Mary Cary Part 10

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

Everybody knew what this ball was going to cost. Knew the supper was coming from New York, with white waiters and kid gloves. And what Mrs.

Reagan and her daughters were going to wear. That their dresses had been made in Europe, and that Mrs. Hamner hadn't been invited, and that more money was coming to Yorkburg in the shape of one man than had ever been in it altogether before.

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

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

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

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

"But she's such a sn.o.b. 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 m.u.f.f to go. "She bought a pair of cream-colored kid gloves from Miss Patty, and she's going to wear them at that ball. You couldn't keep her away."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wish you could have seen her when she was dressed and all ready to go.

She had on a long, white satin dress, low neck and short sleeves, with little tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and no jewelry. And she looked so tall and beautiful, and so something I didn't have a name for, that I was afraid, and my heart beat so thick and fast I thought she'd hear.

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

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

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

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

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

XI

FINDING OUT

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miss Katherine has them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm like Miss Bray now. I'm counting on going to heaven. Otherwise it wouldn't make any difference who I was, as one more misery don't matter when you're swamped in miserableness. I suppose that's what h.e.l.l 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 b.u.t.ting in with questions no Mary on earth could answer.