The Making of Mary
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THE MAKING
OF MARY
BY
JEAN FORSYTH
NEW YORK
THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO.
31 EAST 17TH ST. (UNION SQUARE)
COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY
THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO.
_All rights reserved._
THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
RAHWAY, N. J.
PROLOGUE.
A STURDY northeast wind was rattling the doors and windows of a deserted
farmhouse in Western Michigan. The building was not old, measured by
years, but it had never been painted or repaired, and its wooden face,
prematurely lined with weather stains, looked as if it had borne the
wear and tear of centuries. The windows, like lidless eyes, stared
vacantly at the flat stubble fields and the few spindling trees, a
dreary apology for an orchard. There were plenty of shingles off the
roof to allow the inquisitive rain-drops to follow one another through
the rafters, and thence to the floor of the room below, where the
darkness was creeping out of the corners to take possession.
The house had been but recently vacated, for there was still a "slab"
smoldering on the hearth of the wide fireplace in the outer kitchen, and
something that looked almost human, wrapped in a ragged bedquilt, was
lying much too near it for safety. A friendly gust of wind came down the
chimney, bringing back the smoke, and drawing a faint cough from the
bundle. Another gust and another cough, and then a sneeze which burst
open the quilt, to disclose an ill-clad little girl, six or seven years
old.
She gazed about with drowsy blue eyes till terror of the darkness made
her draw the tattered comforter over her head again, and crouching
nearer to the smoldering log, she tried to warm her fingers and toes.
More wind down the chimney made more smoke, and sent the child coughing
back from the fireplace. She was wide awake now, and stood listening.
Sounds there were, indeed, but not one that could be associated with any
living thing in the house. She felt her way around the walls to where
the candle used to be, but it was gone. There was no furniture to
stumble over, and when she came to the side of the wall in the inner
room from which the stairway crept up, she mounted it on her hands and
knees, trembling, partly with cold, partly with fear at the noise made
by the flapping of the sole of one of her old shoes. There was a step
missing at the turn of the stairs, but the child knew where the vacancy
was, and pulling herself over it, she reached the landing, felt all
around the walls there, and made the circuit of the three small rooms
in the same fashion. They were entirely empty.
Cautiously the girl stole down the broken stairs and back to her former
place by the smoking slab, where she curled herself up into the old
quilt again, as into a mother's arms, and spoke aloud, though there was
none to listen but the obstreperous wind:
"Anyhow she won't be here to lick me no more!" That thought seemed to
compensate for darkness and loneliness. The voices of wind and rain were
apparently more kindly than the human tones to which she had been
accustomed, and soothed by their stormy lullaby, the little maid fell
asleep.
The sunshine poured freely into the forsaken house next morning, drying
up the damp floors, and turning to gold the scrap of yellow hair that
showed through a hole in the old quilt. Presently the small girl shook
the covering away from her and stood up, to yawn and stretch herself
out of the stiffness from a night spent on the hard floor. She was not a
pretty child, unless naturally curling fair hair, that would be fairer
when it was washed, could make her so. The long, thin legs that came
below her torn dress made her too tall for her age, and what might have
been a passable mouth was spoiled by the departure of two of the front
"baby" teeth and the tardy arrival of the later contingent.
Part of the day the child seemed satisfied with her new-found liberty.
Having discovered a stale crust or two in a cupboard, she wanted no
more, for her diet had never been luxurious. Into every corner of the
house she intruded her small freckled nose, pulling down from shelves
all sorts of odds and ends that had been left behind as worthless at the
flitting.
There was an old straw bonnet with a pair of dirty strings, and
therewith the damsel elected to adorn the tousled head, which evidenced
but slight acquaintance with comb or brush. She could not find any
feminine garments to please her fancy, but there was a boy's jacket, out
at elbows and ragged round the edges, which she proudly donned, and as a
finishing touch she popped her long slim legs, old shoes and all, into a
worn-out pair of man's top-boots that reached to her knees.
"I just wish Mawm Mason had lef' a lookin'-glass behin', so's I could
see how I look. My! wouldn't she whack me if she seen me with this
bonnet on!" The child smiled broadly as she continued her confidential
address to the other valueless things left behind. "I allays knowed she
warn't my own mother, an' I'm glad Pete nor Matty aint my own brother
nor sister neither. I'd like him to see me in his jacket!"
She pulled the coat across her narrow little chest to where it met in
the days when there were buttons on it, and marched up and down the
room, making as much noise as possible with the big boots.
This killing of time was all very well while the daylight lasted and the
sun warmed up the frosty November air, but when the darkness began to
assert itself once more the small waif did not feel so contented.
"There aint no use goin' over to Mis' Morgan's. She don't want me no
more'n Mis' Mason did. I guess I'll sleep upstairs to-night with some o'
them things over me. I'll be warm anyhow."
In the middle of the front bedroom she heaped up all the _debris_ and
crawled beneath it. A fantastic pile it seemed to the moon when he
looked in after the rain had stopped, the childish head resting on the
cover of an old bandbox at one side and a pair of man's boots sticking
out at the other.
The last scrap of bread was finished next day, and the two potatoes
picked up in the yard proved uneatable without the softening influence
of fire, so there was nothing for it but Mrs. Morgan's. After sunset,
when the rapidly falling temperature and the heavy bank of clouds in the
west gave warning of a snow-storm, the little girl, still wearing the
old bonnet, boy's jacket, and man's boots, left the only home she could
remember, and made her way slowly over the hard rough fields and snake
fences to the next farmhouse.
Mrs. Morgan was running in from the barn with a shawl over her head.
"Good sakes alive! Mary Mason! I hardly knowed you. What you got on? I
thought you was one o' them scarecrows out o' the fall wheat. Mis'
Mason moved to Californy three days ago. Didn't she take you with her?"
"No, mawm."
"So it 'pears. Wal, she hadn't any call to, I s'pose. You aint none o'
hers."
By this time they were in the kitchen of the farmhouse, Mrs. Morgan
rubbing her hands above the stove, and Mary Mason also venturing near,
stretching out her thin arms to the heat, for the adopted jacket was
somewhat short in the sleeves.
"What's that mark on yer wrist?"
"Bruise--but it don't hurt now."
"Who done it?"
"Ma--Mis' Mason. I've lots worse'n that on me," said the small girl with
some vanity.
"There, now! I jest knew that Mis' Mason was a hard case, though my man
would never hear to it. What you going to do now?"
"I dunno." The accent implied that to be a matter of small moment.
"I don't s'pose we can turn you out to-night. There's room in the attic
for you to sleep, but don't you go near one o' my girls' beds with that
head o' yourn."
As a hostess, Mrs. Morgan was a slight improvement upon Mrs. Mason. She
never took stick or strap to the foundling, and if she occasionally gave
her a cuff on the ear it was never strong enough to knock the girl down.
But the Morgan children bullied Mary Mason, the Morgan father grumbled
at an extra mouth to feed, and when she had been about a month in the
house the mistress of it told her she must move on.
"There's an old dress of Ellie's you can have, an' a pair of Sue's
cast-off boots, and Tom's old cap."
"Where am I to go, mawm?"
"You jest go on from one farmhouse to another, till you find a place
where they'll keep you all winter. It's comin' on to Christmas, an'
people won't be hard on ye. Tell 'em you aint got no folks."
* * * * *
The forlorn little pilgrim took up her march down the snow-covered road.
THE MAKING OF MARY.
CHAPTER I.
MY wife is a theosophist. This fact may account for her numerous
eccentricities or be simply one of them. I incline to the latter
opinion, because she preferred the unbeaten to the beaten track, both in
walk and conversation, long before Modern Buddhism was ever heard of in
the small Western town of whose chief newspaper (circulation largest in
Michigan) I have the honor to be editor and proprietor.
How such a hot-house plant as Theosophy ever took root in the swamps
and sands of the Wolverine State may seem surprising at the first
glance, but let the second rest upon our environment--the absence of
mountain or swift-flowing river, the presence of fever and ague and
half-burnt pine woods--and it will be seen that this Eastern lore with
its embarrassment of symbols supplies a long-felt want to starving
imagination. We of the West are forever reaching beyond our grasp, have
intelligence and perception, but lack the culture necessary for
discrimination, and therefore the romantic souls among us who rise above
the rampant materialism of the majority go to the other extreme, and
hail with enthusiasm the new-old religion.
"It's better to believe too much than too little, but you theosophists
swallow an awful lot," I say to Belle when she tries to convert me.
I am well aware that many of my fellow-citizens consider me a subject
for commiseration because I have lived for twenty years with so erratic
a house-mate, for I have not deemed it necessary to explain to them that
without the stimulus of her enlivening spirit, without the element of
surprise constantly contributed by my wife's love of variety, the daily
life, and therefore the daily paper, of their favorite editor would
partake of that flatness which is the predominant characteristic of this
western part of the State of Michigan.
Our four sons and two daughters enjoy their mother fully as much as I
do, for is she not the most fascinating romancer they ever knew? Now
that they are all of an age to be attending school and looking out for
themselves, after the manner of independent young Americans, they
require from her nothing but sympathy, for their grandmother sews their
buttons on. Grandma!--Ay, there's the rub.
I have no hesitation in owning that I am Scotch by birth. My mother left
her native land to make her home with us entirely too late in life to
allow Western ideas regarding Sabbath observance, the rearing of
children, or the amount of respect due to the opinion of elders, to
become ingrafted upon Scottish prejudice concerning these matters.
Mrs. Gemmell Senior has, however, the national peculiarity of judging
"blood thicker than water," and whatever her convictions may be
concerning the methods of Mrs. Gemmell Junior, she restricts the
expression of them to our family circle--in fact, I may say, to myself.
She generally seizes me when I lie at my ease on the well-worn lounge in
our sitting room, more properly dubbed the "nursery," for it is Liberty
Hall for the youngsters. Two rooms have been knocked into one to
accommodate their dolls' houses, bookshelves, toys, and printing
machines. Belle had the whole side torn out of the house to build an
open fire-place, on purpose to burn slabs, over which the children roast
pop-corn to their hearts' content.
"A body wad think," said my mother one cold night five or six years ago,
when I lay on the sofa, trying to send my weariness off in smoke, "A
body wad think there had been nae cherritable wark dune in the toon ava,
till they theossiphies set aboot it. If yer provost and baillies lookit
efter things as they ocht, there wad be a dacent puirs-house for the
idignant folk, an' a wheen daft leddies like Eesabel needna gang roun'
speirin' at yon infeedels for their siller tae build a hoose o' refuse."
"There is a county poorhouse, mother, but it doesn't happen to be
located in this city, and they won't take in anybody there that hasn't
been a resident of the county for a certain time."
"Aweel! there's plenty o' kirks, though ye never darken the door o' ane.
Do they no' leuk efter their ain puir folk?"
"Yes; but after nobody else's. This House of Refuge is to be
non-sectarian, non-religious, humanitarian, in the broadest sense of the
term. Ah! There's Belle now," and I gave a sigh of relief as I heard my
wife's latch-key in the front door.
She came in with an out-of-door breeze, her dark face glowing from the
wintry wind, flakes of newly fallen snow resting like diamonds upon her
prematurely white hair, and her brown eyes sparkling with the animation
of twenty summers rather than of forty-two.
"Children all gone to bed? That's right! Don't go, mother! I'm sure
you'll like to hear about the House of Refuge. We've got it fixed at
last! Those rich old lumbermen that won't give a cent to a church, or
any charity connected with one, have gone to the bottom of their pockets
this time. Fancy Peter Wood, Dave--five hundred dollars! And Jeff
Henderson, five hundred. I have the list in my bag. Like to see it?"
"No' the nicht, thenk ye," said my mother stiffly, but I added:
"Hand it over to me, and I'll put it in to-morrow's _Echo_. That's what
they want."
"Nothing of the kind, you old cynic! I shan't tell you another thing
about it." But still she went on: "We've taken the old Laurence house on
the corner of Garfield Avenue and Pine Street, and it's to be fitted up
to accommodate any sort of refugees."
"Irrespective of race, creed, sex, or color," I whispered
parenthetically.
"No one is ever to be turned from the door without a good square meal,
and there's to be a back, outside stair erected, up which a tramp can go
at any hour of the night, and find a nice clean bed awaiting him--locked
away from the rest of the house, of course."
"Oh, why?" I innocently inquired. "Surely you have enough faith in your
brother man to believe that he would not commit any breach of
hospitality?"
"_I_ have," replied Belle, squeezing my recumbent form further against
the back of the sofa, upon which she had seated herself. "But remember
we are not all theosophists on the Board."
In the words of the historic witness against Mrs. Muldoon, "That's the
way the row began!" Belle was elected Treasurer of the House of Refuge,
but as she knows nothing of figures, I had to keep the books of that
unique institution, and was therefore enabled to form a practical
estimate of its workings.
I shall not attempt a description of the numerous "cases" in which my
advice, if not my pocketbook, was freely drawn upon, but shall leave
them, along with the description of the many antecedent fads of my
beloved better half, to some historian of longer wind, and shall content
myself with recounting the particular "case"--and attachments--which
most nearly affected our family life and happiness.
* * * * *
"This is what I call solid comfort," said Belle to me one evening late
in September, as we sat in the parlor in a couple of deep, springy
armchairs, fronting a huge grate fire, that would be banished by the
lighting of the furnace. "Children all in school again, your mother off
on a long visit, and plenty of new books on the table."
I looked up from one of the aforesaid new books.
"Just wait! The season's business hasn't begun in the Refuge yet."
"Everything is in good shape for it, though. We've had enough donations
of groceries and vegetables to keep us going almost all winter. We've
lots of wood for the furnace, and Mack and Hardy have given us some
second-hand furniture and----"
The electric door-bell sent out a long, imperative summons.
"Who can that be, Dave, at this time of night? None of the boys locked
out?"
"No; they all went up to bed a while ago."
Belle rose and walked to the door. I pulled the tidy from my chair-back
over my bald head to protect me from the draught, but that did not
prevent me from hearing what went on.
"Are you Mrs. Gemmell?" This from a female voice, breathless with
excitement.
"I am."
"Then you are one of the trustees of the House of Refuge?" gasped
another feminine speaker.
"Yes. Won't you come in?"
"No, thank you. We've just come to tell you about this young girl who
has run to us for protection."
"We're school-teachers, mawm."
"She's in my class, and she hasn't a friend in the city and knew nowhere
else to go."
Then followed some hysterical whispers, which roused my curiosity so
much that I went to the door and peeped over the shoulder of my tall
wife. The two plain, business-like young women were evidently much
distressed, but between them was a fair-haired slip of a girl of
fifteen or sixteen, the least disturbed of the group. The three older
women might have been talking in a foreign tongue, or of someone else,
so unconcerned did she appear, present danger being over.
"How did she happen to be with these people?" Belle was asking as I came
forward.
"The wife of this brute of a man told us that she was nursemaid with the
Ferguson Family Concert Company, but they dropped her here in Lake City
without a friend or a cent."
"She took her in to help sell fruit and ice cream evenings, and she let
her go to school through the day."
At this juncture the subject under discussion broke into a beaming
smile, showing all her fine teeth. Her cheek dimpled and reddened, and
her blue eyes, full of fun, looked straight into mine. I became
suddenly aware that I had forgotten to remove the tidy, and retired in
confusion, but heard Belle's conclusion of the interview:
"Just wait a second till I give you a line to the matron of the House of
Refuge. You can leave the girl there till we see what can be done for
her. She'll be perfectly safe, and had better keep on going to school as
usual."
* * * * *
A week afterward I asked my wife what had become of her latest
_protegee_.
"You mean Mary Mason? She's in the refuge yet, attending school, and
we've settled that man's ice-cream saloon."
"How?"
"Boycotted him. We can't reach him any other way."
"That's rather hard on his wife, who seems to be a decent sort of
party."
"The innocent often appear to suffer with and for the guilty, but if
you understood the law of Karma you would know that all the evil that
befalls us is really the result of some wrongdoing of our own in a
previous incarnation. Mary Mason herself is an instance."
"What's the matter with her?"
"Poor girl! She's been knocked from pillar to post all her days. She
hasn't an idea who her parents are, and there isn't a creature in the
world she has any claim upon. She must have gone very far astray _last
time_ to have been brought into the world again with such
disadvantages."
"It appears to me she has a great many advantages--lovely blue eyes,
good teeth, the fashionable golden shade of hair, and the prettiest
complexion I've seen for many a day."
"Don't be provoking, Dave! The poor little thing has the marks of some
of her beatings on her yet. The Ferguson family were the first who ever
treated her decently, or paid her any wages."
"Why did they drop her?"
"One of our Committee took it upon herself to write and ask them. They
replied that the girl was of perfectly good character, so far as they
knew, but she fell so ridiculously in love with Frank Ferguson, their
eldest son, that she was making a nuisance of herself, and so they had
to let her go."
I laughed.
"There are generally two sides to that kind of story."
"At the meeting of the trustees to-morrow it is to be decided what's to
be done with her, because she says she doesn't want to go to school any
more. She's never had much of a chance before to learn anything, and
she's in a class with little bits of girls, and she doesn't like
it--says she'd rather go to work to earn her own living."
Belle came home from that meeting with her face ablaze with righteous
wrath. Her hands trembled so much over the teacups at our evening meal
that even sixteen year old Watty, our eldest son, remarked it.
"What's the matter with _mamma_? Her trolley's off."
I knew there was trouble in the wind, so I fortified myself with a good
supper and read my paper at the same time, to leave myself free for what
was to follow. The children study their lessons in the back end of the
nursery, and I therefore forbore to take up my usual position upon the
sofa, but withdrew to the parlor with my pipe.
Presently my wife followed me, nearly walking over the furniture in her
excitement.
"Go on, Belle; out with it!"
"You will listen, will you, seriously?"
"Certainly, mawm. I never had any sort of an objection to your making a
scavenger barrel of me, so go ahead."
"Oh, these benevolent women, Dave! Any one of them alone is as
good-hearted as can be, but lump them together on a committee, and
they're as cold and cruel and grasping as the meanest business man you
could name!"
"More so!" said I, approvingly, and for once Isabel did not resent the
disparagement of her sex.
"The question arose, what was to be done about Mary Mason, and every one
of them, David--every one of them, with young daughters of their own
growing up at home, voted to let that girl go round this town selling a
book."
"Was that what she wanted to do herself?"
"Yes; but think of them letting her do it! You know as well as I do what
sort of a city this is, and whether it's safe for a lovely girl like
that to go to men's offices, trying with her pretty looks and ways to
wheedle them into subscribing for Stanley's 'Darkest Africa.' Oh, I was
wild! I said to Mrs. Robinson: 'How would you like your Lulu to do it?'
'The cases are very different,' said she; 'my daughter has no need to
earn her living.' 'Mrs. Constable,' said I, 'if your grandchild were
left alone in the world, what would you think of the charity of any body
of women who allowed her to go from under their protection to make her
living in this way?' 'I don't see the connection,' said she; 'Mary
Mason's been fighting the world since she was seven years old, and just
because she happens to have a pretty face, you seem to think she should
be put in a glass case and never do anything for herself.'"
"She had you there, Belle," said I, pulling her down to the arm of my
big easy-chair. "Let the girl alone; she'll come out all right. She's
too good-looking for a nurse or a housemaid, and she doesn't know enough
arithmetic to be a shop girl. I don't see what else she can do."
"That's just what the ladies calmly decided," said my wife, walking the
floor again. "They seemed to think that a little business training would
just be the making of Mary. Oh, these Christians!"
"You see, my dear," said I, "committees are not supposed to have any
conscience. They have the income of the Refuge in trust for the
contributors, and they have no right to keep on supporting a girl who is
willing to work for herself. How she proposes to do it is none of their
business."
"That's just what it is--their business; their business to see that she
doesn't meet the very fate we've saved her from once already. Oh!
there's no getting these narrow-minded, orthodox, bigoted people to see
more than one side of a question."
"Take care you don't become dogmatic on your own side," said I, rising
to knock the ashes out of my pipe. "If it's the law of Karma that's
responsible for her having been left to shift for herself at so early an
age, it's the same law that's after her now, and I wouldn't interfere
with its operations, if I were you."
"You don't in the least understand what you are talking about," and
Belle sailed from the room to settle a noisy dispute in the nursery.
CHAPTER II.
THROUGH that winter I caught occasionally a glimpse of Mary Mason on the
street, but as I had not the pleasure of her acquaintance, I did not
stop to ask her how she was getting on. My wife told me, however, that
she lived in a room over a store down town, and took her meals out, and
that she was succeeding very well with her subscription list.
"The girl is all right, if only the gossips would let her alone. Some of
them assert that she had a child in the Refuge, and though the ladies on
our committee indignantly deny that, they shake their heads, and say of
course they don't know anything about her now."
"It's the only excitement a lot of these women have," said I. "They
wouldn't read a French novel for the world, and some of them wouldn't be
seen in a theater, so they have to satisfy their morbid craving for
sensationalism by hearing and repeating all sorts of unsavory tales--and
they do it in the name of charity! They're very sorry that there is so
much wickedness in the world, but since it is there, they enjoy the
investigation of details, and it doesn't matter very much whether
they're doing any good or not."