CHAPTER I._The Making of Mary

Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Melissa Er-Raqabi, and the

Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

(This file was produced from images generously made

available by the Canadian Institute for Historical

Microreproductions (www.canadiana.org))

THE "UNKNOWN" LIBRARY

THE MAKING

OF MARY

JEAN FORSYTH

NEW YORK

THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO.

31 EAST 17TH ST. (UNION SQUARE)

THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO.

_All rights reserved._

THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,

RAHWAY, N. J.

PROLOGUE.

A STURDY northeast wind was rattling the doors and windows of a deserted

farmhouse in Western Michigan. The building was not old, measured by

years, but it had never been painted or repaired, and its wooden face,

prematurely lined with weather stains, looked as if it had borne the

wear and tear of centuries. The windows, like lidless eyes, stared

vacantly at the flat stubble fields and the few spindling trees, a

dreary apology for an orchard. There were plenty of shingles off the

roof to allow the inquisitive rain-drops to follow one another through

the rafters, and thence to the floor of the room below, where the

darkness was creeping out of the corners to take possession.

The house had been but recently vacated, for there was still a "slab"

smoldering on the hearth of the wide fireplace in the outer kitchen, and

something that looked almost human, wrapped in a ragged bedquilt, was

lying much too near it for safety. A friendly gust of wind came down the

chimney, bringing back the smoke, and drawing a faint cough from the

bundle. Another gust and another cough, and then a sneeze which burst

open the quilt, to disclose an ill-clad little girl, six or seven years

old.

She gazed about with drowsy blue eyes till terror of the darkness made

her draw the tattered comforter over her head again, and crouching

nearer to the smoldering log, she tried to warm her fingers and toes.

More wind down the chimney made more smoke, and sent the child coughing

back from the fireplace. She was wide awake now, and stood listening.

Sounds there were, indeed, but not one that could be associated with any

living thing in the house. She felt her way around the walls to where

the candle used to be, but it was gone. There was no furniture to

stumble over, and when she came to the side of the wall in the inner

room from which the stairway crept up, she mounted it on her hands and

knees, trembling, partly with cold, partly with fear at the noise made

by the flapping of the sole of one of her old shoes. There was a step

missing at the turn of the stairs, but the child knew where the vacancy

was, and pulling herself over it, she reached the landing, felt all

around the walls there, and made the circuit of the three small rooms

in the same fashion. They were entirely empty.

Cautiously the girl stole down the broken stairs and back to her former

place by the smoking slab, where she curled herself up into the old

quilt again, as into a mother's arms, and spoke aloud, though there was

none to listen but the obstreperous wind:

"Anyhow she won't be here to lick me no more!" That thought seemed to

compensate for darkness and loneliness. The voices of wind and rain were

apparently more kindly than the human tones to which she had been

accustomed, and soothed by their stormy lullaby, the little maid fell

asleep.

The sunshine poured freely into the forsaken house next morning, drying

up the damp floors, and turning to gold the scrap of yellow hair that

showed through a hole in the old quilt. Presently the small girl shook

the covering away from her and stood up, to yawn and stretch herself

out of the stiffness from a night spent on the hard floor. She was not a

pretty child, unless naturally curling fair hair, that would be fairer

when it was washed, could make her so. The long, thin legs that came

below her torn dress made her too tall for her age, and what might have

been a passable mouth was spoiled by the departure of two of the front

"baby" teeth and the tardy arrival of the later contingent.

Part of the day the child seemed satisfied with her new-found liberty.

Having discovered a stale crust or two in a cupboard, she wanted no

more, for her diet had never been luxurious. Into every corner of the

house she intruded her small freckled nose, pulling down from shelves

all sorts of odds and ends that had been left behind as worthless at the

flitting.

There was an old straw bonnet with a pair of dirty strings, and

therewith the damsel elected to adorn the tousled head, which evidenced

but slight acquaintance with comb or brush. She could not find any

feminine garments to please her fancy, but there was a boy's jacket, out

at elbows and ragged round the edges, which she proudly donned, and as a

finishing touch she popped her long slim legs, old shoes and all, into a

worn-out pair of man's top-boots that reached to her knees.

"I just wish Mawm Mason had lef' a lookin'-glass behin', so's I could

see how I look. My! wouldn't she whack me if she seen me with this

bonnet on!" The child smiled broadly as she continued her confidential

address to the other valueless things left behind. "I allays knowed she

warn't my own mother, an' I'm glad Pete nor Matty aint my own brother

nor sister neither. I'd like him to see me in his jacket!"

She pulled the coat across her narrow little chest to where it met in

the days when there were buttons on it, and marched up and down the

room, making as much noise as possible with the big boots.

This killing of time was all very well while the daylight lasted and the

sun warmed up the frosty November air, but when the darkness began to

assert itself once more the small waif did not feel so contented.

"There aint no use goin' over to Mis' Morgan's. She don't want me no

more'n Mis' Mason did. I guess I'll sleep upstairs to-night with some o'

them things over me. I'll be warm anyhow."

In the middle of the front bedroom she heaped up all the _débris_ and

crawled beneath it. A fantastic pile it seemed to the moon when he

looked in after the rain had stopped, the childish head resting on the

cover of an old bandbox at one side and a pair of man's boots sticking

out at the other.

The last scrap of bread was finished next day, and the two potatoes

picked up in the yard proved uneatable without the softening influence

of fire, so there was nothing for it but Mrs. Morgan's. After sunset,

when the rapidly falling temperature and the heavy bank of clouds in the

west gave warning of a snow-storm, the little girl, still wearing the

old bonnet, boy's jacket, and man's boots, left the only home she could

remember, and made her way slowly over the hard rough fields and snake

fences to the next farmhouse.

Mrs. Morgan was running in from the barn with a shawl over her head.

"Good sakes alive! Mary Mason! I hardly knowed you. What you got on? I

thought you was one o' them scarecrows out o' the fall wheat. Mis'

Mason moved to Californy three days ago. Didn't she take you with her?"

"No, mawm."

"So it 'pears. Wal, she hadn't any call to, I s'pose. You aint none o'

hers."

By this time they were in the kitchen of the farmhouse, Mrs. Morgan

rubbing her hands above the stove, and Mary Mason also venturing near,

stretching out her thin arms to the heat, for the adopted jacket was

somewhat short in the sleeves.

"What's that mark on yer wrist?"

"Bruise--but it don't hurt now."

"Who done it?"

"Ma--Mis' Mason. I've lots worse'n that on me," said the small girl with

some vanity.

"There, now! I jest knew that Mis' Mason was a hard case, though my man

would never hear to it. What you going to do now?"

"I dunno." The accent implied that to be a matter of small moment.

"I don't s'pose we can turn you out to-night. There's room in the attic

for you to sleep, but don't you go near one o' my girls' beds with that

head o' yourn."

As a hostess, Mrs. Morgan was a slight improvement upon Mrs. Mason. She

never took stick or strap to the foundling, and if she occasionally gave

her a cuff on the ear it was never strong enough to knock the girl down.

But the Morgan children bullied Mary Mason, the Morgan father grumbled

at an extra mouth to feed, and when she had been about a month in the

house the mistress of it told her she must move on.

"There's an old dress of Ellie's you can have, an' a pair of Sue's

cast-off boots, and Tom's old cap."

"Where am I to go, mawm?"

"You jest go on from one farmhouse to another, till you find a place

where they'll keep you all winter. It's comin' on to Christmas, an'

people won't be hard on ye. Tell 'em you aint got no folks."

* * * * *

The forlorn little pilgrim took up her march down the snow-covered road.

THE MAKING OF MARY.

CHAPTER I.

MY wife is a theosophist. This fact may account for her numerous

eccentricities or be simply one of them. I incline to the latter

opinion, because she preferred the unbeaten to the beaten track, both in

walk and conversation, long before Modern Buddhism was ever heard of in

the small Western town of whose chief newspaper (circulation largest in

Michigan) I have the honor to be editor and proprietor.

How such a hot-house plant as Theosophy ever took root in the swamps

and sands of the Wolverine State may seem surprising at the first

glance, but let the second rest upon our environment--the absence of

mountain or swift-flowing river, the presence of fever and ague and

half-burnt pine woods--and it will be seen that this Eastern lore with

its embarrassment of symbols supplies a long-felt want to starving

imagination. We of the West are forever reaching beyond our grasp, have

intelligence and perception, but lack the culture necessary for

discrimination, and therefore the romantic souls among us who rise above

the rampant materialism of the majority go to the other extreme, and

hail with enthusiasm the new-old religion.

"It's better to believe too much than too little, but you theosophists

swallow an awful lot," I say to Belle when she tries to convert me.

I am well aware that many of my fellow-citizens consider me a subject

for commiseration because I have lived for twenty years with so erratic

a house-mate, for I have not deemed it necessary to explain to them that

without the stimulus of her enlivening spirit, without the element of

surprise constantly contributed by my wife's love of variety, the daily

life, and therefore the daily paper, of their favorite editor would

partake of that flatness which is the predominant characteristic of this

western part of the State of Michigan.

Our four sons and two daughters enjoy their mother fully as much as I

do, for is she not the most fascinating romancer they ever knew? Now

that they are all of an age to be attending school and looking out for

themselves, after the manner of independent young Americans, they

require from her nothing but sympathy, for their grandmother sews their

buttons on. Grandma!--Ay, there's the rub.

I have no hesitation in owning that I am Scotch by birth. My mother left

her native land to make her home with us entirely too late in life to

allow Western ideas regarding Sabbath observance, the rearing of

children, or the amount of respect due to the opinion of elders, to

become ingrafted upon Scottish prejudice concerning these matters.

Mrs. Gemmell Senior has, however, the national peculiarity of judging

"blood thicker than water," and whatever her convictions may be

concerning the methods of Mrs. Gemmell Junior, she restricts the

expression of them to our family circle--in fact, I may say, to myself.

She generally seizes me when I lie at my ease on the well-worn lounge in

our sitting room, more properly dubbed the "nursery," for it is Liberty

Hall for the youngsters. Two rooms have been knocked into one to

accommodate their dolls' houses, bookshelves, toys, and printing

machines. Belle had the whole side torn out of the house to build an

open fire-place, on purpose to burn slabs, over which the children roast

pop-corn to their hearts' content.

"A body wad think," said my mother one cold night five or six years ago,

when I lay on the sofa, trying to send my weariness off in smoke, "A

body wad think there had been nae cherritable wark dune in the toon ava,

till they theossiphies set aboot it. If yer provost and baillies lookit

efter things as they ocht, there wad be a dacent puirs-house for the

idignant folk, an' a wheen daft leddies like Eesabel needna gang roun'

speirin' at yon infeedels for their siller tae build a hoose o' refuse."

"There is a county poorhouse, mother, but it doesn't happen to be

located in this city, and they won't take in anybody there that hasn't

been a resident of the county for a certain time."

"Aweel! there's plenty o' kirks, though ye never darken the door o' ane.

Do they no' leuk efter their ain puir folk?"

"Yes; but after nobody else's. This House of Refuge is to be

non-sectarian, non-religious, humanitarian, in the broadest sense of the

term. Ah! There's Belle now," and I gave a sigh of relief as I heard my

wife's latch-key in the front door.

She came in with an out-of-door breeze, her dark face glowing from the

wintry wind, flakes of newly fallen snow resting like diamonds upon her

prematurely white hair, and her brown eyes sparkling with the animation

of twenty summers rather than of forty-two.

"Children all gone to bed? That's right! Don't go, mother! I'm sure

you'll like to hear about the House of Refuge. We've got it fixed at

last! Those rich old lumbermen that won't give a cent to a church, or

any charity connected with one, have gone to the bottom of their pockets

this time. Fancy Peter Wood, Dave--five hundred dollars! And Jeff

Henderson, five hundred. I have the list in my bag. Like to see it?"

"No' the nicht, thenk ye," said my mother stiffly, but I added:

"Hand it over to me, and I'll put it in to-morrow's _Echo_. That's what

they want."

"Nothing of the kind, you old cynic! I shan't tell you another thing

about it." But still she went on: "We've taken the old Laurence house on

the corner of Garfield Avenue and Pine Street, and it's to be fitted up

to accommodate any sort of refugees."

"Irrespective of race, creed, sex, or color," I whispered

parenthetically.

"No one is ever to be turned from the door without a good square meal,

and there's to be a back, outside stair erected, up which a tramp can go

at any hour of the night, and find a nice clean bed awaiting him--locked

away from the rest of the house, of course."

"Oh, why?" I innocently inquired. "Surely you have enough faith in your

brother man to believe that he would not commit any breach of

hospitality?"

"_I_ have," replied Belle, squeezing my recumbent form further against

the back of the sofa, upon which she had seated herself. "But remember

we are not all theosophists on the Board."

In the words of the historic witness against Mrs. Muldoon, "That's the

way the row began!" Belle was elected Treasurer of the House of Refuge,

but as she knows nothing of figures, I had to keep the books of that

unique institution, and was therefore enabled to form a practical

estimate of its workings.

I shall not attempt a description of the numerous "cases" in which my

advice, if not my pocketbook, was freely drawn upon, but shall leave

them, along with the description of the many antecedent fads of my

beloved better half, to some historian of longer wind, and shall content

myself with recounting the particular "case"--and attachments--which

most nearly affected our family life and happiness.

* * * * *

"This is what I call solid comfort," said Belle to me one evening late

in September, as we sat in the parlor in a couple of deep, springy

armchairs, fronting a huge grate fire, that would be banished by the

lighting of the furnace. "Children all in school again, your mother off

on a long visit, and plenty of new books on the table."

I looked up from one of the aforesaid new books.

"Just wait! The season's business hasn't begun in the Refuge yet."

"Everything is in good shape for it, though. We've had enough donations

of groceries and vegetables to keep us going almost all winter. We've

lots of wood for the furnace, and Mack and Hardy have given us some

second-hand furniture and----"

The electric door-bell sent out a long, imperative summons.

"Who can that be, Dave, at this time of night? None of the boys locked

out?"

"No; they all went up to bed a while ago."

Belle rose and walked to the door. I pulled the tidy from my chair-back

over my bald head to protect me from the draught, but that did not

prevent me from hearing what went on.

"Are you Mrs. Gemmell?" This from a female voice, breathless with

excitement.

"I am."

"Then you are one of the trustees of the House of Refuge?" gasped

another feminine speaker.

"Yes. Won't you come in?"

"No, thank you. We've just come to tell you about this young girl who

has run to us for protection."

"We're school-teachers, mawm."

"She's in my class, and she hasn't a friend in the city and knew nowhere

else to go."

Then followed some hysterical whispers, which roused my curiosity so

much that I went to the door and peeped over the shoulder of my tall

wife. The two plain, business-like young women were evidently much

distressed, but between them was a fair-haired slip of a girl of

fifteen or sixteen, the least disturbed of the group. The three older

women might have been talking in a foreign tongue, or of someone else,

so unconcerned did she appear, present danger being over.

"How did she happen to be with these people?" Belle was asking as I came

forward.

"The wife of this brute of a man told us that she was nursemaid with the

Ferguson Family Concert Company, but they dropped her here in Lake City

without a friend or a cent."

"She took her in to help sell fruit and ice cream evenings, and she let

her go to school through the day."

At this juncture the subject under discussion broke into a beaming

smile, showing all her fine teeth. Her cheek dimpled and reddened, and

her blue eyes, full of fun, looked straight into mine. I became

suddenly aware that I had forgotten to remove the tidy, and retired in

confusion, but heard Belle's conclusion of the interview:

"Just wait a second till I give you a line to the matron of the House of

Refuge. You can leave the girl there till we see what can be done for

her. She'll be perfectly safe, and had better keep on going to school as

usual."

* * * * *

A week afterward I asked my wife what had become of her latest

_protégée_.

"You mean Mary Mason? She's in the refuge yet, attending school, and

we've settled that man's ice-cream saloon."

"How?"

"Boycotted him. We can't reach him any other way."

"That's rather hard on his wife, who seems to be a decent sort of

party."

"The innocent often appear to suffer with and for the guilty, but if

you understood the law of Karma you would know that all the evil that

befalls us is really the result of some wrongdoing of our own in a

previous incarnation. Mary Mason herself is an instance."

"What's the matter with her?"

"Poor girl! She's been knocked from pillar to post all her days. She

hasn't an idea who her parents are, and there isn't a creature in the

world she has any claim upon. She must have gone very far astray _last

time_ to have been brought into the world again with such

disadvantages."

"It appears to me she has a great many advantages--lovely blue eyes,

good teeth, the fashionable golden shade of hair, and the prettiest

complexion I've seen for many a day."

"Don't be provoking, Dave! The poor little thing has the marks of some

of her beatings on her yet. The Ferguson family were the first who ever

treated her decently, or paid her any wages."

"Why did they drop her?"

"One of our Committee took it upon herself to write and ask them. They

replied that the girl was of perfectly good character, so far as they

knew, but she fell so ridiculously in love with Frank Ferguson, their

eldest son, that she was making a nuisance of herself, and so they had

to let her go."

I laughed.

"There are generally two sides to that kind of story."

"At the meeting of the trustees to-morrow it is to be decided what's to

be done with her, because she says she doesn't want to go to school any

more. She's never had much of a chance before to learn anything, and

she's in a class with little bits of girls, and she doesn't like

it--says she'd rather go to work to earn her own living."

Belle came home from that meeting with her face ablaze with righteous

wrath. Her hands trembled so much over the teacups at our evening meal

that even sixteen year old Watty, our eldest son, remarked it.

"What's the matter with _mamma_? Her trolley's off."

I knew there was trouble in the wind, so I fortified myself with a good

supper and read my paper at the same time, to leave myself free for what

was to follow. The children study their lessons in the back end of the

nursery, and I therefore forbore to take up my usual position upon the

sofa, but withdrew to the parlor with my pipe.

Presently my wife followed me, nearly walking over the furniture in her

excitement.

"Go on, Belle; out with it!"

"You will listen, will you, seriously?"

"Certainly, mawm. I never had any sort of an objection to your making a

scavenger barrel of me, so go ahead."

"Oh, these benevolent women, Dave! Any one of them alone is as

good-hearted as can be, but lump them together on a committee, and

they're as cold and cruel and grasping as the meanest business man you

could name!"

"More so!" said I, approvingly, and for once Isabel did not resent the

disparagement of her sex.

"The question arose, what was to be done about Mary Mason, and every one

of them, David--every one of them, with young daughters of their own

growing up at home, voted to let that girl go round this town selling a

book."

"Was that what she wanted to do herself?"

"Yes; but think of them letting her do it! You know as well as I do what

sort of a city this is, and whether it's safe for a lovely girl like

that to go to men's offices, trying with her pretty looks and ways to

wheedle them into subscribing for Stanley's 'Darkest Africa.' Oh, I was

wild! I said to Mrs. Robinson: 'How would you like your Lulu to do it?'

'The cases are very different,' said she; 'my daughter has no need to

earn her living.' 'Mrs. Constable,' said I, 'if your grandchild were

left alone in the world, what would you think of the charity of any body

of women who allowed her to go from under their protection to make her

living in this way?' 'I don't see the connection,' said she; 'Mary

Mason's been fighting the world since she was seven years old, and just

because she happens to have a pretty face, you seem to think she should

be put in a glass case and never do anything for herself.'"

"She had you there, Belle," said I, pulling her down to the arm of my

big easy-chair. "Let the girl alone; she'll come out all right. She's

too good-looking for a nurse or a housemaid, and she doesn't know enough

arithmetic to be a shop girl. I don't see what else she can do."

"That's just what the ladies calmly decided," said my wife, walking the

floor again. "They seemed to think that a little business training would

just be the making of Mary. Oh, these Christians!"

"You see, my dear," said I, "committees are not supposed to have any

conscience. They have the income of the Refuge in trust for the

contributors, and they have no right to keep on supporting a girl who is

willing to work for herself. How she proposes to do it is none of their

business."

"That's just what it is--their business; their business to see that she

doesn't meet the very fate we've saved her from once already. Oh!

there's no getting these narrow-minded, orthodox, bigoted people to see