Maris Read Online Free Page A

personally, make her understand what an unforgivable thing her brother had done. He never had liked that fellow anyway. When he and Maris were married, he would forbid Merrick from coming to the house! One didn't have to marry all one's wife's relatives of course. He would make her understand that thoroughly when the time came.
    So Tilford Thorpe started on his way to see Maris.
    Maris, on her knees beside the dining room couch, was holding a cloth wet in aromatic ammonia in front of her mother's face and crying in her heart, Oh, God. Don't let her die! Oh, God, please don't let my mother die! and was coming out rapidly from the coma of merriment into which the orgy of festivities connected with her engagement had plunged her.
    As the agonized minutes passed and still that white face did not change--save for a quick catching of breath, faintly, so faintly that they weren't quite sure it had been a breath--it seemed as if the atmosphere rapidly became clear of a lot of things that had filled it for Maris in the past weeks. True values of things and people began to adjust themselves to her sharply awakened mind. Such things as special hours for wedding invitations to be mailed and the importance of pleasing Tilford's relatives sank into insignificance. Years of tender care and sacrifice and precious love stood out in clear relief and importance. Strange sharp memories came and stood around like witnesses against her. The time when she had cut the vein in her wrist with the bread knife and Mother had held it together until the doctor got there. The time when the bull had dashed into the garden from a herd that was going by on the street and Mother had sheltered her behind her own body. That was when she was only two and a half years old, yet she remembered how safe she had felt. The time when she had the whooping cough and almost died, with an unbelievable temperature, and Mother had stayed up for two whole nights and days, most of the time on her knees bathing the hot little body under a blanket, trying to bring down the temperature. The time when there had had to be a blood transfusion and Mother had offered her own. Such a precious mother who had guarded and served them all. Her deeds stood crowding about the couch hand in hand, silent witnesses of the past. And last of all her lovely wedding dress seemed to her troubled mind to come floating down the stairs and stand with the rest about the couch where the little gray-faced mother lay.
    "Oh, Mother, Mother!" Maris suddenly cried, softly, and her hand paused with the wet cloth she was holding, and her head suddenly went down on her mother's breast for an instant of despair. Then up again instantly, just as strong hands lifted her, and Merrick's voice, grown suddenly tender and more worried, said, "Take her in the other room. I'll look out for Mother."
    That roused her. She straightened up.
    "No! No! I'm all right!" she whispered. "I must stay here!"
    "There's the doctor!" announced Gwyneth, hurrying to open the door. And then they all made way for the doctor, and Maris felt those strong arms lifting her again and leading her to a chair.
    She did not look up to see who it was. Her eyes were upon her mother's face there on the couch.
    Someone brought her a glass of water, and she drank it and then went back to stand at the head of the couch and watched the doctor's face.
    The strange young man was sent on an errand for the doctor, and Merrick went to telephone his father. Maris stayed to wait on the doctor and answer his questions, though she found it was fourteen-year-old Gwyneth who did most of the answering.
    "I wasn't here," was all Maris could say in answer to some question about whether her mother had felt bad the day before and what she had been doing.
    "She had an awful headache yesterday," said Gwyneth sadly. "I guess she worked too hard. She would do so many things. I tried to help her, but she sent me to do my homework and said she could do it all herself. But once I