The Making of Mary
J >> Jean Forsyth >> The Making of MaryOur city editor often surprises me with the depth and breadth of his
local information. For example, I opened the _Echo_ one day to be made
aware that "Miss Mamie Gemmell" had outstripped all the lady bicyclists
in town by making the distance between Lake City and Interlaken in
forty-seven minutes. It was also remarked that she was one of the most
graceful lady riders on the road.
I wonder how many generations a man must be removed from Scotland before
he becomes callous to the disposition of the family name. I own that I
squirmed inwardly, but with outward composure asked Belle where Mary got
the "bike."
"Watty's old one. He taught Mary to ride it, and then made her a present
of it, for he's set his heart on a new wheel."
"Confoundedly generous of him!"
"I'm glad you look at it that way. It is so seldom that he does give up
anything for anybody, I thought he ought to be encouraged, and I said he
should have a new bicycle with pneumatic tires and all the latest
improvements at Christmas, if you did not see fit to give it to him
sooner."
In August I took my annual day's fishing, which has come to be rather a
joke in the house, because, in spite of my elaborate preparations the
night before, and the unheard-of hour at which I rise in the morning, I
have never been known to catch anything worth bringing home.
This time my companion was a journalist from Chicago, an ardent young
fellow, who could not keep from "shop" even when off on his holidays,
and who had started a small weekly paper in which were to be recorded
the doings of a certain congress holding a summer session in our grove.
We rowed up the little lake on the edge of the lily-pads, fishing both
sides of it, but caught nothing except a sunfish or two. Then we lit our
pipes and talked.
"What an extremely clever young lady that adopted daughter of yours is.
I heard only the other day that she is not your own."
"Indeed!"
"Yes, sir. No one would believe it to talk to her, but she's got a
surprisingly bright mind for one so young. She can't be more than
seventeen, but her descriptions are good enough for one of the best
magazines, and she has evidently thought a lot on all the leading topics
of the day. Why, she's up in Hypnotism, Evolution, Theosophy--everything!"
"Bless my soul! How did you find all that out?"
Thereupon he fished from his pocket a couple of his tiresome little
publications.
"I asked her to write something for our paper, that's how I know. Want
to see?"
I do not set up to be a literary critic, but I guess I know my own
wife's style of composition when I encounter it. During the two years
that we were engaged she lived in Detroit and I in Indiana, and I missed
her letters so much after we were married that to this day she is in the
habit of letting me read those she writes to other people. I was not
going to give her away to that newspaper man, though, for the name "Mary
Gemmell" stared me in the face from the end of each article; but I
remonstrated with Belle when I reached home.
"How could I help it, Dave? There was the girl teasing me to write
something for her because this fellow had asked her to do it. She said I
could scribble down something just as easy as not, and then she could
copy it for him. Copy it! She took hours to do it, and I considered she
deserved all the praise she got for the articles."
"I wouldn't do it again, if I were you. It sets the girl sailing under
false colors."
"Poor Mary! Her one little accomplishment has been of no use to her
since that professional elocutionist came to the hotel, and I hated to
see her cast altogether into the shade, especially while Dolly Martin
was here."
Still there came another production from the pen of Miss Mary Gemmell.
"Really, Belle," said I, "this is carrying the joke too far."
"Don't you worry about it. Some of the old cats at the hotel began to
suspect that Mary hadn't written those things, and accused me to my face
of doing it myself, so I had to write an account of the picnic up the
little lake, because they all know I wasn't there at all!"
"Let this be the last, then."
"It shall, I assure you, for I am much displeased with Mary. Since Mrs.
Martin and Dolly left, she's been going it just as hard as ever with
Lincoln Todd. If you walk up to the Knight Templar's Building I'll
warrant you'll find them there promenading this very minute."
"No, I won't, because I passed them just a little while ago as I came
through the woods, sitting on a secluded bench, his arm round her waist
and her head on his shoulder."
"Didn't they see you?"
"I dare say, but I never let on I saw them. What's the use? I can't be
expected to leave the _Echo_ to my subs, and come down here to play
special policeman to Mary Mason. I should have thought Todd was more of
a gentleman."
"So should I, but I've spoken to him, quarreled with him indeed, so
that he doesn't come near the house, but I know that he and Mary meet
just the same. Thank Heaven! he will be married soon."
"Have you told Mary that?"
"Yes; but she laughs and shrugs her shoulders; evidently thinks she
knows more about Lincoln Todd's intentions than I do."
In the last week of August Mr. Todd went off for a few days "on
business," and then there came a dreadful morning when the announcement
of his marriage to Dolly Martin appeared in the _Echo_.
Mary would not believe her ears. She took the paper down to the beach,
and spelled out the notice word by word. Then she lay down on the sand
and bawled, kicking and squealing like a year-old infant when Belle
appealed to her self-respect.
"I could have spanked her well," said my wife. The worst of it was that
the whole hotel was "on to the racket," as Watty vulgarly expressed it,
and rather chuckled over Belle's mortification, instead of sympathizing
with her in the trying time she was having with her "adopted daughter."
Our grief, as a family, was not unbearable when the time came in
September for Mary Mason to go back to the convent.
CHAPTER IV.
THE self-assertive sleigh-bells suddenly ceased their tinkling, and the
long covered van, with its four horses, drew up in front of our "House
of Many Gables," in Lake City. Watty, then a tall lad of eighteen,
over-coated, fur-capped, and gloved, went quickly out, banging the front
door after him, while his younger brothers and sisters made holes with
their breath through the frost on the window panes, to watch his
departure with the hilarious load of young folks.
"Why aint you goin', Mame?" asked Joe, our smallest son, of the girl
spending her Christmas holidays with us.
"Wasn't asked," she replied defiantly. "An' what's more, I don't care to
go anywheres, neither, if the girls don't act better to me than they
done at that party the other night."
Belle raised her head from the Treasurer's book of the House of Refuge.
"Perhaps you weren't nice to them, Mary?"
"Yes, I was too. I smiled whenever one of them looked at me, but they
all turned their heads as if they'd never seen me before."
My wife sighed as she bent over her book again. If the difficulty of
befriending Mary rested only with outsiders it might have been patiently
borne, but there was mother, to whom the girl's presence in the house
was a constant grievance.
I had been able to buy a quiet horse and a Mikado cutter for Belle when
the snow came, but she had no pleasure out of them during the vacation.
"I'm going to drive downtown, mother," I heard her say one morning.
"Would you like to go?"
"Is Mary gaun?"
"I thought of taking her."
"Then I'll no' gang. I wadna like to crood Mary."
"Dear mother, there's plenty of room."
"Ay, ay, but ye ken Mary doesna like tae sit wi' her back tae the
horse."
That sort of thing was always happening. One day the old lady came home
from a round of visits, much perturbed in mind and body. The sandy hair
I inherited, and have largely lost, does not show the gray with which it
is mixed, and so light and wiry is she one finds it difficult to
remember my mother's seventy years. She is a small woman, but her
personality is sufficiently large for the ripples to be felt throughout
the household when its surface is disturbed.
"What dae ye think I've been hearin'?" she cried, finding me alone in
the nursery on the sofa, and helpless in her hands.
"I can't imagine, mother. You generally have something spicy to tell us
after you've been calling on the MacTavishes."
"Dae ye ken 'at yon hizzy ye've ta'en intill yer hoose ca's hersel' Mary
_Gemmell_?"
"Oh, well, what's in a name?"
"I wonner tae hear ye, Davvit! What wad yer faither hae thocht aboot it,
or yer gran'faither? Gie'n the femly name, that's come doon unspotted
frae ae generation till anither, tae a funnlin' aff the streets! Ou, ay!
I micht 'a' kent what wad happen when I h'ard tell o' ye bein' merrit
till an Amerrican."
"Hold up there, mother. You're just twenty years too late in raking up
that story. If it suits me and Belle to have that girl called 'Mary
Gemmell,' Mary Gemmell she shall be, if it turns all Scotland head over
heels into the North Sea."
So seldom do I break out that an eruption of mine never fails to clear
the air of an unwelcome topic.
Our boys have grown up on a sort of an "every-man-for himself"
principle, and when it came to a fight for the favorite corner of the
sofa, the favorite game, or picture-book, "Mamie" was in the thick of it
every time.
"What else can you expect?" said I to Belle, consolingly. "She's been
fighting the world on her own account ever since she can remember, and
our house represents to her only a change of battle ground."
"I think her father must have been a gentleman."
"He certainly had one gentlemanly peculiarity."
"Don't be a brute, Dave. I mean that Mary's ancestors must have been
wealthy people, she has such a taste for luxury."
"That doesn't follow. I'm sure you've seen plenty of poor folks go
without the necessaries of life in order to get the luxuries."
"She is shiftless enough. To-day I took her into a store to buy her some
stockings, and she refused to have any but the very best quality. 'The
second best are what I get for myself, Mary,' said I; 'they wear much
longer than the others.' 'I don't care,' she said. 'If I can't have the
best, I don't want any.' 'Then do without,' said I, and we left the
place. The fun of it is that she won't even darn her old ones! I can't
always be so firm with her. I'm amazed at myself sometimes, the things
she gets out of me. What do you suppose she wants now?"
I gave a warning cough to signify that my mother had come into the
nursery, but Belle gazed straight ahead into the wood fire, and seesawed
in the rattan rocker--a tuneful symphony in a mauve tea-gown.
"A cornet, if you please."
"A cornet!" said I. "Whatever put that into her head?"
"I can't tell. She says the music professor at the convent can teach her
to play it, and she thinks if she learned she might be able to lead the
singing in a church with one."
"Perhaps somebody played the cornet in that concert company she was
with."
"Na, na. It's nearer hame than that," mother struck in. "She has a
notion o' ane o' thae cratur's 'at pl'y at the Opera Hoose. I hae seen
her gang by the window wi' him, an' spiered at Watty wha he was."
"I don't like Wat's telling tales of Mary."
"He dinna, Davvit, till I pit it tae him. He canna bear the tawpie, and
doesna like to hae her p'inted oot as his sister. A body canna blame the
laddie. It's a heap better than his fa'in' in luv wi' her."
"Perhaps it is," groaned Isabel.
When mother had gone to bed my wife said:
"Mrs. Wade has been here to-day to ask Watty and Mary to a young
people's dance on Friday night."
"What did you say?"
"I told her I wasn't going to dress that girl up and send her out to
parties to be snubbed and slighted by the other girls, as she was at the
dancing school ball. She said that if I let Mary go she'd see that she
had a good time. For her part, she admired the way I'd stuck up for the
girl in spite of everything; and if she was good enough to live with us
as a daughter, it would surely not contaminate anybody else to meet her
out of an evening."
Saturday night I inquired of Belle how Mary got on at the party.
"First rate. Mrs. Wade met her at the door of the drawing room and
kissed her. 'How you've grown, Mary!' said she, and then she took her
round and introduced her to all the girls in the room, including some of
those who've been cutting her right and left, as well as to every boy
she didn't know already. Of course she danced every dance, and had the
best time going."
"And, of course, she put it all down to her own superior attractions?"
"Just exactly. This morning she didn't want to help me make the beds!"
Mary's Christmas present had been a beautiful silver-plated cornet, and
of course she must learn to play it when she went back to the convent.
Word came shortly that the music master employed there could not
undertake to teach her to play the instrument, but that a "professor"
could be secured to go out from Detroit twice a week--if desired. We
seemed to be in for it, so the lessons were desired, and we comforted
ourselves with the assurance that if Mary did not turn out to be a
tiptop reciter she would surely prove a tiptop cornet player. Her
unusual talent would justify my wife in her unusual step, and the
society of Lake City would forgive her for attempting to thrust the girl
into its midst as an equal. Many of our acquaintances seemed to take
mother's view of the case,--"Matter out of place becomes _dirrt_!"--and
Belle was put on her mettle to convince the majority that she had done
exactly the right thing in thus disclassing people. Disclassing
people? In a free republic!
We received glowing accounts of the cornet lessons.
"Dear girl!" said Belle enthusiastically. "She must have the real
artistic temperament to be so determined to excel in one or other of the
arts."
"She's dramatic, anyway," said I, and I was confirmed in my opinion
along in the spring, when the cornet, and aught else, appeared to have
palled upon the versatile Mary. She wrote that she had serious thoughts
of taking the veil.
"Bah!" said I; "what's she after now? She wants to scare us into
something."
Belle wrote privately to the Lady Superior, telling her that if she
considered Mary would be a desirable acquisition to their ranks she had
no sort of objection to her joining them.
The good sister replied that Miss Gemmell had not a grain of the stuff
of which nuns are made, that her leanings were all in a worldly
direction.
"No hope in that quarter!" laughed I, but Belle chided me for making fun
of Mary in her absence.
When "Miss Mamie Gemmell" joined us at Interlaken for the summer her
convent manners lasted for about two weeks, and then gave place to those
of a spoiled and pampered daughter of the house.
We in America are accustomed to disrespectfulness and waywardness in our
own children, but to notice the same attitude in a little nobody from
nowhere we have taken in out of charity, makes a man or woman stand
aghast.
"I don't believe she cares a straw for me personally," Belle would say
sometimes, "but I must confess I like her better than the cringing,
fawning variety. She's outspoken in her impertinent demands."
* * * * *
After a very hot week in July I joyfully took the train on Saturday
afternoon for the five miles' ride to Interlaken, and went to sleep that
night with my ears full of the sound of waves and pine trees; my heart
filled with the satisfaction of knowing that I had a whole round day
ahead of me--a sunrise and a sunset at either end.
I omitted the sunrise part of the programme, but between ten and eleven
I was ready for a walk down the pier to watch the bathers. American
women are seldom plump enough to stand the undress uniform of a bathing
costume. They run to extremes--become very stout indeed, or else very
thin, but in girlhood the tendency is to over-slimness.
I was thinking what a contrast our summer girls would present to a
group of Scotch lasses, though, to be sure, I was never privileged to
see any of the latter in bathing-dress, when a well-rounded apparition
in sky blue luster and no bathing cap emerged from one of the disrobing
houses. This damsel betook herself boldly to the pier, instead of
splashing around the edge of the sand as the others were doing, and,
coming near the end, took a run and then a beautiful header into the
deep blue water.
She had passed me too quickly to be recognized, but as her face appeared
above the surface I saw it belonged to no other than our adopted
daughter, for as such, at the moment, was I pleased to own her. She
shook the water out of her ears, gave her knob of hair an extra twist,
brushed back the ringlets that threatened her eyes, and looked as much
at home as if there were eighteen feet of land, instead of eighteen feet
of water below her.
There were several young men swimming about at the end of the wharf, and
they declared with gusto that a springboard must be erected for "Miss
Gemmell" at once. I declined to assist in breaking the Sabbath over any
such pranks, but a couple of scantily clad, dripping youths arose from
the deep and succeeded in loosening a heavy three-inch plank from the
flooring of the wharf. This was projected well out over the water, and
the fair Mary was induced to ascend and exhibit therefrom. I did not
approve at all, but thought it my duty to remain as chaperon until Belle
and another lady, whom I perceived walking leisurely out the pier,
should arrive.
The young men sprang back into the water to be on the reception
committee, and Mary teetered on the far end of the plank. There was
heard a loud, suggestive _crack_, and she leaped into space in a most
graceful semicircle before touching the water; but that awful board, the
instant her weight was removed, rose straight up in the air, nearly
knocked me off the dock, and with a groan slid through the opening
whence it had been raised, into the depths below.
Belle rushed to my rescue, while the other woman stood still and
shrieked.
"Nobody hurt!" called out from the water a nice-looking lad who was
swimming beside Mary, and apparently daring her to further exploits.
"Who is the young man?" I asked my wife, being ready to change the
subject from my own narrow escape.
"You mean the one with the Burne Jones head and the sleepy blue eyes
that's round with Mary all the time? His name's Flaker, and he's a
medical student from Chicago. That's all I know about him." But she was
destined to hear more, as we sat on the hotel veranda that night, from
two old ladies inside the open window and closed blind.
"Isn't it scandalous," said one, "the way Mrs. Gemmell tries to shove
that girl forward on every occasion?"
"Yes," said the other. "The old friendship between her and Mrs. Martin
is all broken up since she tried so hard to get Lincoln Todd entangled
with her last summer, and now she's doing her best to catch young
Flaker."
"I don't believe he has any idea who the girl is, or rather who she is
not."
"No, indeed, and his people would be in a great state if they knew the
sort of company he was keeping."
"Who are they?"
"Don't you know? His father is Dr. Flaker, who has that fine mansion on
the Grand Boulevard, and his mother belongs to one of the best New York
families. They're all as proud as Lucifer."
"I think it is time we went home, David. Listeners never hear any good
of themselves," said Belle, loudly enough to arrest the attention of the
two dames.
Walking over the dried-up moonlit grass to our cottage, I threatened to
go back and give them a piece of my mind, but my wife said:
"Maybe I did need a slight reminder. I haven't paid much attention to
Mary's goings-on this summer. I must talk to Mr. Flaker the first
chance."
The opportunity came before the Evening was over, while I was in my pet
hammock round the corner of the cottage, and Belle in a rocking-chair at
the front.
"Good-evening, Mr. Flaker," I heard her say. "I don't think you've ever
seen the inside of our cottage. Won't you step in for a moment, now that
it is lighted up?"
The moment satisfied him, for he speedily returned to the veranda.
"I never saw such a beautiful swimmer as Miss Gemmell," said the mannish
voice, and Belle replied impressively:
"I believe you are not aware, Mr. Flaker, that the young lady you call
Miss Gemmell is not my own daughter."
"Your stepchild is she, or your husband's niece?"
"Neither. She is no relation at all--just a poor girl whom I have taken
up to educate. She can barely read or write. I felt that I ought to tell
you this because you have been paying her a good deal of attention."
"Indeed, Mrs. Gemmell, I admire Miss Gemmell very much; but I assure
you I never regarded her as anything else than a pleasant summer
acquaintance."
And Mary was dropped forthwith.
CHAPTER V.
THE winter of 1892-93 Mary spent at home with us. Her first expressed
wish, when the family returned from Interlaken, was to be confirmed, and
the Rev. Mr. Armstrong of the church we do not attend was duly notified.
"He says I must be christened first," said Mary. "Would you mind if he
called me 'Mary Gemmell'? There aint any name that I've a right to, and
I don't want to be called 'Mason,' because that's the name of the woman
that abused me when I was little. I'd rather have yours."
She was such a pathetic-looking young person, standing there before
Belle in her fresh and innocent loveliness, that my wife had not the
heart to refuse her anything.
When I came home that same evening there was a _tableau vivant_ in front
of the parlor fire. Dressed in white, Mary sat on a low stool at the
feet of the Rev. Walter Armstrong, her hands clasped in her lap, gazing
up into the clean-shaven clerical face, with that which passed for her
soul in her eyes. In spite of his stiff round collar and long black coat
the rector is a young man, and I saw that he was impressed.
"You understand, do you, Mary," he said tenderly, "that when you are
received into the Church you have God for your Father and Christ for
your Elder Brother?"
"Yes, I understand, Mr. Armstrong," replied the girl earnestly. "And
that's just what I always wanted--was to have _'folks.'_"
I retired in haste to the dining room, where Isabel was brimming over
with a new scheme.
"I've always found the housekeeping a drag, and it becomes more so every
year as my outlook broadens. I want to keep up to the times, but I never
have any leisure for reading, and our four eldest being boys, there
seemed to be no hope for years of having any one to relieve me."
"Mary's a godsend," said I.
"I wish you really thought that, as I do. She's quick and adaptable, and
I'm going to hand over to her a weekly allowance and let her keep the
house on it."
"What about her accomplishments--the elocution and the cornet?"
"They can stand in the meantime. Do you know, Davie," hesitatingly, "I'm
beginning to be afraid she hasn't a good ear for music."
"Why?"
"The other night when the Mortons were in she sat and talked to Frank
Wade the whole time Eva was playing."
"That's nothing. Everyone else did the same."
"But for a girl who is trying to pose as a cornet player, who thinks she
might earn her living leading a church choir with one, it's bad policy,
to say the least of it."
"Earn her living! I asked Joe Mitchell, when he was listening to her
practicing out in the summer-house, what he thought of her playing, and
he said she'd better keep to a penny whistle."
"Very rude of him!"
"No, it wasn't. I asked him point blank if I should be justified in
paying for the more lessons she wants, and he said decidedly I should
not."
"Well," said Belle wearily, "we'll try the housekeeping. That's a
woman's true vocation, according to orthodox ideas. I shouldn't have set
my heart on Mary turning out to be anything extraordinary. If she'll
only be kind of half decent, and help me out with the housework, I'll be
more than satisfied."
The sense of power gave new brightness to Mary's fair face, and her step
through the house was of the lightest during the next week or two, but
the boys rebelled in turn.
"_Mam_ma! Mary's locked the pantry. Must we go to her for the key
whenever we want anything?"
"I call it a mean shame!" from Joe.
"What were you doing?"
"We didn't do nothin', on'y eat up the pie she meant for dessert. I'm
sure Margaret wouldn't mind makin' another."
"Mary's perfectly right, boys; I've indulged you too much."
Then it was Watty who complained:
"Mary says she won't have us mussing up the parlor after she's tidied
it, and that we've got to change our boots when we come into the house."
Or Chrissie:
"Mary says I'm big enough now to keep my own room in order, and she aint
going to do it any more. She's wors'en grandma!"
To their grandma did they go with their woes when they found their
mother so unaccountably obdurate, but they did not get much comfort
there. Detest Mary as she might, my poor mother is always loyal to the
powers that be, and she told the children: