Part 5
It was no easy matter to disclose all the miserable details of the affair to Mary Christmas, whose piercing black eyes sought out every jot and tittle of the truth; but hope, so long deferred, spurred them on, and they spared themselves nothing, secure at least in the knowledge that a general confession to her was, when compared with acknowledgment made alone and unaided before grieved and disillusioned parents, of two evils most certainly the lesser. They needed five dollars, they told her, after their consciences were, for the time being, freed--just five hundred times the amount which Roger had unearthed from his pockets, and which was the sole wealth among them. They named the sum with hesitation; it was appallingly large in those days; but it was the necessary aggregate which must be extorted from them by sundown if their parents were to remain in ignorance.
“I see,” said Mary Christmas, once the miserable tale was told, her stern, sharp eyes scrutinizing each guilty face. “I see.” Surely the first person singular, present indicative of that simple verb had never before been burdened with such weighty disapproval!
Then she produced the five dollars, which was wrapped with other bills, quite bewildering to the boys, in folds of white cloth and hidden deep within her gold-laced bodice; but she did not give it to them until she had exacted from each a twofold promise of upright living in the future and of reimbursement from their own earnings in the spring. Sitting at the foot of the boulder in the middle of their circle, she made a swift reckoning of the amount due her from each boy, which amounts she wrote on slips of paper, a separate slip for the pocket of each blouse. Only to John she gave none, considering him more sinned against than sinning, and warning them all against leading those younger than themselves into wrongdoing. Him she kept with her, reluctant as he was for once to stay, while she sent the others, in whose breasts relief was fast conquering repentance, on a two-mile journey through the woods to apologize to the farmer and to pay their just indebtedness.
Be it said to her credit that she collected the five dollars, even to the uttermost farthing. It was returned to her the following spring, as she had demanded, by boys who approached her singly from every conceivable hiding-place along the road and proffered hard-earned coins in bits of dirty paper. Be it said, too, that two months after the incident by the boulder, her own conscience troubling her by the thought that she might have wronged him who had been for so long her friend, she wrote a full account of it to Mr. Wescott, confessing freely her part as protector, but asking that, if possible, the children be not punished. Mr. Wescott smiled over Mary Christmas’ letter, which he shared with Mrs. Wescott in the seclusion of the library. It lacked the ease and growing accuracy of her speech, and was, in parts, with its self-abasement and anxious queries, inexpressibly funny. Then, because he was conservative in parenthood as well as in politics, he said not a word to John and Roger, though he did contrive that winter to put in the way of his older son more than the usual opportunities for earning an honest penny.
There were other affairs of far less serious nature in which Mary Christmas played the part of a confidante and friend, not to the Wescotts alone but to many other children in their village and in other villages along the coast of Maine. So many in fact were there that these pages cannot attempt to chronicle them; but one other they must relate because of its immediate importance to at least one of the Wescotts, and its later tremendous significance to the family at large.
That year in the life of Mary Christmas which so stupendously marked the advent of the pushcart and the red hat marked in the lives of Mary and Cynthia Wescott their graduation from the academy. Orgetorix, chief of the Helvetians, and the wholly infamous Catiline had given place to Æneas, his aged father Anchises, and his little son Ascanius, and Cyrus the Younger with his ten thousand Greeks had marched both up and down, moving on at last to make way for Achilles, sulking in his tent. Reciting their carefully prepared essays in the church to the village at large, the one on “Clara Barton, Her Life and Work,” the other a clarion call to achievement, entitled “_Trans Alpes Italia Est_,” they were not in the least unaware that their white graduation frocks eclipsed all the others by reason of the yards of lace which embraced their shoulders in a kind of bertha, and which from waist to hem encircled their wide skirts. Mary Christmas, with the help of little Mary, had woven that lace through the long winter evenings in Portland, and had sent it as a forerunner of her own arrival. When she came, pushing the red cart down the hill, and again drawing the anxious attention of the Wescotts by the deepening lines in her face, the graduation was a thing of the past, and the hearts of Mary and Cynthia were beating excitedly at the thought of college in the fall.
But it was not only the thought of college which was quickening the heart of Mary Wescott in those early days of her nineteenth year; and this Mary Christmas discovered on the late afternoon of the day when she said good-bye to John and set forth along the familiar road. Reaching the bars which heretofore had given her access to the short cut through the pasture, she stopped, realizing for the second time that day that a pushcart has its disadvantages. But desiring a drink from the spring that bubbled up at the foot of the boulder, and a glimpse of the freshness of the woods before she must again take to the dusty highway, she drew the red cart to the side of the road, carefully lifted her new skirt to escape the roughness of the gray fence-poles, and crawled between the bars. A few steps through the alders and over the moist green hummocks, starred here and there with the blue of violets, and she emerged into the path that led to the boulder and the spring.
She did not drink from the spring, however, thirsty though she was, nor was she conscious of the freshness of the woods with their sun-flecked shadows; for there on the boulder above her, and facing the vista that afforded a sight of the crab-apple tree, sat Mary Wescott with her bright head resting against the dark shoulder of William Howe--the selfsame William who had once played the part of Mary’s father in the Etchmiadzin miracle, and who had but just returned triumphant after a year with the Alma Mater of Mr. Longfellow and Father Wescott.
Mary Christmas leaned against the great rock in sheer surprise. The realization that Mary Wescott was a little girl no longer was in itself a shock; and this outward and visible sign that a new door in life had suddenly swung wide for her was quite too overwhelming. Entirely unprepared for both, Mary Christmas stood still and vaguely discerned as through a mist what the two on the rock saw with such intensity--the white tree with its full-blown, drifting blossoms. She did not hear their whispered confidences, did not know that Mary Wescott was finding it the easiest and most satisfying thing in the world to tell William how the crab-apple tree had made her feel and to receive from him the perfect assurance that he had felt exactly the same way! She was concerned solely, once she had come to herself, with the question of whether she could reach the shelter of the alders without attracting their notice. Then William bent his head toward Mary, for he was all at once seized with the most absurd idea that there were secrets in the corners of her mouth; but in that instant, instead of assuring himself that he was right, he caught sight of Mary Christmas’ red hat. For that hat had been designed to arrest, even at such a moment as this, the most wandering attention.
It is, perhaps, just as well not to describe all that followed--the confusion, the embarrassment, the confession, the explanations, the pleas for secrecy. It is quite enough to say that William, standing with his arm around Mary in the shadow of the great boulder, led the conversation, as was entirely fitting and proper, and that Mary Christmas, in spite of earlier misgivings, the result no doubt of surprise, felt her heart warm toward him as he professed his intentions the most honorable in the world and maintained his decision to interview Father Wescott as a gentleman should, just as soon as another year of college should have added dignity and certainty to their dream. Mary Wescott, on her part, cried a little, as I believe girls did on similar occasions a quarter of a century ago, absurd as it doubtless was; and then as the lengthening shadows foretold the evening light, Mary Christmas gave her promise and her blessing. They all went back to the pushcart together, where Mary Wescott straightened the red hat and perked up the daisies. It was all in vain, however; for when Mary Christmas again started on her way, the hat lurched in such reckless abandon that Mary and William both wished the daisies had been allowed to retain their former modest expression.
That evening, as she journeyed along the cool, fragrant roads, Mary Christmas sang, not now the songs of Vartan or of the Virgin’s festival, but one of wedded love. How clearly the unfamiliar, musical words rose and fell in the still air, accompanied by the monotonous undertone of the pushcart:--
“It rained showers of gold when Artasches became a bridegroom; It rained pearls when Satenik became a bride.”
IX
FOLKLORE AND POLITICS
That fall Mary and Cynthia went to college. The preparation for this event of events had been almost more overwhelming than the journey itself and those first over-crowded, uncomfortable days away from home. In extent and quality their new wardrobes were in themselves unbelievable. A half dozen times a day they experienced entirely unaccustomed thrills as they raised the lids of their new trunks and gazed upon outfits in which blue gingham and serge did not predominate. Their graduation frocks with Mary Christmas’ lace were, of course, their best dresses, to be reserved for the gayest of parties; but there was a sprigged muslin apiece for second best and--wonder of wonders!--silk gowns in brown and dark red for Sundays, with wide shoulder-collars of heavy white embroidery. Blue serge, indeed, was absent, except for their sailor suits for everyday and for the most startling innovation of all, their gymnasium suits.
Now those gymnasium suits had caused more problematical musing than all the other effects of the wardrobes combined. The college catalogue had announced them as necessities, and some forceful woman in a high position had sent explicit directions for their manufacture. And yet Father Wescott, when Cynthia and Mary turned around slowly before him, was frankly puzzled, and would, I fear, have been remonstrant had not the realization of his faith in legitimate authority prevented him. As for Mrs. Wescott, it is not too much to say that her sense of rectitude had been outraged. Indeed, upon the first trying on, she remarked with no lack of decision that she almost preferred her daughters to remain uneducated than to appear in such clothing. She became somewhat reconciled, however, when she discovered that if Cynthia and Mary remained perfectly stationary the bloomers might easily be mistaken for short and full skirts; and the girls were wise enough not to raise the objection that in all probability they could not stand still indefinitely in a gymnasium. Mrs. Wescott worried also over the local seamstress; for in spite of the tax imposed upon her ingenuity by the modeling of these extraordinary garments, she had taken occasion to express her opinion of them in no uncertain terms, and Mrs. Wescott did not feel that she could so impair her own dignity as to make a plea for secrecy.
But the passage of time had somewhat minimized even these forebodings, and the great day had come and gone, leaving Mrs. Wescott with ample time to study at close range the psychology of boyhood in the early teens, and plunging Mary and Cynthia into a sea of new events and places, new personalities and studies, which, after the first few days, allowed no room for homesickness.
They were, although they did not know it, particularly fortunate in the college life of their age. It was, in a sense, more peculiarly receptive than in these latter days. Like the hungry multitude waiting for the loaves and fishes, students “sat down” in order that they might be fed, and were miraculously supplied. In still another scriptural phrase, they “asked”; therefore, they received. And all this largely because the individual had not yet discovered himself through the aid of intelligence tests, vocational guidance, and other encouragements toward self-analysis. If Mary and Cynthia Wescott possessed complexes of various sorts, they were not made aware of the fact; and if they were temperamentally unsuited to quadratic equations, no one incited them to act upon this convenient truth. They and their associates without doubt missed much, but they escaped at least the minute dissection of their own natures, and were thus able in later years to be genially surprised upon the occasional discovery of themselves.
Vocational guidance they entirely escaped. No expert, after an interview of ten exhaustive minutes, told them for what they were best fitted. In those days young men and women did what seemed at the time the nearest and best thing to do. Mary and Cynthia, it is true, were more fortunate than most in this respect. Having known Mary Christmas, they needed no vocational adviser. Mary Wescott knew before she had been two years at college that the thing she was most interested in (that is, next to William Howe) was the study of races of people, their history, their customs, their possibilities in the light of American citizenship, and that, if she could only forget William, she wanted to work with such people in some great city. As for Cynthia, she had been sure, ever since the day when she played the penitent pilgrim in the snow, that she wanted to study great literature and some day to unlock for others the door to the majesty of its presence. She had another dream, too. Even more than she wanted to show to others the beauty and magic of words, she longed to write them herself--words that should make one feel the calm arrogance of bright noons on high, treeless plains, words that should suggest the intimacy of those same plains, silver-mantled, at midnight. And when she dreamed this dream a blue light, the color of harebells in sunshine, crept into her clear gray eyes and lingered there.
So it was that Mary Christmas went to college with Mary and Cynthia Wescott, the presence of her spirit enlightening and coloring their hopes and plans for the future. Once, indeed, she came herself, in gold-laced bodice and red silk handkerchief; for so many of Cynthia’s themes had to do with Armenia, its plains, its saints, its legends, and with Mary Christmas herself, that her teacher, whose one passion in life was folklore, inquired about Mary Christmas and suggested that she be invited to come and sing her songs before a society with a long and learned name. Thereupon, the invitation was sent to Portland and received with much bewildered pride; and Mary Christmas, following Cynthia’s directions to the letter, left her pushcart, her green suit, and her red hat, and journeyed to the college, where she was met by Mary and Cynthia and conducted before the learned society. There, her cheeks flushed and her dark eyes haunted by the same flames which had burned and glowed on that day so long ago beneath the orchard trees, she sang her songs, the songs of Vartan, of the Virgin and her festival, and of Artasches and Satenik, upon whom the gracious heavens showered gold and pearls. She told her stories, too--the old, familiar tales of her childhood and of theirs. Mary and Cynthia, sitting with their friends in the front of the room, were conscious of thousands of memories thronging back upon them. It was then, perhaps for the first time, that they realized fully the part that Mary Christmas had played in their lives; but, conscious of the scholastic atmosphere into which they had been suddenly thrust, they strove, in spite of the tears behind their eyes, to appear extremely academic. Meanwhile, the excited professor took notes furiously, and in due time published his “findings” in an article which left out Mary Christmas entirely, and which, since it was printed in the dullest of periodicals, was read only by himself and by other college professors.
In point of fact, Mary Christmas came once more to college, although this second visit was not generally known. She came one evening in the spring of Mary’s and Cynthia’s last year, and she brought Mary Wescott with her, much to the relief of Cynthia and of their house-mother, a tall, gaunt woman who felt her responsibilities. Waiting that afternoon in the Boston station for a train that would take her home after an unusual journey to that city for shopping in the larger markets, Mary Christmas was startled by the familiar face of Mary Wescott, now almost unfamiliar through anxiety and fear. She was sitting on the edge of one of the long waiting-seats, her scanty luggage beside her, her large eyes feverishly watching the unceasing line of people who came and went through the great doors. There was something about her strained, eager face, so intent upon the passing hundreds, that made Mary Christmas check her impulsive steps toward her and sit down at the farther end of the long seat just behind, from which, by rising occasionally, she could see without being seen.
Before a few minutes had passed she had become convinced that her own presence was quite safe from discovery. Mary Wescott had not the slightest interest in those about her. Her anxious gaze never for one moment left the great entrance doors. She was obviously waiting for someone, and, as Mary Christmas studied her face, she was convinced that that someone was no Wescott or chance relative unaccustomed to city ways.
When Mary Christmas heard the big man at the door call her train in his trumpet-like voice, she did not seize her big bundle and go. She waited yet another ten minutes--fifteen--twenty. Then through the station doors, his big suitcase indiscriminately bumping the shins of his fellow men, tore William Howe, with all the anxiety which could not find room on Mary’s face on his own.
Mary Christmas allowed them five hungry minutes for looking at each other before she left her seat behind them. Perhaps she needed that time to swallow something big that had crept into her throat. And when she did approach them, still gazing at each other, the upbraiding words which she had planned quite left her tongue. For all at once, to her who had lived over again the sad passing of so many centuries, Mary and William had become suddenly very young and needy.
Perhaps, as she came with such startling swiftness within their line of vision, they felt a high, classic rage at this retribution-bearing Nemesis; but they looked only like two children, fairly and inextricably caught. Mary Christmas did not say one word as she looked at them, and William felt it again incumbent upon him to manage the conversation, the motif of which, he quickly decided, must be determination at any cost.
“There isn’t a bit of use for you to try to stop us, Mary Christmas,” he began, looking appealingly at Mary, who had suddenly sat down again beside her luggage. “We’re running away together, and we’re going to be married. I’ve got the license, and we’re more than twenty-one. Besides, it’s a necessity. They won’t let us be married this summer--even with all the prospects I’ve got and more than a thousand in the bank. They’ve just told Mary so. It’s an outrage to make us wait! Just as if I couldn’t take care of her! In less than two years I’ll be third vice-president of the company. It’s as good as settled. So we’ve just decided to take matters into our own hands. And I tell you again, Mary Christmas, there isn’t a bit of use for you to interfere.”
Mary Christmas did not interfere. She looked at Mary Wescott, and knew by a prophetic gift of insight that Mary was trying to reconcile romance as she had pictured it with this sinking, frightful feeling in the region of her heart.
“Do you want to run away like this, Mary?” she asked gently.
“Yes,” faltered Mary. “At least--I did--I _do_--because I think it’s necessary. William needs me. He lives in a terrible boarding-house--and--”
“That’s not it,” broke in William, “at least it’s not the main thing. The main thing is, they don’t understand how we feel. They’re unreasonable, like my father and mother. If I couldn’t support her, it would be different. But I can. Besides I’ve got reason to think that Mary’s father doesn’t like me anyway.” He looked now at Mary as though ties of blood demanded that she receive this accusation.
“It’s William’s politics,” she faltered again. “He’s a Democrat, and father _is_ unreasonable. At Christmas, when I talked with him, he said he hoped William would change. But William won’t!” Decision had crept into her voice. “And I’m glad! I wouldn’t marry a man who would change his politics--even for my father.”
Mary Christmas was quick to detect a quality which had crept into her last words.
“Even for your father.” She repeated Mary’s words. “Your father. How do you suppose he will feel when he hears you would not wait? And your mother, too?”
“It’s not just a case of waiting,” interrupted William, to the relief of Mary, who was in no condition to answer Mary Christmas’ questions. “If we could be sure about a year from now--but we can’t! And it’s right about my politics. Mr. Wescott has insulted my party.” William drew himself up proudly. “He has said openly that no intelligent person could be a Democrat.”
“It’s been awfully hard for William,” said Mary from behind her handkerchief.
William consulted his watch. “There’s no use standing here talking, Mary Christmas.” There was finality in his tone. “I’ve got two friends waiting for us now, and we’re due at the church at five o’clock. You can tell them that you saw us here if you like. Of course, we’ll telegraph them just as soon as we’re married. And they needn’t any of them worry over Mary. I’ll be good to her all my life--even if I am a Democrat! And I’m not urging her to be married this way. We talked it all over when I was out at college a week ago.”
“They needn’t blame William!” cried Mary with the last spurt of a dying spirit. “I planned it _all_--myself!”
For a moment Mary Christmas was in a quandary. Here was the time and place for the interference that must come; but how should she interpose it? And then something happened, almost miraculously, which took away all necessity for it.
“You know you haven’t any right to interfere with us, Mary Christmas,” cried William. “Not the least in the world!”
Then down upon Mary Wescott’s tired head there came tumbling her house of romance, as a child’s colored blocks fall which he has put together with too unsteady hands. Mary Christmas no right to interfere! She, who through all these years had lent color and light and reality to their world? _She_, no right?
“Oh, William!” sobbed Mary Wescott. And that was all.
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