Crimson Roses (10 page)

Tom made one more attempt to reason with Marion, after the last load was gone and he had time to look around and see that everything was in order for the new tenants. Jennie and Marion had thoroughly cleaned the house, and there was nothing left to be done but to sweep where the men had brought in dust. So Tom followed Marion into the parlor, where she was brushing up nails and papers and making all clean and neat, and began to reproach her once more. Suddenly she turned on him desperately.

“Tom! Stop! You’ve always known Father meant me to study. He expected me to stay here in this home that he made for us, and it just breaks my heart to leave it. But since that could not be, I’ve made no fuss about selling the house because I saw it would break your heart not to have that farm, and you had to have the money to buy it. Now, please, please let me stay without being unkind to me. I cannot bear it. But anyway, I’ve got to stay. I’ve got to go to lectures and concerts and to night school, perhaps. I’ve got to have a chance. I would smother if I can’t.”

Tom, looking into his sister’s pleading brown eyes, was startled by her likeness to their father, and he seemed to see something of the spirit of that father, who through all his gentleness had known how to be firm on occasion.

So Tom knew it was of no use to say anything more. Marion could not be reasoned out of her “notions.”

“It’s no use to talk to her, Jen,” he said, coming back to his wife. “She’s set on getting more education, and you can’t argue her out of it. Father put it into her head, and she’s got to try it before she’ll be satisfied. It won’t take her long to get homesick for us all, and she’ll be glad enough to come to us after a few weeks. The best way’s to let her see how hard it is to live alone and earn her own living. That’s the only way to cure her. She’ll soon see her mistake and come running up to the farm.”

“Yes, after all the hard work of settling is over,” grumbled Jennie, dissatisfied. “You always were too softhearted about Marion. I might have known you’d give in. It’s lucky the house is sold and the goods gone, or she might make you stay here yet.”

The next two hours were filled with work and discomfort for Marion; but they were over at last, and the girl was glad to bid them all goodbye. She was tired of Jennie’s alternate sharp words and icy silences; and the parting sarcasms were worst of all. It was only when the babies gave her sweet, sticky kisses and Tom gave a burly hug that a sense of coming loneliness swept over her. But she brushed away the gathering tears and waved a farewell.

Chapter 6

S
he was very tired, more so than she ever remembered to have been before, but there was a kind of elation upon her. She still felt the burden of the sorrow through which she had passed, the strain of the last few days, and the sudden desolation that had swept over her at parting with Tom, the only one on earth to whom she could rightfully say she belonged. Yet she realized that she was standing upon the threshold of a new life, and the whole world lay at her feet. It was not in any sense self-will that had brought her to this place. It was an honest desire, a fervid longing, to get for herself the things her father had striven to give her and failed. She felt that she owed it to him, and to the longings that were within her. They seemed a holy call. Perhaps she was wrong—if she was, she wanted to find it out—but she felt she was right.

If she had stayed in the city for her own pleasure, to participate in forbidden pleasure, to dress and gallivant and be generally selfish, she told herself this would not have been the case. But she had not. She had stayed to make herself the best that herself could be made—for the glory of God, she added under her breath. Just how her life could possibly be for the glory of God, she did not understand; only she had been taught early in her youth that it was, and she had grown up in the firm conviction. She earnestly desired to give God as much glory as possible.

So here she was her own mistress. She might apportion her hours, at least as many of them as she was not using for the store, in doing what she liked. It seemed wonderful. Some girls would have bought an ice cream cone at once and then gone straight to the movies, but Marion entered her freedom with bated breath and wonder in her eyes. Now that she was on her own responsibility, she felt she must walk carefully.

She stopped in the station restaurant and indulged in a cup of hot tea and a sandwich, looking about upon her new world with interest.

Over there in the corner were two girls about her own age laughing over the events of the day. Did they care for the great things for which she longed? Or were they trifling away? From some of their conversation that drifted her way she judged the latter. But anyway, whatever they were, she felt a sudden kinship with them and with all the universe of young, independent beings like herself. It was a little touch of the modern reaction that had reached her, perhaps, after all her years of patient, sweet subservience; or perhaps it was only her way of choking down the sob that came in her throat when she thought of the dark, empty house standing alone that had been her home for so many precious years, and of the only brother, harsh though he had been, who was speeding toward a new home far away.

She was such a conscientious child that she had to struggle with herself, now that the thing was done, not to reproach herself and feel after all that she had been wrong.

It was very dark climbing up her little, steep stairway. The landlady held a candle and apologized for a broken gas fixture that made the candle necessary. She said the last lodger had broken it off one night in a drunken rage because he ran into it.

Marion shuddered and escaped into her room, which looked weird and desolate with a single gas jet wavering over her paper-wrapped furniture. Her first glance about seemed to warn her that life was not to be all roses yet. She locked her door, remembering with horror a possible drunken neighbor in the room next door. Removing her hat and coat, she untied the mattress and pillows and placed them on the bed, which she had had the expressman set up when he brought it. She got out some blankets and without further ado dropped herself on the bed under the blankets and was soon asleep.

It was quite late in the morning before she awoke, for she had been thoroughly worn out and needed the sleep. There had been no rousing voice of her sister-in-law to waken her, no sense of duties calling, no clatter of the children.

It was wonderful to just lie still and gradually realize where she was and that no one had a right to call her or demand that she get up till she was ready. This feeling might not last, but it was good, for she had been mortally weary, soul and body.

When she finally did get up and went rummaging in her handbag for her watch to see what time it was, she came upon the envelope so hurriedly thrust there the day before and not thought of since. Tenderly she took it out and smoothed its rumpled surface, and was startled to see written on the outside in her father’s neat, painstaking hand, “M
Y
W
ILL
.”

For a moment she sat looking at the words with an almost frightened feeling. There had been a will then, and Tom had not found it! What should she do with it now? Send it to him? Open it? Or would it be better not to even read it, just destroy it now, since all that had been done with the house was now irrevocable. It would only make Tom feel terrible if he had transgressed any of his father’s directions, and it was too late to remedy that. Besides, it affected no one but herself probably, for Tom had all there was. Perhaps it might promote more ill feeling between them than there already was. Perhaps she ought to destroy it. Just destroy it without reading it. Perhaps that would be the Christian way.

She held it in her hand, looking at it, half inclined to feel that perhaps it was something she had no right to have.

But then, it wouldn’t be right to destroy it either. There might be something in it that they didn’t know about, something sweet and precious of which she, at least, would treasure the thought all her life, and surely she had a right to that since she had relinquished all the rest. It could do no possible harm for her to read it if she kept it to herself. Of course she must not let it influence her in any way, nor let her mind dwell upon anything it might have given her. She had given up her inheritance of her own free will. There was no possible reason why the will should make the slightest difference now.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, she pressed back the unsealed flap of the envelope, took out the single sheet of paper that it contained, and read it through.

The familiar wording of the homemade will filled her throat with sobs and her eyes with tears, but she read it through to the end. Her father had left the house and all its furnishings and his savings fund account, amounting to several thousand dollars, entirely to herself. The life insurance money went to Tom. He called her “my dear daughter,” and there was a tender sentence in the will appealing to Tom’s chivalry to look out for his sister and see that she was enabled to carry out the plan that he had always had in mind for her education.

She dropped her face on the paper and covered it with kisses and tears. Her precious father! It was like a voice from the other world.

For a long time she sat there on the disheveled bed, her slender body shaking with sobs, as this tenderness brought back all the years of his constant care.

But gradually she grew calmer and, wiping her eyes, sat up and read the paper over again, taking in every detail till it was graven on her mind. She was glad she had read it. Glad her father had been so thoughtful for her. It would make no difference, of course. She had chosen her life. She was carrying out the spirit of her father’s wishes, though she did not have his protecting care that he had done his best to make sure for her. But not for worlds would she let her brother know about the will. It could only bring him pain. He had bought his farm, and she knew him well enough to know that while he might not have approved of his father’s “notions,” as he called them, he was conscientious enough to have carried them out to the letter and said not a hesitant word about it. Jennie would have had her say, of course, and a good deal of it, but Tom would have been magnanimous and beautiful about it. He would have probably given up his own desire for a farm, too, and stayed in town to live with her that she might have her home as her father planned.

But perhaps it was just as well that things had turned out as they had. Tom had his wish, and she would be able to carry out hers somehow. God would help her. She felt confident that she could do it. So she would put away the will and keep it among her most treasured possessions, and sometimes when she was lonely and desolate she would take it out and read it just to get the comforting feel of her father’s voice to hearten her. But she would leave it where Tom never, never could find it to make him feel uncomfortable.

She bent her head to lay her lips on the signature once more before she slipped the paper back into its envelope, and a whiff of something pleasant and familiar came to her. What was it? Peppermint. How strange. Her father hated peppermint. The odor of it made him really ill. It was likely only the smell of the adhesive on the envelope flap or perhaps some peculiar kind of paper. Some paper had a strange odor. But it seemed odd that her father’s will should smell of it; it seemed somehow a desecration. They never used to eat any candy flavored with peppermint when he was there because he disliked the smell of it so. It was just a little idiosyncrasy of his. Not that he objected to other people eating it, but she had always planned for his comfort not to have the odor of it around when he was in the house.

Her mother had been very fond of chocolate peppermints, and so was Jennie. Jennie had made some only a few days before her father died. It had hurt her terribly to think that Jennie would deliberately do what she must know would annoy the patient. Jennie had been eating a piece of candy when she came into their father’s room that day after dinner, and Marion had motioned her away quickly. Jennie laughed. She thought it was nonsense. She said people ought not to be humored in such whims; it spoiled them. She had gone away in a huff. There had been smears of chocolate on her fingers and on her dress. Marion remembered how untidy and disagreeable she had looked. Oh, she must stop thinking such things about Jennie! Mr. Stewart had preached about that—some verse from second Peter about “exercising your mind in covetousness.” He had said that people exercised their mind in evil thoughts of other people, and that was not the way to add to their faith, virtue, and to virtue, knowledge, and all those other things. She must add to her faith, self-control, and keep from thinking unpleasant thoughts about Jennie. She must pray to be kept from having anything in her heart but love for Jennie.

She folded the paper and slipped it into the envelope. Something seemed to catch one corner so that it did not go in smoothly; perhaps it was crumpled from being crushed into her bag. She put her finger inside to smooth it out gently and came in contact with something rough and hard. She looked, and a strange, cold feeling came in her throat. It was a tiny piece of chocolate and cream peppermint candy, hardened onto the paper. How did it get into that envelope? Her father’s envelope! Her father who hated it and never would have touched any. Jennie! The candy she had made and that she was eating when she left the sick room and went downstairs! Oh, it was unthinkable! But how could she help thinking about it?