Mary, Mary

longer a child to be controlled and directed by authority. Her little girl was a big girl; she had grown up and was eager to undertake the business of life on her own behalf. But the period of Mrs. Makebelieve’s motherhood had drawn to a close, and her arms were empty. She was too used now to being a mother to relinquish easily the prerogatives of that status, and her discontent had this justification and assistance that it could be put into definite words, fronted and approved or rejected as reason urged. By knowledge and thought we will look through a stone wall if we look long enough, for we see less through eyes than through Time. Time is the clarifying perspective whereby myopia of any kind is adjusted, and a thought emerges in its field as visibly as a tree does in nature’s. Mrs. Makebelieve saw seventeen years’ apprenticeship to maternity cancelled automatically without an explanation or a courtesy, and for a little time her world was in ruins, the ashes of existence powdered her hair and her forehead. Then she discovered that the debris was valuable in known currency; the dust was golden: her love remained to her undisturbed and unlikely to be disturbed by whatever event. And she discovered further that parentage is neither a game nor a privilege, but a duty; it is⁠—astounding thought⁠—the care of the young until the young can take care of itself. It was for this freedom only that her elaborate care had been necessary; her bud had blossomed and she could add no more to its bloom or fragrance. Nothing had happened that was not natural, and whoso opposes his brow against that imperious urgency is thereby renouncing his kind and claiming a kinship with the wild boar and the goat, which they, too, may repudiate with leaden foreheads. There remained also the common human equality, not alone of blood, but of sex also, which might be fostered and grow to an intimacy more dear and enduring, more lovely and loving, than the necessarily one-sided devotions of parentage. Her duties in that relationship having been performed, it was her daughter’s turn to take up hers and prove her rearing by repaying to her mother the conscious love which intelligence and a good heart dictates. This given Mrs. Makebelieve could smile happily again, for her arms would be empty only for a little time. The continuity of nature does not fail, saving for extraordinary instances. She sees to it that a breast and an arm shall not very long be unoccupied, and consequently, as Mrs. Makebelieve sat contemplating that futurity which is nothing more than a prolongation of experience, she could smile contentedly, for all was very well.

XXXII

If the unexpected did not often happen life would be a logical, scientific progression which might become dispirited and repudiate its goal for very boredom, but nature has cunningly diversified the methods whereby she coaxes or coerces us to prosecute, not our own, but her own adventure. Beyond every corner there may be a tavern or a church wherein both the saint and the sinner may be entrapped and remoulded. Beyond the skyline you may find a dynamite cartridge, a drunken tinker, a mad dog, or a shilling which some person has dropped; and any one of these unexpectednesses may be potent to urge the traveller down a side street and put a crook in the straight line which had been his life, and to which he had become miserably reconciled. The element of surprise being, accordingly, one of the commonest things in the world, we ought not to be hypercritical in our review of singularities, or say, “These things do not happen”—because it is indisputable that they do happen. That combination which comprises a dark night, a highwayman armed and hatted to the teeth, and myself, may be a purely fortuitous one, but will such a criticism bring any comfort to the highwayman? And the concourse of three benevolent millionaires with the person to whom poverty can do no more is so pleasant and possible that I marvel it does not occur more frequently. I am prepared to believe on the very lightest assurance that these things do happen, but are hushed up for reasons which would be cogent enough if they were available.

Mrs. Makebelieve opened the letter which the evening’s post had brought to her. She had pondered well before opening it, and had discussed with her daughter all the possible people who could have written it. The envelope was long and narrow; it was addressed in a swift emphatic hand, the tail of the letter M enjoying a career distinguished beyond any of its fellows by length and beauty. The envelope, moreover, was sealed by a brilliant red lion with jagged whiskers and a simper, who threatened the person daring to open a missive not addressed to him with the vengeance of a battle-axe which was balanced lightly but truculently on his right claw.

This envelope contained several documents purporting to be copies of extraordinary originals, and amongst them a letter which was read by Mrs. Makebelieve more than ten thousand times or ever she went to bed that night. It related that more than two years previously one Patrick Joseph Brady had departed this life, and that his will (dated from a multitudinous address in New York) devised and bequeathed to his dearly beloved sister Mary Eileen Makebelieve, otherwise Brady, the following shares and securities for shares, to wit⁠ ⁠… and the thereinafter mentioned houses and messuages, lands, tenements, hereditaments, and premises, that was to say⁠ ⁠… and all household furniture, books, pictures, prints, plate, linen, glass, and objects of vertu, carriages, wines, liquors, and all consumable stores and effects whatsoever then in the house so-and-so, and all money then in the Bank and thereafter to accrue due upon the thereinbefore mentioned stocks, funds, shares, and securities⁠ ⁠… Mrs. Makebelieve wept and besought God not to make a fool