The Making of Mary Part 7

"Dear girl!" said Belle enthusiastically. "She must have the real artistic temperament to be so determined to excel in one or other of the arts."

"She's dramatic, anyway," said I, and I was confirmed in my opinion along in the spring, when the cornet, and aught else, appeared to have palled upon the versatile Mary. She wrote that she had serious thoughts of taking the veil.

"Bah!" said I; "what's she after now? She wants to scare us into something."

Belle wrote privately to the Lady Superior, telling her that if she considered Mary would be a desirable acquisition to their ranks she had no sort of objection to her joining them.

The good sister replied that Miss Gemmell had not a grain of the stuff of which nuns are made, that her leanings were all in a worldly direction.

"No hope in that quarter!" laughed I, but Belle chided me for making fun of Mary in her absence.

When "Miss Mamie Gemmell" joined us at Interlaken for the summer her convent manners lasted for about two weeks, and then gave place to those of a spoiled and pampered daughter of the house.

We in America are accustomed to disrespectfulness and waywardness in our own children, but to notice the same att.i.tude in a little n.o.body from nowhere we have taken in out of charity, makes a man or woman stand aghast.

"I don't believe she cares a straw for me personally," Belle would say sometimes, "but I must confess I like her better than the cringing, fawning variety. She's outspoken in her impertinent demands."

After a very hot week in July I joyfully took the train on Sat.u.r.day afternoon for the five miles' ride to Interlaken, and went to sleep that night with my ears full of the sound of waves and pine trees; my heart filled with the satisfaction of knowing that I had a whole round day ahead of me--a sunrise and a sunset at either end.

I omitted the sunrise part of the programme, but between ten and eleven I was ready for a walk down the pier to watch the bathers. American women are seldom plump enough to stand the undress uniform of a bathing costume. They run to extremes--become very stout indeed, or else very thin, but in girlhood the tendency is to over-slimness.

I was thinking what a contrast our summer girls would present to a group of Scotch la.s.ses, though, to be sure, I was never privileged to see any of the latter in bathing-dress, when a well-rounded apparition in sky blue l.u.s.ter and no bathing cap emerged from one of the disrobing houses. This damsel betook herself boldly to the pier, instead of splas.h.i.+ng around the edge of the sand as the others were doing, and, coming near the end, took a run and then a beautiful header into the deep blue water.

She had pa.s.sed me too quickly to be recognized, but as her face appeared above the surface I saw it belonged to no other than our adopted daughter, for as such, at the moment, was I pleased to own her. She shook the water out of her ears, gave her k.n.o.b of hair an extra twist, brushed back the ringlets that threatened her eyes, and looked as much at home as if there were eighteen feet of land, instead of eighteen feet of water below her.

There were several young men swimming about at the end of the wharf, and they declared with gusto that a springboard must be erected for "Miss Gemmell" at once. I declined to a.s.sist in breaking the Sabbath over any such pranks, but a couple of scantily clad, dripping youths arose from the deep and succeeded in loosening a heavy three-inch plank from the flooring of the wharf. This was projected well out over the water, and the fair Mary was induced to ascend and exhibit therefrom. I did not approve at all, but thought it my duty to remain as chaperon until Belle and another lady, whom I perceived walking leisurely out the pier, should arrive.

The young men sprang back into the water to be on the reception committee, and Mary teetered on the far end of the plank. There was heard a loud, suggestive _crack_, and she leaped into s.p.a.ce in a most graceful semicircle before touching the water; but that awful board, the instant her weight was removed, rose straight up in the air, nearly knocked me off the dock, and with a groan slid through the opening whence it had been raised, into the depths below.

Belle rushed to my rescue, while the other woman stood still and shrieked.

"n.o.body hurt!" called out from the water a nice-looking lad who was swimming beside Mary, and apparently daring her to further exploits.

"Who is the young man?" I asked my wife, being ready to change the subject from my own narrow escape.

"You mean the one with the Burne Jones head and the sleepy blue eyes that's round with Mary all the time? His name's Flaker, and he's a medical student from Chicago. That's all I know about him." But she was destined to hear more, as we sat on the hotel veranda that night, from two old ladies inside the open window and closed blind.

"Isn't it scandalous," said one, "the way Mrs. Gemmell tries to shove that girl forward on every occasion?"

"Yes," said the other. "The old friends.h.i.+p between her and Mrs. Martin is all broken up since she tried so hard to get Lincoln Todd entangled with her last summer, and now she's doing her best to catch young Flaker."

"I don't believe he has any idea who the girl is, or rather who she is not."

"No, indeed, and his people would be in a great state if they knew the sort of company he was keeping."

"Who are they?"

"Don't you know? His father is Dr. Flaker, who has that fine mansion on the Grand Boulevard, and his mother belongs to one of the best New York families. They're all as proud as Lucifer."

"I think it is time we went home, David. Listeners never hear any good of themselves," said Belle, loudly enough to arrest the attention of the two dames.

Walking over the dried-up moonlit gra.s.s to our cottage, I threatened to go back and give them a piece of my mind, but my wife said:

"Maybe I did need a slight reminder. I haven't paid much attention to Mary's goings-on this summer. I must talk to Mr. Flaker the first chance."

The opportunity came before the Evening was over, while I was in my pet hammock round the corner of the cottage, and Belle in a rocking-chair at the front.

"Good-evening, Mr. Flaker," I heard her say. "I don't think you've ever seen the inside of our cottage. Won't you step in for a moment, now that it is lighted up?"

The moment satisfied him, for he speedily returned to the veranda.

"I never saw such a beautiful swimmer as Miss Gemmell," said the mannish voice, and Belle replied impressively:

"I believe you are not aware, Mr. Flaker, that the young lady you call Miss Gemmell is not my own daughter."

"Your stepchild is she, or your husband's niece?"

"Neither. She is no relation at all--just a poor girl whom I have taken up to educate. She can barely read or write. I felt that I ought to tell you this because you have been paying her a good deal of attention."

"Indeed, Mrs. Gemmell, I admire Miss Gemmell very much; but I a.s.sure you I never regarded her as anything else than a pleasant summer acquaintance."

And Mary was dropped forthwith.

CHAPTER V.

THE winter of 1892-93 Mary spent at home with us. Her first expressed wish, when the family returned from Interlaken, was to be confirmed, and the Rev. Mr. Armstrong of the church we do not attend was duly notified.

"He says I must be christened first," said Mary. "Would you mind if he called me 'Mary Gemmell'? There aint any name that I've a right to, and I don't want to be called 'Mason,' because that's the name of the woman that abused me when I was little. I'd rather have yours."

She was such a pathetic-looking young person, standing there before Belle in her fresh and innocent loveliness, that my wife had not the heart to refuse her anything.

When I came home that same evening there was a _tableau vivant_ in front of the parlor fire. Dressed in white, Mary sat on a low stool at the feet of the Rev. Walter Armstrong, her hands clasped in her lap, gazing up into the clean-shaven clerical face, with that which pa.s.sed for her soul in her eyes. In spite of his stiff round collar and long black coat the rector is a young man, and I saw that he was impressed.

"You understand, do you, Mary," he said tenderly, "that when you are received into the Church you have G.o.d for your Father and Christ for your Elder Brother?"

"Yes, I understand, Mr. Armstrong," replied the girl earnestly. "And that's just what I always wanted--was to have _'folks.'_"

I retired in haste to the dining room, where Isabel was br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with a new scheme.

"I've always found the housekeeping a drag, and it becomes more so every year as my outlook broadens. I want to keep up to the times, but I never have any leisure for reading, and our four eldest being boys, there seemed to be no hope for years of having any one to relieve me."

"Mary's a G.o.dsend," said I.