Uncle Stanley of late had been a frequent visitor on the hill, occasionally bringing his son Burdon with him, but generally coming alone. After dinner he and Josiah would sit in the den till well past midnight, going over papers and figures, and drafting out instructions for Judge Cutler, the firm's lawyer.
Mary was never able to overcome her aversion to Uncle Stanley.
"I wish he'd stay away," she ruefully remarked to her father one night."Three evenings this week I haven't been able to come in the den."
"Never mind, dear," said Josiah, looking at her with love in his sombre eyes. "What we're doing: it's all for you."
"All for me? How?"
He explained to her that whereas Josiah Spencer & Son had always been a firm, it was now being changed to a corporation.
"As long as there was a son," he said, "the partnership arrangement was all right. But the way things are now—Well, when I'm gone, Mary, you'll own the stock of the company, and draw your dividends, and have no responsibilities to bother you."
"But who'll run the factory?"
"I suppose Stanley will, as long as he lives. You'll be the owner, of course, but I don't think you'll ever find anybody to beat Uncle Stanley as a general manager."
"And when Uncle Stanley dies—what then?"
"I think you'll find his son Burdon the next best man."
Mary felt her heart grow heavy. It may have been presentiment, or it may have been the thought of her father's possible death.
"Don't let's talk any more about dying," she said. "But tell me: Is that why you are making so many additions to the factory—because we are changing to a corporation?"
Josiah hesitated, struggling to speak to his daughter as though she were a young man instead of a young woman. But heredity, training and world-old custom restrained him. What would a girl know about mergers, combinations, fundamental patents, the differences between common and preferred stock, and all that? "It would only confuse her," he thought, looking at her with love in his eyes. "She would nod her pretty head to be polite, but I might as well be talking Greek to her."
"No, dear," he said, at last. "I'll tell you why we are making those additions. I have bought options on some of the biggest bearing factories in the country—so you won't have so much competition when I'm gone. And instead of running those other factories, I'm going to move their machinery down here. When the changes are once made, it's more economical to run one big factory than half a dozen little ones. And of course it will make it better for New Bethel."
"But it must make it bad for the towns where the factories are now," said Mary after a thoughtful pause. "I know how it would hurt New Bethel if we closed up."
Josiah nodded his head. "I didn't like it myself at first."
"It was Uncle Stanley's idea, then?"
"Yes; he's engineering it."
Again Mary felt her heart grow heavy.
"It must be costing an awful lot of money," she said.
"It is," said Josiah, leaning over and making a gesture. "Of course we'll get it back, and more, too—but for quite a few years now it's been taking a lot of money—a dreadful lot of money. Still, I think the end's in sight—"
He was sitting at his desk with a shaded lamp in front of him, and as he leaned over and gestured with his hands, Mary's eyes caught the shadow on the wall. She seemed to see a spider—a spider that was spinning and weaving his web—and for the third time that night her heart grew heavy within her.
The next day was Saturday and Mary drove her father down to the factory. A small army of men was at work at the new improvements, and when they reached the brow of the hill which overlooked the scene below, Josiah felt that thrill of pride which always ran over him when beholding this monument to his family's genius.
"The greatest of its kind in the world," he said.
With her free hand, Mary patted his arm.
"That's us!" she said, as proud as he. "I'll leave you at the office door, and then I'm going to drive around and see how the building's going on—"
There was plenty for Mary to see.
A gang of structural workers was putting up the steel frame-work for one of the new buildings. Nearby the brick-layers were busy with mortar and trowels. Carpenters were swarming over a roof, their hammers beating staccato.
As they worked in the sunshine, they joked and laughed and chatted with each other, and Mary couldn't help reverting to some of her old thoughts.
"How nice to be a man!" she half sighed to herself. "Back home, their wives are working in the kitchens—the same thing every day and nothing to show for it. But the men come out and do all sorts of interesting things, and when they are through they can say 'I helped build that factory' or 'I helped build that ship' or whatever it is that they have been doing. It doesn't seem fair, somehow, but I suppose it's the way it always has been, and always will be—"
Near her a trench was being dug for water pipes. At one place the men had uncovered a large rock, and she was still wondering how they were going to get it out of the way, when a young man came briskly forward and gave one glance at the problem.
"We'll rig up a derrick for this little beauty," he said. "Come on, boys; let's get some timbers."
They were back again in no time, and before Mary knew what they were doing, they had raised a wooden tripod over the rock. The apex of this was bound together with a chain from which a pulley was hung. Other chains were slung under the rock. Then from a nearby hoisting engine, a cable was passed through the pulley and fastened to the chains below.
"All right, boys?"
"All right!"
The young man raised his hand. "Let her go!" he shouted. "Tweet-tweet!" sounded a whistle. The engine throbbed. The cable tightened. The little beauty began to stir uneasily in its hammock of chains. Then slowly and steadily the rock arose, and nearly as quickly as I can write the words, it was lying on the side of the trench and the derrick was being dismantled.
As the young man hurried away he passed Mary's car.
"Why, it's Archey!" she thought. Whether or not it was due to telepathy, the young man looked up and his colour deepened under his tan. "It is Archey; isn't it?" asked Mary, leaning forward and smiling.
"Yes'm," he said, awkwardly enough, and grammar deserting him in his confusion he added: "It's me all right, Miss Spencer."
"I've been watching you get that rock out," she began, looking at him with frank admiration, and then they talked for a few minutes. I need not tell you what they said—it would only sound trivial—but as they talked a bond of sympathy, of mutual interest, seemed gradually to wind itself around them. They smiled, nodded, looking approvingly at each other; and each felt that feeling of warmth and satisfaction which comes to the heart when instinct whispers, "Make no mistake. You've found a friend."
"But what are you doing here?" she finally asked.
"Working," he grinned. "I graduated last year—construction engineer—and this is my second job. This winter I was down in old Mexico on bridge work—"
"You must tell me about it some time," she said, as one of the workmen came to take him away; and driving off in her car she couldn't help thinking with a smile of amusement, "'Woman's natural enemy'—how silly it sounds in the open air …!"
Meanwhile the matter of Mary's education was receiving the attention of her aunts.
"Patty," said Miss Cordelia one day, "do you know that child of ours is seventeen?"
The years had dealt kindly with the Misses Spencer and as they looked at each other, with thoughtful benignity, their faces were like two studies in silver and pink.
"Although I say it myself," continued Miss Cordelia, "I doubt if we could have improved her studies. Indeed she is unusually advanced in French, English and music. But I do think she ought to go to a good finishing school now for a year or two—Miss Parsons', of course—where she would not only be welcomed because of her family, but where she would form suitable friendships and learn those lessons of modern deportment which we ourselves, I fear, would never be able to teach her."
But if you had been there when the subject of Miss Parsons' School for Young Ladies was broached to Mary, I think it would have reminded you of that famous recipe for rabbit pie which so wisely begins "First catch your rabbit."
Mary listened to all that was said and then, quietly but unmistakably, she put her foot down on Miss Parsons' fashionable institution of learning.
I doubt if she herself could have given you all her reasons.
For one thing, the older she grew, the more democratic, the more American she was becoming.
Deep in her heart she thought the old original Spencers had done more for the world than any leaders of fashion who ever lived; and when she read or thought of those who had made America, her mind never went to smart society and its doings, but to those great, simple souls who had braved the wilderness in search of liberty and adventure—who had toiled, and fought, and given their lives, unknown, unsung, but never in Mary's mind to be forgotten. And whenever she thought of travel, she found she would rather see the Rockies than the Alps, rather go to New Orleans than Old Orleans, rather visit the Grand Canyon than the Nile, and would infinitely rather cross the American continent and see three thousand miles of her own country, than cross the Atlantic and see three thousand miles of water that belonged to every one in general and no one in particular.
"But, my dear," said Miss Cordelia, altogether taken aback, "you ought to go somewhere, you know. Let me tell you about Miss Parsons' school—"
"It's no use, Aunty. I don't want to go to Miss Parsons' school—"
"Where do you want to go then?"
Like most inspirations, it came like a flash.
"If I'm going anywhere, I want to go to college—"
To college! A Spencer girl—or a Spicer—going to college! Miss Cordelia gasped. If Mary had been noticing, she might not have pursued her inspiration further, but her mind was running along a breathless panorama of Niagara Falls, Great Lakes, Chicago, the farms of the Middle West, Yellowstone Park, geysers, the Old Man of the Mountain, Aztec ruins, redwood forests, orange groves and at the end of the vista—like a statue at the end of a garden walk—she imagined a great democratic institution of learning where one might conceivably be prepared to solve some of those problems which life seems to take such deep delight in presenting to us, with the grim command, "Not one step farther shall you go until you have answered this!"
"To college?" gasped Miss Cordelia.
"Yes," said Mary, still intent upon her panorama, "there's a good one inCalifornia. I'll look it up."
The more Mary thought of it, the fonder she grew of her idea—which is, I think, a human trait and true of nearly every one. It was in vain that her aunts argued with her, pointing out the social advantages which she would enjoy from attending Miss Parsons' School. Mary's objection was fundamental. She simply didn't care for those advantages. Indeed, she didn't regard them as advantages at all.
Helen did, though.
In her heart Helen had always longed to tread the stage of society—to her mind, a fairyland of wit and gallantry, masquerades and music, to say nothing of handsome young polo players and titled admirers from foreign shores—"big fools," all of them, as you can guess, when dazzled by the smiles of Youth and Beauty.
"Mary can go to California if she likes," said Helen at last, "but give me Miss Parsons' School."
And Mary did go to California, although I doubt if she would have gained her point if her father hadn't taken her part. For four years she attended the university by the Golden Gate, and every time she made the journey between the two oceans, sometimes accompanied by Miss Cordelia and sometimes by Miss Patty, she seemed to be a little more serene of glance, a little more tranquil of brow, as though one by one she were solving some of those problems which I have mentioned above.
Meanwhile Helen was in her glory at Miss Parsons'; and though the two aunts didn't confess it, they liked to sit and listen to her chatter of the girls whose friendship she was making, and to whose houses she was invited for the holidays.
When she was home, she sang snatches from the operas, danced with imaginary partners, rehearsed parts of private theatricals and dreamed of conquests. She had also learned the knack of dressing her hair which, when done in the grand manner, isn't far from being a talent. Pulled down on one side, with a pin or two adjusted, she was a dashing young duchess who rode to hounds and made the old duke's eyes pop out. Or she could dip it over her ears, change a few pins again and—lo!—she was St. Cecilia seated at the organ, and butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.
"She is quite pretty and very clever," said Miss Cordelia one day. "I think she will marry well."
"Do you think she's as pretty as Mary?" asked Miss Patty.
"My dear!" said Miss Cordelia with a look that said 'What a question you are asking!' "—is pretty in a way, of course," she said, "but there is something about our Mary—"
"I know," nodded Miss Patty. "Something you can't express—"
"The dear child," mused Miss Cordelia, looking out toward the west. "I wonder what she is doing this very moment!"
At that very moment, as it happened, Mary was in her room on the other side of the continent studying the manufacture of raisin fudge. Theretofore she had made it too soft, or too sugary, but this time she was determined to have it right. Long ago she had made all the friends that her room would hold, and most of them were there. Some were listening to a girl in spectacles who was talking socialism, while a more frivolous group, perched on the bed, was arguing the question whether the perfect lover had a moustache or a clean-shaven lip.
"Money is cruel; it ought to be abolished," said the earnest girl in the spectacles. "Money is a millstone which the rich use to grind the poor. You girls know it as well as I do."
Mary stirred away at the fudge.
"It's a good thing she doesn't know that I'm rich," she smiled to herself. "I wonder when I shall start grinding the poor!"
"And yet the world simply couldn't get along without the wage-earners," continued the young orator. "So all they have to do is strike—and strike—and keep on striking—and they can have everything they want—"
"So could the doctors," mused Mary to herself, stirring away at the fudge. "Imagine the doctors striking…. And so could the farmers. Imagine the farmers striking for eight hours a day, and no work Sundays and holidays, and every Saturday afternoon off…."
Dimly, vaguely, a troubled picture took shape in her mind. She stirred the fudge more reflectively than ever.
"I wonder if civil wars are started that way," she thought, "one class setting out to show its power over another and gradually coming to blows. Suppose—yes, suppose the women were to go on strike for eight hours a day, and as much money as the men, and Saturday afternoons and Sundays off, and all the rest of it…. The world certainly couldn't get along without women. As Becky says, they would only have to strike—and strike—and keep on striking—and they could get everything they wanted—"
Although she didn't suspect it, she was so close to her destiny at that moment that she could have reached out her hand and touched it. But all unconsciously she continued to stir the fudge.
"I've always thought that women have a poor time of it compared with men," she nodded to herself. "Still, perhaps it's the way of the world, like … like children have the measles … and old folks have to wear glasses."
She put the pan on the sill to cool and stood there for a time, looking out at the campus, dreamy-eyed, half occupied with her own thoughts and half listening to the conversation behind her.
"There oughtn't to be any such thing as private property—"
"Why, Vera, if he kissed you in the dark, you couldn't tell whether he was a man or a girl—"
"—Everything should belong to the state—"
"—No, listen. Kiss me both ways, and then tell me which you think is the nicest—"
A squeal of laughter arose from the bed and, turning, Mary saw that one of the girls was holding the back of a toothbrush against her upper lip.
"Now," she mumbled, "this is with the moustache … Kiss me hard …"
"The greatest book in the world," continued the girl with the spectacles, "is Marx's book on Capital—"
Mary turned to the window again, more dreamy-eyed than ever.
"The greatest book in the world," she thought, "is the book of life….Oh, if I could only write a few pages in it … myself …!"
Mary "came out" the winter after her graduation.
If she had been left to herself she would have dispensed with the ceremony quite as cheerfully as she had dispensed with Miss Parsons' School for Young Ladies. But in the first place her aunts were adamant, and in the second place they were assisted by Helen. Helen hadn't been going to finishing school for nothing. She knew the value of a proper social introduction.
Indeed it was her secret ambition to outshine her cousin—an ambition which was at once divined by her two aunts. Whereupon they groomed Mary to such good purpose that I doubt if Society ever looked upon a lovelier debutante.
She was dressed in chiffon, wore the Spencer pearls, and carried herself with such unconscious charm that more than one who danced with her that night felt a rapping on the door of his heart and heard the voice of love exclaiming "Let me in!"
There was one young man in particular who showed her such attention that the matrons either smiled or frowned at each other. Even Miss Cordelia and Miss Patty were pleased, although of course they didn't show it for a moment. He was a handsome, lazy-looking young rascal when he first appeared on the scene, lounging against the doorway, drawling a little as he talked to his friends—evidently a lion, bored in advance with the whole proceeding and meaning to slip away as soon as he could. But when his eye fell on Mary, he stared at her unobserved for nearly a minute and his ennui disappeared into thin air.
"What's the matter, Wally?" asked one of his friends.
"James," he solemnly replied, "I'm afraid it's something serious. I only hope it's catching." The next minute he was being introduced to Mary and was studying her card.
"Some of these I can't dance," she warned him.
"Will you mark them with a tick, please—those you can't dance?"
Unsuspectingly she marked them.
"Good!" said he, writing his name against each tick. "We'll sit those out. The next waltz, though, we will dance that."
"But that's engaged—'Chester A. Bradford,'" she read.
"Poor Brad—didn't I tell you?" asked Wally. "He fell downstairs a moment ago and broke his leg."
That was the beginning of it.
The first dance they sat out Wally said to himself, "I shall kiss her, if it's the last thing I ever do."
But he didn't.
The next dance they sat out he said to himself, "I shall kiss her if I never do another thing as long as I live—"
But he didn't.
The last dance they sat out he said to himself, "I shall kiss her if I hang for it."
He didn't kiss her, even then, but felt himself tremble a little as he looked in her eyes. Then it was that the truth began to dawn upon him. "I'm a gone coon," he told himself, and dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief …
"You've got him, all right," said Helen later, going to Mary's room ostensibly to undress, but really to exchange those confidences without which no party is complete.
"Got who?" asked Mary. And she a Bachelor of Arts!
"Oh, aren't you innocent! Wally Cabot, of course. Did he kiss you?"
"No, he did not!"
"Of course, if you don't want to tell—!"
"There's nothing to tell."
"There isn't? … Oh, well, don't worry…. There soon will be."
Helen was right.
From that time forward Mary's own shadow was hardly less attentive than Master Wally Cabot. His high-powered roadster was generally doing one of three things. It was either going to Mary's, or coming from Mary's, or taking a needed rest under Mary's porte cochère.
One day Mary suddenly said to her father, "Who was Paul?"
Fortunately for Josiah the light was on his back.
"Last night at the dance," she continued, "I heard a woman saying that I didn't look the least bit like Paul, and I wondered who he was."
"Perhaps some one in her own family," said Josiah at last.
"Must have been," Mary carelessly nodded. They went on chatting and presently Josiah was himself again.
"What are you going to do about Walter Cabot?" he asked, looking at her with love in his sombre eyes.
Mary made a helpless gesture.
"Has he asked you yet?"
"Yes," she said in a muffled voice, "—often."
"Why don't you take him?"
Again Mary made her helpless gesture and, for a long moment she too was on the point of opening her heart. But again heredity, training and age-old tradition stood between them, finger on lip.
"I sometimes have such a feeling that I want to do something in the world," she nearly told him. "And if I married Wally, it would spoil it all. I sometimes have such dreams—such wonderful dreams of doing something—of being somebody—and I know that if I married Wally I should never be able to dream like that again—"
As you can see, that isn't the sort of a thing which a girl can very well say to her father—or to any one else for that matter, except in fear and hesitation.
"The way I am now," she nearly told him, "there are ever so many things in life that I can do—ever so many doors that I can open. But if I marry Wally, every door is locked but one. I can be his wife; that's all."
Obviously again, you couldn't expect a girl to speak like that, especially a girl with dreamy eyes and shy. Nevertheless those were the thoughts which often came to her at night, after she had said her prayers and popped into bed and lay there in the dark turning things over in her mind.
One night, for instance, after Wally had left earlier than usual, she lay with her head snuggled on the pillow, full of vague dreams and visions—vague dreams of greatness born of the sunsets and stars and flowers—vague visions of proving herself worthy of the heritage of life.
"I don't think it's a bit fair," she thought. "As soon as a woman marries—well, somehow, she's through. But it doesn't seem to make any difference to the man. He can go right on doing the big things—the great things—"
She stopped, arrested by the sound of a mandolin under her window. The next moment the strains of Wally's tenor entered the room, mingled with the moonlight and the scent of the syringa bush. A murmuring, deep-toned trio accompanied him.
"Soft o'er the fountainLing'ring falls the southern moon—"
The beauty of it brought a thrill to the roots of Mary's hair—brought quick tears to her eyes—and she was wondering if Wally was right, after all—if love (as he often told her) was indeed the one great thing of life and nothing else mattered, when her door opened and Helen came twittering in.
"A serenade!" she whispered excitedly. "Im-a-gine!"
She tip-toed to the window and, kneeling on the floor, watched the singers through the curtain—knowing well it wasn't for her, but drinking deep of the moment.
Slowly, sweetly, the chorus grew fainter—fainter—
"Nita—JuanitaAsk thy soul if we should part—"
"What do you think of that!" said Helen, leaning over and giving her cousin a squeeze and a kiss. "He had the two Garde boys and Will Thompson with him. I thought he was leaving earlier than usual tonight; didn't you? But a serenade! I wonder if the others heard it, too!"
Miss Patty and Miss Cordelia had both heard it, and Helen had hardly gone when they came pattering in—each as proud as Punch of Mary for having caused such miracles to perform—and gleeful, too, that they had lived in the land long enough to hear a real, live serenade. And after they had kissed her and gone, Ma'm Maynard came in with a pretty little speech in French. So that altogether Mary held quite a reception in bed. As one result, her feeling toward Wally melted into something like tenderness, and if it hadn't been for the tragic event next morning, the things which I have to tell you might never have taken place.
"I wonder if your father heard it," said Miss Patty at the breakfast table next morning.
"I wonder!" laughed Mary. "I think I'll run in and see."
According to his custom Josiah breakfasted early and had gone to his den to look over his mail. Mary passed gaily through the library, but it wasn't long before she was back at the dining room door, looking as though she had seen a ghost.
"Come—come and look," she choked. "Something—something terrible—"
Josiah sat, half collapsed, in his chair. Before him, on the desk, lay his mail. Some he had read. Some he would never, never read.
"He must have had a stroke," said Miss Cordelia, her arms around Mary; and looking at her brother she whispered, "I think something upset him."
When they had sent for the doctor and had taken Mary away, they returned to look over the letters which Josiah had opened as his last mortal act.
"I don't see anything in these that could have bothered him," said MissCordelia, fearfully looking.
"What's this?" asked Miss Patty, picking up an empty envelope from the floor.
It was post-marked "Rio de Janeiro" and the date showed that it had taken three weeks to make the journey.
"I have some recollection of that writing," said Miss Cordelia.
"So have I," said Miss Patty in a low voice, "but where's the letter?"
Again it was she who made the discovery.
"That must be it," she said. "His ash tray is cleaned out every morning."
It was a large, brass tray and in it was the char of a paper that had been burned. This ash still lay in its folds and across its surface, black on black, could be seen a few lines which resembled the close of a letter.
"Can you read it?" she asked.
Miss Cordelia bent over, and as a new angle of light struck the tray, the words became as legible as though they had just been written.
"I thought I knew the writing," whispered Miss Cordelia, and lowering her voice until her sister had to hang breathless upon the movement of her lips, she added "Oh, Patty … We all thought he was dead … No wonder it killed poor Josiah …"
Their arms went around each other. Their glances met.
"I know," whispered Miss Patty, her lips suddenly gone dry, "….It was from Paul…!"
For the first few months after her father's death, Mary's dreams seemed to fade into mist.
Between her and Josiah a bond of love had existed, stronger than either had suspected—and now that he was gone the world seemed unaccountably empty—and unaccountably cruel. As her father had gone, so must Aunt Cordelia and Aunt Patty some day surely go … Yes, and even Mary herself must just as surely follow.
The immemorial doubt assailed her—that doubt which begins in helplessness and ends in despair. "What's the use?" she asked herself. "We plan and work so hard—like children making things in the sand—and then Death comes along with a big wave and flattens everything out … like that …"
But gradually her sense of balance began to return. One day she stood on the brink of the hill looking at the great factory below, and a calmer, surer feeling slowly swept over her.
"That's it," she thought. "The real things of life go on, no matter who dies, just as though nothing had happened. Take the first Josiah Spencer and look down there what he left behind him. Why, you might even say that he was alive today! And see what Washington left behind him—and Fulton, who invented the steamboat—and Morse who invented the telegraph. So it's silly to say 'What's the use?' Suppose Columbus had said it—or any of the others who have done great things in the world—"
It slowly came to her then, her doubts still lingering, how many are called, how few are chosen.
"That's the trouble," she said. "We can't all be Washingtons. We can't all do great things. And yet—an awful lot of people had to live so that Washington could be born when he was….
"His parents: that was two. And his grand-parents: he must have had four.And his great grand-parents: eight of them….
"Why, it's like the problem of the horse-shoe nails," she continued in growing excitement. "In twenty-eight generations there must have been millions and millions of people who lived—just so George Washington could be born one day at Mt. Vernon—and grow up to make America free! Yes, and every one of them was just as necessary as Washington himself, because if it hadn't been for every single one of them—we would never have had him!"
For a moment she seemed to be in touch with the infinite plan. Down the hill she saw a woman in a black dress, crossing the street.
"Mrs. Ridge going out for the day," thought Mary, recognizing the figure below. "Yes, and who knows? She may be a link in a chain which is leading straight down to some one who will be greater than Washington—greater than Shakespeare—greater than any man who ever lived…!" And her old dreams, her old visions beginning to return, she added with a sigh, "Oh, dear! I wish I could do something big and noble—so if all those millions who are back of me are watching, they'll feel proud of what I'm doing and nudge each other as if they were saying, 'You see? She's come at last. That's us!'"
As you will realize, this last thought of Mary's suggested more than it told—as I believe great thoughts often do—but at least I think you'll be able to grasp the idea which she herself was groping after. At the same time you mustn't suppose that she was constantly going around dreaming, and trying to find expression for those vague strivings and yearnings which come to us all at different times in our lives, especially in the golden days of youth when the flood of ambition is rising high within us—or again in later years when we feel the tide will soon begin to turn, and we must make haste or it will be too late.
No, Mary had plenty of practical matters, too, to engage her attention and keep her feet on the earth.
For one thing there was Wally Cabot—he who had so lately serenaded Mary in the moonlight. But I'll tell you about him later.
Then the settlement of her father's estate kept coming up for action. Judge Cutler and Mary's two aunts were the trustees—an arrangement which didn't please Uncle Stanley any too well, although he was careful not to show it. And the more Mary saw of the silvery haired judge with his hawk's eyes and gentle smile, the more she liked him.
One of the first things they discovered was that Mary's heritage consisted of the factory by the river—but little else. Practically all the bonds and investments that Josiah had ever owned had been sold for the greater glory of Spencer & Son—to buy in other firms and patents—to increase the factory by the river. As her father had once confided to Mary this had taken money—"a dreadful lot of money"—she remembered the wince with which he had spoken—and a safe deposit box which was nearly empty bore evidence to the truth of what he had said.
"High and low," mused the judge when the inventory was at last completed, "it's always the same. The millionaire and the mill-hand—somehow they always manage to leave less than every one expected—"
"Why is that?" asked Mary. "Is it because the heirs expect too much?"
"No, child. I think it's the result of pride. As a rule, man is a proud animal and he doesn't like to tell anything which doesn't redound to his credit. If a man buys bonds, for instance, he is very apt to mention it to his family. But if for any reason he has to sell those bonds, he will nearly always do it quietly and say nothing about it, hoping to buy them back again later, or something better yet—
"I've seen so many estates," he continued, "shrink into next to nothing—so many widows who thought they were well off, suddenly waking up and finding themselves at the mercy of the world—the little they have often being taken away from them by the first glib sharper who comes long—that I sometimes think every man should give his family a show-down once a year. It would surely save a lot of worries and heartaches later on—
"Still," he smiled, looking down at the inventory, with its noble line of figures at the bottom of the column, "I don't think you'll have much trouble in keeping the wolf from the door."
Mary turned the pages in a helpless sort of way.
"You'll have to explain some of this," she said at last. But before giving it back to him she looked out of the window for a time—one of her slow, thoughtful glances—and added, "I wonder why girls aren't brought up to know something about business—the way boys are."
"Perhaps it's because they have no head for business."
She thought that over.
"Can you speak French?" she suddenly asked.
"No."
"…I can. I can speak it, and read it, and write it, and think it…. Now don't you think that if a girl can do that—if she can learn thousands and thousands of new words, how to pronounce them, and spell them, and parse them, and inflect them—how to supply hundreds of rules of grammar—and if she can learn to do this so well that she can chat away in French without giving it a thought—don't you think she might be able to learn something about the language and rules of business, too, if they were only taught to her? Then perhaps there wouldn't be so many helpless widows in the world, as you said just now, at the mercy of the first glib sharper who comes along."
This time it was the judge's turn to think it over.
"You're an exceptional girl, Mary," he said at last.
"No, really I'm not," she earnestly told him. "Any girl can learn anything that a boy can learn—if she is only given a chance. Where boys and girls go to school together—at the grammar schools and high schools—the girls are just as quick as the boys, and their average marks are quite as high. It was true at college, too. The girls could learn anything that the men could learn—and do it just as well."
As one result of this, Judge Cutler began giving Mary lessons in business, using the inventory as a text and explaining each item in the settlement of the estate. He also taught her some of the simpler maxims, beginning with that grand old caution, "Never sign a paper for a stranger—"
It wasn't long after this that Uncle Stanley called at the house on the hill. He talked for a time about some of the improvements which were being made at the factory and then arose as if to go.
"Oh, I nearly forgot," he said, turning back and smiling at his oversight. "We need a new director to take your father's place. When I'm away Burdon looks after things, so I suppose he may as well take the responsibility. It's a thankless position, but some one has to fill it."
"Yes," murmured Mary, "I suppose they do."
"They do," said Uncle Stanley. "So I'll call a stockholders' meeting right away. Meanwhile if you will sign this proxy—"
But just as quietly Mary murmured, "I'd like to think it over."
They looked at each other then—those two—with that careful, yet careless-appearing glance which two duellists might employ when some common instinct warns them that sooner or later they will cross their swords.
Uncle Stanley was the first to lower his eye.
"The law requires three directors," he said in his more usual grumpy voice, "or I wouldn't have bothered you. I'll leave it and you can sign it and send it down this afternoon."
But Mary did neither. Instead she went to see Judge Cutler and when the stockholders' meeting was finally called, she attended it in person—holding practically all the stock—and Judge Cutler was elected to fill the vacancy.
Uncle Stanley just managed to control himself. It took an effort, but he did it.
"We've got to elect a president next," he said, trying to make a joke of it, but unable to keep the tremor of testiness out of his voice. "Of course I've been here all my life—if that counts for anything—and I am now serving in the more or less humble capacity of vice-president—but if the judge would like to throw up his law business and try the manufacturing end instead—"
"No," smiled the judge, lighting a bombshell—though Uncle Stanley little guessed it—"I think the position calls for some one younger than I am. Besides, my name is Cutler, whereas for eight generations this concern has been headed by a Spencer.
"You know, Mr. Woodward, lawyers are sticklers for precedent, and it seems to me that as long as there is a Spencer left in the family, that good old name should stand at the head.
"For the office of president I therefore cast my vote in favour of the last of the Spencers—Miss Mary—"
That was the bombshell, and oh, but didn't it rock Uncle Stanley back on his heels!
"Of course, if you want to make a joke of the company," he said at last, sticking out his lower lip till it made a little shelf, although it wasn't a very steady little shelf because it trembled as though from emotion. "'President, Mary Spencer'—you know as well as I do what people will think when they see that on the letterhead—"
"Unfortunately, yes," said the judge, flashing him one of his hawk's glances but still speaking in his gentle voice. "Still, we can easily get around that difficulty. We can have the letter-heads lithographed 'President, M. Spencer.' Then if our correspondents have imaginations, they will think that the M stands for Matthew or Mark or Michael or Malachi. One thing sure," he smiled at the new president, "they'll never think of Mary."
As in the case of the factory, Uncle Stanley had also been vice-president of the First National Bank. A few days after the proceedings above recorded, the stockholders of the bank met to choose a new president. There was only one vote and when it was counted, Stanley Woodward was found to be elected.
"I wonder what he'll be doing next," said Mary uneasily when she heard the news.
"My dear girl," gently protested the judge, "you mustn't be so suspicious. It will poison your whole life and lead you nowhere."
Mary thought that over.
"You know the old saying, don't you?" he continued. "'Suspicion is the seed of discord.'"
"Yes," nodded Mary, trying to smile, though she still looked troubled. "I know the old saying—but—the trouble is—I know Uncle Stanley, too, and that's what bothers me…"
At this point I had meant to tell you more of Wally Cabot—most perfect, most charming of lovers—but first I find that I must describe a passage which took place one morning between Mary and Uncle Stanley's son Burdon.
Perhaps you remember Burdon, the tall, dark young man who "smelled nice" and wore a white edging on the V of his waistcoat.
As far back as Mary could remember him, he had appealed to her imagination.
His Norfolk jackets, his gold cigarette case and match box, his air of distinction, his wealth of black hair which grew to a point on his forehead, even the walking stick which he sometimes carried; to Mary's mind these had always been properties in a human drama—a drama breathless with possibilities, written by Destiny and entitled Burdon Woodward.
It is hard to express some things, and this is one of them. But among your own acquaintances there are probably one or two figures which stand out above the others as though they had been selected by Fate to play strenuous parts—whether Columbine, clown or star. Something is always happening to them. Wherever they appear, they seem to hold the centre of the stage, and when they disappear a dullness falls and life seems flat for a time. You think of them more often than you realize, perhaps with a smile, perhaps with a frown, and generally you dismiss them from your mind with some such thought as this—"He'll get in trouble yet," or "I wouldn't be surprised if he makes a great man some day"—or "Something will happen to that girl yet, if she isn't careful!"
That, in short, was the sort of a character that Burdon Woodward had always been to Mary. For as long as she could remember him, she had associated him with romance and drama.
To her he had been Raffles, the amateur cracksman. He had also been Steerforth in David Copperfield—and time after time she had drowned him in the wreck. In stories of buccaneers he was the captain—sometimes Captain Morgan, sometimes Captain Kidd—or else he was Black Jack with Dora in his power and trembling in the balance whether to become a hero or a villain. As Mary grew older these associations not only lingered; they strengthened.
Not long before her father died she read in the paper of a young desperado, handsome and well-dressed, who held up a New York jeweller at the point of a gun and relieved him of five thousand dollars' worth of diamond rings. The story was made remarkable by a detail. An old woman was sitting at the corner, grinding a hand-organ, and as the robber ran past her, he dropped one of the rings into her cup.
"Oh, dad," Mary had said, looking up and speaking on impulse, "did I hear you say last night that Burdon Woodward was in New York?"
"No, dear. Boston."
"Mm," thought Mary. "He'd say he was going to Boston for a blind." And for many a week after that she slyly watched his fingers, to see if she could catch him red-handed so to speak, wearing one of those rings! Yet even while she glanced she had the grace to smile at her fancies.
"All the same," she told herself, "it sounded an awful lot like him."
The encounter which I am now going to tell you about took place one morning after Mary had been elected to the presidency of the company. She had just finished breakfast when Burdon telephoned.
"Your father had some private papers in his desk down here," he said. "I was wondering if you'd like to come down and look them over."
"Thank you," she said. "I will."
Josiah's private room in the factory office building had been an impressive one, high-ceiled and flanked with a fire-place which was, however, never lighted. Ancestral paintings and leather chairs had added their notes of distinction. The office of any executive will generally reflect not only his own personality, but the character of the enterprise of which he stands at the head. Looking in Josiah's room, I think you would have been impressed, either consciously or not, that Spencer & Son had dignity, wealth and a history behind it. And regarding then the dark colouring of the appointments, devoid of either beauty or warmth, and feeling yourself impressed by a certain chilliness of atmosphere, I can very well imagine you saying to yourself "Not very cheerful!"
But you wouldn't have thought this on the morning when Mary entered it in response to Burdon's suggestion.
A fire was glowing on the andirons. New rugs gave colour and life to the floor. The mantel had been swept clear of annual reports and technical books, and graced with a friendly clock and a still more friendly pair of vases filled with flowers. The monumental swivel chair had disappeared, and in its place was one of wicker, upholstered in cretonne. On the desk was another vase of flowers, a writing set of charming design and a triple photograph frame, containing pictures of Miss Cordelia, Miss Patty and old Josiah himself.
Mary was still marvelling when she caught sight of Burdon Woodward in the doorway.
"Who—who did this?" she asked.
He bowed low—as d'Artagnan might have bowed to the queen of France—but came up smiling.
"Your humble, obedient servant," said he. "Can I come in?"
It had been some time since Mary had seen him so closely, and as he approached she noticed the faultlessness of his dress, the lily of the valley in his buttonhole, and that slightly ironic but smiling manner which is generally attributed to men of the world, especially to those who have travelled far on adventurous and forbidden paths. In another age he might have worn lace cuffs and a sword, and have just returned from a gambling house where he had lost or won a fortune with equal nonchalance.
"He still smells nice," thought Mary to herself, "and I think he's handsomer than ever—if it wasn't for that dark look around his eyes—and even that becomes him." She motioned to a chair and seated herself at the desk.
"I thought you'd like to have a place down here to call your own," he said in his lazy voice. "I didn't make much of a hit with the governor, but then you know I seldom do—"
"Where did you get the pictures?"
"From the photographers'. Of course it required influence, but I am full of that—being connected, as you may know, with Spencer & Son. When I told him why I wanted them, he seemed to be as anxious as I was to find the old plates."
"And the fire and the rugs and everything—you don't know how I appreciate it all. I had no idea—"
"I like surprises, myself," he said. "I suppose that's why I like to surprise others. The keys of the desk are in the top drawer, and I have set aside the brightest boy in the office to answer your buzzer. If you want anybody or anything—to write a letter—to see the governor—or even to see your humble servant—all you have to do is to press this button."
A wave of gratitude swept over her.
"He's nice," she thought, as Burdon continued his agreeable drawl. "But Helen says he's wicked. I wonder if he is…. Imagine him thinking of the pictures: I'm sure that doesn't sound wicked, and… Oh, dear!….Yes, he did it again, then!… He—he's making eyes at me as much as he dares!…"
She turned and opened a drawer of the desk.
"I think I'll take the papers home and sort them there," she said.
"You're sure there's nothing more I can do?" he asked, rising.
"Nothing more; thank you."
"That window behind you is open at the top. You may feel a draft; I'll shut it."
In his voice she caught the note which a woman never misses, and her mind went back to her room at college where the girls used to gather in the evenings and hold classes which were strictly outside the regular course.
"It's simply pathetic," one of the girls had once remarked, "but nearly every man you meet makes love the same way. Talk about sausage for breakfast every morning in the year. It's worse than that!
"First you catch it in their eye and in their voice: 'Are you sure you're comfortable?' 'Are you sure you're warm enough?' 'Are you sure you don't feel a draft?' That's Chapter One.
"Then they try to touch you—absent-mindedly putting their arms along the back of your chair, or taking your elbow to keep you from falling when you have to cross a doorsill or a curb-stone or some dangerous place like that. That's always Chapter Two.
"And then they try to get you into a nice, secluded place, and kiss you. Honestly, the sameness of it is enough to drive a girl wild. Sometimes I say to myself, 'The next time a man looks at me that way and asks me if I feel a draft, I'm going to say, 'Oh, please let's dispense with Chapter Two and pass directly to the nice, secluded place. It will be such a change from the usual routine!'"
Mary laughed to herself at the recollection.
"If Vera's right," she thought, "he'll try to touch me next—perhaps the next time I come."
It happened sooner than that.
After she had tied up the papers and carried them to the car, and had made a tour of the new buildings—Archey Forbes blushing like a sunset the moment he saw her—she returned to her motor which was waiting outside the office building. Burdon must have been waiting for her. He suddenly appeared and opened the door of the car.
"Allow me," he said. When she stepped up, she felt the support of his hand beneath her elbow.
She slipped into her place at the wheel and looked ahead as dreamy-eyed as ever.
"Chapter Two…" she thought to herself as the car began to roll away, and taking a hasty mental review of Wally Cabot, and Burdon Woodward and Archey Forbes, she couldn't help adding, "If a girl's thoughts started to run that way, oh, wouldn't they keep her busy!"
It relieved her feelings to make the car roar up the incline that led from the river, but when she turned into the driveway at the house on the hill, she made a motion of comic despair.
Wally Cabot's car was parked by the side of the house. Inside she heard the phonograph playing a waltz.
Wally stayed for lunch, looking sheepish at first for having been caught dancing with Helen. But he soon recovered and became his charming self. Miss Cordelia and Miss Patty always made him particularly welcome, listening with approval to his chatter of Boston society, and feeling themselves refreshed as at some Hebian spring at hearing the broad a's and the brilliant names he uttered.
"If I were you, Helen," said Mary when lunch was over, "I think I'd go on teaching Wally that dance." Which may have shown that it rankled a little, even if she were unconscious that it did. "I have some papers that I want to look over and I don't feel very trippy this afternoon."
She went to Josiah's old study, but had hardly untied the papers when she heard the knock of penitence on the door.
"Come in!" she smiled.
The door opened and in came Master Wally, looking ready to weep.
"Wally! Don't!" she laughed. "You'll give yourself the blues!"
"Not when I hear you laugh like that. I know I'm forgiven." He drew a chair to the fire and sat down with an air of luxury. "I can almost imagine that we're an old married couple, sitting in here like this—can't you?"
"No; I can't. And you've got to be quiet and let me work, or I shall send you back to Helen."
"She asked me to dance with her—of course, you know that—or I never would have done it—"
"Oh, fie, for shame," said Mary absently, "blaming the woman. You know you liked to do it."
"Mary—!"
"Hush!"
He watched her for a time and, in truth, she was worth it. He looked at the colour of her cheeks, her dreamy eyes like pools of mystery, the crease in her chin (which he always wanted to kiss), the rise and fall of the pendant on her breast. He looked until he could look no longer and then he arose and leaned over the desk.
"Mary—!" he breathed, taking her hand.
"Now, please don't start that, Wally. We'll shake hands if you want to…There! How are you? Now go back to your chair and be good."
"'Be good!'" he savagely echoed.
"Why, you want to be good; don't you?" she asked in surprise.
"I want you to love me. Mary; tell me you love me just a little bit; won't you?"
"I like you a whole lot—but when it comes to love—the way you mean—"
"It's the only thing in life that's worth a hang," he eagerly interrupted her. "The trouble is: you won't try it. You won't allow yourself to let go. I was like that once—thought it was nothing. But after I met you—! Oh, girl, it's all roses and lilies—the only thing in the world, and don't you forget it! Come on in and give it a try!"
"It's not the only thing in the world," said Mary, shaking her head. "That's the reason I don't want to come in: When a man marries, he goes right on with his life as though nothing had happened. That shows it's not the only thing with him. But when a woman marries—well, she simply surrenders her future and her independence. It may be right that she should, too, for all I know—but I'm going to try the other way first. I'm going right on with my life, the same as a man does—and see what I get by it."
"How long are you going to try it, do you think?"
"Until I've found out whether loveisthe only thing in a woman's life. If I find that I can't do anything else—if I find that a girl can only be as bright as a man until she reaches the marrying age, and then she just naturally stands still while he just naturally goes forward—why, then, I'll put an advertisement in the paper 'Husband Wanted. Mary Spencer. Please apply.'"
"They'll apply over my dead body."
"You're a dear, good boy to say it. No, please, Wally, don't or I shall go upstairs. Now sit by the fire again—that's better—and smoke if you want to, and let me finish these papers."
They were for the greater part the odds and ends which accumulate in every desk. There were receipted bills, old insurance policies, letters that had once seemed worth prizing, catalogues of things that had never been bought, prospectuses, newspaper clippings, copies of old contracts. And yet they had an interest, too—an interest partly historical, partly personal.
This merry letter, for instance, which Mary read and smiled over—who was the "Jack" who had written it? "Dead, perhaps, like dad," thought Mary. Yes, dead perhaps, and all his fun and drollery suddenly fallen into silence and buried with him.
"Isn't life queer!" she thought. "Now why did he save this clipping?"
She read the clipping and enjoyed it. Wally, watching from his chair, saw the smile which passed over her face.
"She'll warm up some day," he confidently told himself, with that bluntness of thought which comes to us all at times. "See how she flared up because I danced with Helen. Maybe if I made her jealous…"
At the desk Mary picked up another paper—an old cable. She read it, re-read it, and quietly folded it again; but for all her calmness the colour slowly mounted to her cheeks, as the recollection of odd words and phrases arose to her mind.
"Wally," she said in her quietest voice, "I'm going to ask you a question, but first you must promise to answer me truly."
"Cross my heart and hope to die!"
"Are you ready?"
"Quite ready."
"Then did you ever hear of any one in our family named Paul?"
"Y-yes—"
"Who was he?"
It was some time before he told the story, but trust a girl to make a man speak when she wishes it! He softened the recital in every possible way, but trust a girl again to read between the lines when she wants to!
"And didn't he ever come back?" she asked.
"No; you see he couldn't very well. There was an accident out West—somebody killed—anyhow, he was blamed for it. Queer, isn't it?" he broke off, trying to relieve the subject. "The Kaiser can start a war and kill millions. That's glory. But if some poor devil loses his head—"
Mary wasn't through yet.
"You say he's dead!" she asked.
"Oh, yes, years ago. He must have been dead—oh, let me see—about fifteen or twenty years, I guess."
"Poor dad!" thought Mary that night. "What he must have gone through! I'll bet he didn't think that love was the only thing in life. And—that other one," she hesitated, "who was 'wild after the girls,' Wally says, and finally ran off with one—I'll bet he didn't think so, either—before he got through—to say nothing of the poor thing who went with him. But dead fifteen or twenty years—that's the queerest part."
She found the cable again. It was dated Rio Janeiro—
"Gods sake cable two hundred dollars wife children sick desperate next week too late."
It was signed "Paul" and—the point to which Mary's attention was constantly returning—it wasn't fifteen or twenty years ago that this appeal had been received by her father.
The date of the cable was scarcely three years old.