Old Madam Leigh
Nobody seemed to know how everybody got into the way of calling her "Old
Madam Leigh." It was not a Virginia custom, and there was not another
old lady in the neighborhood to whom the title of "Madam" was ever
given. After she had lived to be the oldest woman in the county, the
"Old" was prefixed, naturally enough.
I got to know her through Cousin Molly Belle.
"I declare, Frank, Molly has never seen Queen Mab and her hummers!" she
said at dinner one day. "I'm ashamed of myself for not having taken her
there. It's just the sort of thing she would enjoy."
When Mrs. Frank Morton was ashamed of having done anything, or having
left anything undone, the next, and a quick step with her, was to mend
the fault without further waste of words. We went over to Old Madam
Leigh's that same afternoon,--she, Cousin Frank, and I,--on horseback,
"the road to Queen Mab's palace being the vilest in the State," as my
hostess averred.
I thought it a delightful road. It left the main highway a mile beyond
Cousin Frank's plantation gate, and lost its way in oak and hickory
woods, where the trees touched over our heads. I said they were "trying
to shake hands with one another."
"They will be hugging one another before we go much farther," said
Cousin Frank.
As they did when we began to climb a long hill, washed into crooked
gullies by the water that tore down to the creek at the bottom whenever
it rained hard. After this was a short and steeper hill, and then
another long one, and we were on the edge of a clearing, very bright and
sunny after the green glooms of the forest.
"Does Queen Mab drive this way, often, in her chariot-and-four?" I
inquired, as we struck into a gentle gallop along a grassy lane.
"Queen Mab's chariot has not been out of the carriage-house in
twenty-five years," answered Cousin Molly Belle. "There is another road
from her house to where everyday people live, but it would take us a
long way around. Mother can recollect when this was a good road, and
much travelled."
"Doesn't she make any visits?"
"Never to human beings."
"Doesn't she go to church?"
"Not that I have ever heard of."
"Cousin Molly Belle!" in an awed tone. "Is she a _heathen_?"
"She is very old, Namesake. Nearly ninety."
She said it gravely and gently, and Cousin Frank repeated a verse of
poetry I did not know then:--
"He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all."
It was so nice that I turned it over in my mind several times before I
asked another question. My mother sometimes called me "an animated
interrogation-point."
"Is Old Madam Leigh married?"
"She has been married. She would not be 'Madam' if she had not been. She
has been a widow for a long, long time. She had two children--twins--a
boy and a girl. They lived to be twenty years old, and then died."
"Not both at the same time, Cousin Molly Belle?" for her tone suggested
something very sorrowful.
"Yes, Molly dear. The sister fell into the river and the brother, in
swimming out to save her, was seized with the cramp and sank before he
could reach her. The mother has lived alone ever since, except for her
servants. They are very good and faithful. Then, she has her hummers and
her pygmies, who are a great deal of company to her."
"_Pigs!_" in intense disgust. "She can't be a very neat person."
A peal of laughter from my companions broke off the speech.
"You'll change your mind shortly," said Cousin Frank, cantering ahead to
open a gate in the rail fence.
We saw the house from the gate,--a wee bit of a gray cottage, one story
high, literally covered with honeysuckles of every kind I had ever heard
of, and now in fullest bloom. An enormous catalpa tree, also in flower,
stood in front of the cottage, shading all but one gable, and that
looked as if it were made of glass. Between this gable and the garden
were two spreading acacia trees, tufted with the tassel-like blossoms.
The deep front porch was curtained with white jessamine, and as we
walked up the gravelled path leading to it, Madam Leigh stood in the
doorway.
She was a tiny old lady, no taller than I was, and wore a white dress,
fine and sheer. Cousin Molly Belle told me afterward that it was India
muslin, and that she wore white, winter and summer. The waist of the
gown was very short, the skirt was straight, and fell to the in-step of
a foot no bigger than a baby's. Her cap was also old-fashioned, made of
lace, with a full crimped border under which her hair, silvery-white,
was dressed in short, round curls on each side of her forehead. Her skin
reminded me of a bit of rice-paper I had picked up from the floor one
day. It had dropped out of the back of my father's watch, and Bud had
found it and played with it until it was creased and cracked all over
like "crazed" china, yet not torn. Old Madam Leigh's face could not be
said to be wrinkled, for the lines were shallow. They were as fine as if
made with an inkless crow quill, and so close together you would have
thought there was not room for another. Her eyes were dark and bright
She had French blood in her veins, and showed it in her quick glance and
lively motions.
She took us directly into "the chamber" on the left side of the hall
that cut the house in two. Everything there was white, too,--bed and
curtains and chair-covers being of white dimity, trimmed with lace. The
walls were almost covered with portraits. Some were very old. Two of the
brightest hung opposite the bed where Madam Leigh must see them as soon
as she opened her eyes in the morning. One was of a pretty girl in a
white frock, low-necked and short-sleeved, with a red rose in the
bodice, making the fair skin it rested against all the fairer. Her eyes
were dark and sweet; short brown curls, like Madam Leigh's white ones,
clustered about her temples. The other picture was that of a handsome
boy of twenty, or thereabouts, and strikingly like his sister. A dog,
with silky ears, leaned his head against his young master's arm.
I tried hard not to stare at these portraits,--to me the most
interesting things in the room,--for I knew they must be the
twin-children who had died together, ever and ever so many years ago.
The instinct of kindly breeding told me that it would not be polite to
remind the mother of her loss by looking inquisitively at them. But I
could not help stealing a glance at one and the other when the grown
people were intent in talk. Looking led to dreaming, as I was left to
myself and the thoughts suggested by the portraits. I arranged it in my
mind that brother and sister were very fond of each other; that the
sister had fallen into the river where the current was strong, from some
such place as Maiden's Adventure, on Mr. Pemberton's plantation, where
the water was deep above a roaring fall. I thought how she called to her
brother, and how he answered, and I wondered--a chill running down my
spine and catching at my heart--who carried the awful news to the
mother. How could she bear it? how live in this lonely place with
nobody to keep her from thinking of, and missing, her husband and her
children, nobody to care whether she were glad or sorry, sick or well,
alive or dead?
I did not know that my mouth was drawn down at the corners, that my eyes
were mournful, and my whole aspect that of a sadly bored little girl,
who felt herself to be left entirely out of the thoughts of her friends
and the hostess--until Madam Leigh's voice made me start, as if I had
been asleep.
"I am afraid this little lady finds all this mighty stupid."
I think the old-time practice of calling girl-children "little ladies,"
kept them in wholesome remembrance of the necessity of behaving as such.
At any rate, I was instantly aware that I ought to be sitting up
straight upon my cricket, and seeming to be interested in what was going
on. Had not my mother reproved me, times without number, for dreaming in
company and for absent-minded ways that made me heedless of others'
comfort? "It is selfish and rude not to pay attention to what people are
saying when you are with them"--was a nursery rule I ought to have had
well by heart.
It was natural, then, that I should turn as red as a cardinal flower,
and fidget uneasily, and stutter when I tried to set myself right with
my venerable hostess:--
"Oh, no, ma'am. I'm not a bit tired. I'm sorry--if--"
"There's nothing to be sorry for, my dear. If anybody has been rude it
is I who ought to have provided some other entertainment for you than
sitting still, and trying with all your might to understand big folks'
talk."
Her voice was clearer than one would have expected in such an old lady,
and she did not mumble as if she were chewing her words, as a great many
old people do. She spoke very distinctly, pronouncing every syllable in
each word. She told me, when we were better acquainted, that she read
aloud for an hour every day, for fear she might fall into careless ways
of speaking, seeing, as she did, so few educated white people, and,
sometimes, talking with nobody but her colored servants for a week at a
time. She held herself very straight when seated, and in walking, and
stepped as lightly as a young person, as she got up and took me by the
hand, smiling at me in the friendliest way imaginable, and, saying "I
must introduce you to my family," led me across the hall, and opened a
door on the other side.
As soon as we were inside of the door, she shut it quickly behind us,
and I stood stock-still with amazement at what I saw and heard.
It was a large room, with two windows at the front and two at the back,
while the gable we had seen from the lane was almost filled with sashes,
as in a greenhouse. Close against these sashes, now so bright with the
Southern sun that I was half-blinded for an instant, were rows of
shelves, crowded with cut flowers in vases, and growing flowers in pots.
Most of the sashes were open, and the space thus left was screened by
twine netting, something like fine fish seines. Old Madam Leigh had
netted each of these squares herself, as I learned afterward. The same
protected back and front windows. About the open windows, and around the
flowers, flew and floated what I thought, at first, were at least one
hundred humming-birds. Madam Leigh said there were but twenty-five, all
told. The whir of their rapid wings filled the air, the gleam of their
brilliant breasts and backs was like living jewels.
"_Oh-h-h-h!!_" was all I could utter, as I clasped my hands in admiring
wonder at the beauty and the strangeness of it all, and a queer lump
came into my throat, as if I were frightened or sorry, and I knew I was
only delighted past speaking. Madam let me alone for a minute, before
she laid her small, wrinkled hands upon my shoulders and turned me about
to see something I had not observed in my raptures over the marvellous
birds.
Against the wall beyond the door was a long, broad table, or rather
counter, and upon it was a village of small houses, rows upon rows of
them. Outside of the village and the streets were other and larger
houses, in groups of two and three, with dooryards and gardens, and then
came half a dozen farm-houses surrounded by fields and gardens. In the
village there were stores and a Court House, and a Clerk's Office and a
Jail, surrounded by a Public Square, exactly like that at Powhatan Court
House, and two taverns with signs hanging outside of them. Trees lined
the streets, and vines were running over the houses. Then, there were
wells, and wood-piles with men chopping wood at them, and cow-pens with
cows and calves, and pig-pens filled with pigs. Men were driving wagons
along the roads, and a fine carriage with four horses harnessed to it
and a coachman on the box stood before the larger of the two taverns.
The footman, hat in hand, was helping two elegantly dressed ladies out
of the carriage, and the landlady, with two colored maids behind her,
was upon the portico waiting to receive them. Men were digging in the
corn and tobacco fields; there were turkeys, chickens, ducks, and geese,
and boys riding horses to water and driving the cows home to be milked.
Was ever such another Wonderland revealed to a child who had never been
in a toy-shop and never owned a doll that was not home-made?
I screamed and capered with joy, like the crazy thing I was, for a whole
minute after my eyes fell upon the mimic settlement. Then I fell to
examining the "entertainment" more closely, and discovered that
everything, except the mosses that imitated the trees, vines, and other
growing things, was made of corn-stalks and corn-husks--"shucks" as
Virginians call them. The human creatures and the dumb animals were
carved out of the firm, dried pith of the stalks, and afterward painted
with water colors. The clothes of men and women were made of the soft
inner shucks, dried carefully to the pliability of silk. Log and frame
houses were built of the canes themselves; the smallest were used whole,
the larger were split. Peeping into the open doors and windows I saw
that each house was furnished with beds, tables, and chairs, also made
of corn-stalks, pith, and shucks.
At the far end of the counter were six bird-cages, constructed of thin
strips of corn-canes, each supplied with perches and water vessels.
"Those are my reform prisons," Madam Leigh said to my cousins, who had
followed and begged to be let in. "You see,"--to me,--"when one of my
hummers becomes cross or quarrelsome, I separate him from the rest and
shut him up in one of these cages until he is in a better humor. I am
sorry to say that they have pretty peppery tempers, and hardly a day
passes in which I do not have to interfere to stop their fighting."
I had no reason to feel myself slighted now. She went all round the room
with me, showing her pets and telling me interesting stories of their
habits and dispositions. Each had a name, and some answered to their
names when she called them. At least, she thought that they did, and I
did not doubt it when I saw them swoop down to dip their bills in the
flowers she held up, as she called "Sprite" and "Bright," and "Sweet"
and "Swift," and the like crisp, short names in a voice that was like
the tinkle of a little bell. It was a pretty sight,--the tiny woman, all
white from cap to toe, standing in the full tide of sunbeams, bunches of
honeysuckle and catalpa flowers, half as big as herself, in her arms,
the elf-like face smiling out of them at the eagerness of her feathered
darlings, darting and glancing and gleaming and humming about her, as if
she had been a larger edition of themselves, and not of a different
genus. She made me stand by her while this was going on, saying that the
hummers were "too well-bred to be afraid of her friends, and were
especially fond of little people."
"The honeysuckles first made me think of collecting them," went on the
pleasant tinkle. "When they are in full bloom the frisky little
creatures swarm in them all day long. They like white and yellow
jessamine, too, and catalpa flowers and lilies and acacia blossoms. Ten
years ago I found one of their nests upon a low limb of a tulip-poplar
tree. Here it is! It looks like a knob of mossy bark, you see. There
were two eggs in it. I cut off the limb carefully, and set it in a pot
of water in this room. It was full of blossoms, and the water kept these
alive. The window was left open and nobody--not even myself--came in
here for a week. As I had hoped, the mother and father bird found the
nest, and went on sitting on the eggs as if it had not been moved. One
night, after the baby birds were hatched, I went softly to the outside
of the window and let down the sash. That was the beginning of my
aviary. That's a hard word for you--isn't it, Molly? It means a family
of birds, such as I have here."
"I don't believe there is another like it in the world," said Cousin
Molly Belle. "I've always declared that you are a fairy, and charm your
hummers. I described it and them once to a famous ornithologist. That's
a real jaw-breaker, Namesake, and means one who knows everything about
all sorts of birds--or thinks he does. I met this or-nith-ol-o-gist in
New York last May. He said it was impossible to tame and raise families
of wild birds, especially humming-birds. And when I said I had seen it
with my own eyes, times without number, he looked polite--and
unbelieving."
Madam Leigh was so much amused that the flowers shook in her shrivelled
mites of hands.
"Many learned strangers have been to see the 'impossibility,'" she said,
her voice shaken by laughter.
(Cousin Molly Belle had the knack of saying just the thing that would
please everybody, and saying it in the right way and at the right
time.)
"Of course I have not raised them all from the eggs," continued Madam.
"We catch new birds every year, and some are never quite tame. So your
or-nith-ol-o-gist"--pronouncing it in the same comical way that Cousin
Molly Belle had done--"was not altogether in the wrong. But they get
used to their new life much sooner because there are so many of their
own kind about them. When I find that a couple are thinking of going to
house-keeping, I root a branch of poplar, or hickory, or maple, in a tub
of moist earth, and curtain off a corner where they will not be
disturbed in the nesting-time."
"That was the very thing the celebrated or-nith-ol-o-gist said was
absolutely impossible," cried Cousin Molly Belle. "Even though I told
him that, if he would pay us a visit, I would show him the cosey corner,
and the pretty bride and gallant bridegroom building their nest."
"A great many things happen to each of us that others would not believe,
no matter how solemnly we might declare them to be true," said Madam
Leigh, very seriously.
I had a notion that she was thinking of other things in her strangely
desolated life besides the aviary and the learned man who knew all about
birds.
"To me, the most singular part of my management of my hummers is that I
succeed in making them comfortable and contented in the winter," she
said. "For their forefathers and foremothers have been going South at
the first sign of frost for six thousand years or so. I have a stove put
up in here, covered with wire netting to hinder the little dears from
flying against it; then I keep an even temperature and fill the room
with flowers. It has, as you see, a southern exposure. I live here with
them all day long. When it begins to grow dark, I say, 'Good night' and
go across to my chamber. At bedtime I look in to make sure the fire will
keep in until morning, and that my darlings are all right. While
daylight lasts we are very happy together. I am busy with my pygmies
and my flowers. I feed the hummers with sugar-and-water in winter, with
a taste of honey on Sundays"--laughing cheerily. "To make them glad that
Sunday has come, you know. I've an idea that they need stronger food in
cold weather than in summer. It helps tame them to make them eat from
the tip of my finger. I take a great deal of pains to keep a succession
of plants in flower, for, after all, hive-honey isn't quite as pure and
delicate after it has gone through the bee's body as when the hummer
sips it fresh from the flower-cup. You must come over next winter, Molly
Belle, and bring the little lady to see my nasturtiums, and hyacinths,
and morning-glories. Roses and cape-jessamines, and the like are of no
use to us. Our flowers must be shaped like wine-glasses, with a drop of
honey-dew in the bottom, to please us perfectly. The hummers and I
understand that. You wouldn't believe how much company we are for one
another, or how much I learn from them. Even my silly mannikins give
work to my fingers and keep my thoughts steady."
Cousin Molly Belle put her arms around the wee old lady and hugged her
hard--the honeysuckles and catalpas falling to the floor.
"All this is the loveliest thing I ever heard!" laughing to keep from
crying. "I hope you will live to be a hundred years old, and give the
lie to or-nith-ol-o-gists every day you live. And Molly and I will come
to see you, often and often, whenever she is at our house. You dear,
brave, sensible, lion-hearted, _royal_ Queen Mab!"
She kept her word. It was one of her many ways to do more than she had
promised. I never paid a visit to my dearest cousins, the Frank Mortons,
without riding, or driving, up through the woods, and across the creek,
and up the two long, and the one short, hill, and along the grass-grown
lane to the gray cottage that always reminded me of a "hummer's" nest
masked with moss. I spent a good deal of that summer with Cousin Molly
Belle, and one week in the very middle of December.
The weather was very mild for midwinter, and the great south room felt
too warm to me. So warm that I began to feel sleepy and a little dizzy,
and Madam Leigh noticed the yawn I could not quite swallow.
"Put on your hood and cloak, little lady," she said, "and run into the
garden to see if you cannot find some roses for your cousin. Betty tells
me there has been so little frost this season that the rose-bushes are
still all in leaf."
I scampered off willingly, and did not show myself in the house again
until the sun almost touched the tree-tops. I gathered chrysanthemums
and nasturtiums and late heartsease, and at least a dozen roses and
buds, and, wandering farther and farther down the quiet paths, I saw
what I had never noticed before--that there was a small graveyard at the
back of the garden, of which it formed a part. An arbor, thickly
curtained with a Florida honeysuckle that kept its leaves all winter,
was at one side of the burial-place; a walk, edged with box, stretched
from it straight up to the house-yard. Now that the trees were bare, I
saw that old Madam Leigh could have a full view, through the windows in
the south gable, of the arbor, and the two white headstones before it:--
JOHN AND RUTH LEIGH.
TWIN-CHILDREN OF EDWARD AND JUDITH LEIGH.
BORN SEPTEMBER 3, 1790.
DIED AUGUST 1, 1810.
"_I was dumb; I opened not my mouth, because_ THOU
_didst it._"
I sat down in the summer-house and had a long thinking spell, all by
myself. Too young to word the emotions that swelled my heart, the
thoughts that oppressed my brain, there was, all the while, in heart and
head, the recollection of the story she had told of her manner of
getting the first pair of humming-birds--and how she had stolen softly
around to the window after dark, and shut the parents in with their
nestlings.
I never saw her again. On Christmas morning the maid, who came as usual
to awake and dress her mistress, found that she had died in her sleep.
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