Mary Marie Part 1

Mary Marie.

by Eleanor H. Porter.

PREFACE

WHICH EXPLAINS THINGS

Father calls me Mary. Mother calls me Marie. Everybody else calls me Mary Marie. The rest of my name is Anderson.

I'm thirteen years old, and I'm a cross-current and a contradiction.

That is, Sarah says I'm that. (Sarah is my old nurse.) She says she read it once--that the children of unlikes were always a cross-current and a contradiction. And my father and mother are unlikes, and I'm the children. That is, I'm the child. I'm all there is. And now I'm going to be a bigger cross-current and contradiction than ever, for I'm going to live half the time with Mother and the other half with Father. Mother will go to Boston to live, and Father will stay here--a divorce, you know.

I'm terribly excited over it. None of the other girls have got a divorce in their families, and I always did like to be different.

Besides, it ought to be awfully interesting, more so than just living along, common, with your father and mother in the same house all the time--especially if it's been anything like my house with my father and mother in it!

That's why I've decided to make a book of it--that is, it really will be a book, only I shall have to call it a diary, on account of Father, you know. Won't it be funny when I don't have to do things on account of Father? And I won't, of course, the six months I'm living with Mother in Boston. But, oh, my!--the six months I'm living here with him--whew! But, then, I can stand it. I may even like it--some.

Anyhow, it'll be _different_. And that's something.

Well, about making this into a book. As I started to say, he wouldn't let me. I know he wouldn't. He says novels are a silly waste of time, if not absolutely wicked. But, a diary--oh, he loves diaries! He keeps one himself, and he told me it would be an excellent and instructive discipline for me to do it, too--set down the weather and what I did every day.

The weather and what I did every day, indeed! Lovely reading that would make, wouldn't it? Like this:

"The sun shines this morning. I got up, ate my breakfast, went to school, came home, ate my dinner, played one hour over to Carrie Heywood's, practiced on the piano one hour, studied another hour.

Talked with Mother upstairs in her room about the sunset and the snow on the trees. Ate my supper. Was talked _to_ by Father down in the library about improving myself and taking care not to be light-minded and frivolous. (He meant like Mother, only he didn't say it right out loud. You don't have to say some things right out in plain words, you know.) Then I went to bed."

Just as if I was going to write my novel like that! Not much I am. But I shall call it a diary. Oh, yes, I shall call it a diary--till I take it to be printed. Then I shall give it its true name--a novel. And I'm going to tell the printer that I've left it for him to make the spelling right, and put in all those tiresome little commas and periods and question marks that everybody seems to make such a fuss about. If I write the story part, I can't be expected to be bothered with looking up how words are spelt, every five minutes, nor fussing over putting in a whole lot of foolish little dots and dashes.

As if anybody who was reading the story cared for that part! The story's the thing.

I love stories. I've written lots of them for the girls, too--little short ones, I mean; not a long one like this is going to be, of course. And it'll be so exciting to be living a story instead of reading it--only when you're _living_ a story you can't peek over to the back to see how it's all coming out. I shan't like that part.

Still, it may be all the more exciting, after all, _not_ to know what's coming.

I like love stories the best. Father's got--oh, lots of books in the library, and I've read stacks of them, even some of the stupid old histories and biographies. I had to read them when there wasn't anything else to read. But there weren't many love stories. Mother's got a few, though--lovely ones--and some books of poetry, on the little shelf in her room. But I read all those ages ago.

That's why I'm so thrilled over this new one--the one I'm living, I mean. For of course this will be a love story. There'll be _my_ love story in two or three years, when I grow up, and while I'm waiting there's Father's and Mother's.

Nurse Sarah says that when you're divorced you're free, just like you were before you were married, and that sometimes they marry again.

That made me think right away: what if Father or Mother, or both of them, married again? And I should be there to see it, and the courting, and all! Wouldn't that be some love story? Well, I just guess!

And only think how all the girls would envy me--and they just living along their humdrum, everyday existence with fathers and mothers already married and living together, and nothing exciting to look forward to. For really, you know, when you come right down to it, there _aren't_ many girls that have got the chance I've got.

And so that's why I've decided to write it into a book. Oh, yes, I know I'm young--only thirteen. But I _feel_ really awfully old; and you know a woman is as old as she feels. Besides, Nurse Sarah says I am old for my age, and that it's no wonder, the kind of a life I've lived.

And maybe that is so. For of course it _has_ been different, living with a father and mother that are getting ready to be divorced from what it would have been living with the loving, happy-ever-after kind.

Nurse Sarah says it's a shame and a pity, and that it's the children that always suffer. But I'm not suffering--not a mite. I'm just enjoying it. It's so exciting.

Of course if I was going to lose either one, it would be different.

But I'm not, for I am to live with Mother six months, then with Father.

So I still have them both. And, really, when you come right down to it, I'd _rather_ take them separate that way. Why, separate they're just perfectly all right, like that--that--what-do-you-call-it powder?--sedlitzer, or something like that. Anyhow, it's that white powder that you mix in two gla.s.ses, and that looks just like water till you put them together. And then, oh, my! such a fuss and fizz and splutter! Well, it's that way with Father and Mother. It'll be lots easier to take them separate, I know. For now I can be Mary six months, then Marie six months, and not try to be them both all at once, with maybe only five minutes between them.

And I think I shall love both Father and Mother better separate, too.

Of course I love Mother, and I know I'd just adore Father if he'd let me--he's so tall and fine and splendid, when he's out among folks.

All the girls are simply crazy over him. And I am, too. Only, at home--well, it's so hard to be Mary always. And you see, he named me Mary--

But I mustn't tell that here. That's part of the story, and this is only the Preface. I'm going to begin it to-morrow--the real story--Chapter One.

But, there--I mustn't call it a "chapter" out loud. Diaries don't have chapters, and this is a diary. I mustn't forget that it's a diary.

But I can write it down as a chapter, for it's _going to be_ a novel, after it's got done being a diary.

CHAPTER I

I AM BORN

The sun was slowly setting in the west, casting golden beams of light into the somber old room.

That's the way it ought to begin, I know, and I'd like to do it, but I can't. I'm beginning with my being born, of course, and Nurse Sarah says the sun wasn't shining at all. It was night and the stars were out. She remembers particularly about the stars, for Father was in the observatory, and couldn't be disturbed. (We never disturb Father when he's there, you know.) And so he didn't even know he had a daughter until the next morning when he came out to breakfast. And he was late to that, for he stopped to write down something he had found out about one of the consternations in the night.

He's always finding out _something_ about those old stars just when we want him to pay attention to something else. And, oh, I forgot to say that I know it is "constellation," and not "consternation." But I used to call them that when I was a little girl, and Mother said it was a good name for them, anyway, for they were a consternation to _her_ all right. Oh, she said right off afterward that she didn't mean that, and that I must forget she said it. Mother's always saying that about things she says.

Well, as I was saying, Father didn't know until after breakfast that he had a little daughter. (We never tell him disturbing, exciting things just _before_ meals.) And then Nurse told him.

I asked what he said, and Nurse laughed and gave her funny little shrug to her shoulders.

"Yes, what did he say, indeed?" she retorted. "He frowned, looked kind of dazed, then muttered: 'Well, well, upon my soul! Yes, to be sure!'"

Then he came in to see me.

I don't know, of course, what he thought of me, but I guess he didn't think much of me, from what Nurse said. Of course I was very, very small, and I never yet saw a little bit of a baby that was pretty, or looked as if it was much account. So maybe you couldn't really blame him.

Nurse said he looked at me, muttered, "Well, well, upon my soul!"

again, and seemed really quite interested till they started to put me in his arms. Then he threw up both hands, backed off, and cried, "Oh, no, no!" He turned to Mother and hoped she was feeling pretty well, then he got out of the room just as quick as he could. And Nurse said that was the end of it, so far as paying any more attention to me was concerned for quite a while.

He was much more interested in his new star than he was in his new daughter. We were both born the same night, you see, and that star was lots more consequence than I was. But, then, that's Father all over.

And that's one of the things, I think, that bothers Mother. I heard her say once to Father that she didn't see why, when there were so many, many stars, a paltry one or two more need to be made such a fuss about. And _I_ don't, either.

But Father just groaned, and shook his head, and threw up his hands, and looked _so_ tired. And that's all he said. That's all he says lots of times. But it's enough. It's enough to make you feel so small and mean and insignificant as if you were just a little green worm crawling on the ground. Did you ever feel like a green worm crawling on the ground? It's not a pleasant feeling at all.

Well, now, about the name. Of course they had to begin to talk about naming me pretty soon; and Nurse said they did talk a lot. But they couldn't settle it. Nurse said that that was about the first thing that showed how teetotally utterly they were going to disagree about things.

Mother wanted to call me Viola, after her mother, and Father wanted to call me Abigail Jane after his mother; and they wouldn't either one give in to the other. Mother was sick and nervous, and cried a lot those days, and she used to sob out that if they thought they were going to name her darling little baby that awful Abigail Jane, they were very much mistaken; that she would never give her consent to it--never. Then Father would say in his cold, stern way: "Very well, then, you needn't. But neither shall I give my consent to my daughter's being named that absurd Viola. The child is a human being--not a fiddle in an orchestra!"