OF THE USE OF WINGS
"I told you I'd speak a good word for you," shouted Mandy Meacham,
putting her lips down close to Johnnie's ear where she struggled and
fought with her looms amid the deafening clamour of the weaving room.
The girl looked up, flushed, tired, but eagerly receptive.
"Yes," her red lips shaped the word to the other's eyes, though no sound
could make itself heard above that din except such eldritch shrieks
as Mandy's.
"I done it. I got you a invite to some doin's at the Uplift Club
a-Wednesday."
Again Johnnie nodded and shaped "Yes" with her lips. She added something
which might have been "thank you"; the adorable smile that accompanied
it said as much.
Mandy watched her, fascinated as the lithe, strong young figure bent and
strained to correct a crease in the web where it turned the roll.
"They never saw anything like you in their born days, I'll bet," she
yelled. "I never did. You're awful quare--but somehow I sorter like ye."
And she scuttled back to her looms as the room boss came in. A weaver
works by the piece, but Mandy had been reproved too often for slovenly
methods not to know that she might be fined for neglect. Her looms stood
where she could continually get the newcomer's figure against the light,
with its swift motion, its supple curves, and the brave carriage of the
well-formed head. The sight gave Mandy a curious satisfaction, as though
it uttered what she would fain have said to the classes above her. Hers
was something the feeling which the private in the ranks has for the
standard-bearer who carries the colours aloft, or the dashing officer
who leads the charge. Johnnie was the challenge she would have flung in
the face of the enemy.
"I'll bet if you'd put one of Miss Lyddy's dresses on her she'd look
nobby," Mandy ruminated, addressing her looms. "That's what she would.
She'd have 'em all f--fa--faded away, as the feller says."
And so it came about that the next day Johnnie Consadine did not go to
the mill at all, but spent the morning washing and ironing her one light
print dress. It was as coarse almost as flour-sacking, and the blue dots
on it had paled till they made a suspicious speckle not unlike mildew;
yet when she had combed her thick, fair hair, rolled it back from the
white brow and braided it to a coronet round her head as she had seen
that of the lady on the porch at the Palace of Pleasure; when, cleansed
and smooth, she put the frock on, one forgot the dress in the youth of
her, the hope, the glorious expectation there was in that eager face.
The ladies assisting in Miss Lydia Sessions's Uplift
Club for work among the mill girls, were almost all young and youngish
women. The mothers in Israel attacked the more serious problems of
orphanages, winter's supplies of coal, and clothing for the destitute.
"But their souls must be fed, too," Miss Lydia asserted as she recruited
her helpers for the Uplift work. "Their souls must be fed; and who can
reach the souls of these young girls so well as we who are near their
own age, and who have had time for culture and spiritual growth?"
It was a good theory. Perhaps one may say that it remains a good theory.
The manner of uplifting was to select a certain number of mill girls
whom it was deemed well to help, approach them on the subject, and, if
they appeared amenable, pay a substitute to take charge of their looms
while those in process of being uplifted attended a meeting of the Club.
The gathering to which Johnnie was bidden was held in honour of a lady
from London who had written a book on some subject which it was thought
ought to appeal to workingwomen. This lady intended to address the
company and to mingle with them and get their views. Most of those
present being quite unfurnished with any views whatever on the problem
she discussed, her position was something that of a pick-pocket in a
moneyless crowd; but of this she was fortunately and happily unaware.
Mandy Meacham regarded Johnnie's preparation for the function with some
disfavour.
"Ef you fix up like that," she remonstrated, "you're bound to look too
nice to suit Miss Lyddy. They won't be no men thar. I'm goin' to wear my
workin' dress, and tell her I hadn't nary minute nor nary cent to
do other."
Johnnie laughed a little at this, as though it were intended for a joke.
"But I did have time," she objected. "Miss Sessions would pay a
substitute for the whole day though I told her I'd only need the
afternoon for the party. I think it was mighty good of her, and it's as
little as I can do to make myself look as nice as I can."
"You ain't got the sense you was born with!" fretted Mandy. "Them thar
kind ladies ain't a-carin' for you to look so fine. They'll attend to
all the fine lookin' theirselves. What they want is to know how bad off
you air, an' to have you say how much what they have did or give has
helped you."
Such interchange of views brought the two girls to the door of the
little frame chapel, given over for the day to Uplift work. Within it
rose a bustle and clatter, a hum of voices that spoke, a frilling of
nervous, shrill laughter to edge the sound, and back of that the clink
of dishes from a rear room where refreshments were being prepared.
Miss Sessions, near the door, had a receiving line, quite in the manner
of any reception. She herself, in a blouse of marvellous daintiness and
sweeping skirts, stood beside the visitor from London to present her. To
this day Johnnie is uncertain as to where the wonderful blue silk frock
of that lady from abroad was fastened, though she gave the undivided
efforts of sharp young eyes and an inquiring mind to the problem a good
portion of the time while it was within her view. The Englishwoman was
called Mrs. Archbold, and on her other hand stood a tall, slim lady with
long gray-green eyes, prematurely gray hair which had plainly been red,
and an odd little twist to her smile. This was Mrs. Hexter, wife of the
owner of the big woollen mills across the creek, and only bidden in to
assist the Uplift work because the position of her husband gave her much
power. These, with the Misses Burchard, daughters of the rector, formed
the reception committee.
"I am so charmed to see you here to-day," Miss Lydia smiled as they
entered. It was part of her theory to treat the mill girls exactly as
she would members of her own circle. Mandy, being old at the business,
possessed herself of the high-held hand presented; but Johnnie only
looked at it in astonishment, uncertain whether Miss Lydia meant to
shake hands or pat her on the head. Yet when she did finally divine what
was intended, the quality of her apologetic smile ought to have atoned
for her lapse.
"I'm sure proud to be here with you-all," she said. "Looks like to me
you are mighty kind to strangers."
The ineradicable dignity of the true mountaineer, who has always been as
good as the best in his environment, preserved Johnnie from any
embarrassment, any tendency to shrink or cringe. Her beauty, in the
fresh-washed print gown, was like a thing released and, as Miss Sessions
might have put it, rampant.
Gray Stoddard had gone directly to Lydia Sessions, with his proffers of
books, and his suggestions for Johnnie. The explanation of how the girl
came to be riding in his car that Sunday morning was neither as full nor
as penitent as Miss Lydia could have wished; yet it did recognize the
impropriety of the act, and was, in so far, satisfactory. Miss Sessions
made haste to form an alliance with the young man for the special
upliftment of Johnnie Consadine. She would have greatly preferred to
interest him in Mandy Meacham, but beggars can not be choosers, and she
took what she could get.
"Whom have we here?" demanded the lady from London, leaning across and
peering at Johnnie with friendly, near-sighted eyes. "Why, what a
blooming girl, to be sure! You haven't been long from the country, I'll
venture to guess, my dear."
Johnnie blushed and dimpled at being so kindly welcomed. The mountain
people are undemonstrative in speech and action; and that "my dear"
seemed wonderful.
"I come from away up in the mountains," she said softly.
"From away up in the mountains," repeated the Englishwoman, her smiling
gaze dwelling on Johnnie's radiant face. "Why yes--so one would
conceive. Well, you mustn't lose all those pretty roses in the mill down
here." She was a visitor, remember; residents of Cottonville never
admitted that roses, or anything else desirable, could be lost in
the mills.
"I'll not," said Johnnie sturdily. "I'm goin' to earn my way and send
for Mother and the children, if hard work'll do it; but I'm a mighty
big, stout, healthy somebody, and I aim to keep so."
Mrs. Archbold patted the tall young shoulder as she turned to Mandy
Meacham whom Miss Lydia was eager to put through her paces for the
benefit of the lady from London.
"Isn't that the girl Mr. Stoddard was speaking to me about?" she
inquired in a whisper as Johnnie moved away. "I think it must be. He
said she was such a beauty, and I scarcely believe there could be two
like her in one town."
"Such a type,' were Mr. Stoddard's exact words I believe," returned Miss
Sessions a little frostily. "Yes, John Consadine is quite a marked type
of the mountaineer. She is, as she said to you, a stout, healthy
creature, and, I understand, very industrious. I approve of John."
She approved of John, but she addressed herself to exploiting Mandy; and
the lady in the blue silk frock learned how poor and helpless the
Meacham woman had been before she got in to the mill work, how greatly
the Uplift Club had benefited her, with many interesting details. Yet as
the English lady went from group to group in company with Miss Lydia and
T.H. Hexter's wife, her quick eyes wandered across the room to where a
bright head rose a little taller than its fellows, and occasional bursts
of laughter told that Johnnie was in a merry mood.
The threadbare attempt at a reception was gotten through laboriously.
The girls were finally settled in orderly rows, and Mrs. Archbold led to
the platform. The talk she had prepared for them was upon aspiration. It
was an essay, in fact, and she had delivered it successfully before many
women's clubs. She is not to be blamed that the language was as
absolutely above the comprehension of her hearers as though it had been
Greek. She was a busy woman, with other aims and activities than those
of working among the masses; Miss Lydia had heard her present talk,
fancied it, and thought it would be the very thing for the Uplift Club.
For thirty minutes Johnnie sat concentrating desperately on every
sentence that fell from the lips of the lady from London, trying harder
to understand than she had ever tried to do anything in her life. She
put all her quick, young mind and avid soul into the struggle to
receive, though piercingly aware every instant of the difference between
her attire and that of the women who had bidden her there, noting
acutely variations between their language and hers, their voices, their
gestures and hers. These were the women of Gray Stoddard's world. Such
were his feminine associates; here, then, must be her models.
Mandy and her likes got from the talk perhaps nothing at all, except
that rich people might have what they liked if they wanted it--that at
least was Miss Meacham's summing up of the matter when she went home
that night. But to Johnnie some of the sentences remained.
"You struggle and climb and strive," said Mrs. Archbold earnestly,
"when, if you only knew it, you have wings. And what are the wings of
the soul? The wings of the soul are aspiration. Oh, that we would spread
them and fly to the heights our longing eyes behold, the heights we
dream of when we cannot see them, the heights we foolishly and
mistakenly expect to climb some day."
Again Johnnie saw herself coming down the ridge at Shade's side;
descending into the shadow, stepping closer to the droning mills; while
above her the Palace of Pleasure swam in its golden glory, and these who
were privileged to do so went out and in and laughed and were happy.
Were such heights as that what this woman meant? Johnnie had let it
typify to her the heights to which she intended to climb. Was it indeed
possible to fly to them instead? The talk ended. She sat so long with
bent head that Miss Sessions finally came round and took the unoccupied
chair beside her.
"Are you thinking it over, John?" she inquired with that odd little note
of hostility which she could never quite keep out of her voice when she
addressed this girl.
"Yes'm," replied Johnnie meekly.
Several who were talking together in the vicinity relinquished their
conversation to listen to the two. Mrs. Hexter shot one of her quaint,
crooked smiles at the lady from London and, with a silent gesture, bade
her hearken.
"I think these things are most important for you girls who have to earn
your daily bread," Miss Sessions condescended.
"Daily bread," echoed Johnnie softly. She loved fine phrases as she
loved fine clothes. "I know where that comes from. It's in the prayer
about 'daily bread,' and 'the kingdom and the power and the glory.'
Don't you think those are beautiful words, Miss Lydia--the 'power and
the glory'?"
Miss Sessions's lips sucked in with that singular, half-reluctant
expression of condemnation which was becoming fairly familiar
to Johnnie.
"Oh, John!" she said reprovingly, 'Daily bread' is all we have anything
to do with. Don't you remember that it says 'Thine be the kingdom and
the power and the glory'? Thine, John--Thine."
"Yes'm," returned Johnnie submissively. But it was in her heart that
certain upon this earth had their share of kingdoms and powers and the
glories. And, although she uttered that submissive "Yes'm," her
high-couraged young heart registered a vow to achieve its own slice of
these things as well as of daily bread.
"Didn't you enjoy Mrs. Archbold's talk? I thought it very fine," Miss
Sessions pursued.
"It sure was that," sighed Johnnie. "I don't know as I understand it
all--every word. I tried to, but maybe I got some of it wrong."
"What is it you don't understand, John?" inquired
Miss Lydia patronizingly. "Ask me. I'll explain anything you care to
know about."
Johnnie turned to her, too desperately in earnest to note the other
listeners to the conversation.
"Why, that about stretching out the wings of your spirit and flying. Do
you believe that?"
"I certainly do," Miss Sessions said brightly, as delighted at Johnnie's
remembering part of the visitor's words as a small boy when he has
taught his terrier to walk on its hind legs.
"Then if a body wants a thing bad enough, and keeps on a-wanting it--Oh,
just awful--is that aspiration? Will the thing you want that-a-way
come to pass?"
"We-e-ell," Miss Sessions deemed it necessary to qualify her statement
to this fiery and exact young questioner. "You have to want the right
thing, of course, John. You have to want the right thing."
"Yes'm," agreed Johnnie heartily. "And I'd 'low it was certainly the
right thing, if it was what good folks--like you--want."
Miss Sessions flushed, yet she looked pleased, aware, if Johnnie was
not, of the number of listeners. Here was her work of Uplift among the
mill girls being justified.
"I--Oh, really, I couldn't set myself up as a pattern," she said
modestly.
"But you are," Johnnie assured her warmly. "There ain't anybody in this
room I'd rather go by as by you." The fine gray eyes had been travelling
from neck to belt, from shoulder to wrist of the lady who was
enlightening her, "I think I never in all my life seen anything more
sightly than that dress-body you're a-wearin'," she murmured softly.
"Where--how might a person come by such a one? If you thought that my
wishing and--aspiring--would ever bring me such as that, I'd sure try."
There rose a titter about the two. It spread and swelled till the whole
assembly was in a gale of laughter. Miss Sessions's becoming blush
deepened to the tint of angry mortification. She looked about and
assumed the air of a schoolmistress with a room full of noisy pupils;
but Johnnie, her cheeks pink too, first swept them all with an
astonished gaze which flung the long lashes up in such a wide curve of
innocence as made her eyes bewitching, then joined it, and laughed as
loud as any of them at she knew not what. It was the one touch to put
her with the majority, and leave her mentor stranded in a bleak
minority. Miss Sessions objected to the position.
"Oh, John!" she said severely, so soon as she could be heard above the
giggles. "How you have misunderstood me, and Mrs. Archbold, and all we
intended to bring to you! What is a mere blouse like this to the uplift,
the outlook, the development we were striving to offer? I confess I am
deeply disappointed in you."
This sobered Johnnie, instantly.
"I'm sorry," she said, bending forward to lay a wistful, penitent hand
on that of Miss Sessions. "I'll try to understand better. I reckon I'm
right dumb, and you'll have to have a lot of patience with me. I don't
rightly know what to aspire after."
The amende was so sweetly made that even Lydia Sessions, still
exceedingly employed at being pictorially chagrined over the depravity
of her neophyte, could but be appeased.
"I'll try to furnish you more suitable objects for your ambition," she
murmured virtuously.
But the lady with the gray hair and the odd little twist to her smile
now leaned forward and took a hand in the conversation.
"See here, Lydia," Mrs. Hexter remonstrated in crisp tones, "what's the
matter with the girl's aspiring after a blouse like yours? You took a
lot of trouble and spent a lot of money to get that one. I noticed you
were careful to tell me it was imported, because I couldn't see the
neck-band and find out that detail for myself. That blouse is a
dream--it's a dream. If it's good enough aspiration for you or me, why
not for this girl?"
"Oh, but Mrs. Hexter," murmured the mortified Miss Sessions, glancing
uneasily toward the mill-girl contingent which was listening eagerly,
and then at the speaker of the day, "I am sure Mrs. Archbold will agree
with me that it would be a gross, material idea to aspire after blouses
and such-like, when the poor child needs--er--other things so
much more."
"Yes'm, I do that," conceded Johnnie dutifully, those changeful eyes of
hers full of pensive, denied desire, as they swept the dainty gowns of
the women before her. "I do--you're right. I wouldn't think of spending
my money for a dress-body like that when I'm mighty near as barefoot as
a rabbit this minute, and the little 'uns back home has to have every
cent I can save. I just thought that if beautiful wishes was ever really
coming true--if it was right and proper for a person to have beautiful
wishes--I'd like--"
Her voice faltered into discouraged silence. Tears gathered and hung
thick on her lashes. Miss Sessions sent a beseeching look toward the
lady from London. Mrs. Archbold stepped accommodatingly into the breach.
"All aspiration is good," she said gently. "I shouldn't be discouraged
because it took a rather concrete form."
Johnnie's eyes were upon her face, trying to understand. A "concrete
form" she imagined might allude to the fact that Miss Sessions had a
better figure than she.
Mrs. Hexter, glad of an ally, tossed that incorrigible gray head of hers
and dashed into the conversation once more.
"If I were you, Johnnie, I'd just aspire as hard as I could in that
direction," she said recklessly, her mischievous glance upon the flowing
lines of Johnnie's young shoulders and throat. "A blouse like that would
be awfully fetching on you. You'd look lovely in it. Why shouldn't you
aspire to it? Maybe you'll have one just as pretty before the style
changes. I am sure you're nice enough, and good-looking enough, for the
best in the way of purple and fine linen to come to you by the law of
attraction--don't you believe in the law of attraction, Mrs. Archbold?"
Lydia Sessions got up and moved away in shocked silence. Mrs. Hexter was
a good deal of a thorn in her flesh, and she only tolerated her because
of Mr. Hexter and his position. After the retreating and disaffected
hostess came Mrs. Archbold's voice, with a thread of laughter in it.
"I believe in the law of such attraction as this girl has," she said
kindly. "What is it your Walt Whitman says about the fluid and attaching
character? That all hearts yearn toward it, that old and young must give
it love. That is, my dear," turning explainingly to Johnnie, "the
character which gives much love, takes much interest in those about it,
makes itself one with other people and their affairs--do you get
my meaning?"
"I think I understand," half whispered Johnnie, glowing eyes on the face
of the speaker. "Do you mean that I am anything like that? I do love
everybody--most. But how could I help it, when everybody is so good and
kind to me?"
The glances of the older women met across the bright head.
"She won't have much use for feet to climb with," Mrs. Hexter summed it
up, taking her figure from the talk earlier in the afternoon. "She's
got wings."
And puzzled Johnnie could only smile from one to the other.
"Wings!" whispered Mandy Meacham to herself. Mandy was not only
restricted to the use of spiritual feet; she was lame in the soul as
well, poor creature, "Wings--air they callin' her a angel?"