Chapter 5

Our celebrations had always been after Christmas, and Christmas after Christmas is like cold buckwheat cakes and no syrup. Like an orange with the juice all gone.

As for the tree, it was a spanker. We were dazed dumb for a minute when the parlor doors leading into the sewing-room were opened. But never being able to stay dumb long, I commenced to clap. Then everybody clapped. Clapped so hard half the candles went out.

There wasn't a soul on the place that didn't get a present. This tree was Miss Katherine's, not the Board's, and the presents bought with the brother's money were things we could keep. Not things to put away and pass on to somebody else next year. I almost had a fit when I found I had roller-skates and a set of books too. Think of it! Roller-skates and books! The rich brother sent those himself, and I'm still wondering why.

This was Miss Katherine's second Christmas with us, but the first she had managed herself. Last Christmas she had been at the Asylum such a short time she kept quiet, and just saw how things were done. And not done. But this year she asked if she could provide the entertainment, and the difference in these last two Christmases was like the difference in the way things are done from love and duty.

And oh! love is so much the best!

I do believe I was the happiest child in all the world that day, and I didn't come out of that cloud of glory until night. Mrs. Christopher Pryor took me out.

She had come over with some of the Board ladies to see the tree and things, and as she was going home I heard her say:

"I don't approve of all this. Not at all. Not at all. These children have had a more elaborate Christmas than mine. They've had as good a dinner, a handsomer tree, and as many presents as some well-off people. It's all nonsense, putting notions in their heads when they're as poor as poverty itself and have their living to make. I don't approve of it. Not at all."

She bristled so stiff and shook her head so vigorous that the little jet ornaments on her bonnet just tinkled like bells, and one fell off.

Mrs. Christopher Pryor is one of the people who would like to tell the Lord how to run this earth. She could run it. That He lets the rain fall and sun shine on everybody alike is a thing she don't approve of either. As for poor people, she thinks they ought to be thankful for breath, and not expect more than enough to keep it from going out for good.

She's very decided in her views, and never keeps them to herself. It's the one thing she gives away. Everything else she holds on to with such a grip that it keeps her upper lip so pressed down on her under lip that she breathes through her nose most of the time.

She's a very curious shape. Being stout, she has to hold her head up to keep her chin off her fatness; and she goes in so at the waist, coming out top and bottom, that you would think something in her would get jammed out of place. You really would.

There are seven daughters. No sons. The boys call their place Hen-House. There is a husband, but nobody seems to notice him; and when with his wife, he always walks behind.

Miss Webb says she's sorry for a man whose wife is too active in the church. Mrs. Pryor is. She leads all the responses; and as for the chants, she takes them right out of the choir's mouth and soars off with them.

I never could bear her; and when I heard her say those words to Mrs. Marsden, I came right down to earth and was Martha Cary in a minute. I'd been Mary all day, and, like a splash in a mud-puddle, she made me Martha; and I heard myself say:

"No, Mrs. Pryor, we know you don't approve. You never yet have let a child here forget she was a Charity child, and only people who make others happy will approve."

Then I walked away as quiet as a Nun's daughter. But I was burning hot all the same, and so surprised at the way Martha spoke, so serious and unlike the way she usually speaks when mad, that I had to go on the back porch and make snowballs and throw hard at something before I was all right again.

But I wouldn't let it ruin my beautiful day. I wouldn't.

That night, when I went to bed, I was so tired out with happiness I couldn't half say my prayers. But I knew God understood. He let the Christ-child be born poor and lowly, so He could understand about Charity children, and everybody else who goes wrong because they don't know how to go right. So I just thanked Him, and thanked Him in my heart.

And when Miss Katherine kissed me good-night and tucked me in bed, she said I'd made her have a beautiful Christmas. That I'd helped everybody and kept things from dragging, because I had enjoyed it so myself, and been so enthusiastic, and she was so glad I was born that way.

I thought she was making fun, it was so ridiculous, thanking me, little Mary Cary, who hadn't done a thing but be glad and seen that nobody was forgot.

But she wasn't making fun, and I went off to sleep and dreamed I was in a place called the Love-Land, where everybody did everything just for love. Which shows it was a dreamland, for on earth there're Brays and Pryors, and people too busy to be kind. And in that Love-Land everything was done the other way, just backward from our way, and yourself came second instead of first.

X

THE REAGAN BALL

It is snowing fast and furious to-day. It's grand to watch it. I love miracles, and it's a miracle to see an ugly place turn into a palace of marble and silver with diamond decorations. That's what the Asylum is to-day. I certainly would like to have seen the Reagan ball. Miss Webb says it was the best show ever given in Yorkburg, and she enjoyed it, being particular fond of freaks.

Miss Katherine didn't want to go, but Miss Webb made her. For weeks that Reagan ball had been talked about, and Yorkburg knew things about it that had never been known about parties before, money not often being mentioned here.

Everybody knew what this ball was going to cost. Knew the supper was coming from New York, with white waiters and kid gloves. And what Mrs. Reagan and her daughters were going to wear. That their dresses had been made in Europe, and that Mrs. Hamner hadn't been invited, and that more money was coming to Yorkburg in the shape of one man than had ever been in it altogether before.

If I just could have put myself invisible on a picture-frame and looked down on that fleeting show I would have done it. But not being able to work that miracle, I just heard what was going round, and it was very interesting, the things I heard.

Miss Webb and Miss Katherine and I think just alike about Mrs. Reagan. I know, for I heard them talking one night just before the ball.

"But why in the name of Heaven should I go if I don't want to?" said Miss Katherine, and she put her feet on the fender and lay back in her big rose-covered chair. "I don't like her, or her family, the English she speaks, or the books she reads. Why, then, should I go to her parties? I'm not going!"

"Oh yes, you are." And Miss Webb put some more coal on the fire and made it blaze. "Knowledge of life requires a knowledge of humanity In all its subdivisions. Mrs. Reagan is a new sub. As a curio, she's worth the price. You couldn't keep me from her show."

"But she's such a snob. When a woman does not know her grandfather's first name on her mother's side and talks of people not being in her set, Christian charity does not require you to visit her. I agree with Mrs. Rodman. People like that ought to be let alone."

"But Mrs. Rodman isn't going to let them alone. Not for a minute. The only thing that goes on among them that she doesn't know is what she can't find out. She met me this morning, and asked me if I'd heard how many people had gotten here, and when I said no, she made me come in Miss Patty's store, and told me all she'd been able to discover.

"'There are eighteen guests already,' she said, 'and nearly all have rooms to themselves. They tell me it's the fashion now for husbands and wives not to see each other until breakfast, and not then if the wife wants hers in bed.' And the way she lifted her chin and eyebrows would be dangerous for you to try.

"'I tell you it's a reflection on Yorkburg's mode of life,' she went on. 'For two hundred years people have come and gone in this town, and rooms have never been mentioned. But this is a degenerate age. Degenerate! Scandalous wealth shouldn't be recognized, and I don't intend to countenance it myself!'

"But she will." And Miss Webb took up her muff to go. "She bought a pair of cream-colored kid gloves from Miss Patty, and she's going to wear them at that ball. You couldn't keep her away."

And she was there. The first one, they say. She had on the dress her Grandmother wore when her great-grandfather was minister to something in Europe; and when she sailed around the rooms with the big, high comb in her hair that was her great-great-grandmother's, Miss Webb says she was the best side-show on the grounds.

But if you were to take a gimlet and bore a hole in Mrs. Rodman's head, you couldn't make her believe anybody would smile at Her.

She was Mrs. General Rodman, born Mason, and the best blood in Virginia was in her veins. Also in her father's, as she put on his tombstone.

Outside of Virginia she didn't think anybody was really anything. Of course, she knew there were other states where things were done that made money, but she'd just wave her hand if you mentioned them.

As for a Yankee! I wouldn't like to put in words what she does think of a Yankee.

She lost a husband and two brothers and a father and four nephews and an uncle in the war; and all her money; and her house had to be sold; and her baby died before its father saw it; and, of course, that makes a difference. It makes a Yankee real personal.

But Miss Katherine don't feel that way about Yankees. Each of her brothers married one, and she don't seem to mind.

Miss Katherine went to the ball, too. She gave in, after all, and went.

I wish you could have seen her when she was dressed and all ready to go. She had on a long, white satin dress, low neck and short sleeves, with little trimming and no jewelry. And she looked so tall and beautiful, and so something I didn't have a name for, that I was afraid, and my heart beat so thick and fast I thought she'd hear.

I hated it. Hated that satin dress, and the places where she wore it when away from the Asylum; and I sat up in bed, for lying down it was hard to breathe.

Presently she turned from the fire where she had been standing, looking in, and came toward me and kissed me good-night.

In her face was something I had never seen before--something so quiet and proud that I couldn't sleep for a long time after she went away.

It wasn't just the same as the remembrance look I had seen several times before, when she forgot she wasn't by herself. It was prouder than that, and it meant something that didn't get better--just worse.

What was it? If it's a man, who is he? He must be living, for it isn't the look that means something is dead. It means something that won't die, but is never, never going to be told.

XI

FINDING OUT

This world is a hard place to live in. I wish somebody would tell me what we are born for anyway, and what's the use of living.

There are so many things that hurt, and you get so mixed up trying to understand, that if you don't keep busy you'll spend your life guessing at a puzzle that hasn't any answer.

Miss Katherine has gone away. Gone to stay two months, anyhow. Maybe three.

Her Army brother, the one who is a Captain, has been sent to Texas, and his wife and children were taken ill as soon as they got there.

Of course, they sent for Miss Katherine; that is, asked her by telegraph if she wouldn't come. She went. And she'll be going to somebody all her life, for she's the kind that is turned to when things go wrong.

Miss Webb is awful worried. She says a cool head and a warm heart are always worked to death, and the person who has them is forever on call.

Miss Katherine has them.

She had to go, of course. We were not sick, except a few snifflers. We didn't exactly need her, and her brother did; but oh the difference her being away makes!

Three months of doing without her is like three months of daylight and no sunlight. It's like things to eat that haven't any taste; like a room in which the one you wait for never comes.

I am back in No. 4, in one of the thirteen beds. My body goes on doing the same things. Gets up at five o'clock. Dresses, cleans, prays, eats, goes to school, eats, sews, plays, eats, studies, goes to bed. And that's got to be done every day in the same way it was done the day before.

But it's just my body that does them. Outside I am a little machine wound up; inside I am a thousand miles away, and doing a thousand other things. Some day I am going to blow up and break my inside workings, for I wasn't meant to run regular and on time. I wasn't.

What was I meant for? I don't know. But not to be tied to a rope. And that's what I am. Tied to a rope. If I were a boy I'd cut it.

* * * * *

I am almost crazy! A wonderful thing has happened. I am so excited my breathing is as bad as old Miss Betsy Hays's. I believe I know who I am.

My heart is jumping and thumping and carrying on so that it makes my teeth chatter; and as I can't tell anybody what I've heard, I am likely to die from keeping it to myself.

I am _not_ going to die until I find out. If I did I would be as bad off in heaven as on earth. Even an angel would prefer to know something about itself.

I'm like Miss Bray now. I'm counting on going to heaven. Otherwise it wouldn't make any difference who I was, as one more misery don't matter when you're swamped in miserableness. I suppose that's what hell is: Miserableness.

What are you when you don't go to heaven?

But that's got nothing to do with how I found out who I am. It's like Martha, though: always butting in with questions no Mary on earth could answer.

Well, the way I found out was one of those mysterious ways in which God works his wonders. Yesterday afternoon I asked Miss Bray if I could go over and play with the Moon children, three of whom are sick, and she said I might. We were in the nursery, which is next to Mrs. Moon's bedroom, and she and the lady from Michigan, who is visiting her, were talking and paying no attention to us. Presently something the lady said--her name is Mrs. Grey--made everything in me stop working, and my heart gave a little click like a clock when the pendulum don't swing right.

She was sitting with her back to the door, which was open, and I could see her, but she couldn't see me. All of a sudden she put down her sewing and looked at Mrs. Moon as if something had just come to her.

"Elizabeth Moon, I believe I know that child's uncle," she said. "Ever since you told me about her something has been bothering me. Didn't you say her mother had a brother who years ago went West?"

"Hush," said Mrs. Moon, and she nodded toward me. "She'll hear you, and the ladies wouldn't like it."

She lowered her voice so I couldn't hear all she said, but I heard something about its being the only thing Yorkburg ever did keep quiet about. And only then because everybody felt so sorry for her. In a flash I knew they were talking about me.

After the first understanding, which made everything in me stop, everything got moving, and all my inward workings worked double quick. Why my heart didn't get right out on the floor and look up at me. I don't know. I kept on talking and making up wild things just to keep the children quiet, but I had to hold myself down to the floor. To help, I put Billy and Kitty Lee both in my lap.

What I wanted to do was to go to Mrs. Moon and say: "I am twelve and a half, and I've got the right to know. I want to hear about my uncle. I don't want to know him, he not caring to know me." But before I could really think Mrs. Grey spoke again.

"He has no idea his sister left a child. He told me she married very young, and died a year afterward; and he had heard nothing from her husband since. As soon as I go home I am going to tell him. I certainly am."

"You had better not," said Mrs. Moon. "It's been thirteen years since he left Yorkburg, and, as he has never been back, he evidently doesn't care to know anything about it. I don't think the ladies would like you to tell. They are very proud of having kept so quiet out of respect to her father's wishes. If Parke Alden had wanted to learn anything, he could have done it years ago."

"But I tell you he doesn't know there's anything to learn." And the Michigan lady's voice was as snappy as the place she came from. "I know Dr. Alden well," she went on. "He's operated on me twice, and I've spent weeks in his hospital. When he tells me it's best for my head to come off--off my head is to come. And when a man can make people feel that way about him, he isn't the kind that's not square on four sides.

"I tell you, he doesn't know about this child. He's often talked to me about Yorkburg, knowing you were my cousin. He told me of his sister running away with an actor and marrying him, and dying a year later. Also of his father's death and the sale of the old home, and of many other things. There's no place on earth he loves as he does Virginia. He doesn't come back because there's no one to come to see specially. No real close kin, I mean. The changes in the place where you were born make a man lonelier than a strange city does, and something seems to keep him away."

"You say he doesn't know his sister left a child?" Mrs. Moon put down the needle she was trying to thread, and stuck it in her work. "Why doesn't he know?"

"Why should he? Who was there to tell him, if a bunch of women made up their minds he shouldn't know? He wrote to his sister again and again, but whether his letters ever reached her he never knew. He thinks not, as it was unlike her not to write if they were received.

"Travelling from place to place with her actor husband, who, he said, was a 'younger son Englishman,' the letters probably miscarried, and not for months after her death did he know she was dead."

"We didn't, either," interrupted Mrs. Moon. "In fact, we heard it through Parke, who went West after his father's death. He wrote Roy Wright, telling him about it."

"Who is Roy Wright, and where is he, that he didn't tell Dr. Alden about the child?"

"Oh, Roy's dead. I believe Mary Alden's marriage broke Roy's heart; that is, if a man's heart can be broken. He had been in love with her all her life. Not just loved her, but in love with her. His house was next to the Aldens', where the Reagans now live, and Major Alden and General Wright were old friends, each anxious for the match. When Mary ran away at seventeen and married a man her father didn't know, I tell you Yorkburg was scared to death."

"Do you remember it?"

"Remember! I should think I did. I cried for two weeks. Nearly ruined my eyes. Mary and I were deskmates at Miss Porterfield's school, and I adored her. I really did. So did Dick Moon." She stopped. Then: "Like most women, I'm a compromise," and she laughed. But it was a happy laugh. Mrs. Grey smiled too.

"Was Mary Alden engaged to Roy Wright when she married the other man?" she asked. "Tell me all about her."

"No, she wasn't. Mary Alden was incapable of deceit, and Roy Wright knew she didn't love him. He knew she was never going to marry him. Poor Roy! He was as gentle and sweet and patient as Mary was high-spirited and beautiful, and the last type on earth to win a woman of Mary's temperament. She wanted to be mastered, and Roy could only worship."

"And her father--what did he do?"

"Do? The Aldens are not people who 'do' things. The day after the news came, he and General Wright walked arm and arm all over Yorkburg, and their heads were high; but oh, my dear, it was pitiful. They didn't know, but they were clinging to each other, and the Major's face was like death."

"Didn't some one say he had been pretty strict with her? Held too tight a rein?"

"Yes, he had, and he deserved part of his suffering. His pride was inherited, and Mary could go with no one whose great-grandparents he didn't know about. But Mary cared no more for ancestors than she did for Hottentots. When she met this Mr. Cary, a young English actor, at a friend's house in Baltimore, she made no inquiry as to whether he had any, and fell in love at once. He was a gentleman, however. That was as evident as Major Alden's rage when he went to see the latter, and asked for Mary. Mrs. Rodman happened to be in the house at the time, and what she didn't see she heard. She says the one thing you can't fool her about is a counterfeit gentleman. And Ralston Cary was no counterfeit."

"For Heaven's sake, don't get on what Mrs. Rodman thinks or says. Tell me about the marriage. I'm asking a lot of questions, but you're so slow."

"I'm telling as fast as I can. You interrupt so much with questions I can't finish." And Mrs. Moon's voice was real spunky.

"They were married in Washington," she began again. "The morning after the interview with the Major they caught the five-o'clock train, and that afternoon there was a telegram telling of the marriage.

"Her father never forgave Mary. Seven months later he died, and after settling up affairs there was nothing left. Alden House was mortgaged to the limit. There were a number of small debts as well as two or three large ones, and when these were paid and all accounts squared there was barely enough left for Parke to buy his railroad ticket to some city out West, where he had secured a place as resident physician in a hospital. That was thirteen years ago." She took a deep breath, as if thinking. "Thirteen years. Since then we've known little about him. You say he is a famous surgeon? We've never heard it in Yorkburg."

"Of course you haven't. Yorkburg has heard nothing since 1865. But there are a good many things it could hear." And Mrs. Grey laughed, but with her forehead wrinkled, as if she were trying to understand something that was puzzling her.

And then it was Mrs. Moon said something that made understanding come rolling right in on me. The answer to that look on Miss Katherine's face the night of the Reagans' ball was as plain as Jimmie Jenkins's nose, which is most all you see when you see Jimmie. It was like I thought. It was a man.

"Ophelia," said Mrs. Moon, and she moved her chair closer to Mrs. Grey, and leaned forward with her hands clasped, "did you ever hear Doctor Alden speak of a Miss Trent--Miss Katherine Trent?"

"No. You mean--"

"Yes; she's the one. Parke Alden and Katherine Trent were sweethearts from children. Shortly after Mary's marriage something happened. There was a misunderstanding of some kind, and they barely bowed when they met. Everybody was sorry, for it was one of the matches Heaven might have made without discredit. Soon after Parke went away, Katherine went off to some school just outside of Philadelphia, and, so far as is known, they've never seen each other since."

Mrs. Grey brought both hands down on her knees. "I knew it was something like that. I knew it! Doctor Alden is just that sort of a man. And it's Katherine Trent? I wish I'd known it before she went away."

"What would you have done?" Mrs. Moon looked frightened. She's very timid, Mrs. Moon is, and always afraid of telling something she oughtn't. "What could you have done?"

"Looked at her better. She's certainly good to look at. Not beautiful, but a face you never forget. And Doctor Alden is the kind that never forgets. But tell me something about the child. How did she get here?"

"Her nurse brought her. Her father kept her after her mother's death, taking her about from place to place with this old negro mammy until she was three, when he died suddenly, strange to say, in the same place his wife died, Mobile, Alabama."