PAYING OFF THE MORTGAGE.
Without even noticing her father, Marion Marlowe crossed the room to
her mother’s side, and for just a moment mother and daughter wept
together.
Joshua Marlowe stared at her silently. He could hardly believe his
eyes. Was this beautiful, stylishly dressed girl his daughter Marion?
After her burst of tears was over, Marion dried her eyes. It was not
her nature to waste much time in weeping.
“Why didn’t you answer our letters, mother—Dollie’s and mine?” she
asked, and then answered her own question without waiting for her
mother.
“I suppose father would not let you,” she said, with some scorn, “and
of course you were too scared to dream of disobeying him! It doesn’t
seem possible that a woman could be so weak, but I forgive you, mother.
I know he would only have made your life miserable for you.”
“Yew air tew hard on me, Marion,” said her father, faintly. He had
always stood a little in fear of his daughter Marion.
The girl sprang to her feet and faced him, her cheeks flaming with
indignation.
“No, I’m not, father!” she said, hotly. “I am not hard enough on you!
You have broken up your own family and you ought to be ashamed of it!”
“Did I send Dollie away?” asked the farmer, flaring up a little. “Did I
make her run away with that scapegrace, Lawson?”
“No, you didn’t do that, father,” said Marion, sadly, “but you
condemned and disowned her as soon as she was gone, when you might have
known that Dollie was innocent.”
“Waal, any father would hev done the same, I reck’n,” said the old man,
lamely, “but ef I did wrong, I’m a-gittin’ paid fer it, there’s no use
denyin’ that, Marion.”
His mood had softened and his lips were twitching suspiciously.
As Marion looked at him she seemed suddenly to realize how old and worn
he was, and in an instant her heart was bleeding for him.
“Father! Father!” she cried, going over to him as he sank upon a chair
and putting her hand almost tenderly upon his shoulder. “You have been
hard with us all, father; but we will forgive you! Just say that you
love us, and that in future you will be more kind.”
“It’s tew late, Marion,” cried the old man, huskily. “There’s no home
fer yew tew come back tew now, so it don’t make no diff’rence about
your old father! We air goin’ tew the Poor Farm, yewr mother an’ me,
an’ I guess she’s right—she sez it’s jedgement upon us!”
Marion Marlowe’s lips trembled, but only with a smile. Her eyes shone
through her tears as she gazed steadily at her father.
There was something she must know before she told them the truth about
the errand that had brought her back to the mortgaged homestead.
“Father,” she began, sternly, “there is something I must know! If you
refuse to tell me, I will never forgive you! What scrape was Samantha’s
husband in when you loaned him that five hundred dollars? Tell me the
actual truth, father, for I am determined to know it.”
Deacon Marlowe raised his head with the old, stubborn motion that his
wife and daughter knew so well, but one look at Marion’s face made his
glance waver considerably.
“I can’t tell yew—it’s Tom’s secret,” he began, but Marion interrupted
him.
“You must tell me,” she said, firmly, “or I will employ a detective to
find out for me.”
Deacon Marlowe’s jaw dropped and his cheeks became almost ashen in
color. The word detective to his country ears was synonymous with
everything that meant diabolical cleverness.
“Yew wouldn’t dew that!” he began, and stopped. There was something in
Marion’s eyes that told him plainly that she would do it.
“Waal, I’ll tell ef I must,” he muttered at last, “an’, after all, I
don’t much keer, fer Tom’s behaved mighty mean tew me. I let him hev
the money when he went tew New York that time, an’ I reckon he lost it
in some of them hocus-pocus games—I don’t know what they call ’em, it’s
‘bunco,’ or sumthin’! Anyhow, he lost the money, an’ come home with a
satchel full of worthless green paper, an’ it’s nat’ral thet neither on
us wanted tew say much about it, excep’ I had tew tell Sile, ’cause he
took the mor’gage.”
Mrs. Marlowe stared at her husband in breathless interest while he was
talking. In the height of her indignation she had never dreamed that he
was such a sinner.
As for Marion, her first thought was one of disgust; then, the picture
of her gawky brother-in-law being “buncoed” by sharpers rose before her
mental vision, and, in spite of herself, she burst out laughing.
“So you were a ‘green goods’ victim, dad!” she cried, hysterically.
“You thought, by mortgaging the farm, you’d get rich in a minute! Oh,
it’s no wonder that city people think we country folks are green!
That’s why they never lose a chance of imposing upon us!”
“Waal, it’s did, an’ thet’s all there is about it,” said her father,
dolefully, “an’ it’s me an’ yewr mother thet’s got ter bear the brunt.
Yew an’ Dollie air free, an’ yew look prosperous, Marion.”
The old man was weakening very rapidly now. He was fast becoming meek
and submissive in his manner.
“We’ve had an awful struggle,” was Marion’s slow answer. “We’ve been
without money and almost without friends, but Dollie has got a position
as typewriter in view, and when I get back I’m to be a nurse. I’ve got
a letter in my pocket this minute accepting my application.”
Her parents stared at her curiously, so Marion went on. She was glad to
see that they took an interest in what she was telling them.
“Yes, I applied for a dozen or more positions during the first few
weeks I was in New York, and this morning, just as I was coming away, I
got my first acceptance. I’m to go to Charity Hospital, on Blackwell’s
Island, as soon as I go back, and I’m just crazy to begin, for I know I
will like nursing.”
“But I tho’t yew wanted to be a singer,” said her father, a little
vaguely. “Yew’ve got a bootiful voice, Marion, it’s a pity yew can’t
use it.”
Marion smiled at these words of praise from her father, but did not
show by a look that she thought them surprising.
“I sang one night in a concert hall,” she said, laughing. “I had no
idea what the place was like before I sang, or I would never have done
it; but I guess it didn’t hurt me, and I made a hundred dollars.”
“What!” cried her father and mother, in one breath.
Marion nodded her head in a knowing manner.
“They offered me that every night if I would sing,” she said, proudly;
“but it was a drinking place, and I wouldn’t do it.”
Deacon Marlowe was still staring at her as though he could not believe
his senses. Such tales as this set his old brain to spinning.
“Everything that is wicked pays well in New York,” said Marion, sadly;
“but it’s another thing when you are honest and want to live decently.”
Mrs. Marlowe began weeping again, this time very quietly.
“Tew think what we have come tew,” she moaned, behind her apron.
“Our two daughters in a big, wicked city a-tryin’ tew earn their
livin’, an’ yew an’ me, Joshuy, a-goin’ tew leave the old home an’
go tew the Poor Farm, an’ it’s all on account of yewr hardness an’
overbearin’—it’s all yewr fault, Joshuy!”
Marion stopped her before she could go any farther.
“See here, mother,” she said, brightly, “things ain’t quite so bad as
you think! In fact, what do you suppose I’ve come back for, if it isn’t
to help you?”
“What, yew help a father that’s been so hard on yew!” sobbed the woman.
“Yew come back to help me, Marion?” gasped her astonished father.
Marion slowly drew a roll of bills from the purse in her hand and laid
it on her mother’s lap before she answered.
“You’ve been hard on us, father, but we forgive you,” she said, gently.
“I saved a little girl’s life in New York a day or two ago, and her
mother was so grateful that she rewarded me handsomely. There’s five
hundred dollars to pay off the mortgage, father, and all I want you to
say is that you forgive your little Dollie!”
There was a noble light shining from Marion’s eyes. As the old farmer
looked up at her he burst out crying.