Mary Minds Her Business Part 13

He watched her for a time and, in truth, she was worth it. He looked at the colour of her cheeks, her dreamy eyes like pools of mystery, the crease in her chin (which he always wanted to kiss), the rise and fall of the pendant on her breast. He looked until he could look no longer and then he arose and leaned over the desk.

"Mary--!" he breathed, taking her hand.

"Now, please don't start that, Wally. We'll shake hands if you want to...

There! How are you? Now go back to your chair and be good."

"'Be good!'" he savagely echoed.

"Why, you want to be good; don't you?" she asked in surprise.

"I want you to love me. Mary; tell me you love me just a little bit; won't you?"

"I like you a whole lot--but when it comes to love--the way you mean--"

"It's the only thing in life that's worth a hang," he eagerly interrupted her. "The trouble is: you won't try it. You won't allow yourself to let go. I was like that once--thought it was nothing. But after I met you--!

Oh, girl, it's all roses and lilies--the only thing in the world, and don't you forget it! Come on in and give it a try!"

"It's not the only thing in the world," said Mary, shaking her head.

"That's the reason I don't want to come in: When a man marries, he goes right on with his life as though nothing had happened. That shows it's not the only thing with him. But when a woman marries--well, she simply surrenders her future and her independence. It may be right that she should, too, for all I know--but I'm going to try the other way first.

I'm going right on with my life, the same as a man does--and see what I get by it."

"How long are you going to try it, do you think?"

"Until I've found out whether love _is_ the only thing in a woman's life.

If I find that I can't do anything else--if I find that a girl can only be as bright as a man until she reaches the marrying age, and then she just naturally stands still while he just naturally goes forward--why, then, I'll put an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the paper 'Husband Wanted. Mary Spencer. Please apply.'"

"They'll apply over my dead body."

"You're a dear, good boy to say it. No, please, Wally, don't or I shall go upstairs. Now sit by the fire again--that's better--and smoke if you want to, and let me finish these papers."

They were for the greater part the odds and ends which acc.u.mulate in every desk. There were receipted bills, old insurance policies, letters that had once seemed worth prizing, catalogues of things that had never been bought, prospectuses, newspaper clippings, copies of old contracts.

And yet they had an interest, too--an interest partly historical, partly personal.

This merry letter, for instance, which Mary read and smiled over--who was the "Jack" who had written it? "Dead, perhaps, like dad," thought Mary.

Yes, dead perhaps, and all his fun and drollery suddenly fallen into silence and buried with him.

"Isn't life queer!" she thought. "Now why did he save this clipping?"

She read the clipping and enjoyed it. Wally, watching from his chair, saw the smile which pa.s.sed over her face.

"She'll warm up some day," he confidently told himself, with that bluntness of thought which comes to us all at times. "See how she flared up because I danced with Helen. Maybe if I made her jealous..."

At the desk Mary picked up another paper--an old cable. She read it, re-read it, and quietly folded it again; but for all her calmness the colour slowly mounted to her cheeks, as the recollection of odd words and phrases arose to her mind.

"Wally," she said in her quietest voice, "I'm going to ask you a question, but first you must promise to answer me truly."

"Cross my heart and hope to die!"

"Are you ready?"

"Quite ready."

"Then did you ever hear of any one in our family named Paul?"

"Y-yes--"

"Who was he?"

It was some time before he told the story, but trust a girl to make a man speak when she wishes it! He softened the recital in every possible way, but trust a girl again to read between the lines when she wants to!

"And didn't he ever come back?" she asked.

"No; you see he couldn't very well. There was an accident out West--somebody killed--anyhow, he was blamed for it. Queer, isn't it?" he broke off, trying to relieve the subject. "The Kaiser can start a war and kill millions. That's glory. But if some poor devil loses his head--"

Mary wasn't through yet.

"You say he's dead!" she asked.

"Oh, yes, years ago. He must have been dead--oh, let me see--about fifteen or twenty years, I guess."

"Poor dad!" thought Mary that night. "What he must have gone through!

I'll bet he didn't think that love was the only thing in life. And--that other one," she hesitated, "who was 'wild after the girls,' Wally says, and finally ran off with one--I'll bet he didn't think so, either--before he got through--to say nothing of the poor thing who went with him. But dead fifteen or twenty years--that's the queerest part."

She found the cable again. It was dated Rio Janeiro--

"G.o.ds sake cable two hundred dollars wife children sick desperate next week too late."

It was signed "Paul" and--the point to which Mary's attention was constantly returning--it wasn't fifteen or twenty years ago that this appeal had been received by her father.

The date of the cable was scarcely three years old.

CHAPTER XIV

For days Mary could think of little else, but as week followed week, her thoughts merged into memories--memories that were stored away and stirred in their hiding places less and less often.

"Dad knew best," she finally told herself. "He bore it in silence all those years, so it wouldn't worry me, and I'm not going to start now.

Perhaps--he's dead, too. Anyhow," she sternly repeated, "I'm not going to worry. I've seen enough of worry to start doing that."

Besides, she had too much else on her mind--"to start doing that."

As the war in Europe had progressed--America drawing nearer the crimson whirlpool with every pa.s.sing month--a Red Cross chapter was organized at New Bethel. Mary took active part in the work, and whenever visitors came to speak at the meetings, they seldom went away without being entertained at the house on the hill.

"I love to think of it," she told Aunt Patty one day. "The greatest organization of mercy ever known--and practically all women's work!

Doesn't that mean a lot to you, Aunt Patty? If women can do such wonderful things for the Red Cross, why can't they do wonderful things in other ways?"