Mary Minds Her Business Part 10

According to his custom Josiah breakfasted early and had gone to his den to look over his mail. Mary pa.s.sed gaily through the library, but it wasn't long before she was back at the dining room door, looking as though she had seen a ghost.

"Come--come and look," she choked. "Something--something terrible--"

Josiah sat, half collapsed, in his chair. Before him, on the desk, lay his mail. Some he had read. Some he would never, never read.

"He must have had a stroke," said Miss Cordelia, her arms around Mary; and looking at her brother she whispered, "I think something upset him."

When they had sent for the doctor and had taken Mary away, they returned to look over the letters which Josiah had opened as his last mortal act.

"I don't see anything in these that could have bothered him," said Miss Cordelia, fearfully looking.

"What's this?" asked Miss Patty, picking up an empty envelope from the floor.

It was post-marked "Rio de Janeiro" and the date showed that it had taken three weeks to make the journey.

"I have some recollection of that writing," said Miss Cordelia.

"So have I," said Miss Patty in a low voice, "but where's the letter?"

Again it was she who made the discovery.

"That must be it," she said. "His ash tray is cleaned out every morning."

It was a large, bra.s.s tray and in it was the char of a paper that had been burned. This ash still lay in its folds and across its surface, black on black, could be seen a few lines which resembled the close of a letter.

"Can you read it?" she asked.

Miss Cordelia bent over, and as a new angle of light struck the tray, the words became as legible as though they had just been written.

"I thought I knew the writing," whispered Miss Cordelia, and lowering her voice until her sister had to hang breathless upon the movement of her lips, she added "Oh, Patty ... We all thought he was dead ... No wonder it killed poor Josiah ..."

Their arms went around each other. Their glances met.

"I know," whispered Miss Patty, her lips suddenly gone dry, "....It was from Paul...!"

CHAPTER XI

For the first few months after her father's death, Mary's dreams seemed to fade into mist.

Between her and Josiah a bond of love had existed, stronger than either had suspected--and now that he was gone the world seemed unaccountably empty--and unaccountably cruel. As her father had gone, so must Aunt Cordelia and Aunt Patty some day surely go ... Yes, and even Mary herself must just as surely follow.

The immemorial doubt a.s.sailed her--that doubt which begins in helplessness and ends in despair. "What's the use?" she asked herself.

"We plan and work so hard--like children making things in the sand--and then Death comes along with a big wave and flattens everything out ...

like that ..."

But gradually her sense of balance began to return. One day she stood on the brink of the hill looking at the great factory below, and a calmer, surer feeling slowly swept over her.

"That's it," she thought. "The real things of life go on, no matter who dies, just as though nothing had happened. Take the first Josiah Spencer and look down there what he left behind him. Why, you might even say that he was alive today! And see what Washington left behind him--and Fulton, who invented the steamboat--and Morse who invented the telegraph. So it's silly to say 'What's the use?' Suppose Columbus had said it--or any of the others who have done great things in the world--"

It slowly came to her then, her doubts still lingering, how many are called, how few are chosen.

"That's the trouble," she said. "We can't all be Washingtons. We can't all do great things. And yet--an awful lot of people had to live so that Washington could be born when he was....

"His parents: that was two. And his grand-parents: he must have had four.

And his great grand-parents: eight of them....

"Why, it's like the problem of the horse-shoe nails," she continued in growing excitement. "In twenty-eight generations there must have been millions and millions of people who lived--just so George Washington could be born one day at Mt. Vernon--and grow up to make America free!

Yes, and every one of them was just as necessary as Washington himself, because if it hadn't been for every single one of them--we would never have had him!"

For a moment she seemed to be in touch with the infinite plan. Down the hill she saw a woman in a black dress, crossing the street.

"Mrs. Ridge going out for the day," thought Mary, recognizing the figure below. "Yes, and who knows? She may be a link in a chain which is leading straight down to some one who will be greater than Washington--greater than Shakespeare--greater than any man who ever lived...!" And her old dreams, her old visions beginning to return, she added with a sigh, "Oh, dear! I wish I could do something big and n.o.ble--so if all those millions who are back of me are watching, they'll feel proud of what I'm doing and nudge each other as if they were saying, 'You see? She's come at last.

That's us!'"

As you will realize, this last thought of Mary's suggested more than it told--as I believe great thoughts often do--but at least I think you'll be able to grasp the idea which she herself was groping after. At the same time you mustn't suppose that she was constantly going around dreaming, and trying to find expression for those vague strivings and yearnings which come to us all at different times in our lives, especially in the golden days of youth when the flood of ambition is rising high within us--or again in later years when we feel the tide will soon begin to turn, and we must make haste or it will be too late.

No, Mary had plenty of practical matters, too, to engage her attention and keep her feet on the earth.

For one thing there was Wally Cabot--he who had so lately serenaded Mary in the moonlight. But I'll tell you about him later.

Then the settlement of her father's estate kept coming up for action.

Judge Cutler and Mary's two aunts were the trustees--an arrangement which didn't please Uncle Stanley any too well, although he was careful not to show it. And the more Mary saw of the silvery haired judge with his hawk's eyes and gentle smile, the more she liked him.

One of the first things they discovered was that Mary's heritage consisted of the factory by the river--but little else. Practically all the bonds and investments that Josiah had ever owned had been sold for the greater glory of Spencer & Son--to buy in other firms and patents--to increase the factory by the river. As her father had once confided to Mary this had taken money--"a dreadful lot of money"--she remembered the wince with which he had spoken--and a safe deposit box which was nearly empty bore evidence to the truth of what he had said.

"High and low," mused the judge when the inventory was at last completed, "it's always the same. The millionaire and the mill-hand--somehow they always manage to leave less than every one expected--"

"Why is that?" asked Mary. "Is it because the heirs expect too much?"

"No, child. I think it's the result of pride. As a rule, man is a proud animal and he doesn't like to tell anything which doesn't redound to his credit. If a man buys bonds, for instance, he is very apt to mention it to his family. But if for any reason he has to sell those bonds, he will nearly always do it quietly and say nothing about it, hoping to buy them back again later, or something better yet--

"I've seen so many estates," he continued, "shrink into next to nothing--so many widows who thought they were well off, suddenly waking up and finding themselves at the mercy of the world--the little they have often being taken away from them by the first glib sharper who comes long--that I sometimes think every man should give his family a show-down once a year. It would surely save a lot of worries and heartaches later on--

"Still," he smiled, looking down at the inventory, with its n.o.ble line of figures at the bottom of the column, "I don't think you'll have much trouble in keeping the wolf from the door."

Mary turned the pages in a helpless sort of way.

"You'll have to explain some of this," she said at last. But before giving it back to him she looked out of the window for a time--one of her slow, thoughtful glances--and added, "I wonder why girls aren't brought up to know something about business--the way boys are."

"Perhaps it's because they have no head for business."

She thought that over.

"Can you speak French?" she suddenly asked.