CHAPTER II

“This house ought to have a thorough cleaning,” announced Jennie coming
downstairs a few days after the funeral. “It hasn’t been cleaned right
since Father has been sick. I couldn’t really do it alone, and of course
I knew you couldn’t spare the time to help. Suppose we get at it this
morning. It’ll do you good to pull out of the glooms and get to work.”

Marion reflected in her heart that it was not exactly lack of work from
which she had been suffering, but she assented readily enough. She had
not been able to do much housework for the last five years, and it
probably had been hard on Jennie. So she put on an old dress and went
meekly to work, washing windows vigorously, going through closets and
drawers and trunks, putting away and giving away things of her father
and mother. That was hard work. It took the strength right out of her to
feel that these material things, which had belonged to them and been as
it were a part of them, were useless now. They would never need them any
more.

Of course most of her mother’s things had long ago been disposed of, but
there were her father’s clothes, and the special things that had
belonged to his dear invalidism. It was hard to put them away forever.
Yet Jennie demanded that they be sent to a hospital.

“That bed table and the electric fan and the little electric heater and
the hotwater heater. They give me the creeps to look at them. It isn’t
good to have such reminders around, Marion. You want to get away from
everything that belonged to the sickroom. I for one want to forget
sickness and death for a while and have a little good time living.”

Marion felt that Jennie was a bit heartless in the way she talked about
it, but she realized that it would be better to put the things where
they would be doing someone some good, so she packed them tenderly away
and sent them to a poor little new hospital, in which her church was
interested, and sighed as she took down the soft curtains from the
invalid’s windows and washed the windows and set them wide, realizing
that the sunshine would not hurt tired eyes in that room any more, and
could be let in freely without hindrance.

“Would you mind if Tom and I were to take Father’s room now?” asked
Jennie the next day. “Then Bobby and the baby could have the room you’ve
been occupying and you can go back to the room you used to have before
we came. It would change things around a little and not seem so gloomy
in the house, don’t you think?”

The house didn’t seem gloomy to Marion the way it was, and she felt it
rather sudden to tear up her father’s room and give it to another use,
but of course it was sensible and better in every way for the children
to be next to their father and mother. So she said she didn’t mind, and
they set to work moving furniture and changing things from one closet to
another.

And after all, Marion rather enjoyed getting back to her old sunny room
at the back of the house, with the bay window her father had built for
her, her own little bookcase full of books, and her own pretty furniture
her father and she had picked out years before. It brought sweet and
tender memories and made her feel that life was a little more tolerable
now. She could retire to her own pleasant room and try to feel like her
little-girl self again, lonely and sad, of course, but still at home in
the room that her father had made for her just after her mother had
died, the sunniest, prettiest room in the house, she felt. It was a
wonder that Jennie didn’t like it. Still, of course, she wanted to have
the children nearer, and where they had been sleeping in the guest room
was too far away for comfort. Now Nannie could come down from the small,
third-story room and take the room the children had been occupying. It
was better all around. But yet, she felt a lingering wistfulness about
that front room where the invalid had lain so long. It was hard to feel
its door shut, and to know it did not belong to her anymore. It seemed
as if Jennie was so anxious to wipe out all memory of her father.

But Jennie gave Marion very little time to meditate over these things.
She seemed restlessly eager to keep something going all the time. At
breakfast one morning she said to Marion:

“Marion, I don’t see why you don’t get out and see your friends now.
There’s nothing to hinder. Have a little company in and make the place
lively. It will do you good. It’s been so gloomy all the time Father was
sick. Let’s have some life now. Don’t you want to ask some friends in to
dinner or lunch or something?”

Marion roused from her sad thoughts to smile:

“Why, I guess not, Jennie. I don’t know who I’d ask I’m sure. Nearly all
my old school friends are married or gone away or interested in their
own affairs. I really haven’t seen any of them for so long they would
think it queer if I hunted them out now. I never did go out much you
know. When I was in school I was too busy, and after Mother got sick I
had no time.”

“Well, you’re too young to get that way. You’ll be an old maid before
you know it. Tom, don’t you think Marion ought to get out more?”

“Why, if she wants to,” said Tom good-naturedly. “Marion always was kind
of quiet.”

“Now, Tom, that’s no way to talk. You know Marion ought to get out among
young folks and have good times. She’s been mewed up too long.”

But the tears suddenly came into Marion’s eyes and her lip quivered:

“Don’t, please, Jennie!” she protested. “I wasn’t mewed up. I loved to
be with Father.”

“Oh, of course,” said Jennie sharply, “we all know you were a good
daughter and all that. You certainly deserve a lot of praise. But you
owe it to yourself to go out more now. It isn’t right. Shut up in a city
house. If we only lived out in the country now it would be different.”

Marion didn’t quite see why the country would be any better but she
tried to answer pleasantly:

“Well, Jennie, I am going back and take my old Sunday School class if
they still need me. I had thought of that.”

“Oh, a Sunday School class!” sniffed Jennie. “Well, if that pleases you,
of course. But I should think you’d want to get in with some nice young
folks again. My land! this house is as silent as the tomb! Why, I had
lots of friends in Port Harris before we came here to be with you. They
would run in every day, and we’d telephone a lot in between. They do
that in the country or in a small town. But in a city nobody comes near
you. They aren’t friendly.”

“I suppose you are lonely, Jennie,” said Marion apologetically. “I
hadn’t realized it, I have been so occupied ever since you came.”

“Oh, I’m never lonely,” said Jennie, tossing her head. “I’m thinking of
you. I could be alone with my house and my children from morning to
night and never mind it. It’s you I’m worrying about.”

Marion looked at her sister-in-law in mild surprise. It was so new for
Jennie to care what became of her. Jennie had manifested very little
interest in her during the years she had been living with them. What had
got into Jennie?

When they came to clean the den Jennie insisted upon doing it herself,
saying she thought it would be too hard for Marion yet awhile, it would
remind her of her father too much. Marion tried to protest, but when she
got up the next morning she found that Jennie had arisen before her and
finished cleaning the room entirely, so that there was nothing left for
Marion to do in there. She stood for a moment looking around on the bare
room with its book-lined walls, its desk and worn old chair, and the
little upholstered chair where she used to sit by her father’s side and
study her lessons in the dear old days when he was well and she was
still in school. Then she dropped into the desk chair with her head down
on the desk, and cried for a minute.

A wish came into her heart that she might have her house to herself for
a little while. Just a little while. Of course it was nice of Jennie to
be willing to come there and do the work all these years while there had
been sickness. Of course Jennie had given up things to come. She had
come away off from her own father and mother who lived up in Vermont,
and she had not liked the city very well. But oh, if she just wouldn’t
take things into her own hands quite so much and try to make her sister
do everything she thought she ought. If she only hadn’t come into this
sacred room and done the cleaning! It seemed to Marion that the spirit
of the room had been hurt by such unsympathetic touches as Jennie would
have given.

But that was silly of course! So Marion raised her head and wiped her
eyes and summoned a smile to go out and help Nannie wash the breakfast
dishes, but somehow day after day the strange, hurt feeling grew in her
heart, that all the precious things of her soul life were being
commonized by Jennie, yet Jennie was doing it out of kindness to her. If
only there were some way to let Jennie know without hurting her
feelings. Marion was gentle and shy and couldn’t bear to hurt people’s
feelings.

Then Marion began to think about what Jennie had said. Perhaps she ought
to get out more. Perhaps she ought to hunt up her old friends.

So she went to church the next Sabbath. She had always loved to go to
church, but it had been so long since she had been able to leave her
father and go, that it seemed strange now to her to be sitting alone in
the old seat where she and Father had sat.

She had dreaded this and had even ventured to suggest to Tom that
perhaps he would go with her. Jennie had declined most decidedly. She
couldn’t leave the baby. But Tom said he had to see a man who had some
property for sale and he wanted to find out about it. So she had to come
alone.

But it was good to be there again, after all, in spite of the
loneliness, and she had a feeling that her father would be pleased she
had gone.

The minister came down and spoke to her kindly. He asked if she wouldn’t
come back and take her old Sunday School class again. One of the ladies
came over and asked her if she wouldn’t come out to the Mite Society
social and help wait on the folks, they had so much trouble getting
girls to come and be waitresses.

Marion agreed to come although she shrank tremendously from it. But it
was something she could do, of course, and she felt she ought not to
refuse. Jennie was most enthusiastic about it and offered to go with
her, but when the evening came Jennie had a cold and so she had to go
alone.

As she entered the big Sunday School room where the social was to be
held she had an instant of hesitation. It seemed to her she could not go
through a long evening all alone with strangers. She had always been a
shy girl, and her five years of service caring for Mother and then
Father had made her still more so. She was at home among books, not
humans. If her books could have come alive and been present at that
gathering, how gladly would she have walked in and conversed with their
characters, one by one, thrilled by the thought of meeting those she
knew so well. But a lot of people frightened her. She liked to be on the
outside of things and watch. She loved to weave stories to herself about
people, but to have to move among them and make conversation was
terrible. She had purposely come late to avoid having to sit and talk a
long while with someone while people were gathering.

But a group of merry girls was coming in behind her and she hated to
have them stare at her, so she hurried in and took off her coat and hat
in the ladies’ parlor which was already well decorated with hats and
wraps.

The bevy of eager girls entered just as she turned to go out, shouting
and laughing, gay in bright-colored dresses, combing their bobbed locks,
some of them even dabbing on lipstick, holding up their tiny hand
mirrors and chaffing one another loudly in a new kind of slang which
Marion did not in the least understand. They were very young girls, of
course, but some of the things they were saying were shocking. Could it
be that girls, nice girls, girls who belonged to the church and Sunday
School talked like that nowadays?

She shrank away from them and went into the main room.

For a moment she was dazed before the babel of tongues and the medley of
gay dresses. Someone was playing the piano and everybody seemed trying
to talk as loud as possible to be heard above it. She felt somehow a
stranger and an alien.

She began to look about for someone she knew.

Off at the other side of the room were a group of young people, three of
them old schoolmates of Marion’s. Mechanically she made her way toward
them, half hoping they might welcome her to their midst. There was
Isabel Cresson. She used to help Isabel with her algebra and geometry
problems in school. She had never been especially intimate with her, but
at least she was not a stranger.

But when she arrived at the corner where the young people had
established themselves she was not met with cordiality. Anna Reese and
Betty Bryson bowed to her, but Isabel Cresson only stared.

“Oh, why you’re Marion Warren, aren’t you?” she said with a
condescending lift of her eyebrows. “How are you? It’s ages since I’ve
seen you. I thought you must have moved away.”

Marion tried to explain that her father had been ill and she had not
been able to be out, but Isabel was not listening. She had merely swept
Marion with a disconcerting glance which made her suddenly aware that
her dress was out of date, and her shoes were shabby, and then turned
her eyes back to the young men with whom she had been talking when
Marion arrived.

Marion mechanically finished her sentence about her father’s recent
death, feeling most uncomfortable and wishing she had not explained at
all. Isabel turned her glance back toward her long enough to say, “Oh,
too bad. I’m sorry, I’m sure,” and then got up and moved across to the
other side of the circle to speak to one of the young men. She did not
excuse herself nor say she would be back. She did not suggest
introducing Marion to the young men. No one made any attempt to move or
include her in their circle. She dropped down in a chair just behind
them, too hurt and bewildered to get herself away from them immediately.

The girls and men chattered on for some minutes ignoring her utterly.
Once she heard Isabel say with a light laugh in response to something
one of the men had said:

“Yes, one meets so many common people at a church affair, don’t you
think? I’ve coaxed Uncle Rad to let us go to some more exclusive church
out in a suburb you know, or uptown, but he doesn’t see it. He was born
and brought up in this church and nothing will do but we’ve all got to
come. I’ve struck, however. I simply can’t stand the affairs they have
here constantly. I only came to-night because I was asked to sing. Say
Ed, did you hear that Jefferson Lyman is home? That’s another reason I
came. They say he is coming here to-night just for old times’ sake. I
don’t much believe it but I took the chance.”

“And who is Jefferson Lyman?” asked the young man who was evidently a
newcomer in town.

“Oh, mercy, don’t you know Jeff? Why he’s an old sweetheart of mine. We
used to be crazy about each other when we were kids. Walked back and
forth to school together and all that. Jeff’s been abroad for five or
six years, and they say he’s tremendously sophisticated. I’m just dying
to see him.”

“But who is he? Does he live around here? Not one of _the_ Lymans, from
the Lyman firm?”

“Sure, boy!” said Isabel. “He’s the Lyman himself, all there is left.
Didn’t you know it? His father and his uncle are both dead. That’s why
he’s come home. He’s to be the head of the firm now. He’s young, too,
for such a position. But he’s been abroad a lot. That makes a
difference. I’m simply crazy to see him and renew our acquaintance. Yes,
he went abroad for the war, of course, was in aviation, won a lot of
medals and things; and then he stayed over there, looking after the
firm’s interests part of the time, travelling and studying. He’s a great
bookworm, you know. But he’s stunningly handsome, if he hasn’t changed,
and he’s no end rich. My soul! He owns the whole business and it’s been
going ever since the ark, hasn’t it? He’s got a house in town right on
the avenue with a picture gallery in it; that house next the Masonic
Club, yes, that’s it, and an estate out beyond the township line on a
hillside where you can see for miles, and a whole flock of automobiles,
and an army of servants, and a seashore place up in New England with a
wonderful garden right out on the beach almost, among the rocks. Oh,
it’s perfectly darling. We motored past it last summer on our trip. I’d
adore to live in it!”

“Gracious!” said Betty Bryson. “If he’s got all that why does he come to
a church social? I’m sure I wouldn’t bother to if I had all that.”

“Well, perhaps he won’t come,” said Isabel. “I’m sure I wouldn’t either.
But they say he’s interested in the church because his father helped to
found it, and he always comes when he’s home and there’s anything
unusual going on. You know this is the minister’s twenty-fifth
anniversary, and there’s just a chance he may come. I should think he’d
be disillusioned, though, wouldn’t you? All these common people. Why
some of them aren’t even dressed up decently!” and Isabel lowered her
voice and cast a covert glance about. Marion somehow felt she was
looking at her. She rose suddenly and made her swift way toward the
kitchen. She would look up the woman who had asked her to come and say
she would have to go home, she was not feeling well or something. She
simply could not go around among those dressed-up girls. She would drop
something, surely, feeling like this. Oh, why had she been led to come
to a scene like this? Why did they have things of this sort anyway?
There was no worship in it, and what else could people want of it? How
terrible those girls had been. Cruel and terrible. And Isabel Cresson,
how she had changed and coarsened. Her lips and cheeks were painted.
What a difference it made in her. She used to be a pretty girl with
lovely golden curly hair, and now it was all cut off, close, like a
boy’s. That might be pretty on some people, perhaps, but Isabel looked
too big and old for it.

Marion’s pale cheeks were flushed now, and her tired eyes bright with
distress. She had never had quite such an experience as this, being
turned down by an old schoolmate. One who had been under obligation to
her, too, in the old days. What was the trouble? Wasn’t she dressed
right?

She glanced down at her plain brown dress, made in the fashion of two
years ago. It was still fresh and good, but of course the fashion was
behind the times. Why hadn’t she realized that she needed to furbish up
her wardrobe before going out into the world? She must attend to that
before she went anywhere, even to church again. But what kind of people
were they all to look down on an old acquaintance just because she was
oddly dressed? She had been shut away from the world so long that she
had got far away from the sense of worldliness. How odd it was that just
dress made so much difference. And what a silly she was. Was she going
to cry right there in the church before all those people? Oh, Jennie and
Tom had been all wrong! She was not fit to go out anywhere. She was all
tired out and needed to stay at home and rest and just be quiet.

She was edging her way through the merry crowds toward the church
kitchen now, hoping to make her excuses and get away, when the minister
loomed in her way and greeted her with a royal smile, and his wife put a
comforting arm around her and began talking in a low tone saying dear
things about her father; telling her just how she had felt when her
father was taken away. The tight lines of suffering around Marion’s
delicate lips relaxed a little and she began to look almost happy. Then
with a swoop Mrs. Shuttle, the chairman of the entertainment committee
arrived:

“Well, here you are at last, Marion Warren!” she exclaimed in a loud
voice that made Marion shrink. “We’ve been looking all over the place
for you. We want you terribly in the kitchen right away. The woman we
hired to wash dishes hasn’t come yet. She’s always late nowadays. She’s
got a little baby and can’t leave early, and we find the Christian
Endeavor used the glasses and ice cream plates at their last social and
just left them in the closet dirty! Isn’t that the limit? Something
ought to be done about that. And see, we’re almost ready to serve and
not enough ice-cream plates nor glasses. You wouldn’t mind washing a few
for us would you, Marion? I told them I thought you wouldn’t. We’re
almost wild back there in the kitchen. Come on!”

So Marion vanished into the kitchen and was presently established at the
church sink washing dishes. Of course she could wash dishes. She had
done that all her life. It was much less embarrassing than being out
there in the other room being made to feel as if she came out of the
ark. Yes, she was glad to wash dishes. She would rather wash dishes than
serve. Much! Oh, much! This was what she said when it was discovered
that the woman with the little baby did not arrive at all, and that many
more dishes beside the glasses and ice-cream plates would have to be
washed before the evening was over.

So Marion stayed in the kitchen and washed dishes the rest of the
evening, and rejoiced that she was not called upon to go back into the
big room and be looked at. Never, never, never would she come to
anything again till she made sure she was dressed just right! And never
would she come at all just for pleasure.

Marion did not even eat any ice cream. The thought of it was revolting
to her. She felt cold and hot and wanted to cry, but she washed dishes
faithfully all the evening and smiled when each new tray full was landed
on the table beside her, and did not groan nor complain, and was
rewarded at the end by commendation from Mrs. Shuttle.

“Oh, Marion, you’ve been just wonderful! I can’t thank you enough! You
love to wash dishes, don’t you? You make dish washing a fine art, don’t
you? Now, you really do! I wish you would come every time and help us.
We’ll remember you when we get in a strait again.”

“It’s a small thing to do,” said Marion trying not to let her voice
sound weary.

“And will you really come and help us again?”

“Why, surely,” said Marion, “if you need me,” and resolved if she did,
that she would enter by the back door and not go at all into the main
room. It was all well enough to serve the Lord in the church by washing
dishes if she was needed, but there was no law at all either moral or
spiritual to compel her to force herself on the church socially. She
would never do it again.

So Marion went home at half past eleven, having wiped and set up the
last hundred glasses and spoons herself, and let herself in at the front
door with her latch key, and hoped that Jennie had gone to bed.

But Jennie was very much awake. She called down from the head of the
stairs:

“Mercy! What kept you so late? Did you have a good time? You must have,
to stay so long. Did anyone come home with you?”

“I was washing dishes,” said Marion wearily. “No, I didn’t have an
especially good time. I stayed because the dishes had to be washed. No,
no one came home with me. The janitor offered to, but I told him it
wasn’t necessary.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have stayed,” said Jennie indignantly. “What do they
think you are? A servant? I wouldn’t go to that church any more if I
were you. There are other churches. Anyway, perhaps we’re not going to
stay here much longer. Tom’s heard of a farm for sale up in New England.
He’s taking the New York express to-morrow at six. We’ll have to get
breakfast by five. You better get right up to bed or you won’t wake up.
I can’t be depended on to do much, you know, because the baby is sure to
wake up and yell.”

Marion stood in the hall where she had been when Jennie called to her
and stared at the pattern of the wall paper dazedly as she heard Jennie
shut her door with a click and snap off her light. So that was the next
thing that she was going to be confronted by, was it? They were going to
try to go away! They were wanting to sell the house and go away from the
only spot on earth that was dear to her!

She went over and sat down on the lower step of the stairs and put her
face down in her hands and thought how tired and sick she was of it all,
and how wonderful it would be if she could just slip away and go where
her father had gone.

After a few minutes she got up sadly, locked the front door, turned out
the light and went up to her room. After taking off her hat and coat she
dropped upon her knees by her bed, and let her heart cry out to God.

“Oh, God! What am I going to do? How am I going to bear it? Won’t you
take care of me?”

Praying thus she fell asleep upon her knees, and woke hours later, stiff
and chilly, to creep under the covers shivering and so to sleep again,
with a dull, vague realization that she must get up pretty soon and get
breakfast for Tom.