Crimson roses Read online

  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; telHng her just how she had felt when her father was taken away. The tight Hnes 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. Yqs, 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.

  CHAPTER III

  The light had been turned out in the kitchen to save electricity while they ate supper, and Marion Warren did not turn it on when she slipped away from the table with her hands full of dishes. She did not wish to have anyone see the trouble in her face. By the light that came through the open door she scraped the dishes quietly and filled her dish-pans without much noise, that she might hear what her brother was saying.

  Tom Warren was a large man with heavy movements and a voice to correspond. His sister had no difficulty in hearing it above the subdued clatter of the dishes.

  He had arrived home but an hour before from the trip to Vermont, whither he had gone to look at a farm that was for sale at a low price. The days of his absence had been a time of anxiety for his sister, and of eager expectations for his wife. Jennie was hovering about him now, interrupting him occasionally with a chirp of assent as she helped to clear oflF the table. She resembled a sparrow whose mate has just brought home a new twig for the nest.

  Tom talked on in his large^ complacent voice.

  He was immense^ pleased with his " find." The farm was all and more than it had professed to be. The house was in good repair, the location charming and healthful, the land rich and under a good degree of cultivation, with a convenient market for its produce. He had all but said that he would take it.

  " A grand place for the babies to play," he said. " No one will have to stop work to cart them out into the street for the air. No brick wal
ls, no dust, no noise. You and Marion will have nothing to interrupt you from morning till night. The nearest neighbor is half a mile away, and it's two miles to the village. That needn't bother us any; we'll have a car, of course, and when the children get old enough to go to school, Marion here can teach them all they need to know. She's always been crazy to teach. How about that, Marion? " raising his voice unnecessarily. " It isn't every family that has a schoolmarm all ready-made."

  But Marion did not answer. The gentle clatter of the spoons in the dish-pan might have drowned his question. He did not stop to see.

  The girl in the darkened kitchen caught her breath in a half-sobbing sigh, and the tears came into her eyes; but she kept her peace and went on with her task.

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  CRIMSON ROSES 47

  Fm going to see Matthews in the morning," went on Tom joyously. "If he sticks to his offer about buying this house, I'll accept it and bind the bargain for the farm to-morrow. Then how soon do you two ladies think you can get ready to move ? If Matthews buys this house, he's likely to want possession at once."

  Marion gasped, and drew her hands from the dish-water suddenly. She hesitated for an instant, then appeared like a wraith at the dining-room door, her wet hands clasped, her delicate face looking ghastly white against the dark background of the kitchen.

  *' Tom! " she said in an agonized voice, " Tom! "

  Tom wheeled about his chair and faced her, startled from his contented planning.

  " Tom! You're not going to sell this house! The house that Father worked so hard to buy and to pay off the mortgage! Our home! My—^my home! Tom, you know what Father said."

  The last words were almost a cry of distress.

  Tom frowned uneasily. Jennie's face grew red with anger.

  " That's just like you, Marion Warren! " she burst out hotly. " Three little children that you profess to love, your own nephews and niece, languish-

  ing in the crowded city air, and needing the lovely country and a chance to play on the green grass, and you letting a mere sentimental fancy for a little old house stand in the way of their life, perhaps! "

  Jennie's eyes flashed sparks of steel as gray eyes can do sometimes. Marion shrank from their glance, her very soul quivering with their misunderstanding of her.

  '' O, now, Marion," began Tom's smooth tones, " that's all bosh about Father's slaving to pay for this house. Sentimental bosh," he added, catching at his w^ife's adjective. " He worked hard, of course. All men with a family do. I work hard myself. But you know perfectly well that Father wouldn't have hung on to this particular house just because he had worked hard to pay for it, if he had a good chance to better himself. It isn't throwing it away to change it into something better, and this is a great opportunity. As for its being your home, why, you'll have a home with us wherever we go; so you needn't get up any such foolish ideas as that. The farm'll be your home as much as this is in three months' time. Don't be a fool."

  He said it kindly in his elder-brother way; but Marion's face grew whiter, and she stood looking at him as if she could not believe what he had said.

  Her great dark eyes made him uncomfortable. He turned from her, and went to wind the clock.

  "Come, hurry up, Jennie," he said with a yawn. "Let's get to sleep. I'm about played out. It's been a hard day, and I must get up early in the morning to catch Matthews before he goes to the store."

  Marion dropped silently back into the kitchen, and finished her dishes. Jennie came in presently, and turned on the light with an energetic click, looking suspiciously at the silent figure wringing out the dish-towels; but Marion's face was turned from her, and she could not see whether or not there were traces of tears upon it. Marion hung up the dish-tow^els on the little rack beside the range and went silently upstairs.

  Jennie listened until she heard the door of Marion's room close; then she w^ent back to her husband,

  "Do you think she'll make trouble about selling" this house?" she asked anxiously.

  "Trouble? Pooh! She'll not make trouble," he said in his complacent voice that always soothed his wife. "She'll have her little cry over giving it up, but she'll be all right in the morning."

  "But doesn't she own half of it?" queried the wife sharply. "Hasn't she a right by law to object?"'

  "Yes, she owns half of it but she'll never object. Why, she'd give me her head if I told her she ought to," said the husband, laughing.

  "She might give you her head," said Jennie with a, toss of her own; "but she's got a terrible will of her own sometimes, and I've an idea she's got it on the brain to go to normal school, yet."

  "Nonsense!" said her husband, ponderously. "She's too old! Why, she's almost twenty-three."

  "Well, you'll see!"

  "Well, you'll see. I guess my sister has some sense! Come let's shut up shop."

  Marion locked her bedroom door, and went straight to her white bed, kneeling beside it and burying her face in the pillow.

  "O Father, Father," she whispered, "what shall I do? How can I bear it?"

  Long after the house was silent she knelt there trying to think. By and by she crept over to her back window, and, sitting in her willow chair, rested her cheek against the window-frame. The sprmg air stole in and fanned her cheeks, and blew the tendrils of damp hair away from her temples soothingly, like a tender hand.

  The Warren home was a pleasant red-brick house Urith white marble trimmings and marble steps. It

  was in a nice, respectable neighborhood, with plain, well-to-do neighbors, and neat back yards meeting on a cement-paved alleyway. In a few weeks now these back yards would be carpeted with well-kept turf and borders of gay flowers. Her own crocuses and hyacinths and daffodils that her beloved father had taught her to care for were even now beginning to peep through the earth. Her window had always framed for her a pleasant world of sights and sounds that were comfortable and prosperous. She loved to watch and compare the growing things in the green back yards, or to enjoy their clean white coverings in winter; and she knew every varying phase of cloud or clearness in the bit of sky overhead. She looked up now, a broken moon beamed kindly down between dark, tattered clouds.

  Within, the room was a white haven of rest. The simple enamel bed with brass trimmings, the white bureau and wash-stand, the willow chair, the plain muslin curtains, and the gray rugs with pink borders had all been the gift of her loving father. They represented sacrifice and extra night-work after the wearisome day's toil was completed, and some had been acquired under protest of the more practical mother, who felt that the money might have been displayed to better advantage in the parlor.

  Marion loved her white room. It seemed an inner shrine to fortify her soul against the trials and disappointments of life. And the bit of window view of flying cloud and neat yards and brick rows was a part of it all. The whole was linked eternally with precious memories of her dear father. And her brother was planning to take them all away! It was appalling!

  It was not that she did not appreciate pure air and green grass and unlimited sky. She, more than the rest of the family, had the artist eye to see the beauties of nature. But the change meant to her a giving up of her life-ambitions, a cutting herself off from the great world of education. Ever since her childhood she had longed for a fine education and contact with the world of art and culture. She and her father had planned that she should be a teacher, and to that end she had taken g^eat care with all her studies. Her mother had felt that she had had quite enough of school when she was graduated from the high school, but her father encouraged her to take up the normal course. But five long years of nursing had broken in upon her fondest hopes. She realized that it was rather late for her to think of going back to the normal school and completing her course. Quietly, patiently, she had relinquished

  the idea. Nevertheless, she had hoped to be dhlQ to do something else in the world that would bring her into contact with the things she most longed to see and hear and know. And the city w^as the only place where she co
uld hope for that.

  There were lectures, free libraries, great music, and sometimes exhibitions of wonderful pictures. She felt instinctively that there was still opportunity for her to acquire a certain amount of true education and mental culture; and she knew in her inmost soul that it was not to be found in that Vermont farmhouse, where the days would follow one another in a monotonous succession of homely household duties, enlivened by Jennie's pleasant shallow chatter. Jennie's idea of life was to keep one's house speckless, and then to sit down with her sewing in the afternoon and enjoy it. She could not understand what more Marion wanted.

  That might be all very well for Jennie. It would be Jennie's house and Jennie's children. Jennie cared for no more. It was certainly commendable in her. She was a good wife and mother. But Marion, even though she owned a part of the house, could not seem to feel that she really belonged there, since her father's death. It was as though the home had passed into other hands.

  Jennie had taken command in the house years ago, when Marion's mother first fell ill, and had always treated Marion as if she were a child who ought to do whatever she was told. There had been nothing else to do at that time, but to put Jennie in command. It had been good of Jennie to be willing to give up her own home and come to help them out. Marion had always recognized that, and tried patiently to do whatever Jennie asked in the ceaseless round of duties, relieving Jennie whenever it had been possible. But now she felt that the time had come when she could no longer go on as an under-servant, stifling the life that was in her for no reason at all. If it had been necessary for Tom's sake, or even for Jennie's or for the children's good, in any way, she would never have faltered. But there was no reason for anyone's sake why it was necessary for her to go on working in her brother's household, almost as if she were a sort of dependent. Half of the property, of course, belonged to her. And Tom had been doing a good business. He had money in the bank aside from what his father had left. If Tom went to farming he would make that pay, too. He was a stirring, successful man. He could afford to hire a servant if Jennie wanted one. And Nannie