Books: Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories
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Kathleen Norris >> Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories
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"No Lizzie?" asked Mamma, blithely, when her first greetings were
over, and the case of Cousin Will had been dismissed with a few
emphatic sentences.
"I let her go this afternoon instead of to-morrow, Muddie, dear.
We're going down town to dinner."
"Oh; that's nice,--but I look a perfect fright!" said Mrs.
Honeywell, following Mary upstairs. "Nasty trip! I don't want a
thing but a cup of tea for supper anyway--bit of toast. I'll be glad
to get my things off for a while."
"If you LIKE, Mamma, why don't you just turn in?" Mary suggested.
"It's nearly four now. I'll bring you up some cold meat and tea and
so on."
"Sounds awfully nice," her mother said, getting a thin little silk
wrapper out of her suit-case. "But we'll see,--there's no hurry.
What time are you meeting Georgie?"
"Well, we were going to Macbeth's,--but that's not important,--we
needn't meet him until nearly seven, I suppose," Mary said
patiently, "only I ought to telephone him what we are going to do."
"Oh, telephone that I'll come too, I'll feel fine in half an hour,"
Mrs. Honeywell said decidedly.
Mary, unsatisfied with this message, temporized by sitting down in a
deep chair. The room, which had all been made ready for Mamma, was
cool and pleasant. Awnings shaded the open windows; the rugs, the
wall-paper, the chintzes were all in gay and roseate tints. Mrs.
Honeywell stretched herself luxuriously on the bed, both pillows
under her head.
"I'm sure she'd be much more comfortable here than tearing about
town this stuffy night!" the daughter reflected, while listening to
an account of Cousin Will's dreadful house, and dreadful children.
It was so easy when Mamma was away to think generously,
affectionately of her, to laugh kindly at the memory of her trying
moods. But it was very different to have Mamma actually about, to
humor her whims, listen to her ceaseless chatter, silently sacrifice
to her comfort a thousand comforts of one's own.
After a half hour of playing listener she went down to telephone
George.
"Oh, damn!" said George, heartily. "And here I've been hustling
through things thinking any minute that you'd come in. Well, this
spoils it all. I'll come home."
"Oh, dearest,--it'll be just a 'pick-up' dinner, then. I don't know
what's in the house. Lizzie's gone," Mary submitted hesitatingly.
"Oh, damn!" George said forcibly, again.
"What does your mother propose to do?" he asked Mary some hours
later, when the rather unsuccessful dinner was over, Mamma had
retired, and he and his wife were in their own rooms. Mary felt
impending unpleasantness in his tone, and battled with a rising
sense of antagonism. She tucked her pink hat into its flowered box,
folded the silky tissue paper about it, tied the strings.
"Why, I don't know, dear!" she said pleasantly, carrying the box to
her wardrobe.
"Does she plan to stay here?" George asked, with a reasonable air,
carefully transferring letters, pocket-book, and watch-case from one
vest to another.
"George, when does Mamma ever plan ANYTHING!" Mary reminded him,
with elaborate gentleness.
There was a short silence. The night was very sultry, and no air
stirred the thin window-curtains. The room, with its rich litter of
glass and silver, its dark wood and bright hangings, seemed somehow
hot and crowded. Mary flung her dark cloud of hair impatiently back,
as she sat at her dressing table. Brushing was too hot a business
tonight.
"I confess I think I have a right to ask what your mother proposes
to do," George said presently, with marked politeness.
"Oh, Georgie! DON'T be so ridiculous!" Mary protested impatiently.
"You know what Mamma is!"
"I may be ridiculous," George conceded, magnificently, "but I fail
to see--"
"I don't mean that," Mary said hastily. "But need we decide
tonight?" she added with laudable calm. "It's so HOT, dearest, and I
am so sleepy. Mamma could go to Beach Meadow, I suppose?" she
finished unthinkingly.
This was a wrong move. George was disappearing into his dressing-
room at the moment, and did not turn back. Mary put out all the
lights but one, turned down the beds, settled on her pillows with a
great sigh of relief. But George, returning in a trailing wrapper,
was mighty with resolution.
"I mean to make just one final remark on this subject, Mary," said
George, flashing on three lights with one turn of the wrist, "but
you may as well understand me. I mean it! I don't propose to have
your mother at Beach Meadow, not for a single night--not for a day!
She demoralizes the boys, she has a very bad effect on the nurse. I
sympathize with Miss Fox, and I refuse to allow my children to be
given candy, and things injurious to their constitutions, and to be
kept up until late hours, and to have their first perceptions of
honor and truth misled--"
"George!"
"Well,' said George, after a brief pause, more mildly, "I won't have
it."
"Then--but she can't stay here, George. It will spoil our whole
summer."
"Exactly," George assented. There was another pause.
"I'll talk to Mamma--she may have some plan," Mary said at last,
with a long sigh.
Mamma had no plan to unfold on the following day, and a week and
then ten days went by without any suggestion of change on her part.
The weather was very hot, and Lizzie complained more than once that
Mrs. Honeywell must have her iced coffee and sandwiches at four and
that breakfast, luncheon, and dinner regularly for three was not at
all like getting two meals for two every day, and besides, there was
another bedroom to care for, and the kitchen was never in order!
Mary applied an unfailing remedy to Lizzie's case, and sent for a
charwoman besides. Less easily solved were other difficulties.
George, for example, liked to take long motoring trips out of the
city, on warm summer evenings. He ran his own car, and was never so
happy as when Mary was on the driver's seat beside him, where he
could amuse her with the little news of the day, or repeat to her
long and, to Mary, unintelligible business conversations in which he
had borne a part.
But Mamma's return spoiled all this. Obviously, the little lady
couldn't be left to bounce about alone in the tonneau. If Mary
joined her there, George would sit silently, immovably, in the front
seat, chewing his cigar, his eyes on the road. Only when they had a
friend or two with them did Mary enjoy these drives.
Mamma had an unlucky habit of scattering George's valuable books
carelessly about the house, and George was fussy about his books.
And she would sometimes amuse herself by trying roll after roll on
the piano-player, until George, perhaps trying to read in the
adjoining library, was almost frantic. And she mislaid his telephone
directory, and took telephone messages for him that she forgot to
deliver, and insisted upon knowing why he was late for dinner, in
spite of Mary's warning, "Let him change and get his breath Mamma,
dear,--he's exhausted. What does it matter, anyway?"
Sometimes Mary's heart would ache for the little, resourceless lady,
drifting aimlessly through her same and stupid days. Mamma had
always been spoiled, loved, amused,--it was too much to expect
strength and unselfishness of her now. And at other times, when she
saw the tired droop to George's big shoulders, and the gallant
effort he made to be sweet to Mamma, George who was so good, and so
generous, and who only asked to have his wife and home quietly to
himself after the long day, Mary's heart would burn with longing to
put her arms about him, and go off alone with him somewhere, and
smooth the wrinkles from. his forehead, and let him rest.
One warm Sunday in mid-July they all went down to Long Island to see
the rosy, noisy babies. It was a happy day for Mary. George was very
gracious, Mamma charming and complaisant. The weather was
perfection, and the children angelic. They shared the noonday dinner
with little George and Richard and Mary, and motored home through
the level light of late afternoon. Slowly passing through a certain
charming colony of summer homes, they were suddenly hailed.
Out from a shingled bungalow, and across a velvet lawn streamed
three old friends of Mamma's, Mrs. Law'nce Arch'bald, and her
daughter, 'Lizabeth Sarah, who was almost Mamma's age, and 'Lizabeth
Sarah's husband, Harry Fairfax. These three were rapturously
presented to the Venables by Mrs. Honeywell, and presently they all
went up to the porch for tea.
Mary thought, and she could see George thought, that it was very
pleasant to discuss the delicious Oolong and Maryland biscuit, and
Southern white fruit-cake, while listening to Mamma's happy chatter
with her old friends. The old negress who served tea called Mamma
"chile," and Mrs. Archibald, an aristocratic, elderly woman, treated
her as if she were no more than a girl. Mary thought she had never
seen her mother so charming.
"I wonder if the's any reason, Mary Lou'siana, why you can't just
come down here and stay with me this summah?" said Mrs. Archibald,
suddenly. "'Lizabeth Sarah and Harry Fairfax, they're always coming
and going, and Lord knows it would be like havin' one of my own
girls back, to me. We've room, and there's a lot of nice people down
hereabouts--"
A chorus arose, Mrs. Honey well protesting joyously that that was
too much imp'sition for any use, 'Lizabeth Sarah and Harry Fairfax
violently favorable to the idea, Mrs. Archibald magnificently
overriding objections, Mary and George trying with laughter to
separate jest from earnest. Mrs. Honeywell, overborne, was dragged
upstairs to inspect "her room," old Aunt Curry, the colored maid and
cook, adding her deep-noted welcome to "Miss Mar' Lou." It was
arranged that Mamma should at least spend the night, and George and
Mary left her there, and came happily home together, laughing, over
their little downtown dinner, with an almost parental indulgence, at
Mamma.
In the end, Mamma did go down to the Archibald's for an indefinite
stay. Mary quite overwhelmed her with generous contributions to her
wardrobe, and George presented her with a long-coveted chain. The
parting took place with great affection and regret expressed on both
sides. But this timely relief was clouded for Mary when Mamma
flitted in to see her a day or two later. Mamma wondered if Ma'y
dearest could possibly let her have two hundred dollars.
"Muddie, you've overdrawn again!" Mary accused her. For Mamma had an
income of a thousand a year.
"No, dear, it's not that. I am a little overdrawn, but it's not
that. But you see Richie Carter lives right next do' to the
Arch'balds,"--Mamma's natural Southern accent was gaining strength
every day now,--"and it might be awkward, meetin' him, don't you
know?"
"Awkward?" Mary echoed, frowning.
"Well, you see, Ma'y, love, some years ago I was intimate with his
wife," her mother proceeded with some little embarrassment, "and so
when I met him at the Springs last year, I confided in him about--
laws! I forget what it was exactly, some bills I didn't want to
bother Georgie about, anyway. And he was perfectly charmin' about it
I"
"Oh, Mamma!" Mary said in distress, "not Richard Carter of the
Carter Construction Company? Oh, Mamma, you know how George hates
that whole crowd! You didn't borrow money of him!"
"Not that he'd ever speak of it--he'd die first!" Mrs. Honeywell
said hastily.
"I'll have to ask George for it," Mary said after a long pause, "and
he'll be furious." To which Mamma, who was on the point of
departure, agreed, adding thoughtfully, "I'm always glad not to be
here if Georgie's going to fly into a rage."
George did fly into a rage at this piece of news, and said some
scathing things of Mamma, even while he wrote out a check for two
hundred dollars.
"Here, you send it to her," he said bitterly to Mary, folding the
paper with a frown. "I don't feel as if I ever wanted to see her
again. I tell you, Mary, I warn you, my dear, that things can't go
on this way much longer. I never refused her money that I know of,
and yet she turns to this fellow Carter!" He interrupted himself
with an exasperated shrug, and began to walk about the room. "She
turns to Carter," he burst out again angrily, "a man who could hurt
me irreparably by letting it get about that my mother-in-law had to
ask him for a petty loan!"
Mary, with a troubled face, was slowly, silently setting up a game
of chess. She took the check, feeling like Becky Sharp, and tucked
it into her blouse.
"Come on, George, dear," she said, after an uneasy silence. She
pushed a white pawn forward. George somewhat unwillingly took his
seat opposite her, but could not easily capture the spirit of the
game. He made a hasty move or two, scowled up at the lights, scowled
at the windows that were already wide open to the sultry night,
loosened his collar with two impatient fingers.
"I'd give a good deal to understand your mother, Mary," he burst out
suddenly. "I'd give a GREAT deal! Her love of pleasure I can
understand--her utter lack of any possible vestige of business sense
I can understand, although my own mother was a woman who conducted
an immense business with absolute scrupulousness and integrity--"
"Georgie, dear! What has your mother's business ability to do with
poor Mamma!" Mary said patiently, screwing the separated halves of a
knight firmly together.
"It has this to do with it," George said with sudden heat, "that my
mother's principles gave me a pretty clear idea of what a lady does
and does not do! And my mother would have starved before she turned
to a comparative stranger for a personal loan."
"But neither one of her sons could bear to live with her, she was so
cold-blooded," Mary thought, but with heroic self-control she kept
silent. She answered only by the masterly advance of a bishop.
"Queen," she said calmly.
"Queen nothing!" George said, suddenly attentive.
"Give me a piece then," Mary chanted. George gave a fully aroused
attention to the game, and saving it, saved the evening for Mary.
"But please keep Mamma quiet now for a while!" she prayed fervently
in her evening devotions a few hours later. "I can't keep this up--
we'll have serious trouble here. Please make her stay where she is
for a year at least."
Two weeks, three weeks, went peaceably by. The Venables spent a
happy week-end or two with their children. Between these visits they
were as light-hearted as children themselves, in the quiet roominess
of the New York home. Mamma's letters were regular and cheerful, she
showed no inclination to return, and Mary, relieved for the first
time since her childhood of pressing responsibility, bloomed like a
rose.
Sometimes she reflected uneasily that Mamma's affairs were only
temporarily settled, after all, and sometimes George made her heart
sink with uncompromising statements regarding the future, but for
the most part Mary's natural sunniness kept her cheerful and
unapprehensive.
Almost unexpectedly, therefore, the crash came. It came on a very
hot day, which, following a week of delightfully cool weather, was
like a last flaming hand-clasp from the departing summer. It was a
Monday, and had started wrong with a burned omelette at breakfast,
and unripe melons. And the one suit George had particularly asked to
have cleaned and pressed had somehow escaped Mary's vigilance, and
still hung creased and limp in the closet. So George went off,
feeling a little abused, and Mary, feeling cross, too, went slowly
about her morning tasks. Another annoyance was when the telephones
had been cut off; a man with a small black bag mysteriously
appearing to disconnect them, and as mysteriously vanishing when
once their separated parts lay useless on the floor. Mary, idly
reading, and comfortably stretched on a couch in her own room at
eleven o'clock, was disturbed by the frantic and incessant ringing
of the front doorbell.
"Lizzie went in to Broadway, I suppose," she reflected uneasily.
"But I oughtn't to go down this way! Let him try again."
"He"--whoever he was--did try again so forcibly and so many times
that Mary, after going to the head of the kitchen stairs to call
Lizzie, with no result, finally ran down the main stairway herself,
and gathering the loose frills of her morning wrapper about her,
warily unbolted the door.
She admitted George, whose face was dark with heat, and whose voice
rasped.
"Where's Lizzie?" he asked, eying Mary's negligee.
"Oh, dearie--and I've been keeping you waiting!" Mary lamented.
"Come into the dining-room, it's cooler. She's marketing."
George dropped into a chair and mopped his forehead.
"No one to answer the telephone?" he pursued, frowning.
"It's disconnected, dear. Georgie, what is it?--you look sick."
"Well, I am, just about!" George said sternly. Then, irrelevantly,
he demanded: "Mary, did you know your mother had disposed of her
Sunbright shares?"
"Sold her copper stock!" Mary ejaculated, aghast For Mamma's entire
income was drawn from this eminently safe and sane investment, and
Mary and George had never ceased to congratulate themselves upon her
good fortune in getting it at all.
"Two months ago," said George, with a shrewdly observant eye.
Mary interpreted his expression.
"Certainly I didn't know it!" she said with spirit.
"Didn't, eh? She SAYS you did," George said.
"Mamma does?" Mary was astounded.
"Read that!" Her husband flung a letter on the table.
Mary caught it up, ran through it hastily. It was from Mamma: She
was ending her visit at Rock Bar, the Archibalds were going South
rather early, they had begged her to go, but she didn't want to, and
Mary could look for her any day now. And she was writing to Georgie
because she was afraid she'd have to tell him that she had done an
awfully silly thing: she had sold her Sunbright shares to an awfully
attractive young fellow whom Mr. Pierce had sent to her--and so on
and so on. Mary's eye leaped several lines to her own name. "Mary
agreed with me that the Potter electric light stock was just as safe
and they offered seven per cent," wrote Mamma.
"I DO remember now her saying something about the Potter," Mary
said, raising honest, distressed eyes from the letter, "but with no
possible idea that she meditated anything like this!"
George had been walking up and down the room.
"She's lost every cent!" he said savagely. And he flung both hands
out with an air of frenzy before beginning his angry march again.
Mary sat in stony despair.
"Have you heard from her today?" he flung out.
His wife shook her head.
"Well, she's in town," George presently resumed, "because Bates told
me she telephoned the office while I was out this morning. Now,
listen, Mary. I've done all I'm going to do for your mother! And
she's not to enter this house again--do you understand?"
"George!" said Mary.
"She is not going to ENTER MY HOUSE," reiterated George. "I have
often wondered what led to estrangements in families, but by the
Lord, I think there's some excuse in this case! She lies to me, she
sets my judgment at naught, she does the things with my children
that I've expressly asked her not to do, she cultivates the people I
loathe, she works you into a state of nervous collapse--it's too
much! Now she's thrown her income away,--thrown it away! Now I tell
you, Mary, I'll support her, if that's what she expects--"
"Really, George, you are--you are--Be careful!" Mary exclaimed,
roused in her turn. "You forget to whom you are speaking. I admit
that Mamma is annoying, I admit that you have some cause for
complaint,--but you forget to whom you are speaking! I love my
mother," said Mary, her feeling rising with every word. "I won't
have her so spoken of! Not have her enter the house again? Why, do
you suppose I am going to meet her in the street, and send her
clothes after her as if she were a discharged servant?"
"She may come here for her clothes," George conceded, "but she shall
not spend another night under my roof. Let her try taking care of
herself for a change!"
There was a silence.
"George, DON'T you see how unreasonable you are?" Mary said, after a
bitter struggle for calm.
"That's final," George said briefly.
"I don't know what you mean by final," his wife answered with
warmth. "If you really think--"
"I won't argue it, my dear. And I won't have my life ruined by your
mother, as thousands of men's lives have been ruined, by just such
unscrupulous irresponsible women!"
"George," said Mary, very white, "I won't turn against my mother!"
"Then you turn against me," George said in a deadly calm.
"Do you expect her to board, George, in the same city that I have my
home?" Mary demanded, after a pause.
"Plenty of women do it," George said inflexibly.
"But, George, you know Mamma! She'd simply be here all the time; it
would come to exactly the same thing. She'd come after breakfast,
and you'd have to take her home after dinner. She'd have her clothes
made here, and laundered here, and she'd do all her telephoning..."
"That is exactly what has got to stop," said George. "I will pay her
board at some good place. But I'll pay it... she won't touch the
money. Besides that, she can have an allowance. But she must
understand that she is NOT to come here except when she is
especially invited, at certain intervals."
"George, DEAR, that is absolutely absurd!"
"Very well," George said, flushing, "but if she is here to-night, I
will not come home. I'll dine at the club. When she has gone, I'll
come home again."
Mary's head was awhirl. She scarcely knew where the conversation was
leading then, or what the reckless things they said involved. She
was merely feeling blindly now for the arguments that should give
her the advantage.
"You needn't stay at the club, George," she said, "for Mamma and I
will go down to Beach Meadow. When you have come to your senses,
I'll come back. I'll let Miss Fox go, and Mamma and I will look out
for the children--"
"I warn you," George interrupted her coldly, "that if you take any
such step, you will have a long time to think it over before you
hear from me! I warn you that it has taken much less than this to
ruin the happiness of many a man and woman!"
Mary faced him, breathing hard. This was their first real quarrel.
Brief times of impatience, unsympathy, differences of opinion there
had been, but this--this Mary felt even now--was gravely different.
With a feeling curiously alien and cold, almost hostile, she eyed
the face opposite her own; the strange face that had been so
familiar and dear only at breakfast time.
"I WILL go," she said quietly. "I think it will do us both good."
"Nonsense!" George said. "I won't permit it."
"What will you do, make a public affair of it?"
"No, you know I won't do that. But don't talk like a child, Mary.
Remember, I mean what I say about your mother, and tell her so when
she arrives."
After that, he went away. A long time passed, while Mary sat very
still in the big leather chair at the head of the table. The
sunlight shifted, fell lower,--shone ruby red through a decanter of
claret on the sideboard. The house was very still.
After a while she went slowly upstairs. She dragged a little trunk
from a hall closet, and began quietly, methodically, to pack it with
her own clothes. Now and then her breast rose with a great sob, but
she controlled herself instantly.
"This can't go on," she said aloud to herself. "It's not today--it's
not to-morrow--but it's for all time. I can't keep this up. I can't
worry and apologize, and neglect George, and hurt Mamma's feelings
for the rest of my life. Mamma has always done her best for me, and
I never saw George until five years ago--
"It's not," she went on presently, "as if I were a woman who takes
marriage lightly. I have tried. But I won't desert Mamma. And I
won't--I will NOT!--endure having George talk to me as he did
today!"
She would go down to the children, she would rest, she would read
again during the quiet evenings. Days would go by, weeks. But
finally George would write her--would come to her. He must. What
else could he do?
Something like terror shook her. Was this the way serious, endless
separations began between men and their wives? Her mind flitted
sickly to other people's troubles: the Waynes, who had separated
because Rose liked gayety and Fred liked domestic peace; the
Gardiners, who--well, there never did seem to be any reason there.
Frances and the baby just went to her mother's home, and stayed
home, and after a while people said she and Sid had separated,
though Frances said she would always like Sid as a friend--not very
serious reasons, these! Yet they had proved enough.
Mary paused. Was she playing with fire? Ah, no, she told herself, it
was very different in her case. This was no imaginary case of
"neglect" or "incompatibility." There was the living trouble,--
Mamma. And even if tonight she conceded this point to George, and
Mamma was banished, sooner or later resentment, bitter and
uncontrollable, would rise again, she knew, in her heart. No. She
would go. George might do the yielding.
Once or twice tears threatened her calm. But it was only necessary
to remind herself of what George had said to dry her eyes into angry
brilliance again. Too late now for tears.
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