Books: Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories

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

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"Headache, Jean, dear?"

"Oh, and heartache!" said Jean, with a pitiful smile. "Sid thrashed
him yesterday!" she added, with suddenly trembling lips.

"I know." Mary sat down on the edge of the bed and patted Jean's
hand.

"I've let him go with Alice," said Jean, defensively. "I had to!"
She turned on her elbow, her voice rising. "Mary, I didn't say one
word about the whipping, but now--now he threatens to hold him under
the stable pump!" she finished, dropping back wearily against her
pillows. Mrs. Moore caught her breath.

"Ah!" They eyed each other sombrely.

"Mary, would YOU permit it?" demanded Mrs. Carolan, miserably.

"Jeanie, dearest, I don't know what I'd do!"

After a long silence, Mary slipped from the bedside and went
noiselessly to the door and down the stairs, vague ideas of hot tea
in mind. In the dining-room she was surprised to find Sidney,
looking white and exhausted, and mixing himself something at the
sideboard.

"I'm glad you're with Jean," he said directly. "I'm off to get the
boy! The car is to be brought round in a few minutes."

Mrs. Moore went to him, and laid her fingers on his arm.

"Sidney!" she protested sharply, "you must stop this--not for Peter;
he's as naughty as he can be, like all other boys his age sometimes;
but you don't want to kill Jean!" And, to her self-contempt, she
began to cry.

"My dear girl," he said concernedly, "you mustn't take this matter
too hard. Jean knows enough of our family history to realize--"

"All that is such nonsense!" she protested angrily. But she saw that
he was not listening. He compared his watch with the big dining-room
clock, and then, quite as mechanically picked Peter's mug from the
group of bowls and flagons on the sideboard, studied the chasing
absently for a moment, and, stooping, placed the mug just as it had
fallen four days before. Mary watched as if fascinated.

A moment later she ran upstairs, her heart thundering with a sense
of her own daring. She entered the dark bedroom hurriedly, and
leaned over Jean.

"Jean! Jean, I hate to tell you! But Sidney's going to leave in a
few minutes to bring Peter home. He's going after him."

She had to repeat the message before the meaning of it flashed into
the heavy eyes so near her own. Then Jean gathered her filmy gown
together, and ran to the door.

"He shall not!" she said, panting, and Mary heard her imperative
call, "Sidney! Sidney!" as she ran downstairs. Then she heard both
their voices.

With an intolerable consciousness of eavesdropping, Mrs. Moore
slipped out of the house by the servants' quarters, and crossed the
drying lawn at the back of the house, to gain the old grape arbor
beyond. She sat there with burning cheeks and a fast-beating heart,
and gazed with unseeing eyes down the valley.

Presently she heard the horn and the scraping start of the motor-
car, and a moment later it swept into view on the road below. Sidney
was its only occupant.

Mrs. Moore sat there thinking a long while. Dull clouds banked
themselves in the west, and the rising breeze brought dead leaves
about her feet.

She sat there half an hour--an hour. The afternoon was darkening
toward dusk when she saw the motorcar again still a mile away. Even
at this distance, Mary could see that Peter was sitting beside his
father in the tonneau, and that the little figure was as erect and
unyielding as the big one.

She rose to her feet and stood watching the car as it curved and
turned on the winding road that led to the gates of Carolan Hall.
Even when the gates were entered, both figures still faced straight
ahead.

Suddenly Sidney leaned toward the chauffeur, and a moment later the
car came to a full stop. Mary watched, mystified. Then Sidney got
out, and stretched a hand to the boy to help him from his place. The
simple little motion, all fatherly, brought the tears to her eyes. A
moment later the driver wheeled the car about, to take it to the
garage by the rear roadway, and Sidney and his son began to walk
slowly toward the house, the child's hand still in his father's.
Once or twice they stopped short, and once Mary saw Sidney point
toward the house, and saw, from the turn of Peter's head, that his
eyes were following his father's. Her heart rose with a wild,
unreasoning hope.

When a dip in the road hid them, Mary turned toward the house, not
knowing whether to go to Jean or to slip away through the wood. But
the instant her eye fell on Madam Carolan's window she knew what had
halted Sidney, and a wave of heartsickness made her breath come
short.

Jean had taken her place there, to watch and wait. She was keeping
the first vigil of her life. Mary could see how the slight figure
drooped in the carved chair; she remembered, with a pang, the other
patient, drooping figure that had stamped itself upon her childish
memory so many years ago. The suffocating tears rose in her throat.
A sudden sense of helplessness overwhelmed her.

Obviously, the watcher had not seen Sidney and Peter. Her head was
resting on her hand, and her heavy eyes were fixed upon some sombre
inner vision that was hers alone.

Mary crossed behind the house, and, as they came up through the
shrubbery, met Sidney and his son at the side door. Sidney's face
was tired, but radiant with a mysterious content. Peter looked
white--awed. He was clinging with both small brown hands to one of
his father's firm, big ones.

"I know what you're going to say, Mary," said Sidney, in a tone
curiously gentle, and with his oddly bright smile. "I know she's
there. But we're going to her now, and it's all right. Peter and I
have been talking it over. I saw her there, Mary, and it was like a
blow! SHE'S not the one who must suffer for all this. Peter and I
are going to start all over again, and settle our troubles without
hurting a woman; aren't we, Peter?"

The little boy nodded, with his eyes fixed on his father's.

"So the episode is closed, Mary," said Sidney, simply. "And the next
time--if there is a next time!--Peter shall make his own decision,
and abide by what it brings. The mug goes back to its place to-
night, and--and we're going to tell mother that she never need watch
and wait and worry about us again!"

They turned to the steps; but, as the boy ran ahead, Sidney came
back to say in a lower tone:

"I--it may be weakness, Mary, but I can't have Jean doing what--what
SHE did, you know! I tried to give the boy some idea, just now, of
the responsibility of it. Nobody spared my grandmother, but Jean
SHALL be spared, if I never try to control him or save him from
himself again!"

"Ah, Sidney," Mary said, "you have done more, in taking him into
your confidence, than any amount of punishing could do!"

"Well, we'll see!" he said, with a weary little shrug. "I must go to
Jeanie now."

As he mounted the steps, Peter reappeared in the darkened doorway.
The child looked like a little knight, with his tawny loose mop of
hair and short tunic, and the uplifted look in his lovely eyes.

"Shall we go to her now, Dad?" said the little treble gallantly.
And, as the boy came close to Sidney's side, Mary saw the silver mug
glitter in his hand.

MAKING ALLOWANCES FOR MAMMA

At the head of her own breakfast table,--a breakfast table
charmingly littered with dark-blue china and shining glass, and made
springlike by a great bowl of daisies,--Mary Venable sat alone,
trying to read her letters through a bitter blur of tears. She was
not interested in her letters, but something must be done, she
thought desperately, to check this irresistible impulse to put her
head down on the table and cry like a child, and uninteresting
letters, if she could only force her eyes to follow the lines of
them, and her brain to follow the meaning, would be as steadying to
the nerves as anything else.

Cry she would NOT; for every reason. Lizzie, coming in to carry away
the plates, would see her, for one thing. It would give her a
blazing headache, for another. It would not help her in the least to
solve the problem ahead of her, for a third and best. She must think
it out clearly and reasonably, and--and--Mary's lip began to quiver
again, she would have to do it all alone. Mamma was the last person
in the world who could help her, and George wouldn't.

For of course the trouble was Mamma again, and George--

Mary wiped her eyes resolutely, finished a glass of water, drew a
deep great breath. Then she rang for Lizzie, and carried her letters
to the shaded, cool little study back of the large drawing-room.
Fortified by the effort this required, she sank comfortably into a
deep chair, and began to plan sensibly and collectedly. Firstly, she
reread Mamma's letter.

Mary had seen this letter among others at her plate, only an hour
ago. A deep sigh, reminiscent of the recently suppressed storm,
caught her unawares as she remembered how happy she and George had
been over their breakfast until Mamma's letter was opened. Mary had
not wanted to open it, suggesting carelessly that it might wait
until later; she could tell George if there was anything in it. But
George had wanted to hear it read immediately, and of course there
had been something in it. There usually was something unexpected in
Mamma's letters. In this one she broke the news to her daughter and
son-in-law that she hated Milwaukee, she didn't like Cousin Will's
house, children, or self, she had borrowed her ticket money from
Cousin Will, and she was coming home on Tuesday.

Mary had gotten only this far when George, prefacing his remarks
with a forcible and heartfelt "damn," had said some very sharp and
very inconsiderate things of Mamma. He had said--But no, Mary
wouldn't go over that. She would NOT cry again.

The question was, what to do with Mamma now. They had thought her so
nicely settled with Cousin Will and his motherless boys, had packed
her off to Milwaukee only a fortnight ago with such a generous check
to cover incidental expenses, had felt that now, for a year or two
at least, she was anchored. And in so many ways it seemed a special
blessing, this particular summer, to have Mamma out of the way,--
comfortable and happy, but out of the way. For Mary had packed her
three babies and their nurse down to the cottage at Beach Meadow for
the summer, and she and George had determined--with only brief
weekend intervals to break it--to try staying in the New York house
all summer.

Ordinarily Mary, too, would have been at Beach Meadow with the
children, seeing George only in the rare intervals when he could run
up from town, two or three times a season perhaps, and really rather
more glad than otherwise to have Mamma with her. But this promised
to be a trying and overworked summer for him, and Mary herself was
tired from a winter of close attention to her nursery, and to them
both the plan seemed a most tempting chance for jolly little dinners
together, Sunday and evening trips in the motor, roof-garden shows
and suppers. They had had too little of each other's undivided
society in the three crowded years that had witnessed the arrival of
the twins and baby Mary, there had been infantile illnesses, Mary's
own health had been poor, Mamma had been with them, nurses had been
with them, doctors had been constantly coming and going, nothing had
been normal. Both Mary and George had thought and spoken a hundred
times of that one first, happy year of their marriage, and they
wanted to bring back some of its old free charm now. So the
children, with Miss Fox, who was a "treasure" of a trained nurse,
and Myra, whose Irish devotion was maternal in its intensity, were
sent away to the seaside, and they were living on the beach all day,
and sleeping in the warm sea air all night, and hardier and browner
and happier every time they rushed screaming out to welcome mother
and daddy and the motor-car for a brief visit. And Mamma was with
Cousin Will. Or at least she HAD been--

Well, there was only one thing certain, Mary decided,--Mamma could
not come to them. That would spoil all the summer they had been
planning so happily. To picnic in the hot city with one beloved
companion is one thing, to keep house there for one's family is
quite another. Mamma was not adaptable, she had her own very
definite ideas. She hated a dimly lighted drawing-room, and
interrupted Mary's music--to which George listened in such utter
content--with cheery random remarks, and the slapping of cards at
Patience. Mamma hated silences, she hated town in summer, she made
jolly and informal little expeditions the most discussed and tedious
of events. If George, settling himself happily in some restaurant,
suggested enthusiastically a planked steak, Mamma quite positively
wanted some chicken or just a chop for herself, please. If George
suggested red wine, Mamma was longing for just a sip of Pommerey:
"You order it, Georgie, and let it be my treat!"

It never was her treat, but that was the least of it.

No, Mamma simply couldn't come to them now. She would have to go to
Miss Fox and the children. Myra wouldn't like it, and Mamma always
interfered with Miss Fox, and would have to take the second best
bedroom, and George would probably make a fuss, but there was
nothing else to do. It couldn't be helped.

Sometimes in moments of less strain, Mary was amused to remember
that it was through Mamma that she had met George. She, Mary, had
gone down from, her settlement work in hot New York for a little
breathing spell at Atlantic City, where Mamma, who had a very small
room at the top of a very large hotel, was enjoying a financially
pinched but entirely carefree existence. Mary would have preferred
sober and unpretentious boarding in some private family herself, but
Mamma loved the big dining-room, the piazzas, the music, and the
crowds of the hotel, and Mary amiably engaged the room next to hers.
They had to climb a flight of stairs above the last elevator stop to
reach their rooms, and rarely saw any one in their corridors except
maids and chauffeurs, but Mamma didn't mind that. She knew a score
of Southern people downstairs who always included her in their good
times; her life never lacked the spice of a mild flirtation. Mamma
rarely had to pay for any of her own meals, except breakfast, and
the economy with which she could order a breakfast was a real
surprise to Mary. Mamma swam, motored, danced, walked, gossiped,
played bridge, and golfed like any debutante. Mary, watching her,
wondered sometimes if the father she had lost when a tiny baby, and
the stepfather whose marriage to her mother, and death had followed
only a few years later, were any more real to her mother than the
dreams they both were to her.

On the day of Mary's arrival, mother and daughter came down to the
wide hotel porch, in the cool idle hour before dinner, and took
possession of big rocking-chairs, facing the sea. They were barely
seated, when a tall man in white flannels came smilingly toward
them.

"Mrs. Honeywell!" he said, delightedly, and Mary saw her mother give
him a cordial greeting before she said:

"And now, George, I want you to know my little girl, Ma'y,--Miss
Bannister. Ma'y, this is my Southe'n boy I was telling you about!"

Mary, turning unsmiling eyes, was quite sure the man would be nearer
forty than thirty, as indeed he was, grizzled and rather solid into
the bargain. Mamma's "boys" were rarely less; had he really been at
all youthful, Mamma would have introduced him as "that extr'ornarily
intrusting man I've been telling you about, Ma'y, dear!"

But he was a nice-looking man, and a nice seeming man, except for
his evidently having flirted with Mamma, which proceeding Mary
always held slightly in contempt. Not that he seemed flirtatiously
inclined at this particular moment, but Mary could tell from her
mother's manner that their friendship had been one of those frothy
surface affairs into which Mamma seemed able to draw the soberest of
men.

Mr. Venable sat down next to Mary, and they talked of the sea, in
which a few belated bathers were splashing, and of the hot and
distant city, and finally of Mary's work. These topics did not
interest Mamma, who carried on a few gay, restless conversations
with various acquaintances on the porch meanwhile, and retied her
parasol bow several times.

Mamma, with her prettily arranged and only slightly retouched hair,
her dashing big hat and smart little gown, her red lips and black
eyes, was an extremely handsome woman, but Mr. Venable even now
could not seem to move his eyes from Mary's nondescript gray eyes,
and rather colorless fair skin, and indefinite, pleasant mouth.
Mamma's lines were all compact and trim. Mary was rather long of
limb, even a little GAUCHE in an attractive, unself-conscious sort
of way. But something fine and high, something fresh and young and
earnest about her, made its instant appeal to the man beside her.

"Isn't she just the biggest thing!" Mamma said finally, with a
little affectionate slap for Mary's hand. "Makes me feel so old,
having a great, big girl of twenty-three!"

This was three years short of the fact, but Mary never betrayed her
mother in these little weaknesses. Mr. Venable said, not very
spontaneously, that they could pass for sisters.

"Just hear him, will you!" said Mamma, in gay scorn. "Why there's
seventeen whole years between us! Ma'y was born on the day I was
seventeen. My first husband--dearest fellow ever WAS--used to say he
had two babies and no wife. I never shall forget," Mamma went on
youthfully, "one day when Ma'y was about two months old, and I had
her out in the garden. I always had a nurse,--smartest looking thing
you ever saw, in caps and ribbons!--but she was out, I forget where.
Anyway our old Doctor Wallis came in, and he saw me, with my hair
all hanging in curls, and a little blue dress on, and he called out,
'Look here, Ma'y Lou Duval, ain't you too old to be playin' with
dolls?'"

Mary had often heard this, but she laughed, and Mr. Venable laughed,
too, although he cut short an indication of further reminiscence on
Mamma's part by entering briskly upon the subject of dinner. Would
Mrs. Honeywell and Miss Bannister dine with him, in the piazza,
dining-room, that wasn't too near the music, and was always cool,
and then afterward he'd have the car brought about--? Mary's first
smiling shake of the head subsided before these tempting details. It
did sound so cool and restful and attractive! And after all, why
shouldn't one dine with the big, responsible person who was one of
New York's biggest construction engineers, with whom one's mother
was on such friendly terms?

That was the first of many delightful times. George Venable fell in
love with Mary and grew serious for the first time in his life. And
Mary fell in love with George, and grew frivolous for the first time
in hers. And in the breathless joy that attended their discovery of
each other, they rather forgot Mamma.

"Stealing my beau!" said the little lady, accusatively, one night,
when mother and daughter were dressing. Mary turned an uncomfortable
scarlet.

"Oh, don't be such a little goosie!" Mrs. Honeywell said, with a
great hug. And she artlessly added, "My goodness, Mary, I've got all
the beaux I want! I'm only too tickled to have you have one at
last!"

By the time the engagement, with proper formality, was announced,
George's attitude toward his prospective mother-in-law had shifted
completely. He was no longer Mamma's gallant squire, but had assumed
something of Mary's tolerant, protective manner toward her. Later,
when they were married, this change went still further, and George
became rather scornful of the giddy little butterfly, casually
critical of her in conversations with Mary.

Mrs. Honeywell enjoyed the wedding as if she had been the bride's
younger sister now allowed a first peep at real romance.

"But I'm going to give you one piece of advice, dearie," said she,
the night before the ceremony. Mary, wrapped in all the mysterious
thoughts of that unreal time, winced inwardly. This was all so new,
so sacred, so inexpressible to her that she felt Mamma couldn't
understand it. Of course she had been married twice herself, but
then she was so different.

"It's this," said Mrs. Honeywell, cheerfully, after a pause.
"There'll come a time when you'll simply hate him--"

"Oh, Mamma!" Mary said, with distaste.

"Yes, there will," her mother went on placidly, "and then you just
say to yourself that the best of 'em's only a big boy, and treat him
as you'd treat a boy!"

"All right, darling!" Mary laughed, kissing her. But she thought to
herself that the men Mamma had married were of very different
caliber from George.

Parenthood developed new gravities in George, all life became purer,
sweeter, more simple, with Mary beside him. Through the stress of
their first married years they became more and more closely devoted,
marvelled more and more at the miracle that had brought them
together. But Mamma suffered to this. The atmosphere of gay
irresponsibility and gossip that she brought with her on her
frequent visitations became very trying to George. He resented her
shallowness, her youthful gowns, her extravagances. Mary found
herself eternally defending Mamma, in an unobtrusive sort of way,
inventing and assuming congenialities between her and George. It had
been an unmitigated blessing to have the little lady start gayly off
for Cousin Will's, only a month ago--And now here she was again!

Mary sighed, pushed her letters aside, and stared thoughtfully out
of the window. The first of New York's blazing summer days hung
heavily over the gay Drive and the sluggish river. The Jersey hills
were blurred with heat. Dull, brief whistles of river-craft came to
her; under the full leafage of trees on the Drive green omnibuses
lumbered; baby carriages, each with its attendant, were motionless
in the shade. Mary drew her desk telephone toward her, pushed it
away again, hesitated over a note. Then she sent for her cook and
discussed the day's meals.

Alone again, she reached a second time for the telephone, waited for
a number, and asked for Mr. Venable.

"George, this is Mary," said Mary, a moment later. Silence. "George,
darling," said Mary, in a rush, "I am so sorry about Mamma, and I
realize how trying it is for you, and I'm so sorry I took what you
said at breakfast that way. Don't worry, dear, we'll settle her
somehow. And I'll spare you all I can! George, would you like me to
come down to the office at six, and have dinner somewhere? She won't
be here until tomorrow. And my new hat has come, and I want to wear
it--?" She paused; there was a moment's silence before George's warm,
big voice answered:

"You are absolutely the most adorable angel that ever breathed,
Mary. You make me ashamed of myself. I've been sitting here as BLUE
as indigo. Everything going wrong! Those confounded Carter people
got the order for the Whitely building--you remember I told you
about it? It was a three-million dollar contract.

"Oh, George!" Mary lamented.

"Oh, well, it's not serious, dear. Only I thought we 'had it
nailed.' I'd give a good deal to know how Carter does it. Sometimes
I have the profoundest contempt for that fellow's methods--then he
lands something like this. I don't believe he can handle it,
either."

"I hate that man!" said Mary, calmly. George laughed boyishly.

"Well, you were an angel to telephone," he said. "Come early,
sweetheart, and we'll go up to Macbeth's,--they say it's quite an
extraordinary collection. And don't worry--I'll be nice to Mamma.
And wear your blessed little pink hat--"

Mary went upstairs ten minutes later with a singing heart. Let Mamma
and her attendant problems arrive tomorrow if she must. Today would
be all their own! She began to dress at three o'clock, as pleasantly
excited as a girl. She laid her prettiest white linen gown beside
the pink hat on the bed, selected an especially frilled petticoat,
was fastidious over white shoes and silken stockings.

The big house was very still. Lizzie, hitherto un-compromisingly a
cook, had so far unbent this summer as to offer to fill the place of
waitress as well as her own. Today she had joyously accepted Mary's
offer of a whole unexpected free afternoon and evening. Mary was
alone, and rather enjoying it. She walked, trailing her ruffled
wrapper, to one of the windows, and looked down on the Drive. It was
almost deserted.

While she stood there idle and smiling, a taxicab veered to the
curb, hesitated, came to a full stop. Out of it came a small gloved
hand with a parasol clasped in it, a small struggling foot in a gray
suede shoe, a small doubled-up form clad in gray-blue silk, a hat
covered with corn-flowers.

Mamma had arrived, as Mamma always did, unexpectedly.

Mary stared at the apparition with a sudden rebellious surge at her
heart. She knew what this meant, but for a moment the full
significance of it seemed too exasperating to be true. Oh, how could
she!--spoil their last day together, upset their plans, madden
George afresh, when he was only this moment pacified! Mary uttered
an impatient little sigh as she went down to open the door; but it
was the anticipation of George's vexation--not her own--that stirred
her, and the sight of Mamma was really unwelcome to Mary only
because of George's lack of welcome.

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