Maris (10 page)

And then as if inanimate objects had become alive, they trooped into her room and formed a procession in the darkness, stopping one after another for her consideration.

First came those wedding invitations, as if they had somehow escaped their wrapping in the attic and slid out of their white boxes and filed down two abreast to stand before her, condemning her. The very date of the wedding stood out in flaming letters across her vision, as if they would say: "We are now a day late! And tomorrow will be another day later! And the Thorpes are going to be horrified! What are you going to do about it? Are you going to let us be disgraced forever? Are we going to be even more disgraced than we are already?"

Well, and what was she going to do? She had no one to ask. Her mother had passed beyond the consideration of any earthly trouble for the present. Her father was too worried and too much on the verge of illness himself to be consulted. If she dared speak to Merrick about it, his wrath would rise to unspeakable heights. There was no one but God to talk to about it. It must be decided tonight. She had to think it through somehow.

She drew a deep breath of protest and waved the invitations aside for the moment. She had to get Lexie settled for the night first before she took that up. But as she turned to meet the next perplexity in the procession, she had the consciousness of those invitations standing just at her right hand. Sternly awaiting her first moment of leisure.

And next there floated softly up her lovely filmy wedding dress that Mother had made, and looked at her with reproachful eyes, sadly, as if it had been set aside. As if it would say, "What are you going to do about me? Those Thorpes will despise me and scorn me if you insist on wearing me! Do you want to subject me to their criticism? You know they won't admit I am lovely. They likely haven't the fineness to appreciate why I am better for your purpose."

And behind in the shadows came a stiff white satin frock rustling arrogantly up beside the other. Though Maris had never seen it, nor even heard its description, she recognized it as the Thorpe dress from the exclusive shop, and it stood there beside her mother's charming creation of loveliness, and claimed precedence.

Just behind the two she sighted a host of dinners and showers and theater parties, and other affairs that she knew were booked for the coming days, and now were standing tiptoe for her attention.

And over it all she seemed to see her mother's troubled eyes looking at her. Oh, what was she to do, and however did she get involved in all this trouble?

And then she heard a tap at the door and rose to answer it, quick apprehension in her breast. Oh, was Mother worse? Oh, Mother mustn't die now, not before she had a chance to tell her how sorry she was that she had been so indifferent and selfish. Oh, not before she had a chance to undo the hurts and get the trouble straightened out.

She opened the door and there stood Merrick, his eyes standing out in his white face startlingly, his lips quivering with angry excitement, and by his side Gwyneth, softly sobbing into the skirt of her little pink dimity that was all crumpled and pitiful and showed her short petticoat, making her look such a child.

Merrick was grasping her shoulder furiously, clutching it as if he had a prisoner who must be put in chains at once, a gang leader at least.

"Where do you think I found this kid!" said Merrick excitedly. "Just guess where! This child not yet out of grammar school? Down at the drugstore, sitting at a little round table eating ice cream with one of the worst young bums this town affords!"

He gave Gwyneth's small shoulder another fierce shake, and she began to sob louder.

"Hush!" said Maris quickly. "You'll disturb Mother! You'll wake Lexie. Come down in the living room where no one can hear you. You mustn't make a noise up here! You'll frighten Mother. You might kill her!"

There came an instant's hush in the hostilities as the dire possibilities confronted the brother and sister, and the three of them trooped silently down the stairs to the far end of the living room, where Gwyneth curled herself into the corner of the big sofa with her head in a pillow and sobbed silently.

"Now," said Maris, turning to her brother, "what do you mean, Merrick? Where did you find Gwynnie? I let her go over to Erminie's for the night, you know."

"Well, but she wasn't over at Erminie's. Erminie was there, too, with another boy. They were out with the boys, if you please, as if they'd been grown up! And the worst young bums you can find anywhere. Rance Mosher! What do you think of that? His father had to bail him out of jail last week. He was arrested for running over a woman when he was drunk! Only seventeen, but he's got his name up in connection with several terrible affairs up at the Dark of the Moon roadhouse. And he was treating our sister to ice cream, sitting shoulder to shoulder with her down at the drugstore, trying to kiss her and hold her hand! My little sister, out in the public eye that way! The worst bum in town!"

"He's just Erminie's cousin!" wailed Gwyneth. "And Erminie's mother said we might go with him and Harlan Westcott and get some ice cream! And he wasn't kissing me. He was only kidding!"

"I guess I can tell when a fellow is trying to kiss a girl. I guess I could see what he had in his mind. Right out in a public place bringing my sister into disgrace! She's nothing but a child, Maris, and Harlan Westcott and Rance Mosher are a long way on in what our father and mother would call crime, and I'm not kidding! I know what I'm talking about! The nurse sent me after a prescription, and while I was waiting for it, I turned around and saw my sister--!"

"Not so loud, Merrick, please," said Maris, looking at him with troubled eyes.

"Well, it's a serious matter!" said the boy angrily.

"Yes, I know, but we mustn't let Mother hear. Now, Gwyneth, tell me all about it. How did you happen to be there? You told me that Mrs. Howard never let Erminie go out evenings. That was why I was willing for you to stay over there. You knew Mother wouldn't want you to be going out with big boys in the evening."

"Well, but Maris, it was just to the drugstore and it was only Erminie's cousin and his friend. And there wasn't any dessert for dinner, 'cause the maid was out, and we were hot and thirsty and--"

"Do you mean that Mrs. Howard
told
you to go? Did she say it to you, Gwyneth?"

"Why, no, it was Erminie who went upstairs and asked her."

"Did you hear her ask her?"

"No, I was downstairs talking to the boys, but she came down and said her mother said it was all right to go anywhere the boys wanted to take us, and they were going to take us afterward to the movies. They said it was a swell picture, and we ought to see it!" Gwyneth burst into tears again at the thought of her humiliation and loss.

"Well, I wouldn't be so sure Mrs. Howard knows anything about it, Gwyneth. I never did trust Erminie. But whether she said so or not, I'm sure Mother wouldn't approve. And as for going to the movies with boys, you know she wouldn't like that. I think if Merrick will run over to the Howards' and get your suitcase, we'll just bring this visit to a close."

"Sure I will," said Merrick.

"Oh,
Maris
!" Gwyneth began to cry again, with heartrending sobs. "Then I can't go to school, and I'll not get promoted!"

Maris sat down beside her on the sofa and gathered her resisting young form into her arms.

"Listen, little sister, you mustn't cry so loud. You don't want to kill your dear mother, do you? And we'll talk about the school afterward. It is more important to take good care of you than to have you pass your examination."

"But I was being taken perfectly good care of," she argued. "I wasn't really sure I was going to the movies, only they told me it would be something I ought to see. And Rance Mosher is a perfectly nice boy. He was awfully polite to me. He said I had nice eyes and he liked me, and he treated me just as if I'd been a lady. Merrick just doesn't like him, that's all; he was always fighting him when they were in school. Erminie says it's because Merrick stole Rance's girl once----"

"Look here, Gwynnie, you're talking about something you don't understand in the least," said Merrick severely. "I never stole Rance's girl. I didn't like her and didn't want her. But the girl came and asked me to take her home from the senior party because Rance was so drunk she was afraid of him, if you want to know the truth! And I know a lot of things about Rance that I'd be ashamed to tell you. If you knew all I know about him, all I've
seen
myself, you would run from him worse than you would from a rattlesnake."

Gwyneth went into another fit of sobbing then, and Maris signed to Merrick to go after the suitcase and explain to Mrs. Howard that they needed Gwyneth at home.

"But I'm the head of my class, Maris! I'll l–l––lose my s–s–standing in s–s–school!" wailed the little girl.

"It's a great deal better to lose your standing in school than to lose your standing at home, and in the town, and"--she hesitated at the word that came to her lips and then finished, almost in awe at herself--"and before God!"

The child lifted her wet eyes wonderingly.

"What do you mean, Maris? How could I lose my standing at home, or in the town, or even before God by eating ice cream in the drugstore?"

"You could lose your standing at home by not keeping your word about staying in the house when you knew what Mother and Father would feel about your running around the streets at night after dark with older boys, even if they were Erminie's cousins! You could lose your standing in the town by letting yourself be associated even for a little while with boys who do not have a good reputation. You can lose a reputation very easily, but it's not so easy to get it back again. And then, Gwynnie, there are other things; I would rather Mother told you about them, as she once told me when I was a little older than you, but it is never good for little girls to run around with boys much older than they are. It isn't natural, unless they're related to you. Lots of harmful things grow out of such friendships. I haven't time to tell you about them tonight. I'm very tired, and so are you. But it's better for you to stay at home. I've needed you ever since you went away."

"But--my s–school!" began Gwyneth again.

"We'll talk about the school tomorrow and see if anything can be done about it. In the meantime, go to bed, and let's wait till another day."

But it was some time before she got the child quieted down and in bed, and even after she was asleep from sheer exhaustion, Maris found her catching her breath now and then in another sob.

The plot thickened. Problems on every hand. Gwyneth was another! And little Lexie, tossing and turning and crying out in delirium was the next one. Would the doctor never come?

Very late that night after the doctor's visit, when she had made the little girl as comfortable as possible and stood watching the nurse and the doctor in a grave talk down the hall, of which she could make nothing, she crept to her bed, too weary to try to think. As she sank away into a restless sleep, it seemed to her that all about her room were standing those problems. The wedding invitations slithering across the floor in a white heap as if they had done their best to attract her attention, the two dresses like ghosts of enemies in opposite corners, the shadowy parties grouped here and there about the room; and in the midst of them all, stalking in as she dropped from consciousness, stood Tilford and his mother watching her with angry, questioning eyes.

 

 

Over at the old Maitland place matters were moving along at a very satisfactory pace for the little boys who were temporarily parked there.

"Well, boys, we've received our orders from headquarters, and now we've got to get to work," said Lane Maitland as he came back from his brief interview with Maris. "There are two more beds to be put in shape before dark, and the commissary department has got to rustle some food for supper. Tomorrow our old cook and her husband are arriving and we'll have more leisure for amusement, but tonight we've got to get busy. How about jumping in the car and going down to the store with me? I need to lay in a supply of good things. What do you like best to eat?"

"Ice cream!" said Alec promptly.

"Aw, shucks! You can eat ice cream anytime if you get a nickel. How about hot dogs and cook 'em outdoors? That's more like camping."

"Well, how about both?" said Lane.

"Okay!" shouted both boys at once.

"Or how about strawberries? Does anybody like strawberries?"

"We sure do!" shouted Alec.

"Well, there used to be strawberries down in the garden. Let's go see if they have been choked out by weeds. There might be a few, you know, and then we could save the ice cream till tomorrow."

So they tramped down to the old overgrown garden and discovered a few late berries here and there, tasting more like wild ones than the old rare varieties that used to be cultivated in the years when the Maitlands were living there. The host went into the house and brought out a dish, and eager young fingers managed to fill a bowl in spite of the many surreptitious journeys they made to eager young mouths.

"Pretty nice work, old man," said Maitland when Alec brought him the bowl. "All right, now we have our dessert, we'll go down to the store and get our supplies. We'll need soap, and bread, and marshmallows to toast, and bacon for breakfast, and eggs. You like bacon and eggs, don't you, boys? And cream on your strawberries?"

"Oh sure!"

"And toasted marshmallows?"

"I should say! Oh boy! This is going to be great!"

"Sure! We're going to have the time of our lives!"

"We sure are!" said Eric.

"Oh boy, don't I wish our new brother-in-law was going to be like you!" said Alec wistfully. "Then I wouldn't mind Maris getting married so much."

"Oh, do you mind her getting married?" asked the young man, busying himself about putting the strawberries in the window where they would be cool.

"Why, sure we mind. Wouldn't you?" said Eric with a frown. "Wouldn't you mind having your best sister taken away from you entirely?"