A minute later I saw him crossing the lawn to the observatory. Well, what to do I didn"t know. Mary said to go after him; but Marie said nay, nay. And in spite of being Mary just now, I let Marie have her way.
Rush after him and tell him he"d forgotten to hear my lessons?
_Father_? Well, I guess not! Besides, it wasn"t my fault. _I_ was there all ready. It wasn"t my blame that he wasn"t there to hear me.
But he might remember and come back. Well, if he did, _I"d_ be there.
So I went to one of those bookcases and pulled out a touch-me-not book from behind the gla.s.s door. Then I sat down and read till the supper-bell rang.
Father was five minutes late to supper. I don"t know whether he looked at me or not. I didn"t dare to look at him--until Aunt Jane said, in her chilliest manner:
"I trust your daughter had good lessons, Charles."
I _had_ to look at him then. I just couldn"t look anywhere else. So I was looking straight at him when he gave that funny little startled glance into my eyes. And into his eyes then there crept the funniest, dearest little understanding twinkle--and I suddenly realized that Father, _Father_, was laughing with me at a little secret between _us_. But "t was only for a second. The next moment his eyes were very grave and looking at Aunt Jane.
"I have no cause to complain--of my daughter"s lessons to-day," he said very quietly. Then he glanced over at me again. But I had to look away _quick_, or I would have laughed right out.
When he got up from the table he said to me: "I shall expect to see you to-morrow in the library at four, Mary."
And Mary answered, "Yes, Father," polite and proper, as she should; but Marie inside was just chuckling with the joke of it all.
The next day I watched again at four for Father to come up the walk; and when he had come in I went down to the library. He was there in his pet seat before the fireplace. (Father always sits before the fireplace, whether there"s a fire there or not. And sometimes he looks _so_ funny sitting there, staring into those gray ashes just as if it was the liveliest kind of a fire he was watching.)
As I said, he was there, but I had to speak twice before he looked up.
Then, for a minute, he stared vaguely.
"Eh? Oh! Ah--er--yes, to be sure," he muttered then, "You have come with your books. Yes, I remember."
But there wasn"t any twinkle in his eyes, nor the least little bit of an understanding smile; and I _was_ disappointed. I _had_ been looking for it. I knew then, when I felt so suddenly lost and heart-achey, that I had been expecting and planning all day on that twinkly understanding smile. You know you feel worse when you"ve just found a father and then lost him!
And I had lost him. I knew it the minute he sighed and frowned and got up from his seat and said, oh, yes, to be sure. He was just Dr.
Anderson then--the man who knew all about the stars, and who had been unmarried to Mother, and who called me "Mary" in an of-course-you"re-my-daughter tone of voice.
Well, he took my books and heard my lessons, and told me what I was to study next day. He"s done that two days now.
Oh, I"m so tired of being Mary! And I"ve got more than four whole months of it left. I didn"t get Mother"s letter to-day. Maybe that"s why I"m specially lonesome to-night.
_July first_.
School is done, both the regular school and my school. Not that my school has amounted to much. Really it hasn"t. Oh, for three or four days he asked questions quite like just a teacher. Then he got to talking. Sometimes it would be about something in the lessons; sometimes it would be about a star, or the moon. And he"d get so interested that I"d think for a minute that maybe the understanding twinkle would come into his eyes again. But it never did.
Sometimes it wasn"t stars and moons, though, that he talked about. It was Boston, and Mother. Yes, he did. He talked a lot about Mother. As I look back at it now, I can see that he did. He asked me all over again what she did, and about the parties and the folks that came to see her. He asked again about Mr. Harlow, and about the concert, and the young man who played the violin, and what was his name, and how old was he, and did I like him. And then, right in the middle of some question, or rather, right in the middle of some _answer_ I was giving _him_, he would suddenly remember he was hearing my lessons, and he would say, "Come, come, Mary, what has this to do with your lessons?"
Just as if I was to blame! (But, then, we women always get the blame, I notice.) And then he"d attend strictly to the books for maybe five whole minutes--before he asked another question about that party, or the violinist.
Naturally the lessons haven"t amounted to much, as you can imagine.
But the term was nearly finished, anyway; and my _real_ school is in Boston, of course.
It"s vacation now. I do hope _that_ will amount to something!
_August first._
It hasn"t, so far--I mean vacation. Really, what a world of disappointment this is! How on earth I"m going to stand being Mary for three months more I don"t know. But I"ve got to, I suppose. I"ve been here May, June, and July; and that leaves August, September, and October yet to come. And when I think of Mother and Boston and Marie, and the darling good times down there where you"re really _wanted_, I am simply crazy.
If Father wanted me, really wanted me, I wouldn"t care a bit. I"d be willing to be Mary six whole months. Yes, I"d be _glad_ to. But he doesn"t. I"m just here by order of the court. And what can you do when you"re nothing but a daughter by order of the court?
Since the lessons have stopped, Father"s gone back to his "Good-morning, Mary," and "Good-night," and nothing else, day in and day out. Lately he"s got so he hangs around the house an awful lot, too, so I can"t even do the things I did the first of the month. I mean that I"d been playing some on the piano, along at the first, after school closed. Aunt Jane was out in the garden a lot, and Father out to the observatory, so I just reveled in piano-playing till I found almost every time I did it that he had come back, and was in the library with the door open. So I don"t dare to play now.
And there isn"t a blessed thing to do. Oh, I have to sew an hour, and now I have to weed an hour, too; and Aunt Jane tried to have me learn to cook; but Susie (in the kitchen) flatly refused to have me "messing around," so Aunt Jane had to give that up. Susie"s the one person Aunt Jane"s afraid of, you see. She always threatens to leave if anything goes across her wishes. So Aunt Jane has to be careful. I heard her tell Mrs. Small next door that good hired girls were awfully scarce in Andersonville.
As I said before, if only there was somebody here that wanted me. But there isn"t. Of course Father doesn"t. That goes without saying. And Aunt Jane doesn"t. That goes, too, without saying. Carrie Heywood has gone away for all summer, so I can"t have even her; and of course, I wouldn"t a.s.sociate with any of the other girls, even if they would a.s.sociate with me--which they won"t.
That leaves only Mother"s letters. They are dear, and I love them. I don"t know what I"d do without them. And yet, sometimes I think maybe they"re worse than if I didn"t have them. They make me so homesick, and I always cry so after I get them. Still, I know I just couldn"t live a minute if "twasn"t for Mother"s letters.
Besides being so lonesome there"s another thing that worries me, too; and that is, _this_--what I"m writing, I mean. The novel. It"s getting awfully stupid. Nothing happens. _Nothing!_ Of course, if "twas just a story I could make up things--lots of them--exciting, interesting things, like having Mother elope with the violinist, and Father shoot him and fall in love with Mother all over again, or else with somebody else, and shoot that one"s lover. Or maybe somebody"d try to shoot Father, and I"d get there just in time to save him. Oh, I"d _love_ that!
But this is a real story, so, of course, I can"t put in anything only just what happens; and _nothing happens_.
And that"s another thing. About the love story--I"m afraid there isn"t going to be one. Anyway, there isn"t a bit of a sign of one, yet, unless it"s Mother. And of course, I haven"t seen her for three months, so I can"t say anything about that.
Father hasn"t got one. I"m sure of that. He doesn"t like ladies. I know he doesn"t. He always runs away from them. But they don"t run away from him! Listen.
As I said before, quite a lot of them call here to see Aunt Jane, and they come lots of times evenings and late afternoons, and I know now why they do it. They come then because they think Father"ll be at home at that time; and they want to see him.
I know it now, but I never thought of it till the other day when I heard our hired girl, Susie, talking about it with Bridget, the Smalls" hired girl, over the fence when I was weeding the garden one day. Then I knew. It was like this:
Mrs. Darling had been over the night before as usual, and had stayed an awfully long time talking to Aunt Jane on the front piazza. Father had been there, too, awhile. She stopped him on his way into the house. I was there and I heard her. She said:
"Oh, Mr. Anderson, I"m so glad I saw you! I wanted to ask your advice about selling poor dear Mr. Darling"s law library."
And then she went on to tell him how she"d had an offer, but she wasn"t sure whether it was a good one or not. And she told him how highly she prized his opinion, and he was a man of such splendid judgment, and she felt so alone now with no strong man"s shoulder to lean upon, and she would be so much obliged if he only would tell her whether he considered that offer a good one or not.
Father hitched and ahemmed and moved nearer the door all the time she was talking, and he didn"t seem to hear her when she pushed a chair toward him and asked him to please sit down and tell her what to do; that she was so alone in the world since poor dear Mr. Darling had gone. (She always calls him poor dear Mr. Darling now, but Susie says she didn"t when he was alive; she called him something quite different. I wonder what it was.)
Well, as I said, Father hitched and fidgeted, and said he didn"t know, he was sure; that she"d better take wiser counsel than his, and that he was very sorry, but she really must excuse him. And he got through the door while he was talking just as fast as he could himself, so that she couldn"t get in a single word to keep him. Then he was gone.
Mrs. Darling stayed on the piazza two whole hours longer, but Father never came out at all again.
It was the next morning that Susie said this over the back-yard fence to Bridget:
"It does beat all how popular this house is with the ladies--after college hours!"
And Bridget chuckled and answered back:
"Sure it is! An" I do be thinkin" the Widder Darlin" is a heap fonder of Miss Jane now than she would have been had poor dear Mr. Darlin"
lived!"