Maris (20 page)

The boy flung himself about in his chair, leaning over with his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands, and groaned aloud: "Oh, why do I have to be tormented this way, when I already have enough trouble to drive a hundred men insane?"

The father's face softened, and a tortured look came into his eyes.

"Son, I know you are unhappy, but this is something basic that must be maintained, no matter what you are suffering. You must never lower yourself, no matter what you are going through, to be insolent to your mother, and I demand that before you do anything else you go to your mother and apologize."

"What nonsense!" flung out Tilford. "I am not a little kid!"

"No," said the father with a sigh, "I wish that you were! I would certainly try to wail some sense into you. But you are supposed to be a gentleman. At least you were born one, and I intend to try and keep you one if I have to fling every cent I might leave to you into the depths of the sea. I may not be very wise about raising children and I may not know anything about philosophy or religion, but that is one thing you know I have always insisted upon, that you shall be respectful to your mother. Now, Tilford, before I say anything more to you, I want you to go across the hall and beg your mother's pardon."

"Gosh, Dad! Of all the silly baby ideas!"

"If you keep on, you'll have a few more apologies to make before you get through. I intend to see this through to the end."

There was a long silence, and then Tilford arose haughtily, contemptuously.

"All right! Let's have it over with," he said. "Do I go alone, or are you coming along to see whether I do it right?"

"I'm coming along!" said his father with dignity.

Silently they went across the hall, the door opened to the mother's astonished eyes, and the two entered.

Tilford stood like one himself aggrieved and made a scornful apology.

"Mother, Dad seems to think I was rude to you. I sincerely apologize. I have been so much upset the past few days that I scarcely knew what I was doing anyway."

"Yes, of course, my dear!" murmured the mother with a gush of tears. "Don't think any more about it, Tilly dear!"

Then the young man turned away with a look of disgust.

"Is that all, Dad? Or is there more to this?"

The father answered sadly, "If that is the best you can do, we will let that go for the present and you and I will return to my library."

"Heavens and earth!" exclaimed the irascible youth. But he followed his father across the hall and stood at the window scowling, awaiting the next act.

"Sit down, Tilford."

His father's voice was almost tender now.

"Tilford, perhaps you don't know how your father's heart has been yearning over you these last few days. I couldn't help but see that something was wrong when I got back from Chicago. But your mother was so upset over you that I hardly liked to ask her for particulars. Suppose you try to tell me the details. Is Maris still in trouble? Is her mother no better?"

"Oh, gosh! Dad! Have I got to go into all that? No, her mother isn't any better; at least they won't admit she is. And Maris hasn't sent out the invitations and thinks she can't get married on June thirtieth, and that leaves me all up a tree. What am I to do? She's given me back my ring and lets on it's all over between us."

"Well, but let's understand this, son. What did you do to get her into a state that she wanted to give back your ring? Were you kind and helpful to her in her distress when her mother was sick? Did you offer to do anything you could?"

"I? What could I do? I couldn't get a chance even to talk to her for more than a minute. She comes downstairs with a hot-water bottle, or to get a bowl of ice or something, and has to run right back upstairs before she hardly gets down. She won't send out the invitations, nor let me send them. Helpful? I? Certainly, I tried to be. I offered to get those invitations off in plenty of time. But no, she wouldn't even tell me where they were. Said she couldn't send out invitations when her mother was at the point of death. Said her kid sister had measles and she couldn't do anything but hover over her family day and night. She looks like an old crow with black circles under her eyes! Pretty bride she'll be! Helpful and kind? Why, I even got a special child's nurse to go there and tend that hateful little spoiled brat so Maris could go out and keep her engagements with me. Would she go? Not she. Said she'd send the nurse away if I sent her. Said the kid wanted her or her mother."

"Of course. What could you expect?"

"Expect? I'd expect her to take the help I gave and do her duty toward me. Isn't that what being engaged means?"

"No, I wouldn't say so. She can't leave her duty at home when they are in trouble. You ought to have tried to enter into her troubles and sympathize with her. You ought to have tried to find out her burdens and help to lighten them."

"Well, I did. Certainly, I did. There was the matter of a suitable wedding dress for the kind of wedding due our family. Mother found a peach of a dress and suggested she go and see it. Would she go? Not one step. I tried to explain that Mother had had it reserved for her at a special price, but no, she said her mother had
made
a dress for her! Imagine a mother being able to make a good enough dress for our wedding! And when I tried to exercise my authority and tell her she had no right to carry things with such a high hand, she gets mad and flings me back my ring."

"Son, look here! I don't know what is the matter with you. You have a wonderful little girl in that Mayberry child, and you don't seem to know it. You shouldn't try to order her ways, you shouldn't tell her what to wear, and you shouldn't expect her to leave a sick mother and sister. There are such things as right and wrong in this world, though the young people of today don't seem to recognize that anymore. You've probably hurt that child more than she has hurt you. I don't know whether you've got it in you to love her the way she ought to be loved and guarded or not. And I don't know her well enough to know whether she loves you well enough to stand your doldrums and tantrums or not, but I should say there was just one thing that would set you two right, if you can be set right, and that is for you to get down on your knees and be a little humble. Take your ring back to her and tell her you have seen yourself, and you are ashamed of yourself. Tell her you've been a fool and an ass yourself and ask her to forgive you. If you do that, and she really loves you, she's bound to forgive you, and you can start all over again. If she doesn't really love you, then it's all wrong from the beginning and better broken up.

"But son, you'll have to make a concession! When you ask her to forgive you, you've got to tell her you're willing to put the wedding off till she's ready and that you'll come and help her nurse her sick ones back to health and comfort her and sympathize with her. You'll have to tell her that it's grand for her to have a mother who can make a wedding dress for her daughter and that of course she must wear that dress and no other, whether our world or her world or anybody else's world considers it the latest thing or not. There is something rare in a dress that a mother's love prepares. But, my son, I'll miss my guess if you don't find that dress quite the fit thing after all. The mother of that girl wouldn't want her to wear anything that wasn't all right. Don't you know enough to know that? Now go get your evening togs on and run over to her house and say you're sorry, and you'll see how quickly your troubles will smooth out."

The son whirled on his father with a great scorn in his face, a perfect fury of indignation in his voice: "
Me
go and tell Maris I'm sorry? Not on your life I won't! Do you suppose I'm going to do the little whipped-dog act you've done all your life, giving in to every blessed thing Mother has demanded? Not me. I know my way around better than that! I'll get her back, don't you fear, but it won't be that way! Not on my life it won't!" And the son angrily slammed out and down the hall to his own room and locked himself in.

The father sat stricken in his chair, with his face buried in his hands, and let the whole disappointment of the years roll over him. That was what he was in his family! A little whipped dog! And his son, the hope of his failing years, had told him so! There was nothing he could think of that life had to offer so bitter as that.

 

 

The nurse who had come to relieve Miss Bonner was most kind and helpful. She didn't stay during the daytime usually. Her home was not far away, and she went home to her own bed to sleep when her night's work was done. But now and then she would run in an hour or two earlier than she was due to begin work and suggest that she look after Lexie while Maris ran out to get a breath of fresh air or do an errand. Lexie had become very fond of her. She was Scottish and had a store of quaint little stories about foxes and birds and "beasties" as she called them. She had a Scottish accent that fascinated the little girl, and a winning way with her, as well as a deep fund of humor. Lexie always greeted her with delight.

She came over thus one afternoon when Maris was particularly worn and discouraged, and with a sigh of relief Maris went downstairs, glad to get away for a few minutes from the scene of hard work and anxiety.

Maris went through the downstairs rooms. All was in order. There was nothing here that demanded her attention. She had already gathered all the bills out of Mother's desk and attended to them, hunted up estimates from florists and caterers and let them know that the wedding was called off on account of illness in the family, and written notes to her bridesmaids and a few intimate friends who knew about the wedding plans. There was absolutely nothing to demand her hands to work or tired brain to think.

She went out into the kitchen, but Sally had it immaculate. Preparations for the family dinner were in progress as they should be at that hour. The specially prepared dishes and trays that would be needed for the invalids were in the icebox in order, and she could hear Sally stepping around in her own room just off the kitchen, getting into a clean dress to serve the evening meal. There was no reason why she should linger here.

She stepped out of the back door and looked up into the cherry tree, laden with its brilliant fruit, and reached up idly and picked a cluster, eating them as she walked on around the back door and into the garden. She had a strangely desolate feeling that she was all alone in the world. And there was no one to turn to for a comfort of which she felt in sudden terrible need. She told herself that this was what came from relaxing even for a minute in the midst of hard work and anxiety. It was better to keep right on and not take time off with the beautiful world in June, when all the things that belonged in such a June life were hanging in jeopardy. Here was she who was to have been married in lovely grandeur and off on a dream trip to foreign lands in just a few days now, suddenly snatched from all this idyll of a luxurious life and plunged into heavy hard work in desperate anxiety, shot through here and there by stinging annoyances from people who ought to have been her strongest reliance, and finally separated entirely from them and left to go alone. It was strange! So strange!

And this desolate feeling.

It wasn't just anxiety now. One can get used in a way to the monotony of a long-drawn-out anxiety. It wasn't just weariness nor yet a longing for the pleasures of the life she had been living for the last six months since she had been engaged to Tilford. It was the sense of having no one in heaven or earth to depend upon.

Everyone to whom she would naturally turn now to rest her soul had to be carefully guarded for their own sakes. Father, how frail he was! Not so stooped and tortured looking perhaps since he had that note paid and some bills out of the way that had tormented him, but still it seemed as if a breath might blow him away. He would not get over that, of course, till Mother got well.

Merrick mustn't have any more anxieties. He was only a boy anyway. He had finished his last examination and was to start driving his bus route tomorrow morning. She mustn't load her trials on him. He had a responsible job and must keep his mind free from worry. And of course Merrick wouldn't understand all her problems anyway.

But it wasn't just problems, either, this afternoon. It was just a hungry longing for something that satisfies. The feeling was strong that she had given up the life that had stretched out so enticingly before her, and while it was the right thing to do, of course, and she couldn't have done anything else, wouldn't have wanted to, would do over again all that she had done, yet now in the late afternoon waning of the sun, while the shrubbery made long shadows on the grass and the poppies and roses were still and lovely in the garden and the sky so heavenly blue, the heart of her cried out for some part in the beauty of the world, some real joy that pain and sickness and peril could not take from her.

She paused to watch a big velvet bee roll and tumble and wallow around in the heart of a scarlet poppy with a deep black center and ruffle of white. Then he bumbled up and buzzed across the bed, creeping deep into the heart of a purple iris and dusting his coat with yellow pollen from its sleek purple walls. Was the bee happy? she wondered. Did God think of bees, or were they all just a part of a great creation that He had started and then left to go on its careless way? Oh, she knew better than that, of course. She knew the Bible said that not even a sparrow could fall without Him. But she couldn't get the sense today in her weary, lonesome young heart that God really cared about her and the uphill road she had started to walk.

It had been interesting to ease her father's financial difficulties, to see the furrows of his brow relax and a look of relief come into his eyes. It had been good to feel that Merrick trusted her again. Although neither Merrick nor any of them knew yet that she had given up Tilford, it had been restful to have some of her troubled doubts settled by her definite stand for her family. But what was life going to be as it went along, a long, lonely stretch, bearing a mother's cares and anxieties, without the help of a strong love in her life?