THE ALBUM
The next day Garth received a telegram urging him to come at once to the
Grand Canyon. He was needed because of some work at Vision House which
had been stopped for his decision.
Marise believed that he had had the message sent to himself, and was
grateful, for his departure relieved the situation. Later, she thought
differently; but at the time she was pleased with the man. She even gave
him a little appreciative squeeze of the hand when they said good-bye.
Garth was to be gone two days. He would then return, travelling at
night, and after a few hours with Mothereen would take his wife and her
maid away. Considering the circumstances, this was as good an
arrangement as could have been hoped for by Marise. His absence,
however, did leave the house very dull! Whether one liked Jack Garth or
not, even if one hated him, his was a personality that made itself
missed.
Of course, it was very unpleasant that she had to go and live in his
house. In his rough-hewn fashion, he'd been rather decent in some ways,
not abusing the man's power he had over her as a woman; still, Marise
told herself that she thanked Heaven to be rid of him. She must not
appear too joyous, however, or Mothereen would be shocked. So realistic
was the girl's air of sadness (helped by a prospect of heavy boredom),
that the dear woman attempted the task of cheering her up.
"Would ye like me to show ye an album of photos I have of himself as a
boy and a growin' lad?" Mothereen wanted to know. "He was never much on
bein' took, after he grew up. But I've kept all his letters he wrote me
from the Front. They're great, and ye can have the run of 'em, me pet.
But first we'll go through the album together, don't ye think?"
Marise said that she would be delighted. And she must have had a more
angelic nature than she'd supposed, because the thought of the ordeal
left her unruffled.
Mothereen brought the volume in question--bound in purple morocco--and a
ribbon-tied bundle of letters to the girl's sitting-room. Then, with a
beaming countenance, she settled herself on the sofa and opened the
album on her lap. She had evidently no suspicion that she was being
patronised good-naturedly by "Johnny's" wife. Indeed, she fully believed
that the girl was impatiently waiting a treat.
"Come and sit down beside me, Mavourneen," she said. "That's right! Now
we're cosy. See, this cute little photo at the beginnin' was Johnny when
I had him first. Ye know the story, don't ye?"
"No-o," confessed Marise. She could easily have given an evasive answer;
but suddenly she was conscious that she _wished_ to know the story.
"Maj--he--never told me."
"Never told ye!" echoed Mothereen. "Never told ye aught about the father
he's so proud of, and all the rest? Why, if it had not been for that
father of his, I don't suppose he'd have gone to the war like a shot,
the way he did."
"Will you tell me--unless you think he'd rather you didn't?" asked
Marise, gazing at the badly-taken photograph of a handsome,
fearless-eyed child of five or six, in funny little trousers.
"Sure, there's no reason _why_ he should mind. The boy has nothing to
blush for. It's all the contrary!" said Mothereen. "And I _will_ tell
ye. It's right ye should hear what the gossoon fought his way up from to
where he stands now. Ye've heard, at the least, that the father was
English?"
"I think I did hear him tell someone--not me--that his father was a
Yorkshireman," Marise remembered.
"He was that, and a gentleman besides, an officer in the British Army.
His name was the same as the child's--John Garth. It was an American
girl he'd married, a girl from out West here. She went over to England
as a kind of a nursery governess with a family of rich folks, and there
was a row--a flare-up of some sort. The folks left her behind when they
came home, and the girl got engaged to sing with a little concert party,
tourin' the provinces. It was in Yorkshire Captain Garth saw her, and
fell in love. He was always inventin' something or other, was my
Johnny's dad: like father like son, and when the one child born to the
pair of 'em was a toddler, the Captain had an accident with some
explosive stuff he was workin' at. The poor young man's right arm was
blown off, and his eyes were hurt. That meant he must leave the army,
and as he wasn't wounded in the service of his country, not a red cent
of pension did he get! The poor girl wife was expectin' a second child,
but the shock she got by the accident brought on her trouble before its
time, and she and the baby died together.
"It was nip and tuck that the Captain didn't die too. But he pulled
through somehow, and there was the boy to think of. When it turned out
that Government would do nothin', the poor man had a notion to come to
this side of the world--his dead wife's country. She'd always been
tellin' him, it seems, that those inventions of his, that the British
War Office turned up its nose at, might make his fortune in the States.
"Well, he took the little money he had left, and thought to try his
luck. But he was pretty well done for, poor man, and a big storm there
was, crossin', just about put the finishin' touch; for he broke his leg
aboard ship."
"Were you on the ship?" Marise asked.
"Not me! 'Twas many a year since I was on board a ship," said Mothereen.
"Me and my man--Pat was his name--we had our honeymoon in the steerage.
'Twas out to the West we came, near to where we are now, which is why me
heart is in the West always. But troubles fell on Pat in business, and a
friend of his invited him to join in a new scheme, back East in New
York. The fellow'd been left a house there, off Third Avenue, and with
Pat to help in the expense of a start, furnishin', advertisin' and the
like, accordin' to him, they could coin money takin' boarders. It
sounded all right on paper, and so it might have been in practice,
maybe, with Pat to manage and me to cook, if half the boarders hadn't
slipped off without settlin' their bills. But that's what they did, the
spalpeens. And if troubles had been black out West, they was black and
blue in N'York! This was the time when Captain Garth came limpin' in out
of hospital, with his boy hangin' onto his hand. He'd seen our
advertisement in a paper, offerin' cheap board. The man looked like
death--and he didn't look like pay. But sure, me heart opened to the
pair of 'em at first sight! Ses I to meself, 'If I was to have a child,
I'd want one the pattern o' _that_.'"
"What happened then?" Marise wanted to know, when Mothereen paused for
her thoughts to rush back to the past.
"Just the things ye might suppose! We none of us had any luck. There was
no more doin' for the inventions in the States than there'd been in
England. The Captain left the child in my charge, and went to
Washington. There he hung about the place till the last of his money was
frittered away, and nothin' to show for it. But my, didn't that boy grow
into me heart, those days when he was like me own? Four years old he
was, and to look at him or hear him talk, you'd have said six! There
came along a big wave of 'flu, the end of that hard winter, and my Pat
and Captain Garth was both laid low with the sickness. Pat took it from
the Captain, nursin' him--and within a week of each other they was dead.
That's how me Johnny boy got to be me son."
"You were a saint to adopt him, when his father caused your husband's
death," said Marise.
"_Saint_, is it? Wait till ye hear the rest of the story, and know what
it was the boy did for me. Not much more than a baby he was, but with
twice the understandin' of many a grown-up man I've met. He saw the way
things were for me, with his wise little eyes, and he made up his mind
to help when the time came.
"I had to give up the house, I couldn't hold on. I sold up my bits of
things, and took one room for the two of us, Johnny and me. I got some
sewin' to do, but 'twas in a neighbourhood of poor folk, and there
wasn't enough comin' in to keep bread in our mouths. What do you think
that baby did then, darlin'? I'm sure _this_ is the part of the story
he'd _never_ be tellin' ye!"
"I can't imagine," said Marise.
"How he saved a few cents I've never rightly known, for he was mum about
it. What I think is, he must have begged till he had a half-dozen
nickels or dimes. Then he bought newspapers, and sold 'em in the
streets. From the first minute he was a success, and it's not hard to
see why. He was in a different class from the poor dirty brats in the
same business. And if ye'll believe it, me girl, there was times when
the child kept the two of us on what he earned. From that day we never
looked back. He put spirit into me, and the heart to work. Now, I'll
turn over a page in the album, and show you our boy at the age of ten.
What d'ye think of him?"
"He doesn't look like a seller of newspapers," said Marise.
"No more he wasn't, by then. He and I had gone into the molasses candy
business. We made the candy ourselves; and if I do say it, there wasn't
its equal in New York. Johnny would have the stuff wrapped up in pretty
little packets of coloured paper tied with gold string, and I tell you,
it went like smoke! At night, Johnny attended a school, and picked up
knowledge as a chicken picks up corn.
"Now, here he is in the album again at fifteen. We had the Mooney
Molasses Candies--three sorts--for sale in a lot of shops, and we'd a
little flat of our own, and money in the bank. Isn't he a fine fellow to
look at there? The makings of a man! 'Twas when he was fifteen that he
began to study the notebooks his father had left, and to turn his
thoughts to inventions of his own. The first thing was an oyster-opener.
The second was a fastener to keep shoe-strings from untying. Then there
was a big leap, and at eighteen he'd patented a toy pistol that fired
six shots, and no danger in one of 'em! That was what began to bring
_real_ money in; and Johnny said, 'Mothereen' (he'd called me that name
from the first), 'the next step is goin' to take us out West to the
place that you love!' So it did! 'Twas that high-speed bullet of his
which won him the notice of the War Office. It won him ten thousand
dollars, too; and on the strength of it he brought me back to the town
where Pat and I settled first, in the happy old days. But little did I
dream even then of the destiny ahead of the boy! I was lovin' him too
much, and rememberin' the child he'd been, to realise that by me side a
real genius was growin' up. I might o' done, though, if I'd kept me eyes
open, the way he studied and worked, worked and studied, readin' the
classics and learnin' languages and mathematics the while he'd be
faggin' out some new invention. But Johnny was never the boy to brag or
talk about himself. He was always queer in spots, sort of broodin',
you'd almost say sulky, unless you knew him, and a temper, too; though
never with me. Then came his discovery of how to make motor spirit out
of coke. That finished buildin' this house we're in, and bought his land
at Grand Canyon. I mean it did all that in the first few months. Soon
afterwards the dollars poured on us by thousands--yes, tens of
thousands! You sure heard of the trench motor-tool for diggin', I know,
because 'twas in all the English papers after the war had broken out,
and Johnny was at the Front. There was all that about his Victoria Cross
at the same time, or was it a bit before? You can tell me, I guess?"
"It must have been before. I never knew why he was decorated," Marise
said.
"He wouldn't tell you when ye asked?" cried Mothereen, as certain as she
was of life that the girl _had_ asked--yes, begged and prayed!
"He never did tell."
"Well, ye shall read the newspaper paragraphs yerself--American papers,
mind ye!--for he never sent me the English ones, and I got what I got
through his friends. I've columns cut out. And with them there's the
praise of the trench machine, and the new kind of steel--Radium steel,
he calls it--that they say will make him a millionaire in a year or
two."
"A millionaire!" echoed Marise. "I thought he was poor!"
"Poor! Ye thought that--yet ye _married_ him--you, who could get anyone
ye liked, from Princes of the Blood down to Cotton Kings! You _darlin'_!
Well, ye'll have yer reward. The boy is not poor. He's rich--what
_anybody_ would call rich."
"Then why----" Marise burst out, and stopped herself. If she hadn't
bitten back the words, they would have tumbled out: "_Why_ did he marry
me?"
She felt very small in spirit and mean of soul compared with humble
Mothereen, whose faith and loyalty had bridged the dark years with gold.
Why had a man brought up by Mothereen wanted to play the dummy hand in
this ridiculous game of marriage?