CHAPTER X.

GOING AND STAYING.

MARION waked in the morning with a general impression that something very delightful had happened, but it was some minutes before she could disentangle her recollections. At last, however, it came to her. She was really going away, going to begin the world anew as she had wished. She was going where she would have a chance to show what she could do, and where she would not be looked down upon, and treated like a baby, as she was now.

As she lay and looked round her pretty little room with its old-fashioned furniture almost black with age, the carved cabinet which did duty as a bureau, the looking-glass with its queer frame of black wood and tarnished gilding, the muslin-covered toilet-table which Aunt Baby had dressed up in one of her own old flowered dresses as a surprise for Marion's birthday, she wondered how it would seem to wake in a new place.

"Of course I shall go to work and make my room as pretty as I can. I mean to begin some mats and tidies and a scrap-bag, and have some glasses for flowers. I mean to ask Aunt Baby to let me have father's pictures and hang them up—at least some of them. Perhaps some day I shall have a fine house and picture galleries of my own, and then dear father's works shall be appreciated at last. Of course poor dear Aunt Baby could not be expected to see anything in them."

Then returning to her room: "I shall have my Bible and books of course, and when the little boys come in to see me, as I shall let them when they are very good, I shall read to them and tell them Bible stories. Perhaps I shall get them to have family worship after a while."

Marion lay indulging in these delightful visions till the striking clock warned her that it was time to get up. She had resolved on being very kind and amiable to everybody, so as to leave none but pleasant remembrances behind her. Especially she would be very considerate to Aunt Baby. After all, she had meant to be kind, and had been so according to her lights. As Christian said, the idea of her own superiority was firmly fixed in Marion's mind, especially of her superiority to her own family.

"I suppose Marie must have some new clothes," said Hector McGregor at breakfast. "We must not let her go among her new friends with nothing to wear."

"I don't think you need take any trouble about that, grandfather," said Marion, "I dare say father—I mean Mr. Van Alstine—will provide all that is necessary."

"I dare say Ezra will do what is right, my dear, but I should not like you to begin by asking him for something to wear," said Miss Baby. "Aunt Christian has to go to T— for two or three days. We will just look over your things and see what is needed, and she will buy it for us."

The clothes were looked over, and it was decided that Marion should have a new black silk, a muslin and some other articles of minor importance.

"Don't you mean to send for your summer shawl, Aunt Baby?" asked Marion. "You won't have another so good a chance."

"No, dear; I don't think I shall buy a summer shawl just at present," answered Aunt Baby, quietly. "My old one will do very well for some time yet."

"Well, I wonder how you can bear to wear that old snuff-coloured Canton crape that is as well-known as the meeting-house," said Marion.

And it was not till some hours afterward that she suspected that the price of Aunt Baby's new summer shawl had gone into her black silk. It was not that Marion meant to be ungrateful so much as that she did not think. Her heart was never—

"At leisure from itself"

to consider the claims and feelings of others.

"Aunt Baby, I wish you would let me have the key of the east garret," said Marion next day after doctor and Mrs. Campbell had gone; "I want to look at father's pictures."

Miss Baby hesitated.

"Marie dear, I don't think I would touch them if I were you. I don't think you will find any pleasure in them."

"I can tell better when I see them," said Marion, loftily. "I think I have a right to the things which belonged to him, and whatever his faults were, he was my father."

"True, my dear. I would have you respect his memory, and for that very reason I would let the dead rest. However, take ell own way, lassie," she added, as Marion made a gesture of impatience. "Here is the key. Bring it back when you have done with it."

"I suppose I can have some of the pictures to take with me," said Marion; "and the rest can stay here till I have a house of my own."

"Oh yes, they can stay; never fear."

Marion ran up to the east garret, as it was called, and opened the stiff and seldom-used door. The place was not so much a garret as a little chamber in the roof, with a large dormer window a good deal darkened first by dust and cobwebs and secondly by an old green curtain.

Marion went down for a broom, with which she brushed away the cobwebs. She rolled up the curtain, threw open the window, and then looked eagerly about her.

A quantity of rather thin new-looking books were piled on the floor in one corner. In another were a number of large unframed canvases leaning against the wall. Marion eagerly seized upon two and turned them round. Her heart sank at the first glance, but she resolutely wiped the dust from their faces and placed them in the most favourable light and sat down on an old chair to look at them. Alas for her dreams of picture galleries and posthumous fame for her poor father! One of the pictures represented a broad pewter-coloured river running down the middle of the canvas at a very steep angle. On one verdigris-coloured bank was a large red church, which seemed on the point of slipping out of the picture. On the other, exactly opposite, was a large red house similarly endangered. A cow which, judging from the rest of the picture, must have been about sixty feet long, was standing lengthwise in the pewter river, to which if turned across she would have made a convenient bridge. The other picture was worse if possible than the first.

Marion had a correct eye and some knowledge of drawing, but these were hardly required to show that the pictures were the most wretched daubs imaginable. She hastily pushed them back into their original position, and was about to close the window when her eye fell on the books. They might be better, and she took one and opened it at random. The volume was prettily printed on nice paper, and must have cost a good deal. The first poem she lighted on was called "The Rose," and read as follows:

"The rose is a beautiful flower, It holds up its elegant head Above all the rest in the bower, And gives a sweet scent when it's dead.

"A beautiful blue is the violet, Round and white is the snowball, But, love, when you send me a bouquet, Oh, let a sweet rose crown them all!"

and so on for many verses. This elegant poem was a fair sample of the contents of the volume.

Marion threw it down and burst into very pardonable tears of mortification and disgust. Her visions of vindicating the reputation of her dead father were among the least selfish and narrow of her many day-dreams, and it was indeed very hard to have them so rudely dispelled.

"Marie dear, don't cry," said a gentle voice, and Aunt Baby's hand was laid on her head.

"Oh, Aunt Baby, I wish I had taken your advice," sobbed Marion, laying her head on her aunt's shoulder as the latter knelt beside her. "I wish I had never looked at the things. They ought not to have been kept. They ought to be burned up."

"My dear, I have said that to myself a great many times, but it isn't a very easy matter to burn up two or three hundred bound volumes all at once. I might have used them for kindling, but I had a kind of tenderness for the poor things after all. Your father thought them so fine, it seemed almost cruel to treat them in that way. So I e'en piled them all up here, and left them to the mice."

"But they are such—such horrible trash," said Marion, picking up the volume she had dropped. "They are not even good grammar. Just see here:

"'Oh, what an impulsive truant love thou art! Thou first subdues then inspirates the heart!'

"I don't see how he ever got any one to publish them!"

"He could not get any one to publish them, and wasted a great deal of money in printing them himself: I don't want to blame him now that he is away, but you can see what a distress and mortification it was to all of us, especially as your poor mother's little portion and earnings were all wasted in such undertakings, and she actually suffered. From what I have learned since, I have very little doubt that the death of Eiley's first child was caused by its mother's want of the common necessaries of life, while its father was refusing work which would have supported his family, to paint pictures and write poems such as these."

"But my mother never would have thought anything of this rubbish," said Marion. "She must have known better."

"Of course she did. That was not one of the least of her many troubles. But if she ever said a word, her husband talked of the trials of genius and bemoaned his hard fate in being yoked to such an uncongenial mate, the doited haverel," said Aunt Baby in sudden impatience. "My dear, I beg your pardon, I ought not to speak so of your father before you. There, let us put the books and pictures away and close the door on them."

"I mean to ask Uncle Alick to burn them all up some time when he is burning a log heap," said Marion.

"That is a very good notion. I never thought of it," said Aunt Baby. "There, don't cry any more. I never meant you should see these things, for I knew they would vex you."

"She is just as good as she can be," said Marion to herself as she went to her room to wash her hands and brush the dust from her dress. "I won't do a single thing to tease her as long as I stay, and I will help her all I can. It was very good of her to give up her new shawl, and it isn't her fault if she doesn't understand me."

And then Marion blushed as she remembered how her father had considered himself a misunderstood genius. "I wonder if I am like him," she thought. "Aunt Baby must have remembered him ever so many times when I talked of being misunderstood. I will never do it again, I know that."

The lesson she had received was not lost upon Marion. She certainly was far more modest and amiable than usual during the remainder of her stay at home. She took her share of the household work without grumbling, and tried to anticipate her aunt and to save her steps. She even made a resolution to forego the society of the heiress of the McGregors, and kept it for at least forty-eight hours. She read her Bible punctually, and spent more time than usual in prayer.

But she did not go to the root of the matter. She had not learned to call by their right names the great faults of her character, her self-consciousness, conceit and habitual contempt for those about her. She did not see these things in the light of sins to be prayed and striven against. She knew that people considered her self-conceited, but that was only because "they did not understand her."

Consequently, it was not long before her day-dreams resumed their sway. She was once more the model daughter and sister who was to bring order out of chaos and elegance and refinement out of vulgarity. Her very religious exercises ministered to her delusion. With her vigorous imagination, it was not difficult for her to work herself up into a state of exalted feeling, and she found pleasure in so doing. She took this feeling as an evidence that she was truly converted. She applied to her daily conduct none of those Scripture tests which seem given especially to guard against such delusions as hers.

"If ye love me, keep my commandments."

"He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me."

"If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above."

Marion never thought of applying any such tests as these. She pleased herself with dreams of influencing her unknown father and brothers, of establishing Sunday schools among an all but heathen population of workmen and their families, even of persuading her father and brother-in-law to build a church; but all the time it was Marion McGregor who was to have the honour. Not that she said this in so many words, but it was at the bottom of all her schemes. She was not undeceived when she forgot her Sunday school lesson in her ideal class, lost the whole church service, sermon and all, in dreaming over the church she meant to build, and spent the time devoted to her private devotions in the same way.

The circumstances of Marion's journey were all arranged. She was to travel with Doctor and Mrs. Campbell to New York. The doctor would put her on the train for the nearest station to Hemlock Valley, under the care of the conductor, and she would have no changes after that; her stepfather or one of the boys would meet her at the station, and take her home.

The day before her departure arrived, and Marion had been down to the village to say some good-byes and make some last little purchases. She was not in quite as good spirits as she had been. After all, it was a serious thing to leave her friends who had brought her up, and the place which had always been her home, and go away among strangers. She began to appreciate the love which had always surround her, and to have some few stirrings of conscience as to the way she had received and recompensed that love. Her grandfather, vigorous as he was, had long passed the usual term of human life, and Marion felt that she might very probably never see him again.

"I wish I had not seemed so glad to go," thought Marion; "they will all think I am very unfeeling. Here are Kitty and Therese coming; I wonder if they have been up to our house. I wish I was going to Paris like Therese, instead of into the woods, though after all I suppose she will be only a servant."

"We have been up to see you," said Kitty, when they met; "I suppose you will be going to-morrow."

"Yes, by the early express; but I shall not get home till night to-morrow, Uncle Duncan says. And you?"

"We go to New York in two weeks, but we shall not sail for some time," answered Kitty. "Only think, Marion, Therese is not going after all. Isn't it too bad?"

"Not going!" exclaimed Marion; "Why, I thought it was all settled."

"So it was, but it has been unsettled again," said Therese; "that is the way with things in this world, you know."

"But how?"

"Well, Grandmother Duval is very feeble; she has no relation but me in the world, that she knows of. She isn't fit to stay alone, and she doesn't like having a stranger; so there seems a clear call for me to stay."

"But what does Mrs. Tremaine say?"

"She thinks I am right, and so does Mrs. Parmalee, and I am sure I am," answered Therese. "Grand-mère Duval has always been the kindest of the kind to me, and now it is my turn to do something for her."

"Well, I think she is very mean and selfish to require such a sacrifice," said Marion, with her usual want of consideration; "she ought to be willing to give up something for your sake, and not expect you to sacrifice such advantages for improving yourself."

"I suppose the best way of improving one's self is by doing one's duty," said Therese with some animation. "If you knew my grandmother, Marion, you would never think of calling her selfish. She never asked me to stay. But I know it will be a great comfort to her, and indeed I don't see how she could do without me. She is very much changed and broken since—since I was sick. She is unfit to be alone, and there is nobody else to stay with her. She did all she could for me, and, as I said, now it is my turn to do for her."

"But were you not dreadfully disappointed?" asked Marion, with an uncomfortable feeling that these words might somehow apply to herself.

"Why yes, I was, there is no denying it," answered Therese, winking her long lashes pretty hard, but smiling brightly at the same time. "However, it is not an unmixed disappointment after all. I am going to step into your shoes, Marion. Miss Tilly has given me her scholarship in the Crocker school."

"Why, what has Miss Tilly to do with it, and how does she come to have a scholarship?" asked Marion.

"Because her name is Crocker," answered Kitty. "There is a great deal in a name sometimes. Cousin Tilly is one of the two remaining descendants of old Mr. Crocker who founded and endowed the school before the Revolution. She is his great-granddaughter, and, as such, has the right of nominating two pupils to the school whenever there are vacancies. I have one scholarship, and I have lent it to Mary Parmalee's cousin for the present. The other has been vacant some time, and Cousin Tilly has given it to Therese."

"Well, I'm sure she is welcome to it for me, and I wish her joy of it," said Marion; "I know you all think Miss Oliver perfection, but I never could see her merit, though she does very well for a little place like this."

"Mamma thinks Miss Oliver is one of the best teachers she ever knew anywhere," said Kitty.

"She never understood me," replied Marion; "but as she is obliged to teach for a living, it is a good thing that somebody wants her."

"I hope somebody will want me when I am educated," said Therese. "Well, Kitty, we ought to be going. Good-bye, Marion; I hope you will have a pleasant journey."

"I wonder if Aunt Baby thinks I ought to stay at home and help her?" thought Marion as she went on her way homeward. "I suppose she has really done a good deal more for me than Therese's grandmother for her."

But these thoughts were not agreeable, and Marion returned to her day-dreams.

The next morning she set out on her journey.