This world is a hard place to live in. I wish somebody would tell me what we are born for anyway, and what's the use of living.
There are so many things that hurt, and you get so mixed up trying to understand, that if you don't keep busy you'll spend your life guessing at a puzzle that hasn't any answer.
Miss Katherine has gone away. Gone to stay two months, anyhow. Maybe three.
Her Army brother, the one who is a Captain, has been sent to Texas, and his wife and children were taken ill as soon as they got there.
Of course, they sent for Miss Katherine; that is, asked her by telegraph if she wouldn't come. She went. And she'll be going to somebody all her life, for she's the kind that is turned to when things go wrong.
Miss Webb is awful worried. She says a cool head and a warm heart are always worked to death, and the person who has them is forever on call.
Miss Katherine has them.
She had to go, of course. We were not sick, except a few snifflers. We didn't exactly need her, and her brother did; but oh the difference her being away makes!
Three months of doing without her is like three months of daylight and no sunlight. It's like things to eat that haven't any taste; like a room in which the one you wait for never comes.
I am back in No. 4, in one of the thirteen beds. My body goes on doing the same things. Gets up at five o'clock. Dresses, cleans, prays, eats, goes to school, eats, sews, plays, eats, studies, goes to bed. And that's got to be done every day in the same way it was done the day before.
But it's just my body that does them. Outside I am a little machine wound up; inside I am a thousand miles away, and doing a thousand other things. Some day I am going to blow up and break my inside workings, for I wasn't meant to run regular and on time. I wasn't.
What was I meant for? I don't know. But not to be tied to a rope. And that's what I am. Tied to a rope. If I were a boy I'd cut it.
I am almost crazy! A wonderful thing has happened. I am so excited my breathing is as bad as old Miss Betsy Hays's. I believe I know who I am.
My heart is jumping and thumping and carrying on so that it makes my teeth chatter; and as I can't tell anybody what I've heard, I am likely to die from keeping it to myself.
I am not going to die until I find out. If I did I would be as bad off in heaven as on earth. Even an angel would prefer to know something about itself.
I'm like Miss Bray now. I'm counting on going to heaven. Otherwise it wouldn't make any difference who I was, as one more misery don't matter when you're swamped in miserableness. I suppose that's what hell is: Miserableness.
What are you when you don't go to heaven?
But that's got nothing to do with how I found out who I am. It's like Martha, though: always butting in with questions no Mary on earth could answer.
Well, the way I found out was one of those mysterious ways in which God works his wonders. Yesterday afternoon I asked Miss Bray if I could go over and play with the Moon children, three of whom are sick, and she said I might. We were in the nursery, which is next to Mrs. Moon's bedroom, and she and the lady from Michigan, who is visiting her, were talking and paying no attention to us. Presently something the lady said—her name is Mrs. Grey—made everything in me stop working, and my heart gave a little click like a clock when the pendulum don't swing right.
She was sitting with her back to the door, which was open, and I could see her, but she couldn't see me. All of a sudden she put down her sewing and looked at Mrs. Moon as if something had just come to her.
"Elizabeth Moon, I believe I know that child's uncle," she said. "Ever since you told me about her something has been bothering me. Didn't you say her mother had a brother who years ago went West?"
"Hush," said Mrs. Moon, and she nodded toward me. "She'll hear you, and the ladies wouldn't like it."
She lowered her voice so I couldn't hear all she said, but I heard something about its being the only thing Yorkburg ever did keep quiet about. And only then because everybody felt so sorry for her. In a flash I knew they were talking about me.
After the first understanding, which made everything in me stop, everything got moving, and all my inward workings worked double quick. Why my heart didn't get right out on the floor and look up at me. I don't know. I kept on talking and making up wild things just to keep the children quiet, but I had to hold myself down to the floor. To help, I put Billy and Kitty Lee both in my lap.
What I wanted to do was to go to Mrs. Moon and say: "I am twelve and a half, and I've got the right to know. I want to hear about my uncle. I don't want to know him, he not caring to know me." But before I could really think Mrs. Grey spoke again.
"He has no idea his sister left a child. He told me she married very young, and died a year afterward; and he had heard nothing from her husband since. As soon as I go home I am going to tell him. I certainly am."
"You had better not," said Mrs. Moon. "It's been thirteen years since he left Yorkburg, and, as he has never been back, he evidently doesn't care to know anything about it. I don't think the ladies would like you to tell. They are very proud of having kept so quiet out of respect to her father's wishes. If Parke Alden had wanted to learn anything, he could have done it years ago."
"But I tell you he doesn't know there's anything to learn." And the Michigan lady's voice was as snappy as the place she came from. "I know Dr. Alden well," she went on. "He's operated on me twice, and I've spent weeks in his hospital. When he tells me it's best for my head to come off—off my head is to come. And when a man can make people feel that way about him, he isn't the kind that's not square on four sides.
"I tell you, he doesn't know about this child. He's often talked to me about Yorkburg, knowing you were my cousin. He told me of his sister running away with an actor and marrying him, and dying a year later. Also of his father's death and the sale of the old home, and of many other things. There's no place on earth he loves as he does Virginia. He doesn't come back because there's no one to come to see specially. No real close kin, I mean. The changes in the place where you were born make a man lonelier than a strange city does, and something seems to keep him away."
"You say he doesn't know his sister left a child?" Mrs. Moon put down the needle she was trying to thread, and stuck it in her work. "Why doesn't he know?"
"Why should he? Who was there to tell him, if a bunch of women made up their minds he shouldn't know? He wrote to his sister again and again, but whether his letters ever reached her he never knew. He thinks not, as it was unlike her not to write if they were received.
"Travelling from place to place with her actor husband, who, he said, was a 'younger son Englishman,' the letters probably miscarried, and not for months after her death did he know she was dead."
"We didn't, either," interrupted Mrs. Moon. "In fact, we heard it through Parke, who went West after his father's death. He wrote Roy Wright, telling him about it."
"Who is Roy Wright, and where is he, that he didn't tell Dr. Alden about the child?"
"Oh, Roy's dead. I believe Mary Alden's marriage broke Roy's heart; that is, if a man's heart can be broken. He had been in love with her all her life. Not just loved her, but in love with her. His house was next to the Aldens', where the Reagans now live, and Major Alden and General Wright were old friends, each anxious for the match. When Mary ran away at seventeen and married a man her father didn't know, I tell you Yorkburg was scared to death."
"Do you remember it?"
"Remember! I should think I did. I cried for two weeks. Nearly ruined my eyes. Mary and I were deskmates at Miss Porterfield's school, and I adored her. I really did. So did Dick Moon." She stopped. Then: "Like most women, I'm a compromise," and she laughed. But it was a happy laugh. Mrs. Grey smiled too.
"Was Mary Alden engaged to Roy Wright when she married the other man?" she asked. "Tell me all about her."
"No, she wasn't. Mary Alden was incapable of deceit, and Roy Wright knew she didn't love him. He knew she was never going to marry him. Poor Roy! He was as gentle and sweet and patient as Mary was high-spirited and beautiful, and the last type on earth to win a woman of Mary's temperament. She wanted to be mastered, and Roy could only worship."
"And her father—what did he do?"
"Do? The Aldens are not people who 'do' things. The day after the news came, he and General Wright walked arm and arm all over Yorkburg, and their heads were high; but oh, my dear, it was pitiful. They didn't know, but they were clinging to each other, and the Major's face was like death."
"Didn't some one say he had been pretty strict with her? Held too tight a rein?"
"Yes, he had, and he deserved part of his suffering. His pride was inherited, and Mary could go with no one whose great-grandparents he didn't know about. But Mary cared no more for ancestors than she did for Hottentots. When she met this Mr. Cary, a young English actor, at a friend's house in Baltimore, she made no inquiry as to whether he had any, and fell in love at once. He was a gentleman, however. That was as evident as Major Alden's rage when he went to see the latter, and asked for Mary. Mrs. Rodman happened to be in the house at the time, and what she didn't see she heard. She says the one thing you can't fool her about is a counterfeit gentleman. And Ralston Cary was no counterfeit."
"For Heaven's sake, don't get on what Mrs. Rodman thinks or says. Tell me about the marriage. I'm asking a lot of questions, but you're so slow."
"I'm telling as fast as I can. You interrupt so much with questions I can't finish." And Mrs. Moon's voice was real spunky.
"They were married in Washington," she began again. "The morning after the interview with the Major they caught the five-o'clock train, and that afternoon there was a telegram telling of the marriage.
"Her father never forgave Mary. Seven months later he died, and after settling up affairs there was nothing left. Alden House was mortgaged to the limit. There were a number of small debts as well as two or three large ones, and when these were paid and all accounts squared there was barely enough left for Parke to buy his railroad ticket to some city out West, where he had secured a place as resident physician in a hospital. That was thirteen years ago." She took a deep breath, as if thinking. "Thirteen years. Since then we've known little about him. You say he is a famous surgeon? We've never heard it in Yorkburg."
"Of course you haven't. Yorkburg has heard nothing since 1865. But there are a good many things it could hear." And Mrs. Grey laughed, but with her forehead wrinkled, as if she were trying to understand something that was puzzling her.
And then it was Mrs. Moon said something that made understanding come rolling right in on me. The answer to that look on Miss Katherine's face the night of the Reagans' ball was as plain as Jimmie Jenkins's nose, which is most all you see when you see Jimmie. It was like I thought. It was a man.
"Ophelia," said Mrs. Moon, and she moved her chair closer to Mrs. Grey, and leaned forward with her hands clasped, "did you ever hear Doctor Alden speak of a Miss Trent—Miss Katherine Trent?"
"No. You mean—"
"Yes; she's the one. Parke Alden and Katherine Trent were sweethearts from children. Shortly after Mary's marriage something happened. There was a misunderstanding of some kind, and they barely bowed when they met. Everybody was sorry, for it was one of the matches Heaven might have made without discredit. Soon after Parke went away, Katherine went off to some school just outside of Philadelphia, and, so far as is known, they've never seen each other since."
Mrs. Grey brought both hands down on her knees. "I knew it was something like that. I knew it! Doctor Alden is just that sort of a man. And it's Katherine Trent? I wish I'd known it before she went away."
"What would you have done?" Mrs. Moon looked frightened. She's very timid, Mrs. Moon is, and always afraid of telling something she oughtn't. "What could you have done?"
"Looked at her better. She's certainly good to look at. Not beautiful, but a face you never forget. And Doctor Alden is the kind that never forgets. But tell me something about the child. How did she get here?"
"Her nurse brought her. Her father kept her after her mother's death, taking her about from place to place with this old negro mammy until she was three, when he died suddenly, strange to say, in the same place his wife died, Mobile, Alabama."
"Why did the nurse bring her here? Was she a Yorkburg darkey?"
"No; but she had heard Mr. Cary say there was an Orphan Asylum here, and not knowing what else to do, she came on with her. She told the Board ladies she had heard the child's father say a hundred times he would rather see her dead than have her mother's family take her. And she begged them not to let it be known who she was until she was old enough to understand."
Just then Bobbie Moon laid out flat on his back and kicked up his heels. And Billie looked so disgusted, I stopped the story I was trying to tell.
"You ain't talking sense," he said. "And I'm not going to listen any more. An ant can't eat an elephant in half an hour and leave no scraps." And he rolled over and began to fight Bobbie.
Sarah Sue and Myrtle, who'd been playing with their mother's muff and tippet, got to fussing so about which should have her hat that Mrs. Moon, hearing it, jumped up, and I heard her say:
"Mercy me! Do you suppose she heard?"
I never was so glad of a fight in my life. The more fuss was made the more chance there was of my being forgot, and presently I told Mrs. Moon I had to go home. The boys said they didn't care, my stories were rotten anyhow, and out I went and ran so fast I had such a pain in my side I could hardly breathe.
But I didn't go in right away. I couldn't. Inside of me everything was thumping: "Mary Alden, your Mother; Mary Alden, your Mother; Mary Alden, your Mother." There was no other thought but that.
Presently I turned and went down to King Street, to where the Reagans live, and in the dark I stood there and shook my fist at my dead grandfather. I hated him for treating my mother so. Hated him! Then I burst out crying, and cried so awful my eyes were nearly washed out.
There were twelve and a half years' worth of tears that had to come out, and I let them come. After they were out I felt lighter.
But sleep? There wasn't a blink of it for me all night. I was so mixed up with new feelings that I was sick in my stomach, and my old conscience got so sanctimonious that if I could have spanked it I would.
I wasn't eavesdropping; I know that's nasty. But forty times I'd been punished for speaking when I shouldn't, and, besides, it was my duty to find myself. They saw me, and then forgot. If they hadn't wanted me to know what they were saying, they shouldn't have said it.
But that didn't do my conscience any good. I hate a conscience. It's always making you feel low down and disreputable. I don't believe I will say anything to my children about one, and let them have some peace.
For two days I didn't have any. Then I decided I'd wait until Miss Katherine came, and not say anything to her or to anybody about what I'd heard until I found out a little more about that remembrance in her face. But the waiting for her is the longest wait I've ever waited through yet.
It certainly is queer what a surprise you are to yourself. Before I knew that my mother and her father and his father and some other fathers behind him had lived in the Alden House, I would have given all I own, which isn't much, just my body, to have known it. And I guess I would have been that airy Martha couldn't have lived with me, and would have had to take Mary to the pump to bring her senses back with water. Mary is my best part, but at times she hasn't half the common sense she needs, and frequently has a pride Martha has to attend to.
But after I found out I had the same kind of blood in me that Mrs. General Rodman had in her, though I'm thankful it isn't mentioned on the family's tombstones, it didn't seem half as big a thing as I thought.
I was ashamed of the way it had acted, and of the way it had treated my father. He was too much of a gentleman to talk about his, whether high or low, and I know nothing about him. But I adore his memory! I am his child as well as Mary Alden's, and that's a thing my children are never going to forget. Never.
And now the part I'm thinking of most is what was said about Miss Katherine and Dr. Parke Alden being sweethearts when they were young. He has been away thirteen years, Mrs. Moon said, and Miss Katherine is now twenty-eight. I know she is, because she told me so.
Thirteen from twenty-eight leaves fifteen, so she was fifteen when they had that fuss and he went off. Fifteen was awful young to love hard and permanent; but Miss Webb says Miss Katherine was born grown and stubborn, and when she once takes a stand she keeps it.
I wonder what she took the stand with Uncle Parke for? She is right quick and outspoken at times, and I bet he made her mad about something.
But she ought to have known he was a man, and not expected much. I know my children's father is going to make me so hopping at times I could shake him. If he didn't, he would be terrible stupid to live with, and nothing wears you out like stupidness. I don't really mind a scrap. It's so nice to make up.
But I believe that's the reason Miss Katherine don't get married. Because in her secret heart Dr. Parke Alden is still her sweetheart. I know in his secret heart she is still his. She's bound to be if she ever once was.
Glorious superbness! Wouldn't that be grand? If they were to get married she would be my really, truly Aunt! The very thought makes me so full of thrills I can't sit still when it comes over me.
Oh, Mary Martha Cary, what a beautiful place this world could be!