_In Which the Whole World is at Sixes and Sevens, and in Which Life is
Looked Upon as a Great Adventure._
It had been decided that, for a time at least, Gordon and Constance
should stay with Mary. In the spring they would again go back to
London. Grace Clendenning and Aunt Frances were already installed for
the winter at their hotel.
The young couple would occupy the Sanctum and the adjoining room, and
Mary was to take on an extra maid to help Susan Jenks.
In all her planning, Mary had a sense of the pervasiveness of Gordon
Richardson. With masculine confidence in his ability, he took upon
himself not only his wife's problems, but Mary's. Mary was forced to
admit, even while she rebelled, that his judgments were usually wise.
Yet, she asked herself, what right had an outsider to dictate in
matters which pertained to herself and Barry? And what right had he to
offer her board for Constance? Constance, who was her very own?
But when she had indignantly voiced her objection to Gordon, he had
laughed. "You are like all women, Mary," he had said, "and of course I
appreciate your point of view and your hospitality. But if you think
that I am going to let my wife stay here and add to your troubles and
expense without giving adequate compensation, you are vastly mistaken.
If you won't let us pay, we won't stay, and that's all there is to it."
Here was masculine firmness against which Mary might rage impotently.
After all, Constance was Gordon's wife, and he could carry her off.
"Of course," she said, yielding stiffly, "you must do as you think
best."
"I shall," he said, easily, "and I will write you a check now, and you
can have it to settle any immediate demands upon your exchequer. I
shall be away a good deal, and I want Constance to be with you and Aunt
Isabelle. It is a favor to me, Mary, to have her here. You mustn't
add to my obligations by making me feel too heavily in your debt."
He smiled as he said it, and Gordon had a nice smile. And presently
Mary found herself smiling back.
"Gordon," she said, in a half apology, "Porter calls me Contrary Mary.
Maybe I am--but you see, Constance was my sister before she was your
wife."
He leaned back in his chair and looked at her. "And you've had twenty
years more of her than I--but please God, Mary, I am going to have
twenty beautiful years ahead of me to share with her--I hope it may be
three times twenty."
His voice shook, and in that moment Mary felt nearer to him than ever
before.
"Oh, Gordon," she said, "I'm a horrid little thing. I've been jealous
because you took Constance away from me. But now I'm glad you--took
her, and I hope I'll live to dance at your--golden wedding." And then,
most unexpectedly, she found herself sobbing, and Gordon was patting
her on the back in a big-brotherly way, and saying that he didn't blame
her a bit, and that if anybody wanted to take Constance away from him,
they'd have to do it over his dead body.
Then he wrote the check, and Mary took it, and in the knowledge of his
munificence, felt the relief from certain financial burdens.
Before he left her, Gordon, hesitating, referred gravely to another
subject.
"And it will be better for you to have Constance here if Barry goes
away."
"Barry?" breathlessly.
"Yes. Don't you think he ought to go, Mary?"
"No," she said, stubbornly; "where could he go?"
"Anywhere away from Leila. He mustn't marry that child. Not yet--not
until he has proved himself a man."
The blow hit her heavily. Yet her sense of justice told her that he
was right.
"I can't talk about it," she said, unsteadily; "Barry is all I have
left."
He rose. "Poor little girl. We must see how we can work it out. But
we've got to work it out. It mustn't drift."
Left alone, Mary sat down at her desk and faced the future. With Roger
gone, and Barry going----
And the Tower Rooms empty!
She shivered. Before her stretched the darkness and storms of a long
winter. Even Constance's coming would not make up for it. And yet a
year ago Constance had seemed everything.
She crossed the hall to the dining-room and looked out of the window.
The garden was dead. The fountain had ceased to play. But the little
bronze boy still flung his gay defiance to wind and weather.
Pittiwitz, following her, murmured a mewing complaint. Mary picked her
up; since Roger's going the gray cat had kept away from the emptiness
of the upper rooms.
With the little purring creature hugged close, Mary reviewed her
worries--the world was at sixes and sevens. Even Porter was proving
difficult. Since the Sunday when Roger had saved her from the fire,
Porter had adopted an air of possession. He claimed her at all times
and seasons; she had a sense of being caught in a web woven of kindness
and thoughtfulness and tender care, but none the less a web which held
her fast and against her will.
Whimsically it came to her that the four men in her life were opposed
in groups of two: Gordon and Porter stood arrayed on the side of
logical preferences; Barry and Roger on the side of illogical
sympathies.
Gordon had conveyed to her, in rather subtle fashion, his disapproval
of Roger. It was only in an occasional phrase, such as "Poor Poole,"
or "if all of his story were known." But Mary had grasped that, from
the standpoint of her brother-in-law, a man who had failed to fulfil
the promise of his youth might be dismissed as a social derelict.
As for Barry--the situation with regard to him had become acute. His
first disappearance after the coming of Constance had resulted in
Gordon's assuming the responsibility of the search for him. He had
found Barry in a little town on the upper Potomac, ostensibly on a
fishing trip, and again there was a need for fighting dragons.
But Gordon did not fight with the same weapons as Roger Poole. His
arguments had been shrewd, keen, but unsympathetic. And the result had
been a strained relation between him and Barry. The boy had felt
himself misunderstood. Gordon had sat in judgment. Constance had
tearfully agreed with Gordon, and Mary, torn between her sense of
Gordon's rightness, and her own championship of Barry, had been strung
to the point of breaking.
She turned from the window, and went up-stairs slowly. In the Sanctum,
Constance and Aunt Isabelle were sewing. At last Aunt Isabelle had
come into her own. She spent her days in putting fine stitches into
infinitesimal garments. There was about her constantly the perfume of
the sachet powder with which she was scenting the fine lawn and lace
which glorified certain baskets and bassinets. When she was not sewing
she was knitting--little silken socks for a Cupid's foot, little warm
caps, doll's size; puffy wool blankets on big wooden needles.
The Sanctum had taken on the aspect of a bower. Here Constance sat
enthroned--and in her gentleness reminded Mary more and more of her
mother. Here was always the sweetness of the flowers with which Gordon
kept his wife supplied; here, too, was an atmosphere of serene waiting
for a supreme event.
Mary, entering with Pittiwitz in her arms, tried to cast away her
worries on the threshold. She must not be out of tune with this
symphony. She smiled and sat down beside Constance. "Such lovely
little things," she said; "what can I do?"
It seemed that there was a debate on, relative to the suitability of
embroidery as against fine tucks.
Mary settled it. "Let me have it," she said; "I'll put in a few tucks
and a little embroidery--I shall be glad to have my fingers busy."
"You're always so occupied with other things," Constance complained,
gently. "I don't see half enough of you."
"You have Gordon," Mary remarked.
"You say that as if it really made a difference."
"It does," Mary murmured. Then, lest she trouble Constance's gentle
soul, she added bravely, "But Gordon's a dear. And you're a lucky
girl."
"I know I am." Constance was complacent. "And I knew you'd recognize
it, when you'd seen more of Gordon."
Mary felt a rising sense of rebellion. She was not in a mood to hear a
catalogue of Gordon's virtues. But she smiled, bravely. "I'll admit
that he is perfect," she said; "we won't quarrel over it, Con, dear."
But to herself she was saying, "Oh, I should hate to marry a perfect
man."
All the morning she sat there, her needle busy, and gradually she was
soothed by the peace of the pleasant room. The world seemed brighter,
her problems receded.
Just before luncheon was announced came Aunt Frances and Grace.
They brought gifts, wonderful little things, made by the nuns of
France--sheer, exquisite, tied with pale ribbons.
"We are going from here to Leila's," Aunt Frances informed them; "we
ordered some lovely trousseau clothes and they came with these."
Trousseau clothes? Leila's? Mary's needle pricked the air for a
moment.
"They haven't set the day, you know, Aunt Frances; it will be a long
engagement."
"I don't believe in long engagements," Aunt Frances' tone was final;
"they are not wise. Barry ought to settle down."
Nobody answered. There was nothing to say, but Mary was oppressed by
the grim humor of it all. Here was Aunt Frances bearing garments for
the bride, while Gordon was planning to steal the bridegroom.
She stood up. "You better stay to lunch," she said; "it is Susan
Jenks' hot roll day, and you know her rolls."
Aunt Frances peeled off her long gloves. "I hoped you'd ask us, we are
so tired of hotel fare."
Grace laughed. "Mother is of old New York," she said, "and better for
her are hot rolls and chops from her own kitchen range, than caviar and
truffles from the hands of a hotel chef--in spite of all of our globe
trotting, she hasn't caught the habit of meals with the mob."
Grace went down with Mary, and the two girls found Susan Jenks with the
rolls all puffy and perfect in their pans.
"There's plenty of them," she said to Mary, "an' if the croquettes give
out, you can fill up on rolls."
"Susan," Grace said, "when Mary gets married will you come and keep
house for me?"
Susan smiled. "Miss Mary ain't goin' to git married."
"Why not?"
"She ain't that kind. She's the kind that looks at a man and studies
about him, and then she waves him away and holds up her head, and says,
'I'm sorry, but you won't do.'"
The two girls laughed. "How did you get that idea of me, Susan?" Mary
asked.
"By studyin' you," said Susan. "I ain't known you all your life for
nothin'.
"Now Miss Constance," she went on, as she opened the oven and peeped
in, "Miss Constance is just the other way. 'Most any nice man was
bound to git her. An' it was lucky that Mr. Gordon was the first."
"And what about me?" was Grace's demand.
"Go 'way," said Susan, "you knows yo'se'f, Miss Grace. You bats your
eyes at everybody, and gives your heart to nobody."
"And so Mary and I are to be old maids--oh, Susan."
"They don't call them old maids any more," Susan said, "and they ain't
old maids, not in the way they once was. An old maid is a woman who
ain't got any intrus' in life but the man she can't have, and you all
is the kin' that ain't got no intrus' in the men that want you."
They left her, laughing, and when they reached the dining-room they sat
down on the window-seat; where Mary had gazed out upon the dead garden
and the bronze boy.
"And now," said Grace, "tell me about Roger Poole."
"There isn't much to tell. He's given up his position in the Treasury,
and he's gone down to his cousin's home for a while. He's going to try
to write for the magazines; he thinks that stories of that section will
take."
"He's in love with you, Mary. But you're not in love with him--and you
mustn't be."
"Of course not. I'm not going to marry, Grace."
Grace gave her a little squeeze. "You don't know what you are going to
do, darling; no woman does. But I don't want you to fall in love with
anybody yet. Flit through life with me for a time. I'll take you to
Paris next summer, and show you my world."
"I couldn't, unless I could pay my own way."
"Oh, Mary, what makes you fight against anybody doing anything for you?"
"Porter says it is my contrariness---but I just can't hold out my hands
and let things drop into them."
"I know--and that's why you won't marry Porter Bigelow."
Mary flashed at her a surprised and grateful glance. "Grace," she
said, solemnly, "you're the first person who has seemed to understand."
"And I understand," said Grace, "because to me life is a Great
Adventure. Everything that happens is a hazard on the highway--as yet
I haven't found a man who will travel the road with me; they all want
to open a gate and shut me in and say, 'Stay here.'"
Mary's eyes were shining. "I feel that, too."
Grace kissed her. "You'd laugh, Mary, if I told the dream which is at
the end of my journey."
"I sha'n't laugh--tell me."
There was a rich color in Grace's cheeks. In her modish frock of the
black which she affected, and which was this morning of fine serge set
on by a line of fur at hem and wrist, and topped by a little hat of
black velvet which framed the vividness of her glorious hair, she
looked the woman of the world, so that her words gained strength by
force of contrast.
"Nobody would believe it," she prefaced, "but, Mary Ballard, some day
when I'm tired of dancing through life, when I am weary of the
adventures on the road, I'm going to build a home for little children,
and spend my days with them."
So the two girls dreamed dreams and saw visions of the future. They
sang and soared, they kissed and confided.
"Whatever comes, life shall never be commonplace," Mary declared, and
as the bell rang and she went to the table, she felt that now nothing
could daunt her--the hard things would be merely a part of a glorious
pilgrimage.
Susan's hot rolls were pronounced perfect, and Susan, serenely
conscious of it, banished the second maid to the kitchen and waited on
the table herself.
Here were five women of one clan. She understood them all, she loved
them all. She gave even to Aunt Frances her due. "They all holds
their heads high," she had confided on one occasion to Roger Poole,
"and Miss Frances holds hers so high that she almost bends back, but
she knows how to treat the people who work for her, and she's always
been mighty good to me."
Mary's mood of exaltation lasted long after her guests had departed.
She found herself singing as she climbed the stairs that night to her
room. And it was with this mood still upon her that she wrote to Roger
Poole.
Her letter, penned on the full tide of her new emotion, was like wine
to his thirsty soul. It began and ended formally, but every line
throbbed with hope and courage, and responding to the note which she
had struck, he wrote back to her.