Crimson Roses (3 page)

But although Tom was a little worried, and thought about it quite often, he would not open the desk or try to find out anything about matters until his father was laid to rest. It did not seem fitting and right. Tom had his own ideas of what was the decent thing to do.

He waited until his sister had gone to her room and had had time to get to sleep, too, before he went to the den. It wasn’t in the least necessary for Marion to have to worry about business. She was a woman. To his way of thinking, women should not be bothered about business affairs; they only complicated matters. He always tried to make Jennie understand that, too. Sometimes he talked things over with her, of course, as she was his wife, but when it came to the actual business, he felt that he was the head of the family.

So he had told Jennie to go to bed, as he had some papers to look over and might not go up for an hour or so yet, and he took himself to his father’s desk, armed with his father’s keys.

But Jennie was not so easily put off as Tom thought. Jennie crept to her bed with an anxious heart. She had put the little key back on the bunch with the other keys and felt that no one in the world would ever find out that she had had it, but yet she could not sleep. She could not help lying there and listening for Tom.

Jennie did not feel that she had done anything actually wrong. Of course not, her strange little conscience told her briskly. Why, she might easily have destroyed that will and nobody been any the wiser. But Jennie felt most virtuous that she had not. Of course she would not do a thing like that! It would have been a crime in a way, even though its destruction was a good thing for all concerned. But to put it away carefully was another thing. The will was there. It was like giving Providence one more chance to save the day. If anything ever came up to make it necessary, it could be found, of course. Why worry about it? It was safely and innocently lying where there was little likelihood of its ever being found, at least not till long after everything had been satisfactorily settled. And Marion wouldn’t make a fuss after a thing was done anyway. Suppose, for instance, Tom sold the old house and put the money into another one out in the country. Jennie loved the country. But Marion was strange sometimes. She took strong attachments, and one of them was this old house. She might make a lot of trouble when Tom tried to sell it if she owned it outright, as that will stated. It was perfect idiocy for Father ever to have done that anyway. It wasn’t right for a man to make a distinction between his children, and when he did it, he ought to be overruled.

So Jennie lay awake two hours until Tom came to bed, wondering, anxious, and beginning to be really troubled about what she had done. Suppose Tom should somehow find it out! She would never hear the last of it. Tom was so over-conscientious! Well—but of course he wouldn’t find it out!

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? Strange thing! I’ve 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 divides 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. I’m dead tired. Got a hard day tomorrow, too!” And Tom turned over and was soon sound asleep.

Chapter 2

T
his house ought to have a thorough cleaning,” announced Jennie, coming downstairs a few days after the funeral. “It hasn’t been cleaned right since Father has been sick. I couldn’t really do it alone, and of course I’ll get at it this morning. It’ll do you good to pull out of the glooms and get to work.”

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 giving 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 anymore.

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 his 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 hot water 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 anymore 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 we came. It would change things around a little 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 her brothers had been occupying. It was better all around. But yet, she felt a lingering wistfulness 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 odd 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 confined too long.”

But the tears suddenly came into Marion’s eyes, and her lip quivered.

“Don’t, please, Jennie!” she protested. “I wasn’t confined. 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 only we 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 to 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 gotten 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 arisen 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 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 a long way 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 desecrated 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.

Marion went to church the next Sunday. 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 loneliness, and she had a feeling that her father would be pleased she had gone.