fixed to inch along comfortable to the end o’ their days. But law! what
does the old fellow do, when they hadn’t got more’n fairly settled, but
go security fer Jim Jeffries, out Cicero road! Anybody with a grain o’
business sense ’ud a knowed it was flyin’ in the face o’ Providence,
for Jeffries allays was slack an’ shif’less an’ ’twan’t noways likely’t
he’d be able to meet them notes; an’ he didn’t nuther, an’ Father Ellis
he hed to pay the debt, but it took all they was. So hyer they be, all
tore up by the roots, so to speak. Doggoned pity, I say.”
I went aboard the car to speak a word of greeting. The aisle was
blocked by a small woman, with a large basket, and by a young miss
who exchanged farewell giggles with a departing friend, interspersed
with messages to their respective beaux. While I waited just behind
them, the old wife’s voice reached me, soft and clear, amid all the
confusion. I listened, and I turned away, sure that they needed no
comfort I could offer.
“The Lord has been very good to us, John. I can see now that my heart
was set too much on worldly things, and it was best they should be
taken away. The Lord doeth that which is good, John. He has left us
each other.”
“Yes, Cynthy, He has said: ‘I am with thee and will keep thee in all
places whither thou shalt go.’ We are old, my dear, and night will soon
pass forever into the dawn of eternal day. May we enter together into
the land that is no longer very far off. Let us pray, love, that death
shall not part us; that, still together, when the morning is come, we
may open our eyes in the Heavenly Kingdom, where a place is prepared
for us.”
A MOVEMENT IN ART
It was Sunday forenoon, and Lodilla Jackson was engaged in “doing
up” the morning’s work. She had washed the breakfast dishes, put the
kitchen in order, made the beds, helped get her young brother and
sister off to Sunday-school and her mother started to church, and
had got the dinner well under way. Lodilla worked during the week in
the establishment of a manufacturing chemist, or, as the place was
otherwise known, a patent-medicine factory, where she pasted labels
on bottles and pill-boxes, afterwards putting these articles in
elaborately printed wrappers. Sunday was her “off” day, but she usually
spent the first half of it in the manner described in order to relieve
her mother, who was also a hard-working woman, as widows with children
and little money are apt to be. She was twenty years old, and a good
girl. Ever since she was fourteen she had been earning money, and,
with the help of her mother, her brother two years younger, and, now,
of a younger sister who answered to the call of “H-e-r-e, C-a-s-h,” in
a dry goods shop, had almost succeeded in clearing their little house
of the mortgage that encumbered it when her father died. Almost, but
not quite. There was still necessity for frugality and self-denial,
and little chance for indulgence in the vanities and luxuries in which
girls delight. Nevertheless, Lodilla was not downcast or unhappy; far
from it. She looked forward confidently to the time when debt would
cease to be a burden, and, meanwhile, planned a little for that happy
day.
This morning, while the corned beef and cabbage boiled merrily on the
stove and the molasses cake browned in the oven, she opened the parlor
door, and, dust-cloth in hand, gazed meditatively about that retreat.
The room had been a source of great comfort to her mother and herself.
Its possession seemed to them a visible token of their respectable
social standing. It was not every one of their neighbors on the quiet
little South-side Indianapolis street who could afford a parlor. A good
many of the people in their part of town lived in houses so small,
or had families so large, that not a corner of their establishments
could be spared for company uses exclusively. Or, sometimes, when the
extra room was there, the occupant of the house could not afford the
necessary outlay for suitable furniture.
The fittings for the Jackson parlor had been bought when the paternal
Jackson was alive and in the enjoyment of health and good wages. The
selection of this furniture had been the outcome of much thought,
consultation and financial calculation on the part of the two older
members of the family, Lodilla at that time being of an age when her
opinion on such matters was not influential. There, as the foundation
of the outfit, was the ingrain carpet, with a green and black vine of
most luxuriant growth meandering over its bright red ground. There,
against the widest wall space, was a haircloth sofa, now worn to a
gloss that rivaled the Russia-iron stove, and with a lumpiness of
surface and weakness of springs unknown to it when new. The stove, an
upright cylinder, decorated with much nickel-plating, was regarded when
purchased as a great ornament to the room, and, although now adapted to
the use of natural gas instead of the coal for which it was originally
meant, was still held in much esteem in the household. There were
several cane-seated chairs, a table which held a large glass lamp, and,
on a shelf underneath, the family Bible. The crowning glory of the room
was the small cabinet organ in one corner. Lodilla, at an early age,
had learned to play “by ear” a few simple tunes and accompaniments, and
when the family and their visitors gathered there on Sunday afternoons
and sang “Shall We Gather at the River,” “Hold the Fort,” “Whiter than
Snow,” “In the Sweet Bye and Bye,” and other “gospel hymns,” Mrs.
Jackson, for one, felt that she enjoyed many blessings, while the
pleasure felt by all in the music would certainly have been far less
intense at a symphony concert.
But it was not on any of these pieces of furniture that Lodilla was
looking with some discontent visible in her face; it was upon the more
decorative features of the apartment. Over the high wooden mantel
hung a crayon portrait of her departed father, enlarged to a head of
life size from a tintype of thumb-nail proportions by one of those
mysterious processes practiced by peripatetic artisans. Her father
had been gone too long for her to feel any deep personal sentiment
in regard to him, but the picture was invested with the interest of a
sacred relic, and she had no thought of disturbing it. On the wall,
over the sofa, hung that pair of chromos, “Wide Awake” and “Fast
Asleep,” which, when, as newspaper prizes, they found places in a
multitude of homes years ago, were so universally characterized as
“perfectly lovely.” Lodilla was a trifle tired of these pictures, not
because she detected any lack of artistic merit, but because she did
not think the chubby little girl portrayed in them a pretty child.
Still, she did not at this time cherish any designs against them.
Her eyes moved slowly along the row of photographs of various sizes
resting on the mantel, from there passed to the framed marriage
certificate of her parents hanging above the cabinet organ in a line
with the framed certificates of baptism of herself and her brother and
sister, then wandered from these to a large “memorial piece,” framed
in black and hanging in the place of honor between the windows, and
rested there with especial dissatisfaction. This piece, which was
printed in very black inks, with very deep shadows and very white high
lights, represented a marble tombstone of dazzling whiteness, a willow
tree and a kneeling widow, who had evidently come to weep, but had
changed her mind and was looking up with ecstatic gaze at an angel with
powerful wings bearing the astral body of the occupant of the grave
up to a heaven beyond a flock of woolly clouds. Printed on scrolls in
the corners were sundry comforting texts, and below, the full name of
the deceased Jackson, engrossed in an ornamental, Spencerian hand.
This remarkable work of art was kindly furnished to the widow for
$2.75--$1.25 off for an immediate sale--by the agent of an enterprising
engraving firm soon after her husband’s death.
“I do wish, ma,” said Lodilla to her mother, who entered just then,
“I do wish I had a photograph album--one like Nell Abbott’s, a big
plush-covered one. It would be so stylish on the table, and, besides,
is so much better for keeping photographs than setting them around on
things. And, ma--”
Here Lodilla hesitated and blushed a little.
“Ma, Joe--Mr. Little--is getting his pictures taken--great big
cabinets--and if he gives me one it would be nice to have a place to
put it. He just admires Nell’s album; told her he thought every family
ought to have one.”
It will be observed that Lodilla, capable young woman that she was, was
not quite up to date in this matter, but in her behalf it must be said
that she had not had the advantage of association with young society
women, who claim to lead in fads and fashions of this sort, and who
abandoned the album as a drawing-room ornament some time since. Her
ideas as to the desirability of the article had been gathered from
visits to the homes of her friends, who were still in the plush album
and chromo stage of development. She had also gone with her mother
on one occasion to carry a basket of mended clothing to a bachelor
apartment, where, in the common sitting-room of the half dozen young
men, the center-table held six large family albums arranged about
the lamp, and presumably containing likenesses of the relatives,
sweethearts and favorite actresses of the respective owners. Lodilla,
who was much impressed with the luxury of other fittings of this room,
felt that the albums were the crowning touch of elegance, and had
longed for one ever since. She had particularly desired one since Joe
Little, brakeman on the Big Four railroad, had loomed on her social
horizon. She wanted his picture, and fancied that he would be the more
willing to bestow it if she had a suitable casket for the treasure.
She was an unsophisticated girl, you see, unaware that no man needs
encouragement to his vanity beyond the mere willingness on the part of
a young woman to accept a likeness of himself.
Mrs. Jackson, who, mother-like, would have been glad to gratify all her
daughter’s tastes, looked a little troubled.
“I don’t see, Dilly,” she said hesitatingly, “I don’t see how we can
afford one now.”
“Of course not, ma; of course not,” said Lodilla, with a sudden return
to cheerfulness. “I know we can’t afford it yet a while, and I’m not
grumbling. Don’t you think it. I was just wishing and talking, and that
don’t hurt, you know. But some day, ma, I’m going to have that album,
and some day I’m going to buy some pictures and get you to put the
memorial piece and the certificates in your bedroom. They’ve hung where
they are so long I’d like a change, and the parlor needs a little
freshening up and more style.”
Her mother sighed a little, without looking at all sad. Her grief for
the departed Jackson was so mitigated by time that the sighs brought
by allusions to him were more from habit than emotion, and no longer
indicated the least depression of spirits.
“I always liked that memorial,” she said. “It’s so sort of
satisfactory. That angel who’s carrying your pa is so big and strong
that you can easy enough see how he can do it. He looks so substantial.
The Widow Thomas, she has one where the angel’s just starting down
after Thomas--a little, thin, weakly angel you can see through, and
you know the old man must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds
if he did one. Of course, we don’t suppose his spirit was heavy, but,
somehow, there don’t seem to be a fitness in sending such a puny
messenger after him. It seems a pity to put that memorial out of sight
in the bedroom, but young folks must have their way, I reckon. You
don’t think of taking the chromos down, do you?” she asked, anxiously.
“Your pa gave them to me before we was married, and people come from
all around to see them, and everybody said they were just the finest
pictures that had ever been seen in Cherry Corners. Old Mr. Van Lew
offered ten dollars for them, because Little Wide Awake looked so much
like his grand-daughter, Lucy Ann Rodibaugh. But I wouldn’t a’ taken
twice that then.”
Dilly assured her mother that she had no intention of removing “Wide
Awake” and “Fast Asleep,” and hastened to look after her dinner.
The cabbage which had boiled so long and steadily, was tender, the
potatoes mealy, the corned beef just as it should be, the molasses cake
light and sweet and delicious--just the cake that children remember
all their lives as the kind mother used to make, a memory which causes
them, when they are old, to wonder why no one else can ever make as
good.
And if you think the family gathered around that board and partaking of
that frugal fare were not as happy as it is often given to people to
be in this rather pleasant world, then you know little of the rewards
of honest toil, of the delights of home provided, and its comforts
earned and paid for by the efforts of all; you have forgotten the eager
appetite of healthy youth, which gives the plainest food a zest that a
Lucullus feast could not offer now. And if you think Miss Lodilla, with
her narrow life, her daily labor and her simple hopes and ambitions,
was wasting time or energy in repinings at her lot, or fancied herself
in any respect ill-used by fate, then you little understand the serene
independence of the self-reliant, self-supporting American girl, who,
confident of her ability to provide for herself, envies no one.
Lodilla, in her neat black skirt and shirt waist, in summer--oh, the
ever-useful, universal shirt waist!--and her trim cloth jacket over the
waist in winter, wended her way back and forth each day between home
and factory, making one of the great army of working women, but having
her own little plans and cares apart from such associations, and her
maidenly dreams, just as other girls do with more time for dreams--just
as all girls do while life is young and love is sweet. Joe Little, the
big, fair-haired brakeman, figured a good deal in these meditations.
He came to see her now and then, when he had no “run” to make, but it
was always on a week-day evening. Sunday evenings he spent with Nellie
Abbott, Lodilla’s dearest friend. That is, she had been her nearest
and most confidential friend, the girl to whom she had confided all
her little secrets, but lately the intimacy had waned somewhat, and
perhaps Joe Little had, unconsciously to himself, something to do with
the coolness. These ardent friendships between girls are so apt to die
a sudden death when an attractive young man comes on the scene.
Joe Little had first met both the girls at a church strawberry
festival, but had seemed to give preference to Nellie. The chief sign
of his favor was the fact that his calls upon her were made on Sunday
nights, and in their social circle this meant more serious intentions
than an ordinary week-night visit. He was a musician of local repute,
being known as a “boss fiddler,” and this accomplishment gave him
welcome admission to the best society of the neighborhood. Nellie,
being something of a coquette, did not appear to care especially for
him, and, for that matter, neither did Lodilla--she was too fully a
woman for that--but she did care, and was learning to think about him
more and more.
“I really don’t think Nell’s prettier than I am,” she would say to
herself, looking anxiously in the glass. “Nell’s got a real good
complexion, lots better than mine, but her nose is pug and her eyes
are squinty. They are; she can’t deny it, and they do say cross-eyed
people get to have bad tempers, even if they don’t begin with them.
Nell’s awful peppery sometimes now when things don’t go her way. It
can’t be her looks; it must be other things. She’s got a piano and can
play the ‘Maiden’s Prayer,’ ‘The Brook,’ ‘The Gussie Waltz’ and a lot
of pieces, and he likes music so. And she’s got a photograph album,
and, oh dear!”
You people who accept the assurances of novelists and cheap critics
that women with the smallest claims to comeliness--and where is she
who has none?--are satisfied with themselves, and unable to recognize
the charms of their rivals--you merely show your ignorance. The normal
girl is distinctly aware of her own defects, and as keenly conscious
of the other girl’s especial attractions. She recognizes, with a pang
at her heart, the captivating effect of the little curl on her rival’s
white neck, the dimple in her chin, of the long lashes, under which she
glances so bewitchingly. She may honestly wonder why the man in the
case is so stupid and blind as not to detect that other girl’s faults
of character which are so clear to her, but she never undervalues the
outward allurements.
Strawberry time and its festivals were now long past, and early winter
was here, but Joe Little showed no signs of change in his fancy for
Nellie Abbott, except that his calls at the Widow Jackson’s were
rather less frequent than they had been. Lodilla began to have little
heartaches, and if she cried when her sister was asleep and she could
smother her sobs in the pillow, it would not be at all surprising. But
if anybody guessed her sadness and its cause it was only her mother,
and mothers never betray such secrets.
She worked as industriously as ever over her bottles and pill-boxes,
chattered as gayly with her companions as usual, and loitered before
the shop windows during the noon hour with the natural and wholesome
curiosity of a healthy young woman. Love, of the lurid, all-absorbing
kind we read about, that takes the appetite, banishes sleep and
destroys other interests of life, is less frequent than the variety
which permits other sentiments to exist simultaneously and allows the
sufferer intervals of comparative comfort and cheer.
One evening Mr. Little dropped in unexpectedly and brought his
fiddle--he did not call it a violin. He did not tell Lodilla that he
had intended to go to Nellie’s, but from across the street had chanced
to see William Marvin, freight conductor on his road, enter before him
and receive a warm greeting from the young lady. He “never could abide
Bill Marvin,” and wouldn’t spend an hour in the same room if he could
help it.
Lodilla made herself particularly agreeable that evening. She begged
him to play for her, and he did play the “Wrecker’s Daughter,”
“Fisher’s Hornpipe,” “Drunkard’s Heecups”--a tune in which the plunking
of the strings gives the realistic effect of hiccoughs--the “Arkansaw
Traveler” and a Strauss Waltz. At least these are what he told her
they were, and she thanked him and praised him and said she loved the
fiddle, and could never grow tired of it; and then she sang all her
songs to the cabinet organ accompaniment with its undertone of wheezy
groans, suggestive of misery in its inside, and never before had she
put such feeling and earnestness into tunes or words. And, after the
visitor had been served with doughnuts and a big glass of unfermented
grape juice that ma put up herself, he went home, well pleased with
himself and all the world, Lodilla included. She was happy, but not
confident. She had still an oppressive fear of her rival.
The very next day she was drawn by irresistible attraction into a crowd
in front of a big Washington street shoe-shop, and stood there with
fascinated eyes watching a man in the window who painted a beautiful
landscape while you waited. There he stood, painting clouds, trees,
rivers and river banks, grassy knolls, mossy dells and gray rocks with
lightning swiftness--laying on one color and then another, and bringing
out marvelous effects before you fairly knew what he had intended.
A yellow circular thrust into her hand by a boy informed her that she
could have one of these works of art free of cost if she would purchase
a pair of shoes in the shop--the frame only being charged for.
A sudden ambition filled her mind. She had the money in her pocket for
a pair of shoes and meant to buy them that very afternoon. Why not
purchase them here instead of at the little shop on the side street,
which she had always patronized? They might cost a little more here,
but then, just for once, and with this prize in view, she might surely
venture the additional outlay. The frame was extra, but she would take
a ninety-eight-cent one and save the amount after awhile out of the
price of her winter gown. Without giving herself time to reconsider,
she bought the shoes, selected the picture she had seen painted, or one
precisely like it, and went her way, feeling the fearful joy of a wish
gratified at the cost of wild extravagance.
The purchase created a sensation at home, and though the careful mother
shook her head doubtfully over the investment of so much money for
purely decorative purposes, she did not remonstrate, but joined with
the rest of the family in admiring the new possession.
“You see, ma,” said Lodilla, with intent to justify herself, “you
see, hand-painted pictures are the thing now-days; everybody says so,
and they cost like everything. Nell says her uncle’s sister-in-law
in Chicago paid twenty-five dollars for a painting not more than ten
inches across, and Joe Little, he told me about a five-hundred-dollar
picture he’d seen a man carrying home on the train one day, and there
wasn’t a thing to it but two or three sheep and a dog on a side-hill.
And just think! This didn’t cost a cent without the frame.”
The next day was Sunday, and frequent were Lodilla’s visits to the
parlor to look at her treasure hanging in state between the windows,
in place of the memorial piece, now retired to the privacy of ma’s
bedroom. That night who should come but Joe Little to ask her to go
to church. She accepted the invitation with sedate dignity, but with
secret joy. Sunday night! That meant so much.
Nellie Abbott was there with the freight conductor, whom Lodilla
mentally classified at once as “perfectly horrid,” and was instantly
convinced that her old friend was consumed with envy of her superior
good fortune in securing the handsome and altogether more desirable
escort. Filled with which thought, she smiled with great sweetness on
Miss Nellie.
After services were over Joe came in with intent to sit by the
sheet-iron cylinder and enjoy an hour of social converse. Lodilla
wished her new art acquisition to dawn upon him unannounced, and sat
in tremulous expectation of his verdict. Finally, after talk about
the weather, ma’s cold, the new choir and various neighborhood topics
had begun to languish, Mr. Little’s glance chanced to fall upon the
picture. He rose slowly and stood before it, inspecting it closely with
a critical eye; then he made a telescope of his hands and viewed it
from a more distant standpoint. Then he said impressively:
“Lodilla, that’s a mighty good thing; it’s got good points. You don’t
want to stand too close to one of them hand-painted oil pictures,
they’re apt to blur, but just get off a piece and they come right
out. That lightning artist’s a dandy. Shows what a painter man can do
who puts his mind to it and isn’t afraid to work. It must make those
fellows who potter over one picture for weeks just sick to see him dash
them things off at such a rate. I tell you, Lodilla,” he added with
animation, after a pause and further inspection, “it looks like a place
on the old farm down home. I’ve set on that rock, or one like it, and
fished for bass in just such a hole many of a time.”
Then, as if with inspiration of the instant; “And say, Lodilla”--here
he faltered and his voice grew soft--“say, don’t you want to marry me
some day and go down there and visit the home place and the old folks?”
It was sudden, but she was equal to the emergency. His arm was around
her, and her answer was whispered on his shoulder, but not so low that
he could not hear.
* * * * *
When Christmas came, a few weeks later, he gave her a big red plush
album with gilt trimmings and a little mirror set in the corner, and
she felt that her cup of bliss was full.
The album was a treasure, but Lodilla will value that picture between
the windows till the end of her days. It brought her love and Joe. Art
education is not always a rapid process. Her children may learn to
appreciate picture posters and know what Beardsleyism means, but she
will be forever satisfied with her landscape painted in nine minutes as
her mother before her was with the chromos.
THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL