Mary Minds Her Business Part 8

"If I'm going anywhere, I want to go to college--"

To college! A Spencer girl--or a Spicer--going to college! Miss Cordelia gasped. If Mary had been noticing, she might not have pursued her inspiration further, but her mind was running along a breathless panorama of Niagara Falls, Great Lakes, Chicago, the farms of the Middle West, Yellowstone Park, geysers, the Old Man of the Mountain, Aztec ruins, redwood forests, orange groves and at the end of the vista--like a statue at the end of a garden walk--she imagined a great democratic inst.i.tution of learning where one might conceivably be prepared to solve some of those problems which life seems to take such deep delight in presenting to us, with the grim command, "Not one step farther shall you go until you have answered this!"

"To college?" gasped Miss Cordelia.

"Yes," said Mary, still intent upon her panorama, "there's a good one in California. I'll look it up."

The more Mary thought of it, the fonder she grew of her idea--which is, I think, a human trait and true of nearly every one. It was in vain that her aunts argued with her, pointing out the social advantages which she would enjoy from attending Miss Parsons' School. Mary's objection was fundamental. She simply didn't care for those advantages. Indeed, she didn't regard them as advantages at all.

Helen did, though.

In her heart Helen had always longed to tread the stage of society--to her mind, a fairyland of wit and gallantry, masquerades and music, to say nothing of handsome young polo players and t.i.tled admirers from foreign sh.o.r.es--"big fools," all of them, as you can guess, when dazzled by the smiles of Youth and Beauty.

"Mary can go to California if she likes," said Helen at last, "but give me Miss Parsons' School."

And Mary did go to California, although I doubt if she would have gained her point if her father hadn't taken her part. For four years she attended the university by the Golden Gate, and every time she made the journey between the two oceans, sometimes accompanied by Miss Cordelia and sometimes by Miss Patty, she seemed to be a little more serene of glance, a little more tranquil of brow, as though one by one she were solving some of those problems which I have mentioned above.

Meanwhile Helen was in her glory at Miss Parsons'; and though the two aunts didn't confess it, they liked to sit and listen to her chatter of the girls whose friendship she was making, and to whose houses she was invited for the holidays.

When she was home, she sang s.n.a.t.c.hes from the operas, danced with imaginary partners, rehea.r.s.ed parts of private theatricals and dreamed of conquests. She had also learned the knack of dressing her hair which, when done in the grand manner, isn't far from being a talent. Pulled down on one side, with a pin or two adjusted, she was a dashing young d.u.c.h.ess who rode to hounds and made the old duke's eyes pop out. Or she could dip it over her ears, change a few pins again and--lo!--she was St. Cecilia seated at the organ, and b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

"She is quite pretty and very clever," said Miss Cordelia one day. "I think she will marry well."

"Do you think she's as pretty as Mary?" asked Miss Patty.

"My dear!" said Miss Cordelia with a look that said 'What a question you are asking!' "--is pretty in a way, of course," she said, "but there is something about our Mary--"

"I know," nodded Miss Patty. "Something you can't express--"

"The dear child," mused Miss Cordelia, looking out toward the west. "I wonder what she is doing this very moment!"

At that very moment, as it happened, Mary was in her room on the other side of the continent studying the manufacture of raisin fudge.

Theretofore she had made it too soft, or too sugary, but this time she was determined to have it right. Long ago she had made all the friends that her room would hold, and most of them were there. Some were listening to a girl in spectacles who was talking socialism, while a more frivolous group, perched on the bed, was arguing the question whether the perfect lover had a moustache or a clean-shaven lip.

"Money is cruel; it ought to be abolished," said the earnest girl in the spectacles. "Money is a millstone which the rich use to grind the poor.

You girls know it as well as I do."

Mary stirred away at the fudge.

"It's a good thing she doesn't know that I'm rich," she smiled to herself. "I wonder when I shall start grinding the poor!"

"And yet the world simply couldn't get along without the wage-earners,"

continued the young orator. "So all they have to do is strike--and strike--and keep on striking--and they can have everything they want--"

"So could the doctors," mused Mary to herself, stirring away at the fudge. "Imagine the doctors striking.... And so could the farmers.

Imagine the farmers striking for eight hours a day, and no work Sundays and holidays, and every Sat.u.r.day afternoon off...."

Dimly, vaguely, a troubled picture took shape in her mind. She stirred the fudge more reflectively than ever.

"I wonder if civil wars are started that way," she thought, "one cla.s.s setting out to show its power over another and gradually coming to blows.

Suppose--yes, suppose the women were to go on strike for eight hours a day, and as much money as the men, and Sat.u.r.day afternoons and Sundays off, and all the rest of it.... The world certainly couldn't get along without women. As Becky says, they would only have to strike--and strike--and keep on striking--and they could get everything they wanted--"

Although she didn't suspect it, she was so close to her destiny at that moment that she could have reached out her hand and touched it. But all unconsciously she continued to stir the fudge.

"I've always thought that women have a poor time of it compared with men," she nodded to herself. "Still, perhaps it's the way of the world, like ... like children have the measles ... and old folks have to wear gla.s.ses."

She put the pan on the sill to cool and stood there for a time, looking out at the campus, dreamy-eyed, half occupied with her own thoughts and half listening to the conversation behind her.

"There oughtn't to be any such thing as private property--"

"Why, Vera, if he kissed you in the dark, you couldn't tell whether he was a man or a girl--"

"--Everything should belong to the state--"

"--No, listen. Kiss me both ways, and then tell me which you think is the nicest--"

A squeal of laughter arose from the bed and, turning, Mary saw that one of the girls was holding the back of a toothbrush against her upper lip.

"Now," she mumbled, "this is with the moustache ... Kiss me hard ..."

"The greatest book in the world," continued the girl with the spectacles, "is Marx's book on Capital--"

Mary turned to the window again, more dreamy-eyed than ever.

"The greatest book in the world," she thought, "is the book of life....

Oh, if I could only write a few pages in it ... myself ...!"

CHAPTER X

Mary "came out" the winter after her graduation.

If she had been left to herself she would have dispensed with the ceremony quite as cheerfully as she had dispensed with Miss Parsons'

School for Young Ladies. But in the first place her aunts were adamant, and in the second place they were a.s.sisted by Helen. Helen hadn't been going to finishing school for nothing. She knew the value of a proper social introduction.

Indeed it was her secret ambition to outshine her cousin--an ambition which was at once divined by her two aunts. Whereupon they groomed Mary to such good purpose that I doubt if Society ever looked upon a lovelier debutante.

She was dressed in chiffon, wore the Spencer pearls, and carried herself with such unconscious charm that more than one who danced with her that night felt a rapping on the door of his heart and heard the voice of love exclaiming "Let me in!"

There was one young man in particular who showed her such attention that the matrons either smiled or frowned at each other. Even Miss Cordelia and Miss Patty were pleased, although of course they didn't show it for a moment. He was a handsome, lazy-looking young rascal when he first appeared on the scene, lounging against the doorway, drawling a little as he talked to his friends--evidently a lion, bored in advance with the whole proceeding and meaning to slip away as soon as he could. But when his eye fell on Mary, he stared at her un.o.bserved for nearly a minute and his ennui disappeared into thin air.

"What's the matter, Wally?" asked one of his friends.

"James," he solemnly replied, "I'm afraid it's something serious. I only hope it's catching." The next minute he was being introduced to Mary and was studying her card.

"Some of these I can't dance," she warned him.