Mary "came out" the winter after her graduation.
If she had been left to herself she would have dispensed with the
ceremony quite as cheerfully as she had dispensed with Miss Parsons'
School for Young Ladies. But in the first place her aunts were adamant,
and in the second place they were assisted by Helen. Helen hadn't been
going to finishing school for nothing. She knew the value of a proper
social introduction.
Indeed it was her secret ambition to outshine her cousin--an ambition
which was at once divined by her two aunts. Whereupon they groomed Mary
to such good purpose that I doubt if Society ever looked upon a lovelier
debutante.
She was dressed in chiffon, wore the Spencer pearls, and carried herself
with such unconscious charm that more than one who danced with her that
night felt a rapping on the door of his heart and heard the voice of love
exclaiming "Let me in!"
There was one young man in particular who showed her such attention that
the matrons either smiled or frowned at each other. Even Miss Cordelia
and Miss Patty were pleased, although of course they didn't show it for a
moment. He was a handsome, lazy-looking young rascal when he first
appeared on the scene, lounging against the doorway, drawling a little as
he talked to his friends--evidently a lion, bored in advance with the
whole proceeding and meaning to slip away as soon as he could. But when
his eye fell on Mary, he stared at her unobserved for nearly a minute and
his ennui disappeared into thin air.
"What's the matter, Wally?" asked one of his friends.
"James," he solemnly replied, "I'm afraid it's something serious. I only
hope it's catching." The next minute he was being introduced to Mary and
was studying her card.
"Some of these I can't dance," she warned him.
"Will you mark them with a tick, please--those you can't dance?"
Unsuspectingly she marked them.
"Good!" said he, writing his name against each tick. "We'll sit those
out. The next waltz, though, we will dance that."
"But that's engaged--'Chester A. Bradford,'" she read.
"Poor Brad--didn't I tell you?" asked Wally. "He fell downstairs a moment
ago and broke his leg."
That was the beginning of it.
The first dance they sat out Wally said to himself, "I shall kiss her, if
it's the last thing I ever do."
But he didn't.
The next dance they sat out he said to himself, "I shall kiss her if I
never do another thing as long as I live--"
But he didn't.
The last dance they sat out he said to himself, "I shall kiss her if I
hang for it."
He didn't kiss her, even then, but felt himself tremble a little as he
looked in her eyes. Then it was that the truth began to dawn upon him.
"I'm a gone coon," he told himself, and dabbed his forehead with his
handkerchief ...
"You've got him, all right," said Helen later, going to Mary's room
ostensibly to undress, but really to exchange those confidences without
which no party is complete.
"Got who?" asked Mary. And she a Bachelor of Arts!
"Oh, aren't you innocent! Wally Cabot, of course. Did he kiss you?"
"No, he did not!"
"Of course, if you don't want to tell--!"
"There's nothing to tell."
"There isn't? ... Oh, well, don't worry.... There soon will be."
Helen was right.
From that time forward Mary's own shadow was hardly less attentive than
Master Wally Cabot. His high-powered roadster was generally doing one of
three things. It was either going to Mary's, or coming from Mary's, or
taking a needed rest under Mary's porte cochère.
One day Mary suddenly said to her father, "Who was Paul?"
Fortunately for Josiah the light was on his back.
"Last night at the dance," she continued, "I heard a woman saying that I
didn't look the least bit like Paul, and I wondered who he was."
"Perhaps some one in her own family," said Josiah at last.
"Must have been," Mary carelessly nodded. They went on chatting and
presently Josiah was himself again.
"What are you going to do about Walter Cabot?" he asked, looking at her
with love in his sombre eyes.
Mary made a helpless gesture.
"Has he asked you yet?"
"Yes," she said in a muffled voice, "--often."
"Why don't you take him?"
Again Mary made her helpless gesture and, for a long moment she too was
on the point of opening her heart. But again heredity, training and
age-old tradition stood between them, finger on lip.
"I sometimes have such a feeling that I want to do something in the
world," she nearly told him. "And if I married Wally, it would spoil it
all. I sometimes have such dreams--such wonderful dreams of doing
something--of being somebody--and I know that if I married Wally I should
never be able to dream like that again--"
As you can see, that isn't the sort of a thing which a girl can very well
say to her father--or to any one else for that matter, except in fear and
hesitation.
"The way I am now," she nearly told him, "there are ever so many things
in life that I can do--ever so many doors that I can open. But if I marry
Wally, every door is locked but one. I can be his wife; that's all."
Obviously again, you couldn't expect a girl to speak like that,
especially a girl with dreamy eyes and shy. Nevertheless those were the
thoughts which often came to her at night, after she had said her prayers
and popped into bed and lay there in the dark turning things over in her
mind.
One night, for instance, after Wally had left earlier than usual, she
lay with her head snuggled on the pillow, full of vague dreams and
visions--vague dreams of greatness born of the sunsets and stars and
flowers--vague visions of proving herself worthy of the heritage of life.
"I don't think it's a bit fair," she thought. "As soon as a woman
marries--well, somehow, she's through. But it doesn't seem to make any
difference to the man. He can go right on doing the big things--the great
things--"
She stopped, arrested by the sound of a mandolin under her window. The
next moment the strains of Wally's tenor entered the room, mingled with
the moonlight and the scent of the syringa bush. A murmuring, deep-toned
trio accompanied him.
"Soft o'er the fountain
Ling'ring falls the southern moon--"
The beauty of it brought a thrill to the roots of Mary's hair--brought
quick tears to her eyes--and she was wondering if Wally was right, after
all--if love (as he often told her) was indeed the one great thing of
life and nothing else mattered, when her door opened and Helen came
twittering in.
"A serenade!" she whispered excitedly. "Im-a-gine!"
She tip-toed to the window and, kneeling on the floor, watched the
singers through the curtain--knowing well it wasn't for her, but drinking
deep of the moment.
Slowly, sweetly, the chorus grew fainter--fainter--
"Nita--Juanita
Ask thy soul if we should part--"
"What do you think of that!" said Helen, leaning over and giving her
cousin a squeeze and a kiss. "He had the two Garde boys and Will Thompson
with him. I thought he was leaving earlier than usual tonight; didn't
you? But a serenade! I wonder if the others heard it, too!"
Miss Patty and Miss Cordelia had both heard it, and Helen had hardly gone
when they came pattering in--each as proud as Punch of Mary for having
caused such miracles to perform--and gleeful, too, that they had lived in
the land long enough to hear a real, live serenade. And after they had
kissed her and gone, Ma'm Maynard came in with a pretty little speech in
French. So that altogether Mary held quite a reception in bed. As one
result, her feeling toward Wally melted into something like tenderness,
and if it hadn't been for the tragic event next morning, the things which
I have to tell you might never have taken place.
"I wonder if your father heard it," said Miss Patty at the breakfast
table next morning.
"I wonder!" laughed Mary. "I think I'll run in and see."
According to his custom Josiah breakfasted early and had gone to his den
to look over his mail. Mary passed gaily through the library, but it
wasn't long before she was back at the dining room door, looking as
though she had seen a ghost.
"Come--come and look," she choked. "Something--something terrible--"
Josiah sat, half collapsed, in his chair. Before him, on the desk, lay
his mail. Some he had read. Some he would never, never read.
"He must have had a stroke," said Miss Cordelia, her arms around Mary;
and looking at her brother she whispered, "I think something upset him."
When they had sent for the doctor and had taken Mary away, they returned
to look over the letters which Josiah had opened as his last mortal act.
"I don't see anything in these that could have bothered him," said Miss
Cordelia, fearfully looking.
"What's this?" asked Miss Patty, picking up an empty envelope from the
floor.
It was post-marked "Rio de Janeiro" and the date showed that it had taken
three weeks to make the journey.
"I have some recollection of that writing," said Miss Cordelia.
"So have I," said Miss Patty in a low voice, "but where's the letter?"
Again it was she who made the discovery.
"That must be it," she said. "His ash tray is cleaned out every morning."
It was a large, brass tray and in it was the char of a paper that had
been burned. This ash still lay in its folds and across its surface,
black on black, could be seen a few lines which resembled the close of a
letter.
"Can you read it?" she asked.
Miss Cordelia bent over, and as a new angle of light struck the tray, the
words became as legible as though they had just been written.
"I thought I knew the writing," whispered Miss Cordelia, and lowering her
voice until her sister had to hang breathless upon the movement of her
lips, she added "Oh, Patty ... We all thought he was dead ... No wonder
it killed poor Josiah ..."
Their arms went around each other. Their glances met.
"I know," whispered Miss Patty, her lips suddenly gone dry, "....It was
from Paul...!"