MARY MINDS HER BUSINESS
BY GEORGE WESTON
Author of "Oh, Mary, Be Careful," "The Apple-Tree Girl," and "You Never
Saw Such a Girl."
1920
To Karl Edwin Harriman
One of the Noblest of them All
G.W.
MARY MINDS HER BUSINESS
So that you may understand my heroine, I am going to write a preface and
tell you about her forebears.
In the latter part of the seventeenth century, there was a young
blacksmith in our part of the country named Josiah Spencer. He had a
quick eye, a quick hand and a quicker temper.
Because of his quick eye he married a girl named Mary McMillan. Because
of his quick hand, he was never in need of employment. And because of his
quick temper, he left the place of his birth one day and travelled west
until he came to a ford which crossed the Quinebaug River.
There, before the week was over, he had bought from Oeneko, the Indian
chief, five hundred acres on each side of the river--land in those days
being the cheapest known commodity. Hewing his own timber and making his
own hardware, he soon built a shop of his own, and the ford being on the
main road between Hartford and the Providence Plantations, it wasn't long
before he had plenty of business.
Above the ford was a waterfall. Josiah put in a wheel, a grist mill and a
saw mill.
By that time Mary, his wife, had presented him with one of the two
greatest gifts that a woman can ever bestow, and presently a sign was
painted over the shop:
JOSIAH SPENCER & SON
In course of time young Josiah made his first horse-shoe and old Josiah
made his last.
On a visit to New Amsterdam, the young man had already fallen in love
with a girl named Matilda Sturtevant. They were married in 1746 and had
one of those round old-fashioned families when twelve children seemed to
be the minimum and anything less created comment.
Two of the boys were later killed in the Revolution, another became
Supreme Court justice, but the likeliest one succeeded to the business of
Josiah Spencer & Son, which was then making a specialty of building
wagons--and building them so well that the shop had to be increased in
size again and again until it began to have the appearance of quite a
respectable looking factory.
The third Spencer to own the business married a Yankee--Patience
Babcock--but Patience's only son married a French-Canadian girl--for even
then the Canadians were drifting down into our part of the country.
So by that time, as you can see--and this is an important part of my
preface--the Spencer stock was a thrifty mixture of Yankee, Irish,
Scotch, Dutch and French blood--although you would never have guessed it
if you had simply seen the name of one Josiah Spencer following another
as the owner of the Quinebaug Wagon Works.
In the same year that the fourth Josiah Spencer succeeded to the
business, a bridge was built to take the place of the ford and the
waterfall was fortified by a dam. By that time a regular little town had
formed around the factory.
The town was called New Bethel.
It was at this stage of their history that the Spencers grew proud,
making a hobby of their family tree and even possibly breathing a sigh
over vanished coats-of-arms.
The fifth of the line, for instance, married a Miss Copleigh of Boston.
He built a big house on Bradford Hill and brought her home in a tally-ho.
The number of her trunks and the size of her crinolines are spoken of to
this day in our part of the country--also her manner of closing her eyes
when she talked, and holding her little finger at an angle when drinking
her tea. She had only one child--fortunately a son.
This son was the grandfather of our heroine. So you see we are getting
warm at last.
The grandfather of our heroine was probably the greatest Spencer of them
all.
Under his ownership the factory was rebuilt of brick and stone. He
developed the town both socially and industrially until New Bethel bade
fair to become one of the leading cities in the state. He developed the
water power by building a great dam above the factory and forming a lake
nearly ten miles long. He also developed an artillery wheel which has
probably rolled along every important road in the civilized world.
Indeed he was so engaged in these enterprises that he didn't marry until
he was well past forty-five. Then one spring, going to Charlestown to buy
his season's supply of pine, he came back with a bride from one of the
oldest, one of the most famous families in all America.
There were three children to this marriage--one son and two daughters.
I will tell you about the daughters in my first chapter--two delightful
old maids who later had a baby between them--but first I must tell you
about the seventh and last Josiah.
In his youth he was wild.
This may have been partly due to that irreducible minimum of Original Sin
which (they say) is in all of us--and partly due to his cousin Stanley.
Now I don't mean to say for a moment that Stanley Woodward was a natural
born villain. I don't think people are born that way at all. At first the
idea probably struck him as a sort of a joke. "If anything happens to
young Josiah," I can imagine him thinking to himself with a grin, "I may
own this place myself some day.... Who knows?"
And from that day forward, he unconsciously borrowed from the spiders--if
you can imagine a smiling spider--and began to spin.
Did young Josiah want to leave the office early? Stanley smilingly did
his work for him.
Was young Josiah late the next morning? Stanley smilingly hid his
absence.
Did young Josiah yearn for life and adventure? Stanley spun a few more
webs and they met that night in Brigg's livery stable.
It didn't take much of this--unexpectedly little in fact--the last of the
Spencers resembling one of those giant firecrackers of bygone days--the
bigger the cracker, the shorter the fuse. Some say he married an actress,
which was one of the things which were generally whispered when I was a
boy. A Russian they said she was--which never failed to bring another
gasp. Others say she was a beautiful bare-back rider in a circus and wore
tights--which was another of the things which used to be whispered when I
was a boy, and not even then unless the children had first been sent from
the room and only bosom friends were present.
Whatever she was, young Josiah disappeared with her, and no one saw him
again until his mother died in the mansion on the hill. Some say she died
of a broken heart, but I never believed in that, for if sorrow could
break the human heart I doubt if many of us would be alive to smile at
next year's joys. However that may be, I do believe that young Josiah
thought that he was partly responsible for his mother's death. He turned
up at the funeral with a boy seven years old; and bit by bit we learned
that he was separated from his wife and that the court had given him
custody of their only child.
As you have probably noticed, there are few who can walk so straight as
those who have once been saved from the crooked path. There are few so
intolerant of fire as those poor, charred brands who have once been
snatched from the burning.
After his mother's funeral young Spencer settled down to a life of
atonement and toil, till first his father and then even his cousin
Stanley were convinced of the change which had taken place in the
one-time black sheep of the family.
By that time the patents on the artillery wheel had expired and a
competition had set in which was cutting down the profits to zero. Young
Josiah began experimenting on a new design which finally resulted in a
patent upon a combination ball and roller bearing. This was such an
improvement upon everything which had gone before, that gradually Spencer
& Son withdrew from the manufacture of wagons and wheels and re-designed
their whole factory to make bearings.
This wasn't done in a month or two, nor even in a year or two. Indeed the
returned prodigal grew middle aged in the process. He also saw the
possibilities of harnessing the water power above the factory to make
electric current. This current was sold so cheaply that more and more
factories were drawn to New Bethel until the fame of the city's products
were known wherever the language of commerce was spoken.
At the height of his son's success, old Josiah died, joining those silent
members of the firm who had gone before. I often like to imagine the
whole seven of them, ghostly but inquisitive, following the subsequent
strange proceedings with noiseless steps and eyes that missed nothing;
and in particular keeping watch upon the last living Josiah Spencer--a
heavy, powerfully built man with a look of melancholy in his eyes and a
way of sighing to himself as though asking a question, and then answering
it with a muffled "Yes... Yes..." This may have been partly due to the
past and partly due to the future, for the son whom he had brought home
with him began to worry him--a handsome young rascal who simply didn't
have the truth in him at times, and who was buying presents for girls
almost before he was out of short trousers.
His name was Paul--"Paul Vionel Olgavitch Spencer," he sometimes proudly
recited it, and whenever we heard of that we thought of his mother.
The older Paul grew, the handsomer he grew. And the handsomer he grew,
the wilder he became and the less the truth was in him. At times he would
go all right for a while, although he was always too fond of the river
for his aunts' peace of mind.
At a bend below the dam he had found a sheltered basin, covered with
grass and edged with trees. And there he liked to lie, staring up into
the sky and dreaming those dreams of youth and adventure which are the
heritage of us all.
Or else he would sit and watch the river, although he couldn't do it
long, for its swift movement seemed to fascinate him and excite him, and
to arouse in him the desire to follow it--to follow it wherever it went.
These were his quieter moods.
Ordinarily there was something gipsy-like, something Neck-or-Nothing
about him. A craving for excitement seemed to burn under him like a fire.
The full progression of correction marched upon him and failed to make
impression: arguments, orders, warnings, threats, threshings and the
stoppage of funds: none of these seemed to improve him in the least.
Josiah's two sisters did their best, but they could do nothing, either.
"I wouldn't whip him again, Josiah," said Miss Cordelia one night,
timidly laying her hand upon her brother's arm. "He'll be all right when
he's a little older.... You know, dear ... you were rather wild, yourself
... when you were young.... Patty and I were only saying this morning
that if he takes after you, there's really nothing to worry about--"
"He's God's own punishment," said Josiah, looking up wildly. "I
know--things I can't tell you. You remember what I say: that boy will
disgrace us all...."
He did.
One morning he suddenly and simply vanished with the factory pay-roll and
one of the office stenographers.
In the next twelve months Josiah seemed to age at least twelve years--his
cousin Stanley watching him closely the while--and then one day came the
news that Paul Spencer had shot and killed a man, while attempting to
hold him up, somewhere in British Columbia.
If you could have seen Josiah Spencer that day you might have thought
that the bullet had grazed his own poor heart.
"It's God's punishment," he said over and over. "For seven generations
there has been a Spencer & Son--a trust that was left to me by my father
that I should pass it on to my son. And what have I done...!"
Whereupon he made a gesture that wasn't far from despair--and in that
gesture, such as only those can make who know in their hearts that they
have shot the albatross, this preface brings itself to a close and at
last my story begins.
CHAPTER I
"Patty," said Miss Cordelia one morning, "have you noticed Josiah
lately?"
"Yes," nodded Miss Patricia, her eyes a little brighter than they should
have been.
"Do you know," continued the other, her voice dropping to a whisper, "I'm
afraid--if he keeps on--the way he is--"
"Oh, no, Cordelia! You know as well as I do--there has never been
anything like that in our family."
Nevertheless the two sisters looked at each other with awe-stricken eyes,
and then their arms went around each other and they eased their hearts in
the immemorial manner.
"You know, he worries because we are the last of the Spencers," said
Cordelia, "and the family dies with us. Even if you or I had children, I
don't think he would take it so hard--"
A wistful look passed over their faces, such as you might expect to see
on those who had repented too late and stood looking through St. Peter's
gate at scenes in which they knew they could never take a part.
"But I am forty-eight," sighed Cordelia.
"And I--I am fifty--"
The two sisters had been writing when this conversation started. They
were busy on a new generation of the Spencer-Spicer genealogy, and if you
have ever engaged on a task like that, you will know the correspondence
it requires. But now for a time their pens were forgotten and they sat
looking at each other over the gatelegged table which served as desk.
They were still both remarkably good-looking, though marked with that
delicacy of material and workmanship--reminiscent of old china--which
seems to indicate the perfect type of spinster-hood. Here and there in
their hair gleamed touches of silver, and their cheeks might have
reminded you of tinted apples which had lightly been kissed with the
frost.
And so they sat looking at each other, intently, almost breathlessly,
each suddenly moved by the same question and each wishing that the other
would speak.
For the second time it was Cordelia who broke the silence.
"Patty--!"
"Yes, dear?" breathed Patty, and left her lips slightly parted.
"I wonder if Josiah--is too old--to marry again! Of course," she
hurriedly added, "he is fifty-two--but it seems to me that one of the
Spicers--I think it was Captain Abner Spicer--had children until he was
sixty--although by a younger wife, of course."
They looked it up and in so doing they came across an Ezra Babcock,
father-in-law of the Third Josiah Spencer, who had had a son proudly born
to him in his sixty-fourth year.
They gazed at each other then, those two maiden sisters, like two
conspirators in their precious innocence.
"If we could find Josiah a young wife--" said the elder at last.
"Oh, Cordelia!" breathed Patty, "if, indeed, we only could!"
Which was really how it started.
As I think you will realize, it would be a story in itself to describe
the progress of that gentle intrigue--the consultations, the gradual
eliminations, the search, the abandonment of the search--(which came
immediately after learning of two elderly gentlemen with young wives--but
no children!)--the almost immediate resumption of the quest because of
Josiah's failing health--and finally then the reward of patience,
the pious nudge one Sunday morning in church, the whispered "Look,
Cordelia, that strange girl with the Pearsons--no, the one with the red
cheeks--yes, that one!"--the exchange of significant glances, the
introduction, the invitation and last, but least, the verification of the
fruitfulness of the vine.
The girl's name was Martha Berger and her home was in California. She had
come east to attend the wedding of her brother and was now staying with
the Pearsons a few weeks before returning west. Her age was twenty-six.
She had no parents, very little money, and taught French, English and
Science in the high school back home.
"Have you any brothers or sisters!" asked Miss Cordelia, with a side
glance toward Miss Patty.
"Only five brothers and five sisters," laughed Martha.
For a moment it might be said that Miss Cordelia purred.
"Any of them married?" she continued.
"All but me."
"My dear! ... You don't mean to say that they have made you an aunt
already?"
Martha paused with that inward look which generally accompanies mental
arithmetic.
"Only about seventeen times," she finally laughed again.
When their guest had gone, the two sisters fairly danced around each
other.
"Oh, Patty!" exulted Miss Cordelia, "I'm sure she's a fruitful vine!"