And then Tom came tiptoeing in and knocked over a book that had been left on the bedside table, and Jennie pretended to wake up and ask what he had been doing. She yawned and tried to act indifferent but her hands and feet were like ice and she felt that her voice was not natural.
Tom, however, did not notice. He was too much engrossed in his own affairs.
" You awake, Jennie ? Queer thing! IVe been looking through Dad's papers and I can't find a sign of a will. I was sure he made one. He always spoke as if he had."
" Mmmmm! " mumbled Jennie sleepily. " Will that make any trouble? Can't you get hold of the property ? "
" Oh, yes, get the property all right. Sort of makes things easier. The law dirides things equally. But of course I'll look after the whole thing in any event. Marion doesn't know anything about business. Gosh, I didn't know it was so late! Let's get to sleep. Fm dead tired. Got a hard day to-morrow, too! " and Tom turned over and was soon sound asleep.
CHAPTER II
" This house ought to have a thorough cleaning," announced Jennie coming downstairs a few days after the funeral. " It hasn't been cleaned right since Pather has been sick. I couldn't really do it alone, and of course I knew you couldn't spare the time to help. Suppose we get at it this morning. It'll do you good to pull out of the glooms and get to w^ork."
Marion reflected in her heart that it was not exactly lack of work from which she had been suffering, but she assented readily enough. She had not been able to do much housework for the last five years, and it probably had been hard on Jennie. So she put on an old dress and went meekly to work, washing windows vigorously, going through closets and drawers and trunks, putting away and gKnng away things of her father and mother. That was hard work. It took the strength right out of her to feel that these material things, which had belonged to them and been as it were a part of them, were useless now. They would never need them any more.
Of course most of her mother's things had long
ago been disposed of, but there were her father's
clothes, and the special things that had belonged to 24
his dear invalidism. It was hard to put them away forever. Yet Jennie demanded that they be sent to a hospital.
" That bed table and the electric fan and the little electric heater and the hotwater heater. They give me the creeps to look at them. It isn't good to have such reminders around, Marion. You want to get away from everything that belonged to the sickroom, I for one want to forget sickness and death for a while and have a little good time living."
Marion felt that Jennie was a bit heartless in the way she talked about it, but she realized that it would be better to put the things where they would be doing someone some good, so she packed them tenderly away and sent them to a poor little new hospital, in which her church was interested, and sighed as she took down the soft curtains from the invalid's windows and washed the windows and set them wide, realizing that the sunshine would not hurt tired eyes in that room any more, and could be let in freely without hindrance.
"Would you mind if Tom and I were to take Father's room now ? " asked Jennie the next day. " Then Bobby and the baby could have the room you've been occupying and you can go back to the room you used to have before w^e came. It would
change things around a Httle and not seem so gloomy in the house, don't you think? "
The house didn't seem gloomy to Marion the way it was, and she felt it rather sudden to tear up her father's room and give it to another use, but of course it was sensible and better in every way for the children to be next to their father and mother. So she said she didn't mind, and they set to work moving furniture and changing things from one closet to another.
And after all, Marion rather enjoyed getting back to her old sunny room at the back of the house, with the bay window her father had built for her, her own little bookcase full of books, and her own pretty furniture her father and she had picked out years before. It brought sweet and tender memories and made her feel that life was a little more tolerable now. She could retire to her own pleasant room and try to feel like her little-girl self again, lonely and sad, of course, but still at home in the room that her father had made for her just after her mother had died, the sunniest, prettiest room in the house, she felt. It was a wonder that Jennie didn't like it. Still, of course, she wanted to have the children nearer, and where they had been sleeping in the guest room was too far away for comfort. Now Nannie could
come down from the small, third-story room and take the room the children had been occupying. It was better all around. But yet, she felt a lingering wist fulness about that front room where the invalid had lain so long. It was hard to feel its door shut, and to know it did not belong to her anymore. It seemed as if Jennie was so anxious to wipe out all memory of her father.
But Jennie gave Marion very little time to meditate over these things. She seemed restlessly eager to keep something going all the time. At breakfast one morning she said to Marion:
" Marion, I don't see why you don't get out and see your friends now. There's nothing to hinder. Have a little company in and make the place lively. It will do you good. It's been so gloomy all the time Father was sick. Let's have some life now. Don't you want to ask some friends in to dinner or lunch or something? "
Marion roused from her sad thoughts to smile:
" Why, I guess not, Jennie. I don't know who I'd ask I'm sure. Nearly all my old school friends are married or gone away or interested in their own affairs. I really haven't seen any of them for so long they would think it queer if I hunted them out now. I never did go out much you know. When I was in
school I was too busy, and after Mother got sick I had no time/'
" Well, you're too young to get that way. You'll be an old maid before you know it. Tom, don't you think Marion ought to get out more ? "
'* Why, if she wants to," said Tom good-naturedly. " Marion always was kind of quiet."
" Now, Tom, that's no way to talk. You know Marion ought to get out among young folks and have good times. She's been mewed up too long."
But the tears suddenly came into Marion's eyes and her lip quivered:
" Don't, please, Jennie! " she protested. '* I wasn't mewed up. I loved to be with Father."
" Oh, of course," said Jennie sharply, " we all know you were a good daughter and all that. You certainly deserve a lot of praise. But you owe it to yourself to go out more now. It isn't right. Shut up in a city house. If we only lived out in the country now it would be different."
Marion didn't quite see why the country would be any better but she tried to answer pleasantly:
" Well, Jennie, I am going back and take my old Sunday School class if they still need me. I had thought of that."
" Oh, a Sunday School class! " sniffed Jennie.
** Well, if that pleases you, of course. But I should think you'd want to get in with some nice young folks again. My land! this house is as silent as the tomb! Why, I had lots of friends in Port Harris before we came here to be with you. They would run in every day, and we'd telephone a lot in between. They do that in the country or in a small town. But in a city nobody comes near you. They aren't friendly."
" I suppose you are lonely, Jennie,'' said Marion apologetically. " I hadn't realized it, I have been so occupied ever since you came."
" Oh, I'm never lonely," said Jennie, tossing her head. " I'm thinking of you. I could be alone with my house and my children from morning to night and never mind it. It's you I'm worrying about."
Marion looked at her sister-in-law in mild surprise. It was so new for Jennie to care what became of her. Jennie had manifested very little interest in her during the years she had been living with them. What had got into Jennie ?
When they came to clean the den Jennie insisted upon doing it herself, saying she thought it would be too hard for Marion yet awhile, it would remind her of her father too much. Marion tried to protest, but when she got up the next morning she found that
Jennie had a
risen before her and finished cleaning the room entirely, so that there was nothing left for Marion to do in there. She stood for a moment looking around on the bare room with its book-lined walls, its desk and worn old chair, and the little upholstered chair where she used to sit by her father's side and study her lessons in the dear old days when he was well and she was still in school. Then she dropped into the desk chair with her head down on the desk, and cried for a minute.
A wish came into her heart that she might have her house to herself for a little while. Just a little while. Of course it was nice of Jennie to be willing to come there and do the work all these years while there had been sickness. Of course Jennie had given up things to come. She had come away off from her own father and mother who lived up in Vermont, and she had not liked the city very well. But oh, if she just wouldn't take things into her own hands quite so much and try to make her sister do everything she thought she ought. If she only hadn't come into this sacred room and done the cleaning! It seemed to Marion that the spirit of the room had been hurt by such unsympathetic touches as Jennie would have given.
But that was silly of course! So Marion raised
her head and wiped her eyes and summoned a smile to go out and help Nannie wash the breakfast dishes, but somehow day after day the strange, hurt feeling-grew in her heart, that all the precious things of her soul life were being commonized by Jennie, yet Jennie was doing it out of kindness to her. If only there were some way to let Jennie know without hurting her feelings. Marion was gentle and shy and couldn't bear to hurt people's feelings.
Then Marion began to think about what Jennie had said. Perhaps she ought to get out more. Perhaps she ought to hunt up her old friends.
So she went to church the next Sabbath. She had always loved to go to church, but it had been so long since she had been able to leave her father and go, that it seemed strange now to her to be sitting alone in the old seat where she and Father had sat.
She had dreaded this and had even ventured to suggest to Tom that perhaps he would go with her. Jennie had declined most decidedly. She couldn't leave the baby. But Tom said he had to see a man who had some property for sale and he wanted to find out about it. So she had to come alone.
But it was good to be there again, after all, in spite of the loneliness, and she had a feeling that her father would be pleased she had gone.
The minister came down and spoke to her kindly. He asked if she wouldn't come back and take her old Sunday School class again. One of the ladies came over and asked her if she wouldn't come out to the Mite Society social and help wait on the folks, they had so much trouble getting girls to come and be Avaitresses.
Marion agreed to come although she shrank tremendously from it. But it was something she could do, of course, and she felt she ought not to refuse. Jennie was most enthusiastic about it and offered to go with her, but when the evening came Jennie had a cold and so she had to go alone.
As she entered the big Sunday School room where the social was to be held she had an instant of hesitation. It seemed to her she could not go through a long evening all alone with strangers. She had always been a shy girl, and her five years of service caring for Mother and then Father had made her still more so. She was at home among books, not humans. If her books could have come alive and been present at that gathering, how gladly would she have walked in and conversed with their characters, one by one, thrilled by the thought of meeting those she knew so well. But a lot of people frightened her. She liked to be on the outside of
things and watch. She loved to weave stories to herself about people, but to have to move among them and make conversation was terrible. She had purposely come late to avoid having to sit and talk a long while with someone while people were gathering.
But a group of merry girls was coming in behind her and she hated to have them stare at her, so she hurried in and took off her coat and hat in the ladies' parlor which was already well decorated with hats and wraps.
The bevy of eager girls entered just as she turned to go out, shouting and laughing, gay in bright-colored dresses, combing their bobbed locks, some of them even dabbing on lipstick, holding up their tiny hand mirrors and chaffing one another loudly in a new kind of slang which Marion did not in the least understand. They were very young girls, of course, but some of the things they were saying were shocking. Could it be that girls, nice girls, girls who belonged to the church and Sunday School talked like that nowadays ?
She shrank away from them and went into the main room.
For a moment she was dazed before the babel of tongues and the medley of gay dresses. Someone was playing the piano and everybody seemed trying 3
to talk as loud as possible to be heard above it. She felt somehow a stranger and an alien.
She began to look about for someone she knew.
Off at the other side of the room were a group of young people, three of them old schoolmates of Marion's. Mechanically she made her way toward them, half hoping they might welcome her to their midst. There was Isabel Cresson. She used to help Isabel with her algebra and geometry problems in school. She had never been especially intimate with her, but at least she was not a stranger.
But when she arrived at the corner where the young people had established themselves she was not met with cordiality. Anna Reese and Betty Bryson bowed to her, but Isabel Cresson only stared.
" Oh, why you're Marion Warren, aren't you ? " she said with a condescending lift of her eyebrows. "How are you? It's ages since I've seen you. I thought you must have moved away."
Marion tried to explain that her father had been ill and she had not been able to be out, but Isabel was not listening. She had merely swept Marion with a disconcerting glance which made her suddenly aware that her dress was out of date, and her shoes were shabby, and then turned her eyes back
to the young men with whom she had been talking when Marion arrived.
Marion mechanically finished her sentence about her father's recent death, feeling most uncomfortable and wishing she had not explained at all. Isabel turned her glance back toward her long enough to say, *' Oh, too bad. I'm sorry, I'm sure," and then got up and moved across to the other side of the circle to speak to one of the young men. She did not excuse herself nor say she would be back. She did not suggest introducing Marion to the young men. No one made any attempt to move or include her in their circle. She dropped down in a chair just behind them, too hurt and bewildered to get herself away from them immediately.
The girls and men chattered on for some minutes ignoring her utterly. Once she heard Isabel say with a light laugh in response to something one of the men had said:
" Yes, one meets so many common people at a church affair, don't you think? I've coaxed Uncle Rad to let us go to some more exclusive church out in a suburb you know, or uptown, but he doesn't see it. He was born and brought up in this church and nothing will do but we've all got to come. I've struck, however. I simply can't stand the affairs
they have here constantly. I only came to-night because I was asked to sing. Say Ed, did you hear that Jefferson Lyman is home ? That's another reason I came. They say he is coming here to-night just for old times' sake. I don't much believe it but I took the chance."
"And who is Jefferson Lyman?" asked the young man who was evidently a newcomer in town.
"Oh, mercy, don't you know Jeff? Why he's an old sweetheart of mine. We used to be crazy about each other when we were kids. Walked back and forth to school together and all that. Jeff's been abroad for five or six years, and they say he's tremendously sophisticated. I'm just dying to see him."
" But who is he ? Does he live around here ? Not one of the Lymans, from the Lyman firm? "
" Sure, boy! " said Isabel. " He's the Lyman himself, all there is left. Didn't you know it? His father and his uncle are both dead. That's why he's come home. He's to be the head of the firm now. He's young, too, for such a position. But he's been abroad a lot. That makes a difference. I'm simply crazy to see him an
d renew our acquaintance. Yes, he went abroad for the war, of course, was in aviation, won a lot of medals and things; and then he stayed over there, looking after the firm's interests
part of the time, travelling and studying. He's a great bookworm, you know. But he's stunningly handsome, if he hasn't changed, and he's no end rich. My soul! He owns the whole business and it's been going ever since the ark, hasn't it? He's got a house in town right on the avenue with a picture gallery in it; that house next the Masonic Club, yes, that's it, and an estate out beyond the township line on a hillside where you can see for miles, and a whole flock of automobiles, and an army of servants, and a seashore place up in New England with a wonderful garden right out on the beach almost, among the rocks. Oh, it's perfectly darling. We motored past it last summer on our trip. I'd adore to live in it! "
" Gracious! " said Betty Bryson. " If he's got all that why does he come to a church social? I'm sure I wouldn't bother to if I had all that.'*
" Well, perhaps he won't come," said Isabel. ''I'm sure I wouldn't either. But they say he's interested in the church because his father helped to found it, and he always comes when he's home and there's anything unusual going on. You know this is the minister's twenty-fifth anniversary, and there's just a chance he may come. I should think he'd be disillusioned, though, wouldn't you ? All these com-
mon people. Why some of them aren't even dressed up decently! " and Isabel lowered her voice and cast a covert glance about. Marion somehow felt she was looking at her. She rose suddenly and made her swift way toward the kitchen. She would look up the woman who had asked her to come and say she would have to go home, she was not feeling well or something. She simply could not go around among those dressed-up girls. She would drop something, surely, feeling like this. Oh, why had she been led to come to a scene like this? Why did they have things of this sort anyway? There was no worship in it, and what else could people want of it? How terrible those girls had been. Cruel and terrible. And Isabel Cresson, how she had changed and coarsened. Her lips and cheeks were painted. What a difference it made in her. She used to be a pretty girl with lovely golden curly hair, and now it was all cut off, close, like a boy's. That might be pretty on some people, perhaps, but Isabel looked too big and old for it.
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