"I"m never going to get married. I want to make a lot of money like Mr. O"Valley did--quick. Then we"ll go and live in Europe and maybe I"ll get a steam yacht and we"ll hunt for buried treasure," he could not refrain from adding.
"All right, dear. Just work hard for now and be my pal; we"ll let the future take care of itself. Another thing--we want to have as merry a Christmas as if mother were with us. It"s the only thing to do or else we"ll find ourselves morbid and unable to keep going."
Shamed tears were stoically refused entrance into Luke"s blue eyes. "I guess I"ll buy you a silver-backed comb and brush. I got some extra money."
"Oh, Luke--dear!" Mary made the fatal error of trying to hug him. He wriggled away.
"Trudy never came near us," he said, sternly.
Mary was silent.
"But Mr. O"Valley came like a regular----"
"Don"t you think you ought to get to bed?" Mary changed the subject.
"Sleep in the room next to mine if you like."
"When are you coming upstairs?"
"Soon. I want to look over the letters."
Luke rose and pretended a nonchalant stretching.
"Are you going to the office right away?"
"Not until New Year"s."
Something in the tired way she spoke evoked Luke"s pity and sent him away to smother his boy-man"s grief by promises of a glorious future in which his sister should live in the lap of luxury.
With its customary shock death had for the time being given Mary a false estimate of her mother and herself, the usual neurasthenic experience people undergo at such a time. It seemed, as she sat alone by the fire, that she must have been a strangely selfish and ungrateful child who misunderstood, neglected, and underestimated her mother, and she would be forced to live with reproachful memories the rest of her days. Each difference of opinion--and there had been little else--which had risen between them was magnified into brutal injustice on Mary"s part and righteous indignation on her mother"s.
This state of mind would find a proper readjustment in time but that did not comfort Mary at the present moment. Her mother was dead, and when a mother is gone so is the home unless someone bravely slips into the absent one"s place without delay and a.s.sumes its responsibilities and credits. For Luke"s sake this was what Mary had resolved to do.
As she could not sleep she rummaged in a cabinet containing old letters and mementos, which added fuel to her self-reproach and misery. She had borne up until now. Mary had always been the sort who could meet a crisis. Reaction had set in and she felt weak and faulty, longing for a strong shoulder upon which to cry and be forgiven for her imagined shortcomings. As she read yellowed letters of bygone days and lives, finding the record of a baby sister who had lived only a few days and of whom she had been in ignorance, a sc.r.a.p of her mother"s wedding gown, old tintypes--she realized that her family was no more and that everyone needed a family, a group of related persons whose interests, arguments, events, and achievements are of particular benefit and importance each to the other and who unconsciously challenge the world, no matter what secret disagreements there may be, to disrupt them if they dare! Now only Luke and Mary comprised the family.
After midnight Mary battled herself into the commonsense att.i.tude of going to bed. Wakening after the dreamless sleep of the exhausted she found low spirits and self-blame had somewhat diminished and though her state of mind was as serious as her gray eyes yet life was not utterly bereft of compensations.
Luke had thoughtfully risen early, clumsily tiptoeing about to get breakfast. Neighbours had furnished the customary donations of cake, pie, and doughnuts, which gave Luke the opportunity of spreading the breakfast table with these kingly viands and doing justice to them in no half-hearted fashion.
The sun streamed through the starched window curtains, and even the empty rocking-chair seemed serene in the relief from its morbid burden. Christmas was only a few days away. Mary decided that they should have a truly Christmas dinner, and that the words she had bravely spoken as a three-year-old runaway, found a mile from home and offered a.s.sistance by kindly strangers, should become quite true: "Not anybody need take care of myself," Mary had declared in dauntless fashion.
Later in the day Luke went to the office because Mary thought it best.
So when Steve called he found her alone, the same cheery fire burning in the grate, the same posies blooming in their window pots, and the smell of homemade bread pervading the house, Mary in a soft gray frock presiding over the walnut secretary.
"I"m sorry not to be at the office," she began, thinking he had come to persuade her to return. "Sit down. Well--you see," indicating the stacks of addressed envelopes--"I really can"t come back until after the New Year. Do you mind? There is a great deal to be seen to here, and I feel I"ve earned the right to loaf for a week. I want particularly to make the holidays happy for Luke."
"Of course you do. Besides, you never had your vacation."
"We"ll call this a vacation and I"ll work extra hard to prove to you that it was worth the granting." Still she did not understand that he wanted to talk to her for the very comfort of her companionship, to enjoy the fire, the smell of homemade bread, the atmosphere of shabby, lovely, everyday plain living.
"We"ll decide that later. I came to see just--you. Surprised? I wanted to ask if there is anything I can do for you. I want to help if I may."
"I"ve no exact plans. Just a definite idea of finding a small apartment and making it as homey as possible. I loathe apartments usually," she added, impulsively, "but we must have a home and I can"t a.s.sume a whole house. We will take our old things and fix them over, and the worst of them we"ll pa.s.s on to someone needing them badly enough not to mind what they are." She was quite frank in admitting the tortured walnut and the engravings.
"I"m glad you are not going to break up and board--though it"s none of my business. I brought some fruit. Do you mind?" He had been trying to hide behind the chair a mammoth basket of fruit.
"No. How lovely of you and Mrs. O"Valley!"
"It was not possible for Mrs. O"Valley to come yesterday," he forced himself to say. "She was very sorry and is going to call on you later."
"Thank you," Mary answered, briefly.
"You have a nice old place here. Mind if I stroll about and stare? I have very seldom been in rooms like this one. An orphan asylum, a ranch, a hall bedroom, star boarder, a club, a better club, the young palace--is my record. How different you seem in your home, Miss Faithful. Perhaps it"s the dress. I like soft gray----" he caught himself in time.
Mary was blushing. She called his attention to some wood carving her father had done. Presently Steve changed the subject back to himself.
"You don"t know how I"d like a slice of homemade bread," he pleaded.
"Must I turn up my coat collar and go stand at the side door?"
"I made it because Luke had eaten nothing but pie and cake. You really don"t want just bread?"
"I do--two slices, thick, stepmother size, please."
It seemed quite unreal to Mary as she was finally prevailed upon to bring in the tea wagon with the bread and jam tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs to accompany the steaming little kettle.
"Man alive," sighed Steve, stretching out leisurely, "I came to console you and I"m being consoled and fed--in body and mind--made fit for work.... I say, what do you think of letting the Boston merger be made public at the banquet on----" He began a budget of business detail upon which Mary commented, agreeing or objecting as she felt inclined.
It was so easy to become clear-headed about work--details became adjusted with magical speed--when one had a gray-eyed girl with a tilted freckled nose sitting opposite. The soft gray dress played a prominent part, too, even if the Gorgeous Girl would have been amused at its style and material. Besides this, there was the wood fire, the easy-chair with gay Turkey-red cushions designed for use and not admiration, and no yapping spaniel getting tangled up in one"s heels.
Before they realized it twilight arrived, and simultaneously they began to be self-conscious and formal, telling themselves that this would never do, no, indeed! Dear me, what queer things do happen all in a day! Still, it would always be a splendid thing to remember.
Certainly it was more edifying than to confront a nervous Gorgeous Girl who had discovered that her maid had been reading her personal notes.
"I sprinkled talc.u.m powder on them and the powder is all smudged away, so Jody has been spying. She is packing her things now and I shall refuse any references. But who will ever take such good care of me, Steve? And please get dressed; we are invited to the Marcus Baynes for dinner. They have a wonderful poet from Greenwich Village who is spending the holidays with them--long hair, green-velvet jacket, cigar-box ukulele, and all. A darling! And I am going to take Monster because he does black-and-white sketches and I want one of my ittey, bittey dirl." And so on.
Certainly it was more pleasing than to have a shamed and confused Trudy elegantly attired come dashing in with a jar of vanishing cream as a peace offering, presumably to smooth out any wrinkles of grief, and to explain hastily that it looked like a lack of feeling not to be at the funeral but most certainly it was not--no, indeed; it was just tending to business. She was sure Mary realized how essential it was not to offend the Gorgeous Girl. How dreadful it was for poor Mary.
She, Trudy, had cried her old eyes out thinking about it. Did Mary get the flowers she and Gay sent? She wished she could do something nice for Mary. How would she like to have a black-satin dress made at cost price? No? She wasn"t going to wear mourning! Well, it was very brave but it would certainly look queer and cause talk.... Gay"s moustache was coming on beautifully and no one at the bridge club had dared to spoof her!
At least there was some excuse for the delivery on Christmas Day of a parcel addressed to Miss Mary Faithful. It contained Steve"s card, some wonderful new books with an ivory paper knife slipped between them. And when Mary wrote to thank him she found herself inclosing a demure new silver dime, explaining:
"I must give you a coin because you gave me a knife, and unless I did so the old superst.i.tion might come true--and cut our "business affections" right straight in two!"
CHAPTER IX
Mary returned to the office with a premeditatedly formal air toward Steve. She had taken a New Year"s resolution to refrain from letting an impulsive expression of sympathy a.s.sume false meanings in her heart. On the other hand, Steve felt a boor for having sent the books.
He was so used to being called cave man and told not to do this or say that that he now pictured himself an awkward villain who had best confine himself to writing checks and growling at the business world.