Books: Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories

K >> Kathleen Norris >> Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories

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At five o'clock the trunk was packed, but Mamma had not yet arrived.
There remained merely to wait for her, and to start with her for
Beach Meadow. Mary's heart was beating fast now, but it was less
with regret than with a nervous fear that something would delay her
now. She turned the key in the trunk lock and straightened up with
the sudden realization that her back was aching.

For a moment she stood, undecided, in the centre of her room. Should
she leave a little note for George, "on his pincushion," or simply
ask Lizzie to say that she had gone to Beach Meadow? He would not
follow her there, she knew; George understood her. He knew of how
little use bullying or coaxing would be. There would be no scenes.
She would be allowed to settle down to an existence that would be
happy for Mamma, good for the children, restful--free from
distressing strain--for Mary herself.

With a curious freedom from emotion of any sort, she selected a hat,
and laid her gloves beside it on the bed. Just then the front door,
below her, opened to admit the noise of hurried feet and of joyous
laughter. Several voices were talking at once. Mary, to whom the
group was still invisible, recognized one of these as belonging to
Mamma. As she went downstairs, she had only time for one
apprehensive thrill, before Mamma herself ran about the curve of the
stairway, and flung herself into Mary's arms.

Mamma was dressed in corn-colored silk, over which an exquisite wrap
of the same shade fell in rich folds. Her hat was a creation of pale
yellow plumes and hydrangeas, her silk stockings and little boots
corn-colored. She dragged the bewildered Mary down the stairway, and
Mary, pausing at the landing, looked dazedly at her husband, who
stood in the hall below with a dark, middle-aged man whom she had
never seen before.

"Here she is!" Mamma cried joyously. "Richie, come kiss her right
this minute! Ma'y, darling, this is your new papa!"

"WHAT!" said Mary, faintly. But before she knew it the strange man
did indeed kiss her, and then George kissed her, and Mamma kissed
her again, and all three shouted with laughter as they went over and
over the story. Mary, in all the surprise and confusion, still found
time to marvel at the sight of George's radiant face.

"Carter--of all people!" said George, with a slap on the groom's
shoulder. "I loved his dea' wife like a sister!" Mamma threw in
parenthetically, displaying to Mary's eyes her little curled-up fist
with a diamond on it quite the width of the finger it adorned.
"Strangely enough," said Mr. Carter, in a deep, dignified boom,
"your husband and I had never met until to-day, Mrs.--ah, Mary--
when-" his proud eye travelled to the corn-colored figure, "when
this young lady of mine introduced us!"

"Though we've exchanged letters, eh?" George grinned, cutting the
wires of a champagne bottle. For they were about the dining-room
table now, and the bride's health was to be drunk.

Mary, managing with some effort to appear calm, outwardly
congratulatory, interested, and sympathetic; and already feeling
somewhere far down in her consciousness an exhilarated sense of
amusement and relief at this latest performance of Mamma's,--was
nevertheless chiefly conscious of a deep and swelling indignation
against George.

George! Oh, he could laugh now; he could kiss, compliment, rejoice
with Mamma now, he could welcome and flatter Richard Carter now,
although he had repudiated and insulted the one but a few hours ago,
and had for years found nothing good to say of the other! He could
delightedly involve Mary in his congratulations and happy prophecies
now, when but today he had half broken her heart!

"Lovely!" she said, smiling automatically and rising with the others
when the bridegroom laughingly proposed a toast to the firm that
might some day be "Venable and Carter," and George insisted upon
drinking it standing, and, "Oh, of course, I understand how sudden
it all was, darling!" "Oh, Mamma, won't that be heavenly!" she
responded with apparent rapture to the excited outpourings of the
bride. But at her heart was a cold, dull weight, and her sober eyes
went again and again to her husband's face.

"Oh, no!" she would say to herself, watching him, "you can't do
that, George! You can't change about like a weathercock, and expect
me to change, too, and forget everything that went before! You've
chosen to dig the gulf between us--I'm not like Mamma, I'm not a
child--my dignity and my rights can't be ignored in this fashion!"

No, the matter involved more than Mamma now. George should be
punished; he should have his scare. Things must be all cleared up,
explained, made right between them. A few weeks of absence, a little
realization of what he had done would start their marriage off again
on a new footing.

She kissed her mother affectionately at the door, gave the new
relative a cordial clasp with both hands.

"We'll let you know in a week or two where we are," said Mamma, all
girlish confusion and happiness. "You have my suit-case, Rich'?
That's right, dea'. Good-by, you nice things!"

"Good-by, darling!" Mary said. She walked back into the empty
library, seated herself in a great chair, and waited for George.

The front door slammed. George reappeared, chuckling, and rubbing
his hands together. He walked over to a window, held back the heavy
curtain, and watched the departing carriage out of sight.

"There they go!" he said. "Carter and your mother--married, by Jove!
Well, Mary, this is about the best day's work for me that's come
along for some time. Carter was speaking in the carriage only an
hour ago about the possibility of our handling the New Nassau Bridge
contract together. I don't know why not." George mused a moment,
smilingly.

"I thought you had an utter contempt for him as a business man,"
Mary said stingingly--involuntarily, too, for she had not meant to
be diverted from her original plan of a mere dignified farewell.

"Never for him," George said promptly. "I don't like some of his
people. Burns, his chief construction engineer, for instance. But
I've the greatest respect for him! And your mother!" said George,
laughing again. "And how pretty she looked, too! Well, sir, they
walked in on me this afternoon. I never was so surprised in my life!
You know, Mary," said George, taking his own big leather chair,
stretching his legs out luxuriously, and eying the tip of a cigar
critically, "you know that your mother is an extremely fascinating
woman! You'll see now how she'll blossom out, with a home of her own
again--he's got a big house over on the Avenue somewhere, beside the
Bar Kock place--and he runs three or four cars. Just what your
mother loves!"

Mary continued to regard her husband steadily, silently. One look at
the fixed expression of contempt on her face would have enlightened
him, but George was lighting his cigar now, and did not glance at
her.

"I'll tell you another thing, Mary," said George, after a match-
scratching-and-puffing interlude, "I'll tell you another thing, my
dear. You're an angel, and you don't notice these things as I do,
but, by Jove, your mother was reaching the point where she pretty
nearly made trouble between us! Fact!" he pursued, with a serious
nod. "I get tired, you know, and nervous, and unreasonable--you must
have had it pretty hard sometimes this month between your mother and
me! I get hot--you know I don't mean anything! If you hadn't the
disposition of a saint, things would have come to a head long ago.
Now this very morning I talked to you like a regular kid. Mary, the
minute I got back to the office I was ashamed of myself. Why,
ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have raised the very deuce
with me for that! But, by Jove--" his voice dropped to a pause.

"By Jove," George went on, "you are an angel! Now tell me the honest
truth, old girl, didn't you resent what I said to-day, just for a
minute?"

"I certainly did," Mary responded promptly and quietly, but with an
uncomfortable sense of lessened wrath. "What you said was absolutely
unwarrantable and insulting!"

"I'll BET you did!" said George, giving her a glance that was a
little troubled, and a little wistful, too. "It was insulting, it
was unwarrantable. But, my Lord, Mary, you know how I love your
mother!" he continued eagerly. "She and I are the best of friends.
We rasp each other now and then, but we both love you too much ever
to come to real trouble. I'm no angel, Mary," said George, looking
down his cigar thoughtfully, "but as men go, I'm a pretty decent
man. You know how much time I've spent at the club since we were
married. You know the fellows can't rope me into poker games or
booze parties. I love my wife and my kids and my home. But when I
think of you, and realize how unworthy I am of you, by Heaven--!" He
choked, shook his head, finding further speech for a moment
difficult. "There's no man alive who's worthy of you!" he finished.
"The Lord's been very good to me."

Mary's eyes had filled, too. She sat for a minute, trying to steady
her suddenly quivering lips. She looked at George sitting there in
the twilight, and said to herself it was all true. He WAS good, he
WAS steady, he was indeed devoted to her and to the children. But--
but he had insulted her, he had broken her heart, she couldn't let
him off without some rebuke.

"You should have thought of these things before you--" she began,
with a very fair imitation of scorn in her voice. But George
interrupted her. His hands were clasped loosely between his knees,
his head hanging dejectedly.

"I know," he said despondently, "I know!"

Mary paused. What she had still to say seemed suddenly flat. And in
the pause her mother's one piece of advice came to her mind. After
all it only mattered that he was unhappy, and he was hers, and she
could make him happy again.

She left her chair, went with a few quick steps to her husband's
side, and knelt, and put her cheek against his shoulder. He gave a
great boyish laugh of relief and pleasure and put his arms about
her.

"How old are you, George?" she said.

"How old am I? What on earth--why, I'm forty," he said.

"I was just thinking that the best of you men is only a little boy,
and should be treated as such!" said Mary, kissing him.

"You can treat me as you like," he assured her, joyously. "And I'm
starving. And unless you think there is any likelihood of Mamma
dropping in and spoiling our plan, I would like to take you out to
dinner."

"Well, she might," Mary agreed with a happy laugh, "so I'll simply
run for my hat. You never can be sure, with Mamma!"

THE MEASURE OF MARGARET COPPERED

Duncan Coppered felt that his father's second marriage was a great
mistake. He never said so; that would not have been Duncan's way.
But he had a little manner of discreetly compressing his lips, when,
the second Mrs. Coppered was mentioned, eying his irreproachable
boots, and raising his handsome brows, that was felt to be
significant. People who knew and admired Duncan--and to know him was
to admire him--realized that he would never give more definite
indications of filial disapproval than these. His exquisite sense of
what was due his father's wife from him would not permit it. But all
the more did the silent sympathy of his friends go out to him.

To Harriet Culver he said the one thing that these friends,
comparing notes, considered indicative of his real feeling. Harriet,
who met him on the Common one cold afternoon, reproached him, during
the course of a slow ride, for his non-appearance at various dinners
and teas.

"Well, I've been rather bowled over, don't you know? I've been
getting my bearings," said Duncan, simply.

"Of course you have!" said Harriet, with an expectant thrill.

"I'd gotten to count on monopolizing the governor," pursued Duncan,
presently, with a rueful smile. "I shall feel no end in the way for
a while, I'm afraid, Of course, I didn't think Dad would always
keep"-his serious eyes met Harriet's--"always keep my mother's place
empty; but this came rather suddenly, just the same."

"Had your father written you?" said Harriet, confused between fear
of saying the wrong thing and dread of a long silence.

"Oh, yes!" Duncan attempted an indifferent tone. "He had written me
in August about meeting Miss Charteris and her little brother in
Rome, you know, and how much he liked her. Her brother was an
invalid, and died shortly after; and then Dad met her again in
Paris, quite alone, and they were married immediately."

He fell silent. Presently Harriet said daringly: "She's--clever;
she's gifted, isn't she?"

"I think you were very bold to say that, dear!" said Mrs. Van
Winkle, when Harriet repeated this conversation, some hours later,
in the family circle.

"Oh, Aunt Minnie, I had to--to see what he'd say."

"And what did he say?" asked Harriet's mother,

"He looked at me gravely, you know, until I was ashamed of myself,"
the girl confessed, "and then he said: 'Why, Hat, you must know that
Mrs. Coppered was a professional actress?'"

"And a very obscure little actress, at that," finished Mrs. Culver,
nodding.

"Pacific Coast stock companies or something like that," said
Harriet. "Well, and then, after a minute, he said, so sadly, 'That's
what hurts, although I hate myself for letting it make a
difference.'"

"Duncan said that?" Mrs. Van Winkle was incredulous.

"Poor boy! With one aunt Mrs. Vincent-Hunter and the other an
English duchess! The Coppereds have always been among Boston's best
families. It's terrible," said Mrs. Culver.

"Well, I think it is," the girl agreed warmly. "Judge Clyde Potter's
grandson, and brought up with the very nicest people, and sensitive
as he is--I think it's just too bad it should be Duncan!"

"There's no doubt she was an actress, I suppose, Emily?"

"Well," said Harriet's mother, "it's not denied." She shrugged
eloquently.

"Shall you call, mother?"

"Oh, I shall have to once, I suppose. The Coppereds, you know. Every
one will call on her for Carey's sake," said Mrs. Culver, sighing.

Every one duly called on Mrs. Carey Coppered, when she returned to
Boston; and although she made her mourning an excuse for declining
all formal engagements, she sent out cards for an "at home" on a
Friday in January. She was a thin, graceful woman, with the blue-
black Irish eyes that are set in with a sooty finger, and an
unexpectedly rich, deep voice. Her quiet, almost diffident manner
was obviously accentuated just now by her recent sorrow; but this
did not conceal from her husband's friends the fact that the second
Mrs. Coppered was not of their world. Everything charming she might
be, but to the manner born she was not. They would not meet her on
her own ground, she could not meet them on theirs. In her own home
she listened like a puzzled, silenced child to the gay chatter that
went on about her.

Duncan stood with his father, at his stepmother's side, on her
afternoon at home, prompting her when names or faces confused her,
treating her with a little air of gracious intimacy eminently
becoming and charming under the circumstances. His tact stood
between her and more than one blunder, and it was to be noticed that
she relied upon him even more than upon his father. Carey Coppered,
indeed, hitherto staid and serious, was quite transformed by his joy
and pride in her, and would not have seen a thousand blunders on her
part. The consensus of opinion, among his friends, was that Carey
was "really a little absurd, don't you know?" and that Mrs. Carey
was "quite deliciously odd," and that Duncan was "too wonderful--
poor, dear boy!"

Mrs. Coppered would have agreed that her stepson was wonderful, but
with quite a literal meaning. She found him a real cause for wonder-
-this poised, handsome, crippled boy of nineteen, with his tailor,
and his tutor, and his groom, and the heavy social responsibilities
that bored him so heartily. With the honesty of a naturally
brilliant mind cultivated by hard experience, and much solitary
reading, she was quite ready to admit that her marriage had placed
her in a new and confusing environment; she wanted only to adapt
herself, to learn the strange laws by which it was controlled. And
she would naturally have turned quite simply to Duncan for help.

But Duncan very gently, very coldly, repelled her. He was
representative of his generation. Things were not LEARNED by the
best people; they were instinctively KNOWN. The girls that Duncan
knew--the very children in their nurseries--never hesitated over the
wording of a note of thanks, never innocently omitted the tipping of
a servant, never asked their maid's advice as to suitable frocks and
gloves for certain occasions. All these things, and a thousand more,
his stepmother did, to his cold embarrassment and annoyance.

The result was unfortunate in two ways. Mrs. Coppered shrank under
the unexpressed disapproval into more than her native timidity,
rightly thinking his attitude represented that of all her new world;
and Carey, who worshipped his young wife, perceived at last that
Duncan was not championing his stepmother, and for the first time in
his life showed a genuine displeasure with his son.

This was exquisitely painful to Margaret Coppered. She knew what
father and son had been to each other before her coming; she knew,
far better than Carey, that the boy's adoration of his father was
the one vital passion of his life. Mrs. Ayers, the housekeeper,
sometimes made her heartsick with innocent revelations.

"From the day his mother died, Mrs. Coppered, my dear, when poor
little Master Duncan wasn't but three weeks old, I don't believe he
and his father were separated an hour when they could be together!
Mr. Coppered would take that little owl-faced baby downstairs with
him when he came in before dinner, and 'way into the night they'd be
in the library together, the baby laughing and crowing, or asleep on
a pillow on the sofa. Why, the boy wasn't four when he let the nurse
go, and carried the child off for a month's fishing in Canada! And
when we first knew that the hip was bad, Mr. Coppered gave up his
business and for five years in Europe he never let Master Duncan out
of his sight. The games and the books--I should say the child had a
million lead soldiers! The first thing in the morning it'd be, 'Is
Dad awake, Paul?' and he running into the room; and at noon, coming
back from his ride, 'Is Dad home?' Wonderful to him his father's
always been."

"That's why I'm afraid he'll never like me," Margaret was quite
simple enough to say wistfully, in response. "He never laughs out or
chatters, as Mr. Coppered says he used to do."

And after such a conversation she would be especially considerate of
Duncan--find some excuse for going upstairs when she heard the click
of his crutch in the hall, so that he might find his father alone in
the library, or excuse herself from a theatre trip so that they
might be together.

"Oh, I'm so glad the Poindexters want us!" she said one night, over
her letters.

"Why?" said Carey, amused by her ardor. "We can't go."

"I know it. But they're such nice people, Carey. Duncan will be so
pleased to have them want me!"

Her husband laughed out suddenly, but a frown followed the laugh.

"You're very patient with the boy, Margaret. I--well, I've not been
very patient lately, I'm afraid. He manages to exasperate me so,
with these grandiose airs, that he doesn't seem the same boy at
all!"

Mrs. Coppered came over to take the arm of his chair and put her
white fingers on the little furrow between his eyes.

"It breaks my heart when you hurt him, Carey! He broods over it so.
And, after all, he's only doing what they all--all the people he
knows would do!"

"I thought better things of him," said his father.

"If you go to Yucatan in February, Carey," Margaret said, "he and
I'll be here alone, and then we'll get on much smoother, you'll
see."

"I don't know," he said. "I hate to go this year; I hate to leave
you."

But he went, nevertheless, for the annual visit to his rubber
plantation; and Margaret and Duncan were left alone in the big house
for six weeks. Duncan took especial pains to be considerate of his
stepmother in his father's absence, and showed her that he felt her
comfort to be his first care. He came and went like a polite,
unresponsive shadow, spending silent evenings with her in the
library, or acting as an irreproachable and unapproachable escort
when escort was needed. Margaret, watching him, began to despair of
ever gaining his friendship.

Late one wintry afternoon the boy came in from a concert, and was
passing the open door of his step-mother's room when she called him.
He found her standing by one of the big windows, a very girlish
figure in her trim walking-suit and long furs. The face she turned
to him, under her wide hat, was rosy from contact with the nipping
spring air.

"Duncan," she said, "I've had such a nice invitation from Mrs.
Gregory."

Duncan's face brightened.

"Mrs. Jim?" said he.

"No, indeed!" exulted Margaret, gayly. "Mrs. Clement."

"Oh, I say!" said Duncan, smiling too. For if young Mrs. Jim
Gregory's friendship was good, old Mrs. Clement's was much better.
For the first time, he sat down informally in Margaret's room and
laid aside his crutch.

"She's going to take General and Mrs. Wetherbee up to Snowhill for
three or four days," pursued Margaret, "and the Jim Gregorys and Mr.
Fred Gregory and me. Won't your father be pleased? Now, Duncan, what
clothes do I need?"

"Oh, the best you've got," said Duncan, instantly interested; and,
until it was time to dress for dinner, the two were deep in absorbed
consultation.

Duncan was whistling as he went upstairs to dress, and his
stepmother was apparently in high spirits. But twenty minutes later,
when he found her in the library, there was a complete change. Her
eyes were worried, her whole manner distressed, and her voice sharp.
She looked up from a telegram as he came in.

"I've just had a wire from an old friend in New York," said she,
"and I want you to telephone the answer for me, will you, Duncan?
I've not a moment to spare. I shall have to leave for New York at
the earliest possible minute. After you've telephoned the wire, will
you find out about the trains from South Station? And get my ticket
and reservation, will you? Or send Paul for them--whatever's
quickest."

Duncan hardly recognized her. Her hesitation was gone, her
diffidence gone. She did not even look at him as she spoke; his
scowl passed entirely unnoticed. He stood coldly disapproving.

"I don't really see how you can go," he began. "Mrs. Gregory--"

"Yes, I know!" she agreed hastily. "I telephoned. She hadn't come in
yet, so I had to make it a message--simply that Mrs. Coppered
couldn't manage it tomorrow. She'll be very angry, of course.
Duncan, would it save any time to have Paul take this right to the
telegraph station--"

"Surely," Duncan interrupted in turn, "you're not going to rush off--"

"Oh, surely--surely--surely--I am!" she answered, fretted by his
tone. "Don't tease me, dear boy! I've quite enough to worry over! I-
-I"--she pushed her hair childishly off her face--"I wish devoutly
that your father was here. He always knows in a second what's to be
done! But--but fly with this telegram, won't you?" she broke off
suddenly.

Duncan went. The performance of his errand was not reassuring. The
telegram was directed to Philip Penrose, at the Colonial Theatre,
and read:

Will be with you this evening. Depend on me. Heartsick at news.
MARGARET.

When he went upstairs again, he rapped at his stepmother's door.
Hatted, and with a fur coat over her arm, she opened it.

"Are you taking Fanny?" said Duncan, icily. Fanny, the maid, middle-
aged, loyal, could be trusted with the honor of the Coppereds.

"Heavens, no!" said Mrs. Coppered, vigorously.

"Then I hope you will not object to my escort," said the boy,
flushing.

If he meant it for reproach, it missed its mark. Mrs. Coppered's
surprised look became doubtful, finally changed to relief.

"Why, that's very sweet of you, Duncan," she said graciously,
"especially as I can't tell you what I'm going for, my dear, for it
may not occur. But I think, of all people in the world, you're the
one to go with me!"

Duncan eyed her severely.

"At the same time," he said, "I can't for one moment pretend--"

"Exactly; so that it's all the nicer of you to volunteer to come
along!" she said briskly. "You'll have to hurry, Duncan. And ask
Paul to come up for my trunk, will you? We leave the house in half
an hour!"

Mrs. Coppered advised her stepson to supply himself with magazines
on the train.

"For I shall have to read," she said, "and perhaps you won't be able
to sleep."

And read she did, with hardly a look or a word for him. She turned
and re-turned the pages of a little paper-covered book, moving her
lips and knitting her brows over it as she read.

Duncan, miserably apprehensive that they would meet some
acquaintance and have to give an explanation of their mad journey,
satisfied himself that there was no such immediate danger, and,
assuming a forbidding expression, sat erect in his seat. But he
finally fell into an uneasy sleep, not rousing himself until the
train drew into the Forty-second Street station late in the evening.
His stepmother had made a rough pillow of his overcoat and put it
between his shoulder and the window-frame; but he did not comment
upon it as he slipped it on and followed her through the roaring,
chilly station to a taxicab.

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