Crimson Roses (2 page)

It was during one of these visits of Jennie to the sickroom that there seemed to come a change over the shadows on the white face. Jennie had breathed a syllable emphasizing it as it came, as some people will always make vocal a self-evident fact. Marion wanted to cry out, “Oh, keep still, won’t you,
please!
” but she held her lips closed tight and drew a deeper breath, trying to pray for strength.

The doctor was coming in. They could hear the street door open and close softly. The latch had been left off that he might come in when he wished. Marion looked up with relief. Ah! The doctor! Now, if there was anything to do, it would be done!

The doctor noted the change instantly. Marion could understand by the grave look on his face that it was serious business. He stepped silently to the bedside and laid practiced fingers on the frail wrist.

It was at that moment that the pale lips moved and the eyelids opened and her father looked at her.

Her hands were in his cold one instantly, and she thought she felt a faint pressure of the frail fingers.

“Bye, little girl!” he said faintly. “I have to leave you!” The eyelids closed, and she thought that he was gone, but he roused again and spoke in a clearer voice.

“You’ll have your home here—Tom will see to all that. He’ll understand—” The voice trailed off into silence.

Tom roused himself huskily and tried to speak, as if he were talking to one very far away.

“S’ all right, Dad. I’ll look after Marion. Don’t you worry.”

The sick man smiled.

“Of course!” he gasped, his breath nearly gone. “Good-bye!” His eyes searched the room.

“Jennie, too, and the children!”

But Jennie had slipped away suddenly.

Perhaps she had gone to her room to cry. Perhaps Jennie was fond of Father in her way after all, thought Marion.

But Jennie had not gone to cry. Jennie was stealing stealthily down the stairs, slipping like a ghost into the little den that had belonged to her father-in-law, where his big roll-top desk stood and his old desk chair, the walls lined with books. She closed the door carefully, snapped on the light, and pulled down the shade, then looked furtively around. It was not the first time that Jennie had visited that room.

Since her father-in-law had been ill, and Marion closely held in his service, she had managed to make herself thoroughly familiar with every corner of the house. She was not going in search of something. She knew exactly what she was after.

She took out a key from her pocket and went over to the desk. The key had been in her pocket for a week. She had found it while putting away things in her father-in-law’s closet. It had been on a key ring with other keys. She had taken it off of the ring one day when Marion was downstairs preparing some food for the invalid while he was asleep.

Jennie opened the right-hand lower drawer of the desk and moved some account books over. Then she took out a tin box from the back end of the drawer. She fit the key into the lock and opened the box. Breathlessly she turned over the neat envelopes carefully labeled “D
EED OF THE
H
OUSE
,” “T
AX
R
ECEIPTS
,” “W
ATER
T
AX
,” and the like, till she came to the envelope labeled “M
Y
W
ILL
.”

Jennie took this out, quickly put the rest back, locked the box, returned it to the drawer from which she had taken it, replaced the books, and closed the drawer. Then she picked up the envelope and held it in her hand for an instant, an almost frightened look in her eyes, as if she were weighing the possibilities of what she was about to do. She did not open the envelope and read the will, for she had already done that a week ago. Every word and syllable of the neatly written document was graven on her soul, and she had spent nights of waking, going over and over the brief paragraphs indignantly. The old man had no right to discriminate between his children. He had no right to leave the house entirely to Marion. If there
were
no will—that is, if no will were
found
, why, the law would divide the property. Tom would look after Marion, of course, in any case. But Tom should have the right to decide things. He should not be hindered with a girl’s whims. She could not see that what she was about to do was in any way wrong. No harm would come to her sister-in-law. In any case she would be cared for. It would simply smooth out things for Tom. And it was perfectly right.

Having shut her thin lips firmly over this decision, she opened the upper right-hand drawer, pulled it entirely out, and laid it on the desk. Then she reached far in and laid the envelope containing the will carefully at the back of the opening, replacing the drawer and shutting it firmly again, even turning the key that was in the lock.

Having done this, she snapped out the light and groped her way to the door, unlocking it and stealing back into the hall. She listened an instant and then glided up the stairs as silently as she had come down, a nervous satisfaction in her face.

She appeared in the doorway an instant too late to hear the last kindly word from her father-in-law. The doctor had raised his head from bending over to watch, and Marion was turning away with her hands to her throat and a look of exalted sorrow on her face. Marion was so strange! Why didn’t she cry? Jennie began to cry. It was hardly decent not to cry, Jennie thought. And Marion pretended to think so much of her father! Probably, though, she was worn out and really glad it was over. It was perfectly natural for a girl not to enjoy taking care of an old, sick man for so long. Two years! It had been two years since Father took sick! Well it was over, thank goodness, at last! Jennie buried her face in her handkerchief and sobbed gently.

Marion wished again that Jennie would keep still. Their last minutes, and the precious spirit just taken its flight! It seemed a desecration!

The doctor and Tom were talking in low tones in the hall now, and Marion turned back for one last, precious look. But even that look had to be interrupted by Jennie, who came with an air of doing her duty and stood at the other side of the bed.

“Poor old soul! He’s at rest at last!” she said with a sniff and a dab at her eyes with her handkerchief. “And you, Marion, you haven’t any call to blame yourself for anything. You certainly have been faithful!” This by way of offering sympathy.

It was piously said, but somehow the unusual praise from her sister-in-law grated on her just now. It was as if she were putting it in to exonerate herself as well.

Oh, please, please keep still!
shouted Marion’s soul silently. But Marion’s lips answered nothing. She still wore that exalted look. After all, what did anything like this matter now? Let Jennie voice her meaningless chatter. She need not pay attention. She was trying to follow the flight of the dear spirit who had gone from her. She had not yet faced the life without him that was to be hers now that he was gone. She still had the feeling upon her that for his sake she must be brave and quiet. She must not desecrate the place by even a tear.

All through the trying days that followed until the worn-out body was laid to rest beside the partner of his youth in the peaceful cemetery outside the city, Marion had to endure the constant attentions of her sister-in-law. Jennie was always bringing her a cup of tea and begging her to lie down. Jennie wanted to know if she would like her to come into her room and sleep lest she would be lonely. Jennie disciplined the children for making a noise and told them their Aunt Marion didn’t feel well. Jennie became passionate in her vigilance until after the funeral was over. Marion was glad beyond words to be allowed at last to go to her own room alone and lock the door. To be alone with her sorrow seemed the greatest luxury that could now be given her.

And while she knelt beside her bed in the room that had been hers during her father’s illness—because it was next to his and she could leave the door open and listen for his call in the night—her brother, Tom, was down in the den going over his father’s papers.

Tom was a big, pleasant-faced man with an easy-going nature. He would not for the world hurt anybody, much less his own sister. He intended with all his heart to take care of her all her life if that was her need and her desire. He had not a thought otherwise. Yet when he began the search among those papers of his father it could not be denied that he hoped matters were so left that he would have full charge of the property without any complications. He had certain plans in the back of his head that an uncomplicated will would greatly facilitate. He and Jennie had often talked about these plans, and Jennie had urged him to speak to his father about it someday while there was time. But Tom did not like to seem interested; and, too, there was something about his father, perhaps a kind of dignity that he did not understand, that made Tom embarrassed at the thought of broaching the subject of money. So Tom had never said a word to his father about the property.

Once or twice Tom’s father had dropped a word to the effect that if anything happened to him, Tom was to look after his sister, and Tom had always agreed, but there had never been anything definite spoken regarding the house or what money was left or even the life insurance. And Tom had never broken through the silence.

During that last afternoon when he had sat in the sickroom, tilted back against the wall in the shadows, clearing his throat now and then, he had been thinking about this. He had been wondering if, for all their sakes, he ought to try and rouse his father and find out just what he had done, how he had left things. But Marion had stayed so close to the bedside, and somehow he could not bring himself to speak about it with Marion there. There was something about Marion’s attitude that forbade any such thing.

But after his father had spoken to them about the house and about Marion, and said that he would understand, Tom had been uneasy. Perhaps after all his father had complicated things by putting Marion into the will in such a way that he would continually have to ask her advice and get her to sign papers and be always consulting her. He hoped against hope that his father had not been so foolish. Poor Father! He had always been so visionary. That was the word Tom could remember hearing his mother call his father. Visionary. She had said once that if father hadn’t been so visionary they might all have been rich by this time, and Tom had decided then and there that he would profit by his father’s mistakes and not be visionary.