects, ranging from young
turkeys to unhappy marriages, when the porter passed through the train
calling, "Bauer! All out for Bauer!"
Mrs. Barnaby glanced out the window, saying in surprise, "I had no idea
we were so near home!" Then she gave Mary's sleeve an affectionate
little pat with her plump hand, exclaiming cordially, "I declare, it's
been a real treat to have you along." And Mary, as she helped Mrs.
Barnaby struggle into her coat, responded, "Well, I've enjoyed every
inch of the way. Somehow you make me feel that you're just my age or I'm
just yours,--I don't know which. You can't imagine how 'little and lorn'
I feel at the thought of leaving you."
"Oh, but I'm not going to leave you until you're safely settled," was
the comforting assurance. "James has some business at the court-house
that will keep him in town for an hour or so. As soon as we drop him
there I'll drive around with you to make arrangements about the cottage.
There's Pedro now."
They were on the platform by this time, and she indicated by a nod the
slim young Mexican who had driven the carriage from the ranch to meet
them. It was a roomy, old-fashioned carriage drawn by two big gray
mules, with much shining nickel-plating on their stout black harness.
The station was half a mile away from the village, and as they swung
down the sunny white road towards it, at a rapid gait, both Norman and
Mary looked out eagerly at the place that was to be their home for a
whole long winter, and maybe more.
From a distance it looked almost like a toy village, with its red roofs,
blue barns and flashing windmills nestled against the background of
misty hills. Low mountain peaks rose here and there on the far horizon
beyond.
"This is distinctly a German village, you know," explained Mrs. Barnaby,
as they passed a group of little flaxen-haired Teutons on the roadside,
who were calling to each other and their dog in a tongue which Mary
could not understand.
"Bauer was settled by an old German count and a baron or two, who came
over here with their families and followers. They made it as much like a
corner of the Fatherland as they could, and their descendants still
cling to their language and customs. They don't want any disturbing,
aggressive Americans in their midst, so they never call on new-comers,
and never return their visits if any of them try to make the advances.
They will welcome you to their shops, but not to their homes. Even the
English and Scotch people who have owned the out-lying ranches as long
as they have owned the town are looked upon as aliens and strangers, in
a way."
[Illustration: "MARY WARE in TEXAS"
"A dashing girl in khaki and a cowboy hat astride of a fiery little
mustang"]
Mary gave an exclamation of dismay. "Texas certainly is full of
surprises," she said, in a disappointed tone. "One thinks of it as being
young and crude, and with the proverbial hospitality of a new country.
I've always thought of it as having the latch-string out for everybody."
"Oh, _Texas_ has," Mrs. Barnaby hastened to assure her. "Its doors are
wide open, and its welcome corresponds to its size, the biggest in the
Union. But Bauer is different. It has a few families who will not look
on you with suspicion. The old couple who own the cottage which I hope
to get for you will be good neighbors, and if you were to live here a
long time there are others who would be friendly. Then there are several
American families who have found a foothold in the town, and as I said,
English-speaking people on the ranches hereabout. They are cultured,
refined people, interesting to know, but strangers coming here rarely
make their acquaintance. You see we have so many transients coming for
their health, staying just a few weeks or months and going on
again--it's hardly to be expected we'd--"
Her sentence was interrupted by a dashing girl in khaki and a cowboy
hat, astride a fiery little mustang. She rode past the carriage, calling
out a greeting as she passed. Norman turned around exclaiming, "Did you
see that? A cartridge belt around her waist and a six-shooter in her
holster! That's the wild West for you."
"That's the sheriff's daughter," explained Mrs. Barnaby. "She's his
deputy, and meets the trains when it's necessary and he's out of town."
"I'd like to know her," said Mary. "I'm glad that there's something to
give one the kind of a thrill you naturally expect to have out here. I
was beginning to have such a foreign, far-away feeling, seeing all these
picturesque little German gardens with old women weeding in them. We can
imagine we are abroad this winter in Cologne or Pottsdam or Bingen on
the Rhine. Oh, _oh!_ How quaint and dear!"
The exclamation escaped her as the gray mules stopped at the gate of an
old garden, over whose stone walls arched a row of great pecan trees. A
straight path ran from the gate to the kitchen door, stiffly bordered by
coxcombs and princes' feather, while on each side chrysanthemums and
roses and a host of old-fashioned autumn flowers made the little plot a
tangle of colors and sweet smells. There were some bee-hives under the
bare peach trees, and at one side beyond them, a small vineyard where
the mockingbirds still sang noisily although the grapes had all been
gathered and pressed into wine. An old man with a flowing white beard
and a high black hat sat on a bench by the kitchen door placidly smoking
a long pipe.
"That's Mr. Metz," said Mrs. Barnaby, preparing to alight. "Come in with
me."
"It's all just like one of the pictures in Joyce's studio," commented
Mary, as they followed the straight walk to the door, "and this is just
like one of those lovely old-master, Dutch interiors," she added, in a
whisper, as Mr. Metz ushered them into the big, clean kitchen, where his
wife sat knitting.
On the deep window-sill a cat lay asleep in the sun beside a pot of
glowing red geraniums, and there was such an air of cleanliness and
thrift and repose about the room that Mary could not help exclaiming
aloud over it. As she glanced around with admiring glances her bright
face showed its appreciation also, and Mrs. Metz watched it shrewdly
while she talked with Mrs. Barnaby, in English so broken as to be almost
unintelligible.
What the old woman saw must have satisfied her, for she accepted Mrs.
Barnaby's offer after a very short parley with her husband in German,
and when they rose to go she bade them wait while she made a stiff
little nosegay for each of them, culled from her garden borders and
edged with strong-smelling mint. In the center of Mary's was one of her
handsomest coxcombs. Mrs. Barnaby smiled meaningly when she saw it, and
when they had climbed back into the carriage, said in a pleased tone,
"That shows that she has weighed you in the balance and is satisfied
with the result. You'll get along famously with her, I'm sure, and we'll
soon have you settled now, in fine shape."
An hour later Mary stood on the threshold of the cottage she had rented,
with the keys of possession in her hand. Thanks to Mrs. Barnaby and the
rapid gait of the gray mules, much had been accomplished in that time.
The groceries they had ordered were already piled on the table in the
kitchen. A load of wood was on its way. The new mattresses they had
bought at the furniture shop (kept by the undertaker of the village)
were promised for delivery early in the afternoon, and they had been
introduced at each place as friends of the Barnabys, who were to be
charged home prices, and not the ones usually asked of strangers. Mrs.
Barnaby was what she called plain-spoken, and although she made a jest
of her demands they carried weight.
Their trunks, three of which contained bedclothes and dishes, stood on
the front gallery waiting to be unpacked. Inside, the house looked as
clean as soapsuds and fresh paint could make it. Mrs. Metz herself had
attended to the scrubbing after the last tenant left. But Mary decided
that she would feel more comfortable, moving in after strangers, if she
should give the furniture a personal washing before they began to use
it. While Norman built a fire in the kitchen stove, she unlocked one of
the trunks and changed her travelling suit for a gingham dress and
apron.
"Let's eat picnic fashion," called Norman, "and unpack afterward. It's
nearly one o'clock, and I'm too hungry to wait. I've found a cup I can
boil some eggs in, and if we don't use any dishes we won't have any to
wash afterwards."
"That's a bright suggestion," Mary called back. "We haven't any time to
lose if we are to get everything ready for mamma and Jack by to-morrow
afternoon."
When she came dancing out into the kitchen a few minutes later Norman
had already begun his luncheon, and was walking around with a cheese
sandwich in one hand and a pickle in the other, investigating the
premises while he ate. Mary followed his example, and wandered from the
open doorway to the open windows, looking at the view from each, and
exclaiming over each new discovery. The house was on a slight knoll with
a wide cotton-field stretching down between it and the little village.
From this distance it looked more than ever like a toy village, against
the background of low hills.
"You ought to see it from the top of the windmill," said Norman. "I
climbed up while you and Mrs. Barnaby were talking so long at the gate.
I'm glad we've got a windmill. It'll save me a lot of pumping, and it
makes such a fine watch-tower. You ought to see how far you can look
across the country. You can see the creek. It's just a little way back
of our place."
"I'm going up this minute!" answered Mary. Slipping her unfinished
sandwiches into her apron pocket, she ran out to the windmill and began
to swing herself from one cross-piece of the tower to another, as
lightly as Norman had done.
"It's perfectly lovely!" she called back from the top. "I'd like to perch
up here all afternoon if there wasn't so much to do. I'm going to come up
here often. It gives you such a high-up-above-all-your-earthly-ills
feeling! There's St. Peter's," she called, "over at the south end of
town. I recognize the little stone belfry. What do you suppose that
square tower is at the other end of town?"
Norman came out and climbed half-way up the windmill, swinging there
below her by one arm, as he slowly munched a ginger-snap.
"Oh, that," he said, as he looked in the direction which she pointed.
"That's the Sisters' school. I asked Pedro this morning. It's the
Academy of the Holy Angels."
Mary's face glowed as she shook back the hair which the wind kept
blowing into her eyes. "That's perfectly fascinating!" she declared.
"There's something beautiful to me in the thought that the little town
we've come to lies between two such guardians. It's a good omen, and I'm
not sorry now that we had to come."
She stayed perched on the windmill, enjoying the view and eating her
sandwiches until Norman called her that the wash-water was boiling over
on the stove. Then she climbed nimbly down and started towards the
kitchen door. The kitchen was in an ell of the house, and from its front
window she could see the road which ran in front of the house. Just
across it, half hidden by a row of bushy umbrella trees, stood two
little blue cottages. They were within easy calling distance, and the
voices of half a dozen children at play came cheerfully across to her.
Although they spoke in a foreign tongue the chatter gave her a sense of
companionship.
"Norman," she suddenly suggested, "let's stay here to-night, instead of
going to the boarding-house as mamma and Mrs. Barnaby arranged. I'm not
afraid with neighbors so near, and I'm sure mamma wouldn't care if she
could see how quiet and peaceful it is here. We'd be saving
considerable--a night's lodging for two, and we can make this real
comfortable and homey by bedtime."
With the promise of hot biscuit and honey for supper Norman agreed to
her plan. He was to call at the boarding-house and cancel the
arrangements Mrs. Barnaby had made for them, when he went for the milk
which Mr. Metz had promised to sell them. It was from the Metz bee-hives
they were to have the honey, too. She had engaged it as a special treat
for Jack.
Under her direction Norman fell to work making a kitchen cabinet out of
two old boxes, while she scrubbed away at the chairs and tables.
"Isn't it funny the way history repeats itself?" she remarked. "This
makes me think of the time that Joyce and Jack had getting settled in
the Wigwam. I felt so defrauded then because I couldn't have a hand in
it, and this seems a sort of compensation for what I missed then."
The exercise seemed to loosen her tongue, for as she worked she went on,
"I'm truly glad that I can enjoy both the top and bottom crusts of
things. Nobody, I am sure, could have squeezed more pleasure out of this
last week than I did. I fairly revelled in all the luxuries we had as
Mr. Robeson's guests. It comes so easy to be waited on and to be the
fine lady. And on the other hand, it is a real joy to be working this
way, blacking stoves and filling lamps and making things look spick and
span. I can spend like a lord and I can skimp like a scrubwoman, and I
really don't know which I enjoy most."
She did not attempt to put any finishing touches to the house that day,
but left such things as the hanging of curtains and the few pictures
they had brought until next morning. But before she stopped everything
was shining, her room was ready for the night, and a cot was made up for
Norman in the room which he was to share with Jack. Later, while she
waited for the biscuits to bake and for him to come home with the milk
and honey, she wrote a letter to Joyce. She did not take time to go to
the bottom of her trunk for writing material, but emptying the sugar
from a large paper sack, cut it into several square sheets. With a big
tin pan turned bottom upwards in her lap for a desk, she hastily
scribbled the events of the day with a lead-pencil, which she sharpened
with the carving-knife.
Joyce has that letter yet. It was scribbled in the most careless,
commonplace way, just as Mary would have told it had they been together;
but Joyce, who could read her little sister like a book, read between
the lines and divined the disappointments she had conquered, and saw the
courage it took to make the most of every amusing incident in such a
cheery way, while she touched only lightly on the serious ones.
"We had a visitor a little while ago," wrote Mary, in closing. "The
Reverend Paul Rochester came to call, and where, of all awkward
impossible places, do you suppose he found me? Up on the windmill
tower. I had gone up again to watch the sunset,--for just a minute. The
glow on the roofs of the town and the hills beyond was so lovely! If
Norman had had any sense he would have ignored my high perch. He was
splitting kindling by the back door, making such a noise that we could
not hear Mr. Rochester's knock at the front door, so he came around.
"Mrs. Barnaby had stopped at the rectory on her way home to tell them
about our coming to town, and Mrs. Rochester thought that we were all
here, and that we would be so busy getting settled that we wouldn't have
much time to cook things for an invalid, and she had sent the most
tempting basketful of good things you ever saw. There was orange
gelatine and charlotte russe, and some delicious nut sandwiches. The
rector had walked all the way up here and carried the basket himself.
You know I've always stood in awe of clergymen. At first this one seemed
fully as dignified and reverend as all the others, and I nearly fell off
my perch with embarrassment when he looked up and saw me hanging there
like a monkey on a stick. But the next moment we both laughed, and he
seemed almost as young and boyish as Jack.
"I scuttled down in a hurry, I assure you. He only stayed a minute, just
long enough to deliver the basket and his wife's message, but you've no
idea how that little incident changed the whole atmosphere. I'd been
looking down the white road that leads from our place into the town,
thinking how lonely and foreign everything was, and how hard it would be
to live all winter in a place where nobody wanted to be neighborly, and
where the only people we knew were slightly old like the Barnabys or
awfully old like the Metzes, and then Mr. Rochester appeared, young and
so nice-looking and with a jolly twinkle in his eyes that makes you
forget the clerical cut of his clothes.
"His wife must be young, too, or she couldn't be married to him, and she
must be dear or she wouldn't have sent such a dainty, altogether
charming basket with her message of greeting. You've no idea how their
cordial welcome changed everything. Now as I look through the open door
at the same road leading to the town, it doesn't look lonely and foreign
any more. It makes me think of a verse that dear old Grandmother Ware
taught me once. You remember how she used to take us up in her lap and
make us spell the words out to her from her big Bible with the terrible
pictures. '_The crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways
shall be made smooth!_'
"Well, grandmother's verse is coming true. It was all so crooked and
uncertain and rough yesterday. But now everything is being smoothed out
for us so beautifully. I have just looked out to see if Norman is
coming. I can hear him whistling away down the road.
"I wish you, with your artist's eye for effect, could see the little
town now, spread out below the hills in the twilight, with the windmills
silhouetted against the sky. At one end is the little stone belfry of
St. Peter's, at the other the square gray tower of the Academy of the
Holy Angels; and just between, swinging low over the hills in the faint
afterglow, the pale golden crescent of the new moon. After all, it's a
good old world, Joyce, and I 'feel it in my bones' that little old Bauer
is going to bring us some great good that shall make us thankful always
for having come. In some way, I am sure, all our '_rough ways shall be
made smooth_.'"
CHAPTER IV
MARY FINDS GAY
THE day before Thanksgiving saw the Ware family fully settled in their
new home. The trunks had been unpacked and their contents disposed of to
make the little cottage look as homelike as possible. Even the
preparations for their Thanksgiving dinner were all made. They had been
simplified by Mrs. Barnaby's gift of a jar of mince-meat, and the plump
hen, which was to take the place of a turkey, had been bought already
dressed.
Now at only nine o'clock the morning work was all done, and Mrs. Ware
sat sewing on the south gallery where Jack had wheeled himself into the
sunshine. Mary came and stood in the doorway.
"Things stay so clean here," she grumbled in a laughing way. "I could do
everything there is to be done with one hand and not half try, and when
you all help we get through so fast it makes me dizzy. Then there's
nothing left to do but sit in the sun and wait till time to get the next
meal ready. I wish I hadn't been in such a hurry to put everything in
order. I wouldn't be so restless and idle now. It makes me fidgety to
have nothing to do."
"Take the basket and dishes back to the rectory," suggested Mrs. Ware,
after Jack had proposed several occupations to no purpose.
"But I've never met Mrs. Rochester yet," objected Mary, "and it would be
sort of awkward, going in and introducing myself."
"No more awkward than it was for Mr. Rochester to come here and
introduce himself," said Jack. "You can tell her for me that that
charlotte russe was perfection."
"I wonder what she is like," mused Mary, half persuaded to go and see.
"If I thought she'd be approachable and easy to talk to--but--"
"Oh, you know she's all right," urged Jack, "or she never would have
been so good to a family of strangers. I'll bet she's a dear, motherly
old soul, in a checked apron, with gray hair and a double chin."
"Why, she couldn't be!" cried Mary. "Not and be Mr. Rochester's wife. He
doesn't look much older than you do, and for all he's so dignified
there's something so boyish and likable about him that I felt chummy
with him right away."
"Well, the things she cooked tasted as if she were the kind of woman I
said," persisted Jack, "and I shall keep on thinking of her as that kind
until it's proved that my guess is wrong. I should think that anybody
with as much curiosity as you have would go just to satisfy it."
"You mean you want yours satisfied," retorted Mary. "Well, she'll do it
herself in a few days. She sent word that she'd call soon, so I believe
that I'll wait."
Coming out she stood leaning idly against one of the gallery posts, a
restless, dissatisfied little figure. Then she strolled out to the front
gate and stood there awhile, looking down the deserted road. Jack's gaze
followed her sympathetically, and he said to his mother in a low tone,
"Poor little kid, it's going to be a dull winter for her I'm afraid. She
was never cut out for solitude. She'd 'rather dwell in the midst of
alarms,' and this place isn't much more diverting than a country
graveyard."
Mrs. Ware's glance followed his, then she replied confidently as she
looked down to thread her needle, "Oh, she'll soon adjust herself.
She'll find something that will not only keep her busy but will amuse
all the rest of us."
Jack picked up the magazine from which he had been reading aloud the
evening before and resumed the story, but he was conscious all the time
of the little figure at the gate, and saw her without seeming to notice
when she slipped around the corner of the house presently to the back
yard. Then he looked up with a smile when he heard the creaking of the
windmill crank at the back of the house.
"She's stopping the wheel," said Mrs. Ware, "so that she can climb to
the top of the tower again. It seems to have some sort of fascination
for her."
Jack went on with his story, and Mary, perched on her watch-tower, clung
to the bar above and looked down over the town. The currents of air were
stronger up at the height to which she had climbed. Down below scarcely
a breath was stirring, but here a fresh breeze blew the hair into her
eyes and began to blow the discontent out of her mind. Her wish that
Jack could see the view was followed instantly by the thought that he
could never, never have any other outlook than the one the wheeled chair
afforded.
"It's wicked of me to be discontented one single minute," she thought
remorsefully. "There I was fussing right before him about having nothing
to do, when he'd give worlds just to be foot loose--to climb up here and
walk about the place. And he was so dear and considerate, never once
reminded me how much harder it is for him than me, and that he has
nothing else to look forward to as long as he lives."
The yellow walls of the rectory gleamed through the trees at the north
end of the little hamlet, reminding her of Jack's laughing wish to know
what Mrs. Rochester was like.
"It's as little as I can do to go and find out for him," she thought,
"even if he did ask it in a joke. I ought to be willing to do anything
in the world he expresses a wish for, poor boy. There's little enough
here to amuse him."
A few minutes later, in her travelling suit and hat, with Mrs.
Rochester's basket on her arm, she interrupted the reading on the
gallery.
"I'm going to see your motherly friend," she announced--"to find out if
she is gray-haired and double-chinned. Maybe I'll tell her how you
described her."
"Don't you dare," warned Jack, laughingly. "I'll get even with you if
you do."
"You've already done that on a dozen old scores," answered Mary gaily.
"Good-bye, my friends and kinsmen dear! As the story books say, 'we
shall see what we shall see.'"
What she saw when she rang the bell at the rectory was the exact
opposite of the motherly creature whom Jack had pictured; for Mrs.
Rochester, who came to the door herself, was tall and slim and very
young, with the delicate, spirituelle kind of beauty that had always
been plump little Mary's greatest admiration and desire. One part of
Jack's guess was correct, however. She wore a big checked apron, for she
was making cake, and she invited Mary into the dining-room where the
materials were all spread out on the table.
With the girlish cordiality that had won her so many friends even in
unsociable Bauer, she made Mary feel so much at home, that in a few
moments she was insisting on helping with the cake. It seemed a matter
of course that Mrs. Rochester should hand her the egg-beater, and before
the eggs were whipped into a stiff white mountain of snow, they were
exchanging experiences like old friends. Mrs. Rochester had found Bauer
a lonely place too, at first.
"Jack says there was some great mix-up made when I alighted on this
planet," said Mary. "I should have dropped down some place where 'the
breaking waves dashed high on a stern and rock-bound coast.' He says I
wasn't meant for a quiet fish-pond existence."
"I know," laughed her hostess. "You feel as if you were bound into the
wrong book. You'd be perfectly satisfied to find yourself in one of
Scott's novels, in a jumble of knights and tourneys and border wars, but
you would be bored beyond endurance to have to be one of the characters
in Jane Austen's stories."
"Oh, you _do_ know," cried Mary eagerly, emphasizing her pleasure with a
harder bang of the egg-beater. "You understand exactly. There's nothing
tamer than Miss Austen's stories. Why, there's pages and pages taken up
with just discussing the weather and each other's health; and they do
such trivial, inane things and go around and around in such a deadly
monotonous circle that sometimes I've been so out of patience with them
that I wanted to throw the book into a corner."
"But you never did throw it down," answered Mrs. Rochester, "you read on
to the end and in spite of yourself you were interested in those same
commonplace happenings and conversations, just as readers before you
have been interested in them and always will be as long as those books
live. And I'll tell you why. You read them to the end because they are
true pictures of the lives of average people. The majority of us have to
put up with the humdrum, no matter how much we long for the heroic, and
it's a good thing to read such books as 'Emma' and 'Pride and Prejudice'
every now and then, as a sort of spirit-level. We're more satisfied to
amble along the road if everybody else drives a slow nag too."
"I'm not," declared Mary. "I want to whizz past everything in sight that
is poky and slow. I know it would be lots easier for me if I could only
make up my mind to the fact that nothing exciting and important is ever
going to happen to me, but I can't break myself of the habit of
expecting it. I've felt that way as far back as I can remember. I'm
always looking for something grand and unexpected, and every morning
when I wake up it gives me a sort of thrill to think, maybe it will come
to-day."
"Well, if you're going to stay in Bauer for awhile you certainly do need
another dose of 'Emma,'" answered Mrs. Rochester, nodding to the shelves
in the adjoining library, where stood a well thumbed edition of Miss
Austen's works. "Take her home with you, and any of the books you think
your brother would like. We are glad to make our library a circulating
one."
Mary's face showed her pleasure quite as much as her words, as she left
her seat by the table to slip into the great book-lined room and glance
around it.
"You've made up for one of my disappointments," she called back. "I had
counted so much on having the library in San Antonio to draw on this
winter, and this is even better, for I'm sure that they haven't all
these rare old prints and first editions that I see here."
Her five minutes' call stretched into an hour, when she found that Mrs.
Rochester had been brought up in Washington and had spent her school
days there. Then it stretched into two, for some one drove in from the
country with a carriage load of autumn leaves, and Mary stayed to help
arrange them in the little church for the Thanksgiving service next day.
It was nearly noon when she finally started home with several books
under her arm, her usual hopefulness and buoyancy of spirits quite
restored.
"Mamma and I can't both be away from Jack at the same time," she said in
response to Mrs. Rochester's invitation to attend the service next day.
"I want her to come. I've already had my share of Thanksgiving. I've
been thankful every minute while I've been here that I discovered you.
It's been a beautiful morning."
"Come over often," urged Mrs. Rochester cordially. "I can always find
something for you to do, and I'd love to have you come."
Mary's wave of the hand as she turned to latch the gate at the end of
the walk was answered by a flutter of Mrs. Rochester's apron in the
doorway, and each went her way smiling over the recollection of the
other.
"She's a diverting little piece," Mrs. Rochester reported to her husband
at noon. "I laughed all the time she was here."
"She's a darling," Mary reported at home, and quoted her at intervals
for several days.
"She's promised to take me with her sometime when she drives out to call
at the ranches. Nearly all the members of St. Boniface are out-of-town
people, so they'll probably not call on us she says. But she's coming as
soon as she can get around to it. I saw our name on a list she has
hanging beside her calendar. But there's nearly a week full of things
for her to do before she gets to us. I wish that I had a list of duties
and engagements that would keep me going every minute, the way she has
to go."
"You can easily fill out a list that will keep you busy for awhile,"
answered her mother. "While you were gone Jack and I got to discussing
dates, and it was somewhat of a shock to find that Christmas will be
here so soon. One forgets the calendar in this summer-like climate.
Whatever we send to Holland and Joyce must be started from here in less
than three weeks, and as our gifts must be all home-made we cannot
afford to lose any time in beginning."
The problem of Christmas giving had always been a knotty one in the Ware
household, but it was especially hard this year. Mary spent nearly all
afternoon making her list of names with the accompanying list of gifts
that seemed suitable for each one. There were so many to whom she longed
to send little remembrances that the length of it was appalling. Then
she revised it, putting in one column such people as Madam Chartley and
Mrs. Lee, to whom she decided to write letters--the gayest, brightest
greetings she could think of. Still there were a goodly number left to
provide with gifts, no matter how simple, and she was busy till
bed-time measuring and figuring over the amount of material she would
need for each, and how much it would cost. It had been decided that she
should go to San Antonio for a day to attend to the family shopping.
"The trouble is," she sighed next morning, "it's the simplest things
that are always the hardest to get. Don't you remember, in the story of
Beauty and the Beast, the father had no difficulty in buying ropes of
jewels and costly things for his oldest daughters, but it almost cost
him his life to get the one common little white rose that his youngest
daughter so modestly asked for. I could do this shopping in a few hours
if I did not have to stop to consider pennies, but there are several
little things that may take me all day to find. I'm sure that that
particular kind of narrow beading that I need for Lloyd's present will
prove to be the fatal white rose. I can't make it without and there
isn't time to send back East for it."
"Maybe you'd better arrange to stay over night," suggested her mother,
"and take two days to look around for what you want. Of course you
couldn't go to a hotel alone, and it would be too expensive even if you
had company, but Mrs. Rochester might be able to recommend some private
family who has rooms for transients."
Mary caught at the idea so eagerly that had it not been Thanksgiving Day
and she feared to intrude, she would have gone that very hour to ask if
the Rochesters knew of such a place. She remembered that they were to
have guests to dinner. Fortunately for her peace of mind the rector and
his wife called for a few moments just before dusk. Mrs. Rochester did
know of a quiet inexpensive place where she could spend the night, and
then and there slipped off her gloves to write a cordial note of
introduction.
It rained the Friday after Thanksgiving, but the next day was fair, and
Mary insisted on doing the week's washing Saturday morning, and as much
of the ironing as she could accomplish in the afternoon, in order to be
able to start early Monday morning. Several times she left her tubs to
run into the house and jot down some small items on her memorandum,
which she remembered would be indispensable in making up their Christmas
packages. Once she thought of something in the night, when the barking
of a neighbor's dog awakened her.
If she had been alone in the room she would have lighted a candle and
made a note of it. As it was she was afraid to do so lest she waken her
mother, and afraid not to lest it should slip her mind before morning.
Finally she settled the difficulty by putting her hand to her head and
pulling out several hairs which she twisted together and tied around her
finger.
"There!" she said to herself. "Hair will make me think of herring, and
then ring will make me think of the little white celluloid rings that I
must get for those safety-pin holders."
Armed with Mrs. Rochester's letter she started off gaily on the Monday
morning train. It was not due in the city till nearly ten, so she
decided that it would save time to go at once to the largest department
store, check her suit-case and wait until shopping hours were over
before going out to the boarding-house which Mrs. Rochester had
recommended.
She had thought San Antonio charming the first time she saw it, but it
seemed doubly so now that she came back to it, as one familiar with its
principal streets and landmarks. The life, the color, the holiday air of
the crowds, the fête day atmosphere of the old town itself, exhilarated
her till her cheeks glowed like roses, and several times, both on the
street and in the stores, she caught herself whistling half under her
breath.
Although the usual Monday morning bargain hunters were out in throngs,
she found no trouble in making her purchases. Everything seemed to be in
her favor this morning. The shop girls were unusually responsive and
helpful, showed her just what she wanted or suggested something better
than she had thought of. Only once or twice did the prices go above the
limit she had set for them, and several times they were lower. By
quarter to twelve she had checked off two thirds of the articles on her
list.
Elated by this success, she stood waiting at the transfer desk for her
change, looking around with unabated interest. Suddenly her attention
was attracted to a girl in a brown tailor suit, standing in the next
aisle. Her back was turned towards Mary, but there was something
familiar looking in the poise of the graceful head; something very
familiar looking in the puffs of soft auburn-bronze hair held by amber
combs, and arranged so becomingly under the big brown hat.
Mary had been on the look-out all morning for the girl whom Jack had
recognized at the hotel as Gay Melville. She might have missed her had
Gay been an ordinary blonde or brunette, but as Jack said, there was no
mistaking that glorious hair. Snatching up the proffered change, which
the cashier put through the cage window, she pushed her way into the
next aisle. The girl turned. The big plumed hat drooped over her face,
still Mary recognized the delicate profile, the slight tilt of the
slender chin. It was an opportunity which she could not afford to lose,
and as the girl turned her back again to receive a package held out to
her by a clerk, and started slowly to the door, Mary hurried after her.
Almost breathless in her eagerness she exclaimed impulsively, "I beg
your pardon--but aren't you _Gay_?"
There was an instant of freezing silence as the eyes of the girl in
brown swept Mary from head to foot.
"Well, not particularly," was the indignant reply.
The roll of her r's emphasized Mary's mistake. It was evidently some
stranger from the North whom she had accosted. One glance into her full
face made Mary see how dire her mistake had been. There was no
resemblance whatever in that to Gay. Wishing that she could drop out of
sight through the floor, she hastily apologized and hurried out into
the street, her cheeks burning, as she smarted under the recollection of
the stranger's supercilious glance.
"She needn't have been so snippy," Mary thought. "_Any_body is liable to
make such mistakes."
Not until she had crossed the street and was stopped short by her own
reflection in a mirror in the show window opposite, did she realize how
her question might have sounded.
"Oh, she must have thought that I was asking her if she wasn't _gay_!
_Gay with a little g!_" she gasped. "No wonder she looked at me so
freezingly."
She was so perturbed by this discovery, that she walked on, unmindful of
the direction. When a group of children crowded past her on the narrow
pavement, she turned into a side street to avoid being jostled, and
walked aimlessly for some distance. It was the sight of a green kettle
swinging above a door which she was approaching that brought her to
herself with a start. Mrs. Rochester had told her to stop at the Sign of
the Green Kettle for lunch, and had given her directions for finding it.
Here she had stumbled upon it unaware, just as the city bells were
beginning to clang for noon.
At the next glance her heart went to thumping so hard that she could
plainly hear it. There on the step leading up to the door of the Green
Kettle, stood Gay Melville; the real Gay this time. There was no shadow
of doubt about it. As she looked, Mary wondered how she ever could have
mistaken the other girl for her, although each had hair wonderfully like
the other.
This one carried a violin case. She had paused on her way in to call
back something to the girl in the carriage, who had brought her down
town. And the girl in the carriage was Roberta--Roberta of the boyish
speech and coquettish eyelashes, whose laughing question held the girl
on the step long enough for Mary to reach it too, and stand there beside
her while she gathered courage to speak.
It was the little pin thrust through Gay's tie which finally brought the
words trembling to Mary's lips, for it was the Warwick Hall pin which
only its alumni might wear; those who had kept the four years' tryst
with all its requirements. It was a mailed hand rising from a heart to
grasp a spear, the motto and the crest of Edryn.
All diffidence fled at that familiar sight, but this time Mary did not
ask if the girl were gay. With a gesture toward the pin she cried
breathlessly, "Oh, I know by _that_ that you are Miss Melville. _Aren't_
you!" Gay after one look into the eager gray eyes said quite as
cordially, "And you're Mary Ware! I had a letter from Betty Lewis this
very morning telling me to be sure to find you."
She gave a quick glance at the chatelaine watch she wore. "I haven't a
minute to stop--I'm to play an obligato for the great prima donna,
Madame de Martel, and she has a beast of a temper which she lets loose
if a person is one second late at rehearsal. But I must take time to say
one thing if she wipes me off the face of the earth for it. The girls'
letters have made me wild to know you. At what hotel can I find you?
I'll call this very day."
"We've taken a cottage in Bauer," Mary answered hastily. "I came down on
a little shopping expedition, and am on my way in here for luncheon."
The heavy chords of a piano accompaniment rolled threateningly through
the music rooms up-stairs, and Gay shrugged her shoulders impatiently.
"Do be a long time over it," she begged as she turned towards the
stairs. "I'll get through as quickly as possible and hurry back for
another word with you."
Mary watched her out of sight before starting into the dining-room of
the Green Kettle, and then deliberately pinched herself to make sure
that she was awake. It was a good hard nip, which hurt, and smiling to
herself because it proved that she was not dreaming, she sat down at a
table near the window to gloat over the fact that one of her best dreams
had come true at last. She had met Gay Melville.
The lunch was a good one, but it would have made no difference to Mary
what was put before her that day. Anything would have been nectar and
ambrosia served to the accompaniment of the music overhead. A chorus of
cherubim and seraphim could not have left her more uplifted. Madame de
Martel might have the temper of a beast at times, but she had a voice of
rare sweetness and power, and the knowledge that it was Gay's violin
pouring out that tremulous, tender, heartbreaking obligato, enhanced
Mary's enjoyment of every note.
The rehearsal was a short one. All that the famous visiting singer
wanted was to make sure, since her own accompanists had failed her,
that the local ones were satisfactory. It came to an end just as Mary
began her dessert, and almost instantly it seemed Gay was at her elbow,
and seating herself in the chair beside her.
"Isn't it a shame I haven't more than two minutes to stay," she began.
"This is like having Warwick Hall and Lloydsboro Valley rolled into one,
to find somebody who loves them both as much as I do. I could talk a
week without stopping about each place, and ask a thousand questions,
but I'm due at a luncheon out on Government Hill by the time the next
car can put me there. Immediately after that is over we're all going to
the polo tournament. All during rehearsal I kept trying to think of some
way I could arrange to see you, and there's only one. You've simply got
to come home with me to stay all night. Go on and finish your shopping,
and I'll come down for you after the tournament and meet you anywhere
you say."
The invitation, as cordial as it was sudden, was gladly accepted and Gay
exclaimed, "Oh, I'm so delighted to think I've found you at last! You've
no idea how often you were quoted the summer I was in the Valley. Lloyd
and Betty and the old Colonel and Dr. Alex Shelby were always saying
'as little Mary Ware says.' I feel as if I'd known you from babyhood
up."
"And I know all about your past," laughed Mary. She was about to mention
several incidents to prove her claim, when Gay stopped her by a glance
at the clock and the question: "Wouldn't you like to see the dress
parade at the Post this evening? Most people do, and it's well worth
seeing."
Would she _like_ it! Mary's beaming face answered the question before
her usually ready tongue found a word, and Gay smiled as she hastily
drew on her gloves and picked up her violin case.
"I'd like to keep you all to myself to-night," she said, "but I do want
you to meet some of the people that Kitty Walton liked best when she
visited me last year. I'll pick up Roberta and Lieutenant Boglin to take
dinner with us if I can get them. They're always so nice to my Warwick
Hall friends. They were both wild about Kitty. Well, at quarter to five,
then, I'll meet you--where?"
Finally the glove counter at Joske's was agreed upon as a meeting place,
and with a friendly pat on the shoulder in passing, Gay hurried away to
keep her engagement. Smiling blissfully after her, Mary whispered to
herself with one of her old childish wriggles of pleasure, "And _Bogey_,
too."
CHAPTER V
AT FORT SAM HOUSTON
PROMPTLY at the time agreed upon, Mary took her station by the glove
counter, almost sure that Gay would be late. It was one of the Warwick
Hall traditions that something tragic always happened to Gay's clothes
at the last moment, to delay her departure. But she had scarcely seated
herself and deposited her suit-case on the floor beside her when the
door opened and Gay came breezily into the store. Her hat was awry and
her hair disheveled.
"On time for once," she exclaimed triumphantly with a glance at the
clock. "But I couldn't have been if Roberta hadn't come to the rescue.
She brought me down in their carriage. It's Roberta Mayrell," she
explained, as they made their way as rapidly as possible down the
crowded aisle.
"She isn't really one of the Army girls, but she lives just outside the
Post and has always been counted in everything there, since she was old
enough to talk. I've been telling her all about you on the way down."
"Well, I hope she'll find me as interesting as the alligators," began
Mary, remembering the speech she had overheard from the hotel balcony.
But Gay was stopping to apologize to an old lady whom she had bumped
into, and did not hear the remark. The next moment they were outside and
at the curbstone, where a carriage drawn by two Kentucky horses was in
waiting, and Roberta was stepping down with outstretched hands to
welcome her.
Roberta at close range was even more fascinating than when seen from a
hotel balcony, and Mary, sitting between the two girls as they drove
along towards Government Hill, had much the same feeling that a thirsty
Bedouin has when after miles of desert journeying he finds himself
beside the well of a green oasis.
They were fairly bubbling over with high spirits, and it was impossible
to be with them and not share their exhilaration. Before they had gone
two blocks the weight of care and anxiety that had been resting on
Mary's shoulders ever since Jack's accident, began to slip off. It
almost gave her a sense of having wings, to be so light and care free.
The last eight months with their constant association with suffering and
anxiety about finances had been like a hard march through the sands. Now
the sudden substitution of something frivolous and young was so
refreshing that she giggled almost hysterically in her enjoyment of it.
"Oh, we forgot to tell you," exclaimed Gay as they came in sight of the
parade grounds. "There's to be a hop at the gymnasium to-night for the
visiting polo team. They got it up on short notice. Lieutenant Boglin
told me about it when I invited him to come to dinner. He asked if he
might take you, and I said he might, for of course you won't want to
miss it, and old Bogey is quite the nicest officer in the bunch when it
comes to giving a girl a good time."
Mary's face wore such a comical expression of blended delight and dismay
that Roberta laughed, and Gay stopped the refusal that Mary was
beginning to stammer out by putting both hands over her ears.
"No, I won't listen," she declared. "Of course you didn't expect to do
anything like this, and didn't bring the proper clothes, but it is such
an informal affair that it doesn't make any difference. Roberta and I
can rig you out in something of mine. It will be all the more fun."
"Oh, it's just the larkiest lark that ever was!" exclaimed Mary so
excited over the prospect that her cheeks were growing redder and
redder, and her eyes shining with happy anticipation.
"This day has been full of thrills, and--oo, oo! There goes another!"
she added with a little shiver of delight as the band began to play. The
carriage had stopped at the end of the parade ground, where the usual
crowd of spectators was gathered.
"Martial music always sends cold shivers up and down my back," she said
gravely. "It makes me want to cheer and march right off to do something
big and brave--'storm the heights,' or bleed and die for my country, or
something of that sort. I've always thought that I'd have been a soldier
if I hadn't been born a girl."
She laughed as she said it, but there was a quiver of earnestness in her
voice. Parade was a matter-of-course affair to Gay and Roberta, a part
of the weekly routine of Post life, which familiarity made ordinary.
They exchanged amused glances which Mary did not see, and made remarks
and criticisms on the manoeuvres which she did not hear. Wholly
absorbed, she leaned forward in the carriage, watching every movement of
the drill.
It is always an inspiring sight, even to one who looks no farther than
the outward show, admiring the clock-like precision which makes a
battalion move as one man; but to Mary every khaki coat in the regiment
clothed a hero. Lexington and Valley Forge, Gettysburg and Chickamauga
called to her through every drum-beat and bugle note.
She had loved her old dog-eared copy of the History of the United
States, and many a time had spread it out on her desk to re-read, when
she should have been studying other things. She had pored over its
stories of war till the black and white of its printed pages had
transformed her into a little fire-ball of a patriot. Now as she saw for
the first time these men who stood as the guardians of "Old Glory,"
everything she had ever read of heroism and blood-stained battle-fields
and glorious dying, came back to her in a flood of enthusiasm which
nearly lifted her to her feet. When at last the band struck into "The
Star-spangled Banner" and the guns fired the signal which heralded the
lowering of the colors, her plain little face was almost transfigured
with the exalted emotions of the moment.
"Aye, call it holy ground,
The soil that they have trod,"
she was repeating to herself, when she became aware that Roberta was
trying to attract her attention, and was holding out a box of candy.
"Come down to earth!" she exclaimed laughingly. "I tried to get you to
take some earlier in the action, but you hadn't eyes for anything but
the brass buttons. I don't believe you would have heard thunder!"
"It wasn't brass buttons I was seeing," began Mary. "It was--" Then
realizing the utter hopelessness of trying to explain what soul-stirring
visions had been hers for that little space of time that the band played
and the heroes of the past as well as the present passed before her, she
did as Roberta advised, came down to earth and took a caramel.
When they reached Major Melville's house in the officers' quarters,
Roberta dismissed the carriage and went in with Gay and Mary. She had
decided not to change her dress for the hop, she said as she threw off
her long cloak in the hall, revealing the pretty frock of pink and gray
foulard which she had worn at the luncheon.
Mrs. Melville came out to meet them, a large sandy-haired woman with a
certain faded fairness and enough of a resemblance to Gay to suggest
what she might have looked like in her teens. Her cordial welcome put
Mary at ease at once, and she followed the girls up the broad staircase,
feeling that this visit was quite the most delightful thing which had
happened to her since she left Warwick Hall.
While Gay rummaged through trunks and wardrobes to find party raiment
for her guest, Mary walked about the room, experiencing more thrills at
every turn; for on each wall and book-shelf and bracket was some picture
or souvenir of Warwick Hall or Lloydsboro Valley.
"Oh, there's Lloyd and Betty and the Walton girls!" she cried. "I have
this same picture at home, and one like this of Madam Chartley too, in
her high-back chair with the carved griffins on it.
"What a splendid picture this is of Dr. Alex Shelby," she called a
moment later. Then catching sight of a larger one on the mantel in a
silver frame, she exclaimed in surprise, "Why, you have two of Doctor
Alex."
Gay was deep in a closet, her head between rows of dress-skirts, and she
made no answer; but Roberta, perching in the window-seat, cleared her
throat to attract Mary's attention, and then with an impish smile held
up seven fingers and pointed in different directions to five other
photographs that Mary had not yet discovered.
"One for each day in the week," she said in a low tone. "I'd give a good
deal to see that man. He was here last spring, but I was down on the
coast and missed him. I intend to make a point of staying at home next
time he comes. I want to see for myself what's up. Gay pretends there
isn't anything, but I have my own ideas."
"Oh, is he coming again?" cried Mary.
Roberta's only answer was a significant nod, for Gay emerged from the
closet just then.
"There's nothing in there," she announced, "but I've just thought of one
that Lucy left here this spring. I'll ask mother where it is."
"You see," said Roberta as the door closed behind Gay, "I wouldn't tease
her if she'd confess anything, but she won't. Kitty Walton thinks I've
guessed right too. She said that from the moment she heard about their
romantic meeting she was sure something would come of it."
"Oh, tell me about it," urged Mary. "I know Doctor Alex so well that I
can't help being interested."
"And do you know a place in Lloydsboro Valley called the Log Cabin?"
asked Roberta. "A fine country home built of logs and furnished with
beautiful old heirlooms? Gay's sister, Mrs. Harcourt, rented it one
summer."
"Indeed I do know it," assented Mary. "It is a fascinating place, with a
big outside fire-place on the porch, and the front is covered with a
climbing rose. We used to pass it often."
"Well, Kitty says that the day after the Harcourts took possession, Gay
put a ladder against the front of the house and climbed up on it to hang
a mirror on the outside of her window-sill, the way they do in Holland.
It was one she had brought all the way from Amsterdam. And while she was
up on the ladder, looking like a picture, of course, with the roses all
about her and the sunshine turning her hair to gold, Dr. Shelby came by
on horseback. She saw him in the mirror and the girls teased her about
it--called it her Lady of Shalott mirror and him her Knight of the
Looking-glass. Kitty says he was devotion itself to her all summer."
What more she might have revealed was interrupted by Gay's return. She
tossed an armful of dainty muslin and lace on the bed, and for a few
moments all three gave their undivided attention to the trying-on
process.
"I must confess it doesn't look as if it were fitted to you in perfect
health," confessed Roberta, "but it's one of those soft clinging things
that doesn't have to fit like a glove. I can pin it up on you to make it
look all right, and it's so pretty with all that fine lace and
embroidery that it'll pass muster anywhere."
Gay sat down to make some slight alteration in the girdle, while Roberta
invited Mary to a seat in front of the dressing-table, proposing to try
her skill on her as a hair-dresser. It was all so delightfully intimate
and friendly, just such a situation as Mary had longed for in her
dream-castle building, that she even felt at liberty to grow a little
personal with Roberta. She peeped out through the hair which now hung
over her face, to watch Roberta's face reflected in the mirror opposite.
"Do you know," she remarked with a mischievous glance, like a skye
terrier peeping through its bangs, "that I've actually lain awake
nights, wondering if you'd been persuaded yet to give up that 'adorable
little curl.'"
Roberta's mouth opened wide in astonishment, and she dropped the comb
with which she was parting Mary's hair.
"How spooky!" she cried. "I was just thinking about that myself. Who in
the world told you anything about that?"
"Oh, I overheard the remark," confessed Mary. "I was on one of those
hotel balconies all hidden by moon-vines when you and Gay and Mr. Wade
and the officer you call Bogey came out into the court. I was so
lonesome for some young person to talk to, and so close to you all that
I could see the comb slipping out of Gay's hair. I didn't know who she
was then. If I had I should have leaned over the railing and called to
her. Wouldn't it have made a sensation?
"I'll never forget how either of you looked. She was in white with white
violets, and you were in pale lemon yellow with a scarf over your
shoulders that looked like a white moonbeam spangled with dewdrops. It
slipped down as you started to go and see the alligators, and that Mr.
Wade drew it up for you and said what he did about the curl."
"That was the first time he ever mentioned it," explained Roberta. "I
thought when you spoke that you meant last night. I was going to tell
Gay about it, and as long as you're so interested I don't mind telling
you, too. You know Mr. Wade has been very nice to me, and I thought he
was great fun until he began to get sentimental. My brother William
knew him at college, and he told me what I might expect. He said 'that
chap always gets sentimental with every girl he goes with.' It's a great
thing to have plenty of brothers to put you wise.
"When Mr. Wade began that nonsense about wanting one of those little
curls and its being the most fetching thing he had ever seen I laughed
at him. But it only made him the more determined. He wrote some poetry
about wearing it over his heart forever and all that sort of thing. If
he only could have known how Billy and I shrieked over it! Of course I
hadn't given him the slightest encouragement, or it would have been
different--"
"Roberta," interrupted Gay sternly, "how can you say that? You know you
looked at him. I saw you do it. And when you look out at anybody from
under those lashes, whether you mean it or not you _do_ look
flirtatious, and you know it."
"I don't!" contradicted Roberta hotly, with boyish directness. "I can't
help the way my lashes are kinked, and I'm very sure I'm not going to
pull them out to keep people from getting a wrong impression. Anyhow
there's no kink in my tongue! I told him straight enough what I thought
of his silly speeches. I put a stop to them last night, all right."
"How?" demanded Gay.
"Well," began Roberta, plaiting Mary's hair so energetically that it
pulled dreadfully. "He went over the same performance again, begging me
for that little curl in token that I'd be his'n forevermore, etc. And
after he'd spun it out into a most romantic proposal I said very
sweetly, 'Really, Mr. Wade, to be honest with you, I can't afford to
give away a seventy-five cent curl to every man who asks for one. You
see I'm always financially embarrassed, for papa won't let me borrow
after I've spent my monthly allowance, and I never by any chance have a
cent left over after the second of the month. But if you must have a
curl I'll give you Madame Main's address on Houston Street, where you
can get an exact duplicate. I'm sure it will be just as good to wear
over your heart as mine would.'"
"Roberta, you little beast!" laughed Gay. "How could you give him the
impression they were false, when you know very well they grow tight on
your own scalp?"
"I wanted to see if he would say 'with all thy faults I love thee
still.' But he didn't. He got very stiff and red and walked away, and
spent the rest of the evening flirting with Louie Rowan to show that he
didn't care."
Gay continuing to shake her head in a shocked and disapproving way,
Roberta cried out, "I don't care! It's no worse than what you said to a
certain freshman who proposed to you."
"I don't call that a proposal," calmly disagreed Gay. "He didn't ask
anything. He simply took it for granted that I'd fall all over myself to
accept him. Mary, what would you say to a boy, one whom you'd always
known but who'd never been particularly nice to you, who would march up
to you some day and say: 'You suit me better than any girl I know, and
I'd like to talk over arrangements with you now. Of course we couldn't
marry till a year after my graduation, but I want to have it settled
before I go away, so that I'll know what to depend on. My family all
tell me that it's risky business, choosing a wife with red hair, but I'm
willing to take the chances.'"
"Now, Gay, you know it wasn't as bald as that," protested Roberta. "He
put in all sorts of 'long and short sweetenin'.'"
"It amounted to the same thing," persisted Gay, and in answer to Mary's
gasping question, "What _did_ you say?" she replied:
"I couldn't speak at first, I was so furious at his speech about red
hair. But I managed to tell him several things before I finished, and
nothing can be frostier and snippier than a sixteen year old girl when
she tries to appear very dignified. That was my age then. The thing that
made him maddest however, was that I told him that even the 'frog who
would a-wooing go' knew how to go about such a matter in a much better
way than he did. That he'd better wait till he was older, and amounted
to something more than a mere silly boy. My snubbing almost gave him
apoplexy, but it did him good in the long run."
"A proposal, and she was a year younger than I am now," thought Mary,
wishing with a queer little throb of envy that she had some such
experience to confess. Roberta was only nineteen now, and to judge by
Gay's teasing remarks had had any number of romantic affairs. Lloyd was
only fourteen when Phil first began to care so much for her.
Roberta was putting the finishing touches to her hair now, and as Mary's
eyes met their wistful reflection in the mirror, she wondered if there
would ever be a time when any one would care enough for her to come to
her with the momentous question. She wouldn't mind so much being an old
maid if she could only have some such experience to lay away in her
memory, as people lay away treasures in rose-leaves and lavender. But so
far she couldn't count even a susceptible youth like young Mr. Wade, or
a conceited freshman like Gay's early admirer. She wanted to ask how it
felt to be proposed to, and thus keep the conversation rolling along in
the same interesting groove. But Roberta suddenly switched off to
saddles. She was about to buy a new one, and saddles, as Roberta
presented the topic, became so vastly important that Mary did not have
the courage to attempt to turn the talk back to the subject of mere men.
It was one of Roberta's chief characteristics that she swept everything
before her by the sheer force of her personality. She dominated whatever
company she was in, and the most frivolous things she said carried
weight and made people listen because of the way she said them. She made
statements in the same manner she was now thrusting the safety-pins into
Mary's skirt-bands, in a direct, forcible way that made people feel that
they might be depended upon.
"Roberta's pins always stay where they are put," Gay remarked
admiringly, as she watched the capable way in which Mary was being
fastened into her borrowed gown. "There's no danger of your coming to
pieces, when she fixes you. Sometimes I think that she must hypnotize
things. It's a gift with her. There! You look perfectly fine. Come on
down stairs and let's try that piece of new music before dinner."
Mary had her doubts about looking perfectly fine. She was uncomfortably
conscious that the dress was not a good fit. It was too tight in the
arm-holes and too short in the waist. But the girls seemed proud of the
costume they had evolved for her, the parting glance in the mirror
showed that the general effect was becoming, and their compliments were
most reassuring. So she followed them down stairs in a very elated and
"partified" state of mind.
The old Major's affable greeting as she entered the living-room was as
cordial as his wife's had been, and seemed to place her at once on the
footing of an old friend. She sank into the comfortable chair he pushed
forward for her with the sensation that she was coming back to a
familiar hearthstone, where she had been a guest many times. It was very
queer, but it was decidedly pleasant to have it all seem so homelike
and familiar.
With such surroundings Mary ought to have appeared at her best, but
Roberta's dominating presence made her silent and shy. It had not had
that effect when they were up-stairs together, but now in the presence
of older people Roberta gave the effect of a lamp that has suddenly been
turned up to a brighter flame. She was positively brilliant, Mary
thought, and made everybody else in the room seem of secondary interest.
Roberta, who ran in and out every day, felt the same freedom that a
daughter of the house would have. She laughingly pushed Mrs. Melville
into a chair and ordered her to sit still while _she_ ran up-stairs for
the forgotten spectacles. She joked with the Major about numberless
things which were meaningless to Mary because she had not shared their
beginnings, and when she sat down at the piano and played with strong
masterful touches, it really seemed that what Gay had jokingly said
about her having hypnotic powers was true.
Mary felt as if she had been thrust into a corner and deprived of power
to come out. At first she was so absorbed in her enjoyment of the music
that she was not conscious of that sensation, but it oppressed her when
Lieutenant Boglin and the Captain of the polo team, a Mr. Mills, came
in. They were strangers to her but old friends of all the others, and
she suddenly felt herself as self-conscious and shy as the bashful
little country mouse of the fable. She began to contrast herself with
the other girls, and try to find a reason for the difference which she
felt existed.
"It's partly because they've always lived in the heart of things," she
thought, a trifle enviously. "They're used to meeting strangers, and
they're pretty and gifted and accomplished; a very different thing from
being just 'plain little Mary Ware,' with no talents or _anything_. I
can't even play Yankee Doodle with one finger, as Norman does."
When they went out to dinner the uneven number and the small size of the
company made the conversation general around the table. If it had been a
larger party with only her immediate neighbors to give ear, Mary was
sure that she could have found plenty to say to the Major on one side,
or to Lieutenant Boglin on the other. But Roberta kept the
conversational ball rolling, and always in directions that Mary could
not follow. She knew nothing of polo or golf or the people of the Post,
and the funny stories and quick-witted replies which circled around the
table gave her no opportunity to rise to the occasion as the others did.
[Illustration: "MARY WARE in TEXAS"
"He seated himself beside her, coffee-cup in hand"]
They were all so vastly entertained and entertaining themselves that no
one seemed to notice Mary's silence. She was angry with herself because
she could not chime in with the others, and thought with flaming cheeks
that they must think her dreadfully stupid and unresponsive; just a
bread-and-butter miss, not yet out of the nursery. Once there came a
place where an anecdote about Hawkins and a new school-girl would have
fitted in beautifully if she could only have mustered up courage to tell
it. She had a conundrum too, when the others were propounding them, and
had opened her mouth to tell it--in fact had said "Did you ever hear--"
when somebody else who had not heard her tremulous beginning captured
the attention of the table with one of his own. The sound of her voice
thus suddenly stopped made her blush, choke, take a drink of water and
subside into silence again.
It was not until coffee was being served afterward in the living-room,
that Mary found her tongue. Roberta did not take coffee, and at the
Major's request had gone to the piano to play a dashing fantasie that he
always called for on such occasions. The lieutenant, who, as Mary had
feared, had classed her as a callow little school-girl who couldn't talk
except in embarrassed monosyllables, had been wondering why Gay had made
such a point of his meeting her. Now as he looked across the room at her
animated face, responsive to every chord of the brilliantly executed
music, he decided that there might be some reason for Gay's interest in
her which he had not yet fathomed, and he at once proceeded to find out.
He started towards her, stopping to say in an aside to Gay, "What's the
little girl's name? I've forgotten. Oh, thank you." Then he deliberately
pulled up a chair, tête-à-tête wise, and seated himself beside her,
coffee-cup in hand.
"Miss Ware," he began in a flatteringly confidential tone, "it is an old
saying that the 'shallows murmur, but the deeps are dumb.' Is that why
you are so silent this evening?"
It was easy now, under cover of the music, and in response to such
deferential attention to make a reply, and Mary began at a rate that
made Bogey "sit up and take notice," as he expressed it afterward.
"No, I was only like the fox in Æsop's fables, the one that went to dine
with the stork, you know. Don't you remember, the stork put the soup
into such a slender-necked deep vase that only a long-beaked bird like
himself could reach it. You see the people you talked about to-night
were utter strangers to me, and I never saw a polo game, so I couldn't
very well dip into the conversation."
"By George!" exclaimed Bogey. "That wasn't very considerate of us, _was_
it?"
"Oh, I enjoyed it!" Mary hastened to add. "Only I was afraid you'd think
I was dreadfully stupid. It made me think of the time I used that same
fable to get rid of an unwelcome caller when I was at a house-party in
Kentucky. I wanted to be with the older girls who were to be
bridesmaids, and watch their preparations for the wedding, and this
child tagged after me so persistently that I lay awake nights trying to
plan some way to get rid of her. It was the fable that finally suggested
it. I had lots of fun playing the stork, but I never realized before
just how _she_ must have felt, till I took the part of fox to-night."
"Tell me how you did it," insisted the lieutenant. He liked the way
Mary's face lighted up when she talked, and the way her dimples flashed
in and out as she chattered on. Gay looked over approvingly a little
later when his hearty laugh showed that he was thoroughly amused by
something that she had said.
The tête-à-tête was ended by the stopping of the music and the arrival
of the man who was to be Gay's escort, and almost immediately after it
seemed, although in fact it was half an hour, the 'bus whistle sounded
outside, and Mary was being hurried into her borrowed party cloak and
helped into the waiting 'bus.
"It always goes around the Post collecting passengers on such occasions
as this," Bogey told her. "You can imagine we sometimes have a jolly
crowd."
It was an old story to the other passengers, but as they passed the
sally port where the sentinel stood attention, Mary nearly fell out in
her eagerness to see all the novel sights. The lieutenant smiled at her
enthusiasm. Visiting girls always exhibited it in some degree, but never
in quite such a precipitate manner as Mary.
"She's a funny little piece," he thought as the whole 'bus load laughed
at her naïve comment on the sentinel, "but there is something genuine
and likeable about her. She shall have the time of her life to-night if
I can give it to her."
CHAPTER VI
ON THE CREEK-BANK
THERE is only a partial account of that evening in Mary's Good Times
book. She recorded the fact that the General himself came and talked to
her a few minutes, and laughed several times at her replies till people
turned to see who it was that he found so amusing. The handsome officer
of the day in sword and spurs was brought up to be introduced, and there
was a most gratifying list of names on her well-filled program.
Lieutenant Boglin had dutifully seen to that.
Had it not been for one circumstance the evening would have been a
succession of thrills, and she could have filled several pages with
enthusiastic recollections of it. That one little happening, however,
marred the whole occasion. She made no record of it in her Good Times
book, and she made up her mind never to speak of it, but to seal it up
in its particular memory cell as the bees do any intruding object which
threatens to poison their honey.
There was so much else to tell about her visit, that for several days
after her return she kept the family amused by her lively descriptions.
She and Gay had had a whole string of adventures the morning after the
hop, when they went down town together to finish her shopping. There had
been some interesting guests from New Zealand at luncheon, who had vied
with each other in telling marvelous yarns, and Mary had stored them all
away to repeat at home.
With so much else to talk about she might have succeeded in keeping her
resolution, had not she and Jack gone off to the creek one afternoon,
instead of taking their usual excursion towards the village. The spot
where they paused was a place which seemed to invite confidences. She
wheeled his chair along the bank, close to the water's edge, until they
came to a secluded circle of shade under an ancient cypress tree. There
she sat down opposite him on a big boulder.
They were some distance from the main road. Except when a wagon rattled
down the hill and across the ford it was so very still that the rush of
water over the pebbles sounded almost brawling. The constant gurgle and
swish seemed to have a sort of hypnotic effect on them both, for neither
of them spoke for a long time. Then Jack broke the silence.
"This monotony is getting on my nerves," he said in a low tense voice.
"You're a wonder to me, Mary. I don't see how you can come back to such
a deadly stupid place as this is, after the taste of gay times you've
had, and settle down again as cheerfully as you do. It makes me
desperate whenever I think that if it wasn't for my being in such a fix
you needn't be tied here. You could be where you'd have the social
opportunities you ought to have."
Mary looked up quickly. This tone of bitterness was a new note in Jack's
speech. He had drawn his hat down over his eyes, and was gripping the
arms of his chair with both hands, as if trying to keep his resentment
against fate in check.
"Just let me tell you something," cried Mary, so anxious to smooth the
grim lines of suffering out of the beloved face that she recklessly
broke her resolution. "_I didn't have as good a time at that hop as I
made out! The last part of it was perfectly ghastly, and I never want to
go to another as long as I live!_"
Then, seeing the look of blank amazement that spread over Jack's face,
she hastened to explain.
"Oh, it started out beautifully. I was simply ecstatic when we climbed
out of the 'bus and were ushered into that long room with the flags and
the evergreens, and the military music. And you already know how much it
meant to me to have the General so nice to me and the officer of the day
so attentive and complimentary; and how happy I was to have my programme
filled up so that there was no danger of my being a wall-flower. I was
having the loveliest time imaginable, when I went up to Gay to ask if
any of the safety-pins showed below my girdle. The polo man I had met at
dinner, that Mr. Mills, had been dancing with me, and, when he left me
with Gay, went over to speak to a pretty butterfly sort of girl, a
little brunette all in frilly pink and white; I'd been admiring her at a
distance. Of course he didn't know his voice carried so far. He was
protesting because she had left no place for him on her programme, and I
heard him say:
"'It wasn't _my_ fault that I didn't get to you in time. Bogey roped me
in first thing for a turn with that kindergarten kid he's got in tow.
She's Miss Melville's guest and I couldn't get out of it, but really,
Juliet--_that was punishment enough_ without your--'"
"I didn't hear the rest of it. Some people beside me laughed just then
and drowned his voice, but the girl looked over at me, and gave me a
long, searching glance, sort of out of the corner of her eye, and then
turned away with a little shrug of her shoulders and smiled up at him
quite as if she agreed with him and had forgiven him because he had such
a good excuse.
"I never had anything make me so uncomfortable in all my life as his
speech and then her sidelong look and nasty little shrug. It was the
_way_ he said it, and the _way_ she answered, that hurt. After that I
never forgot for a moment that my dress was a borrowed one and that it
didn't fit, and that I was the plain little country mouse that they were
polite to, merely because I was Gay's guest and Lieutenant Boglin asked
them to be. And I couldn't help feeling that every man who danced with
me was as bored as Mr. Mills had been; even more so, for I had been
perfectly natural and at ease when I was talking to him, and after I
overheard his remark I was so stiff and self-conscious that such a state
of mind was bound to have its effect all the rest of the evening. I was
perfectly aware that I was boring my partners."
"But that was such a little thing to let spoil your whole evening,"
interrupted Jack. "It was awfully rude of the fellow to make such a
speech, but he probably said it just to square himself with the other
girl. 'All's fair in love and war,' they say, and you don't know how
much it might have meant to him to keep in her good graces. I don't
believe he really meant it."
"Oh, I know better!" insisted Mary dismally. "He _did_ mean it! I felt
it!"
She slowly gathered up a handful of pebbles and sent them skipping
across the water at intervals as she continued:
"It gave me the same sensation that I had years ago, when I had my first
toy balloon. That is one of my earliest and most vivid recollections.
One moment I was hugging it to me because it was such a dear, gay, red
bubble, fairly entranced with the beauty of it. The next I was looking
down in a scared, puzzled way at what was left--just a dull scrap of
wrinkled rubber. That one remark and glance and shrug made all the
pleasure ooze out of the evening as quickly as my hugging squeezed the
air out of that collapsed balloon."
Jack smiled at her comparison. He remembered that time, and how they had
all laughed at her bewildered expression when the balloon burst in her
hands. She could not be convinced at first that her beautiful, red
bubble had ceased to be, and hopefully peered under tables and chairs,
even while she held the wreck of it in her hands.
Jack had always been her comforter. He had dried her tears then with the
promise of another balloon as soon as he could find the man who sold
them, and now he hurried to lift the gloom that had settled down on her
usually cheerful features. Having thrown away all her pebbles, she
bunched herself up into a disconsolate little heap, on the boulder, her
elbows on her knees, and her chin in her hand.
"No, it's no use your trying to comfort me," she said presently in
response to his repeated attempts. "Every time I think about that
evening I'm so mortified that I could cry. My mind's made up. I am a
dead failure socially, and I never want to go to another function as
long as I live!"
"You're a little goose! That's what you are," said Jack. "And I know
what's at the root of the whole trouble. You've done a lot of imagining
about your social career at one time and another. You've looked forward
to it and seen yourself in the rôle of an irresistible charmer. You've
felt like a dowager duchess inwardly, and forgotten that you've no marks
outwardly to show that you've grown up to take such a part. You have
your own individual charm, but so far it is only the charm of an
unsophisticated little school-girl, and naturally grown men find older
girls more interesting, just as you would prefer Phil Tremont's company
for instance, to that of little Billy Downs. But that's not saying that
you dislike Billy Downs, or that he won't grow up to be a social lion
some day. So may you. Now own up. You always have pictured yourself as
cutting quite a wide swath on your first appearance in society, haven't
you? That's one reason you were so disappointed at the hop."
"Well," admitted Mary, smiling in spite of herself, "I own I did expect
to once, a long time ago, and maybe that had a sort of sub-conscious
influence on me. It was when we first moved to Arizona. Hazel Lee and I
found a book that a boarder had left behind in his tent. It was called
'The Lady Agatha's Career; A Novel.' We took it out on the desert, a
little way, and spelled it out between us, sitting on the sand behind a
clump of grease-wood bushes, that hid us from view of the ranch house.
Hazel was allowed only juvenile books, and she knew her mother would
take this away from us on account of the word novel.
"It was such a horribly sentimental story that we found it embarrassing
to read the tenderest parts of it aloud, and I suppose because it was
the first one of the kind we had ever come across, it made a deeper
impression on us than it would have done otherwise. We fairly devoured
it. For days we thought and talked of nothing else, and we used to take
turns playing we were the Lady Agatha, about to burst on society like a
dazzling star, and win the heart of the proud scion of the House of de
Hoverly."
Jack threw back his head and laughed so heartily that Mary was forced to
smile again herself, as she went on with her confession.
"That all came back to me the other night when we climbed out of the
'bus, and I almost giggled when I remembered that this was what Hazel
and I had looked forward to as such a grand event--being escorted for
the first time by a grown man. It was on a similar occasion that the
Lady Agatha made such a hit in society. Our ideas of society were so
crude and funny then," Mary went on, beginning to relish her own
reminiscences. "All we knew about it we gathered from that book. It
seemed to be made up principally of haughty earls and dowager duchesses
who lived in castles and wore coronets. I didn't know what a dowager
was then, but I privately resolved to be one when I was grown. The name
seemed so grand and high-sounding, and in the story they always had
everything their own way. I couldn't help laughing a bit ago when you
used the word, for you had hit the nail on the head."
"Then you won't mind when I say 'I told you so'" laughed Jack. "If you
hadn't gone that night expecting to create a sensation, you'd have been
satisfied to have people nice to you simply because you were their
friend's friend, and wouldn't have been so cut up over that remark you
overheard."
"I'm not so sure about the last part," Mary insisted, her face clouding
again. "It _was_ nasty of him to say it, and the mere thought of that
man will always be an abomination to me."
There was silence for a little while. Everything was so still that a
bird hopped fearlessly out on a limb above them, and began to call to
its mate. When Mary spoke again there was a whimsical expression on her
face that soon reflected itself in Jack's.
"I can't help picturing things out beforehand, the way I'd like to have
them be. I've done it all my life. The rehearsing is always more fun,
though, than the actual happening. Now when I went away to school last
year, every time I'd wake up that last night in the sleeping-car, I'd
plan just what I'd say and how I'd act to make my entrance to Warwick
Hall imposing. I could actually see myself sweeping in to make a good
impression on Madam Chartley, and you know what happened! My hat was
cocked over one ear, the wire sticking out through the loops of ribbon,
and Madam caught me jumping up and down to try every seat in the
reception-room, one after the other."
Jack chuckled, glad to see some of Mary's cheerfulness returning.
"And then," she continued, "you remember when we met Phil and Elsie
Tremont on the train, as we were going out to Arizona to live?"
Jack nodded.
"I was only nine years old then, but for weeks I thought of Phil as a
sort of young god--a regular Apollo, and I pictured all sorts of scenes
in which I should be a prominent personage at our next meeting. And when
he _did_ come I was sprinting down the road in a cloud of dust, hatless
and breathless and purple in the face, crying, and crazy with fright,
because I thought that a harmless old Indian who chanced to be riding
down the same road, was chasing me. How Phil does laugh every time that
is mentioned!"
Mary was sitting up straight on the boulder now, her face dimpling as
she recalled these various predicaments.
"Then there's the time the Little Colonel visited us at the Wigwam.
Hadn't I dreamed of that first meeting for weeks--what we'd say and what
she'd say? Me in my rosebud sash and best embroidered white gown. But
she caught you and Joyce at the wash-tub, and I had to take my first
peep at her, crouched down in an irrigating ditch on my way home from
school, all inky and dirty and torn.
"But I don't think I've done quite so much romancing since Betty gave me
my Good Times book and preached me that little sermon on being
self-conscious," Mary chattered on. "She said that my always thinking of
the impression I was making on people, and being so eager to please was
what made me miserable when I fell short of my expectations. She said
that I ought to copy Lloyd. That her greatest charm was her utter
unconsciousness of self. I think that is Betty's too. She's _such_ a
darling."
There was no response to this. The mention of Betty's name brought up
so many pleasing scenes to Mary, that she sat living them over,
unmindful of the long silence that fell between her and Jack. He sat
with his hat pulled still farther over his eyes, in a revery as deep as
hers. Betty's name recalled the picture that was often before him in
these long, idle days. He was seeing her as he had seen her the first
time, now over a year ago, when he made his memorable visit to Kentucky.
She was standing at the end of the long locust avenue, all in white,
between the stately white pillars, with her godmother's arm about her,
as they awaited his approach.
Slim and girlish and winsomely sweet she was, and when he looked into
her wistful brown eyes, he felt in some strange way that he had come to
the end of all pilgrimage. The world held nothing beyond worth seeking
for.
After a long time the swirl of the water past them was lost in the sound
of a wagon, rattling noisily down the hill and across the ford. Then a
long line of cattle passed down the same road, accompanied by the hoarse
calls of their drivers on horseback. Mary looked up.
"Jack," she said hesitatingly, "did you ever hear this verse?
"'For should he come not by the road, and come not by the hill,
And come not by the far sea-way, yet come he surely will.
Close all the roads of all the world--_Love's road is open still_.'
"Do you believe that is true?"
"Not for me," he answered in a hoarse voice, so bitter, so resentful
that it startled her, coming as it did after long silence. He gripped
the arms of his chair again, as if in pain too great to endure, and then
burst out vehemently, "_Every_ road is closed to me now! It wouldn't be
so hard if there was any prospect of the end coming soon, but I may have
to hang on this way for years--just a living death! Caged in this
helpless hulk of a body, a drag on every one and a misery to myself!
_Heavens!_ If I could only end it all!"
"Oh, Jack!" begged Mary, starting up, tears in her eyes. "Don't talk
that way! You're not a drag on anybody! We couldn't live without you!
You've been so brave--just like Aldebaran in the Jester's Sword. '_So
bravely did he bear his lot, it seemed a kingly spirit dwelt among us!_'
Don't you know that just having you with us is more to us than anything
else in the whole world?"
She was fairly wringing her hands in her distress over this revelation
of the overwhelming bitterness of Jack's soul. For months he had been
so cheerful, hiding his real feelings under a playfulness of manner,
that it was a shock to her to find that his cheerfulness was only
assumed. Because he "had met his hurt so bravely and made no sign" she,
like the Jester, thought "the struggle had grown easier with time, and
that he really felt the gladness that he feigned." Like the Jester, too,
she was "at her wit's end for a reply." She could think of no word of
comfort.
The loud halloo which sounded just then in a familiar voice from up the
creek, was a welcome interruption. The next instant Norman came in sight
around the curve. He was standing up in a flat-bottomed boat, poling
down stream towards them, with the vigor and skill of a young Indian. It
was a clumsy, home-made affair, with "The Swan" painted in blue letters
on the side.
"She's mine for the winter!" he announced joyfully, as soon as he was
within speaking distance. "A man who lives up past Klein's crossing
rented it to me. I'm to chop wood awhile every Saturday to pay for the
use of it."
Norman was so interested in his new possession that he could not see
that he had interrupted a conversation of tragic seriousness.
"Come on and get in, Mary," he urged. "It's great. Beats those old rafts
you used to pole at Lee's ranch, all hollow. Don't you want to try it?"
Mary hesitated. To go off and leave Jack sitting on the creek-bank,
unable to accompany her, would emphasize his crippled condition. To
refuse to leave him would only be added proof in his present sensitive
mood that he was a "drag on every one."
"The sun is dropping so low we ought to be starting home before it
begins to get chilly," she said with a meaning glance towards Jack,
which to her relief Norman interpreted aright. He answered cheerfully,
"Oh, go on! It's a cinch _you_ won't get chilly if you push that old
boat along as fast as I did, and if we get cold waiting for you, it
won't be many minutes till we'll be 'seen, a-rolling down the Bowling
Green' towards home."
"All right, then," said Mary, climbing in as he climbed out to hold the
boat steady for her. "I won't go far, but I'm surely glad to get out on
the water again."
She took the oar he handed her, and with a skilful push against the bank
she sent the boat gliding out into the stream. As she went off she
thought: "That was considerate of Norman, to put it the way he did--to
include Jack with himself as a matter of course, and not to remind him
of his helplessness by saying he'd stay and take care of him. Norman has
lots of tact for a boy of his age; more than I have. I must have hurt
Jack many a time by my inconsiderate speeches, but I had no idea he felt
so horribly sensitive about being dependent."
All the way up the creek she was so occupied with thinking of what Jack
had said, and so depressed over the depths of mental suffering which his
exclamations revealed, that she plied her oar mechanically, only partly
awake to the scenes about her. But the long even strokes, first on one
side and then the other, sent her darting forward through the water so
rapidly that she soon reached a turn in the creek which she had never
passed before, and as she rounded the curve such a beautiful sight
greeted her that she cried out in pleased surprise, "How perfectly
_heavenly_!"
On one side the bank towered up into a high, steep cliff, straight as a
wall. It was completely covered with ferns; delicate, feathery
maiden-hair ferns, as luxuriantly green as in mid-summer. In this
sheltered spot they were still left untouched by the frost, although it
was now December. Everywhere else vegetation was dry and sere, but the
green freshness of this bank was accounted for by a number of tiny
water-falls splashing down from unseen springs above, and sending a
light spray in every direction, as fine as mist.
"I'm coming straight back here in the morning," she said to herself,
"and dig up a lot of these ferns before the frost gets them. I can't
think of anything lovelier to send to Gay for a Christmas greeting than
a clump of them growing in a box--a rustic box covered with bark and
dainty lichens. One would be nice for Mrs. Rochester, too. She's just
the kind that would appreciate such a gift. Well, that solves two of my
hardest problems of what to give." That trip up the creek in _The Swan_
was a voyage of discovery in more ways than one, for Mary came upon the
fact that she had grown older in the last quarter of an hour, quite as
suddenly and unexpectedly as she had come upon the fern-bank. That cry
of Jack's, "Heavens! If I could only end it all!" had shocked her into a
deeper understanding of pain, and human limits of endurance.
She had always prided herself on her ability to imagine herself in
other people's places, and until now had believed that she fully
understood and appreciated the depths of Jack's suffering. Now she saw
that she had not even begun to fathom it. His bravery had deceived her.
All the while that she had been thinking that he was growing accustomed
to his lot and that time was making it easier for him to bear, a fire of
rebellion was smouldering fiercely within him, making each day one of
new torture.
[Illustration: MARY WARE in TEXAS
"She sent the boat down stream with long swift strokes."]
Because she could plaster up her own small hurts with platitudes and
proverbs, and ease her disappointments by counting her blessings "as one
would count the beads upon a rosary" she had vainly imagined that all
this would be balm for him. How many times she had offered him such
comfort, feeling with childish complacency that she was helping to ease
his pain. She understood now. A sugarplum may help one to forget a
bee-sting, but a death-thrust is another matter.
Absorbed in her thoughts, she sent the boat down stream with long, swift
strokes, not noticing how fast it was going. Helped by the current, she
came in sight of Jack and Norman before she had mentally adjusted
herself to her new view-point. She was afraid that as soon as she and
Jack were left alone again they would find themselves facing the same
wall of blank despair, and she dreaded it. So to gain time, she began
calling to them about the wonderful bank of ferns she had discovered,
and made several awkward thrusts of the oar in an attempt to land,
before she finally ran the boat up on the bank.
But Norman did not leave them alone. Deciding that that secluded spot
would be a good place to chain the boat, and that it was time to be
doing his evening chores, he slipped the padlock key in his pocket and
handed the oar over to Mary, saying, "You carry this and I'll wheel the
chair."
Jack had taken a new grip on his courage, and if Mary could have but
known it, it was by the help of one of the very means she had branded as
futile, a few moments before. The sight of the bloodstone on his
watch-fob, as he glanced at the time, recalled the story of the poor
Jester who had been born in Mars month, like himself, and for that
reason had cause to claim undaunted courage as the "jewel of his soul."
The merest flicker of a smile crossed Jack's grimly-set lips as he
looked down at the bloodstone and thought of all it stood for; and
pulling himself together he whispered the Jester's vow between clenched
teeth: "I'll keep my oath until the going down of one more sun."
When Mary joined them he was chaffing Norman quite as usual, and
immediately began to joke about the awkward landing she had made. On the
way home Norman laughed often, thinking that Jack was in one of his
jolliest moods; but Mary walked beside them, the oar over her shoulder,
saying to herself, "And under all this brave show, _he's feeling every
minute that he'd be glad to die_!"
When she reached the house Mrs. Ware met them at the door, and Mary,
passing in quietly as Norman began telling about the boat, suddenly
remembered that that was not the natural way for her to come home.
Whenever she had any news she fairly tumbled into the house in her haste
to tell it. The boys knew that she had discovered the bank of ferns, and
that it was as exciting as Norman's discovery of a boat, because it
would provide some of her Christmas presents without cost. Yet here she
was walking in as calmly as if she were fifty years old and had outgrown
her girlish enthusiasms. It certainly was not natural.
So she turned back and interrupted Norman, because that was what she
always did when she was in a hurry to tell things, and she tried to make
her description as full of life and color as she usually did; but all
the time she had a feeling that she was acting.
Mrs. Ware expressed her interest with many pleased exclamations as she
always did when Mary came to her with any new-found cause for rejoicing,
but Mary, suddenly grown keen of vision, saw the look of anxiety and
weariness that seemed to lie in the back of her eyes behind the smile.
"I wonder," she mused, "if mamma is acting, too, if her gladness is only
on the surface, and she smiles to keep up her courage and ours, as they
say little boys whistle in the dark. Oh, it's dreadful to grow up if one
has to lose faith in this being a good old world. It used to seem so
happy all the time, and now it's all so sorrowful and out of joint."
She went into her room to wash her hands and get an apron before going
out into the kitchen to help prepare supper. As she stood tying the
apron-strings, she looked up at Lloyd Sherman's picture which hung over
her bed, as it used to hang in Warwick Hall and at Lone Rock, when she
pretended that it was Lloyd's _shadow-self_, the chum to whom she could
carry all her troubles, sure of silent sympathy. But somehow, while the
beautiful eyes smiled down into hers as kindly as they had always done,
they did not bring the sense of her presence. They did not speak to her
as they had done those other times when she turned to them for the
imagined communion that always brightened her spirits.
"It's never seemed the same since I knew she was engaged," Mary thought
with a sigh. "Of course I know she's just as fond of me as she was
before, but I can't help feeling that she's so taken up with other
things now, her life so heavenly full since she has found her prince,
that she _can't_ take the same interest in my affairs."
As she passed the mirror she turned back for a second glance. The first
had shown her the fresh unlined face of a girl of seventeen, but judging
by the way she felt she was sure there should be wrinkles. The weight of
world-weariness and disillusionment and foreboding which depressed her,
certainly could not belong to youth. They must be the property of an old
woman, in her sixties at least.
CHAPTER VII
CHRISTMAS
TEN days before Christmas Mary opened the bottom drawer of her bureau,
in which she had placed each gift as soon as it was finished, and
sitting down on the floor beside it, proceeded to take an inventory of
the packages within. They were all wrapped, stamped and addressed, but
she had made them ready without a single Christmas thrill. There was
nothing in the climate or surroundings to suggest the holiday season,
and she compared this year's preparations with the year before at
Warwick Hall, when the very air seemed charged with a spirit of
delightful expectancy; when everybody had secrets and went around
smiling and humming snatches of carols which the choir-girls were
practising for the service in the chapel.
Mechanically she counted the bundles and checked them off her list: the
ones for Holland, for Joyce, for Eugenia, the bunny doll with the
chamois skin head which she had made for little Patricia. She was very
well satisfied with them all, as well as with the fancy trifles she had
made for Lloyd and Betty and the girls at school, with whom she still
kept up a correspondence. They were inexpensive, but they were original
and appropriate.
Allowing for the crowded condition of the mails, she decided that the
packages which had the longest distance to go should be started that
very day. These she took from the drawer and piled on her bed, and then
got out her pen to begin the writing of her Christmas letters.
Now one may make all sorts of dainty gifts, and tie them with holly
ribbon, and send them away in Christmasy looking packages which will
bring a glow to the heart of the one who opens them, and yet do it all
without one spark of festal feeling herself. But it is impossible to
write a Christmas letter and put the proper zest into its greetings,
unless one is a-tingle with it. When Mary discovered that fact, she tore
up the sheets on which she had made various beginnings, and put the cork
in her ink-bottle.
"I can't do it any more than I could keep Thanksgiving on the Fourth of
July or New Year's on April Fool's day," she thought. "Luckily the
letters travel faster than second-class mail, so I'll take my packages
to the post-office now, and then go out in the boat awhile, and think
about snow and sleigh-bells and holly berries till I work myself up to
the proper mood."
As she started out of the door her mother called to her to remind her
that they needed eggs. That meant that Mary was to go around by the Metz
place to get them on her way home, which would take so much longer that
there wouldn't be much time for meditation in the boat. But it was in
going for the eggs that she came across the very inspiration of which
she was in quest.
Mr. Metz and his wife were sitting on a bench in the sunny garden near
the kitchen door, when Mary opened the gate. Looking up the path between
the stiff rows of coxcombs and prince's feather, she could see that the
old lady was knitting, as usual. He sat with a newspaper across his
knees, and his spectacles folded in one hand. The other grasped the end
of his long white beard which flowed almost to his lap.
They were both singing; singing with the quavering voices of age, a song
which they had brought with them from their far away youth in the
beloved Fatherland. It was a song of Christmas joy which they had
carolled many a time around a candle-lighted tree. Their voices were
thin and tremulous, and broke now and then on the high notes, but it was
a gay little tune, very sweet and full of cheer; and Mary, who stopped
to listen just inside the gate, was thankful that they had not heard the
latch click. When it came to an end she waited a moment, hoping there
would be another verse, but they began to talk, and she started on up
the path. But halfway to the house she paused again, for they had begun
another song.
"_Am Weinachtsbaum die Lichter brennen!_"
Their voices came to a sudden stop at the end of that line, however, as
they became aware of an approaching visitor. Mary hurried forward
saying, "Oh, I understood one word of it. You were singing about a
Christmas tree, weren't you? The children in the blue cottages across
from us have been talking about a 'Weinachtsbaum' all week. Please don't
stop. It sounded so sweet as I came in at the gate."
At some other time the old couple might have been hard to persuade, but
the holiday season was their high-tide of the year, and its return
always swept them along with a rush of happy memories, to a state of
enjoyment that was almost childish in its outward manifestation. Finding
that Mary was really interested in hearing them talk of the customs of
their youth, they began a series of reminiscences so interesting that
she could have listened all day.
Seventy Christmases they could remember distinctly, besides the dim
impressions of several earlier ones. In the course of describing them it
came about quite naturally that they should sing her the interrupted
song.
The old man, because he spoke better English than his wife, interpreted
the verses first. But even his speech was halting and broken, and he
pulled his white beard desperately, and used many despairing gestures
when he could not find the right word. She, clicking her needles, kept
up a constant nodding while he explained.
"On the Christmas tree the lights are burning. The children gaze at the
what you call it--picture--scene--till the eye laughs and the heart
laughs and the old look Himmelwartz, heavenwards that means, with
blessed rapture."
"Yah, yah!" nodded the old wife, prompting him as he paused. "Zwei
Engel"--
"Two angels appear," he repeated, going haltingly on with the next
verse. Mary could not understand all that he tried to convey, but she
caught the meaning of the last part, that the day brings God's blessing
to young and old alike, to the white as well as the brown hair.
"It is the same all over the world," he said, clearing his throat
preparatory to singing the lines he had just translated.
"We will be alone this year. We cannot go to our children and they
cannot come to us. But we shall not feel alone. We will make ready one
little tree, and in our hearts we will join hands with all the happy
ones who greet the _Weinachtsbaum_. We will be part of that circle which
reaches around the whole wide world."
The quavering old voices took up the tune, and although Mary recognized
only three words, Christmas-tree, angels and heavenward, there was
something in the zest with which they sung it, something in the
expression of the wrinkled old faces, which gave her the inspiration she
was in search of. It was as if she had brought to them a little
unlighted candle, and they had kindled it at the flame of their own
glowing ones.
When Mary went home she was more like her accustomed self than she had
been for days. She went dancing into the house with the eggs, and
immediately set about the writing of her Christmas letters in her usual
resourceful way. Mrs. Ware looked up, much amused, to see her piling
some fresh orange peel and bits of broken cedar on the table beside her
ink-bottle.
"There's nothing like that combination of smells to make you think that
Santa Claus is coming straight down the chimney," exclaimed Mary
gravely, catching her mother's amused glance. "You may think it is
foolish, but really it makes all the Christmases I have ever known stand
right up in a row in front of me, whenever I smell that smell."
She rubbed a bit of the fresh peel and then a piece of the cedar between
her palms to bring out the pungent fragrance, and afterwards, from time
to time, bent over it for another whiff to bring her new inspiration.
By the twentieth of December the last letter and the last out-of-town
package but one was started on its way. Gay's box of ferns, a mass of
luxuriant, feathery greenness, sat on a window-sill, waiting for its
time to go. The crate in which it was to be shipped stood ready in the
wood-shed, even to the address on the express-tag. Then time began to
drag. The next two days, although the shortest in the year, seemed many
times longer than usual.
"It's like trying to keep things hot when somebody is late and keeps
dinner waiting," complained Mary. "If you can't eat when it's all ready,
some of the things are sure to dry up and some to get cold. I was worked
up to quite a festive state of mind day before yesterday, but my
enthusiasm is all drying up and cooling off now."
"Here's something to warm it over again," announced Norman, coming in
from the express office with a box on his shoulder. "Here's the first
gift to arrive. Let's open up right now, and open each thing that comes
after this _when_ it comes instead of waiting for one grand surprise on
Christmas morning. You never will try my way, and it would spread the
pleasure out and make it last lots longer if you only would. You're
bound to get more enjoyment out of each thing if you give your undivided
attention to it."
For once Norman's suggestion, made yearly, was not opposed, and as he
pried the lid off the box Mary flopped down on the floor beside it, Jack
wheeled his chair closer, and Mrs. Ware came in from the next room in
answer to their eager calls that it was from Joyce.
Each one of the studio family had contributed to the filling of the box.
The holly-wreaths on top, tied with great bows of wide red ribbon, were
from Miss Henrietta Robbins.
"Don't you know," exclaimed Mary, as she lifted them out and held them
up for them all to admire, "that Miss Henrietta has turned that studio
into a perfect bower of Christmas greens? She gives it all the elegant
costly touches that Joyce never could afford, just as she's put the
finishing touch on these wreaths with this beautiful ribbon. It's wide
enough and satiny enough for a sash."
"And isn't it just like little Mrs. Boyd to send _this_!" she cried a
moment later, when the opening of a fancy pasteboard box revealed a doll
about six inches long, dressed like a ballet dancer. Its fluffy scarlet
skirts hid the leaves of a needle-book, concealed among its folds, and
from the ends of the sash, by which it was intended to dangle, hung a
tiny emery bag in the shape of a strawberry, and a little silk
thimble-case.
"She got the idea for that from the Ladies' Home Magazine, I am sure.
She adores the pages that tell how to evolve your entire spring outfit
from a shoe-string and a strip of left-over embroidery. It's not that
she's trying to economize. Joyce says she has the piece-bag habit. The
girls tease her about not being able to see a scrap of goods without
wishing to find some way to use it, but they love the homey flavor her
home-made things give to the house. She is as old-fashioned and dear in
her ways as she is in her ideas of art."
"That is an unusually pretty doll," remarked Mrs. Ware as Mary swung it
around by its sash.
"Yes," she answered, "it's the kind Hazel Lee and I were always wishing
for. Ours were flaxen haired, and this has raven curls. We would have
called her 'Lady Agatha' if we had had her then. I believe I'll name her
that now," she added with a glance towards Jack to see if he understood
the allusion.
But Jack was not noticing. He was turning the pages of a handsomely
illustrated work on Geology, a book he had long wanted to own. Joyce had
had little to spend this year compared with last, but in her hurried
shopping expeditions, she had considered the tastes and needs of each
one so well that every gift was hailed with delight.
"Norman's way is a dandy one," acknowledged Mary, as she opened a box of
fine stationery engraved with her monogram, the first she had ever
owned. "Now I can write my note to Gay on this. If we had waited I
should have had to use the common paper that we buy at the drug-store
by the pound, because it is cheap. And it's so nice too, to have these
holly-wreaths beforehand."
She danced away to hang them in the windows, and to swing the Lady
Agatha from a corner of the mirror over her bureau, where her hidden
needle-book could readily be reached. Then she thriftily gathered up
every bit of ribbon and tinsel from the discarded wrappings, smoothed
out the tissue paper and picked loose from it all the adhering seals
that had not been broken in the process of tearing open the packages.
"Here's seven whole seals with holly on them," she announced to her
mother, "six with Santa Claus heads and four with the greeting Merry
Christmas. I'm going to use them over again in doing up the rest of my
packages. That box that the doll came in is exactly what I want to put
the candy in that I made for the Barnabys. And that plain one that holds
the stuffed dates that Lucy Boyd sent will do for the candy I'm going to
send Mr. and Mrs. Metz. All I'll need to do is to cover it with some of
this holly paper and tie it with the same gold cord. I'll find a use for
nearly everything I've saved before the week is over."
She said it in a tone of such deep satisfaction that Norman looked up
from the book and other gifts in which he had seemed absorbed, to laugh
at her.
"Mary is like that old woman who wrote those recipes for cheap pies in
that old New England cook-book we have at home," he said to his mother.
"She thinks 'a little Ingenuity added to almost any material that comes
to hand will make a tasty pie!' You ought to send the Ladies' Home
Magazine some pointers, Mary, on '_How to make Christmas gifts for
others on the wrappings of those sent you_.' Didn't some one say
something about the _scrap-bag_ habit awhile ago?"
Mary's only answer was a saucy grimace. She could afford to let him
tease her about her squirrel instinct for hoarding, when it gave her so
much satisfaction to add to her store of scraps. She had all sorts of
things to draw on in emergencies. In the one month they had been in
Bauer she had nearly filled a shoe-box with odds and ends. She had
sheets of tin-foil, saved from packages of chocolate, picture cards,
little bottles and boxes and various samples of toilet articles sent out
by firms who advertise their goods in that way.
For the next two days every mail brought greetings and remembrances to
some one of the family, sometimes to all, so that the hours slipped by
at a fairly rapid pace. One of the gifts which gave Mary most pleasure
was the chiffon scarf that Lloyd sent. It was like the one Roberta wore
the first evening Mary had seen her, and which she rapturously compared
to "a moonbeam spangled with dew-drops," only she thought hers far
lovelier than Roberta's. A dozen times a day she slipped into her room
to take the floating, filmy web from its box, and spread it out to gloat
over it. She had to try the effects of different lights on it, sunshine
and moonlight and the rays of the lamp. She spread it over different
dresses, white, pink and green, to see which produced the prettiest
glimmers, and Norman caught her once posing before a mirror with it
draped over head, and teased her all the rest of the evening.
Betty's gift was a simple, inexpensive one, intended merely as a
greeting. It was only a green bay-berry candle, but the card tied to it
by a scarlet bow bore the verse:
"This bay-berry candle's tongue of flame
Bears message. Prithee hear it!
_While it burns mid your Christmas greens
I'm with you all in spirit!_"
"I'm glad that it's a big fat candle," said Mary, passing it around for
each one to enjoy the spicy, aromatic fragrance. "It'll burn a long
time."
She lighted it Christmas eve and put it in the centre of the table with
one of the holly-wreaths laid around the base, and the tongue of flame
did seem to "bear message." It started Mary to talking of her absent
friend; of the bloodstone and the Good Times book Betty had given her.
Of Betty's clear brown eyes and dearer ways, of Betty's sweet
consideration for others, of her talent for writing which was sure to
make her famous some day. She talked of her all during supper, not
noticing that Jack was unusually silent, and that his eyes rested
oftener on the candle than it did on his plate.
As they left the table Mr. Metz appeared at the door like a veritable
old Santa Claus, with his long white beard and eyes a-twinkle. In one
arm he carried a big round hat-box full of nuts, in the other two
bottles of home-made wine. His own pecan trees and vineyard had
furnished his offering. He thanked them so volubly in his broken way for
the little gifts that Norman had carried over when he went for the milk,
and delivered his nuts and wine with such benign smiles and a flow of
good wishes from his wife and himself, that Mary gave a skip of
pleasure when she closed the door after him. She went back to the
kitchen singing:
"'Now jingle, jingle, come Kris Kringle!' Oh, I feel as if the old
fellow himself had really been here. He and Betty's candle have given me
a real Night-before-Christmas-and-all-through-the-house feeling. It's
lovely!"
They had had supper so early that it was barely dusk outdoors when she
and Norman started to take the box of ferns to the rectory. When they
had passed the cotton field, the bend in the road soon brought them to
the edge of the village, and the beginning of the short thoroughfare
which led to the main street, past the cotton-gin and the Free
Camp-yard.
The Free Camp-yard was always an interesting place to both of them, and
they never passed it without looking in. It was a large lot surrounded
by a high board fence. Low sheds were built along one side within the
enclosure, in which both men and beasts might find shelter in time of
storm. Usually they slept in the open, however, with little campfires
here and there to boil their coffee and give them light. Peddlers,
hucksters and belated country people were its usual patrons. But
sometimes one saw a family of armadillo hunters on their way to the
curio dealers, with crates full of the queer nine-banded shells which
can be made into baskets, simply by tying the head and tail together.
One evening Mary saw two country belles, putting the finishing touches
to their toilets behind a wagon, by the aid of a pocket-mirror. They had
come in for one of the Saturday night balls, held regularly in the town
hall. The week before, part of a disbanded freak show had taken refuge
in the camp-yard. Norman, peeping through a knot-hole, the gate being
shut, had seen the Armless Man scratch a match and light a fire with his
toes.
It was deserted to-night, except for a dilapidated covered wagon which
had driven in a few minutes before. It was drawn by a big bony horse and
a dejected little burro, and piled high with household goods. A gaunt,
rough-looking man with a week's stubble of red beard on his chin, was
beginning to unhitch. His wife, who was only a young thing, and pretty
in a worn, faded way, put down the sleeping baby that she had been
holding, and stretched her arms wearily. She seemed too tired and
listless to move till one of the two children, who were climbing down
over the wheel, fell and began to whimper. A pair of hounds that had
trailed along behind dropped down under the wagon as if they had
followed a long way and were utterly exhausted.
"Did you ever see anything so forlorn in all your life!" exclaimed
Norman as they passed on. "And Christmas eve, too. I don't suppose those
poor little kids will have a thing."
"No, I suppose not," answered Mary. "It seems a shame, too, when
there'll probably be a tree in every house in Bauer. Mrs. Metz says that
is one custom that they keep up here as faithfully as they do in the old
country. Even the poorest families will manage to get one somehow."
"Those were cute kids," Norman went on, too much interested in what he
had just seen to put the subject by. "That oldest little girl with the
yellow curls looked like a big doll, and the little one is almost as
pretty."
He spoke of them again on the way back, after they had left the ferns at
the rectory, and turned homeward. The lights were beginning to twinkle
all down the long street. In every house they passed, where the shades
had not been drawn, they could see a tree, standing all ready for the
lighting, from gift-laden base to top-most taper. As they drew near the
camp-yard again they saw the red-whiskered man going into the corner
grocery with a tin pail on his arm. At the camp-yard gate they looked
in. A small fire had been started, over which a battered coffee-pot had
been set to boil. The burro and the bony horse were munching fodder near
the wagon, but the woman and the children had disappeared.
"There they are," whispered Mary, pointing down the road a little way to
a group standing in front of the pretty green and white cottage next to
the cotton gin. The lace curtains had been dropped over the windows, but
they did not hide the gay scene within. The family was having its
celebration early, because the two small lads for whom it was designed
were so young that their bedtime came early. They were handsome little
fellows, one in kilts and the other just promoted to trousers. The gifts
hanging from the lighted boughs were many and costly. The two little
ones outside looking in, had never seen anything so fine and beautiful
before, and stood gazing in round-eyed wonder. Attracted by the music
they had strayed down from the camp-yard, and their mother had followed
with the sleeping baby thrown across her shoulder, to bring them back.
Now she, too, stood and stared.
The phonograph was still playing when Mary and Norman reached the gate,
so they paused to listen, also, more interested in the watchers outside
however, than the revellers within.
Presently Mary turned to the woman, saying, "It's pretty, _isn't_ it?"
in such a friendly way that her remark called out an equally friendly
response, and in a few moments she had learned what she wanted most to
know about the strangers. They were moving on to the next county, having
already been two days and a night on the road. Her man thought he could
find work in the cedar brakes.
They stood talking until the phonograph stopped, then a glance over her
shoulder told the woman that her husband was returning to the wagon, and
she turned to go. The children were loath to leave, however.
"It's their first sight of Sandy Claws," she remarked as if to explain
their unwillingness. Then as one of them stumbled and caught at her
skirts she added impatiently, "I reckon it's likely to be your last. He
don't care anything for the likes of _us_."
It was said so bitterly, that as Norman trudged on in the opposite
direction with his sister, he exclaimed in a regretful tone, "It's too
bad that we didn't find out about them sooner, in time to fix something
for them. It sort of spoils my own Christmas to think of those kids
going without."
"They are not going without," replied Mary promptly, who had been
thinking rapidly as she walked. "We've got to get something ready for
them before they shut their eyes to-night."
"Huh, I'd like to know how you'll do it this late," Norman answered.
She laughed in reply, saying teasingly, "Who was it said that 'A little
Ingenuity added to almost any material that comes to hand will make a
tasty pie?' Well, it will make a tasty tree too. If you'll help I'll
have one ready in an hour."
His skeptical "I don't believe it! Why, you _can't_!" was all she needed
to start her to working out her resolution with the force of a young
whirlwind. She could plan with lightning-like rapidity when any need
arose.
"I said if you'd all help," she reminded him.
As soon as he had expressed a hearty willingness to do anything he could
to carry "Sandy Claws" to the camp-yard, she began.
"The minute we get home, you hack off one of the bottom branches of that
cedar tree outside the gate; a good bushy one about three feet high. Put
it into the box that Joyce's presents came in, and nail it in place
with cleats made from the lid. Better weight it with some stones in the
bottom, and we can tack green crêpe paper all over the base. We've
nothing but ordinary white candles, but we can cut them in two, and wire
them on with hairpins, and cover the pins with tinfoil out of my
scrap-box that you make so much fun of. That will be _your_ part.
"There's some corn already popped, waiting till I get back, to be made
into balls. I'll get mamma to string it instead, and Jack to make a lot
of little gilt cornucopias out of some stuff I've saved. I'm sure he'll
donate the candy cane Joyce sent as a joke, although he is so fond of
old-fashioned striped peppermint sticks. We'll break it up into short
pieces and hang that on. And we can tie up a few dates and nuts into
tiny packages. There are fancy papers and ribbons galore in that
aforesaid scrap-box. I'll think of more after we get started. Come on,
let's race the rest of the way. The one who gets there first can tell
the others."
Norman reached the front door several yards ahead of Mary, but he did
not claim his privilege. He merely rushed into the kitchen for a
hatchet, calling as he dashed out again, "Sixty minutes to make a
Christmas tree in! Everybody get to work." Mary did not stop to take
off her hat. Throwing off her coat, she began talking "on the bounce" as
Jack said, for she hurried from one room to the other, explaining at the
top of her voice, while she gathered up pop-corn, scrap-box, paste-tube
and scissors. Her enthusiasm was so contagious, her description of the
camp-yard pilgrims so appealing, that by the time she had finished her
breathless account of them Jack had begun cutting squares of gilt paper
and Mrs. Ware was stringing corn as if they were working to win a wager.
The race against time was the most exciting experience they had had in
Bauer. They watched the clock with many laughing exclamations, but were
working too fast to talk much. In twenty minutes Norman brought in a
shapely little tree firmly fastened on a green base. In thirty minutes
more the candles were wired in place; a few skilful twists had turned
part of the tinfoil into silvery ornaments to hang beneath, while the
rest had gone to the making of a great star to blaze on the top-most
bough. White strings of pop-corn were festooned around it like garlands
of snow. Every branch was bright with gilt and silver and blue and red
packages, holding only a nut or a sweetmeat it is true, but adding much
to the gay attire of the tree.
A little pocket-mirror flashed from one bough, a fancy sample bottle of
perfume hung from another. A miniature cake of scented soap and many
fluttering picture cards bore witness to the resources of the scrap-box.
Then exclaiming over a sudden happy thought Mary darted into the bedroom
and took down Lady Agatha. Three snips of the scissors robbed her of the
needle book hidden under her fluffy scarlet skirts and of the emery bag
and thimble case tied to her sash ends, and left her no longer useful;
only so ornamental that any little girl would have been glad to take her
to her arms and affection.
"I know Mrs. Boyd wouldn't mind my passing it on to those children,"
Mary said as she tied it to one of the highest branches, "if she knew
that it makes me happy as well as them."
"But," asked Norman, "what if Goldilocks and her sister both want to
play with it at the same time? What will the left-out one do?"
Mary thought an instant and then flew to the tray of her trunk to snatch
out a woolly toy lamb, that had fallen to her lot from the mock
Christmas tree at Warwick Hall.
"I brought it down to Texas with me because Dorene said that 'everywhere
that Mary went the lamb was sure to go.' I expected to keep it always as
a reminder of that lovely evening, but--" with a half stifled sigh, "it
will do them more good than me."
When that was in place she gave one last glance around the room to see
what else she could appropriate. Her eyes fell on the holly wreaths.
"Those red bows will make lovely hair-ribbons," she cried. "We can spare
two of them. Hurry, mamma, and help me untie them! The needle-book may
as well go too. Pin it on, Norman, and stick a date in the thimble bag
and swing it up, Jack."
In the meantime Norman had been lighting the candles in order that they
might see how it looked when it was all ashine, and it stood now, a very
creditable and a very bright little tree. There were none of the
spun-glass birds and crystal icicles and artificial fruits that had made
little Patricia's tree such a gorgeous affair the year before, and were
probably making it beautiful to-night, but there was sparkle and color
and glow and charm of beribboned packages, enough to make little eyes
who saw such a sight for the first time believe that it was the work of
magic hands.
"Done!" cried Mary triumphantly, "and in only fifty-eight minutes!"
"Well, I didn't believe it would be possible," acknowledged Norman.
"I'll bet it's the only tree in Texas trimmed in such short order."
When he and Mary reached the camp-yard again, they found the family
sitting around the smouldering fire, listening to the phonograph which
was still playing in the cottage down the road. The quilts were spread
out in the wagon, ready for the night, but the children, who had slept
most of the afternoon on their tiresome journey, could not be induced to
climb in while the music lasted.
The two bearers of Yule-tide cheer set the tree down and reconnoitered
through cracks in the fence. "The man looks awfully down in the mouth,"
whispered Norman. "So does she. Shall we tell them 'Sandy Claws' sent
it?"
"No," Mary whispered back. "They look so forlorn and friendless, and the
woman seemed to feel so left out of everything, that it might do them
good to tell them we brought it because the angels sang peace on earth,
good-will to men, and that it's a sort of sign that they're _not_ left
out. They're to have a part in it too."
Norman turned his eye from the knot-hole to gape at her. "Well!" was
his whispered ejaculation. "If you want all _that_ said you'll have to
say it yourself. I'm no preacher."
"Come on then," said Mary boldly. She knew what she wanted to convey to
them but the words stuck in her throat, and she never could remember
afterwards exactly what she blurted out as they put the tree down in
front of the astonished family and then turned and ran. However, her
words must have carried some of the good cheer she intended, for when
she and Norman paused again outside, she at the knot-hole this time and
he at the crack, it gave them each a queer little flutter inside to see
the expression on the pleased faces and hear their exclamations of
wonder.
"They couldn't be more surprised if it had dropped right down out of the
sky," whispered Norman. "Now the kids are getting over their daze a bit.
They're hopping around just like they saw the Kramer boys do."
"See, they've found Lady Agatha," answered Mary. "Just _look_ at
Goldilocks now! Did you ever see such an ecstatic little face. I
wouldn't have missed it for anything. Now they've got the lamb. I'm so
glad I thought of it, for the Kramers had a whole bunch of little white
sheep around the base of their tree."
They were both very quiet when they finally turned away from the fence
and started home. They did not speak till they reached the white
moonlighted road, stretching past the cotton field. Then Mary looked up
at the stars saying reverently, "Somehow I feel as if we'd been taking
part in the _first_ Christmas. It was a sort of camp-yard that the Star
of Bethlehem led to. Don't you remember, 'there was no room in the inn'
for the Child and His mother? It was a manger the gold and frankincense
and myrrh were carried to. I feel as if we'd been following along--a
little way at least--on the trail of the Wise Men."
"Me too," confessed Norman. Then nothing more was said for a long time.
Mary could find no words for the next thoughts which puzzled her. She
was picturing all the Christmas trees of the world brought together in
on
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