Books: Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories

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THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS

POOR, DEAR MARGARET KIRBY AND OTHER STORIES

VOLUME III

This book is Jim's,--this page shall bear
Its witness to my love for him.
Best of small brothers anywhere,
Who would not do as much for Jim?

CONTENTS

POOR, DEAR MARGARET KIRBY
BRIDGING THE YEARS
THE TIDE-MARSH
WHAT HAPPENED TO ALANNA
THE FRIENDSHIP OF ALANNA
"S IS FOR SHIFTLESS SUSANNA"
THE LAST CAROLAN
MAKING ALLOWANCES FOR MAMMA
THE MEASURE OF MARGARET COPPERED
MISS MIX, KIDNAPPER
SHANDON WATERS
GAYLEY THE TROUBADOUR
DR. BATES AND MISS SALLY
THE GAY DECEIVER
THE RAINBOW'S END
ROSEMARY'S STEPMOTHER
AUSTIN'S GIRL
RISING WATER

POOR, DEAR MARGARET KIRBY

I

"You and I have been married nearly seven years," Margaret Kirby
reflected bitterly, "and I suppose we are as near hating each other
as two civilized people ever were!"

She did not say it aloud. The Kirbys had long ago given up any
discussion of their attitude to each other. But as the thought came
into her mind she eyed her husband--lounging moodily in her motor-
car, as they swept home through the winter twilight--with hopeless,
mutinous irritation.

What was the matter, she wondered, with John and Margaret Kirby--
young, handsome, rich, and popular? What had been wrong with their
marriage, that brilliantly heralded and widely advertised event?
Whose fault was it that they two could not seem to understand each
other, could not seem to live out their lives together in honorable
and dignified companionship, as generations of their forebears had
done?

"Perhaps everyone's marriage is more or less like ours," Margaret
mused miserably. "Perhaps there's no such thing as a happy
marriage."

Almost all the women that she knew admitted unhappiness of one sort
or another, and discussed their domestic troubles freely. Margaret
had never sunk to that; it would not even have been a relief to a
nature as self-sufficient and as cold as hers. But for years she had
felt that her marriage tie was an irksome and distasteful bond, and
only that afternoon she had been stung by the bitter fact that the
state of affairs between her husband and herself was no secret from
their world. A certain audacious newspaper had boldly hinted that
there would soon be a sensational separation in the Kirby household,
whose beautiful mistress would undoubtedly follow her first unhappy
marital experience with another--and, it was to be hoped, a more
fortunate--marriage.

Margaret had laughed when the article was shown her, with the easy
flippancy that is the stock in trade of her type of society woman;
but the arrow had reached her very soul, nevertheless.

So it had come to that, had it? She and John had failed! They were
to be dragged through the publicity, the humiliations, that precede
the sundering of what God has joined together. They had drifted, as
so many hundreds and thousands of men and women drift, from the
warm, glorious companionship of the honeymoon, to quarrels, to
truces, to discussion, to a recognition of their utter difference in
point of view, and to this final independent, cool adjustment, that
left their lives as utterly separated as if they had never met.

Yet she had done only what all the women she knew had done, Margaret
reminded herself in self-justification. She had done it a little
more brilliantly, perhaps; she had spent more money, worn handsomer
jewels and gowns; she had succeeded in idling away her life in that
utter leisure that was the ideal of them all, whether they were
quite able to achieve it or not. Some women had to order their
dinners, had occasionally to go about in hired vehicles, had to
consider the cost of hats and gowns; but Margaret, the envied, had
her own carriage and motor-car, her capable housekeeper, her yearly
trip to Paris for uncounted frocks and hats.

All the women she knew were useless, boasting rather of what they
did not have to do than of what they did, and Margaret was more
successfully useless than the others. But wasn't that the lot of a
woman who is rich, and marries a richer man? Wasn't it what married
life should be?

"I don't know what makes me nervous to-night," Margaret said to
herself finally, settling back comfortably in her furs. "Perhaps I
only imagine John is going to make one of his favorite scenes when
we get home. Probably he hasn't seen the article at all. I don't
care, anyway! If it SHOULD come to a divorce, why, we know plenty of
people who are happier that way. Thank Heaven, there isn't a child
to complicate things!"

Five feet away from her, as the motor-car waited before crossing the
park entrance, a tall man and a laughing girl were standing, waiting
to cross the street.

"But aren't we too late for gallery seats?" Margaret heard the girl
say, evidently deep in an important choice.

"Oh, no!" the man assured her eagerly.

"Then I choose the fifty-cent dinner and 'Hoffman' by all means,"
she decided joyously.

Margaret looked after them, a sudden pain at her heart. She did not
know what the pain was. She thought she was pitying that young
husband and wife; but her thoughts went back to them as she entered
her own warm, luxurious rooms a few moments later.

"Fifty-cent dinner!" she murmured. "It must be awful!"

To her surprise, her husband followed her into her room, without
knocking, and paid no attention to the very cold stare with which
she greeted him.

"Sit down a minute, Margaret, will you?" he said, "and let your
woman go. I want to speak to you."

Angry to feel herself a little at loss, Margaret nodded to the maid,
and said in a carefully controlled tone:

"I am dining at the Kelseys', John. Perhaps some other time--"

Her husband, a thin, tall man, prematurely gray, was pacing the
floor nervously, his hands plunged deep in his coat pockets. He
cleared his throat several times before he spoke. His voice was
sharp, and his words were delivered quickly:

"It's come to this, Margaret--I'm very sorry to have to tell you,
but things have finally reached the point where it's--it's got to
come out! Bannister and I have been nursing it along; we've done all
that we could. I went down to Washington and saw Peterson, but it's
no use! We turn it all over--the whole thing--to the creditors to-
morrow!" His voice rose suddenly; it was shocking to see the control
suddenly fail. "I tell you it's all up, Margaret! It's the end of
me! I won't face it!"

He dropped into a chair, but suddenly sprang up again, and began to
walk about the room.

"Now, you can do just what you think wise," he resumed presently, in
the advisory, quiet tones he usually used to her. "You can always
have the income of your Park Avenue house; your Aunt Paul will be
glad enough to go abroad with you, and there are personal things--
the house silver and the books--that you can claim. I've lain awake
nights planning--" His voice shook again, but he gained his calm
after a moment. "I want to ask you not to work yourself up over it,"
he added.

There was a silence. Margaret regarded him in stony fury. She was
deadly white.

"Do you mean that Throckmorton, Kirby, & Son have--has failed?" she
asked. "Do you mean that my money--the money that my father left me-
-is GONE? Does Mr. Bannister say so? Why--why has it never occurred
to you to warn me?"

"I did warn you. I did try to tell you, in July--why, all the world
knew how things were going!"

If, on the last word, there crept into his voice the plea that even
a strong man makes to his women for sympathy, for solace, Margaret's
eyes killed it. John, turning to go, gave her what consolation he
could.

"Margaret, I can only say I'm sorry. I tried--Bannister knows how I
tried to hold my own. But I was pretty young when your father died,
and there was no one to help me learn. I'm glad it doesn't mean
actual suffering for you. Some day, perhaps, we'll get some of it
back. God knows I hope so. I've not meant much to you. Your marriage
has cost you pretty dear. But I'm going to do the only thing I can
for you."

Silence followed. Margaret presently roused herself.

"I suppose this can be kept from the papers? We needn't be discussed
and pointed at in the streets?" she asked heavily, her face a mask
of distaste.

"That's impossible," said John, briefly.

"To some people nothing is impossible," Margaret said.

Her husband turned again without a word, and left her. Afterward she
remembered the sick misery in his eyes, the whiteness of his face.

What did she do then? She didn't know. Did she go at once to the
dressing-table? Did she ring for Louise, or was she alone as she
slowly got herself into a loose wrapper and unpinned her hair?

How long was it before she heard that horrible cry in the hall? What
was it--that, or the voices and the flying footsteps, that brought
her, shaken and gasping, to her feet?

She never knew. She only knew that she was in John's dressing-room,
and that the servants were clustered, a sobbing, terrified group, in
the doorway. John's head, heavy, with shut eyes, was on her
shoulder; John's limp body was in her arms. They were telling her
that this was the bottle he had emptied, and that he was dead.

II

It was a miracle that they had got her husband to the hospital
alive, the doctors told Margaret, late that night. His life could be
only a question of moments. It was extraordinary that he should live
through the night, they told her the next morning; but it could not
last more than a few hours now. It was impossible for John Kirby to
live, they said; but John Kirby lived.

He lived, to struggle through agonies undreamed of, back to days of
new pain. There were days and weeks and months when he lay, merely
breathing, now lightly, now just a shade more deeply.

There came a day when great doctors gathered about him to exult that
he undoubtedly, indisputably winced when the hypodermic needle hurt
him. There was a great day, in late summer, when he muttered
something. Then came relapses, discouragements, the bitter retracing
of steps.

On Christmas Day he opened his eyes, and said to the grave, thin
woman who sat with her hand in his:

"Margaret!"

He slipped off again too quickly to know that she had broken into
tears and fallen on her knees beside him.

After a while he sat up, and was read to, and finally wept because
the nurses told him that some day he would want to get up and walk
about again. His wife came every day, and he clung to her like a
child. Sometimes, watching her, a troubled thought would darken his
eyes; but on a day when they first spoke of the terrible past, she
smiled at him the motherly smile that he was beginning so to love,
and told him that all business affairs could wait. And he believed
her.

One glorious spring afternoon, when the park looked deliriously
fresh and green from the hospital windows, John received permission
to extend his little daily walk beyond the narrow garden. With an
invalid's impatience, he bemoaned the fact that his wife would not
be there that day to accompany him on his first trip into the world.

His nurse laughed at him.

"Don't you think you're well enough to go and make a little call on
Mrs. Kirby?" she suggested brightly. "She's only two blocks away,
you know. She's right here on Madison Avenue. Keep in the sunlight
and walk slowly, and be sure to come back before it's cold, or I'll
send the police after you."

Thus warned, John started off, delighted at the independence that he
was gaining day after day. He walked the two short blocks with the
care that only convalescents know; a little confused by the gay,
jarring street noises, the wide light and air about him.

He found the address, but somehow the big, gloomy double house
didn't look like Margaret. There was a Mrs. Kirby there, the maid
assured him, however, and John sat down in a hopelessly ugly
drawing-room to wait for her. Instead, there came in a cheerful
little woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Kippam. She was of the
chattering, confidential type so often found in her position.

"Now, you wanted Mrs. Kirby, didn't you?" she said regretfully.
"She's out. I'm the housekeeper here, and I thought if it was just a
question of rooms, maybe I'd do as well?"

"There's some mistake," said John; and he was still weak enough to
feel himself choke at the disappointment. "I want Mrs. John Kirby--a
very beautiful Mrs. Kirby, who is quite prominent in--"

"Oh, yes, indeed!" said Mrs. Kippam, lowering her voice and growing
confidential. "That's the same one. Her husband failed, and all but
killed himself, you know--you've read about it in the papers? She
sold everything she had, you know, to help out the firm, and then
she came here--"

"Bought out an interest in this?" said John, very quietly, in his
winning voice.

"Well, she just came here as a regular guest at first," said Mrs.
Kippam, with a cautious glance at the door. "I was running it then;
but I'd got into awful debt, and my little boy was sick, and I got
to telling her my worries. Well, she was looking for something to
do--a companion or private secretary position--but she didn't find
it, and she had so many good ideas about this house, and helped me
out so, just talking things over, that finally I asked her if she
wouldn't be my partner. And she was glad to; she was just about
worried to death by that time."

"I thought Mrs. Kirby had property--investments in her own name?"
John said.

"Oh, she did, but she put everything right back into the firm," said
Mrs. Kippam. "Lots of her old friends went back on her for doing
it," the little woman went on, in a burst of loyal anger. "However,"
she added, very much enjoying her listener's close attention, "I
declare my luck seemed to change the day she took hold! First thing
was that her friends, and a lot that weren't her friends, came here
out of curiosity, and that advertised the place. Then she slaves day
and night, goes right into the kitchen herself and watches things;
and she has such a way with the help--she knows how to manage them.
And the result is that we've got the house packed for next winter,
and we'll have as many as thirty people here all summer long. I feel
like another person, "the tears suddenly brimmed her weak, kind
eyes, and she fumbled with her handkerchief. "You'll think I'm crazy
running on this way!" said little Mrs. Kippam, "but everything has
gone so good. My Lesty is much better, and as things are now I can
get him into the country next year; and I feel like I owed it all to
Margaret Kirby!"

John tried to speak, but the room was wheeling about him. As he
raised his trembling hand to his eyes, a shadow fell across the
doorway, and Margaret came in. Tired, shabby, laden with bundles,
she stood blinking at him a moment; and then, with a sudden cry of
tenderness and pity, she was on her knees by his side.

"Margaret! Margaret!" he whispered. "What have you done?"

She did not answer, but gathered him close in her strong arms, and
they kissed each other with wet eyes.

III

A few weeks later John came to the boarding-house, nervous,
discouraged, still weak. Despite Margaret's bravery, they both felt
the position a strained and uncomfortable one. As day after day
proved his utter unfitness for a fresh business start in the cruel,
jarring competition of the big city, John's spirits nagged
pitifully. He hated the boarding-house.

"It's only the bridge that takes us over the river," his wife
reminded him.

But when a little factory in a little town, half a day's journey
away, offered John a manager's position, at a salary that made them
both smile, she let him accept it without a murmur.

Her courage lasted until he was on the train, travelling toward the
new town and the new position. But as she walked back to her own
business, a sort of nausea seized her. The big, heroic fight was
over; John's life was saved, and the debt reduced to a reasonable
burden. But the deadly monotony was ahead, the drudgery of days and
days of hateful labor, the struggle--for what? When could they ever
take their place again in the world that they knew? Who could ever
work up again from debts like these? Would John always be the weak,
helpless convalescent, or would he go back to the old type, the
bored, silent man of clubs and business?

Margaret turned a grimy corner, and was joined by one of her
boarders, a cheerful little army wife.

"Well, we'll miss Mr. Kirby, I'm sure," said little Mrs. Camp, as
they mounted the steps. "And by the way, Mrs. Kirby, you won't mind
if I ask if we mayn't just now and then have some of the new towels
on our floor--will you? We never get anything but the old, thin
towels. Of course, it's Alma's fault; but I think every one ought to
take a turn at the new towels as well as the old, don't you?"

"I'll speak to Alma," said Margaret, turning her key.

A lonely, busy autumn fellowed, and a winter of hard and thankless
work.

"I feel like a plumber's wife," smiled Margaret to Mrs. Kippam, when
in November John wrote her of a "raise."

But when he came down for two days at Christmastime, she noticed
that he was brown, cheerful, and amazingly strong. They were as shy
as lovers on this little holiday, Margaret finding that her old
maternal, half-patronizing attitude toward her husband did not fit
the case at all, and John almost as much at a loss.

In April she went up to Applebridge, and they spent a whole day
roaming about in the fresh spring fields together.

"It's really a delicious little place," she confided to Mrs. Kippam
when she returned. "The sort of place where kiddies carry their
lunches to school, and their mothers put up preserves, and everybody
has a surrey and an old horse. John's quite a big man up there."

After the April visit came a long break, for John went to Chicago in
the July fortnight they had planned to spend together; and when he
at last came to New York for another Christmas, Margaret was in bed
with a bad throat, and could only whisper her questions. So another
winter struggled by, and another spring, and when summer came
Margaret found that it was almost impossible to break away from her
increasing responsibilities.

But on a fragrant, soft October day she found herself getting off
the early train in the little station; and as a big man waved his
hat to her, and they turned to walk down the road together, they
smiled into each other's eyes like two children.

"Were you surprised at the letter?" said John.

"Not so much surprised as glad," said Margaret, coloring like a
girl.

They presently turned off the main road, and entered a certain gate.
Beyond the gate was an old, overgrown garden, and beyond that a
house--a broad, shabby house; and beyond that again an orchard, and
barns and outhouses.

John took a key from his pocket, and they opened the front door.
Roses, looking in the back door, across a bare, wide stretch of
hall, smiled at them. The sunlight fell everywhere in clear squares
on the bare floors. It brightened the big kitchen, and glinted in
the pantry, still faintly redolent of apples stored on shelves. It
crept into the attic, and touched the scored casement where years
ago a dozen children had recorded their heights and ages.

Margaret and John came out on the porch again, and she turned to him
with brimming eyes. It suddenly swept over her, with a thankfulness
too deep for realization, that this would be her world. She would
sit on this wide porch, waiting for him in the summer afternoons;
she would go about from room to room on the happy, commonplace
journeys of house-keeping; would keep the fire blazing against
John's return. And in the years to come perhaps there would be other
voices about the old house; there would be little shining heads to
keep the sunlight always there.

"Well, Margaret, do you like it?" said John, his arm about her, his
face radiant with pride and happiness.

"Like it I" said Margaret. "Why, it's home!"

IV

So the Kirbys disappeared from the world. Sometimes a newcomer at
Margaret's club would ask about the great portrait that hung over
the library fireplace--the portrait of a cold-eyed woman with
beautiful pearls about her beautiful throat. Then the history of
poor, dear Margaret Kirby would be reviewed--its triumphs, its
glories, Margaret's brilliant marriage, her beauty, her wit. These
only led to the final tragic scenes that had ended it all.

"And now she is grubbing away dear knows where!" her biographer
would say carelessly. "Absolutely, they might as well be buried!"

But about seven years after the Kirbys' disappearance, it happened
that four of Margaret's old intimates--the T. Illington Frarys and
the Josiah Dunnings--were taking a little motor trip in the
Dunnings' big car, through the northern part of the State. Just
outside the little village of Applebridge, something mysterious and
annoying happened to the car, which stopped short, and after some
discussion it was decided that the ladies should wait therein, while
the men walked back in search of help.

Mrs. Dunning and Mrs. Frary, settling themselves comfortably in the
tonneau for a long wait, puzzled themselves a little over the name
of Applebridge.

"I can just remember hearing of it," said Mrs. Dunning, sleepily,
"but when or where or how I don't know."

They opened their books. A brilliant May afternoon throbbed, hummed,
sparkled all about them. The big wheels of the motor were deep in
grass and blossoms. On either side of the road, fields were gay with
bees and butterflies. Larks looped the blackberry-vines with quick
flights; mustard-tops showed their pale gold under the apple-
blossoms.

Here and there a white cloud drifted in the deep, clear blue of the
sky. There had been rains a day or two before, and in the fragrant
air still hung a little chill, a haunting suggestion of wet earth
and refreshed blossoms. Somewhere near, but out of sight, a flooded
creek was tumbling noisily over its shallows.

Suddenly the Sunday stillness was broken by voices. The two women in
the motor looked at each other, listening. They heard a woman's
voice, singing; then a small boyish voice, then a man's voice. The
speakers, whoever they were, apparently settled down in the meadow,
not more than a dozen yards away, for a breathing space. A tangle of
vines and bushes screened them from the motor-car.

"Mother, are me and Billy going to turn the freezer?" said a child's
voice, and a man asked:

"Tired, old lady?"

"No, not at all. It's been a delicious walk," said the woman. The
two sitting in the motor gasped. "Yes, yes, yes, lovey," the woman's
voice went on, "you and Bill may turn, if Mary doesn't mind. Be
careful of my fern, Jack!" And then, in German: "Aren't they lovely
in all the grass and flowers, John?"

"Margaret!" breathed Mrs. Frary. "Poor, dear Margaret Kirby!"

"I hope they don't go by this way," whispered Mrs. Dunning, after an
astounded second. "One's been so rude--don't you know--forgetting
her!"

"She probably won't know us," Mrs. Frary whispered back, adjusting
her veil in a stealthy way.

Mrs. Frary was right. The Kirbys presently passed with only a
cursory glance at the swathed occupants of the motor-car. They were
laughing like a lot of children as they scrambled through the hedge.
John--a big, broad John, as strong and brisk as a boy--carried a
tiny barefoot girl on his shoulder. Margaret, her beauty more
startling than ever under the sweep of a gypsy hat; her splendid
figure a little broader, but still magnificent under the cotton
gown; her arms full of flowers and ferns, was escorted by two more
children, sturdy little boys, who doubled and redoubled on their
tracks like puppies. The tiny barefoot girl, in her father's arms,
was only a tangle of blue gingham and drifting strands of silky
hair; but the boys were splendidly alert little lads, and their high
voices loitered in the air after the radiant, chattering little
caravan had quite disappeared.

"Well!" said Mrs. Dunning, then.

"Poor, dear Margaret Kirby!" was on Mrs. Frary's lips; but she
didn't say it.

She and Mrs. Dunning stared at each other a long minute, utterly at
a loss. Then they reopened their books.

BRIDGING THE YEARS

The rain had stopped; and after long days of downpour, there seemed
at last to be a definite change. Anne Warriner, standing at one of
the dining-room windows, with the tiny Virginia in her arms, could
find a decided brightening in the western sky. Roofs--the roofs that
made a steep sky-line above the hills of old San Francisco--glinted
in the light. The glimpse of the bay that had not yet been lost
between the walls of fast-encroaching new buildings, was no longer
dull, and beaten level by the rain, but showed cold, and ruffled,
and steely-blue; there was even a whitecap or two dancing on the
crests out toward Alcatraz. A rising wind made the ivy twinkle
cheerfully against the old-fashioned brick wall that bounded the
Warriners' backyard.

"I believe the storm is really over!" Anne said, thankfully, half
aloud, "to-morrow will be fair!"

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