Brentwood (2 page)

Below was an address in an eastern city:

And below that, in pencil, had been written uncertainly as if with an idea of erasing it:

So then she was no longer Marjorie Wetherill but Dorothy Gay. How strange and fantastic life was turning out to be!

She bowed her head on the letter and wept. First for the only mother she had known, and then for the mother she had not known. How pitiful it all seemed! So many little babies in the world without homes, and yet she should have been loved so intensely by two mothers!

Her heart burned for the mother she had always known, whose conscience had troubled her, and then ached for the other mother who wanted her and might not have her! What a strange world, and a strange happening, that this should come to her! That suddenly her safe, secure world should crumble all about her, death and change and perplexity staring her in the face.

And yet, she didn’t have to pay any attention to this letter. Nobody but herself knew of it. She could go right on living her life apart from them, living in this lovely home that the Wetherills had left her, forgetting her birth family, as she had always done. They had practically sold her out of their lives, hadn’t they? They had no real claim upon her. And, of course, they might be embarrassing! There was no telling what they were. She had nothing to give her a clue to what they were, except that her mother’s eyes were like hers.

Then suddenly a thrill came to her heart. But they were her very own, whatever they were! How wonderful that would be! And her mother had
wanted
her, enough to come a long distance to see her!

All the rest of the day the thought of her birth mother hovered in her mind and grew into a great longing to go to her; yet somehow it seemed disloyalty to the mother and father who had brought her up and had chosen to keep her in ignorance of her birth family.

It was not until she had read Mrs. Wetherill’s letter over carefully several times that she began to see that the letter really was a permission, if not even a plea, for her to do something about her birth family. As she began to read more and more between the lines of the letter, she felt that there was something demanded of her as a daughter that she should have done long ago.

That night she could not sleep and lay staring about in the darkness of her room—the room that Mrs. Wetherill had made so beautiful for her—realizing how safe and sweet and quiet it all was here, and how many complications there might be if she broke the long silence between herself and her own family. Yet the longing in her heart increased, to see them, even to find out the worst possible about them, just to have them for her own. Not to be alone in the great world.

There was a sister, too, and how wonderful it would be to have a sister! She had always wished for a sister. Or—perhaps the sister had not lived after all! The letter said she was delicate. Perhaps she had died. Perhaps that was the reason why her mother wanted her. Perhaps she had no others to love her and comfort her. Perhaps the father might be dead too!

Marjorie buried her face in her pillow and wept.

The morning mail brought two invitations to spend Christmas week with friends.

Christmas was only ten days off, and it loomed large and gloomy. The thought of Christmas without the only mother she had ever known seemed intolerable.

One of the invitations was from a distant cousin of Mrs. Wetherill’s, a kindly person with a large house, given to entertaining. The other was from an old schoolmate living in Boston. Both invitations spelled gaiety and good cheer, but they somehow did not appeal to her now. Her grief was too recent, and her feeling of loneliness too poignant to be diminished by mingling with a giddy throng of pleasure-seekers. In fact, that kind of Christmas never did appeal to her at any time. She liked simpler pleasures. Besides, her heart was too restless just now to plunge into worldliness and try to forget her loss.

All day she went about trying to make a decision, now almost deciding to accept one of the invitations and end her uncertainty, now playing with the idea of going to search out her birth family and learn once for all what they were like.

But when she reasoned that perhaps forgetting was best for the present, and tried to decide which invitation she should accept, she realized that she didn’t feel like going to either place.

Oh, of course they would all be very kind and put themselves out to make her have a good time, but Christmas couldn’t be Christmas this year, no matter how it was planned.

She was still in her unsettled state of mind when evening came and Evan Brower arrived to call upon her.

The Browers were one of the best old families, and among the closest friends of the Wetherills. Evan Brower was three or four years older than Marjorie, and though she had known him practically all her life, it had not been until the last year that he had paid her much attention. Mrs. Wetherill had been very fond of him, and of late he had been often at the house, one of the closest friends Marjorie had. Yet the two were still on the basis of friendship, nothing closer.

Marjorie was glad of his coming as a relief from the perplexities that had been with her all day, and smiled a real welcome as he took her hand in greeting.

“You are looking tired and white!” he said, scrutinizing her face sharply. “You need a change, and I’ve come to offer one. Mother wants you to come and stay a couple of weeks with her. She thought you might like to help her get ready for the family gathering at Christmastime. It will take your mind off your loneliness. You know your mother would never want you to mope. Mother thought maybe you would come over tomorrow and just consider you are on a visit.”

Marjorie’s heart sank. Here was the question again! And a family gathering! The hardest kind of a thing to go through, with this thought of her own unknown family in the back of her mind. Suddenly she knew she could not go anywhere till that matter was settled! She had to know just where she stood before ever she went among people again. She lifted her eyes to Evan’s kindly, pleasant face and tried to decline his offer in a gracious way.

“Oh, that is dear of your mother, Evan!” she said. “I do appreciate it a lot, and some other time I’d love to come, but just now I don’t feel I could.”

He settled down comfortably to combat her, just as if he had expected to have to do so.

“Now, you know that isn’t a bit sensible, Marjorie. There’s no point in stretching out your grief. You’ve got to go on living, and you know perfectly well your mother would want you to be happy.”

“Yes,” said Marjorie sweetly. “I know, and I’m not stretching out my grief. Mother and I talked it over together, and she told me all that. I understand, and I don’t intend to mope. But somehow I don’t feel I can stand gaiety just yet. I’ve had two other invitations but I’m declining them both—”

Marjorie hadn’t been quite sure till this minute what she was going to do, but now it was all very clear in her mind.

“But, Marge, it’s only our house. It’s almost like home, you know. It isn’t as if we were going to have a lot of strangers either. There will be just the cousins and aunts and uncles. You’ve always known them, and Mother intends to plan it all very quietly. I’m sure there won’t be anything to upset you. If you find it’s too much I’ll take you off in the car to some quiet place for a few hours and rest you up, and you really must see it will be better for you than moping around here in this lonely house.”

“You’re very kind!” said Marjorie with a troubled gaze, but more and more certain that she wasn’t going to accept. Then suddenly she lifted frank eyes to his.

“You see, Evan, there’s something I have to do first before I can go anywhere and begin life again.”

“Something you have to do? What do you mean?” He turned puzzled, dominating eyes upon her.

Marjorie hesitated, then spoke decisively. After all, he was her good friend, why not confide in him? Perhaps he could advise her.

“You know I’m an adopted child, don’t you? You’ve always known that, haven’t you, Evan?”

A startled, almost cautious look came into his eyes.

“Why—yes, of course, but what has that got to do with it? You don’t mean, Marjorie, that after all these years your mother has cut you out of the property she promised you? I heard her say myself that she was leaving you everything. You don’t mean that she tied it up or anything?”

Marjorie laughed and drew a deep breath.

“Oh, no, nothing like that, Evan. I’m very comfortably fixed, of course.”

A relieved look came into the young man’s handsome eyes.

“Well, then, why worry?” he said playfully, and his hand stole across and dropped familiarly, warmly, down upon hers.

They were sitting on the deep couch, Marjorie at one end, Evan near the other, but now he leaned across with a comforting manner and looked into her eyes.

She was quite serious as she answered him.

“It’s not money worries,” she said. “It’s something entirely different. It’s my family. My
birth
family, I mean.”

“Your birth family?” He looked at her, startled. “Have they dared turn up and annoy you?”

“Oh, no!” she said quickly. “Of course not!”

“Why ‘of course not’? They likely would, if they knew you were alone and unprotected. A girl with a fortune is never quite safe alone. You ought not to stay a night alone here!”

“Why, I’m not alone!” said Marjorie. “The servants would protect me with their lives if there were need. I’m quite safe. But it’s absurd, Evan, for you to talk that way about my birth family! Don’t, please! It hurts me!”

“
Hurts
you?” he said, looking at her incredulously. “Hurts you to hear that people you never saw in your life, and about whom you know nothing, might possibly have some motives that were not of the best?”

“They are my own people, Evan!”

“Nonsense! Nothing of the kind!” said Evan, lifting his well-modeled chin haughtily. “You are no more connected with them than I am. They gave you up! I should think you would never want to see or hear of them! I should say you are fortunate that they are not troubling you. Let sleeping dogs lie! You have no obligation whatever toward them!”

Something about the harshness of his tone made Marjorie give a little shiver and draw her hand quietly away from under his.

“I don’t feel that way, Evan!” she said gently, marveling that after her hours of doubt she suddenly felt clear in her mind about the matter. “You don’t know all about it, or you wouldn’t say that either, I’m quite sure. Mother left a letter telling me about them and suggesting that I might want to hunt them up and see if there was anything I could do for them.”

“And I still say, ‘Let sleeping dogs lie,’ ” said Evan coldly. And then he laid his hand once more on hers in a possessive way, as if he owned her.

“Of course, if you were anxious to do a little something in a quiet way for them, it could be arranged anonymously,” he added. “I would be glad to see to that for you, and it might ease your conscience, since you seem to be distressed about the matter. But on no account let them know that you have done anything for them. They will just be after you all the time, begging and whining, and making your life a misery. They are all suckers, those people! They never cared anything for you or they wouldn’t have sold you in the first place. And now you are a being of another world than theirs, and they have no right to intrude into your life and try to get your property away from you! I insist—!”

Marjorie drew her hand decidedly away from under his again and stood up, her own chin lifted defiantly, her eyes bright and indignant.

“Evan! You must not talk that way! You simply don’t understand at all. I thought you were my friend and I could talk it over with you, but you don’t seem willing to listen. I’m sorry I mentioned it, but since I have started, I must finish. I tell you, Mother left me a letter in which she tells me more about my people than I ever knew, and than she ever knew until a few months before Father died. I think she meant to
tell
me, but found it hard to talk about, and so left this letter. She gives me all the circumstances of my adoption and how my birth mother afterward was grieved that she had given me up and begged to see me, and—”

“Yes!
Exactly!
Didn’t I tell you? People like that can never honorably abide by a bargain—”

“Please don’t interrupt me, Evan. You must hear me to the end. Mother felt I ought to know about everything, and that I was free to do what I liked about hunting up my people and doing everything I liked for them. She says in the letter that they positively refused money. Sent back a check that she sent them!”

“Oh, probably only a fine gesture!” sneered Evan. “My dear, trust me! I know that class of people—”

“Be careful, Evan,” said Marjorie, drawing herself up. “Please don’t say any more! It is my own mother and father you are talking about! This is something I have to work out myself. I’m sorry I said anything about it until I had made my decision.”

“But, darling, be reasonable!” said Evan, softening his voice. Marjorie didn’t even notice he had called her “darling.” It was such a common phrase of the day and Evan was a very close friend. But his voice was less aggressive now, more gentle. He got up and stood beside her, taking her hands in his and drawing her nearer to him. “Listen, little girl! If you are really serious about this thing, of course it will have to be investigated. I still think it would be better not, but if you have set your heart on it, I beg you will let
me
do the investigating for you. I am a lawyer. I know how to protect your interests, and I will do whatever you want done conscientiously. I am sure you can trust me, Marjorie. I love you, don’t you know it, little girl?”

She looked up at him, startled. It was the first time he had ever spoken of love. He had just been a good friend, somewhat as she supposed a brother might be, only more polite than some brothers. One who would protect and advise and care for her when she needed it. And even now she was not sure but it was just in this way he meant that he loved her, as a man might love a dear sister whom he wanted to guide and protect. But somehow he had created a doubt in her mind as to his full willingness to understand and do all that she needed now. She could not get away from the harshness in his voice when he had said, “Let sleeping dogs lie!” The very words by which he had hoped to turn her away from her purpose had served to clarify her decision and give her a certain loyalty to these unknown ones of her family.