Mary Marie Part 7

Father's come. He came yesterday. But I didn't know it, and I came running downstairs, ending with a little bounce for the last step. And there, right in front of me in the hall was--_Father_.

I guess he was as much surprised as I was. Anyhow, he acted so. He just stood stock-still and stared, his face turning all kinds of colors.

"You?" he gasped, just above his breath. Then suddenly he seemed to remember. "Why, yes, yes, to be sure. You are here, aren't you? How do you do, Mary?"

He came up then and held out his hand, and I thought that was all he was going to do. But after a funny little hesitation he stooped and kissed my forehead. Then he turned and went into the library with very quick steps, and I didn't see him again till at the supper-table.

At the supper-table he said again, "How do you do, Mary?" Then he seemed to forget all about me. At least he didn't say anything more to me; but three or four times, when I glanced up, I found him looking at me. But just as soon as I looked back at him he turned his eyes away and cleared his throat, and began to eat or to talk to Aunt Jane.

After dinner--I mean supper--he went out to the observatory, just as he always used to. Aunt Jane said her head ached and she was going to bed. I said I guessed I would step over to Carrie Heywood's; but Aunt Jane said, certainly not; that I was much too young to be running around nights in the dark. Nights! And it was only seven o'clock, and not dark at all! But of course I couldn't go.

Aunt Jane went upstairs, and I was left alone. I didn't feel a bit like reading; besides, there wasn't a book or a magazine anywhere _asking_ you to read. They just shrieked, "Touch me not!" behind the gla.s.s doors in the library. I hate sewing. I mean _Marie_ hates it.

Aunt Jane says Mary's got to learn.

For a time I just walked around the different rooms downstairs, looking at the chairs and tables and rugs all _just so_, as if they 'd been measured with a yardstick. Marie jerked up a shade and pushed a chair crooked and kicked a rug up at one corner; but Mary put them all back properly--so there wasn't any fun in that for long.

After a while I opened the parlor door and peeked in. They used to keep it open when Mother was here; but Aunt Jane doesn't use it. I knew where the electric push b.u.t.ton was, though, and I turned on the light.

It used to be an awful room, and it's worse now, on account of its shut-up look. Before I got the light on, the chairs and sofas loomed up like ghosts in their linen covers. And when the light did come on, I saw that all the old s.h.i.+ver places were there. Not one was missing.

Great-Grandfather Anderson's coffin plate on black velvet, the wax cross and flowers that had been used at three Anderson funerals, the hair wreath made of all the hair of seventeen dead Andersons and five live ones--no, no, I don't mean _all_ the hair, but hair from all seventeen and five. Nurse Sarah used to tell me about it.

Well, as I said, all the s.h.i.+ver places were there, and I s.h.i.+vered again as I looked at them; then I crossed over to Mother's old piano, opened it, and touched the keys. I love to play. There wasn't any music there, but I don't need music for lots of my pieces. I know them by heart--only they're all gay and lively, and twinkly-toe dancy.

_Marie_ music. I don't know a one that would be proper for _Mary_ to play.

But I was just tingling to play _something_, and I remembered that Father was in the observatory, and Aunt Jane upstairs in the other part of the house where she couldn't possibly hear. So I began to play. I played the very slowest piece I had, and I played softly at first; but I know I forgot, and I know I hadn't played two pieces before I was having the best time ever, and making all the noise I wanted to.

Then all of a sudden I had a funny feeling as if somebody somewhere was watching me; but I just couldn't turn around. I stopped playing, though, at the end of that piece, and then I looked; but there wasn't anybody in sight. But the wax cross was there, and the coffin plate, and that awful hair wreath; and suddenly I felt as if that room was just full of folks with great staring eyes. I fairly shook with s.h.i.+vers then, but I managed to shut the piano and get over to the door where the light was. Then, a minute later, out in the big silent hall, I crept on tiptoe toward the stairs. I knew then, all of a sudden, why I'd felt somebody was listening. There was. Across the hall in the library in the big chair before the fire sat--_Father_! And for 'most a whole half-hour I had been banging away at that piano on marches and dance music! My! But I held my breath and stopped short, I can tell you. But he didn't move nor turn, and a minute later I was safely by the door and halfway up the stairs.

I stayed in my room the rest of that evening; and for the second time since I've been here I cried myself to sleep.

_Another week later_,

Well, I've got them--those brown and blue serge dresses and the calfskin boots. My, but I hope they're stiff and homely enough--all of them! And hot, too. Aunt Jane did say to-day that she didn't know but what she'd made a mistake not to get gingham dresses. But, then, she'd have to get the gingham later, anyway, she said; then I'd have both.

Well, they can't be worse than the serge. That's sure. I hate the serge. They're awfully homely. Still, I don't know but it's just as well. Certainly it's lots easier to be Mary in a brown serge and clumpy boots than it is in the soft, fluffy things Marie used to wear.

You couldn't be Marie in _these_ things. Honestly, I'm feeling real Maryish these days.

I wonder if that's why the girls seem so queer at school. They _are_ queer. Three times lately I've come up to a crowd of girls and heard them stop talking right off short. They colored up, too; and pretty quick they began to slip away, one by one, till there wasn't anybody left but just me, just as they used to do in Boston. But of course it can't be for the same reason here, for they've known all along about the divorce and haven't minded it at all.

I heard this morning that Stella Mayhew had a party last night. But _I_ didn't get invited. Of course, you can't always ask everybody to your parties, but this was a real big party, and I haven't found a girl in school, yet, that wasn't invited--but me. But I guess it wasn't anything, after all. Stella is a new girl that has come here to live since I went away. Her folks are rich, and she's very popular, and of course she has loads of friends she had to invite; and she doesn't know me very well. Probably that was it. And maybe I just imagine it about the other girls, too. Perhaps it's the brown serge dress. Still, it can't be that, for this is the first day I've worn it. But, as I said, I feel Maryish already.

I haven't dared to touch the piano since that night a week ago, only once when Aunt Jane was at a missionary meeting, and I knew Father was over to the college. But didn't I have a good time then? I just guess I did!

Aunt Jane doesn't care for music. Besides, it's noisy, she says, and would be likely to disturb Father. So I'm not to keep on with my music lessons here. She's going to teach me to sew instead. She says sewing is much more sensible and useful.

Sensible and useful! I wonder how many times I've heard those words since I've been here. And durable, too. And nouris.h.i.+ng. That's another word. Honestly, Marie is getting awfully tired of Mary's sensible sewing and dusting, and her durable clumpy shoes and stuffy dresses, and her nouris.h.i.+ng oatmeal and whole-wheat bread. But there, what can you do? I'm trying to remember that it's _different_, anyway, and that I said I liked something different.

I don't see much of Father. Still, there's something kind of queer about it, after all. He only speaks to me about twice a day--just "Good-morning, Mary," and "Good-night." And so far as most of his actions are concerned you wouldn't think by them that he knew I was in the house, Yet, over and over again at the table, and at times when I didn't even know he was 'round, I've found him watching me, and with such a queer, funny look in his eyes. Then, very quickly always, he looks right away.

But last night he didn't. And that's especially what I wanted to write about to-day. And this is the way it happened.

It was after supper, and I had gone into the library. Father had gone out to the observatory as usual, and Aunt Jane had gone upstairs to her room as usual, and as usual I was wandering 'round looking for something to do. I wanted to play on the piano, but I didn't dare to--not with all those dead-hair and wax-flower folks in the parlor watching me, and the chance of Father's coming in as he did before.

I was standing in the window staring out at nothing--it wasn't quite dark yet--when again I had that queer feeling that somebody was looking at me. I turned--and there was Father. He had come in and was sitting in the big chair by the table. But this time he didn't look right away as usual and give me a chance to slip quietly out of the room, as I always had before. Instead he said:

"What are you doing there, Mary?"

"N-nothing." I know I stammered. It always scares me to talk to Father.

"Nonsense!" Father frowned and hitched in his chair. Father always. .h.i.tches in his chair when he's irritated and nervous. "You can't be doing nothing. n.o.body but a dead man does nothing--and we aren't so sure about him. What are you doing, Mary?"

"Just l-looking out the window."

"Thank you. That's better. Come here. I want to talk to you."

"Yes, Father."

I went, of course, at once, and sat down in the chair near him. He hitched again in his seat.

"Why don't you do something--read, sew, knit?" he demanded. "Why do I always find you moping around, doing nothing?"

Just like that he said it; and when he had just told me--

"Why, Father!" I cried; and I know that I showed how surprised I was.

"I thought you just said I couldn't do nothing--that n.o.body could!"

"Eh? What? Tut, tut!" He seemed very angry at first; then suddenly he looked sharply into my face. Next, if you'll believe it, he laughed--the queer little chuckle under his breath that I've heard him give two or three times when there was something he thought was funny.

"Humph!" he grunted. Then he gave me another sharp look out of his eyes, and said: "I don't think you meant that to be quite so impertinent as it sounded, Mary, so we'll let it pa.s.s--this time. I'll put my question this way: Don't you ever knit or read or sew?"

"I do sew every day in Aunt Jane's room, ten minutes hemming, ten minutes seaming, and ten minutes basting patchwork squares together. I don't know how to knit."

"How about reading? Don't you care for reading?"

"Why, of course I do. I love it!" I cried. "And I do read lots--at home."

"At--_home_?"

I knew then, of course, that I'd made another awful break. There wasn't any smile around Father's eyes now, and his lips came together hard and thin over that last word.

"At--at _my_ home," I stammered. "I mean, my _other_ home."

"Humph!" grunted Father. Then, after a minute: "But why, pray, can't you read here? I'm sure there are--books enough." He flourished his hands toward the bookcases all around the room.

"Oh, I do--a little; but, you see, I'm so afraid I'll leave some of them out when I'm through," I explained,

"Well, what of it? What if you do?" he demanded.