The Making of Mary Part 2

"Don't be provoking, Dave! The poor little thing has the marks of some of her beatings on her yet. The Ferguson family were the first who ever treated her decently, or paid her any wages."

"Why did they drop her?"

"One of our Committee took it upon herself to write and ask them. They replied that the girl was of perfectly good character, so far as they knew, but she fell so ridiculously in love with Frank Ferguson, their eldest son, that she was making a nuisance of herself, and so they had to let her go."

I laughed.

"There are generally two sides to that kind of story."

"At the meeting of the trustees to-morrow it is to be decided what's to be done with her, because she says she doesn't want to go to school any more. She's never had much of a chance before to learn anything, and she's in a cla.s.s with little bits of girls, and she doesn't like it--says she'd rather go to work to earn her own living."

Belle came home from that meeting with her face ablaze with righteous wrath. Her hands trembled so much over the teacups at our evening meal that even sixteen year old Watty, our eldest son, remarked it.

"What's the matter with _mamma_? Her trolley's off."

I knew there was trouble in the wind, so I fortified myself with a good supper and read my paper at the same time, to leave myself free for what was to follow. The children study their lessons in the back end of the nursery, and I therefore forbore to take up my usual position upon the sofa, but withdrew to the parlor with my pipe.

Presently my wife followed me, nearly walking over the furniture in her excitement.

"Go on, Belle; out with it!"

"You will listen, will you, seriously?"

"Certainly, mawm. I never had any sort of an objection to your making a scavenger barrel of me, so go ahead."

"Oh, these benevolent women, Dave! Any one of them alone is as good-hearted as can be, but lump them together on a committee, and they're as cold and cruel and grasping as the meanest business man you could name!"

"More so!" said I, approvingly, and for once Isabel did not resent the disparagement of her s.e.x.

"The question arose, what was to be done about Mary Mason, and every one of them, David--every one of them, with young daughters of their own growing up at home, voted to let that girl go round this town selling a book."

"Was that what she wanted to do herself?"

"Yes; but think of them letting her do it! You know as well as I do what sort of a city this is, and whether it's safe for a lovely girl like that to go to men's offices, trying with her pretty looks and ways to wheedle them into subscribing for Stanley's 'Darkest Africa.' Oh, I was wild! I said to Mrs. Robinson: 'How would you like your Lulu to do it?'

'The cases are very different,' said she; 'my daughter has no need to earn her living.' 'Mrs. Constable,' said I, 'if your grandchild were left alone in the world, what would you think of the charity of any body of women who allowed her to go from under their protection to make her living in this way?' 'I don't see the connection,' said she; 'Mary Mason's been fighting the world since she was seven years old, and just because she happens to have a pretty face, you seem to think she should be put in a gla.s.s case and never do anything for herself.'"

"She had you there, Belle," said I, pulling her down to the arm of my big easy-chair. "Let the girl alone; she'll come out all right. She's too good-looking for a nurse or a housemaid, and she doesn't know enough arithmetic to be a shop girl. I don't see what else she can do."

"That's just what the ladies calmly decided," said my wife, walking the floor again. "They seemed to think that a little business training would just be the making of Mary. Oh, these Christians!"

"You see, my dear," said I, "committees are not supposed to have any conscience. They have the income of the Refuge in trust for the contributors, and they have no right to keep on supporting a girl who is willing to work for herself. How she proposes to do it is none of their business."

"That's just what it is--their business; their business to see that she doesn't meet the very fate we've saved her from once already. Oh!

there's no getting these narrow-minded, orthodox, bigoted people to see more than one side of a question."

"Take care you don't become dogmatic on your own side," said I, rising to knock the ashes out of my pipe. "If it's the law of Karma that's responsible for her having been left to shift for herself at so early an age, it's the same law that's after her now, and I wouldn't interfere with its operations, if I were you."

"You don't in the least understand what you are talking about," and Belle sailed from the room to settle a noisy dispute in the nursery.

CHAPTER II.

THROUGH that winter I caught occasionally a glimpse of Mary Mason on the street, but as I had not the pleasure of her acquaintance, I did not stop to ask her how she was getting on. My wife told me, however, that she lived in a room over a store down town, and took her meals out, and that she was succeeding very well with her subscription list.

"The girl is all right, if only the gossips would let her alone. Some of them a.s.sert that she had a child in the Refuge, and though the ladies on our committee indignantly deny that, they shake their heads, and say of course they don't know anything about her now."

"It's the only excitement a lot of these women have," said I. "They wouldn't read a French novel for the world, and some of them wouldn't be seen in a theater, so they have to satisfy their morbid craving for sensationalism by hearing and repeating all sorts of unsavory tales--and they do it in the name of charity! They're very sorry that there is so much wickedness in the world, but since it is there, they enjoy the investigation of details, and it doesn't matter very much whether they're doing any good or not."

"There aren't any details to investigate, so far as Mary Mason is concerned. I took pains to make sure of that, when I heard that a big hulk of a machinist, who rooms on the same flat, was telling lies about her, just because she refused to have anything to say to him."

When I was leaving the _Echo_ office at noon one day I saw Henderson's handsome black span, with the wreck of a sleigh behind them, come down the street at a full gallop, and I was just debating with myself whether my duty as a citizen, which called me to attempt to stop the brutes, was stronger than my duty to my wife and family, which bade me stay where I was, when a young lady jumped the snow ridge at the edge of the sidewalk and flung herself at the bit of the nearest horse. The powerful animal swung her right off her feet, but he was checked for an instant, and in that instant a young man seized the mate on the other side; the team was stopped and surrounded by a crowd directly. Then I saw it was Mary Mason who was the heroine of the drama. She withdrew from the throng, straightened her flat hat above her rosy face, and walked off with her habitual indifferent air.

"She's got good grit, that girl," said I to myself, but I thought no more about her till I came home on a certain evening in March, and found her comfortably ensconced on one side of our nursery fire, while my mother from the other side cast suspicious glances at her over her spectacles. "Miss Mason," had supper with us, and then I retired to my big leather-covered spring rocker in the parlor to await developments.

That chair needs to be approached with deference, for it has a precocious trick of either tilting in the air the feet of any unwary occupant, or of tipping him out on the floor. I know its disposition, can preserve my proper balance, and have never been flung either forward or backward--except once each way.

Presently Belle followed me, "loaded up," as the boys say.

"It seems as if I was never to get free from the responsibility of that child."

"What's up now?"

"Down town to-day I met the chief of police----"

"Great chum of yours!"

"Yes, indeed. We've had considerable conversation at different times about some of my cases. To-day he said, 'You're interested in that young girl, Mary Mason, aint you, Mrs. Gemmell?' 'Yes,' said I, though my heart sank, and I didn't see why he couldn't have addressed any other one of the committee; 'anything wrong with her?' 'Not yet,' said he; 'but there will be pretty soon if somebody doesn't look after her.

There's a scheme on foot to take her off to Chicago--to sell a book--so they say.' 'Good gracious! n.o.body would dare!' 'Wouldn't they, though?'

said he. 'There's a well-known drummer in this town at the bottom of it. He's aware the girl has no friends, and in Chicago she don't even know a soul. It's too bad, for I've had my eye on the young woman all winter, and she's kept perfectly straight.'

"You may think, Dave, that I ought to be hardened to horrors by this time, but I became fairly dazed as the chief of police went on to say, 'I can't move in the matter. We never can touch these things until the mischief is done; but if you like to make inquiries, you'll find out that I've been telling you the truth.'

"When he left me, I turned to come home, not knowing what to do, but going round the first corner, didn't I run right into Mary Mason herself! I hadn't laid eyes on her for a couple of months. 'How d'ye do, Mrs. Gemmell?' she said, for I stopped and stared at her as if she'd been a white crow. 'What about "Darkest Africa?"' I found breath to ask, though it was Darkest Chicago I had in my mind. 'I've done with that now,' she said; 'did very well, too.' 'And what are you going to do next?' 'I dunno. Whatever turns up. I've got an offer to go to Chicago to sell a book there.' I caught her by the arm as if I'd been the chief of police. 'Mary, will you please go to my house and wait there for me till I come?' 'Oh, yes, mawm, if you want me to,' and off she went, asking no questions.

"Well, Dave, I've put in four hours of amateur detective work this afternoon, and I feel as if I needed a moral bath. I found out it was all true, as the chief of police had said. There was a plot to ruin the girl, and I don't think the author of it will forget his interview with me in a hurry."

"What good will that do the young woman? There are plenty more of his kind in the world, and with her inherited tendencies I suppose it's only a question of time--how soon she goes to the bad."

"David Gemmell!"

It is worth while making a caustic speech occasionally to see Isabel rise to her full height. Her brown eyes positively emit sparks, and her gray hair, which she wears waved and parted, gives her an air of distinction that would not be out of place upon an avenging spirit.

"I came home all tired out," she went on, sinking into the chair beside mine, "and looking through the nursery window, there sat Mary Mason with our little Chrissie on her knee. The two faces in the firelight looked so much alike that my heart gave a great thump, and I vowed that girl should never be set adrift again. This is the second time she has been cast upon my sh.o.r.e, and I must see to her."

So Mary Mason dropped into our family circle without anybody having very much to say in the matter--except my mother!