The Making of Mary Part 5

If I had not known the s.e.x and the approximate age of Mary, I should have thought it was a small boy in a temper who stamped off the veranda.

The next Sat.u.r.day night the full moon was a.s.sisted in her duties by a large bonfire down on our beach. The Adamless Eden, having received its "week-end" male contingent, was stimulated to a corn-roasting. The green ears, stuck on the ends of long sticks, were held by girls and men over the fire till roasted, and then pa.s.sed on to a row of matrons, disguised in large ap.r.o.ns, who salted and b.u.t.tered them ready for eating. If you know anything that tastes sweeter than a freshly roasted and b.u.t.tered ear of Indian corn, your experience is broader than mine.

Using my eyes habitually in the way of business, I could not avoid noticing that Lincoln Todd was not collecting his share of driftwood for keeping up the fire, nor did I see Mary Mason's pretty face in the garland of beauties bending with eager interest over the poles bayoneted with cobs of corn. It may have been fear of spoiling her complexion that kept her at one side whispering with Link, but it served them both right that Dolly Martin should choose that very moment for her stage entrance.

She and her mother joined the group of b.u.t.terers, and I noticed that Mrs. Martin returned Belle's cordial greeting rather stiffly. Then Miss Dolly calmly walked over to the pair sitting apart, having evidently recognized the back of Lincoln's blazer. She pretended to stumble over one of his feet.

"Oh, excuse me!" said she; and when Link sprang up, Mary Mason had the pleasure of witnessing the warmest sort of a meeting between the engaged lovers. They sallied off in the moonlight, his arm around her waist.

No one but me noticed the young girl slipping down on the sand, and laying her head on the log on which she had been sitting, and even I pretended not to see that her handkerchief was in action.

"h.e.l.lo, Mary!" said I, "I'll match you skipping stones. Look at this!"

With that I sent a beautiful flat one skimming along with nearly a dozen hops in the brilliant track of the moon on the water. She did not pay any attention to me at first, and I kept skipping away, just as if I did not see her mopping her eyes. By-and-by a stroke worthy of myself sent a pebble spinning through the ripples, and Mary's ready laugh rang out beside me. Within twenty minutes of Dolly Martin's appearance on the scene, "Mamie" was the center of the corn-roasters, and the gayest of the gay. Belle told me she kept on that line of conduct during the whole week that Miss Martin and her mother stayed at the hotel.

"It seemed to me that Dolly took a special pleasure in parading her happiness before poor Mary, but Mary never showed the white feather."

"There's the making of a fine woman in her."

"That may be," said my wife. "But this last week she has been extremely wearing on me. Having no particular man on the string, she has followed me about like a spaniel, wanted to know what I'm reading, and has begun a book the minute I'm through with it."

"I've seen her carrying 'The Coming Race' about with her lately, but I notice that the bookmark always stays in the same place."

Mary became fond of solitary rambles back in the pine woods, intersected by plank walks that made promenading possible. People liked to wander through there in the evenings, when the camp-lights in the hollows lent a mysterious charm, and on up to the big Knight Templar's Building, erected on the highest point of the sandy bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. Every night that prominent structure blazed with electric lights, and sometimes a band played on the veranda; but the only visitors were cottagers and guests from the hotel, who went up there to walk about and enjoy the prospect.

Our city editor often surprises me with the depth and breadth of his local information. For example, I opened the _Echo_ one day to be made aware that "Miss Mamie Gemmell" had outstripped all the lady bicyclists in town by making the distance between Lake City and Interlaken in forty-seven minutes. It was also remarked that she was one of the most graceful lady riders on the road.

I wonder how many generations a man must be removed from Scotland before he becomes callous to the disposition of the family name. I own that I squirmed inwardly, but with outward composure asked Belle where Mary got the "bike."

"Watty's old one. He taught Mary to ride it, and then made her a present of it, for he's set his heart on a new wheel."

"Confoundedly generous of him!"

"I'm glad you look at it that way. It is so seldom that he does give up anything for anybody, I thought he ought to be encouraged, and I said he should have a new bicycle with pneumatic tires and all the latest improvements at Christmas, if you did not see fit to give it to him sooner."

In August I took my annual day's fis.h.i.+ng, which has come to be rather a joke in the house, because, in spite of my elaborate preparations the night before, and the unheard-of hour at which I rise in the morning, I have never been known to catch anything worth bringing home.

This time my companion was a journalist from Chicago, an ardent young fellow, who could not keep from "shop" even when off on his holidays, and who had started a small weekly paper in which were to be recorded the doings of a certain congress holding a summer session in our grove.

We rowed up the little lake on the edge of the lily-pads, fis.h.i.+ng both sides of it, but caught nothing except a sunfish or two. Then we lit our pipes and talked.

"What an extremely clever young lady that adopted daughter of yours is.

I heard only the other day that she is not your own."

"Indeed!"

"Yes, sir. No one would believe it to talk to her, but she's got a surprisingly bright mind for one so young. She can't be more than seventeen, but her descriptions are good enough for one of the best magazines, and she has evidently thought a lot on all the leading topics of the day. Why, she's up in Hypnotism, Evolution, Theosophy--everything!"

"Bless my soul! How did you find all that out?"

Thereupon he fished from his pocket a couple of his tiresome little publications.

"I asked her to write something for our paper, that's how I know. Want to see?"

I do not set up to be a literary critic, but I guess I know my own wife's style of composition when I encounter it. During the two years that we were engaged she lived in Detroit and I in Indiana, and I missed her letters so much after we were married that to this day she is in the habit of letting me read those she writes to other people. I was not going to give her away to that newspaper man, though, for the name "Mary Gemmell" stared me in the face from the end of each article; but I remonstrated with Belle when I reached home.

"How could I help it, Dave? There was the girl teasing me to write something for her because this fellow had asked her to do it. She said I could scribble down something just as easy as not, and then she could copy it for him. Copy it! She took hours to do it, and I considered she deserved all the praise she got for the articles."

"I wouldn't do it again, if I were you. It sets the girl sailing under false colors."

"Poor Mary! Her one little accomplishment has been of no use to her since that professional elocutionist came to the hotel, and I hated to see her cast altogether into the shade, especially while Dolly Martin was here."

Still there came another production from the pen of Miss Mary Gemmell.

"Really, Belle," said I, "this is carrying the joke too far."

"Don't you worry about it. Some of the old cats at the hotel began to suspect that Mary hadn't written those things, and accused me to my face of doing it myself, so I had to write an account of the picnic up the little lake, because they all know I wasn't there at all!"

"Let this be the last, then."

"It shall, I a.s.sure you, for I am much displeased with Mary. Since Mrs.

Martin and Dolly left, she's been going it just as hard as ever with Lincoln Todd. If you walk up to the Knight Templar's Building I'll warrant you'll find them there promenading this very minute."

"No, I won't, because I pa.s.sed them just a little while ago as I came through the woods, sitting on a secluded bench, his arm round her waist and her head on his shoulder."

"Didn't they see you?"

"I dare say, but I never let on I saw them. What's the use? I can't be expected to leave the _Echo_ to my subs, and come down here to play special policeman to Mary Mason. I should have thought Todd was more of a gentleman."

"So should I, but I've spoken to him, quarreled with him indeed, so that he doesn't come near the house, but I know that he and Mary meet just the same. Thank Heaven! he will be married soon."

"Have you told Mary that?"

"Yes; but she laughs and shrugs her shoulders; evidently thinks she knows more about Lincoln Todd's intentions than I do."

In the last week of August Mr. Todd went off for a few days "on business," and then there came a dreadful morning when the announcement of his marriage to Dolly Martin appeared in the _Echo_.

Mary would not believe her ears. She took the paper down to the beach, and spelled out the notice word by word. Then she lay down on the sand and bawled, kicking and squealing like a year-old infant when Belle appealed to her self-respect.

"I could have spanked her well," said my wife. The worst of it was that the whole hotel was "on to the racket," as Watty vulgarly expressed it, and rather chuckled over Belle's mortification, instead of sympathizing with her in the trying time she was having with her "adopted daughter."

Our grief, as a family, was not unbearable when the time came in September for Mary Mason to go back to the convent.

CHAPTER IV.