Mary Marie Part 12

And she chuckled again, and so did Susie. And then, all of a sudden, I knew. It was Father all those ladies wanted. It was Father Mrs.

Darling wanted. They came here to see him. They wanted to marry him.

_They_ were the prospective suitors. As if I didn't know what Susie and Bridget meant! I'm no child!

But all this doesn't make Father like _them_. I'm not sure but it makes him dislike them. Anyhow, he won't have anything to do with them. He always runs away over to the observatory, or somewhere, and won't see them; and I've heard him say things about them to Aunt Jane, too--words that sound all right, but that don't mean what they say, and everybody knows they don't. So, as I said before, I don't see any chance of Father's having a love story to help out this book--not right away, anyhow.

As for _my_ love story--I don't see any chance of that's beginning, either. Yet, seems as if there ought to be the beginning of it by this time--I'm going on fifteen. Oh, there have been _beginnings_, lots of them--only Aunt Jane wouldn't let them go on and be endings, though I told her good and plain that I thought it perfectly all right; and I reminded her about the brook and river meeting where I stood, and all that.

But I couldn't make her see it at all. She said, "Stuff and nonsense"--and when Aunt Jane says _both_ stuff and nonsense I know there's nothing _doing_. (Oh, dear, that's slang! Aunt Jane says she does wish I would eliminate the slang from my vocabulary. Well, I wish _she'd_ eliminate some of the long words from _hers_. Marie said that--not Mary.)

Well, Aunt Jane said stuff and nonsense, and that I was much too young to run around with silly boys. You see, Charlie Smith had walked home from school with me twice, but I had to stop that. And Fred Small was getting so he was over here a lot. Aunt Jane stopped _him_. Paul Mayhew--yes, _Paul Mayhew_, Stella's brother!--came home with me, too, and asked me to go with him auto-riding. My, how I did want to go! I wanted the ride, of course, but especially I wanted to go because he was Mrs. Mayhew's son. I just wanted to show Mrs. Mayhew! But Aunt Jane wouldn't let me. That's the time she talked specially about running around with silly boys. But she needn't have. Paul is no silly boy. He's old enough to get a license to drive his own car.

But it wasn't just because he was young that Aunt Jane refused. I found out afterward. It was because he was any kind of a man paying me attention. I found that out through Mr. Claude Livingstone. Mr.

Livingstone brings our groceries. He's a _real_ young gentleman--tall, black mustache, and lovely dark eyes. He goes to our church, and he asked me to go to the Sunday-School picnic with him. I was _so_ pleased. And I supposed, of course, Aunt Jane would let me go with _him. He's_ no silly boy! Besides, I knew him real well, and liked him. I used to talk to him quite a lot when he brought the groceries.

But did Aunt Jane let me go? She did not. Why, she seemed almost more shocked than she had been over Charlie Smith and Fred Small, and the others.

"Mercy, child!" she exclaimed. "Where in the world do you pick up these people?" And she brought out that "these people" _so_ disagreeably! Why, you'd think Mr. Livingstone was a foreign j.a.panese, or something.

I told her then quietly, and with dignity, and with no temper (showing), that Mr. Livingstone was not a foreign j.a.panese, but was a very nice gentleman; and that I had not picked him up. He came to her own door himself, almost every day.

"My own door!" exclaimed Aunt Jane. And she looked absolutely frightened. "You mean to tell me that that creature has been coming here to see you, and I not know it?"

I told her then--again quietly and with dignity, and without temper (showing)--that he had been coming, not to see me, but in the natural pursuance of his profession of delivering groceries. And I said that he was not a creature. On the contrary, he was, I was sure, an estimable young man. He went to her own church and Sunday-School.

Besides, I could vouch for him myself, as I knew him well, having seen and talked with him almost every day for a long while, when he came to the house.

But nothing I could say seemed to have the least effect upon her at all, only to make her angrier and angrier, if anything. In fact _I_ think she showed a great deal of temper for a Christian woman about a fellow Christian in her own church.

But she wouldn't let me go to the picnic; and not only that, but I think she changed grocers, for Mr. Livingstone hasn't been here for a long time, and when I asked Susie where he was she looked funny, and said we weren't getting our groceries where Mr. Livingstone worked any longer.

Well, of course, that ended that. And there hasn't been any other since. That's why I say _my_ love story doesn't seem to be getting along very well. Naturally, when it gets noised around town that your Aunt Jane won't let you go anywhere with a young man, or let a young man come to see you, or even walk home with you after the first time--why, the young men aren't going to do very much toward making your daily life into a love story.

_Two weeks later._

A queer thing happened last night. It was like this:

I think I said before what an awfully stupid time Mary is having of it, and how I couldn't play now, or make any noise, 'cause Father has taken to hanging around the house so much. Well, listen what happened.

Yesterday Aunt Jane went to spend the day with her best friend. She said for me not to leave the house, as some member of the family should be there. She told me to sew an hour, weed an hour, dust the house downstairs and upstairs, and read some improving book an hour.

The rest of the time I might amuse myself.

Amuse myself! A jolly time I could have all by myself! Even Father wasn't to be home for dinner, so I wouldn't have _that_ excitement. He was out of town, and was not to come home till six o'clock.

It was an awfully hot day. The sun just beat down, and there wasn't a breath of air. By noon I was simply crazy with my stuffy, long-sleeved, high-necked blue gingham dress and my great clumpy shoes. It seemed all of a sudden as if I couldn't stand it--not another minute--not a single minute more--to be Mary, I mean. And suddenly I determined that for a while, just a little while, I'd be Marie again. Why couldn't I? There wasn't anybody going to be there but just myself, _all day long_.

I ran then upstairs to the guest-room closet where Aunt Jane had made me put all my Marie dresses and things when the Mary ones came. Well, I got out the very fluffiest, softest white dress there was there, and the little white slippers and the silk stockings that I loved, and the blue silk sash, and the little gold locket and chain that Mother gave me that Aunt Jane wouldn't let me wear. And I dressed up. My, didn't I dress up? And I just _threw_ those old heavy shoes and black cotton stockings into the corner, and the blue gingham dress after them (though Mary went right away and picked the dress up, and hung it in the closet, of course); but I had the fun of throwing it, anyway.

Oh, how good those Marie things did feel to Mary's hot, tired flesh and bones, and how I did dance and sing around the room in those light little slippers! Then Susie rang the dinner-bell and I went down to the dining-room feeling like a really truly young lady, I can tell you.

Susie stared, of course and said, "My, how fine we are to-day!" But I didn't mind Susie.

After dinner I went out into the hall and I sang; I sang all over the house. And I ran upstairs and I ran down; and I jumped all the last three steps, even if it was so warm. Then I went into the parlor and played every lively thing that I could think of on the piano. And I sang there, too--silly little songs that Marie used to sing to Lester.

And I tried to think I was really down there to Boston, singing to Lester; and that Mother was right in the next room waiting for me.

Then I stopped and turned around on the piano-stool. And there was the coffin plate, and the wax cross, and the hair wreath; and the room was just as still as death. And I knew I wasn't in Boston. I was there in Andersonville, And there wasn't any Baby Lester there, nor any mother waiting for me in the next room. And all the fluffy white dresses and silk stockings in the world wouldn't make me Marie. I was really just Mary, and I had got to have three whole months more of it.

And then is when I began to cry. And I cried just as hard as I'd been singing a minute before. I was on the floor with my head in my arms on the piano-stool when Father's voice came to me from the doorway.

"Mary, Mary, what in the world does this mean?"

I jumped up and stood "at attention," the way you have to, of course, when fathers speak to you. I couldn't help showing I had been crying--he had seen it. But I tried very hard to stop now. My first thought, after my startled realization that he was there, was to wonder how long he had been there--how much of all that awful singing and banging he had heard.

"Yes, sir." I tried not to have my voice shake as I said it; but I couldn't quite help that.

"What is the meaning of this, Mary? Why are you crying?"

I shook my head. I didn't want to tell him, of course; so I just stammered out something about being sorry I had disturbed him. Then I edged toward the door to show him that if he would step one side I would go away at once and not bother him any longer.

But he didn't step one side. He asked more questions, one right after another.

"Are you sick, Mary?"

I shook my head.

"Did you hurt yourself?"

I shook my head again.

"It isn't--your mother--you haven't had bad news from her?"

And then I blurted it out without thinking--without thinking at all what I was saying: "No, no--but I wish I had, I wish I had; 'cause then I could go to her, and go away from here!" The minute I'd said it I _knew_ what I'd said, and how awful it sounded; and I clapped my fingers to my lips. But 'twas too late. It's always too late, when you've once said it. So I just waited for him to thunder out his anger; for, of course, I thought he _would_ thunder in rage and righteous indignation.

But he didn't. Instead, very quietly and gently he said:

"Are you so unhappy, then, Mary--here?"

And I looked at him, and his eyes and his mouth and his whole face weren't angry at all. They were just sorry, actually sorry. And somehow, before I knew it, I was crying again, and Father, with his arm around me--_with his arm around me!_ think of that!--was leading me to the sofa.

And I cried and cried there, with my head on the arm of the sofa, till I'd made a big tear spot on the linen cover; and I wondered if it would dry up before Aunt Jane saw it, or if it would change color or leak through to the red plush underneath, or some other dreadful thing. And then, some way, I found myself telling it all over to Father--about Mary and Marie, I mean, just as if he was Mother, or some one I loved--I mean, some one I loved and _wasn't afraid of_; for of course I love Father. Of course I do!

Well, I told him everything (when I got started there was no stopping)--all about how hard it was to be Mary, and how to-day I had tried to be Marie for just a little while, to rest me. He interrupted here, and wanted to know if that was why I looked so different to-day--more as I had when I first came; and I said yes, that these were Marie things that Mary couldn't wear. And when he asked, "Why, pray?" in a voice almost cross, I told him, of course, that Aunt Jane wouldn't let me; that Mary had to wear brown serge and calfskin boots that were durable, and that would wear well.

And when I told him how sorry I was about the music and such a noise as I'd been making, he asked if _that_ was Marie's fault, too; and I said yes, of course--that Aunt Jane didn't like to have Mary play at all, except hymns and funeral marches, and Mary didn't know any. And he grunted a queer little grunt, and said, "Well, well, upon my soul, upon my soul!" Then he said, "Go on." And I did go on.

I told him how I was afraid it _was_ going to be just like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (I forgot to say I've read it now. I found it in Father's library.) Of course not _just_ like it, only one of me was going to be bad, and one good, I was afraid, if I didn't look out. I told him how Marie always wanted to kick up rugs, and move the chairs out of their sockets in the carpet, and leave books around handy, and such things. And so to-day it seemed as if I'd just got to have a vacation from Mary's hot gingham dresses and clumpy shoes. And I told him how lonesome I was without anybody, not _anybody_; and I told about Charlie Smith and Paul Mayhew and Mr. Claude Livingstone, and how Aunt Jane wouldn't let me have them, either, even if I was standing where the brook and river meet.

Father gave another funny little grunt here, and got up suddenly and walked over to the window. I thought at first he was angry; but he wasn't. He was even more gentle when he came back and sat down again, and he seemed interested, very much interested in everything I told him. But I stopped just in time from saying again how I wished I could go back to Boston; but I'm not sure but he knew I was going to say it.