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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It was only a little after midnight that night when Julie, lying
wakeful in the sultry summer darkness, was startled by a person in
her room.
"It's Emma, Miss Ives," said Mrs. Arbuthnot's maid, stumbling about,
"Mrs. Arbuthnot wants you."
"She's ill!" Julie felt rather than said the words, instantly alert
and alarmed, and reaching for her wrapper and slippers.
"No, ma'am. But the doctor feels like he ought to go down to the
fire, and she's nervous--"
"The fire?"
"Yes'm," said Emma, simply, "the windmill is afire!"
"And I sleeping through it all!" Miss Ives was still bewildered,
fastening the sash of her cobwebby black Mandarin robe as she
followed Emma through the passage that joined her suite to the
Arbuthnots'.
"Ann, dear--Emma tells me the laundry's on fire?" said she, entering
the big room. "I had no idea of it!"
"Nor had we," the doctor's wife rejoined eagerly. "The first we knew
was from Emma. Jim says there's no danger. Do you think there is?"
"Certainly not, Ann!" Julie laughed. "I'll tell you what we can do,"
she added briskly. "We'll wheel you down the hall here to the
window; you can get a splendid view of the whole thing."
The doctor approving, the ladies took up their station at a wide
hall window that commanded the whole scene.
Outside the velvet blackness and silence of the night were
shattered. The great mill, ugly tongues of flame bursting from the
door and windows at its base, was the centre of a talking, shouting,
shrill-voiced crowd that was momentarily, in the mysterious fashion
of crowds, gathering size.
"Wonderful sight, isn't it, Ann?"
"Wonderful. Does this cut off our water supply, Emma?"
"No, Mrs. Arbuthnot. They're using the little mill for the engines
now."
"What did they use the big mill for, Emma?"
"The laundry, Miss Ives. And there's a sort of flat on the second
floor where the laundry woman and her husband--he's the man that
drives the 'bus--live."
"Good heavens!" said Ann. "I hope they got out!"
"Oh, sure," said the maid, comfortably. "It was all of an hour ago
the fire started. They had lots of time."
The three watched for a while in silence. Ann's eyes began to droop
from the bright monotony of the flames.
"I believe I'll wait until the tank falls, Ju? and then go back to
my comfortable bed--Julie, what is it--!"
Her voice rose, keen with terror. The actress, her hand on her
heart, shook her head without turning her eyes from the mill.
For suddenly above the other clamor there had risen one horrible
scream, and now, following it, there was almost a silence.
"Why--what on earth--" panted Miss Ives, looking to Mrs. Arbuthnot
for explanation after an endless interval in which neither stirred.
But again they were interrupted, this time by such an outbreak of
shouting and cries from the watching crowd about the mill as made
the night fairly ring.
A moment later the entire top of the mill collapsed, sending a gush
of sparks far up into the night. Then at last the faithfully played
hoses began to gain control.
"Do run down and find out what the shouting was, Emma," said Julie.
Emma gladly obeyed.
"She'd come back, if anything had happened," said Julie, some ten
minutes later.
"Who--Emma?" Mrs. Arbuthnot was not alarmed. "Oh, surely!" she
yawned, and drew her wraps about her.
"It's all over now. But I suppose it will burn for hours. I think
I'll turn in again," she said.
"I've had enough, too!" Julie said, not quite easy herself, but glad
to find the other so. "Let's decamp."
She wheeled the invalid carefully back to her room, where both women
were still talking when a bell-boy knocked, bringing a message from
the doctor. A woman had been hurt; he would be busy with her for an
hour.
"Who was it?" Julie asked him, but the boy, obviously frantic to
return to the fascinations of the fire, didn't know.
It was more than an hour later that the doctor came in. Julie had
been reading to Ann. She shut the book.
"Jim! What on earth has kept you so long?"
"Frighten you, dear?" The doctor was very pale; he looked, between
the dirt and disorder of his clothes, and the anxiety of his face,
like an old man.
"Some one was hurt?" flashed Julie, solicitous at once.
"Has no one told you about it?" he wondered. "Lord! I should think
it would be all over the place by this time!"
He dropped into an easy chair, and sank his head wearily into his
hands.
"Lord--Lord--Lord!" he muttered. Then he looked up at his wife with
the smile that never failed her.
"Jim--no one was killed?"
"Oh, no, dear! No, I'll tell you." He came over and sat beside her
on the bed, patting her hand. The two women watched him with tense,
absorbed faces.
"When I got there," said the doctor, slowly, "there was quite a
crowd--the lower story of the mill was all aflame--and the firemen
were keeping the people back. They'd a ladder up at the second story
and firemen were pitching things out of the windows as fast as they
could--chairs, rugs, pillows, and so on. Finally the last man came
out, smoke coming after him--it was quick work! Now, remember, dear,
no one was killed--"he stopped to pat his wife's hand reassuringly.
"Well, just then, at the third-story windows--it seems the laundress
has children--"
"Children!" gasped Miss Ives. "Oh, NO!"
"Yes, four of 'em--the oldest a little fellow of ten, had the baby
in his arms--." The doctor stopped.
"Go ON, Jim!"
"Well, they put the ladder back again, but the sill was aflame then.
No use! Just then the mother and father--poor souls--arrived. They'd
been at a dance in the village. The woman screamed--"
"We heard."
"Ah? The man had to be held, poor fellow! It was--it was--" Again
the doctor stopped, unable to go on. But after a few seconds he
began more briskly: "Well! The mill was connected with this house,
you know, by a little bridge, from the tank floor of the mill to the
roof. No one had thought of it, because every one supposed that
there was no one in the mill. Before the crowd had fairly seen that
there WERE children caged up there, they left the window, and not a
minute later we saw them come up the trap-door by the tank. Lord,
how every one yelled."
"They'd thought of it, the darlings!" half sobbed Mrs. Arbuthnot.
"No, they'd never have thought of it--too terrified, poor little
things. No. We all saw that there was some one--a woman--with them
hurrying them along. I was helping hold the mother or I might have
thought it was the mother. They scampered across that bridge like
little squirrels, the woman with the baby last. By that time the
mill was roaring like a furnace behind them, and the bridge itself
burst into flames at the mill end. She--the woman--must have felt it
tottering, for she flung herself the last few feet--but she couldn't
make it. She threw the baby, by some lucky accident, for she
couldn't have known what she was doing, safe to the others, and
caught at the rail, but the whole thing gave way and came down.... I
got there about the first--she'd only fallen some dozen feet, you
know, on the flat roof of the kitchen, but she was all smashed up,
poor little girl. We carried her into the housekeeper's room--and
then I saw that it was little Miss Carter--your Dancing Girl, Ju!"
"Jim! Dead?"
"Oh, no! I don't think she'll die. She's badly burned, of course--
face and hands especially--but it's the spine I'm afraid for. We can
tell better to-morrow. We made her as comfortable as we could. I
gave her something that'll make her sleep. Her mother's with her.
But I'm afraid her dancing days are over."
"Think of it--little Miss Carter!" Julie's voice sounded dazed.
"But, Jim," Ann said, "what was she doing in the mill?"
"Why, that's the point," he said. "She wasn't there when the fire
started. She was simply one of the crowd. But when she heard that
the children were there, she ran to the back of the mill, where
there was a straight up-and-down ladder built against the wall
outside, so that the tank could be reached that way. She went up it
like a flash--says she never thought of asking any one else to go.
She broke a window and climbed in--she says the floor was hot to her
feet then--and she and the kids ran up the inside flight to the
trap-door. They obeyed her like little soldiers! But the bridge side
of the mill was the side the fire was on, and the wood was rotten,
you know--almost explosive. Half a minute later and they couldn't
have made it at all."
"How do you ACCOUNT for such courage in a girl like that?" marvelled
Julie.
"I don't know," he said. "Take it all in all, it was the most
extraordinary thing I ever saw. Apparently she never for one second
thought of herself. She simply ran straight into that hideous
danger--while the rest of us could do nothing but put our hands over
our eyes and pray."
"But she'll live, Jim?" the actress asked, and as he nodded a
thoughtful affirmative, she added: "That's something to be thankful
for, at least!"
"Don't be too sure it is," said Ann.
Ten days later Miss Ives came cheerfully into the sunny, big room
where Marian Carter lay. Bandaged, and strapped, and bound, it was a
sorry little Dancing Girl who turned her serious eyes to the
actress's face. But Julie could be irresistible when she chose, and
she chose to be her most fascinating self to-day. Almost reluctantly
at first, later with something of her old gayety, the Dancing Girl's
laugh rang out. It stirred Julie's heart curiously to hear it, and
made the little patient's mother, listening in the next room, break
silently into tears.
"But this is what I really came to bring you," said the actress,
presently, laying a score or more of newspaper clippings on the bed.
"You see you are famous! I had my press-agent watch for these, and
they're coming in at a great rate every mail. You see, here's a
nattering likeness of you in a New York daily, and here you are
again, in a Chicago paper!"
"Those aren't of ME," said Marian, smiling.
"It SAYS they are," Julie said. "One says you are petite and dark,
and the other that you are a blond Gibson type. You wouldn't have
believed that your wish could come true so quickly, would you, just
the other day?"
"My wish?" stammered the girl.
"Yes. Don't you remember saying that you wished you could do
something big?" pursued Julie. "You've done a thing that makes the
rest of us feel pretty small, you know. Why, while there was any
question of your getting better, there wasn't a dance given at any
of the hotels between here and Surf Point, and all sorts of people
came here with inquiries every day. This place was absolutely
hushed. The maids used to fight for the privilege of carrying your
trays up. None of us thought of anything but 'How is Miss Carter?'
And you'll be 'The young lady who saved those children from the
fire' for the rest of your life wherever you go!"
Miss Carter was watching her gravely.
"You say I got my wish," she said now, her blue eyes brimming with
slow tears, and her lips trembling. "But--but--you see how I AM,
Miss Ives! Dr. Arbuthnot says I MAY be able to walk in a month or
two, but no swimming or riding or dancing for years--perhaps never.
And my face--it'll always be scarred."
Julie laid a gentle hand on the little helpless fingers.
"But that's part of the process, you know, little girl," said the
actress after a little silence. "I pay one way, perhaps, and you pay
another, but we both pay. Don't you suppose," a smile broke through
the seriousness of her face, "don't you suppose I have my scars,
too?"
Marian dried her eyes. "Scars?"
"When you are pointed out--as you WILL be, wherever you go--" said
Julie, "you'll think to yourself, 'Ah, yes, this is very lovely and
very flattering, but I'll never dance again--I'll never rush into
the waves again, I'll never spend a whole morning on the tennis
court,' won't you?"
The Dancing Girl nodded, her eyes filling again, her lips trembling.
"And when people stare after me and follow me," said Julie, "I think
to myself--'Oh, this is very flattering, very delightful--but the
young years are gone--the mother who missed me and longed for me is
gone--the little sisters are married, and deep in happy family
cares--they don't need me any more.' I have what I wanted, but I've
paid the price! In a life like mine there's no room for the normal,
wonderful ties of a home and children. Never--" she put her head
back against her chair and shut her eyes--"never that happiness for
me!" She finished, her voice lowered and carefully controlled.
They were both silent awhile. Then Marian stirred her helpless
fingers just enough to deepen their light pressure on Julie's own.
"Thank you," she said shyly. "I see now. I think I begin to
understand."
ROSEMARY'S STEPMOTHER
In the sunny morning-room there prevailed an atmosphere of business.
Rosemary, at the desk, was rapidly writing notes and addressing
envelopes. Theodore, a deep wrinkle crossing his forehead, was
struggling to reduce to order a confused heap of crumpled and
illegible papers. Before him lay little heaps of silver and small
gold, which he moved and counted untiringly, referring now and then
to various entries in a large, flat ledger. Mrs. Bancroft,
stepmother of these two, was in a deep chair, with her lap full of
letters. Now and then she quoted aloud from these as she opened and
glanced over them. Lastly, Ann Weatherbee, a neighbor, seated on the
floor with her back against Mrs. Bancroft's knee, was sorting a
large hamperful of silver spoons and crumpled napkins into various
heaps.
"There!" said Ann, presently. "I've finished the napkins--or nearly!
Tell me, whose are these, Aunt Nell?"
Mrs. Bancroft reached a smooth hand for them and mused over the
monograms.
"B--B--B--?" she reflected. "Both are B's, aren't they? And
different, too. This is Mrs. Bayne's, anyway--I was with her when
she bought these. But these--? Oh, I know now, Ann! That little
cousin of the Potters',--what was her name, Rosemary?"
"Sutter, madam! Guess again."
"No; but her unmarried name, I mean?"
"Oh, Beatty, of course!" supplied Ann. "Aren't you clever to
remember that! I'll tie them up. Oh, and should there only be eleven
of the Whiteley Greek-borders?" she asked presently.
"One was sent home with a cake, dear,--we had too much cake."
"We always do, somehow," commented Rosemary, absently, and there was
a silence. The last speaker broke it presently, with a long sigh.
"At your next concert, mamma, I shall insist upon having 'please
omit flowers' on the tickets," said Rosemary, severely. "I think I
have thanked forty people for 'your exquisite roses'!"
"Poor, overworked little Rosemary!" laughed her stepmother.
"You can look for a new treasurer, too," said Theodore. "This sort
of thing needs an expert accountant. No ordinary brain...! What with
some of these women rubbing every item out three or four times, and
others using pale green water for ink, nobody could get a balance."
Mrs. Bancroft, smiling serenely, leaned back in her chair,
"Aren't they unkind to me, Ann?" she complained. "They would expect
a poor, forlorn old woman--Now, Rosemary!"
For Rosemary had interrupted her. Seating herself upon the arm of
her stepmother's chair, she laid a firm hand over the speaker's
mouth.
"Now she will fish, Ann," said Rosemary, calmly.
"Fish!" said Ann, indignantly. "After last night she doesn't have to
FISH!"
"You bet she doesn't," said Theodore, affectionately. "Not she! She
got enough compliments last night to last her a long while."
"_I_ was ashamed of myself," confessed Rosemary, with her slow
smile; "for, after all, WE'RE only her family! But father, Ted, and
I went about the whole evening with broad, complacent grins--as if
WE'D been doing something."
"Oh, _I_ was boasting aloud most of the time that I knew her
intimately," Ann added, laughing. "Just being a neighbor and old
friend shed a sort of glory even on me!"
"Oh, well, it was the dearest concert ever," summarized Rosemary,
contentedly. "The papers this morning say that the flowers were like
an opera first night--though _I_ never saw any opera singer get so
many here--and that hundreds were turned away!"
"'Hundreds'!" repeated Mrs. Bancroft, chuckling at the absurdity of
it.
"Well, mamma, the hall WAS packed," Ted reminded her promptly. He
grinned over some amusing memory. "...Old lady Barnes weeping over
'Nora Creina,'" he added.
"Ann, I didn't tell you that Dad and I met Herr Muller at the gate
this morning," said Rosemary, "shedding tears over the thought of
some of the Franz songs, and blowing his nose on his blue
handkerchief!"
"And you certainly did look stunning, mamma," contributed Ted.
"Children... children!" protested Mrs. Bancroft. But the pleased
color flooded her cheeks.
Another busy silence was broken by a triumphant exclamation from
Theodore, who turned about from his table to announce:
"Three hundred and seven dollars, ladies, and thirty-five cents,
with old lady Baker still to hear from, and eight dollars to pay for
the lights."
"WHAT!" said the three women together. Theodore repeated the sum.
"Nonsense!" cried Rosemary. "It CAN'T be so much."
Mrs. Bancroft stared dazedly.
"TWO hundred, Ted...?" she suggested.
"Three hundred!" the boy repeated firmly, beaming sympathetically as
both the young women threw themselves upon Mrs. Bancroft, and
smothered her in ecstatic embraces.
"Oh, Aunt Nell," said Ann, almost tearfully, "I don't know what the
girls will SAY. Why, Rose, it'll all but clear the ward. It's three
times what we thought!"
"Your father will be pleased," said Mrs. Bancroft, winking a little
suspiciously. "He's worried so about you girlies assuming that debt.
I must go tell him." She began to gather her letters together. "Do
you know where he is, Ted? Has he come in from his first round?" she
asked.
"She's the dearest...!" said Ann, when the door closed behind her.
"There's nobody quite like your mother."
"Honestly there isn't," assented Rosemary, thoughtfully. "When you
think how unspoiled she is--with that heavenly voice of hers, you
know, and every one so devoted to her. She doesn't do a THING,
whether it's arranging flowers, or apron patterns, or managing the
maids, that people don't admire and copy."
"She can't wait now to tell father the news," commented Theodore,
smiling.
"He'll be perfectly enchanted," said Rosemary. "He sent her violets
last night, and this morning, when we were taking all her flowers
out of the bathtub, and looking at the cards, she gave me such a
funny little grin and said, 'I'll thank the gentleman for these
myself, Rose!' Ted and I roared at her."
"But that was dear," said Ann, romantically.
"She simply does what she likes with Dad," said Ted, ruminatively.
Rosemary, facing the others over the back of her chair, nodded. Ann
had her arms about her knees. They were all idle.
"She got Dad to give me my horse," the boy went on, "and she'll get
him to let us go off to the Greers' next month--you'll see! I can't
think how she does it."
"I can remember the first day she came here," said Rosemary. She
rested her chin in her hands; her eyes were dreamy.
"George! We were the scared, miserable little rats!" supplemented
Theodore. Rosemary smiled pitifully, as if the mother asleep in her
could feel for the children of that long-passed day.
"I was only six," she said, "and when we heard the wheels we ran--"
"That's right! We ran upstairs," agreed her brother.
"Yes. And she followed us. I can remember the rustling of her
dress.... And she had roses on--she pinned one on Bess's little
black frock. And she carried me down to dinner in her arms, and I
sat in her lap."
"And that year you had a party," said Ann. "I remember that, for I
came. And the playhouse was built for Bess's birthday."
"So it was," said Rosemary, struck afresh. "That was all her doing,
too. She just has to want a thing, and it gets done! I'll never
forget Bess's wedding."
"Nor I," said Ann. "It was the most perfect little wedding I ever
saw. Not a hitch anywhere. And wasn't the house a bower? I never had
so much fun at any wedding in my life. Bess was so fresh and gay,
and she and George helped us until the very last minute--do you
remember?--gathering the roses and wrapping the cake. It was all
ideal!"
"Bess told me the other day," said Rosemary, soberly, and in a
lowered tone, "that on her wedding-day, when she was dressed, you
know, mamma put on her veil, and pinned on the orange blossoms, and
kissed her. And Bess saw the tears in her eyes. And mamma laughed,
and put her arm about her and said: 'It is silly and wrong of me,
dearest, but I was thinking who might have been doing this for you
to-day--of how proud she would have been!' Then they came down, and
Bess was married."
"Wasn't that like her?" said Ann. They were all silent a moment.
Then the visitor jumped up.
"Well, I must trot home to my deserted parent, my children," she
exclaimed briskly. "He rages if he comes in and doesn't find me.
But, if you ask me, I'll be over later to help you, Rose. Every one
in the world will be here for tea. And, meantime, make her rest,
Ted. She looks tired to death."
"I'll see thee home, Mistress," said Ted, gallantly, and Rosemary
was left alone. Her brother, coming in again nearly an hour
afterward, found her still in the same thoughtful attitude, her big
eyes fixed upon space. He knelt, and put his arm about her, and she
drooped her soft, cool little cheek against his, tightening her own
arm about his neck. There was a little silence.
"What is it?" said the boy, presently.
"Nothing, Teddy. But you're SUCH a comfort!"
"Well, but it's SOMETHING, old lady. Out with it!"
Rosemary tumbled his hair with her free hand.
"I was thinking of--mother," she confessed, very low.
His eyes were fast on hers for another short silence.
"Well,"--he spoke as if to a small child--"what were you thinking,
dear?"
"Oh, I was just thinking, Ted, that it's not fair. It isn't fair,"
said Rosemary, with a little difficulty. "Not only Dad and Bess and
the maids, but you and I, too, we can't help idolizing mamma. And
sometimes we never think of mother--our own mother!--except as tired
and sick and struggling--that's all I remember, anyway. And mamma is
all strength and sweetness and health."
"I--I know it, old lady."
"Oh, and Ted!--to-day, and sometimes before, it's hurt me so! I
can't feel--I don't want to!--anything but what I do to mamma, but
sometimes--"
She struggled for composure. Her brother cleared his throat.
"She was so wistful for pretty things and good times, even I can
remember that," said Rosemary, with pitiful recollection. "And she
never had them! SHE would have loved to stand there last night, in
lace and pearls, bowing and smiling to every one. She would have
loved the applause and the flowers. And it stings me to think of us,
you and I, proud to be mamma's stepchildren!"
"Dad worshipped mother," submitted the boy, hesitatingly.
"Yes, of course! But he was working day and night, and they were
poor, and then she was ill. I don't think she managed very well.
Those frightful, sloppy servants we used to have, and smoky fires,
and sticky summer dinners--and three bad little kids crying and
leaving screen doors open, and spilling the syrup! I remember her at
the stove, flushed and hot. You think I don't, but I do!"
"Yes, I do, too," he assented uncomfortably, frowningly.
"And do you remember the Easter eggs, Ted?"
Theodore nodded, wincing.
"She forgot to buy them, you know, and then walked two miles in the
hot spring weather, just to surprise and please us!"
"And then the eggs smashed, didn't they?"
"On the way home, yes. And we cried with fury, little beasts that we
were!" said Rosemary, as if unable to stop the sad little train of
memories. "I can remember that awful Belle that we had, making her
drink some port. I wouldn't kiss her. And she said that she would
see if she couldn't get me another egg the next day. And then Dad
came in, and scolded us all so, and carried her upstairs!"
She suddenly burst out crying, and clung to her brother. And he let
her cry for a while, patting her shoulder and talking to her until
control and even cheerfulness came back, and she could be trusted to
go upstairs and bathe her eyes for lunch.
When the lunch bell rang, Rosemary went downstairs, to find her
stepmother at the wide hall doorway with a yellow telegram in her
hand.
"News from Bess," said Mrs. Bancroft, quickly. "Good news, thank
God! George wires that she and the little son are doing well. The
baby came at eleven this morning. Dad's just come in, and he's
telephoning that you and I will come over right after lunch. Think
of it! Think of it!"
"Bess!" said Rosemary, unsteadily. She read the telegram, and clung
a little limply to the firm hand that held it. "Bess's baby!" she
said dazedly.
"Bess's darling baby--think of holding it, Aunt Rose!"
Rosemary's sober eyes flashed joyously.
"Oh, I am--so I am! An aunt! DOESN'T it seem queer?"
"It seems very queer to me," said Mrs. Bancroft, as they sat down on
a wide window-seat to revel in the news, "for I went to see your
mother, on just such a morning, when Bess herself was just a day
old--it seems only a year ago! Bless us, how old we get! Your mother
was younger than I, you know, and I remember that SHE seemed to me
mighty young to have a baby! And now here's her baby's baby! Your
mother was like an exquisite child, Rosey-posy, showing off little
Bess. They lived in a little playhouse of a cottage, with blue
curtains, and blue china, and a snubnosed little maid in blue! I
passed it on my way to school,--I had been teaching for seven years
or so, then,--and your mother would call out from the garden and
make me come in, and dance about me like a little witch. She wanted
me to taste jam, or to hold Teddy, or to see her roses--I used to
feel sometimes as if all the sunshine in the world was for Rose!
Your father had boarded with my mother for three years before they
were married, you know, and I was fighting the bitterest sort of
heartache over the fact that I liked him and missed him--not that he
ever dreamed it! Perhaps she did, for she was always generous with
you babies--loaned you to me, and was as sweet to me as she could
be." Mrs. Bancroft crumpled the telegram, smiled, and sighed. "Well,
it all comes back with another baby--all those times when we were
young, and gay, and unhappy, and working together. Bess will look
back at these days sometime, with the same feeling. There is nothing
in life like youth and work, and hard times and good times, when
people love each other, Rose."
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