Some of Us Are Married/An Opening for Mariana
AN OPENING FOR MARIANA
I DON'T see why you can't go to the wedding, Mariana, so long as it's in the church, even if you're not invited; you can sit in the last pew. Your Aunt Lucy and I used to go to all the church weddings when we were girls."
"Oh, Mother, nobody does that sort of thing now!" Mariana, with her arms upraised, was putting on her hat before the glass.
"Well, I think these war weddings are terrible!" Mrs. Gillies's light blue eyes took on a tragic expression; they always had a certain veiled, distressed look, which appealed to the innate chivalry of men, but was not so winning to women, who usually felt that they had something to look distressed over, also, if they wanted to.
"How Mrs. Porter can let her daughter marry a man who may go off next week to be killed passes my comprehension; though I do think they might have asked you to the church! I'm sure you've been to all the Red Cross meetings. I think it's very strange—it's over six weeks since we came here, and we hardly know anybody. If you only had a different manner to people, yourself—but you hang back so. If"
"Oh, Mother, everyone is too busy with all this war work to think of us; you know that. Half the girls go into town every day." She stooped over to kiss her mother. "Now I'm off!"
Mrs. Gillies sighed as she watched her daughter down the street. The mother knew how dear and funny and loving her child was, and how utterly adorable she could look in appropriate garb; but even her fiercely maternal soul couldn't but acknowledge that slim Mariana in a khaki skirt, a shapeless brown sweater, and a black scoop hat that covered all her sweet, curly brown hair and cut off half her lovely, delicate face, would never attract a second look from any one; she hadn't the brilliant colour which made her ten-year-old sister, Filomena, noticeable.
Mrs. Gillies had come with her two daughters from their home town in Ohio—after the fifteen-year-old Jack had been happily disposed of in a boy's camp—with all the glow of anticipation of a delightfully social life in the new environment, during the months in which the furnished house of an old and wealthy friend, Mrs. Iverson, had been put at their disposal while she and her husband were deeply engaged in Y.M.C.A. work in France. Their son Leslie was in a far-off Southern camp, with his young wife and child near him. With the Iversons' prestige as introduction, and the town an outlying suburb, only thirty-five miles from a training camp, Mrs. Gillies felt that here, at last, would be a real opening for Mariana; the mother cherished impassioned dreams of her child surrounded by adorers, with all the other girls eagerly courting her society. It wasn't that she wanted Mariana to marry, that was far from her mind indeed; but as a truly American mother she passionately wanted the girl to Have a Good Time. She hadn't married very early herself; but she had enjoyed her girlhood to the full, as Mariana had never had the chance to do. Her father's death, Mrs. Gillies's long illness, the changed conditions of their finances and those made by the war in their home town, with all the young men leaving it, had been answerable for Mariana's lack.
Summer people in a suburb are, after all, only summer people, gone before the inhabitants realize their presence. The elderly Mr. and Mrs Iverson, though citizens of weight, had represented no social centre. But apart from that, the whole place was given up to the thought and furtherance of the war. Mariana—her mother wasn't yet strong enough—made surgical dressings at the Red Cross meetings, and helped a couple of times at a canteen in a neighbouring town frequented by the soldiers from the camps. The girls whom she met were pleasant and civil enough, but no one made any particular overtures. Mrs. Gillies, unfortunately, had nobody "in the war," and took interest in it only under protest, as Something that interfered with Everything.
She had taken the unwilling Mariana on a too-expensive automobile trip to the training camp, only to see an array of tin-roofed barracks and a few khaki-clad soldiers straying around!
But this military wedding, with all the ring and stir of it in the air, had brought matters to a climax as showing the futility of expecting any opening for Mariana here. Bravely as she bore her exclusion, the girl was, the mother knew, lonely.
The tears came in Mrs. Gillies's eyes, thinking of all this, as she sat on the piazza later in a fresh muslin dress, with her fair hair prettily waved; Mrs. Gillies always got herself up becomingly.
The carpenters were hammering away in a near-by house, the town seemed to be full of subdued stir; there was to be a local parade for the Red Cross Drive in the evening. Boy scouts were already passing. The people were also beginning to appear from the wedding reception, in couples and groups, eagerly conversational.
Mrs. Gillies rose as three women unexpectedly came up the steps, the older one—purple-gowned, stout, gray-haired, and fine-looking—she knew as Mrs. Brentwood, with whom she had a bowing acquaintance.
"How do you do?" said Mrs. Brentwood pleasantly. "This is Miss Wills, Mrs. Gillies"—she indicated a tall, angular lady—"and Mrs. Chandor." Mrs. Chandor, charmingly arrayed, was pretty and gentle-eyed; her smile was warming. "We really must apologize for not having called on you before, Mrs. Gillies, but you know yourself just how busy everyone is these war times. We just stopped now to see if you would like to contribute something to our Red Cross Drive to-day."
"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Gillies brightly. "Won't you please sit down here while I go in for my pocket-book? Oh, what is the matter with this screen door, the bolt has slipped again—I never saw a house with so many bolts and catches on everything!"
"Mr. Iverson was very much afraid of burglars," explained Mrs. Brentwood.
Mrs. Gillies hastened back to draw her chair up to the politely waiting group.
"I can only give a dollar, but I know that my daughter will be very glad to contribute her little share if you can wait a few minutes; she will be home directly."
Mrs. Brentwood smiled assentingly. "Why, certainly. Thank you so much for your donation. We've just come from such a lovely wedding; you've heard about it, of course—only intimate friends were invited. Kitty was a dream, and Captain Hike, he isn't exactly what you'd call handsome—but he has such a fine, resolute expression. He expects that the regiment will be sent over next week. The best man, that young Lieutenant Blackmore, is handsome, but he is so shy he couldn't seem to talk at all. He's staying to-night with the Prices."
"Those shy young men sometimes come out quite surprisingly," suggested Mrs. Chandor.
"I think these war weddings are terrible!" exploded Mrs. Giles. "If he goes to the front she may never see him again."
"I don't know," said Mrs. Chandor. "There's something big back of it all, now, it isn't just a matter of new silver and mahogany and Living Happy Ever After; Kitty and her captain will belong to each other no matter what happens. They'll have had that, anyway."
There was a silence. Then, "My nephew's in the war," said Miss Wills, rising. "The dearest boy! He is only a private, but he writes the cheeriest letters from Over There. We must be going. I've got to stop and see about that poor girl with the sick baby—her husband is wounded."
Not a word about Mariana! Or herself either, for that matter. Mrs. Gillies watched her visitors depart with a feeling of bitterness. But hope revived as the Price girls passed with that Lieutenant Blackmore. They would certainly meet Mariana! One of the girls would stop and speak to Mariana, and—what more natural?—ask her to join them for the evening.
Mariana's slight figure was already coming up the path.
"Well?" said Mrs. Gillies eagerly.
"Well," responded the daughter. "I've been reading at the library."
"Didn't you meet the Price girls with that officer?"
"Yes. What of it?"
"Didn't they ask you to come with them to-night?"
"Why, Mother! No, of course not. They hardly know me at all, they just bowed and passed on."
"Well, of all the places! I never saw such people." Mrs. Gillies was fairly trembling with agitation. "Nobody cares here whether you live or die! But I suppose you hardly looked at those girls yourself, Mariana. You have such a strange manner sometimes… If you would only wear your hair a little looser; but you won't even put on your pink hat."
"Oh, Mother!" flared Mariana. Then her tone changed. "Here, for goodness' sake, don't get so excited; you'll be sick again. Now smile at me! … Mother, you're a perfect infant about some things—it's time you grew up! Why should anybody think of us? They're occupied with far more important things."
"I think this war is terrible!" moaned Mrs. Gillies.
"Mother, I made up my mind while I was out. I'm going to call up Cousin Kate to-night, and get her to come and stay with you for a week while I go off and try to get a war job in town like the other girls."
"Oh, Mariana! I can't stand Counsin Kate, she fusses over me so. "
"You need to be fussed over. I'm going in to town to see that nice old Miss Crossley who has the welfare diet kitchen; perhaps she'll let me help her for a few days."
"Oh, Mariana! In a kitchen! I think it's terrible." Mrs. Gillies's voice faltered, and then took another sharper tone of woe, as Filomena appeared, indescribably dirty as to her chubby cheeks, hands, knees, and raiment.
"Filomena! How did you ever get yourself looking like that? And all those people passing! What will they think of us?"
She called to her older daughter, already half way up the stairs.
"Mariana! Mariana! Please give Filomena a bath, and change all her clothes; she looks perfectly terrible! Oh, my goodness, what I go through with my children!"
II
Mariana, on the floor above, after the regeneration of Filomena, sat by her dressing table brushing out her hair. Mariana had lovely hair—it had a vitality of its own, springing out into wide, goldy waves where the brush touched it; her mother's anguish at its concealment was pardonable. It seemed to caress her milky white neck and the bare arms from which the kimono sleeves fell back. Her little bare feet were thrust into straw sandals, preparatory to changing to white stockings and slippers.
The sisters, despite the difference in their ages, had held not unsympathetic converse; Mariana had laughed at the younger's account of slipping off the curb into the newly oiled dust of the street—and being picked up by a "perfikly splendid" young officer, the best man at the wedding, who was crossing over with the Price girls. "He had the nicest mouth. I wouldn't have minded a bit if he'd kissed me when he thought I was hurted, but he didn't, he only smiled—he had sparkly eyes—and said, 'Run home, little one'."
As Mariana finished brushing her hair, she made her plans. The big room was touched with the shadows of the late summer afternoon; the intermittent sound of preparatory drums came through the window. Not being asked to the wedding had made her realize afresh how "out of it all" she was. No one knew how lonely she had been! But poor Mother must have a rest from agonizing about her for awhile. She would come home each night, of course.
It gave her a queer sense of hitherto unknown power to think she could do anything "on her own." She had heard once that if you really had the will to strike out in a new path, a way would be opened for you, even if it were not the one you had sought—it was the effort itself that counted. "I'll get my suitcase out of the attic now," she decided, with a quick clinching of her purpose, and ran up the stairs.
The sky-lighted garret was piled high with heavy old furniture and trunks, only a small space at the end under the rafters being left for the extra belongings of the tenants; the bags had been placed by a tidy maid on the high, narrow shelf of a small, shallow closet built in between the chimney and the side of the house, and evidently intended for valuables by the burglar-fearing Mr. Iverson; the extremely heavy, thick door, which stood open, had iron bars across the inner side.
As Mariana dashed in, her arm upraised for her suitcase, she felt the flying end of her kimono catch in something, and gave it a quick tug, without looking around; the next instant, with the sound of a slight metallic click, she was enveloped in pitch darkness. She had pulled the door, with its burglar-proof combination lock, fast shut.
Mariana's fingers groped wildly to find a knob—but there was none. There wasn't, of course, even a keyhole. The edges of the door fitted so tightly to the sides and the bottom that one couldn't find where they were. She pounded frantically on it and called as loudly as she could; somebody, of course, would hear her in a few minutes. She bruised her soft hands against the iron bars; after long, panting pauses to rest, perforce, she pounded and screamed again… Everybody must be out… Mariana began to feel sick and dizzy… She wondered how long the air would last in there—but probably that was all right. Why was it that no one would hear her?
Downstairs, Mrs. Gillies had been happily entertained by Filomena, who, having hung outside the church with the other children, proved a mine of information regarding the wedding party and guests. It was an hour only slightly marred by the renewed knocking of those carpenters somewhere—so late, too!
"Yes, Mandy," as the coloured maid appeared in the doorway, "we're coming. Mariana!" she called at the foot of the stairs, "dinner's ready."
The meal progressed with no sign of the missing one. Filomena, going upstairs finally for her best Teddy bear, let out her voice in a shriek.
"Mother, come here!"
"What's the matter?" Mrs. Gillies almost flew to the scene.
"I don't know where Mariana is! Look here—there's her hat and sweater, and her dress laid out on the bed, and her brown shoes and her white slippers on the floor. She isn't taking a bath, for I looked."
"Oh, my goodness! The Germans have got her!" moaned Mrs. Gillies. She clutched a chair to stay her trembling limbs.
"Mother! how could they?" Filomena gasped; perhaps Mother was right.
"Don't ask me how they do anything! They're too terrible for words." She suddenly heard something from above. "That noise—it can't be the carpenters now; it seems to come from our attic!" She flew down the hall and up the steep back stairs. "Mariana, my darling, are you here?"
Mariana's voice carried with an effort through the thick door.
"Yes, dear; yes, my darling child! Mother's here with you. Everything will be all right. Mrs. Chandor has a paper with the combination written down. Mrs. Iverson wrote me that she left it with her."
Mrs. Gillies hurtled down to the telephone.
"Oh, Mrs. Chandor, we're in trouble—my daughter Mariana is locked in that closet in the attic—the one with the iron door! If you'll look up that lock combination that Mrs. Iverson gave you to keep Oh, thank you!"
It was only fifteen minutes, though it seemed as an hour, before she ran to the door to meet the footsteps hurrying up the walk. But it was the slim, dark-eyed Mrs. Bannard instead of Mrs. Chandor.
"Mrs. Chandor is looking for the paper," the visitor announced breathlessly. "She just telephoned me to come to you. She's afraid her boy took it to cut up into ships when he was sick last week. But Miss Mariana is going to be all right; you mustn't worry a minute! I called up Mrs. Roberts—here she is now—her cat was locked in that closet once. Mrs. Roberts, Mrs. Gillies. We went to the locksmith, but he is in the parade to-night."
"You are very kind," said Mrs. Gillies helplessly. "There's the telephone."
"I'll answer it; you sit down here," said Lucia Bannard.
Agonized telephoning from Mrs. Chandor clinched the fact that the paper with the combination couldn't be found. Hardly was the receiver hung up, when it rang again—this time it was to say that Mrs. Paxton, who had been telephoned to, would find a Man with an Axe. Hope revived in Mrs. Gillies' breast.
Soon Mrs. Paxton arrived, piloting the axe-bearer himself, a quite splendid young fellow in his officer's uniform of olive drab.
"This is Lieutenant Blackmore, Mrs. Gillies," said Mrs. Paxton.
"Is it the little lady I picked out of the mud to-day who is the prisoner?"
"No, it's her sister, Mariana," said Mrs. Gillies weakly, gazing up at him.
"Oh, Mariana!" said the lieutenant, as if he had always known her. "I'll bring the child down to you in a jiffy. This the way?"
He went loping up the stairs. Those below could hear him tramping down the attic to where Lucia and Filomena were keeping guard.
"We haven't heard a sound in there for the last ten minutes," said Lucia. "She must have fainted … Mariana!"
There was no answer.
Lieutenant Blackmore was examining the door; he shook his head. "No good to try to chop into this."
He stepped back to take a view of the surroundings and then whistled softly.
"Well, if this isn't just like the fool things people do—build an iron safe in an attic, with nothing but rafters above! It'll be as easy as cutting cheese. How do you get on the roof from here? Oh, down at the other end—I see!" He was stalking off, and then came back hurriedly to say:
"I think you'd better both go down to the mother; tell her not to get frightened when she hears a noise—I'll sure have little Mariana with her in a few minutes now."
"Very well," said Lucia.
As Lucia and Filomena disappeared, Lieutenant Blackmore, the axe over his shoulder, mounted the ladder and lifted the skylight. Another instant and he was on the roof in the brilliant moonlight. It was flat where he was, with the chimney at the slope of the eaves. For a moment he stood still, the breeze lifting the loose locks on his forehead. From the distance came the sound of shouts and cheers mingled with the notes of the band; the procession was on its way. He suddenly saw himself where he so ardently hoped to be going, Over There, in another week. He was glad—yet with a pang, quickly suppressed—that there was no one belonging to him to care. Then his eye located the exact spot he had marked from below. He planted his feet firmly, with his back to the chimney, and plunged the axe into the shingles; ripped one off, and then another—they fell with a clatter to the ground below. He was a little too much at one side.
"Don't be frightened, little Mariana!" he called cheerfully; but there was no sound from within. Another ripping and tearing, and the moonlight poured down upon her.
She lay there, a wonder, white as pearl, her eyes closed, her curling hair spread out around her bare neck, her soft arms stretched out straight at her side, her little bare feet crossed. She was so beautiful, and so different from the child he had expected to see, that he turned dizzy and breathless from the shock. Then he let himself down cautiously into the narrow space and bent over her.
The rush of incoming air revived her; she opened her lovely eyes and smiled into his dark ones.… How long does it take for people really to know each other? Some have lived through long years of married life, strangers always.
It might be only for a brief moment that the eyes of these two met, but in it they were removed from time and space, so that each could see distinctly the soul of the other
Then he lifted her in his arms.
She whispered something, and he put his cheek against hers to listen, for there was the noise of running up to the attic within. He barely heard her breathe:
"Have you really come?"
"Oh, you bet I have!" he whispered, and called out very loud: "Don't come up on the roof, any of you! Stay away from the ladder. I'm bringing her down; she's all right."
On the roof all the world was nothing but moonlight, and they two a part of the moonlight between earth and heaven. Mariana's eyes were closed once more as he held her to him.
"You darling, you darling, you darling!" he was murmuring—"you darling!" His lips touched hers—a wholly indefensible proceeding.
It was, after all, but the briefest interlude before he had her at the end of the ladder, swaying on her bare feet, supported only by his encircling arm, in the midst of an acclaiming group.
"Her mother's on the floor below," said Lucia Bannard. "I'd no idea the girl was so lovely as that—why, she's adorable!"
"Oh, my darling child! And in such a state! My darling child, such a sight!" This, of course, was Mrs. Gillies's voice.
Lieutenant Blackmore, entirely unnoticed in the intimate reunion of the mother and daughter, was already half way down the lower stairs; no one saw his start or heard the muttered "Gosh!" at the glimpse of a room at the end of the hall filled with people who had heard that the Gillieses Needed Help. He made a sudden deflection out of the side door just as a further deputation, including the Price girls, came up the front walk in the moonlight.
"And I didn't even thank him!" moaned Mrs. Gillies. There was a great buzzing of conversation, and an inspiring smell of coffee from the kitchen, where Mrs. Paxton was presiding.
Mariana herself, in her best white silk negligee, her hair tied back with pink ribbon, like a schoolgirl, white stockings and slippers on her feet, sat pillowed back on the big davenport, with Edna Price and one of the Gardiner girls on either side of her, holding her hands, and an admiring circle drawn up in front. Mariana was smiling as she talked, but she was still pale; there was a look in her eyes as if she were not really there, even now.
Whenever the screen door opened, Mariana glanced up expectantly.
"Oh, here is Elinor Chandor at last! And, did you ever—Aunt Mary, too!"
"I insisted on coming with Elinor," announced the last comer, who was white-haired and stout.
"Thank you so much," said Mrs. Gillies.
"I have brought around a little box of tablets," said Aunt Mary, "prescribed by my own physician, which I have found very useful in cases of shock. I nearly gave one to a young soldier I met just around the corner by that empty house—he was behaving so oddly, without a hat and talking to himself. His head was turned away, and I distinctly heard him say: 'Why, in h— (men will be men, my dears), can't they go? Why, in h— can't they go?' I suppose he had reference to our troops being sent to France. When he looked up I could see he wasn't intoxicated—he was a very handsome boy. I said at once, 'Are you suffering from shock?' and he said, 'I sure am. Yes, madam.' Then I asked him, 'Is it painful?' and he said, 'Oh, no, madam!' And then Elinor came along and he jumped back into the shadow. The war does such strange things to our boys, doesn't it? My dear Miss Gillies, no one would think you had been imprisoned so long, you have such a lovely colour!"
"We must be going back, it's getting late; we only came for a minute to express our sympathy," said Mrs. Chandor.
"We must be going, too," said Mrs. Paxton.
There was a tremendous clattering on the walk; the door bell rang. Through the screen door one saw the moon shining down on a company of Boy Scouts, drawn up, with the fourteen-year-old captain, straight and rosy-cheeked, as spokesman.
"We heard that you were in trouble," he announced. "They said there was a young lady locked up in here, so we came to see if we could help get her out."
"Thank you, she is out," said Mrs. Bannard.
"I want to thank him, too!" called Mariana.
"She's some pippin!" he announced to his comrades as he rejoined them.
The company within hastily followed the Scouts, with tearful thanks from Mrs. Gillies.
"I never knew of so much kindness, never!" she protested. Lucia Bannard remained behind. But hardly was everyone out of sight when the sturdy ring of heavier footsteps was heard outside. This time the pioneer of the troop was the big, blue-coated and helmeted chief of police, who rang the bell with the formula: "We heard that you were in trouble here, so we came to ask if we could help."
"Everything is all right now," said Mrs. Gillies. "Thank you so very much! Please come in and let my daughter thank you, too."
"And what was the girl like?" asked the man nearest the chief of police.
"She could have me!" said the latter, entirely as a complimentary figure of speech, he being the possessor already of a wife and five children.
And hardly had they departed when the feet of marching men still once again broke the silence; the Home Guard, on its way, also, from the parade, had stopped to send in a deputation comprising Mr. Brentwood, Preston Chandor, Donald Bannard, and the wealthy Mr. Heriot.
"Come right in!" said Mrs. Gillies. "You've heard that we were in trouble and came to help us; such kindness—such goodness from everyone!"
"God bless you, my dear child," said Mr. Brentwood, bending over Mariana in fatherly wise.
"And, oh, Donald!" called Lucia. "I'm going to stay for the night. I'll be home to breakfast, though."
There was a ringing cheer from the Home Guard when the good news reached them.
It had grown very silent in the room now. Mrs. Gillies was going around picking up things, and putting chairs to rights. She had turned out most of the lights; the moonlight streamed in through the still open screen door. Mariana sat on the sofa, her feet touching the floor, her head bent a little forward, her lips faintly parted; when her mother asked:
"Don't you think you had better go to bed now, dear child?"
She only shook her head and said, "Not just yet, Mother. Don't talk, please."
A swift step came up the quiet street, light yet firm.
Lieutenant Blackmore stood outside the screen door in the moonlight, tapped on it lightly, and strode down the hall into the room, a gallant figure of a young soldier, his dark eyes deep with love, his lips
Mariana rising from her couch, white as pearl in the moonlight, came forward to him.
"Isn't it terrible, the way this war goes on!" said Mrs. Gillies.
She and Edna Price were standing by a snowdrift though it was spring by the calendar.
"Lieutenant Blackmore's regiment has really sailed for France. Mariana will be home to-morrow. I knew you'd want to hear."
"Yes, indeed," said Edna.
Mrs. Gillies drew her cloak around her. Her small, delicate face had lost its harassed look, her eyes were full of eager light.
"I'm so glad I got off all those comfort kits for his men before they left the camp. When I think how I felt about Mariana's marriage—after only three days!—it did seem such a terrible opening for her—and here they've had all these months in the South together.
"I must go in and see about the fires. Mrs. Parker is still with us. I wouldn't let her take the children back to that cold house yet; Mr. Iverson had laid in so much coal. You have to do what you can for people in these war times, when they're in trouble. She hasn't heard from him in three months! When I think of Mariana—Mariana is so brave!"
There was a moment's pause. Edna Price kissed the little woman before the latter went on:
"Isn't it terrible the way some people act as if they didn't want to think about the war? Why, when you have any one in it—I feel sometimes as if they were all fighting for us, not far away at all, but right out here, in this street—in front of this house—and I just can't do enough to help!"