I shivered, and looking up I met his gaze and was held by it. It was
pleading--commanding, almost compelling. I understood him perfectly,
and I tried hard to break away from that controlling glance, but all
in vain, until a dimness came across his eyes and slow tears gathered
there. Then I wrenched my eyes from his and hung my head and whispered,
“Good-bye.” As my mother called me I slid off the bed to go to her,
but the hoarse whisper came, “Little torment!” and I stopped. Again,
“Dear, little torment!” and foolishly I looked at him, and for the
last time our struggle was renewed, and now I had to resist not only
his pleading, but that of something within me that said, “Think of his
little daughter who cannot tell him good-bye, and kiss him for her
sake.” Almost I yielded--and then--the homesick friend, the bridge,
the knife, and I threw back my head violently and exclaimed, “No! No!
I can’t! but----” and I laid my little hand against his lips. He took
it gently, gently, and sighing heavily he kissed it, palm and back, and
every dimple, including the tiny one in my wrist, and every finger-tip,
and then said under his breath, as it were, “Good-bye, little maid who
knows her own mind,” and as the key was turning in the lock after we
had gone from the cell we heard him give a husky laugh and say, “She’s
got a will--it’s stronger than mine--for, mind you, she never kissed
me!”
And that was our last sight of “the gentleman who was going to
die,” because that bright day, when Charley and I were out making
the acquaintance of a very remarkable calf--remarkable because its
forequarters were mild and gentle, while its hindquarters stung like an
adder--and we were about to play marketing, and we both had a desire
to purchase the forequarters of the calf, and as we never quarreled
we drew lots for choice, while the calf slowly chewed up our market
basket--and at that very moment, in the city, Goldy-locks’ beloved “Mr.
No. 3” was heading a procession to the scaffold with many a jest about
the “blue funk” he said the men were in about him. He remarked their
pale faces and trembling hands, and actually encouraged and advised
them, himself directing the proper placing of the fatal knot. Then
with alert, springy step, bright eye and cheerful voice he mounted the
scaffold, stepped with quick obedience upon the trap, and was hurled
out of this world into--what?
White and cold and silent his wife removed her coffined dead, and when
we returned “the gentleman who was going to die” had died. He was gone,
and his cell and corridor knew him no more.
Old Myra’s Waiting
Old Myra’s Waiting
Was she mad? I do not know. I only know that she was old, oh! very
old, and had known such sorrows as break the heart and blast the
intellect of many of her sex. So old, so fragile--so poor--with a wit
like polished steel and a tongue like an adder. I was her one friend
in the world and was as helpless as herself. We each earned our own
living--that was the one experience we had in common. Save for that,
there was a whole world between us. She stood wavering and unstrung at
one end of life--I stood quivering and tense at the other end. She had
known it all, all, and only wished to sleep, to forget--I knew nothing,
and only longed to learn, to feel, to know.
The first time I saw her she stood on the bank of the lake, a little,
swaying, black-robed figure, facing a blinding gale. The wild wind tore
her pitifully thin shawl from her shoulders and sent it whirling down
the lonely street. I set my long, young legs in motion and ran it down,
and returning, put it about her sharp, old shoulders.
She gave me one piercing glance from the blackest eyes I ever saw. Her
dry, pale lips drew back across her rather long, narrow teeth in a sort
of smile, and she said: “My dear, you are a wonder; few young people
condescend to run like that, particularly for the old. I thank you!”
She turned her face again to the lake. Though I found it hard to keep
my position, she somehow managed to maintain hers, frail as she was. I
was puzzled--why was she standing there, so thinly clad? I hesitated a
moment, then I said as respectfully as I could:
“Madame--could you not go into one of those houses, or home, perhaps,
and let me wait here for your message or--or friend, and then come and
tell you?”
She turned her sharp eyes upon my face, and exclaimed: “God bless my
soul! the girl means a kindness to me!” and she laughed a shrill, thin
peal of mocking laughter that made me hot with shame and anger too, and
I turned away with a brief “I beg your pardon;” but she could be quick
if she was old, and her claw-like hand was on my wrist in a moment, and
her sharp voice reached me through the wind: “I can’t, my dear, I can’t
leave now! You see my treasures are out there, and if they should be
given up, I want to be at hand. Go home! my dear--go home, where people
are not old and mad, and do not wait for the sea to give up their
dead,” and turned again to face the gale, while I flew like the wind
from her strange presence.
Some weeks passed before I saw her again, and then, as it happened, was
able to do her a second small service. The day was wet and windy, the
streets muddy. I was hurrying down Bank street and was about to cross
an alley-way, which opens on that street, when I heard a little cry
behind me, and there rolled past my feet a very neatly done up, small
package, with a large seal on it in red wax. It stopped in the middle
of the alley directly in front of an advancing dray-horse. I snatched
it up and sprang across to the sidewalk, where I waited for the owner,
who came hurrying across with anxious face and outstretched hands; and
behold! there was my strange, old lady again.
She seized the package, and examining it carefully, she muttered, more
to herself than to me: “I hope it’s safe, a fortune blowing about the
muddy streets like that!”
My face must have been an expressive one; at all events she read it
like a book, and went on rather sneeringly:
“Oh, I’m not mad; at least, not _now_! This does not belong to me;
it would not be a fortune if it did; it’s lace--old, rare and very
valuable! Had it been ruined? Oh, it makes me quite faint to think of
such a chance! I am really very grateful to you, my child!”
She spoke her thanks so gracefully that I felt myself grow pink with
pleasure.
We walked side by side a little way, when she said: “My dear, I’m not a
stupid woman, but I can’t quite make you out. Your speech and bearing
says one thing, but your being out so much, quite unattended, says
another. Oh! I’ve seen you many times since that day at the lake.
Then, your clothes--they are too good for poverty; but you wear the
same things too often to have generous and well-to-do parents. No, I
don’t quite understand.”
We were right at the door of the old “Academy” then, and I stopped,
saying: “I go in here; there is a rehearsal; I am a member of the
company.”
I never saw such fire as could leap into those fierce, old eyes of
hers--at that moment they fairly blazed.
“Here, you!--you with that clean, honest, young face! For fifty years
I’ve had a curse, hot and burning in my heart, for theatres and all
connected with them!”
Then angrily shaking her forefinger at me, she cried:
“You run up your flag, girl!--your flag of red and black, of paint and
dye!--that honest craft may know there’s a pirate in these waters!”
and, dragging her veil across her face, she left me standing there,
divided between the desire to laugh and the desire to cry. A pirate? I
was such a harmless, well-meaning, little pirate that even had I shown
the flag, and blackened my lashes and rouged my cheeks, I doubt if I
should have created a very great panic in the Cleveland shipping--and
so, at last, the laugh won; and between laughs I said aloud: “I am a
pirate! I am a pirate!” And so a member of the company found me, and
paused and looked me gravely over, and, wagging his head desperately,
said: “It seems incredible, such meanness in one so young, but you will
bear in mind I _saw_ this myself--a girl of sixteen, who knows a good
story, takes herself out into a cold, damp hall, and tells this story
to herself, and laughs and laughs all to herself, and then wipes her
mouth and goes in seriously and sadly to join her defrauded brother and
sister artistes. Clara, I wouldn’t have believed it of you!”
I had to tell him what I was really laughing at.
“Good Lord!” he said, “that was old Mrs. Worden. Do you mean to tell me
you don’t know her? She’s a terror, is old Myra! She used to carry this
town in her pocket. She was young then, and rich, and they do say Myra
was a beauty. Hard to believe that, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think so,” I replied. “Her features are really perfect. Her
eyes must have been very fine; her hair black, and her figure very
graceful.”
“Perhaps,” he yawned, “but she has the sharpest tongue and the longest
memory in Cleveland. How she does lash some of our public men! You
know the rector of Christ Church, the party who abuses theatres so
often? Well, one day there was a race between the ancient Myra and the
long-winded Reverend. She was overhauling him fast, and he knew it.
These doors stood open--theatre doors. He was between the devil and the
deep sea, and--well, quite properly, he chose the deep sea, and slid
in here, and behind that billboard. Had he only known it, he need not
have gone behind that board for shelter, for nothing on earth could
induce the ancient dame to enter the door of a theatre; so he would
have been safe had he merely stepped inside. As soon as she had passed,
he tried to slip out unnoticed, but _I_ was on the spot, I am proud
to say, when I was least wanted, and, lifting my hat, I informed him
that if he wanted seats he would find the box-office at the head of the
stairs. He _glared_ at me, and then I offered to run up and get him a
programme of the evening’s performance, but he snorted something about
‘mistaking the entrance,’ and got away. Well,” my companion added, with
a self-satisfied look, “if there is anyone in town who has _not_ heard
of that chase and escape, it’s not my fault.”
“But why,” I asked, “does Mrs. Worden dislike theatres so greatly?”
“My dear girl,” replied my friend Lewis, “I just love to instill
knowledge into your hungry, young mind, but fifty cents are always
full fifty cents to me, and if I stand here stuffing you with valuable
information, I shall be late to rehearsal, and fifty cents forfeit will
be torn from my unwilling pocket-book. So _en avant_,” and we both
turned our faces stageward.
The next day was very stormy and bitter cold. My mother insisted upon
my wrapping her shawl about me as an extra protection, but I had not
gone more than a block or two before I was in trouble. The wind tore
at me, the small pins could not stand the strain, they gave way, open
went the shawl. The wind caught it, and slapped my face with it, and
flung it flapping noisily through the air. I grabbed for it, jumped
up at it, waltzed around and tried to catch it; but truth to tell
that shawl could be found most any place in the street except on my
shoulders. While I was laboring like a ship in a high sea, I heard
some one knocking on a window-pane, and just as I began thinking
I should have to scud under bare poles for home, the knocking was
repeated so very loudly that I looked up, and, to my astonishment,
there stood Mrs. Worden! I was amazed, because I had supposed the
house to be unoccupied. The lower part was so, but at the upper window
she was standing and making signs for me to cross over to her. Still
wrestling madly with the shawl, I plunged over. The old lady opened
the front door, showing an empty and bare hall, and holding tightly to
the door itself, to keep from being blown backward, she motioned with
her head for me to come in. I obeyed, and stood leaning against the
unfriendly-looking wall, trying to regain my breath. Mrs. Worden smiled
sardonically at me, and remarked:
“I don’t think you will get to your precious rehearsal to-day at that
rate of speed. I’ve been watching you prancing about with that shawl,
and I’ve brought you down this.”
She held out to me a shawl-pin. As I took it, I found it was yet warm
from the hand of its maker since it was formed of a stout darning
needle with a ball of red sealing wax for a head. She had seen my
trouble and had hastily made this shawl-pin especially for me. I was
surprised beyond speech for a moment, and she mistook my silence, for
she began to jeer.
“Oh, use it, use it! If you can keep that shawl about you it may save
you from a sickness. Then you can hide the pin from the sight of those
lords and ladies at your great, fine theatre. They are so artistic, I
fear its roughness and lack of finish might jar upon them.”
But I shook my head, and, smiling broadly at her, I said:
“It’s no use, Mrs. Worden, you can never frighten me again. I know you
now, and you are good and kind.”
A sort of wonder came upon her: “Good God!” she cried. “You must
be madder than I am!” then she turned her eyes to the rough, gray
lake spreading far before us, and on her face there grew the look it
wore the first time I saw her. She spoke out quite distinctly, but
apparently not to me:
“I wonder if you hear?” she said. “I wonder? You used to call me good
and kind, aye, and dear, but that’s five and forty years ago, a weary
time my prettys! Perhaps the sign is coming soon--”
I stood a moment, then I laid my hand gently on her arm and said: “See,
now, how safe the shawl is; I thank you very much, and I shall get to
the rehearsal in time, after all.” She looked a bit bewildered for a
moment, then she asked: “Shall you be long to-day?”
“Oh, no,” I answered, “I shall be through very early.”
“Then suppose you stop in here a bit and have a cup of coffee?”
I accepted the invitation eagerly, and, as I ran down the steps, she
called to me: “You, girl, who won’t be frightened any more, I may be
out when you come; see, here’s where you’ll find the key, and just go
right up to the front room and wait for me.”
I nodded, and started again, but once more through the wind came her
shrill call: “You, girl, don’t you touch the fire, if you have to wait;
mind now, don’t touch it; I attend to that myself.”
The door slammed shut, and I was slammed down the windy street,
but in considerable comfort, now that the thick shawl was fastened
securely about me. I have seen--owned very handsome shawl pins since
then--some double, with connecting chains of silver or of gold, and
cunningly decorated by the goldsmith’s skill, but none ever gave me
better service than did that darning needle with its head of wax, made
beautiful in my eyes by the kindly thought that prompted its creation.
I was really quite excited at the prospect of seeing her at home. She
was an acquired taste. I had found her bitter at first, but now there
was a faint hint of sweetness rising above the bitterness, and I liked
it. I hurried to keep my appointment, and as I approached I was struck
by the resemblance the house bore to the woman who lived in it. Both
were so old, so gaunt, so lonely, and, above all, so frail. Surely, I
thought, that trembling, old, frame shell of a house cannot be safe in
any great off-lake gale. And when I first entered it and mounted its
sagging, old stairs I was really frightened when it jarred at every
quick movement and shook in each blast of wind.
Mrs. Worden was out when I arrived, and so I entered gladly the front
room she had indicated, for, silly as it sounds, I must admit I am, and
always have been, afraid of an empty house. I went in and closed the
door.
Now, the French say, when colors do not agree ‘that they swear at each
other,’ but never, surely, did inanimate things swell to such a storm
of profanity as did the furnishings of this room. The floor was bare,
the boards were narrow and warped and hungry-looking. Guiltless of
stain or paint, they had been scrubbed to a creamy whiteness, which
somehow gave the whole floor a peculiarly frigid, unfriendly look.
It had a Pharisaical air, as though it were thanking its maker “that
it was not as other floors.” Then, exactly opposite the door, there
hung upon the glaring, whitewashed wall, in a magnificent frame, a
life-sized, full-length portrait in oil, of a charming girl of about
ten years. The “swearing” here was almost audible. The windows,
ill-fitting and rattling in their cases, looked out directly upon the
lake. The bedstead had been a grand affair in its long-passed day, but
now, stripped of all its luxurious hangings, it stretched its thin,
old posts up, only to meet the skeleton of its former canopy, while
the silken spread of patch-work, of a brain-destroying intricacy of
pattern, was worn clear through in places, so that the cotton wadding
showed plainly. As I turned slowly around, I found another great
portrait. This time it was a boy who smiled happily at me from the
canvas; such a handsome, manly little chap, for all his absurd dress.
One only smiled with him, not at him. I was very much impressed, for
I had only been in two houses where there were family portraits, and
I knew they meant a great expenditure. And then, ignorant as I was of
such matters, I felt sure these portraits were the work of some great
artist, and I was right, for later on I learned they had been painted
by the most famous artist of his time.
Two small tables, a bureau, a few chairs, all of the commonest, and a
small corner cupboard, completed the furniture of this odd room. Oh,
yes; I must not omit the screen, then a very unusual object, a tall,
narrow, three-panelled screen, which played an important part in its
owner’s daily life. And the fire! Thank Heaven, I thought, for one
thing, that did not look cold. I think there was about one scant quart
of fire, and, as I threw off my shawl, I started to put on some coal,
when suddenly I remembered that injunction, ‘You girl! don’t touch the
fire!’ and I stayed my hand, but when I looked into the box and saw
there just four pieces of coal, and so suspiciously exact in size one
to the other, and leaning at the end of the box a hammer, my heart
melted with pity; I began to understand. With a sigh I left the fire,
precious but inadequate, and turned to study the painted pair. The
boy, swarthy, smiling, happy, won your love at once; but the girl’s
blonde, young arrogance slightly repelled. The portrait, considered
as a picture, was quite lovely. The dainty figure, in the soft,
yellowish-pink gown, stood out well from the olives and dull greens of
the brocaded curtain behind her. On the table lay her great hat, while
just slipping from her shoulder was the black velvet pelisse which,
by contrast, brought out so beautifully the milky whiteness of her
childish neck. The features, the lift of the head, the thin, slightly
shrewish, delicate lips were all wonderfully like Mrs. Worden. But the
color scheme was wrong. This handsome, overbearing child was blonde
as she could be, while the boy, with but one feature of her face, her
piercing eyes, was surely darker than she had ever been. So while I
stood before the girl and thought how clever had been the artist, who
had painted the boy with his hand upon his dog’s head--while in the
girl’s hand he had placed a broken necklace--in these bits of detail, I
thought he has given his idea of their character, and just then I heard
Mrs. Worden approaching.
Like many people who live much alone, she had the habit of talking to
herself--she was talking then. I heard her say, “That’s fifteen years
ago, you fool! yes, all of that. Now, what the devil did I do it for?”
I felt quite certain she was referring to the invitation she had
given to me, and I shook with laughter. When she opened the door, her
eyes were snapping viciously and her brows were brought together in an
inky frown; only her hair was white, her brows were black as they had
ever been, but when she saw me standing, my hands behind me, evidently
studying the portrait, the frown unknit itself, her eyes softened,
and when I asked: “Who are they, the handsome girl and the laughing,
little man?” she answered proudly: “They are my treasures, my man-child
Philip, and my Edith, gift-of-God; because of whom I have not cursed
Him long ago and died.”
At the words, “my treasures,” I suddenly recalled her speech at the
lake, and instinctively my eyes turned towards it. She caught the look,
and, going to the window, she went on: “My treasures, precious beyond
rubies, they lie out there now; I watch them and wait for the sign.”
Then, pointing with her long, bony finger, she said: “You see that dark
line out there on the water; no, no, the darker, purplish one? That’s
where they lie. Yes, yes, my prettys, I know, I know! but it’s weary
waiting, dearies; weary, weary!”
Her voice died away so drearily that I felt the tears rising in my
eyes. A movement of mine made her turn to me. She put her hand up and
passed it across her brow and eyes once or twice, and then, quite
naturally, she went on: “I was wondering, when I came in, what I asked
you here for.”
I interrupted to say: “I think it was to give me pleasure.” “No,” she
answered, “it wasn’t that. I know now. I thought I’d like to hear some
one talk again.”
I felt a bit flattered at that, but she finished with: “I haven’t heard
anyone talk at home since my parrot died.”
Down sat my vanity, flat. The old lady had taken off her bonnet, and,
as she motioned me to a chair, she said, musingly: “I never can quite
remember whether I learned to swear from the parrot, or the parrot
learned from me.”
She heaved a sigh and proceeded to prepare the tray for our coffee. As
she moved about she continued her remarks: “Yes, we did a fairish bit
of swearing between us, Poll and I; her name, by the way, was not Poll,
but Sally, and, of course, I suppose some one must have taught her to
do it, but it was delicious to hear the ‘bloomin’’ cussing she would
give to any one who called her Sarah. Yes, all things considered, there
was in the past considerable profanity in this room.”
And I, glancing at the splendid frame against the whitewashed wall,
recklessly made answer: “And it is not absolutely absent at this
moment.”
Her bright, old eye glanced from wall to frame, then back to me, her
quick comprehension making my unfinished thought her finished one in
an instant. She wagged her head and said: “That’s not bad, you girl,”
then, with somewhat unnerving loudness, she went on: “She’s young
and green, oh! but upon my soul, she’s not a fool.” Then addressing
me again: “So you know some French sayings, do you? Not many though,
I think; but look, you, young ears are sharp, and you should have
been here before the hangings of my bed fell to bits. They were of
brocatelle and lined with silk, and they cursed that whitewashed wall
so venomously, had you been here in the bed, you’d not have slept
one wink, unless your soul’s already gray instead of white,” and she
laughed that odd, stinging laughter that was so like the crackling of
thin ice upon a wintry day.
While she had talked and laughed and nodded, she had prepared her
coffee, and we seated ourselves at either side of the little table, she
taking care to sit facing the tossing lake.
Oh, that tray! It really seemed as though the things thereon must come
to blows, so fiercely did they contradict each other. The coffee pot
of make and material precisely like those good “Bridgets” purchase
for the use of honest “Patricks.” The knives and forks--they appeared
a bit later--were of that brand which always makes you wish that you
were dead, they make of life a thing so hideous. While cheek by jowl
with these rough things stood a few pieces of old porcelain, deserving,
each one of them, a satin-lined box to rest in. And to keep them in
countenance, there were four spoons of silver, paper-thin, initials and
dates quite worn away, and all a trifle bent and dented in spite of
the owner’s care of them; while the linen, I could have cried over that
eye-destroying mass of delicate darning. Truly, there were places in my
napkin where the darning had itself been darned again. But the coffee,
like the fire, which had been increased by the addition of one small
cube of coal, was inadequate in quantity, but the quality? oh, well, it
was perfection, that’s all; absolute perfection.
I tasted it and smiled, and sighed. She understood, and snapped her
old eyes at me approvingly, and _she_ tasted and sighed, and then she
slowly said: “Whenever I drink good coffee I always rejoice that God
created it. It would have been an infernal shame had it been invented
by some fool man!”
I laughed aloud--I always did, I’m sorry to confess--whenever she
swore, she did it in such an impersonal way, never, never in anger,
never, even when she was busily engaged in flaying alive some victim of
her memory and her tongue. She generally swore to herself, and nearly
always when in a reflective mood. When I laughed, she gave me a glance
and asked quickly: “What is it, eh? Did I swear? Well, don’t you do it,
that’s all. But Lord! you won’t have to live fifteen or twenty years
alone with a ‘cussing’ parrot, as I did. For some time after Sally died
I used to say ‘damnation.’ Oh, I don’t say it now; don’t open your
eyes any wider, you’ll meet with an accident. But, you see, for nearly
twenty years that bird told me twice a day that her coffee was ‘too
damnation hot,’ and after she was gone I had to say it now and then to
break the silence.”