Crimson Roses (9 page)

“I have taken a position in Ward’s store,” she said almost haughtily, and turned back to her work again, trying to down the stinging tears that threatened.

The angry sister-in-law stood speechless for a moment, too taken aback for words. At last she spoke, biting words that stung as they fell about the troubled girl.

“And you call that right, do you? You think you’re a Christian, don’t you? You’re always going to church and prayer meeting and pretending to be better than anybody else, and you’re always so hypocritically sweet and patient. Oh, yes, but you’re sly! The idea of your going to work and sneaking your furniture out of the house as if you thought we might steal it, and going about it in an underhanded way, just to make your brother trouble. Here he’s slaving and planning to make a nice permanent home for you, where you will be cared for all your life and be safe and comfortable, and you act up like this! Why didn’t you come out straight and tell him you didn’t like him? Answer me that! Why didn’t you tell him all about it? There must be some hidden reason why you want to stay. You’re afraid to tell your brother. I understand.”

Jennie was so angry now that she did not really know what she was saying.

“There’s probably some man at the bottom of this. There’s always a man!”

But suddenly Marion turned and took hold of her furiously, her face white, her eyes black with indignation. She took hold of Jennie and shook her.

“You shall not say a thing like that! You shall not! It is not true, and you know it is not true! I could not go to Vermont. My father wanted me to stay here and get an education! I couldn’t go away! You have no right to say such things about me!”

Marion had caught Jennie unaware and for a moment had been able to punctuate her sentences by shaking her as if she had been a child too astonished to recover herself. But her slender hold had not a chance in the world against Jennie’s stout arms, and in a moment more Jennie had wrenched herself free and dealt a resounding slap on Marion’s white cheek.

Stinging with pain and humiliation Marion buried her face in her hands, and moaning, turned and fled up to her room, blindly stumbling over the heavy rug that Jennie had left in a heap in the doorway. Falling headlong, she lay for a moment, too crushed to do anything but lie there shaking with silent sobs.

Then suddenly she realized that she must not let herself be defeated this way. She had done wrong perhaps to shake her sister-in-law, even though she had insulted her, but she was in the right in demanding her freedom. She must go down and face Jennie again and explain.

Hastily dashing the tears away, she got up and went downstairs to the furious Jennie.

“Jennie, I am sorry I shook you,” she said gently, “although you said something that made me very, very angry.”

“Oh, yes, you’re sorry now,” flashed Jennie, gloating over Marion’s humiliation. “You’re afraid of what your brother will say, laying hands on his wife. It doesn’t look very well for a Christian to go around shaking people just because she doesn’t like to hear them tell her the truth and call a spade a spade, but you’ll have to learn that the world won’t stand for your sly ways, and Tom won’t either. Well, as far as I’m concerned, I’m glad it came out for once. Tom always thinks you are so sweet and meek and gentle. I wonder what he’ll think now. The idea of attempting to shake me! Tell me what I shall say and what I shan’t. You sly little minx—you. Get out of my sight! You make me sick, getting up a scene like this and planning to upset all your brother’s plans.”

“Jennie, that isn’t true,” said Marion boldly. “It can’t possibly make any difference to you whether I go to Vermont or not, and I have not done anything wrong, either. I have only taken away the furniture that my father gave me when I was a little girl. I have not even asked for my share of the money from this house or from my father’s life insurance or from his other property, although I’m sure I must have had a perfect right to do so. I thought it over and decided that I did not want to have Tom disappointed about the farm he meant to buy, and I could not see why it should make any difference to either of you if I stayed behind, so long as I gave up my share of the property.”

“Property! Property!” babbled Jennie, too angry to reason, “as if property were everything. As if of course, the property wouldn’t be a man’s to look after. As if your father didn’t expect you would stay with your brother and behave yourself like a decent girl and not try to run around alone and set up your own apartment like these common flappers! As if you weren’t leaving me with all the work of settling and the children to care for and everything, and me off alone there on the farm without any company or anyone to relieve me day in and day out!” She raged on, but Marion had control of herself now.

“Listen! Jennie, you didn’t have to go on a farm if you didn’t want to, and you had no right to demand that I go, anyway. Tom is perfectly able to hire help for you if you want it!”

“Yes, hire, hire, hire help! As if Tom was made of money! You’re perfectly willing your brother should go to a great expense while you lie around and have a fine time!”

“Jennie! Stop! I’m not going to lie around and have a good time. I’m going to work hard and earn my living and get more education. And at least you will have the price of my board and keep extra, if you don’t count that I had any right in my father’s property. You don’t seem to realize that you have taken away the home that I love from me. My father always said—”

But Jennie, with a frightened look at Marion, had fled to her room and locked the door behind her, and Marion could hear her sobbing aloud for a long time.

Marion, feeling that she had made a mess of everything and disgraced her Christian profession as well by losing her temper, went around finishing the rest of her work with sorrowful heart and troubled eyes in which were many unshed tears.

She tried to get together a nice little supper with the few utensils that were not packed, but when Tom came in the storm raged again, and nobody attempted to eat anything until it was all cold. Jennie came down to meet her husband in a perfect torrent of angry tears, as soon as she heard his step in the house, and Marion had the added sorrow of seeing her brother turned horrified unbelieving eyes in her direction and reproved her bitterly.

“Marion! I never thought this of you. Is that really true? Did you lay hands on my wife and shake her?”

Marion opened her white lips to protest, but no words came from her parched throat. She could only stare at her brother with wretched eyes. How could she speak up and say that Jennie had slapped her in the face? How could she tell that they had come to a common low-down fight, like two fish-wives, she a Christian, and her brother’s wife! How could she justify herself? And because her heart was almost broken that Tom, her brother, should believe all that and not know that there was something to be said in her defense, she could not speak. Her throat refused her breath to clear herself.

So she had to stand there speechless and hear Jennie tell the whole miserable story over in her own version, blaming her and never telling what she herself had done.

And finally she had to see her brother soothing his wife and comforting her clumsily, and telling her she was all worn out and that she must go upstairs and lie down and he would bring her some supper, that she needed to rest; and then he helped her up the stairs, with cold reproachful looks at Marion, who had caused all this trouble.

After a long, long time, Tom came down and harshly called to her.

“Now, Marion, let me hear what you have to say. What is all this nonsense about you hiring a room? Of course you know I can’t permit it.”

Marion stood up straight and slim and white to the lips and tried to say the things she had planned to say to her brother, but her lips trembled so she almost broke down.

“Tom, I’m not a little girl; I’m of age. You have no right to say ‘permit’ to me. I have a right to stay here where Father planned that I should stay. And I am not doing wrong. I have deliberately planned to give up whatever share of property I should have had and to earn my own living—”

“So you think I’m so mercenary, do you, that all I will care about will be the property?” he interrupted, the hard, cold look in his eyes.

“Oh, Tom!” cried Marion. “Why won’t you understand?”

“No, I can’t understand,” he said coldly. “This is merely a streak of stubbornness in you, and I suppose I shall have to let you go and try it before you will believe what a fool you are making of yourself. Everyone knows that father was visionary—!”

“Tom!” cried Marion. “Don’t! Don’t!”

“No, I won’t,” said Tom, “because it is of no earthly use. You have that streak in you, and I suppose you can’t help it. It will have to be taken out of you, and I guess it won’t take long working for your living before you find out. Very well, go your own gait and learn your lesson to your sorrow. You are of age, of course, and I can’t prevent you forcibly. You’ve got the bug of education in your head, and you don’t realize that you’re too old now to make anything out of that. You’ve got all the education any reasonable woman, who is decent and stays in her own respectable home, needs. But you’ve got to find it out, so stay and learn your lesson. But remember that when you’ve learned it, your brother is ready to forgive you and take you back. There’ll be a nice, comfortable home waiting for you with plenty of all that any woman needs to make her happy. You don’t see it now, but the time will come when you’ll be sorry and ashamed that you have treated your only brother this way. And you don’t think for a minute, do you, that Father would want you to desert us and live by yourself in the city? Answer me that?”

“Tom, I think he would,” said Marion sorrowfully. “The last thing he said was that I would have a home here in this house.”

“Oh, you’re going to harp on that again, are you? You are trying to punish me for selling this house. Well, you should have said so before it was sold. It is too late now. You had a perfect right not to sign your name to the deed if you didn’t want to, but you never even mentioned—”

“Tom, I begged you that first night—”

“Oh, yes, I know you went into hysterics at first. I expected that. But after you knew all the story, about what a wonderful place we were getting—”

“Well, Tom, I haven’t blamed you about the house, I only—”

“Oh, yes, you have blamed me. You said that Father said you were to have this house, and I had taken it away from you. You as much as said that. Come now, didn’t you?”

“Tom, if you twist what I said that way, I can’t talk any more about it. I—”

“Very well, young lady, don’t talk! I won’t talk either! No, I don’t want to hear any more of your explanations. They are all insulting to me. I’m done! You go and do what you’ve planned, and when you find out what a mistake you’ve made, let me know, and we’ll have some basis to go on. As things are, I’ve nothing further to say. Of course, if you change your mind before we leave, why you can go along yet, but I suppose that’s too much to expect of a little silly head like you. You’ve made your bed, and you’ll have to lie on it. No, don’t say another word! I’m done!” And he stalked off upstairs without even looking at the nice supper she had prepared at such pains.

That last night in her dear old home was a most unhappy one for Marion. She did not sleep until almost daybreak, and then from sheer exhaustion. It was worse than even her wildest fears, but there was some relief that at last it was out and there was nothing more to dread.

The next morning she came down pale and sorrowful and prepared the last meal in the old home, and then slipped up the back stairs as the others came down the front ones and began to roll up the mattresses and fold sheets and pillow cases and stuff them into the drawers that had been left unlocked to receive them.

She was everywhere at once, it seemed, helping, bringing labels when they were needed, always knowing where the hammer and scissors and cord had been laid down, always knowing just which article of furniture Tom wanted the men to take next to pack in the car.

It was thus she happened to be in the den when the movers came in to take her father’s desk out. It was covered in burlap, and Marion’s eyes filled with wistful tears as the men lifted it up to carry it out of the room. Her father’s desk, and she would likely see it no more. Why hadn’t she asked Tom to let her have it? Still, there would scarcely be room for it in her tiny room. She must let it go. Perhaps, later when Tom became more reconciled to her new life, he might be willing she should send for it. She could pay the freight on it herself. But now she must let it go.

As the movers passed her, she noticed a brown envelope slipping down farther and farther from behind the drawers at the back of the desk. It was more than two-thirds protruding when they reached the door, and impulsively she stepped forward and twitched it out, stuffing it down inside her blouse without looking to see what it was. Probably nothing but an old empty envelope, but it had been her dear father’s, and it was something she could keep and look at. Anyhow, whatever it was, it would only be lost on the way to the car if it were left sticking out that way. Then, because she was afraid Jennie might notice the stiff bulging and crackling of the envelope, she ran up to her room and slipped it into her little handbag, still without taking time to glance at it.