Marcia Schuyler Part 34

She was standing with her back to the door looking out of the window toward her own home when Kate entered the room. Without turning about she felt Kate's presence and knew that it was she. The moment had come. She turned around, her face calm and sweet, with two red spots upon her cheeks, and her bonnet,-Kate's bonnet and shawl, Kate's fine lace shawl sent from Paris-grasped in her hands.

They faced each other, the sisters, and much was understood between them in a flash without a word spoken. Marcia suddenly saw herself standing there in Kate's rightful place, Kate's things in her hands, Kate's garments upon her body, Kate's husband held by her. It was as if Kate charged her with all these things, as she looked her through and over, from her slipper tips to the ruffle around the neck. And oh, the scorn that flamed from Kate's eyes playing over her, and scorching her cheeks into crimson, and burning her lips dry and stiff! And yet when Kate's eyes reached her face and charged her with the supreme offense of taking David from her, Marcia's eyes looked bravely back, and were not burned by the fire, and she felt that her soul was not even scorched by it. Something about the thought of David like an angelic presence seemed to save her.

The silence between them was so intense that nothing else could be heard by the two. The voices below were drowned by it, the footstep on the stair was as if it were not.

At last Kate spoke, angered still more by her sister's soft eyes which gazed steadily back and did not droop before her own flas.h.i.+ng onslaught.

Her voice was cold and cruel. There was nothing sisterly in it, nothing to remind either that the other had ever been beloved.

"Fool!" hissed Kate. "Silly fool! Did you think you could steal a husband as you stole your clothes? Did you suppose marrying David would make him yours, as putting on my clothes seemed to make them yours? Well I can tell you he will never be a husband to you. He doesn't love you and he never can. He will always love me. He's as much mine as if I had married him, in spite of all your attempts to take him. Oh, you needn't put up your baby mouth and pucker it as if you were going to cry. Cry away. It won't do any good. You can't make a man yours, any more than you can make somebody's clothes yours. They don't fit you any more than he does. You look horrid in blue, and you know it, in spite of all your prinking around and pretending. I'd be ashamed to be tricked out that way and know that every dud I had was made for somebody else. As for going around and pretending you have a husband-it's a lie. You know he's nothing to you. You know he never told you he cared for you. I tell you he's mine, and he always will be."

"Kate, you're married!" cried Marcia in shocked tones. "How can you talk like that?"

"Married! Nonsense! What difference does that make? It's hearts that count, not marriages. Has your marriage made you a wife? Answer me that!

Has it? Does David love you? Does he ever kiss you? Yet he came to see me in New York this winter, and took me in his arms and kissed me. He gave me money too. See this brooch?"-she exhibited a jeweled pin-"that was bought with his money. You see he loves me still. I could bring him to my feet with a word to-day. He would kiss me if I asked him. He is weak as water in my hands."

Marcia's cheeks burned with shame and anger. Almost she felt at the limit of her strength. For the first time in her life she felt like striking,-striking her own sister. Horrified over her feelings, and the rage which was tearing her soul, she looked up, and there stood David in the doorway, like some tall avenging angel!

Kate had her back that way and did not see at once, but Marcia's eyes rested on him hungrily, pleadingly, and his answered hers. From her sudden calmness Kate saw there was some one near, and turning, looked at David.

But he did not glance her way. How much or how little he had heard of Kate's tirade, which in her pa.s.sion had been keyed in a high voice, he never let them know and neither dared to ask him, lest perhaps he had not heard anything. There was a light of steel in his eyes toward everything but Marcia, and his tone had in it kindness and a recognition of mutual understanding as he said:

"If you are ready we had better go now, dear, had we not?"

Oh how gladly Marcia followed her husband down the stairs and out the door! She scarcely knew how she went through the formalities of getting away. It seemed as she looked back upon them that David had sheltered her from it all, and said everything needful for her, and all she had done was to smile an a.s.sent. He talked calmly to her all the way home; told her Mr.

Brentwood's opinion about the change in the commerce of the country the new railroad was going to make; told her though he must have known she could not listen. Perhaps both were conscious of the bedroom window over the way and a pair of blue eyes that might be watching them as they pa.s.sed into the house. David took hold of her arm and helped her up the steps of their own home as if she had been some great lady. Marcia wondered if Kate saw that. In her heart she blessed David for this outward sign of their relations.h.i.+p. It gave her shame a little cover at least. She glanced up toward the next house as she pa.s.sed in and felt sure she saw a glimmer of purple move away from the window. Then David shut the door behind them and led her gently in.

CHAPTER XXVII

He made her go into the parlor and sit down and she was all unnerved by his gentle ways. The tears would come in spite of her. He took his own fine wedding handkerchief and wiped them softly off her hot cheeks. He untied the bonnet that was not hers, and flung it far into a corner in the room. Marcia thought he put force into the fling. Then he unfolded the shawl from her shoulders and threw that into another corner. Kate's beautiful thread lace shawl. Marcia felt a hysterical desire to laugh, but David's voice was steady and quiet when he spoke as one might speak to a little child in trouble.

"There now, dear," he said. He had never called her dear before. "There, that was an ordeal, and I'm glad, it's over. It will never trouble us that way again. Let us put it aside and never think about it any more. We have our own lives to live. I want you to go with me to-morrow morning to see the train start if you feel able. We must start early and you must take a good rest. Would you like to go?"

Marcia's face like a radiant rainbow answered for her as she smiled behind her tears, and all the while he talked David's hand, as tender as a woman's, was pa.s.sing back and forth on Marcia's hot forehead and smoothing the hair. He talked on quietly to soothe her, and give her a chance to regain her composure, speaking of a few necessary arrangements for the morning's ride. Then he said, still in his quiet voice: "Now dear, I want you to go to bed, for we must start rather early, but first do you think you could sing me that little song you were singing the day I came home?

Don't if you feel too tired, you know."

Then Marcia, an eager light in her eyes, sprang up and went to the piano, and began to play softly and sing the tender words she had sung once before when he was listening and she knew it not.

"Dearest, believe, When e'er we part: Lonely I grieve, In my sad heart:-"

Kate, standing within the chintz curtains across the yard shedding angry tears upon her purple silk, heard presently the sweet tones of the piano, which might have been hers; heard her sister's voice singing, and began to understand that she must bear the punishment of her own rash deeds.

The room had grown from a purple dusk into quiet darkness while Marcia was singing, for the sun was almost down when they walked home. When the song was finished David stood half wistfully looking at Marcia for a moment.

Her eyes shone to his through the dusk like two bright stars. He hesitated as though he wanted to say something more, and then thought better of it.

At last he stooped and lifted her hand from the keys and led her toward the door.

"You must go to sleep at once," he said gently. "You'll need all the rest you can get." He lighted a candle for her and said good-night with his eyes as well as his lips. Marcia felt that she was moving up the stairs under a spell of some gentle loving power that surrounded her and would always guard her.

And it was about this time that Miranda, having been sent over to take a forgotten piece of bride's cake to Marcia, and having heard the piano, and stolen discreetly to the parlor window for a moment, returned and detailed for the delectation of that most unhappy guest Mrs. Leavenworth why she could not get in and would have to take it over in the morning:

"The window was open in the parlor and they were in there, them two, but they was so plum took up with their two selves, as they always are, that there wasn't no use knockin' fer they'd never hev heard."

Miranda enjoyed making those remarks to the guest. Some keen instinct always told her where best to strike her blows.

When Marcia had reached the top stair she looked down and there was David smiling up to her.

"Marcia," said he in a tone that seemed half ashamed and half amused, "have you, any-that is-things-that you had before-all your own I mean?"

With quick intuition Marcia understood and her own sweet shame about her clothes that were not her own came back upon her with double force. She suddenly saw herself again standing before the censure of her sister. She wondered if David had heard. If not, how then did he know? Oh, the shame of it!

She sat down weakly upon the stair.

"Yes," said she, trying to think. "Some old things, and one frock."

"Wear it then to-morrow, dear," said David, in a compelling voice and with the sweet smile that took the hurt out of his most severe words.

Marcia smiled. "It is very plain," she said, "only chintz, pink and white.

I made it myself."

"Charming!" said David. "Wear it, dear. Marcia, one thing more. Don't wear any more things that don't belong to you. Not a Dud. Promise me? Can you get along without it?"

"Why, I guess so," said Marcia laughing joyfully. "I'll try to manage. But I haven't any bonnet. Nothing but a pink sunbonnet."

"All right, wear that," said David.

"It will look a little queer, won't it?" said Marcia doubtfully, and yet as if the idea expressed a certain freedom which was grateful to her.

"Never mind," said David. "Wear it. Don't wear any more of those other things. Pack them all up and send them where they belong, just as quick as we get home."

There was something masterful and delightful in David's voice, and Marcia with a happy laugh took her candle and got up saying, with a ring of joy in her voice: "All right!" She went to her room with David's second good-night ringing in her ears and her heart so light she wanted to sing.

Not at once did Marcia go to her bed. She set her candle upon the bureau and began to search wildly in a little old hair-cloth trunk, her own special old trunk that had contained her treasures and which had been sent her after she left home. She had scarcely looked into it since she came to the new home. It seemed as if her girlhood were shut up in it. Now she pulled it out from the closet.

What a flood of memories rushed over her as she opened it! There were relics of her school days, and of her little childhood. But she had no time for them now. She was in search of something. She touched them tenderly, but laid them all out one after another upon the floor until down in the lower corner she found a roll of soft white cloth. It contained a number of white garments, half a dozen perhaps in all, finished, and several others cut out barely begun. They were her own work, every st.i.tch, the first begun when she was quite a little girl, and her stepmother started to teach her to sew. What pride she had taken in them!

How pleased she had been when allowed to put real tucks in some of them!

She had thought as she sewed upon them at different times that they were to be a part of her own wedding trousseau. And then her wedding had come upon her unawares, with the trousseau ready-made, and everything belonged to some one else. She had folded her own poor little garments away and thought never to take them out again, for they seemed to belong to her dead self.

But now that dead self had suddenly come to life again. These hated things that she had worn for a year that were not hers were to be put away, and, pretty as they were, many of them, she regretted not a thread of them.

She laid the white garments out upon a chair and decided that she would put on what she needed of them on the morrow, even though they were rumpled with long lying away. She even searched out an old pair of her own stockings and laid them on a chair with the other things. They were neatly darned as all things had always been under her stepmother's supervision.

Further search brought a pair of partly worn prunella slippers to light, with narrow ankle ribbons.

Then Marcia took down the pink sprigged chintz that she had made a year ago and laid it near the other things, with a bit of black velvet and the quaint old brooch. She felt a little dubious about appearing on such a great occasion, almost in Albany, in a chintz dress and with no wrap.

Stay! There was the white crepe shawl, all her own, that David had brought her. She had not felt like wearing it to Hannah Heath's wedding, it seemed too precious to take near an unloving person like Hannah. Before that she had never felt an occasion great enough. Now she drew it forth breathlessly. A white crepe shawl and a pink calico sunbonnet! Marcia laughed softly. But then, what matter! David had said wear it.

All things were ready for the morrow now. There were even her white lace mitts that Aunt Polly in an unusual fit of benevolence had given her.