Crimson Roses (4 page)

The minister came down and spoke to her kindly. He asked if she would come back to her old Sunday school class again. One of the ladies came over and asked her if she would come out to the Mite Society social and help wait on the folks; they had so much trouble getting girls to come and be waitresses.

Marion agreed to come, although she shrank tremendously from it. But it was something she could do, of course, and she felt she ought not to refuse. Jennie was most enthusiastic about it and offered to go with her, but when the evening came Jennie had a cold, and so she had to go alone.

As she entered the big Sunday school room where the social was to be held, she had an instant of hesitation. It seemed to her she could not go through a long evening all alone with strangers. She had always been a shy girl, and her five years of service caring for Mother and then Father had made her still more so. She was at home among books, not humans. If her books could have come alive and been present at that gathering, how gladly would she have walked in and conversed with their characters, one by one, thrilled by the thought of meeting those she knew so well. But a lot of people frightened her. She liked to be on the outside of things and watch. She loved to weave stories to herself about people, but to have to move among them and make conversation was terrible. She had purposely come late to avoid having to sit and talk a long while with someone while people were gathering.

But a group of merry girls was coming in behind her, and she hated to have them stare at her, so she hurried in and took off her coat and hat in the ladies’ parlor, which was already well decorated with hats and wraps.

The bevy of eager girls entered just as she turned to go out, shouting and laughing, pretty in bright-colored dresses, combing their bobbed locks, some of them even dabbing on lipstick, holding up their tiny hand mirrors and teasing one another loudly in a new kind of slang that Marion did not in the least understand. They were very young girls, of course, but some of the things they were saying were shocking. Could it be that girls, nice girls, girls who belonged to the church and Sunday school, talked like that nowadays?

She shrank away from them and went into the main room.

For a moment she was dazed before the clamor of tongues and the medley of pretty dresses. Someone was playing the piano, and everybody seemed trying to talk as loud as possible to be heard above it. She felt somehow a stranger and an alien.

She began to look about for someone she knew.

Off at the other side of the room was a group of young people, three of them old schoolmates of Marion’s. Mechanically she made her way toward them, half hoping they might welcome her to their midst. There was Isabel Cresson. She used to help Isabel with her algebra and geometry problems in school. She had never been especially intimate with her, but at least she was not a stranger.

But when she arrived at the corner where the young people had established themselves, she was not met with friendliness. Anna Reese and Betty Byson bowed to her, but Isabel Cresson only stared.

“Oh, why you’re Marion Warren, aren’t you?” she said with a condescending lift of her eyebrows. “How are you? It’s been ages since I’ve seen you. I thought you must have moved away.”

Marion tried to explain that her father had been ill and she had not been able to be out, but Isabel was not listening. She had merely swept Marion with a disconcerting glance, which made her suddenly aware that her dress was out of date and her shoes were shabby, and then turned her eyes back to the young men with whom she had been talking when Marion arrived.

Marion mechanically finished her sentence about her father’s recent death, feeling most uncomfortable and wishing she had not explained at all. Isabel turned her glance back toward her long enough to say, “Oh, too bad. I’m sorry, I’m sure,” and then got up and moved across to the other side of the circle to speak to one of the young men. She did not suggest introducing Marion to the young men. No one made any attempt to move or include her in their circle. Marion dropped down in a chair just behind them, too hurt and bewildered to get herself away from them immediately.

The girls and men chattered on for some minutes, ignoring her utterly. Once she heard Isabel say, with a light laugh in response to something one of the men had said, “Yes, one meets so many common people at a church affair, don’t you think? I’ve coaxed Uncle Rad to let us go to some more exclusive church, out in a suburb you know, or uptown, but he doesn’t see it. He was born and brought up in this church, and nothing will do but we’ve all got to come. I’ve quit, however. I simply can’t stand the affairs they have here constantly. I only came tonight because I was asked to sing. Say Ed, did you hear that Jefferson Lyman is home? That’s another reason I came. They say he is coming here tonight just for old times’ sake. I don’t much believe it, but I took the chance.”

“And who is Jefferson Lyman?” asked the young man, who was evidently a newcomer in town.

“Oh, mercy, don’t you know Jeff? Why, he’s an old sweetheart of mine. We used to be crazy about each other when we were kids. Walked back and forth to school together and all that. Jeff’s been abroad for five or six years, and they say he’s tremendously sophisticated. I’m just dying to see him.”

“But who is he? Does he live around here? Not one of
the
Lymans, from the Lyman firm?”

“Sure, boy!” said Isabel. “He’s the Lyman himself, all there is left. Didn’t you know it? His father and his uncle are both dead. That’s why he’s come home. He’s to be the head of the firm now. He’s young, too, for such a position. But he’s been abroad a lot. That makes a difference. I’m simply crazy to see him and renew our acquaintance. Yes, he went abroad for the war, of course—was in aviation, won a lot of medals and things—and then he stayed over there, looking after the firm’s interests part of the time, traveling and studying. He’s a great bookworm, you know. But he’s stunningly handsome, if he hasn’t changed, and he’s no-end rich. My soul! He owns the whole business, and it’s been going ever since the ark, hasn’t it? He’s got a house in town right on the Avenue with a picture gallery in it; that house next to the Masonic Club, yes, that’s it, and an estate out beyond the township line on a hillside where you can see for miles, and a whole flock of automobiles and an army of servants and a seashore place up in New England with a wonderful garden right out on the beach almost, among the rocks. Oh, it’s perfectly darling. We motored past it last summer on our trip. I’d adore to live in it!”

“Gracious!” said Betty Bryson. “If he’s got all that, why does he come to a church social? I’m sure I wouldn’t bother to if I had all that.”

“Well, perhaps he won’t come,” said Isabel. “I’m sure I wouldn’t either. But they say he’s interested in the church because his father helped to found it, and he always comes when he’s home and there’s anything unusual going on. You know this is the minister’s twenty-fifth anniversary, and there’s just a chance he may come. I should think he’d be disillusioned, though, wouldn’t you? All these common people. Why some of them aren’t even dressed up decently!” Isabel lowered her voice and cast a covert glance about.

Marion somehow felt she was looking at her. She rose suddenly and made her swift way toward the kitchen. She would look up the woman who had asked her to come and say she would have to go home, that she was not feeling well or something. She simply could not go around among those dressed-up girls. She would drop something, surely, feeling like this. Oh, why had she been led to come to a scene like this? Why did they have things of this sort anyway? There was no worship in it, and what else could people want of it? How terrible those girls had been. Cruel and terrible. And Isabel Cresson, how she had changed and coarsened. Her lips and cheeks were painted. What a difference it made in her. She used to be a pretty girl with lovely golden, curly hair, and now it was all cut off, close, like a boy’s. That might be pretty on some people, perhaps, but Isabel looked too big and old for it.

Marion’s pale cheeks were flushed now, and her tired eyes bright with distress. She had never had quite such an experience as this, being turned down by an old schoolmate. One who had been under obligation to her, too, in the old days. What was the trouble? Wasn’t she dressed right?

She glanced down at her plain brown dress, made in the fashion of two years ago. It was still fresh and good, but of course the fashion was behind the times. Why hadn’t she realized that she needed to furbish up her wardrobe before going out into the world? She must attend to that before she went anywhere, even to church again. But what kind of people were they all to look down on an old acquaintance just because she was oddly dressed? She had been shut away from the world so long that she had gotten far away from the sense of worldliness. How odd it was that just dress made so much difference. And what a silly she was. Was she going to cry right there in the church before all those people? Oh, Jennie and Tom had been all wrong! She was not fit to go out anywhere. She was all tired out and needed to stay at home and rest and just be quiet.

She was edging her way through the merry crowds toward the church kitchen now, hoping to make her excuses and get away, when the minister loomed in her way and greeted her with a royal smile, and his wife put a comforting arm around her and began talking in a low tone, saying dear things about her father, telling her just how she had felt when her father was taken away. The tight lines of suffering around Marion’s delicate lips relaxed a little, and she began to look almost happy. Then with a swoop Mrs. Shuttle, the chairman of the entertainment committee, arrived.

“Well, here you are at last, Marion Warren!” she exclaimed in a loud voice that made Marion shrink. “We’ve been looking all over the place for you. We want you terribly in the kitchen right away. The woman we hired to wash dishes hasn’t come yet. She’s always late nowadays. She’s got a little baby and can’t leave early, and we find the Christian Endeavor used the glasses and ice-cream plates at their last social and just left them in the closet dirty! Isn’t that the limit? Something ought to be done about that. And see, we’re almost ready to serve and not enough ice-cream plates or glasses. You wouldn’t mind washing a few for us, would you, Marion? I told them I thought you wouldn’t. We’re almost wild back there in the kitchen. Come on!”

So Marion vanished into the kitchen and was presently established at the church sink washing dishes. Of course she could wash dishes. She had done that all her life. It was much less embarrassing than being out there in the other room being made to feel as if she came out of the ark. Yes, she was glad to wash dishes. She would rather wash dishes than serve. Much! Oh, much! This was what she said when it was discovered that the woman with the little baby did not arrive at all and that many more dishes besides the glasses and ice-cream plates would have to be washed before the evening was over.

So Marion stayed in the kitchen and washed dishes the rest of the evening, and rejoiced that she was not called upon to go back into the big room and be looked at. Never, never, never would she come to anything again till she made sure she was dressed just right! And never would she come at all just for pleasure.

Marion did not even eat any ice cream. The thought of it was revolting to her. She felt cold and hot and wanted to cry, but she washed dishes faithfully all the evening and smiled when each new trayful was landed on the table beside her and did not groan or complain and was rewarded at the end by commendation from Mrs. Shuttle.

“Oh, Marion, you’ve been just wonderful! I can’t thank you enough! You love to wash dishes, don’t you? You make dish washing a fine art, don’t you? Now, you really do! I wish you would come every time and help us. We’ll remember you when we get in a pinch again.”

“It’s a small thing to do,” said Marion, trying not to let her voice sound weary.

“And will you really come and help us again?”

“Why, surely,” said Marion, “if you need me,” and resolved if she did, that she would enter by the back door and not go at all into the main room. It was all well enough to serve the Lord in the church by washing dishes if she was needed, but there was no law at all either moral or spiritual to compel her to force herself on the church socially. She would never do it again.

So Marion went home at half past eleven, having wiped and set up the last hundred glasses and spoons herself, and let herself in at the front door with her latch key, and hoped that Jennie had gone to bed.

But Jennie was very much awake. She called down from the head of the stairs.

“Mercy! What kept you so late? Did you have a good time? You must have, to stay so long. Did anyone come home with you?”

“I was washing dishes,” said Marion wearily. “No, I didn’t have an especially good time. I stayed because the dishes had to be washed. No, no one came home with me. The janitor offered to, but I told him it wasn’t necessary.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t have stayed,” said Jennie indignantly. “What do they think you are? A servant? I wouldn’t go to that church anymore if I were you. There are other churches. Anyway, perhaps we’re not going to stay here much longer. Tom’s heard of a farm for sale up in New England. He’s taking the New York express tomorrow at six. We’ll have to get breakfast by five. You better get right up to bed or you won’t wake up. I can’t be depended on to do much, you know, because the baby is sure to wake up and cry.”

Marion stood in the hall where she had been when Jennie called to her and stared at the pattern of the wallpaper dazedly as she heard Jennie shut her door with a click and snap off her light. So that was the next thing that she was going to be confronted by, was it? They were going to try to go away. They wanted to sell the house and go away from the only spot on earth that was dear to her!

She went over and sat down on the lower step of the stairs and put her face down in her hands and thought how she was tired and sick of it all, and how wonderful it would be if she could just slip away and go where her father had gone.