The Making of Mary
J >> Jean Forsyth >> The Making of Mary"There aren't any details to investigate, so far as Mary Mason is
concerned. I took pains to make sure of that, when I heard that a big
hulk of a machinist, who rooms on the same flat, was telling lies about
her, just because she refused to have anything to say to him."
When I was leaving the _Echo_ office at noon one day I saw Henderson's
handsome black span, with the wreck of a sleigh behind them, come down
the street at a full gallop, and I was just debating with myself whether
my duty as a citizen, which called me to attempt to stop the brutes, was
stronger than my duty to my wife and family, which bade me stay where I
was, when a young lady jumped the snow ridge at the edge of the sidewalk
and flung herself at the bit of the nearest horse. The powerful animal
swung her right off her feet, but he was checked for an instant, and in
that instant a young man seized the mate on the other side; the team was
stopped and surrounded by a crowd directly. Then I saw it was Mary Mason
who was the heroine of the drama. She withdrew from the throng,
straightened her flat hat above her rosy face, and walked off with her
habitual indifferent air.
"She's got good grit, that girl," said I to myself, but I thought no
more about her till I came home on a certain evening in March, and found
her comfortably ensconced on one side of our nursery fire, while my
mother from the other side cast suspicious glances at her over her
spectacles. "Miss Mason," had supper with us, and then I retired to my
big leather-covered spring rocker in the parlor to await developments.
That chair needs to be approached with deference, for it has a
precocious trick of either tilting in the air the feet of any unwary
occupant, or of tipping him out on the floor. I know its disposition,
can preserve my proper balance, and have never been flung either forward
or backward--except once each way.
Presently Belle followed me, "loaded up," as the boys say.
"It seems as if I was never to get free from the responsibility of that
child."
"What's up now?"
"Down town to-day I met the chief of police----"
"Great chum of yours!"
"Yes, indeed. We've had considerable conversation at different times
about some of my cases. To-day he said, 'You're interested in that young
girl, Mary Mason, aint you, Mrs. Gemmell?' 'Yes,' said I, though my
heart sank, and I didn't see why he couldn't have addressed any other
one of the committee; 'anything wrong with her?' 'Not yet,' said he;
'but there will be pretty soon if somebody doesn't look after her.
There's a scheme on foot to take her off to Chicago--to sell a book--so
they say.' 'Good gracious! Nobody would dare!' 'Wouldn't they, though?'
said he. 'There's a well-known drummer in this town at the bottom of
it. He's aware the girl has no friends, and in Chicago she don't even
know a soul. It's too bad, for I've had my eye on the young woman all
winter, and she's kept perfectly straight.'
"You may think, Dave, that I ought to be hardened to horrors by this
time, but I became fairly dazed as the chief of police went on to say,
'I can't move in the matter. We never can touch these things until the
mischief is done; but if you like to make inquiries, you'll find out
that I've been telling you the truth.'
"When he left me, I turned to come home, not knowing what to do, but
going round the first corner, didn't I run right into Mary Mason
herself! I hadn't laid eyes on her for a couple of months. 'How d'ye do,
Mrs. Gemmell?' she said, for I stopped and stared at her as if she'd
been a white crow. 'What about "Darkest Africa?"' I found breath to
ask, though it was Darkest Chicago I had in my mind. 'I've done with
that now,' she said; 'did very well, too.' 'And what are you going to do
next?' 'I dunno. Whatever turns up. I've got an offer to go to Chicago
to sell a book there.' I caught her by the arm as if I'd been the chief
of police. 'Mary, will you please go to my house and wait there for me
till I come?' 'Oh, yes, mawm, if you want me to,' and off she went,
asking no questions.
"Well, Dave, I've put in four hours of amateur detective work this
afternoon, and I feel as if I needed a moral bath. I found out it was
all true, as the chief of police had said. There was a plot to ruin the
girl, and I don't think the author of it will forget his interview with
me in a hurry."
"What good will that do the young woman? There are plenty more of his
kind in the world, and with her inherited tendencies I suppose it's only
a question of time--how soon she goes to the bad."
"David Gemmell!"
It is worth while making a caustic speech occasionally to see Isabel
rise to her full height. Her brown eyes positively emit sparks, and her
gray hair, which she wears waved and parted, gives her an air of
distinction that would not be out of place upon an avenging spirit.
"I came home all tired out," she went on, sinking into the chair beside
mine, "and looking through the nursery window, there sat Mary Mason with
our little Chrissie on her knee. The two faces in the firelight looked
so much alike that my heart gave a great thump, and I vowed that girl
should never be set adrift again. This is the second time she has been
cast upon my shore, and I must see to her."
So Mary Mason dropped into our family circle without anybody having very
much to say in the matter--except my mother!
"Wha's yon 'at Eesabell's ta'en up wi' the noo?"
"Her name's Mason," said I; "Mary Mason."
"I h'ard yer wife was thinkin' o' keepin' a hoosemaid, but I didna
expeck tae see her pap hersel' doon at the table wi' the fem'ly."
"She's not a housemaid. She's just staying with us for a while."
"Ye'd think Eesabell micht hae eneugh adae wi' her ain, 'thoot takin' in
ony strangers."
"But Mary is to help with the housework, in return for her board and
clothes."
"Let her wear a kep an' apron, then, an' eat wi' Marg'et."
"Margaret might object," and I laughed at the probable dismay of our
stalwart, rough-and-ready five-foot-tenner, should this ladyfied blonde
permanently invade her domain.
"Hoo lang's she gaun to st'y?"
"That's more than I can tell you."
When Mary had been a week in the house, it became apparent that
something must be done with her.
"She's bound she'll not go back to the public school, Dave, and yet she
cannot read or write. Do you think we can afford to send her to
boarding-school--to a convent, for instance, where she'd be well looked
after, and allowances made for her backwardness?"
Belle and I were out driving together. It was the first springlike
evening we had had, and I was trying Jim Atwood's new mare on Maple
Avenue, which had been newly block-paved. So engrossed was I in watching
her paces I did not reply to my wife at once, and she continued:
"You were going to get me a horse and a victoria this spring, but I'm
willing to give them up to send Mary to school."
"Please yourself, my dear. You would be the one to use the turnout. I'm
content to borrow from my friends. Isn't she a beauty?"
Belle came out of space to answer me.
"Yes, just now; but she'll not be when she's old. Her features are not
good at all; her forehead's too narrow, and her nose too broad. Were it
not for her lovely hair and complexion, she'd have nothing to brag about
but a pair of very ordinary blue eyes."
"Who? The mare?"
"Don't be stupid, Dave, and do attend to what I am saying. I hardly ever
have a chance to speak to you, goodness knows!"
"You get the editorial ear oftener and longer than anybody else."
"Lend it to me now, then. Don't you think a convent would be the best
place for Mary?"
"Perhaps--as there are no theosophical educational institutions that we
know about."
"Mary isn't far enough on for theosophist yet. She'll have to come back
many times before she is. The Roman Catholic Church is on her plane this
incarnation."
"It does seem to catch the masses, that's a fact, whereas your theosophy
doesn't appear to be practicable for uneducated people nor for
children."
"I don't agree with you there."
"Then why were you so anxious to send Watty to a church school to finish
his education, and why are you on the lookout already for a
boarding-school for the two girls where they will have the best of
Christian influences? What is your object in being so particular that
the younger boys are regular in their attendance at our surpliced
choir?"
"It gives them a good idea of music--but that is not the point just now.
Can we afford to send Mary Mason to a convent, or can we not?"
"Choose between her and the buggy mare 'suitable for a lady to drive,'"
said I; but in reality it was my mother who settled the question.
When we came home that evening she was sitting by the fireside,
"Nursin' her wrath to keep it warm."
"Ye maun either pit yon hizzy oot the hoose, or I'll hitta gang."
"What's the matter now, mother?"
"I tell't her to brush the boys' bits tae be ready for the schule in the
mornin'. They were thrang wi' their lessons an' she wasna daein' a han's
turn."
"And what did she say?"
"S'y! I wush ye'd seen the leuk she gi'ed me!"
"The boys can brush their ain bits," said she; "I'm no' their servant."
I laughed.
"It's well seen she hasn't been brought up in Scotland, or she would
know it was the bounden duty of the girls in the house to wait on the
boys."
"An' a hantle better it is than to see the laddies aye rinnin' efter the
lasses, tendin' them han' an' fut as they dae here. When a man comes
hame efter his d'y's wark, he should be let sit on his sate, an' hae a'
things dune for him."
"David," said Belle, sinking to a footstool at my feet with a dramatic
gesture, "you shall never button my boots again! But seriously," she
continued, as mother withdrew in high dudgeon to her sanctum upstairs,
"I don't think Mary should be expected to brush the boys' boots. We
didn't engage her as servant, and even if we had, there isn't a hired
girl in this part of the country that wouldn't make a fuss if she had to
brush the boots of the man of the house, not to mention the boys. We'll
have to pack Mary off somewhere, if only to keep the peace."
So Mary was sent to a convent, and at the end of three months came back
for her holidays to our summer cottage at Interlaken. Being so near the
big lake does not agree with my mother, and she rarely spends more than
a week with us there, but during July and August visits my married
sister in town. The coast was clear for Belle and me to decide what
progress had been made in the making of Mary, and we fancied we
discovered a good deal.
"What have they done to you, those nuns, to tone you down so quickly,
Mary?" I asked, as she sat beside me, swinging in a low rocker, and
looking so pretty that I was quite proud of her as an ornament to our
front veranda.
"I dunno," she said, "unless it was the exercise for sitting perfectly
still on a row of chairs. A nun goes behind us and drops a big book or
something, and any girl that jumps gets a bad mark."
"Capital!" I cried; "no wonder you have learned repose of manner."
Thus encouraged, the girl continued:
"Then we have little parties and receptions, and we have to converse
with the nuns and with each other, and anybody that mentions one of the
three D's gets a bad mark."
"The three D's?"
"Yes, sir--Dress, Disease, and Domestics."
"Hear this, Belle," I said, laughing, as my wife took the rocking chair
on the other side of me; "fancy any collection of women being obliged to
steer clear of the three D's!"
"You should ask Mary about her studies," was the severe reply. "We were
much pleased with your letters."
"Yes, mawm; Sister Stella was always very good about that; helped me
with the big words, and often wrote the whole thing out for me.
Sometimes I had to copy it two or three times before I could please
her."
Belle hastily changed the subject. "Let Mr. Gemmell hear that piece you
recited to me this morning."
I am no judge of elocution, but the general effect of the young girl
standing there in the arch of the veranda, a clematis-wreathed post on
either side, and her face, with its delicate coloring, turned toward the
golden twilight, was pleasing in the extreme.
"She'll maybe be famous some day," said Belle, when Mary had discreetly
retired. "She is far quicker at learning verses off by heart than she is
at reading them."
"Still, to be a successful elocutionist nowadays one has to be
thoroughly well educated, and Mary is too late in beginning."
"You can't tell. She's got the appearance, and that's half the battle."
"With us, perhaps; but remember, we are not capable critics, even though
one of us is a Theosophist."
"Laugh as you like, Dave. Theosophy satisfies me, because it explains
some things in my own nature that I never could understand before."
"It may be that you are too soon satisfied. That's the way with all new
movements--one story is good till another is told. Your
great-granddaughter will smile at the credulity of your ideas on this
very subject."
"She can smile, and so can you. We don't pretend to know everything; we
only hope that we are on the right road to learn. I, for one, am
thankful to think that there are wiser heads than mine puzzling over the
problem of our psychic powers. I've always taken impressions from
inanimate objects, and it has bothered me. Now I find my sensations
analyzed and classified under the head of Psychometry, and it is a
comfort to know that other people besides myself can discern an _aura_,
and are foolishly wise enough to trust the impressions they receive in
that way."
"But if I were you, I don't think I'd make a parlor entertainment out of
the gift,--if it is a gift,--as I heard you did at the Wades' the other
night."
"Who told you? What have you heard?"
"Newspaper men hear everything. You asked Mr. Saxon to hold his
handkerchief pressed tightly in his hand for a few minutes, and then to
give it to you. You shut your eyes as you held it, and received the
impression of his 'aura,' or the atmosphere which surrounds him, or
whatever you like to call it, and then the company asked you questions,
and you gave him a great old character. He didn't like it a bit, nor did
his wife, nor his mother-in-law. You'll make enemies for yourself if you
don't watch out."
"It _was_ wrong of me to exercise my powers just to gratify idle
curiosity. No good Theosophist would approve of it."
"Say, rather, 'no sensible person would.' The Theosophists haven't a
monopoly of common sense. To me they appear slightly deficient in that
article, but I dare say they make up for it in uncommon sense."
"You speak more wisely than you know," said Belle solemnly. "If I hadn't
taken in some of the Brotherhood ideas I wonder where that pretty,
innocent young girl would have been by this time. Would you like me to
go back and be as I was in the old days, a rank materialist, caring for
nothing but dress, dancing, and having a good time? You know you
wouldn't, David. You know as well as I do that Theosophy has been the
making of me, and through me it shall be the making of Mary too."
CHAPTER III.
TO the Scotchman or Englishman, with Loch Katrine or Windermere in his
fond memory's eye, it is not surprising that the great lakes of America
seem howling wildernesses of water, for the shores are mostly low and
unpicturesque. There is no changing tide to give variety, no strong
smell of seaweed nor salt breeze to brace the wearied nerves, but the
wearied nerves are braced nevertheless. The sand is soft and clean to
extend one's length upon, and the waves forever rolling up at one's feet
are soothing in their monotony. There is no fear of the encroachment of
the water, no fear of its leaving a bare mud-flat for nearly a mile; and
the unlimited expanse of blue which meets the horizon satisfies the eye,
which cares not if the land on the other side be hundreds or thousands
of miles away, so long as it be out of sight.
Two young people one evening in July seemed to find Lake Michigan
perfectly satisfactory in every respect. The girl sat on a log of
driftwood, poking holes in the sand with the pointed toes of her shoes,
much too fine for the purpose, while the young man stretched at her feet
looked at her instead of the sunset they had come to admire. I could not
help thinking what a pretty picture they made, as I strolled along the
shore with my pipe, to get cooled off after a very hot day in town.
The family were all at Interlaken, but Margaret was left in Lake City
to keep the grass watered, and to give me my midday dinner. I am unable
to decide which occupation she considered the more important. It is not
easy to get grass to grow with us, and anyone who can display a
reasonably green patch in July and August gives evidence of considerable
perseverance in the matter of lawn sprinkling. I told Margaret she would
be ready to enter the Fire Brigade next winter, she was getting to be
such an expert with the hose. But to return to the shore of Michigan.
The pair of lovers interested me so much that I gradually edged nearer
to them. The species seldom objects to the proximity of a stout little
man with a prosaic pipe in his mouth and a pair of light blue eyes,
handicapped by spectacles, that seem always to be looking for a sail on
the horizon. In fact, I never attract any attention anywhere, unless my
wife is along, and then I am only too proud and happy to shine in her
reflection.
So I sat down on a piece of stump, worn white and smooth like a skeleton
before being cast up by the waves; but when the two caught sight of me,
the man sprang up and came toward me, holding out his hand, while the
girl sauntered off in the other direction, and I saw that she was Mary
Mason.
"Hello, Link?" said I to the young fellow. "Didn't know you were down
here."
"I'm at the hotel for a week or two. I've just been making the
acquaintance of your adopted daughter."
"My what?"
"You have adopted her, haven't you?"
"Don't know that I have--hadn't considered the matter at all."
"She's a sweet girl, and a beauty too. Anyone would be proud to own
her."
"You'd better let Dolly Martin hear you say that."
Abraham Lincoln Todd straightened himself up in the most independent
bachelor style.
"She can look after me when we're married, but in the meantime I'm a
free man."
He is considered very handsome, tall and dark, a good business man too,
and Belle had quite approved of the engagement between him and Dolly
Martin, who, though not a pretty girl, was strong and sensible, and the
daughter of one of her oldest friends.
Lincoln must be taking advantage of his intimacy with our family to
flirt with Mary Mason.
Interlaken is not a fashionable resort. Even the hotel is a homely
abode, which the guests seem to run themselves, though they generally
prefer to live outdoors and go inside only for meals and beds. Once in
a while, on a chilly evening, the young people get up a dance, and some
of us older folks are dragged into it too.
Scotchmen love to dance, and I am no exception. I am not up to waltzing
or any of the newfangled round dances, but give me a Highland
schottische, or a square dance, when there is an inventive genius to
call off the figures and prescribe plenty of variety. There was no
professional caller-off at Interlaken, but Lincoln Todd did duty for one
as he danced. When he tired of it, and led off into a round of waltzes,
ripples, jerseys, bon tons, rush polkas, and goodness knows what
besides, I remained as a wall-flower.
The reason that I sat there was that I could not take my eyes off Mary
Mason. Where she learned to dance I know not, but dance she did, with a
grace and _abandon_ that made every other girl in the room a
clod-hopper. Lincoln Todd was quite infatuated with her.
Ours is one of the dozen or so of cottages that radiate from the big
hotel. Most of the cottagers take dinner and supper at the hotel, being,
like ourselves, in a servantless condition. Belle said she could get
along perfectly well without Margaret, when she had Mary Mason to help
her with the housework, and, indeed, there was not much to be done. The
four bedrooms open into one central room that we call the sitting-room,
but it is only in wet weather it justifies the name, for, as a rule, we
sit in rockers or swing in hammocks on the broad veranda that runs round
three sides of the house. The cottages lie so close together that a good
jumper can easily spring from one veranda to the next, and the lady
proprietors gossip across, and the men too when they come down from
business every evening, or from Saturday till Monday. My lot is
generally the shorter allowance, and one Sunday afternoon I lay in my
favorite hammock on the north side of the veranda, sleeping the sleep of
the brain-tired editor, till voices roused me.
"Mary, where did you get that new tennis racket?"
"Mr. Todd gave it to me."
"Haven't I told you distinctly that you were not even to take candy from
Mr. Todd?"
"He gives things to you and Chrissie."
"That's a very different matter. Chrissie is a child, and he is an old
friend of the family."
"I can't help it if he likes to give me presents."
"You can help taking them, especially from an engaged man."
"I don't care if he is engaged. He says he don't care anything at all
about Miss Martin. He only went after her for her money. He likes me
best, and he says he'll never marry her."
"Mary! I should think you'd know better than to make yourself so cheap.
You give Mr. Todd back that racket right away, and tell him Mrs. Gemmell
said you were not to keep it, and the next time he brings you down
flowers or chocolates you do the same."
If I had not known the sex and the approximate age of Mary, I should
have thought it was a small boy in a temper who stamped off the veranda.
The next Saturday night the full moon was assisted in her duties by a
large bonfire down on our beach. The Adamless Eden, having received its
"week-end" male contingent, was stimulated to a corn-roasting. The green
ears, stuck on the ends of long sticks, were held by girls and men over
the fire till roasted, and then passed on to a row of matrons, disguised
in large aprons, who salted and buttered them ready for eating. If you
know anything that tastes sweeter than a freshly roasted and buttered
ear of Indian corn, your experience is broader than mine.
Using my eyes habitually in the way of business, I could not avoid
noticing that Lincoln Todd was not collecting his share of driftwood for
keeping up the fire, nor did I see Mary Mason's pretty face in the
garland of beauties bending with eager interest over the poles bayoneted
with cobs of corn. It may have been fear of spoiling her complexion that
kept her at one side whispering with Link, but it served them both right
that Dolly Martin should choose that very moment for her stage entrance.
She and her mother joined the group of butterers, and I noticed that
Mrs. Martin returned Belle's cordial greeting rather stiffly. Then Miss
Dolly calmly walked over to the pair sitting apart, having evidently
recognized the back of Lincoln's blazer. She pretended to stumble over
one of his feet.
"Oh, excuse me!" said she; and when Link sprang up, Mary Mason had the
pleasure of witnessing the warmest sort of a meeting between the engaged
lovers. They sallied off in the moonlight, his arm around her waist.
No one but me noticed the young girl slipping down on the sand, and
laying her head on the log on which she had been sitting, and even I
pretended not to see that her handkerchief was in action.
"Hello, Mary!" said I, "I'll match you skipping stones. Look at this!"
With that I sent a beautiful flat one skimming along with nearly a dozen
hops in the brilliant track of the moon on the water. She did not pay
any attention to me at first, and I kept skipping away, just as if I
did not see her mopping her eyes. By-and-by a stroke worthy of myself
sent a pebble spinning through the ripples, and Mary's ready laugh rang
out beside me. Within twenty minutes of Dolly Martin's appearance on the
scene, "Mamie" was the center of the corn-roasters, and the gayest of
the gay. Belle told me she kept on that line of conduct during the whole
week that Miss Martin and her mother stayed at the hotel.
"It seemed to me that Dolly took a special pleasure in parading her
happiness before poor Mary, but Mary never showed the white feather."
"There's the making of a fine woman in her."
"That may be," said my wife. "But this last week she has been extremely
wearing on me. Having no particular man on the string, she has followed
me about like a spaniel, wanted to know what I'm reading, and has begun
a book the minute I'm through with it."
"I've seen her carrying 'The Coming Race' about with her lately, but I
notice that the bookmark always stays in the same place."
Mary became fond of solitary rambles back in the pine woods, intersected
by plank walks that made promenading possible. People liked to wander
through there in the evenings, when the camp-lights in the hollows lent
a mysterious charm, and on up to the big Knight Templar's Building,
erected on the highest point of the sandy bluff overlooking Lake
Michigan. Every night that prominent structure blazed with electric
lights, and sometimes a band played on the veranda; but the only
visitors were cottagers and guests from the hotel, who went up there to
walk about and enjoy the prospect.