"Are you fond of hot corn-meal mush?"
"Yes, sir," very faintly.
"With cream on it--rich yellow cream--and plenty of sugar?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, I'll bet a nickel that's what we're going to get!"
"Yes, sir."
We drove up the lane and stopped at the yard gate. Harriet opened the
door. I led the small dark figure into the warmth and light of the
kitchen. She stood helplessly holding the baby tight in her arms--as
forlorn and dishevelled a figure as one could well imagine.
"Harriet," I said, "this is Anna Williams."
Harriet gave me her most tremendous look. It seemed to me at that moment
that it wasn't my sister Harriet at all that I was facing, but some
stranger and much greater person than I had ever known. Every man has,
upon occasion, beheld his wife, his sister, his mother even, become
suddenly unknown, suddenly commanding, suddenly greater than himself or
any other man. For a woman possesses the occult power of becoming
instantly, miraculously, the Accumulated and Personified Customs, Morals
and Institutions of the Ages. At this moment, then, I felt myself slowly
but surely shrinking and shriveling up. It is a most uncomfortable
sensation to find one's self face to face with Society-at-Large. Under
such circumstances I always know what to do. I run. So I clapped my hat
on my head, declared that the mare must be unharnessed immediately, and
started for the door. Harriet followed. Once outside she closed the door
behind her.
"David, _David_, DAVID," she said.
It occurred to me now for the first time (which shows how stupid I am)
that Harriet had already heard the story of Anna Williams. And it had
gained so much bulk and robustity in travelling, as such stories do in
the country, that I have no doubt the poor child seemed a sort of
devastating monster of iniquity. How the country scourges those who do
not walk the beaten path! In the, careless city such a one may escape to
unfamiliar streets and consort with unfamiliar people, and still find a
way of life, but here in the country the eye of Society never sleeps!
For a moment I was appalled by what I had done. Then I thought of the
Harriet I knew so well: the inexhaustible heart of her. With a sudden
inspiration I opened the kitchen door and we both looked in. The girl
stood motionless just where I left her: an infinitely pathetic figure.
"Harriet," I said, "that girl is hungry--and cold."
Well, it worked. Instantly Harriet ceased to be Society-at-Large and
became the Harriet I know, the Harriet of infinite compassion for all
weak creatures. When she had gone in I pulled my hat down and went
straight for the barn. I guess I know when it's wise to be absent from
places.
I unharnessed the mare, and watered and fed her; I climbed up into the
loft and put down a rackful of hay; I let the cows out into the pasture
and set up the bars. And then I stood by the gate and looked up into the
clear June sky. No man, I think, can remain long silent under the stars,
with the brooding, mysterious night around about him, without feeling,
poignantly, how little he understands anything, how inconsequential his
actions are, how feeble his judgments.
And I thought as I stood there how many a man, deep down in his heart,
knows to a certainty that he has escaped being an outcast, not because
of any real moral strength or resolution of his own, but because Society
has bolstered him up, hedged him about with customs and restrictions
until he never has had a really good opportunity to transgress. And some
do not sin for very lack of courage and originality: they are helplessly
good. How many men in their vanity take to themselves credit for the
built-up virtues of men who are dead! There is no cause for surprise
when we hear of a "foremost citizen," the "leader in all good works,"
suddenly gone wrong; not the least cause for surprise. For it was not he
that was moral, but Society. Individually he had never been tested, and
when the test came he fell. It will give us a large measure of true
wisdom if we stop sometimes when we have resisted a temptation and ask
ourselves why, at that moment, we did right and not wrong. Was it the
deep virtue, the high ideals in our souls, or was it the compulsion of
the Society around us? And I think most of us will be astonished to
discover what fragile persons we really are--in ourselves.
I stopped for several minutes at the kitchen door before I dared to go
in. Then I stamped vigorously on the boards, as if I had come rushing up
to the house without a doubt in my mind--I even whistled--and opened the
door jauntily. And had my pains for nothing!
The kitchen was empty, but full of comforting and homelike odours. There
was undoubtedly hot mush in the kettle. A few minutes later Harriet came
down the stairs. She held up one finger warningly. Her face was
transfigured.
"David," she whispered, "the baby's asleep."
So I tiptoed across the room. She tiptoed after me. Then I faced about,
and we both stood there on our tiptoes, holding our breath--at least I
held mine.
"David," Harriet whispered, "did you see the baby?"
"No," I whispered.
"I think it's the finest baby I ever saw in my life."
When I was a boy, and my great-aunt, who lived for many years in a
little room with dormer windows at the top of my father's house, used
to tell me stories (the best I ever heard), I was never content with the
endings of them. "What happened next?" I remember asking a hundred
times; and if I did not ask the question aloud it arose at least in my
own mind.
If I were writing fiction I might go on almost indefinitely with the
story of Anna; but in real life stories have a curious way of coming to
quick fruition, and withering away after having cast the seeds of their
immortality.
"Did you see the baby?" Harriet had asked. She said no word about Anna:
a BABY had come into the world. Already the present was beginning to
draw the charitable curtains of its forgetfulness across this simple
drama; already Harriet and Anna and all the rest of us were beginning to
look to the "finest baby we ever saw in all our lives."
I might, indeed, go into the character of Anna and the whys and
wherefores of her story; but there is curiously little that is strange
or unusual about it. It was just Life. A few days with us worked
miraculous changes in the girl; like some stray kitten brought in
crying from the cold, she curled herself up comfortably there in our
home, purring her contentment. She was not in the least a tragic figure:
though down deep under the curves and dimples of youth there was
something finally resistant, or obstinate, or defiant--which kept its
counsel regarding the past.
It is curious how acquaintanceship mitigates our judgments. We classify
strangers into whose careers the newspapers or our friends give us
glimpses as "bad" or "good"; we separate humanity into inevitable
goathood and sheephood. But upon closer acquaintance a man comes to be
not bad, but Ebenezer Smith or J. Henry Jones; and a woman is not good,
but Nellie Morgan or Mrs. Arthur Cadwalader. Take it in our own cases.
Some people, knowing just a little about us, might call us pretty good
people; but we know that down in our hearts lurk the possibilities (if
not the actual accomplishment) of all sorts of things not at all good.
We are exceedingly charitable persons--toward ourselves. And thus we let
other people live!
The other day, at Harriet's suggestion, I drove to town by the upper
road, passing the Williams place. The old lady has a passion for
hollyhocks. A ragged row of them borders the dilapidated picket fence
behind which, crowding up to the sociable road, stands the house. As I
drive that way it always seems to look out at me like some half-earnest
worker, inviting a chat about the weather or the county fair; hence,
probably, its good-natured dilapidation. At the gate I heard a voice,
and a boy about three years old, in a soiled gingham apron, a sturdy,
blue-eyed little chap, whose face was still eloquent of his recent
breakfast, came running to meet me. I stopped the mare. A moment later a
woman was at the gate between the rows of hollyhocks; when she saw me
she began hastily to roll down her sleeves.
"Why, Mr. Grayson!"
"How's the boy, Anna?"
And it was the cheerful talk we had there by the roadside, and the sight
of the sturdy boy playing in the sunshine--and the hollyhocks, and the
dilapidated house--that brought to memory the old story of Anna which I
here set down, not because it carries any moral, but because it is a
common little piece out of real life in which Harriet and I have been
interested.