Mary Marie Part 29

I knew from the minute his eyes looked into mine that whatever I had been before, I was now certainly no mere "Oh, some friend of Helen's."

I was (so his eyes said) "a deucedly pretty girl, and one well worth cultivating." Whereupon he began at once to do the "cultivating."

And just here, perversely enough, I grew indifferent. Or was it only feigned--not consciously, but unconsciously? Whatever it was, it did not endure long. Nothing could have endured, under the circ.u.mstances.

Nothing ever endures--with Jerry on the other side.

In less than thirty-six hours I was caught up in the whirlwind of his wooing, and would not have escaped it if I could.

When I went back to college he held my promise that if he could gain the consent of Father and Mother, he might put the engagement ring on my finger.

Back at college, alone in my own room, I drew a long breath, and began to think. It was the first chance I had had, for even Helen now had become Jerry--by reflection.

The more I thought, the more frightened, dismayed, and despairing I became. In the clear light of calm, sane reasoning, it was all so absurd, so impossible! What could I have been thinking of?

Of Jerry, of course.

With hot cheeks I answered my own question. And even the thought of him then cast the spell of his presence about me, and again I was back in the whirl of dining and dancing and motoring, with his dear face at my side. Of Jerry; yes, of Jerry I was thinking. But I must forget Jerry.

I pictured Jerry in Andersonville, in my own home. I tried to picture him talking to Father, to Mother.

Absurd! What had Jerry to do with learned treatises on stars, or with the humdrum, everyday life of a stupid small town? For that matter, what had Father and Mother to do with dancing and motoring and painting society queens' portraits? Nothing.

Plainly, even if Jerry, for the sake of the daughter, liked Father and Mother, Father and Mother certainly would not like Jerry. That was certain.

Of course I cried myself to sleep that night. That was to be expected.

Jerry was the world; and the world was lost. There was nothing left except, perhaps, a few remnants and pieces, scarcely worth the counting--excepting, of course, Father and Mother. But one could not always have one's father and mother. There would come a time when--

Jerry's letter came the next day--by special delivery. He had gone straight home from the station and begun to write to me. (How like Jerry that was--particularly the special-delivery stamp!) The most of his letter, aside from the usual lover's rhapsodies, had to do with plans for the summer--what we would do together at the Westons'

summer cottage in Newport. He said he should run up to Andersonville early--very early; just as soon as I was back from college, in fact, so that he might meet Father and Mother, and put that ring on my finger.

And while I read the letter, I just knew he would do it. Why, I could even see the sparkle of the ring on my finger. But in five minutes after the letter was folded and put away, I knew, with equal cert.i.tude--that he wouldn't.

It was like that all that spring term. While under the spell of the letters, as I read them, I saw myself the adored wife of Jerry Weston, and happy ever after. All the rest of the time I knew myself to be plain Mary Marie Anderson, forever lonely and desolate.

I had been at home exactly eight hours when a telegram from Jerry asked permission to come at once.

As gently as I could I broke the news to Father and Mother. He was Helen's brother. They must have heard me mention him, I knew him well, very well, indeed. In fact, the purpose of this visit was to ask them for the hand of their daughter.

Father frowned and scolded, and said, "Tut, tut!" and that I was nothing but a child. But Mother smiled and shook her head, even while she sighed, and reminded him that I was twenty--two whole years older than she was when she married him; though in the same breath she admitted that I _was_ young, and she certainly hoped I'd be willing to wait before I married, even if the young man was all that they could ask him to be.

Father was still a little rebellious, I think; but Mother--bless her dear sympathetic heart!--soon convinced him that they must at least consent to see this Gerald Weston. So I sent the wire inviting him to come.

More fearfully than ever then I awaited the meeting between my lover and my father and mother. With the Westons' mansion and manner of living in the glorified past, and the Anderson homestead, and _its_ manner of living, very much in the plain, unvarnished present, I trembled more than ever for the results of that meeting. Not that I believed Jerry would be sn.o.bbish enough to scorn our simplicity, but that there would be no common meeting-ground of congeniality.

I need not have worried--but I did not know Jerry then so well as I do now.

Jerry came--and he had not been five minutes in the house before it might easily have seemed that he had always been there. He _did_ know about stars; at least, he talked with Father about them, and so as to hold Father's interest, too. And he knew a lot about innumerable things in which Mother was interested. He stayed four days; and all the while he was there, I never so much as thought of ceremonious dress and dinners, and liveried butlers and footmen; nor did it once occur to me that our simple kitchen Nora, and Old John's son at the wheel of our one motorcar, were not beautifully and entirely adequate, so una.s.sumingly and so perfectly did Jerry unmistakably "fit in."

(There are no other words that so exactly express what I mean.) And in the end, even his charm and his triumph were so un.o.btrusively complete that I never thought of being surprised at the prompt capitulation of both Father and Mother.

Jerry had brought the ring. (Jerry always brings his "rings"--and he never fails to "put them on.") And he went back to New York with Mother's promise that I should visit them in July at their cottage in Newport.

They seemed like a dream--those four days--after he had gone; and I should have been tempted to doubt the whole thing had there not been the sparkle of the ring on my finger, and the frequent reference to Jerry on the lips of both Father and Mother.

They loved Jerry, both of them. Father said he was a fine, manly young fellow; and Mother said he was a dear boy, a very dear boy. Neither of them spoke much of his painting. Jerry himself had scarcely mentioned it to them, as I remembered, after he had gone.

I went to Newport in July. "The cottage," as I suspected, was twice as large and twice as pretentious as the New York residence; and it sported twice the number of servants. Once again I was caught in the whirl of dinners and dances and motoring, with the addition of tennis and bathing. And always, at my side, was Jerry, seemingly living only upon my lightest whim and fancy. He wished to paint my portrait; but there was no time, especially as my visit, in accordance with Mother's inexorable decision, was of only one week's duration.

But what a wonderful week that was! I seemed to be under a kind of spell. It was as if I were in a new world--a world such as no one had ever been in before. Oh, I knew, of course, that others had loved--but not as we loved. I was sure that no one had ever loved as we loved.

And it was so much more wonderful than anything I had ever dreamed of--this love of ours. Yet all my life since my early teens I had been thinking and planning and waiting for it--love. And now it had come--the real thing. The others--all the others had been shams and make-believes and counterfeits. To think that I ever thought those silly little episodes with Paul Mayhew and Freddy Small and Mr. Harold Hartshorn were love! Absurd! But now--

And so I walked and moved and breathed in this spell that had been cast upon me; and thought--little fool that I was!--that never had there been before, nor could there be again, a love quite so wonderful as ours.

At Newport Jerry decided that he wanted to be married right away. He didn't want to wait two more endless years until I was graduated. The idea of wasting all that valuable time when we might be together! And when there was really no reason for it, either--no reason at all!

I smiled to myself, even as I thrilled at his sweet insistence. I was pretty sure I knew two reasons--two very good reasons--why I could not marry before graduation. One reason was Father; the other reason was Mother. I hinted as much.

"Ho! Is that all?" He laughed and kissed me. "I'll run down and see them about it," he said jauntily.

I smiled again. I had no more idea that anything he could say would--

But I didn't know Jerry--_then_.

I had not been home from Newport a week when Jerry kept his promise and "ran down." And _he_ had not been there two days before Father and Mother admitted that, perhaps, after all, it would not be so bad an idea if I shouldn't graduate, but should be married instead.

And so I was married.

(Didn't I tell you that Jerry always brought his rings and put them on?)

And again I say, and so we were married.

But what did we know of each other?--the real other? True, we had danced together, been swimming together, dined together, played tennis together. But what did we really know of each other's whims and prejudices, opinions and personal habits and tastes? I knew, to a word, what Jerry would say about a sunset; and he knew, I fancy, what I would say about a dreamy waltz song. But we didn't either of us know what the other would say to a dinnerless home with the cook gone. We were leaving a good deal to be learned later on; but we didn't think of that. Love that is to last must be built upon the realization that troubles and trials and sorrows are sure to come, and that they must be borne together--if one back is not to break under the load. We were entering into a contract, not for a week, but, presumedly, for a lifetime--and a good deal may come to one in a lifetime--not all of it pleasant. We had been brought up in two distinctly different social environments, but we didn't stop to think of that. We liked the same sunsets, and the same make of car, and the same kind of ice-cream; and we looked into each other's eyes and _thought_ we knew the other--whereas we were really only seeing the mirrored reflection of ourselves.

And so we were married.

It was everything that was blissful and delightful, of course, at first. We were still eating the ice-cream and admiring the sunsets. I had forgotten that there were things other than sunsets and ice-cream, I suspect. I was not twenty-one, remember, and my feet fairly ached to dance. The whole world was a show. Music, lights, laughter--how I loved them all!

_Marie_, of course. Well, yes, I suspect Marie _was_ in the ascendancy about that time. But I never thought of it that way.

Then came the baby, Eunice, my little girl; and with one touch of her tiny, clinging fingers, the whole world of sham--the lights and music and glare and glitter just faded all away into nothingness, where it belonged. As if anything counted, with _her_ on the other side of the scales!

I found out then--oh, I found out lots of things. You see, it wasn't that way at all with Jerry. The lights and music and the glitter and the sham didn't fade away a mite, to him, when Eunice came. In fact, sometimes it seemed to me they just grew stronger, if anything.

He didn't like it because I couldn't go with him any more--to dances and things, I mean. He said the nurse could take care of Eunice. As if I'd leave my baby with any nurse that ever lived, for any old dance!

The idea! But Jerry went. At first he stayed with me; but the baby cried, and Jerry didn't like that. It made him irritable and nervous, until I was _glad_ to have him go. (Who wouldn't be, with his eternal repet.i.tion of "Mollie, _can't_ you stop that baby's crying?" As if that wasn't exactly what I was trying to do, as hard as ever I could!) But Jerry didn't see it that way. Jerry never did appreciate what a wonderful, glorious thing just being a father is.

I think it was at about this time that Jerry took up his painting again. I guess I have forgotten to mention that all through the first two years of our marriage, before the baby came, he just tended to me.

He never painted a single picture. But after Eunice came--

But, after all, what is the use of going over these last miserable years like this? Eunice is five now. Her father is the most popular portrait painter in the country, I am almost tempted to say that he is the most popular _man_, as well. All the old charm and magnetism are there. Sometimes I watch him (for, of course, I _do_ go out with him once in a while), and always I think of that first day I saw him at college. Brilliant, polished, witty--he still dominates every group of which he is a member. Men and women alike bow to his charm. (I'm glad it's not _only_ the women. Jerry isn't a bit of a flirt. I will say that much for him. At any rate, if he does flirt, he flirts just as desperately with old Judge Randlett as he does with the newest and prettiest _debutante_: with serene impartiality he bestows upon each the same glances, the same wit, the same adorable charm.) Praise, attention, applause, music, laughter, lights--they are the breath of life to him. Without them he would--But, there, he never _is_ without them, so I don't know what he would be.