 CHAPTER IX. LOVE IS BEST. Christmas is over. I feel like the parlor great when the fire has gone out. But it was a grand Christmas, the grandest we've ever known. It came on Christmas Day. From the time we got up until we went to bed, we were so happy we forgot we were charity children. And no matter whatever happens, we've got one beautiful time to look back on. Miss Catherine says a beautiful memory is a possession no one can take from you. And it's one of the best possessions you can have. I think so too. She's made all my memories. All. I mean the precious ones. Everybody in this orphan asylum had a present from somebody outside. Even me, who might as well be that man in the Bible, Melchise something, who didn't have beginning or end, or any relations. I had fourteen from outside. Some I hid, because I didn't want the girls to know, several not getting more than one, and hardly any more than three or four. Those who had the heart to give them didn't have the money, and those who had the money didn't have the heart. Being so busy with their own they forgot to remember, and if it hadn't been for Miss Catherine and her friends, this last Christmas would have been like all others. Her army brother's wife sent a box full of all sorts of pretty Indian things. She being in the Wild West near the Indians who made them. And she sent ten dolls all dressed for the ten youngest girls. She is awful busy having three children and not much money. But Miss Catherine says busy people make time, and those who have most to do, do more still. She sent me the darlingest little bedroom slippers with fur all around the top, and in them she put a little note that made me cry and cry and cry. It was so dear and motherly. I don't know what made me cry, but I couldn't help it. I couldn't. She doesn't know me except from what Miss Catherine writes, and I wonder why she wrote that note. But everybody is good to me. That is nearly everybody. It certainly makes a difference in your backbone when people are kind and when they are not. I don't believe unkindness and misfortune and suffering will ever make me good. If anybody is mean to me, I'm stifferer than a lamp post, and you couldn't make me cry. But when anyone is good to me, I have a bit of firmness and of no better than a caterpillar. I got thirty-one presents this year. Thirty-one! I didn't know I had so many friends in York Berg, and my heart was so bursting with surprise and gratitude at just eight. Eight happy. We are not often allowed to make regular visits, but I have lots of little talks informal on errands or messages or passing. And as I know almost everybody by sight, I have a right large speaking acquaintance. With some people, Miss Catherine says, that's the safest kind to have. You see, York Berg is a very small place. Just three long streets and some short ones going across. Scratching up everything, it hasn't got three thousand people in it. A lot of them are colored. But it's very old and historic. Awful old. So is everything in it. As for its blue blood, Mrs. Hunt says there's more in York Berg than any place of its size in America. Most of the strangers who come here, though, seem to prefer to pass on rather than stop. And Miss Webb thinks it's on account of the blood. A little red mixed in might wake York Berg up, she says, and that's what it needs, to know the war is over and the change has come to stay. But I love York Berg, and most of the people are dear. Some queer. Oldness is Pete is. Her husband has been dead forty years, but she still keeps his hat on the rack for protection. And whenever anyone goes to see her after dark, she always calls him as if he were upstairs. She lives by herself and is over seventy. And she's pretended so long that he's living that they say she really believes he is. She almost makes you believe it too. Miss Brace sent me there one night. She wanted some cherry-bounce for Eliza Green, who had an awful pain. And after I'd knocked, I'd have run if I dared. In the hall I could hear Mrs. Pete pounding on the floor with her stick, then her little piping voice. Mr. Pete, Mr. Pete, you'd better come down. There's someone at the door. You'd better come down, Mr. Pete. It's just Mary Carey, I called. Miss Brace sent me, Mrs. Pete, she wants some cherry-bounce. Oh, all right, Mr. Pete, you needn't bother to come down. It's just little Mary Carey. And she opened the door a tiny crack and peeped through. Mr. Pete isn't very well to-night, she said. He's taken fresh cold, but you can come in. I came, but I didn't want to. And if Mr. Pete had come down those steps and shaken hands, I wouldn't have been surprised. It's certainly strange how something you know isn't true seems true. And Mr. Pete, dead forty years, seemed awful alive that night. Every minute I thought he'd walk in. She likes you to think he's living at night. Every day she goes to his grave, which is in the churchyard right next to where she lives, but at night he comes back to life to her. She's so lonely, I think it's beautiful that he comes. I make out like I think he comes, too, and I always send him my love and ask how his rheumatism is. I tell you, Martha don't dare smile when I do it. She don't even want to. And don't you know? Old Mrs. Pete sent me a Christmas present, too. A pair of mittens. She knit them herself. It was awful nice of her. I don't know how big the check was that Miss Catherine's billionaire brother sent her to spend on the children's Christmas, but it must have been a corker. The things she bought with it cost money, and the change it made in the asylum was Cinderella-y. It was. She bought a carpet for the parlor, and some curtains for the windows, and a bookcase of books. For the dining-room she bought six new tables and sixty chairs. They were plain, but to sit at a table with only ten at it instead of forty, as I'd been sitting for many years, was to have a proud sensation in your stomach. Mine got so gay I couldn't eat at the first meal. To have a chair all to yourself after sitting on benches so old they were worn on both edges, was to feel like the Queen of Sheba, and I felt like her. I could have danced up and down the table, but instead I said grace over and over inside. I had something to say it for. All of us did. Besides a present each of us had a new dress. It was made of worsted. Real worsted, not calico. And that morning after breakfast, and after everything had been cleaned up, we put on our new dresses and came down in the parlor. And such a fire as there was in it. It sputtered and flamed and danced and blazed and crackled and roared. A wit knew it was Christmas that fire did, and the mistletoe and holly and running cedar knew it too. At first, though, the children felt so stiff and funny in their new shaped dresses made like other children's that they weren't natural. So I pretended we were having a soiree, and I went round and shook hands with everyone. They got to laughing so at the names I gave them, names that fit some and didn't touch others by a thousand years, that the stiffness went. And if in all Yorkburg there was a cheerful room or a happier lot of children that Christmas day than we were, we didn't hear of it. I don't believe there was, either. The reason we enjoyed this Christmas so was because it was on Christmas Day. 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 Catherine'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 Catherine'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 there is 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 the 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 Henhouse. 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 chance, 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. Marston, I came right down to earth and was Martha-carry in a minute. I'd been merry 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 Catherine 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 Carey, 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 are braves and priors 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. 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 today. 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 Catherine 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 waders 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 Catherine 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 Catherine, 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 shell. 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 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 grandmothers, Miss Webb says she was the best sideshow 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 just waved 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 Catherine don't feel that way about Yankees. Each of her brothers married one, and she don't seem to mind. Miss Catherine 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 went 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. CHAPTER 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 Catherine 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 Catherine. 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 Catherine 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 number four 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, sows, 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 Hazes. 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 budding 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. Bray, 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 ya, 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. Gray 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 Park 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 ladies' 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 especially. No real close can, I mean. The changes in the place where you were born makes a man lonelier than a strange city does, and something seems to keep him away. You say he doesn't know his sister left the 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 Park, 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 Reagan's 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 ruining my eyes. Mary and I were deskmates at Miss Porterfield School, and I adored her. I really did. How did Dick moon? She stopped. Then, like most women I'm a compromise, and she laughed, but it was a happy laugh. Mrs. Gray 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 someone say he had been pretty strict with her, held too tight a reign? 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 hotentots. When she met this Mr. Carey, a young English actor, at a friend's house in Baltimore, she made no inquiries 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 Carey was no counterfeit. For heaven's sake, don't get on what Mrs. Rodman thinks her 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. Aldenhouse 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 Park 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. Mrs. Gray 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 Catherine's face the night of the Reagan's ball was as plain as Jimmy Jenkins's nose, which is most all you see when you see Jimmy. It was like I thought. It was a man. Ophelia, said Mrs. Moon, and she moved her chair closer to Mrs. Gray and leaned forward with her hands clasped. Did you ever hear Dr. Alden speak of a Miss Trent, Miss Catherine Trent? No, you mean, yes, she's the one. Park Alden and Catherine Trent were sweet hearts 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 Park went away Catherine went off to some school just outside of Philadelphia, and so far as is known they've never seen each other since. Mrs. Gray brought both hands down on her knees. I knew it was something like that. I knew it. Dr. Alden is just that sort of a man. And it's Catherine 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 Dr. 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 as wife died, Mobile, Alabama. Why did the nurse bring her here? Was she a Yorkburg darkie? No, but she had heard Mr. Carey say there was an orphan asylum here. And not knowing what else to do, she came on with her. She told the board lady she had heard the child's father say a hundred times he would rather see her dead than have her mother's family take her. And she begged them not to let it be known who she was until she was old enough to understand. Just then Bobby Moon laid out flat on his back and kicked up his heels. And Billy looked so disgusted I stopped the story I was trying to tell. You ain't talking sense, he said. And I'm not going to listen any more. An aunt can't eat an elephant in half an hour and leave no scraps. And he rolled over and began to fight Bobby. Sarah Sue and Myrtle, who'd been playing with their mother's muffin tippet, got to fussing so about which should have her hat, that Mrs. Moon, hearing it, jumped up, and I heard her say, Mercy me, do you suppose she heard? I never was so glad of a fight in my life. The more fuss was made the more chance there was of my being forgot. And presently I told Mrs. Moon I had to go home. The boys said they didn't care. My stories were rotten anyhow. And out I went, and ran so fast I had such a pain in my side I could hardly breathe. But I didn't go in right away. I couldn't. Inside of me everything was thumping. Mary Alden, your mother. Mary Alden, your mother. Mary Alden, your mother. There was no other thought but that. Presently I turned and went down to King Street, to where the Regans live. And in the dark I stood there and shook my fist at my dead grandfather. I hated him for treating my mother so, hated him. Then I burst out crying, and cried so awful my eyes were nearly washed out. There were twelve and a half years worth of tears that had to come out, and I let them come. After they were out I felt lighter. I was so mixed up with new feelings that I was sick in my stomach. And my old conscience got so sanctimonious that if I could have spanked it I would. I wasn't eavesdropping. I know that's nasty. But forty times I'd been punished for speaking when I shouldn't. And besides, it was my duty to find myself. They saw me, and then forgot. If they hadn't wanted me to know what they were saying, they shouldn't have said it. But that didn't do my conscience any good. I hate a conscience. It's always making you feel low down and disreputable. I don't believe I will say anything to my children about one, and let them have some peace. For two days I didn't have any. Then I decided I'd wait until Miss Catherine came, and not say anything to her or to anybody about what I'd heard, until I found out a little more about that remembrance in her face. But the waiting for her is the longest wait I've ever waited through yet. It certainly is queer what a surprise you are to yourself. Before I knew that my mother and her father and his father and some other fathers behind him had lived in the Alden House, I would have given all I own, which isn't much, just my body, to have known it. And I guess I would have been that airy Martha couldn't have lived with me, and would have had to take Mary to the pump to bring her senses back with water. Mary is my best part. But at times she hasn't half the common sense she needs, and frequently has a pride Martha has to attend to. But after I found out I had the same kind of blood in me that Mrs. General Rodman had in her, though I'm thankful it isn't mentioned on the family's tombstones, it didn't seem half as big a thing as I thought. I was ashamed of the way it had acted, and of the way it had treated my father. He was too much of a gentleman to talk about his, whether high or low, and I know nothing about him, but I adore his memory. I am his child as well as Mary Alden's, and that's a thing my children are never going to forget. Never. And now the part I'm thinking of most is what was said about Miss Catherine and Dr. Park Alden being sweethearts when they were young. He has been away thirteen years, Mrs. Moon said, and Miss Catherine is now twenty-eight. I know she is, because she told me so. Thirteen from twenty-eight leaves fifteen, so she was fifteen when they had that fuss, and he went off. Fifteen was awful young to love hard and permanent, but Miss Webb says Miss Catherine was born grown and stubborn, and when she once takes a stand she keeps it. I wonder what she took the stand with Uncle Park for. She is right quick and outspoken at times, and I bet he made her mad about something. But she ought to have known he was a man and not expected much. I know my children's father is going to make me so hopping at times I could shake him. If he didn't he would be terrible stupid to live with, and nothing wears you out like stupidness. I don't really mind a scrap. It's so nice to make up. But I believe that's the reason Miss Catherine don't get married, because in her secret heart Dr. Park Alden is still her sweetheart. I know in his secret heart she is still his. She's bound to be if she ever once was. Glorious superbness! Wouldn't that be grand? If they were to get married she would be my really truly aunt. The very thought makes me so full of thrills I can't sit still when it comes over me. Oh, Mary Martha Carey! What a beautiful place this world could be! CHAPTER XII A TRUE MIRACLE A secret isn't any pleasure. What's the use of knowing a thing you can't let anybody know you know? If I can't tell soon what I've heard about myself something is liable to happen. Nearly three months have passed and I haven't told yet. I'm still holding out, but it's the most awful experience I ever had. Another idea has come to me, and if I could see Miss Catherine I could tell whether to do it or not. If she don't come soon I will do it anyhow. I won't be able to help it. The girls say if I were a darkie they'd think I was seeking. That's because some days I'm so unnatural quiet and stay so much by myself. I'd do that for safety, fearing otherwise I'd speak. They don't know what's going on inside of me. If they could see they'd find nothing but quiverings and questions, and if I don't do anything really violent it's all I ask. Every morning and every night my prayers are just this. Oh Lord, help Mary Carrie through this day. I'm not asking for tomorrow, it not being here yet, but this day helped me to hold out. And all day long I'm saying under my roof. Hold on, Mary Carrie, hold on, hold on. There never was a night that didn't have a dawn. There never was a road that didn't have an end. Wait a while, wait a while, and then the letter send. I say that so often to myself that I'm afraid somebody will hear me think it. If that letter isn't sent soon the answer will be received by a corpse. I'm never again going to have a secret. It's worse than a tumor or dropsy. Mrs. Pinnock has a tumor. I've never seen the dropsy, but a secret is more dangerous for it dries you up. Dropsy has water to it. We had apple dumplings for dinner. I sold mine to Lucy Pyle for two cents and bought a stamp with it. The stamp is for the letter. Miss Catherine has come back. Came night before last, but I've been too excited to write anything down. Everything I do is done in dabs these days, and few lines at the time is all I'm equal to. She looks grand. And oh, what a difference her being here makes. We are children, not just orphans when she is with us. And it's because she loves us, trusts us, brings our best part to the top that we are different when she is about. The very way she laughs, so clear and hearty, makes you think things aren't so bad, and already they have picked up, like my primrose does when I give it water, after forgetting it till it is as limp as old Miss Sarah Cone's crepe veil. I haven't told her anything yet, but I've been watching good. I haven't seen any particular signs of memories and regrets, she being too busy to have them since she got back. Still, I believe they are there, and I'm that afraid I'll say Park Alden in my sleep, I put the covering over my head, for fear she'd hear me if I did. I am back in her room, and this afternoon she asked me what I was looking at her so hard for. I told her she was the best thing to look at that came my way, and she laughed and called me a foolish child. But Mary Carey is thinking, and she isn't telling all she thinks about either. Well, it's written. That letter is written and gone. It was to Dr. Park Alden. I sent it to his hospital in Michigan. I made it short, because by nature I write just endless, having gotten in the habit for making up stories for the girls, and scribbling them off when kept in, which in the past was frequent. This is what I wrote. Dr. Park Alden. Dear sir, eleven weeks and two days ago I heard you did not know I was living. I am. I live in the Yorkburg Female Orphan Asylum, and have been living here for nine years and four months and almost a week. If you had known I was living all these years and had not made yourself acquainted with me, I would not now write you. But I heard by accident you did not know I had been born, so I am writing to tell you I was. It happened in Natchez, Mississippi. I know that much, but little more, except my father was an actor. I worship his memory. My mother was named Mary Alden, and you are her brother. If you would like to know more, and will write and ask me, I think you will learn something of interest. Not about me, but there are other people in this world. Respectfully, Mary Carey. Three days have passed since I sent that letter off secret. I wouldn't let Miss Catherine know for a billion dollars that I'd sent it, but I'm glad I did. I'm sure she's got something in her heart she don't talk about, for last night, when she didn't know I was looking. I saw that same quiet proudness come in her face I saw the night of the ball. I don't know how long it takes to go to Michigan. Not knowing much about traveling, as I've never been out of Yorkburg since I came in. But some day I'm going around the world, and I'm going to see everything anybody else has ever seen before I marry my children's father. Of course, after I get married he will be busy, and there will be always some excuse that will make you tired. I'm going beforehand. Miss Webb says marriage is very uncertain. This is a grand day. The crocuses are peeping up just as pertain pretty. The little brown buds on the trees have turned green and getting bigger every day, and even the air feels like it's had a bath. I just love the spring. Everything says to you, good morning. Here we are again. Let's begin all over. And inside I say, all right, and I mean it. But oh, Mary Carey, you're so unreliable. There are times when your future looks very much like a worm of the dust. Miss Bray is real sick. She hasn't been well for a long time, and she looks like she's shriveling, though still fat. She has nervous dyspepsia, which they say is ruinous to dispositions. And Miss Bray isn't the kind for any sort of sickness to be free with. It certainly is making her queer, for she's changed from sharpness to tearfulness, and she weeps any time. A thing I never thought I'd live to see. Poor creature. I feel real sorry for her. Miss Jones says she's worn out, but I don't believe it's that. I believe it's conscience and coffee. Miss Bray isn't an all-over bad person. If it wasn't I knew she told stories, I could have stood the other things. But when a person tells stories, what have you got to hold on to? Nothing. I believe it's those stories that's giving her trouble in her stomach. Anything on your mind does. And Miss Bray looks at me so curious and so nervous sometimes that I can't help feeling sorry for her. I don't believe she will ever get well until she repents and confesses and crosses her heart that she won't do it again. A confession is a grand relief. Suppose Dr. Park Alden don't wait. Don't notice me. I will be that mad and mortified I will wish I was dead. But if he don't answer that letter, I will write a few more things to him before dying. For if I am an orphan, I oughtn't to be treated like a piece of imagination. The black hen has got a lot of little chickens, and the Johnquills are in bloom. The sun is as warm as June, but I'm shivering all the time, and Miss Catherine says she don't understand me. She gave me a tonic to make me eat more. I don't want to eat. I want a letter. Jerusalem the Golden! Now what do you reckon has happened? Nothing will ever more surprise Mary Kerry, mostly Martha. If the moon ever burns, or the stars come to town, or the pope marries a wife, or the dead come to life, I will just say, is that so? And in my heart I will know a stranger thing than that. Yesterday Miss Bray sent for me to come to her room. She was sick in bed, and her frizzes weren't frizzed, and she looked so old and pitiful, that I took hold of her hand and said, I'm awful sorry you're a sick Miss Bray. And what did she do but begin to cry? And such a long crying I never saw anybody have. I knew there was a lot to come out, and she'd better get rid of it. So I let it keep on without remarks. And after a while, she told me to shut the door, and get her a clean handkerchief out of her top bureau drawer. I did it. Then she told me to sit down. I did that too, and as well I did. If I hadn't, I'd have fell. Her words would have made me. Mary Kerry, she said, you have given me a great deal of trouble. And at times you've nearly worried me to death. But never since you've been here have you ever told a story. And that's what I've done. And she put her head down in her pillow, and I tell you she nearly shook herself out of bed. She cried so. I was so surprised and confused I didn't know whether I was awake or asleep. But all of a sudden it came to me what she meant. And I put my arms around her neck and kissed her. That's what I did. Martha or no Martha, I kissed her. Then I said, Miss Bray, I'm awful glad you were sorry you did it. If you're sorry it's like a sponge that wipes it off. And don't anybody but you and me and God know about that particular one. And we can all forget it if there's never any more. And then she cried harder than ever, regular rivers. I didn't know the top of your head could hold so much water. But she said there would never be any more, for she'd never had any peace since the way I looked at her that day, and she couldn't stand it any longer. She didn't know why I had that effect on her, but I did, and she'd sent for me to talk about it. Well, we talked. I told her I didn't think just being sorry was enough, and I asked her how sorry was she. I don't know, she said. And then she began on tears again, so I thought I'd better be quick while the feeling lasted. Well, you know, Miss Bray, I began. Pinky Moore hasn't been adopted yet. She never will be while the ladies think what you told them is true. You ought to write a letter to the board and tell them what you said wasn't so. I can't, she said. And then more fountains flowed. I can't tell them I told a story. Like that's what you did, I said. And when you've done a mean thing, there isn't but one way to undo it. Own up and take what comes. But it's nothing to a conscience that's got you, and is never going to let you go until you do the square thing. If you want peace, it's the only way to get it. But I can't write a letter. I'm so nervous I couldn't compose a line. And you never would have known her voice. It was as quaverly as old Doc Fleury's, the Methodist preacher who's laid off from work. I'll write it for you. And I hopped for the things in her desk. You can copy it when you feel better. And don't you know she let me do it. After three tryings I finished it, then read it out loud. Dear ladies, if anyone applies for Pinky Moore, I hope you will let her go. Pinky is the best and most useful girl in the asylum. More than two years ago I said differently. It was wrong in me, and Pinky isn't untruthful. She hasn't a bad temper, and never in her life took anything that didn't belong to her. I am sorry I said what I did. She don't know it and never will, and I hope you will forgive me for saying it. Respectfully, Molly E. Bray. When I was through she cried still harder and said she'd lose her place. She knew she would. I told her she wouldn't. I knew she wouldn't. And after a while she sat up in bed and copied it. Some of her tears blotted it, but I told her that didn't matter, and when I got up to go she looked better already. I knew how she felt. Like I did when my tooth that had to come out was out. And the thing on your mind is worse than the toothache. One you can tell, the other you can't. A thing you can't tell is like a spook that's always behind you and right in the bed with you when you wake up sudden and lies down with you every time you go to sleep. I know, for that letter is on my mind. When I got out of Miss Bray's room I ran in mine, Miss Catherine being out, and locked the door. And I said, Mary Martha Carey don't ever say again there's no such things as modern miracles. There's been a miracle today and you have seen it. Somebody has been born over. And then, because I couldn't help it, I cried almost as bad as Miss Bray. But oh, nobody can ever know how much harm it had done me to believe a lady could go through life telling stories and doing mean dishonorable things and not minding. And people treating her just the same as if she were honest. When I found out it wasn't so, that your sin did make you suffer and that it did make a difference trying to do right. I felt some of my old Martha Reese scornfulness slipping away. And I got down on my knees, no words, but God understanding why. I don't like any kind of bitterness in my heart. I'd rather like people. But can you like a deceiver? You can't. Dr. Park Alden has taken no more notice of me than if I were a junipug. I wonder if Miss Catherine will ever marry. She wasn't meant to live in an orphan asylum. She was meant to be the lady of the house, and to wear beautiful clothes and have horses and carriages and children of her own, and to give orders. Instead of that, she is here. But sometimes she has a look on her face which I call, waiting. Last week I wrote a poem about it. This is it. In the winter by the fireside when the snow falls soft and white, I am waiting, hoping, longing, but for what I don't know quite. And when summer sunshine shimmers and the birds sing clear and sweet, I am waiting, always waiting, for the joy I hope to meet. It will be, I think, my husband, and the home he'll make for me. But of his coming or home-making I as yet no signs do see. But I still shall keep on waiting, for I know it's true as fate. When you really, truly hustle, things will come if just you'll wait. I don't think much of that. It sounds like dearest Willie, thou has left us, and I lost, we deeply feel. But I wasn't meant for a poet any more than Miss Catherine for an old maid. Dr. Park Alden must be dead. Either that or he's no gentleman. Or he didn't get my letter. I wish I hadn't written it. I wish I hadn't let him know I was living. But it was Miss Catherine I was thinking about. Thank heaven I didn't mention her name. He isn't worth thinking about. And I think of nothing else. CHAPTER XIII. His coming. If I could get out on the roof and shake hands with the stars, or dance with the man in the moon, I might be able to write it down. But everything in me is bubbling and singing so I can't keep still to write. But I'm bound to put down that he's come. He's come. He came day before yesterday morning about ten o'clock. I was in the school room, and Mrs. Blaymire opened the door and looked in. Every carry can go to the parlor, she said. Someone wishes to see her. I got up and went out, not dreaming who it was, as I was only looking for a letter. And there, standing by a window with his back to me, was a man, and in a minute I knew. I couldn't move and I couldn't speak, and Lot's wife wasn't any stiller than I was. But he heard me come in and turned, and oh, it is so strange how right at once you know some things, and the thing I knew was it was all true, that he'd never known about me until he got my letter. For a minute he just looked at me. We didn't either of us say a word, and then he came toward me and held out his hands. Mary carry, he said, and the first thing I knew I was crying fit to break my heart, with my arms around his neck and he holding me tight in his. His eyes were wet too. They were, I saw them. He kissed me about fifty times, though maybe not more than twenty. And I had such a strange feeling I didn't know whether I was in my body or not. It was the first time that anyone who was really truly my own had ever come to see me since I'd been an orphan, and every bit of sense I ever had rolled away like the Red Sea waters, rolled right away. I don't remember what happened next. Everything is a jumble of so many kinds of joys that I've been crazy all day. But I wasn't too crazy to see the look on his face. I mean on my Uncle Dr. Park Alden's face, when he saw Miss Catherine coming across the front yard. We were standing by the window, and as he saw her he looked again, as if he didn't see good, and then his face got as white as whitewash. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his lips and his forehead that were real perspiring. And I almost danced for joy, for I knew in his secret, secret heart she was his sweetheart still. But I didn't move even a toe. I just said, That's Miss Catherine Trent. She's the trained nurse here. Did you know her when she lived in Yorkburg? And he said yes, he knew her. Just that and nothing else. But I knew, for fear I'd tell him I knew, I flew out of the room like I was having a fit, and met Miss Catherine coming in the front door. Miss Catherine, I said. There's a friend of yours in the parlor who wants to see you. Will you go in? She walked in just as natural humming a little tune, and I walked behind her, for I wanted to see it. I will never be as ready for glory as I was that minute. I could have folded my hands and sailed up, but I didn't sail. It's well I didn't, for they didn't meet at all like I expected, and I was so surprised I just said, Well, sir, and sat right down on the floor and looked up at them. They didn't see me. They didn't see anything but each other. But if they'd had the smallpox they couldn't have kept farther apart, just bowing formal and not even offering to shake hands. My, I was set on! I didn't think they'd meet that way. But Miss Becky Cole, who's kinder crazy, says God Almighty don't know what a woman is going to do, or when she's going to do it. Miss Catherine proved it. She didn't fool me, though, with all her quietness and coolness. I knew her heart was beating as hard as mine. And I jumped up and said, I think you all have been waiting long enough to make up, and it's no use wasting any more time. And I flew out, slamming the door tight, and shut them in. I don't know what happened after I shut that door. But oh, he's grand! He is thirty-six and big and splendid. He and Miss Catherine are in the parlor now. Miss Jones says everybody in Yorkburg knows he's here, and all talking. All. I've been so excited since the first day he came that I've had little sense. But my natural little is coming back, and I'm trying not to talk too much. Of course, I had to say a good deal, because everybody had to know how it happened that Dr. Alden came back to Yorkburg so suddenly after thirteen years being away, and why he hadn't been before, and what he came for and when he was going away, and if he were going to take me with him. And then everybody remembered how he and Miss Catherine used to be sweethearts when they were young. I tell you the talking that's been going on in Yorkburg in the last few days would fill a barrel of books. By the end of the week a whole lot more will be known about Uncle Park than he knows about himself. If Yorkburg had a coat of arms it ought to be a question mark. They've had time to talk over everything that ever happened since Adam and Eve left Paradise, in the long walks they take, and in the evenings when he calls, which he does as regular as night comes. And now I'm waiting for the news. I'll have to be so surprised, and I guess I will be. Love does very surprising things. Miss Catherine knew where Uncle Park was all the time. She knew who I was, too. That is, she found out after she nursed me at the hospital. But what that fuss was about I don't know. Nothing much I reckon. But the more you love a person the matter you can get with them. And from foolishness they've wasted years and years of togetherness. But it's all explained now, and I don't think there's going to be any more nonsense. They are going to be married as sure as my name isn't in a bank book. And if signs are anything it's going to be soon. Miss Bray is better though she looks pretty bad still. She's been awfully excited about Uncle Park's coming. And she says she hears he's very distinguished and real rich. Isn't it strange how quick some people hear about riches? I don't know anything of his having any. He hasn't mentioned money to me. But oh, I feel so safe with him. He's so strong and quiet and easy in his manners. And he's been so splendid and beautiful to me. He don't use many words. Just makes you understand. I wonder what a man says to a lady when he wants her to marry him. I know Dr. Park Alden isn't the kind to get down on his knees. If he were Miss Catherine would certainly tell him to get up and say what he had to say standing or sitting if it took long. But I'll never know what he said. They're not the kind to tell. But they can't hide love. It's just like the sun. It can't help shining. Land of Nipon I'm excited. I believe he said it. The reason I think so is I saw them late yesterday evening coming in from a long walk down the Calverton Road where there's a beautiful place for quarters. When they got to the gate they stopped and talked and talked. Then he walked to the door with her, still holding his hat in his hand. And though it was dark I could feel something different. I was so nervous you would have thought I was the one. I was over by the lilacs but they didn't see me. I didn't like to move. It might have been ruinous. So I held my breath and waited. When they got to the door they stopped again. And presently he held out his hand to say goodbye. The way he did it. The way he looked at her made me just know. And I got right down on my knees under the lilac bush. And when he'd gone I sang Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Sang it loud. I didn't care who heard. I wasn't telling why I was thankful. Just telling I was. Oh, Mary Martha Carey, to think of her being your really, truly aunt. The very next thing to a mother. End of Chapter 13. Recording by Jan McGillivray. Chapter 14 of Mary Carey, Frequently Martha. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Jan McGillivray. Mary Carey, Frequently Martha. By Kate Langley-Bosher. Chapter 14. The Hurt of Happiness. I wouldn't like to put on paper how I feel today. Uncle Park has gone. Gone back to Michigan. I'm such a mixture of feelings that I don't know which I've got the most of. Gladness or sadness or happiness or miserableness. And I'd rather cry as much as I want than have as much ice cream as I could hold. But I'm not going to cry. I don't like cryers. And besides, I haven't a place to do it in private. I wouldn't let Miss Catherine see me, not if I died of choking. I ought to be rejoicing, and I am. But the female heart is beyond understanding, Miss Becky Cole says, and it is. Mine is. I could die of thankfulness. But I'd like first to cry as much as I could if I let go. They are engaged, Uncle Park and Miss Catherine are, and they are to be married on the 27th of June. That's my birthday. I will be thirteen on the 27th of June. They told me about it night before last. I was out on the porch, and Miss Catherine called me and told me she and Dr. Alden wanted me to go to walk with them. I knew what was coming. Knew in a flash. But I pretended not to, and thanked her ever so much and told her I just love to go. We walked on down to the Calverton Road talking about nothing, and making out it was our usual night walk. But when we got to the seven maples, Uncle Park stopped. Suppose we sit down, he said. It's too warm to walk far to-night. And after we sat, he threw his hat on the ground, then leaned over and took my hands in his. Mary-Carrie? He began. And though his eyes were smiling, his voice was real quivering. I was noticing, and it was. Mary-Carrie? Catherine and I have brought you with us to-night to ask you if you have any objection to our being married. We would like to do so as soon as possible, if you do not object. He turned my face to his, and the look in his eyes was grand. It meant no matter who objected, marry her he would. But it was a way to tell me the way he was asking, and I understood. It depends, I said. And as I am always playing parts to myself, right on the spot I was a chaperone lady. It depends on whether you love enough. Do you? I do. For myself I am entirely sure. As to Catherine, suppose she tells you what she thinks. I turned toward her. Do you, Miss Catherine? It takes, I guess it takes a lot of love to stand marriage. Do you think you have enough? In the moonlight her face changed like her opal ring when the cream becomes pink and the pink red. I think there is, she said. Then, oh, Mary-Carrie, why are you such a strange, strange child? And she threw her arms around me and kissed me twenty times. After a while, after we'd talked and talked, and they'd told me things and I'd told them things, I said I'd consent. But if the love ever gives out, I'm not going to stay with you, I said. I'm never going to be fashionable and not care for love. A home without it is hell. Mercy, Mary! Uncle Park jumped. Don't use such strong language. It isn't nice. But it's true. I read it in a book and I've watched the Rises. When there's love enough, you can stand anything. When there isn't, you can stand nothing. Living together every day you find out a lot you didn't know and love can't keep still. It's got to grow or die. Then I jumped up. I always could talk a lot about things I didn't understand, I said. But I consent. And I flew down the road and left them. I've written it out on a piece of paper about their being engaged, and looked at it by night and by day since they told me about it. I've said it low and I've said it loud, but I can't realize it. And the little sense the Lord gave me he has taken away. They say I did it. Say I'm responsible for every bit of it, and that I will have to look after them all the rest of their lives to see that I didn't make a mistake in writing that letter. And that I'm to go to Europe with them on their wedding tour and live with them always and always. And, oh, I believe my heart is going to burst with miserable happiness and happy miserableness. And my head feels like it's in a bag. Dr. Park Alden and Ms. Catherine Trent are the two nicest people on earth, and the two I love best. But I don't think they know all the time what they are doing and saying. They are that in love they don't see but one side, the happy side. And they think I am going to leave this place with a skip and a jump and run along by them, third person, single number, and not know I'm in the way. They won't even listen when I tell them I don't know what I'm going to do. I know what I want to do. Everything in me gets into shivering trembleness when I think I could go to Europe with them on their wedding trip. Think of it, Mary Carey could go to E-U-R-O-P-E. They've invited me and say I'm to go because I'm never to leave them any more, and they want me. But it isn't so. Mary tries to believe it's so, but Martha knows it isn't. They think they think they want me, but they don't. Nobody wants an outsider on a wedding tour, and I'm not going. I can't help it. Come on, tears. Even angels sometimes cry aloud, and not being a step relation to one. I'm going to let Mary cry if she wants to. Sometimes Martha is real hard on Mary. There is no use studying human nature. You can't study a thing that changes by day and by night, and is so uncertain you never know what it is going to do. Now here is Mary Carey, mostly Martha, who would rather get on a train or a boat and go somewhere, she don't care where, than to do any other thing on earth, who has never seen anything and wants to see everything, and who, if anyone had told her a year ago she could go to New York and then to Europe, would have slid down every flight of stairs head foremost from pure joy. And now she has the chance she is not going. She is not. She hasn't much sense, Mary Carey hasn't, but enough to know wedding trips are personal. And besides, the girls have turned into regular weepers. Every time anything is said about going away, their eyes water up, and Martha feels like a yellow dog with no tail. I know they hate Miss Catherine's going, but why do they cry about my going? Lord this is a strange place to live in this world is. I wonder what heaven will be like. Miss Bray is much better. She says Uncle Park has cured her. I don't believe it. I believe it was relief of the mind. I wasn't meant to be a sad person. I was silly sad the other day. But I found out when anything bothers you very much, it helps to take it out and look at it. Walk all around it. Poke it and see if it's sure enough. And if it isn't, tell it you'll see it dead before you'll let it do you that way. That's what I did with what was making me doleful. And now I'm all right again. It was because I did want to go to Europe awful. And it twisted my heart like a machine had it when I turned my back on the chance. And then, too, it was because the girls begged me so not to go away for good that I got so worried. They said it wouldn't be the same if I wasn't here. And though they didn't blame me, they begged me so not to go that I got as addled as the old black hen that hatched ducks. Now did you ever hear of such a thing? As if it really mattered where Mary Carrie lived. I didn't know anybody truly cared. And finding out made me light in the head. But I know that's just passing. They're caring, I mean. I'm much obliged. But they'll forget it in a little while. And I will be just a memory. I hope it will be bright. There's so much dark, you can't help that a brightness is real enjoyable. They say what you look for you see. And what you want to forget you mustn't remember. There are a lot of things about my orphan life I'm going to try to forget. But there are some that for the sake of sense, and in case of heirs, I had better bear in mind. I guess Martha will see to those. Whenever Mary gives signs of soaring, Martha brings her straight back to earth. Martha doesn't care for soars. And she has a terrible bad habit of letting them know she don't. Yorkburgh hasn't settled down yet, and is still hanging on to the last remnants of the surprise about Uncle Park's coming, and about his marriage to Miss Catherine, and my going away. Of course Miss Amelia Coakland wanted to know if he'd made the asylum a present, and how much. At first nobody would tell her. She's got such a ripping curiosity that there isn't a sneeze-sneezed in Yorkburgh, or a cake-baked, or a door shut that she doesn't want to know why. But maybe she can't help it. Some people are natural inquirers, and that's the way she makes her living telling the news. She used to work buttonholes, but since she can't see good, she just spends the day out and tells all she hears. Nobody really likes her, but her tongue is too sharp to fool with. To keep from being talked about, everybody pretends to be friendly. I don't. She shook her finger at me once because I wouldn't tell her what was in Miss Catherine's letter the first time she went away, and since then she's never noticed me until Uncle Park came. Now every time I see her she's awful pleasant, and tries to make me talk. But a finger once shook his shook. I don't talk. But Uncle Park did make the asylum a present. He didn't tell me, neither did Miss Catherine, and I don't think he wanted anybody but the board-ladies to know. But of course they couldn't keep it secret. They told their husbands, and that meant the town. Nothing but a dead man could keep from talking about money. It must have been a lot he gave, for Peeley Duke told me. She heard Mrs. Carr and Mrs. Dent talking about it. The day she took some apple jelly from Miss Jones over to little Jesse Carr, who was sick. He could have kept her at a fashionable boarding school from the day she was born until now for the sum he's turned over to the board, said Mrs. Carr, and her eyes, which are the beaming kind, just danced, Peeley said. Well, he ought to, granted Mrs. Dent, who talks like her tongue was down her throat. He ought to. We've been taking care of the child for almost ten years. I hear he wants the house put in good condition, a new dining room and kitchen built, and four bathrooms. The rest is to go to the endowment. I think more ought to go to the endowment and less for these luxuries. I don't approve of them. An orphan asylum is not a hotel. No, but it ought to be a home, if possible, said Mrs. Carr, and Peeley said she looked at Mrs. Dent like she wondered how under heaven her husband stood her all the time. I certainly am glad to know I'm paid for. Someday, when I'm grown and earning my own living, before I marry my children's father, I am going to give as much as I can of that money back to Uncle Park. Of course, that will be some time off. And until then, I'll just have to try to be a nice person. Miss Catherine says a whole lot of people would pay a big price to have a nice person in the house with them. One of those cheerful sunshiney kind that helps and is encouraging, and gets up again when they fall down. As I can't earn money yet, I'm going to try to be something like that, so they won't be sorry I ever was born. Uncle Park and Miss Catherine won't. But isn't it strange, when the time comes for you to do a thing you are crazy to do, you wish it hadn't come? There have been days when I hated this asylum. I felt at times that I was just one of the numbers of the multiplication table, and in all my life I'd never be anything else. And I'd almost sweep the bricks up out of the yard. I'd be so mad to think I was nothing and nobody. I wanted to be something and somebody. I didn't want to die and be forgotten. I would have liked to sit on St. John's church steeple and have everybody look at me and say, That's Mary Kerry. She's great and rich and gives away lots of money and sings like an angel. That's what I once would have liked. But I've learned a few things since I didn't know then. One is that high places are lonely and hard and uncomfortable, and people who have sat on them have sometimes wished they didn't. Miss Catherine told me that herself. Also that the place you're in is pretty near what you're fitted to fill. Otherwise you'd get out and fill another. I've given up steeples and superiorities. But I'm glad I'm not going to be an orphan, just an orphan, all my life. I'm glad. Still, when I think of going away and leaving everybody and everything, the old pump where I drowned my first little chicken washing it, and the old mulberry tree where my first doll was buried, and the garret where I made up ghost stories for the girls on rainy days, and the schoolroom, and even number four. When I think of these things, I could be like that man in the Bible. I believe it was David, but it might have been Jonah. I could lift up my voice and weep. But I'm not going to. Weepers are in nuisance. I guess that's the way with life, though. When things are going, you try to hold them back. And if you got them, you'd maybe wish you hadn't. That's the way Mrs. Gaines did when her husband died. I mean, when he didn't die that first time. She thought he was going to, and so did everybody else. He had fright's disease, and it affected his heart, being libel to take him off any time, and Mrs. Gaines just carried on terrible. She had faintings and hysterics, and said she couldn't live without him, though everybody in Yorkburg knew she could, and easy enough. He without her, too, had she gone first. She had asthma and an outbreaking temper, and he drank. Mrs. Mosby, she's the doctor's wife, said she didn't blame him. No man could stand Mrs. Gaines all the time without something to help. And everybody hoped when he got so ill that he'd die and have a little rest. But he didn't. He got better. Mrs. Gaines was so surprised she was downright disagreeable about it, and how he stood it was a wonder. He didn't long. For the next summer he was dead sure enough, and Mrs. Gaines put on the longest crepe veil ever seen in the South, she said. It touched the hem of her skirt in front and behind, but she cut it in half after everybody had seen it often enough to know how long it was. If Augustus Gaines thought she was going to ruin her eyes and choke her lungs by wearing unhealthy crepe over her face, he thought wrong, she said, and in a few months it was gone, and she was gay as a girl. She's what they call a character Mrs. Gaines is. I don't want to be like her. And I don't expect to do any groaning over leaving Yorkburg. I want to live with Uncle Park and Miss Catherine, and I'm going to. But it's strange how many happy things hurt. CHAPTER 15. A REAL WEDDING. It looks as if everybody who knows Miss Catherine wants her to be married from their house. Her brothers want her to be married from theirs. Her aunt, Mrs. Powett and Bloodgood, who lives in Loudoun County, and whose husband is as rich as a real lord, begs her to be married in hers. And everybody in Yorkburg, I mean the coat of arms everybody's, has invited her to have the wedding in their home. But she just smiles and says no to them all. Says she is going to be married from her house, which is the orphan asylum, though the ceremony will be at the church. It's going to be in the morning at twelve o'clock, so they can take the two o'clock train for Richmond and go on to New York. Miss Catherine wants it to be quiet, but it can't be quiet. There's nothing on human legs that can use them, who won't be at the church to see that wedding take place. Everybody has been paying her a lot of attention of late. It's real strange what a difference a man makes in a marriage, even if he hasn't noticed much in person at the time. If he's rich and prominent, everybody is so pleasant and sociable you'd think they were real intimate. If he's just good and poor, few take notice. When Miss Vicky Toons married Mr. Joe Blake, they didn't get hardly any presents. They had a lot of dead relations who used to be rich and haughty, but their living ones are as poor as the people they didn't use to know, and hardly anybody gave them anything handsome. Miss Catherine's presents are just amazing, and my eyes are blistered by the shine of them. I didn't know before such things were in the world. People say Uncle Park has made a lot of money in some mines out west, besides being a doctor, and that he doesn't have to work. But a man who doesn't work hasn't any excuse for living, I heard him tell somebody, and maybe it's so, though I don't know. I don't know anything these days. I'm the shape and size of Mary Kerry, but I see and hear so many things I never saw and heard before, that I'd like to borrow a dog to see if he knows whether I am myself or somebody else. And another thing I'd like to find out is, how do other people know so much? Mrs. Philip Creekmore has a cousin whose wife's brother lives in the same place Uncle Park does, and Miss Amelia Coakland wrote out there and found out all about him. But it doesn't matter whether she truly knows anything or not. Miss Webb says she is like those fish scientists. Give her one bone, and she can tell you all the rest. She's had a grand time telling more things about Uncle Park than Miss Catherine will ever learn in this world. My dress is finished. I'm to be maiden of honor. There are no bridesmaids. Think of it. Me, Mary Kerry, once just flesh and blood mechanical. Now a living creature who is to wear a white Swiss dress and a sash with pink rose buds on it. And walk up the church aisle with my arms full of roses. And magnificent gloriousness, most beautiful of all. Every girl in this asylum is to have a white dress and a sash the color she likes best to wear to the wedding. That's my wedding gift to the girls. Uncle Park gave it to me. Miss Catherine's California brother and his wife have come. I don't like them. He looks bored to death and chews the end of his mustache till you wonder there's any left. As for her, she's the limit. Maybe that's what's the matter with him. She seems to be afraid some of us might touch her, and she stares as if we were figures in a china shop. No more says good morning than if we were. She wears seven rings on one hand and four on another. And rustles so when she walks. She sounds like a churner out of order. If she isn't a Bulgarian born, she's bought herself into being one. For she oozes money. It's the only thing you think of when she's around. You can actually smell it. I think Miss Catherine is sorry they came. She don't say it, of course. But plenty of things don't have to be said. Uncle Park came last night, bringing his best friend and some others. The best one is Dr. Wilwood. He's fine. He and I are going to come down the aisle together. I reach up to his elbow and he says he may put me in his pocket. I wish he would. I know I will be that frightened I'd be glad to get in it. He wants to know all about Yorkburg and the people, and today Miss Bray let me take him all around the town and show him the antiquities. He asked her. I had on the white dress Miss Catherine gave me last summer, and I looked real nice, for I had on my company manners, too. You see, he was from the West and had never been to Virginia before. And when a man comes such a long way, one ought to put on company manners and be extra polite. It wouldn't be right not to. I put mine on, and I guess I did do a lot of talking. I'm by nature a talker, just like I can't help skipping when my heart is happy and nothing hurts. I told him all about the places we came to and about who lived in them, except the Aldenhouse, which the Reagan's now possess. When we got there, he stopped in front of it. My, he said. That's a beautiful old place. Who's is it? Some people by the name of Reagan live there, I said. I don't know them. And I started on. I came near forgetting and saying, that is Aldenhouse, where my grandfather used to live. But I remembered in time. I don't acknowledge my grandfather. And I knew somebody else would tell him Uncle Park was born and lived there until he went West. We had a grand time. We stayed out over four hours and I forgot all about dinner. He didn't want to go in when I suddenly remembered and told him I must. And then he said I was going to take dinner with him at the Colonial. He'd asked Miss Bray, and it was alright. And that's what I did. Took dinner with him at the Colonial. I tell you, Mary Martha Carey had what you could truly call a time. And Dr. Wilwood said he never had enjoyed a morning in his life like that one. Laugh? I never heard a man laugh so hardy. Half the time I couldn't tell why. I'd be real serious. But he'd look at me and almost die laughing. I bet I said some things I oughtn't. But I don't remember. And I couldn't take them back if I did. It's over. The wedding is over. Everything is after a while in this life, even death. And time is the only thing that keeps on just the same. They're gone. Gone on their bridal tour. And the happiness that's left Yorkburg would run a family for a long life. I wish everybody could have seen that wedding. It's going to be long remembered, for the earth and sky and birds and flowers and trees and sunshine all took part. Everything tried to help. And as for blessings on them, they took away enough for the human race. But now it's over. I feel like my first balloon looked when I stuck a pin in it to see what would happen. I saw. I had a telegram from them today. It said, We sail at eleven o'clock. Love to all and hearts full for Mary Kerry. Uncle Park and Aunt Catherine. Well, she's my aunt now. That's fixed anyhow. And the marriage that fixed it was a beauty. Every bird in Yorkburg was singing. Every flower was blooming and every heart was blessing. And when those fifty-eight orphans walked in, all in white and two by two, every hand was dropping roses. And that is what each girl was wishing. Roses roses all her life. After the ushers I came in all alone by myself. That is, my shape did. Mary was really inside the altar looking at me coming up slow and easy. And Martha was ordering me to keep step to the music. All right, I'm doing my best, I was saying to both. And I was. But I was thankful when I got to where I could stop. For my legs were so excited, I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd turned and run out. Behind me came Miss Catherine on her army brother's arm. He's as nice as the other isn't. He hasn't got the money-making disease. When Uncle Park and Dr. Wilwood came out of the vestry room, Uncle Park gave me one look. Just one. But it was so understanding I winked back. And then he came farther down and stood by Miss Catherine, like she was his until kingdom come forever more. Amen. Then the minister began. And the music was so soft you could hear the birds outside. The breeze through the window blew right on Miss Catherine's veil. And I was so busy watching it, I didn't know the time had come to pray. And I hardly got my head bent before I had to take it up again. Then the minister was through. And I was walking down the aisle with Dr. Wilwood. And in just about two minutes more, we were back at the asylum and it was all over, the thing we'd been looking forward to so long. The asylum looked real nice that morning. There were bushels and bushels of flowers in it, for everybody in town who had any sent them. Flowers cover a multitude of poverties. The reception was grand. That California richness called it a breakfast, but that was pure style. Yorkburg don't have breakfast between twelve and one, and everybody else called it a reception. As for the people at it, there were more kinds than were ever in one dining room before, and every single one had a good time. Every one. You see, Miss Catherine, besides being who she was, was what she was. Having known a great deal about all sorts of people since being a nurse, and finding out that the plain and the fancy, the rich and the poor, those who've had a chance and those who haven't, are a heap more alike than people think. She said she was going to invite to her wedding whoever she wanted, and she did. There wasn't one invited who didn't come. The bent and the broken, the blind. That's true, for old Mr. Forbes is bent, and Mrs. Rose Hip was broken and she uses crutches, and Bobby Anderson is blind. And the old, that's the high-born coat of arms kind, and the new, that's the Regans and Hinchmans and some others, and Mr. Pinkert, the shoemaker, who she says is a gentleman if he don't remember his grandfather's name, and Miss Ginny Grant, who made her underclothes, all were there. All. It was a different wedding from any that was ever before in Yorkburg, and if any feelings were hurt, it was because they were trying to be. Some feelings are kept for that purpose. Of course Mrs. Christopher Pryor had remarks to make. When always was too independent, I heard her tell Miss Quiche Spence. But I don't believe in anything of the kind. If you once let people get out of the place they were born in, there'll be no doing anything with them. You mark me if this wedding don't make trouble. Some of these people will expect to be invited to my house next. And she took another helping of salad that was enough for three. She's an awful eater. Oh no, they won't, said Miss Quiche. They know better than to expect anything like that of you. And she gave me a little wink and walked off with Mr. Morris, who's her beau. I went off too. It isn't safe for Martha Carey to be too near Mrs. Pryor, for Mary never knows what she may do. And oh, you ought to have seen Miss Bray. She was stepsister to the Queen of Sheba. Solomon never had a wife a raid like she was on that twenty-seventh day of June. I believe she is engaged to Dr. Rudd. I really do. You see, after people got over teasing him about that make-believe wedding, he got to thinking about her. He's bound to know he isn't much of a man, and no young girl would have him. So lately he's been ambling round Miss Bray. If he can stand her, he'll do well to get her. She's a grand manager on little. He was at the wedding too. His beard was flowing her and redder, and the part in the back of his head shining her than ever. He had an elegant time. He was so full of himself you would have thought it was his own party. Uncle Park and Aunt Catherine have been on the ocean three days. I wonder if they are sick. I don't think I will go to Europe with my children's father. I was seasick once on land, and there wasn't a human being I even liked that day. It would be bad to find out so soon that the very sight of your husband makes you ill. After you know him better, you could tell him to go off somewhere. But at first I suppose you have to be polite. They were awful nice about wanting me to go with them, the bride and groom were. They said I had to, and they were so surprised when I said I couldn't that they didn't think I meant it. When they found out I did, they were dreadfully worried and didn't know what to do next. There wasn't anything to do, and here I am. Here I'm going to be too, until the first day of October, when they will be back and we will start for the West, from Michigan. I'm going to like Michigan. I've decided before I get there. I know there will be something to like. There always is in every place and every person, Miss Catherine says, if you just will see it instead of the all wrong. I was by nature born critical. There are a lot of things I don't like in this world, but there's no use in mentioning them. As for opinions, if they're not pleasant, they better be kept to yourself. I learned that early in life, and forget it every day. I'm going to try and think Michigan is a grand place, and next to Virginia the best to live in. They couldn't, couldn't expect me to think it was like Virginia. Perhaps after a while Uncle Park may come back. For over two hundred years his people have lived here, and sometimes I believe he feels just like that dog did, who had his call in him. The call of the place that the first dogs came from, that wild free place, and I think Uncle Park wants to come back, wants to be with his own people. But West is very convenient, though, Peggy Green says. She has an aunt who used to live out there, and she told her you could do as you choose in almost everything. If husbands and wives don't like each other, there was no trouble in getting new ones. They could get a divorce and marry somebody else. I wonder what a divorce is. We've never had one in Yorkburg, and I never knew until the other day that when you got married it wasn't really truly permanent. I thought it was forever and ever until death parted. The prayer book says so, and I thought it meant it. By the time I'm grown I guess I'll find a lot of things are said and not meant. Maybe when I find out I will be all the glatter to come back to Yorkburg, where people don't seem to know much about these new-fashioned things. Where they still believe in the old ones, and just live on and don't hurry, and are kind and polite and dear, if they are slow and queer and proud a little bit. It makes me have such a funny feeling in my throat when I think about going away. I'm trying not to think, but I do. Think all the time. I want this summer to be the happiest the children ever had. It's the last for me. That sounds consumptive, but I don't mean that way. I mean it's my last orphan summer. Of course I'm glad. Awful glad. But I'm so sorry the other children aren't going to. For them it's prunes and blue and white calico to look forward to until they're 18. Year in and year out, prunes and calico. But maybe it isn't. If Mary-Carrie will do her part, something nicer may happen. She doesn't know yet the way to make it happen, having nothing much to send back but love. Somebody says love finds the way. Oh, Mary-Carrie, you and love must find a way. The End. End of Chapter 15. Recording by Jan McGillivray. End of Mary-Carrie, Frequently Martha by Kate Langley-Bosher.