Part 11 (1/2)
Well, the way I found out was one of those mysterious ways in which G.o.d 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 d.i.c.k 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 wors.h.i.+p.”
”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?”