CHAPTER XX
Mary had a bad time of it the next few weeks. More than once her face seemed turned toward the Valley of the Shadow. But gradually health and strength returned, although it wasn't until April that she was anything like herself again.
She liked to sit—sometimes for hours at a time—reading, thinking, dreaming—and when she was strong enough to go outside she would walk among the flowers, and look at the birds and the budding trees, and draw deep breaths as she watched the glory of the sunset appearing and disappearing in the western sky.
Helen occasionally walked and sat with her—but not often. Helen's time was being more and more taken up by the younger set at the Country Club. She came home late, humming snatches of the latest dances and talking of the conquests she had made, telling Mary of the men who would dance with no one else, of the compliments they had paid her, of the things they had told her, of the competition to bring her home. One night, it appears, they had an old-fashioned country party at the club, and Helen was in high glee at the number of letters she had received in the game of post office.
"You mean to say they all kissed you?" asked Mary.
"You bet they did! Good and hard! That's what they were there for!"
Mary thought that over.
"It doesn't sound nice to me, somehow," she said at last. "It sounds—oh,
I don't know—common."
"That's what the girls thought who didn't get called," laughed Helen.
She arranged her hair in front of the mirror, pulling it down over her forehead till it looked like a golden turban. "Oh, who do you think was there tonight?" she suddenly interrupted herself.
Mary shook her head.
"Burdon Woodward—as handsome as ever. Yes, handsomer, I think, if he could be. He asked after you. I told him you were nearly better."
"Then he must be down at the factory every day," thought Mary. But the thought moved her only a little. Whether or not it was due to her illness, she seemed to have undergone a reaction in regard to the factory. Everything was going on well, Judge Cutler sometimes told her. As the men returned from service, the women were giving up their places.
"Whatever you do," he always concluded, "don't begin worrying about things down there. If you do, you'll never get well."
"I'm not worrying," she told him, and once she added, "It seems ever so long ago, somehow—that time we had down there."
As the spring advanced, her thoughts took her further than ever from their old paths. Instead of thinking of something else (as she used to do), when Helen was telling of her love affairs, Mary began to listen to them—and even to sit up till Helen returned from the club. One night, as Helen was chatting of a young an from Boston who had teased her by following her around until every one was calling him "Helen's little lamb," Mary gradually became aware of an elusive scent in the room.
"Cigarettes," she thought, "and—and raspberry jam—!" She waited until her cousin paused for breath and then, "Did Burdon Woodward ride home with you tonight?" she asked.
"With Doris and me," nodded Helen, smiling at herself in the mirror. "He told us he went over with some of the boys, but he wanted to go home civilized."
Nothing more was said, but a few mornings later, as Helen sat at breakfast reading her mail, Mary was sure she recognized Burdon's dashing handwriting. A vague sense of uneasiness passed over her, but this was soon forgotten when she went to the den to look at her own mail.
On the top of the pile was a letter addressed to her father.
"Rio de Janeiro," breathed Mary, reading the post-mark. "Why, that's where the cable came from!"
She opened the letter…. It was signed "Paul."
"Dear Sir (it began)
"This isn't begging. I am through with that. When you paid no attention to my cable, I said, 'Never again!' You might like to know that I buried my wife and two youngest that time. It hurt then, but I can see now that they were lucky.
"I have one daughter left—twelve years old. She's just at the age when she ought to be looked after. This is her picture. She's a pretty girl, and a good girl, but fond of fun and good times.
"I've done my best, but I'm down and out—tired—through. I guess it's up to you what sort of a granddaughter you want. There's a school near here where she could go and be brought up right. It won't cost much. You can send the money direct—if you want the right sort of a granddaughter.
"If you want the other kind, all you have to do is to forget it. The crowd I go with aren't good for her.
"Anyway I enclose the card and rates and references of the school. You see they give the consuls' names.
"If you decide yes, you want your granddaughter to have a chance, write a letter to the name and address below. That's me. Then write the school, sending check for one year and say it is for the daughter of the name and address below. That is the name I am known by here.
"I'm sorry for everything, but of course it's too late now. The truest thing in the world is this: As you make your bed, so you've got to lie in it. I made mine wrong, but you couldn't help it. I wouldn't bother you now except for Rosa's sake.
"Your prodigal son who is eating husks now,
"PAUL."
Mary looked at the photograph—a pretty child with her hair over her shoulders and a smile in her eyes.
"You poor little thing," she breathed, "and to think you're my niece—and I'm your aunt … Aunt Mary," she thoughtfully repeated, and for the first time she realized that youth is not eternal and that years go swiftly by.
"Life's the strangest thing," she thought. "It's only a sort of an accident that I'm not in her place, and she's not in mine…. Perhaps I sha'n't have any children of my own—ever—" she dreamed, "and if I don't—it will be nice to think that I did something—for this one—"
For a moment the chill of caution went over her.
"Suppose it isn't really Paul," she thought. "Suppose—it's some sharper.
Perhaps that's why dad never wrote him—"
But an instinct, deeper than anything which the mind can express, told her that the letter rang true and had no false metal in it.
"Or suppose," she thought, "if he knows dad is dead—suppose he turns up and makes trouble for everybody—"
Wally's story returned to her memory. "There was an accident out West—somebody killed. Anyhow he was blamed for it—so he could never come back or they'd get him—"
"That agrees with his living under this Russian name," nodded Mary. "Anyhow, I'm sure there's nothing to fear in doing a good action—for a child like this—"
She propped the picture on her desk and after a great deal of dipping her pen in the ink, she finally began—
"Dear Sir:
"I have opened your letter to my father, Josiah Spencer. He has been dead three years. I am his daughter.
"It doesn't seem right that such a nice girl as Rosa shouldn't have every chance to grow up good and happy. So I am writing the school you mentioned, and sending them the money as you suggest.
"She will probably need some clothes, as they always look at a girl's clothes so when she goes to school. I therefore enclose something for that.
"Trusting that everything will turn out well, I am
"Yours sincerely,
"MARY SPENCER.
"P.S. I would like Rosa to write and tell me how she gets on at school."
She wrote the school next and when that was done she sat back in her chair and looked out of the window at the birds and the flowers and the bees that flew among the flowers.
"What a queer thing it is—love, or whatever they call it," she thought. "The things it has done to people—right in this house! I guess it's like fire—a good servant but a bad master—"
She thought of what it had done to Josiah—and to Josiah's son. She thought of what it had done to Ma'm Maynard, what it was doing to Helen, how it had left Aunt Cordelia and Aunt Patty untouched.
"It's like some sort of a fever," she told herself. "You never know whether you're going to catch it or not—or when you're going to catch, it—or what it's going to do to you—"
She walked to the window and rather unsteadily her hand arose to her breast.
"I wonder if I shall ever catch it…." she thought. "I wonder what it will do to me…!"