Susan Jenks, coming up, found Mary with the little cat in her lap.
"Oh, honey child, don't cry like that."
"Oh, Susan, Susan, it will never be the same again, never the same."
And now once more in the garden, the roses bloomed on the
hundred-leaved bush, once more the fountain sang, and the little bronze
boy laughed through a veil of mist--but there were no gay voices in the
garden, no lovers on the stone seat. Susan Jenks kept the paths trim
and watered the flowers, and Pittiwitz chased butterflies or stretched
herself in the sun, lazily content, forgetting, gradually, those who
had for a time made up her world.
But Mary, on the high seas, could not forget what she had left behind.
It was not Susan Jenks, it was not Pittiwitz, it was not the garden
which called her back, although these had their part in her regrets--it
was the old life, the life which had belonged to her childhood and her
girlhood the life which had been lived with her mother and father and
Constance--and Barry.
As she lay listless in her deck chair, she could see nothing in her
future which would match the happiness of the past. The days lived in
the old house had never been days of great prosperity; her father had,
indeed, often been weighed down with care--there had been times of
heavy anxieties--but, there had been between them all the bond of deep
affection, of mutual dependence.
In Gordon's home there would be splendors far beyond any she had known,
there would be ease and luxury, and these would be shared with her
freely and ungrudgingly, yet to a nature like Mary Ballard's such
things meant little. The real things in life to her were love and
achievement; all else seemed stale and unprofitable.
Of course there would be Constance and the baby. On the hope of seeing
them she lived. Yet in a sense Gordon and the baby stood between
herself and Constance--they absorbed her sister, satisfied her, so that
Mary's love was only one drop added to a full cup.
It was while she pondered over her future that Mary was moved to write
to Roger Poole. The mere putting of her thoughts on paper would ease
her loneliness. She would say what she felt, frankly, freely, and when
the little letters were finished, if her mood changed she need not send
them.
So she began to scribble, setting down each day the thoughts which
clamored for expression.
Porter complained that now she was always writing.
"I'd rather write than talk," Mary said, wearily; and at last he let
the matter drop.