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I. EDEN PLACE 1
II. MISTRESS MARY’S GARDEN 16
III. A FAMILY POLYGON 29
IV. MARM LISA IS TRANSPLANTED 46
V. HOW THE NEW PLANT GREW 59
VI. FROM GRUBB TO BUTTERFLY 77
VII. THE COMET AND THE FIXED STAR 88
VIII. THE YOUNG MINISTER’S PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS 106
IX. MARM LISA’S QUEST 121
X. THE TWINS JOIN THE CELESTIALS 135
XI. RHODA FREES HER MIND 150
XII. FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 167
XIII. LEAVES FROM MISTRESS MARY’S GARDEN 186
XIV. MORE LEAVES 202
XV. ‘THE FEAST O’ THE BABE’ 219
XVI. CLEANSING FIRES 231
I
EDEN PLACE
EDEN PLACE was a short street running at right angles with Eden Square, a
most unattractive and infertile triangle of ground in a most unattractive
but respectable quarter of a large city. It was called a square, not so
much, probably, because it was triangular in shape, as because it was
hardly large enough to be designated as a park. As to its being called
‘Eden,’ the origin of that qualifying word is enveloped in mystery; but
it is likely that the enthusiastic persons who projected it saw visions
and dreamed dreams of green benches under umbrageous trees, of a green
wire fence, ever green, and of plots of blossoming flowers filling the
grateful air with unaccustomed fragrance.
As a matter of fact, the trees had always been stunted and stubby, the
plants had never been tended, and all the paint had been worn off the
benches by successive groups of working-men out of work. As for the wire
fence, it had been much used as a means of ingress and egress by the
children of the neighbourhood, who preferred it to any of the gateways,
which they considered hopelessly unimaginative and commonplace, offering
no resistance to the budding man of valour or woman of ambition.
Eden Place was frequented mostly by the children, who found it an
admirable spot to squabble, to fight, and to dig up the hapless earth;
and after them, by persons out of suits with fortune. These (generally
men) adorned the shabby benches at all times, sleeping, smoking, reading
newspapers, or tracing uncertain patterns in the gravel with a
stick,—patterns as uncertain and aimless as themselves. There were fewer
women, because the unemployed woman of this class has an old-fashioned
habit, or instinct, of seeking work by direct assault; the method of the
male being rather to sit on a bench and discuss the obstacles, the
injustices, and the unendurable insults heaped by a plutocratic
government in the path of the honest son of toil.
The corner house of Eden Place was a little larger than its neighbours in
the same row. Its side was flanked by a sand-lot, and a bay window, with
four central panes of blue glass, was the most conspicuous feature of its
architecture. In the small front yard was a microscopic flower-bed;
there were no flowers in it, but the stake that held up a stout plant in
the middle was surmounted by a neat wooden sign bearing the inscription,
‘No Smoking on these Premises.’ The warning seemed superfluous, as no
man standing in the garden could have put his pipe in his mouth without
grazing either the fence or the house, but the owner of the ‘premises’
possibly wished to warn the visitor at the very threshold.
All the occupied houses in Eden Place were cheerful and hospitable in
their appearance, and were marked by an air of liveliness and
good-fellowship. Bed linen hung freely from all the windows, for there
was no hard and fast law about making up beds at any special hour, though
a remnant of superstition still existed that it was a good thing to make
up a bed before you slept in it. There were more women on their
respective front steps, and fewer in their respective kitchens, in Eden
Place than in almost any other locality in the city. That they lived for
the most part in close and friendly relations could be seen from the
condition of the fences between the front yards, whose upper rails fairly
sagged with the weight of gossip.
One woman, living in the middle of the row, evidently possessed somewhat
different views, for she had planted vines on each of her division
fences, rented her parlour to a lodger who only slept there, kept all her
front curtains drawn, and stayed in the hack of her house. Such
retribution as could legally be wreaked upon this offensive and exclusive
person was daily administered by her two neighbours, who stood in their
doors on either side and conversed across her house and garden with much
freedom and exuberance. They had begged the landlord to induce her to
take up her abode elsewhere; but as she was the only tenant who paid her
rent regularly, he refused to part with her.
Any one passing the ‘No Smoking’ sign and entering the front door of Mrs.
Grubb’s house, on the corner, would have turned off the narrow uncarpeted
hall into the principal room, and, if he were an observing person, would
have been somewhat puzzled by its appearance. There were seven or eight
long benches on one side, yet it had not the slightest resemblance to a
schoolroom. The walls were adorned with a variety of interesting
objects. There was a chart showing a mammoth human hand, the palm marked
with myriads of purple lines. There were two others displaying
respectively the interior of the human being in the pink-and-white purity
of total abstinence, and the same interior after years of intemperance
had done their fatal work; a most valuable chart this last, and one that
had quenched the thirst of many a man.
The words ‘_Poverty Must Go_’ were wrought in evergreen letters over the
bay window, and various texts were printed in red and black and tacked to
the wall in prominent places. These were such as—
‘_To be a Flesh-Eater is to be a Shedder of Blood and a Destroyer of
God’s Innocent Creatures_.’
‘_Now that Man has Begun to Ascend in the Scale of Being_, _let Woman
Reach Down a Strong_, _Tender Hand and Aid him in his Struggle for Moral
and Spiritual Elevation_.’
‘_Let the Pleasure Field be as Large as Possible_. _Pains and Fears
Lessen Growth_.’
‘_I Believe that to Burden_, _to Bond_, _to Tax_, _to Tribute_, _to
Impoverish_, _to Grind_, _to Pillage_, _to Oppress_, _to Afflict_, _to
Plunder_, _to Vampire the Life Labouring to Create Wealth is the
Unpardonable Sin_.’
Over the mantel-shelf was a seaweed picture in a frame of shells, bearing
the inscription, ‘_Unity Hall_, _Meeting-Place of the Order of Present
Perfection_.’ On a table, waiting to be hung in place, was an impressive
sort of map about four feet square. This, like many of the other
ornaments in the room, was a trifle puzzling, and seemed at first, from
its plenitude of coloured spots, to be some species of moral propaganda
in a state of violent eruption. It proved, however, on closer study, to
be an ingenious pictorial representation of the fifty largest cities of
the world, with the successful establishment of various regenerating
ideas indicated by coloured discs of paper neatly pasted on the surface.
The key in the right-hand corner read—
Temperance Blue.
Single Tax Green.
Cremation Orange.
Abolition of War Red.
Vegetarianism Purple.
Hypnotism Yellow.
Dress Reform Black.
Social Purity Blush Rose.
Theosophy Silver.
Religious Liberty Magenta.
Emancipation of Woman Crushed Strawberry.
A small gold star, added to the coloured spot, hovering over the name of
a city, was explained, in the lower left-hand corner, as denoting the
fact that the Eldorado face-powder was exclusively used there, and that
S. Cora Grubb was the sole agent for the Pacific coast.
Joseph’s coat faded into insignificance in comparison with the city of
Mrs. Grubb’s present residence, which appeared to be a perfect hot-bed of
world-saving ideas, and was surrounded by such a halo of spots that it
would have struck the unregenerate observer as an undesirable place in
which to live, unless one wished to be broken daily on the rack of social
progress.
This front room was Mrs. Grubb’s only parlour. The seven benches were
rather in the way and seemingly unnecessary, as the lady attended
meetings morning, noon, and night in halls hired for that purpose; but
they gave her a feeling of security, as, in case one of her less
flourishing societies should be ejected from its hall, or in case she
should wake up in the middle of the night and want to hold a meeting of
any club when all the halls were closed, the benches in the parlour would
make it possible without a moment’s loss of time.
The room connecting with this was the family banquet-hall and kitchen in
one, and as Mrs. Grubb’s opinions on diet were extremely advanced, it
amply served the purpose.
There were three bedrooms upstairs, and the whole establishment was
rather untidy in its aspect; but, though it might have been much cleaner,
it is only fair to say that it might also have been much dirtier.
The house was deserted. The only sound came from the back yard, and it
was the echo of children’s voices. It was not at all a merry prattle; it
was a steady uproar interrupted by occasional shrieks and yells, a
clatter of falling blocks, beatings of a tin pan, a scramble of feet, a
tussle, with confusion of blows and thumps, and then generally a
temporary lull in the proceedings, evidently brought about by some sort
of outside interference. If you had pushed open the wire door, you would
have seen two children of four or five years disporting themselves in a
sand-heap. One was a boy and one a girl; and though they were not at all
alike in feature or complexion, there was an astonishing resemblance
between them in size, in figure, in voice, in expression, and,
apparently, in disposition.
Sitting on a bench, watching them as a dog watches its master’s coat, was
a girl of some undeterminable age,—perhaps of ten or twelve years. She
wore a shapeless stout gingham garment, her shoes were many sizes too
large for her, and the laces were dangling. Her nerveless hands and long
arms sprawled in her lap as if they had no volition in them. She sat
with her head slightly drooping, her knees apart, and her feet aimlessly
turned in. Her lower lip hung a little, but only a little, loosely. She
looked neither at earth nor at sky, but straight at the two belligerents,
with whose bloodthirsty play she was obliged to interfere at intervals.
She held in her lap a doll made of a roll of brown paper, with a waist
and a neck indicated by gingham strings. Pieces of ravelled rope were
pinned on the head part, but there was no other attempt to assist the
imagination. She raised her dull eyes; they seemed to hold in their
depths a knowledge of aloofness from the happier world, and their dumb
sorrow pierced your very heart, while it gave you an irresistible sense
of aversion. She smiled, but the smile only gave you a new thrill; it
was vacant and had no joy in it, rather an uncommunicable grief. As she
sat there with her battered doll, she was to the superficial eye
repulsive, but to the eye that pierces externals she was almost majestic
in her mysterious loneliness and separation.
The steam-whistle of a factory near by blew a long note for twelve
o’clock, and she rose from her bench, took the children by the hand, and
dragged them, kindly but firmly, up the steps into the kitchen. She laid
her doll under a towel, but, with a furtive look at the boy, rolled it in
a cloth and tucked it under her skirt at the waist-line. She then washed
the children’s faces, tied on their calico bibs, and pushed them up to
the pine table. While they battered the board and each other with spoons
and tin mugs, she went automatically to a closet, took a dish of cold
porridge and turned it into three bowls, poured milk over it, spread
three thick slices of wheat bread with molasses from a cup, and sat down
at the table. After the simple repast was over, she led the still
reluctant (constitutionally reluctant) twins up the staircase and put
them, shrieking, on a bed; left the room, locking the door behind her in
a perfunctory sort of way as if it were an everyday occurrence, crouched
down on the rug outside, and, leaning her head back against the wall,
took her doll from under her skirt, for this was her playtime, her hour
of ease.
Poor little ‘Marm Lisa,’ as the neighbours called her! She had all the
sorrows and cares of maternity with none of its compensating joys.
II
MISTRESS MARY’S GARDEN
‘“Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?”
“With silver bells and cockle shells,
And little maids all in a row.”’
MISTRESS MARY’S Garden did grow remarkably well, and it was wonderfully
attractive considering the fact that few persons besides herself saw
anything but weeds in it.
She did not look in the least a ‘contrary’ Miss Mary, as she stood on a
certain flight of broad wooden steps on a sunshiny morning; yet she was
undoubtedly having her own way and living her own life in spite of
remonstrances from bevies of friends, who saw no shadow of reason or
common-sense in her sort of gardening. It would have been foolish enough
for a young woman with a small living income to cultivate roses or
violets or lavender, but this would at least have been poetic, while the
arduous tilling of a soil where the only plants were little people ‘all
in a row’ was something beyond credence.
The truth about Mistress Mary lay somewhere in the _via media_ between
the criticisms of her sceptical friends and the encomiums of her
enthusiastic admirers. In forsaking society temporarily she had no
rooted determination to forsake it eternally, and if the incense of love
which her neophytes for ever burned at her shrine savoured somewhat of
adoration, she disarmed jealousy by frankly avowing her unworthiness and
lack of desire to wear the martyr’s crown. Her happiness in her chosen
vocation made it impossible, she argued, to regard her as a person worthy
of canonisation; though the neophytes were always sighing to
‘have that little head of hers
Painted upon a background of pale gold.’
She had been born with a capacity for helping lame dogs over stiles;
accordingly, her pathway, from a very early age, had been bestrewn with
stiles, and processions of lame dogs ever limping towards them. Her
vocation had called her so imperiously that disobedience was impossible.
It is all very well if a certain work asks one in a quiet and courteous
manner to come and do it, when one has time and inclination; but it is
quite another matter if it coaxes one so insistently that one can do
nothing else properly, and so succumbs finally to the persuasive voice.
Still, the world must be mothered somehow, and there are plenty of women
who lack the time or the strength, the gift or the desire, the love or
the patience, to do their share. This gap seems to be filled now and
then by some inspired little creature like Mistress Mary, with enough
potential maternity to mother an orphan asylum; too busy, too absorbed,
too radiantly absent-minded to see a husband in any man, but claiming
every child in the universe as her very own. There was never anywhere an
urchin so dirty, so ragged, so naughty, that it could not climb into
Mistress Mary’s lap, and from thence into her heart. The neophytes
partook of her zeal in greater or less degree, and, forsaking all
probability of lovers (though every one of them was young and pretty),
they tied on their white aprons and clave only unto her. Daily
intercourse with a couple of hundred little street Arabs furnished a
field for the practice of considerable feminine virtue, and in reality
the woman’s kingdom at the top of the broad wooden steps was a great
‘culture engine’ of spiritual motherhood.
It certainly was a very merry place, and if its presiding geniuses were
engaged in conscious philanthropy, the blighting hallmark was conspicuous
by its absence. Peals of laughter rang through the rooms; smiling faces
leaned from the upstairs windows, bowing greeting to the ashman, the
scissors-grinder, the Italian and Chinese vegetable-vendors, the
rag-sack-and-bottle man, and the other familiar figures of the
neighbourhood.
It was at the end of a happy, helpful day that Mistress Mary stood in the
front door and looked out over her kingdom.
There was a rosy Swedish girl sitting on the floor of a shop window
opposite and washing the glass. She had moved the fresh vegetables aside
and planted herself in the midst of them. There she sat among the
cabbages and turnips and other sweet things just out of the earth; piles
of delicate green lettuce buds, golden carrots bursting into feathery
tops, ruddy beets, and pink-checked. It was pretty to see the honest joy
of her work and the interest of her parted lips, when, after polishing
the glass, it shone as crystal clear as her own eyes. A milkman stopping
to look at her (and small wonder that he did) poured nearly a quart of
cream on the ground, and two children ran squabbling under the cart to
see if they could catch the drippings in their mouths. They were
Atlantic and Pacific Simonson with Marm Lisa, as usual, at their heels.
She had found her way to this corner twice of late, because things
happened there marvellous enough to stir even her heavy mind. There was
a certain flight of narrow, rickety steps leading to a rickety shanty,
and an adjacent piece of fence with a broad board on top. Flower-pots
had once stood there, but they were now lying on the ground below, broken
into fragments. Marm Lisa could push the twins up to this
vantage-ground, and crawl up after them. Once ensconced, if they had
chosen the right time of day, interesting events were sure to be
forthcoming. In a large playground within range of vision, there were
small children, as many in number as the sands of the seashore. At a
given moment, a lovely angel with black hair and a scarlet apron would
ring a large bell. Simultaneously, a lovely angel with brown hair and a
white apron would fly to the spot, and the children would go through a
mysterious process like the swarming of bees around a queen. Slowly,
reluctantly, painfully, the swarm settled itself into lines in
conformance with some hidden law or principle unknown to Marm Lisa.
Then, when comparative order had been evolved from total chaos, the most
beautiful angel of all would appear in a window; and the reason she
always struck the onlookers as a being of beauty and majesty was partly,
perhaps, because her head seemed to rise from a cloud of white (which was
in reality only a fichu of white mull), and partly because she always
wore a slender fillet of steel to keep back the waves of her fair hair.
It had a little point in front, and when the sun shone on its delicate,
fine-cut prisms it glittered like a halo. After the appearance of this
heavenly apparition the endless lines of little people wended their was
into the building, and enchanting strains of music were wafted through
the open windows, supplemented sometimes by the inspiring rattle of drums
and the blare of instruments hitherto indissolubly associated with street
parades.
Who? Why? Whence? Whither? What for? These were some of the
questions that assailed Marm Lisa’s mind, but in so incoherent a form
that she left them, with all other questions, unanswered. Atlantic and
Pacific were curious, too, but other passions held greater sway with
them; for when the children disappeared and the music ceased, they called
loudly for more, and usually scratched and pinched Marm Lisa as they were
lifted down from the fence; not seeing daily how anybody else could be
held answerable for the cessation of the entertainment, and scratches and
pinches being the only remedial agencies that suggested themselves.
On this particular occasion there were no bells, no music, and no
mysterious swarming; but the heavenly apparition sat on the broad steps.
Yes, it was she! Blue-grey eyes with darker lashes sweeping the warm
ivory of her cheeks, sweet true lips for ever parting in kind words, the
white surplice and apron, and the rememberable steel fillet. She had a
little child in her lap (she generally had, by the way), and there were
other tots clinging fondly to her motherly skirts. Marm Lisa stood at
the foot of the steps, a twin glued to each side. She stared at Mistress
Mary with open-mouthed wonder not unmixed with admiration.
‘That same odd child,’ thought Mary. ‘I have seen her before, and always
with those two little vampires hanging to her skirts. She looks a trifle
young to have such constant family cares; perhaps we had better “lend a
hand.”’
‘Won’t you come in?’ she asked, with a smile that would have drawn a sane
person up the side of a precipice.
Atlantic turned and ran, but the other two stood their ground.
‘Won’t you come up and see us?’ she repeated. ‘There are some fishes
swimming in a glass house; come and look at them.’
Marm Lisa felt herself dragged up the steps as by invisible chains, and
even Pacific did not attempt to resist the irresistible. Atlantic,
finding himself deserted by his comrades, gave a yell of baffled rage,
and scrambled up the steps after them. But his tears dried instantly at
the sight of the room into which they were ushered; as large as any of
the halls in which Aunt Cora spent her days, and how much more beautiful!
They roved about, staring at the aquarium, and gazing at the
rocking-horse, the piano, the drum, the hanging gardens, with speechless
astonishment. Lisa shambled at their heels, looking at nothing very
long; and when Rhoda (one of the neophytes), full of sympathy at the
appearance of the wild, forlorn, unkempt trio, sat herself down on a sofa
and gathered them about a wonderful picture-book, Mistress Mary’s keen
eyes saw that Lisa’s gaze wandered in a few minutes. Presently she crept
over the floor towards a table, and, taking a string from it, began to
blow it to and fro as it hung from her fingers. Rhoda’s glance followed
Mary’s; but it was only a fleeting one, for the four eyes of the twins
were riveted on hers with devouring eagerness, while they waited for her
explanation of the pictures. At the end of half an hour, in which the
children had said little or nothing, they had contrived to reveal so many
sorrowful and startling details of their mental, moral, and physical
endowment, that Mistress Mary put on her hat.
‘I will go home with them,’ she said. ‘There is plenty of work here for
somebody; I could almost hope that it won’t prove ours.’
‘It will,’ replied Rhoda, with a stifled sigh. ‘There is an old Eastern
legend about the black camel that comes and lies down before the door of
him upon whom Heaven is going to lay her chastening hand. Every time I
have seen that awful trio on the fence-top, they were fairly surrounded
by black camels in my imagination. Mistress Mary, I am not sure but
that, in self-defence, we ought to become a highly specialised
_Something_. We are now a home, a mother, a nursery, a labour bureau, a
divorce court, a registry of appeals, a soup kitchen, an advisory hoard,
and a police force. If we take _her_, what shall we be?’
‘We will see first where she belongs,’ smiled Mary. (Nobody could help
smiling at Rhoda.) ‘Somebody has been neglecting his or her duty. If we
can make that somebody realise his delinquencies, all the better, for the
responsibility will not be ours. If we cannot, why, the case is clear
enough and simple enough in my mind. We certainly do not want “_Mene_,
_mene_, _tekel_, _upharsin_” written over this, of all doors.’
Rhoda’s hand went up to an imaginary cap in a gesture of military
obedience. ‘Very well, my general. I fly to prepare weapons with which
to fight Satan. You, of course, will take _her_; oh, my dear, I’m almost
afraid you oughtn’t! I choose the bullet-headed blonde twin who says his
name is “Lanty,” and reserve for Edith the bursting-with-fat brunette
twin who calls herself “Ciffy.” Edith’s disciplinary powers have been
too much vaunted of late; we shall see if Ciffy ruffles her splendid
serenity.’
III
A FAMILY POLYGON
MRS. GRUBB’S family circle was really not a circle at all; it was rather
a polygon—a curious assemblage of distinct personages.
There was no unity in it, no membership one of another. It was four
ones, not one four. If some gatherer of statistics had visited the
household, he might have described it thus:—
Mrs. S. Cora Grubb, widow, aged forty years.
‘Alisa Bennett, feeble-minded, aged ten or twelve years.
‘Atlantic and Pacific Simonson, twins, aged four years.’
The man of statistics might seek in vain for some principle of attraction
or cohesion between these independent elements; but no one who knew Mrs.
Grubb would have been astonished at the sort of family that had gathered
itself about her. Queer as it undoubtedly was at this period, it had, at
various times, been infinitely queerer. There was a certain memorable
month, shortly after her husband’s decease, when Mrs. Grubb allowed
herself to be considered as a compensated hostess, though the terms
‘landlady’ and ‘boarder’ were never uttered in her hearing. She hired a
Chinese cook, who slept at home; cleared out, for the use of Lisa and the
twins, a small storeroom in which she commonly kept Eldorado face-powder;
and herself occupied a sofa in the apartment of a friend of humanity in
the next street. These arrangements enabled her to admit an experimenter
on hypnotism, a mental healer who had been much abused by the orthodox
members of her cult, and was evolving a method of her own, an ostensible
delegate to an Occidental Conference of Religions, and a lady agent for a
flexible celluloid undershirt. For a few days Mrs. Grubb found the
society of these persons very stimulating and agreeable; but before long
the hypnotist proved to be an unscrupulous gentleman, who hypnotised the
mental healer so that she could not heal, and the Chinese cook so that he
could not cook. When, therefore, the delegate departed suddenly in
company with the celluloid-underwear lady, explaining by a hurried postal
card that they would ‘remit’ from Chicago, she evicted the other two
boarders, and retired again to private life.
This episode was only one of Mrs. Grubb’s many divagations, for she had
been a person of advanced ideas from a comparatively early age. It would
seem that she must have inherited a certain number of ‘views,’ because no
human being could have amassed, in a quarter of a century, as many as she
held at the age of twenty-five. She had then stood up with Mr. Charles
Grubb, before a large assembly, in the presence of which they promised to
assume and continue the relation of husband and wife so long as it was
mutually agreeable. As a matter of fact it had not been mutually
agreeable to Mr. Grubb more than six months, but such was the nobility of
his character that he never disclosed his disappointment nor claimed any
immunity from the responsibilities of the marriage state. Mr. Grubb was
a timid, conventional soul, who would have given all the testimony of all
the witnesses of his wedding ceremony for the mere presence of a single
parson; but he imagined himself in love with Cora Wilkins, and she could
neither be wooed nor won by any of the beaten paths that led to other
women. He foolishly thought that the number of her convictions would
grow less after she became a wife, little suspecting the fertility of her
mind, which put forth a new explanation of the universe every day, like a
strawberry plant that devotes itself so exclusively to ‘runners’ that it
has little vigour left for producing fruit.
The town in New York where they lived proving to be too small, narrow,
and bigoted to hold a developing soul like Mrs. Grubb’s, she persuaded
her husband to take passage for California, where the climate might be
supposed more favourable to the growth of saving ideas. Mr. Grubb would,
of course, be obliged to relinquish his business, but people could buy
and sell anywhere, she thought, and as for her, she wanted nothing but
unlimited space in which to expand.
There was money enough for an economical journey and a month or two of
idleness afterwards; and as Mrs. Grubb believed everything in the
universe was hers, if she only chose to claim it, the question of
finances never greatly troubled her. They sailed for the golden West,
then, this ill-assorted couple, accompanied by Mrs. Grubb’s only sister,
who had been a wife, was now a widow, and would shortly become a mother.
The interesting event occurred much sooner than had been anticipated.
The ship became the birthplace of the twins, who had been most unwelcome
when they were thought about as one, and entirely offensive when found to
be two. The mother did not long survive the shock of her surprise and
displeasure, and after naming the babies Atlantic and Pacific, and
confiding them distinctly to the care of Mr., not Mrs., Grubb, she died,
and was buried at sea, not far from Cape Horn. Mrs. Cora enjoyed at
first the dramatic possibilities of her position on the ship, where the
baby orphans found more than one kindly, sentimental woman ready to care
for them; but there was no permanent place in her philosophy for a pair
of twins who entered existence with a concerted shriek, and continued it
for ever afterwards, as if their only purpose in life was to keep the
lungs well inflated. Her supreme wish was to be freed from the carking
cares of the flesh, and thus for ever ready to wing her free spirit in
the pure ether of speculation.
You would hardly suppose that the obscure spouse of Mrs. Grubb could wash
and dress the twins, prepare their breakfast, go to his work, come home
and put them to bed, four or five days out of every seven in the week;
but that is what he did, accepting it as one phase of the mysterious
human comedy (or was it tragedy?) in which he played his humble part.
Mrs. Grubb was no home spirit, no goddess of the hearth. She graced her
family board when no invitation to refresh herself elsewhere had been
proffered, and that she generally slept in her own bed is as strong a
phrase as can be written on the subject. If she had been born in Paris,
at the proper time, she would have been the leader of a salon; separated
from that brilliant destiny by years, by race, and by imperious
circumstance, she wielded the same sort of sceptre in her own
circumscribed but appreciative sphere. No social occasion in Eden Place
was complete without Mrs. Grubb. With her (and some light refreshment),
a party lacked nothing; without her, even if other conditions were
favourable, it seemed a flat, stale, and unprofitable affair. Like Robin
Adair,
‘She made the ball so fine;
She made th’ occasion shine.’
Mrs. Grubb hanging on her front gate, duster in hand (she never conversed
quite as well without it, and never did anything else with it), might
have been a humble American descendant of Madame de Staël talking on the
terrace at Coppet, with the famous sprig of olive in her fingers. She
moved among her subjects like a barouche among express wagons, was heard
after them as a song after sermons. That she did not fulfil the whole
duty of woman did not occur to her fascinated constituents. There was
always some duller spirit who could slip in and ‘do the dishes,’ that
Mrs. Grubb might grace a _conversazione_ on the steps or at the gate.
She was not one of those napkin people who hide their talents, or who
immure their lights under superincumbent bushels. Whatever was hers was
everybody’s, for she dispensed her favours with a liberal hand. She
would never have permitted a child to suffer for lack of food or bed, for
she was not at heart an unkind woman. You could see that by looking at
her vague, soft brown eyes,—eyes that never saw practical duties straight
in front of them,—liquid, star-gazing, vision-seeing eyes, that could
never be focussed on any near object, such as a twin or a cooking-stove.
Individuals never interested her; she cared for nothing but humanity, and
humanity writ very large at that, so that once the twins nearly died of
scarlatina while Mrs. Grubb was collecting money for the children of the
yellow-fever sufferers in the South.
But Providence had an eye for Mr. Grubb’s perplexities. It does not and
cannot always happen, in a world like this, that vice is assisted to
shirk, and virtue aideth to do, its duty; but any man as marvellously
afflicted as Mr. Grubb is likely to receive not only spiritual
consolation, but miraculous aid of some sort. The spectacle of the
worthy creature as he gave the reluctant twins their occasional bath, and
fed them on food regularly prescribed by Mrs. Grubb, and almost as
regularly rejected by them, would have melted the stoniest heart. And
who was the angel of deliverance? A little vacant-eyed, half-foolish,
almost inarticulate child, whose feeble and sickly mother was dragging
out a death-in-life existence in a street near by. The child saw Mr.
Grubb wheeling the twins in a double perambulator: followed them home;
came again, and then again, and then again; hung about the door, fell
upon a dog that threatened to bite them, and drove it away howling; often
stood over the perambulator with a sunshade for three hours at a time,
without moving a muscle; and adored Mr. Grubb with a consuming passion.
There was no special reason for this sentiment, but then Alisa Bennett
was not quite a reasonable being. Mr. Grubb had never been adored before
in his life; and to say the truth, his personality was not winning. He
had a pink, bald head, pale blue eyes, with blond tufts for eyebrows, and
a pointed beard dripping from his chin, which tended to make him look
rather like an invalid goat. But as animals are said to have an eye for
spirits, children have an eye for souls, which is far rarer than an eye
for beautiful surfaces.
Mr. Grubb began by loathing Alisa, then patiently suffered her, then
pitied, then respected, then loved her. Mrs. Grubb seldom saw her, and
objected to nothing by which she herself was relieved of care. So Lisa
grew to be first a familiar figure in the household, and later an
indispensable one.
Poor Mrs. Bennett finally came to the end of things temporal. ‘Dying is
the first piece of good luck I ever had,’ she said to Mr. Grubb. ‘If it
turns out that I’ve brought a curse upon an innocent creature, I’d rather
go and meet my punishment half-way than stay here and see it worked out
to the end.’
‘“In my Father’s house are many mansions,”’ stammered Mr. Grubb, who had
never before administered spiritual consolation.
She shook her head. ‘If I can only get rid of this world, it’s all I
ask,’ she said; ‘if the other one isn’t any better, why, it can’t be any
worse! Feel under the mattress and you’ll find money enough to last
three or four years. It’s all she’ll ever get, for she hasn’t a soul now
to look to for help. That’s the way we human beings arrange things,—we,
or the Lord, or the Evil One, or whoever it is; we bring a puzzle into
the world, and then leave it for other people to work out—if they can!
Who’ll work out this one? Who’ll work out this one? Perhaps she’ll die
before the money’s gone; let’s hope for the best.’
‘Don’t take on like that!’ said Mr. Grubb despairingly,—‘don’t! Pray for
resignation, can’t you?’
‘Pray!’ she exclaimed scornfully. ‘Thank goodness, I’ve got enough
self-respect left not to pray!—Yes, I must pray, I _must_ . . . Oh, God!
I do not ask forgiveness for him or for myself; I only beg that, in some
way I cannot see, we may be punished, and she spared!’
And when the stricken soul had fled from her frail body, they who came to
prepare her for the grave looked at her face and found it shining with
hope.
It was thus that poor little Alisa Bennett assumed maternal
responsibilities at the age of ten, and gained her sobriquet of ‘Marm
Lisa.’ She grew more human, more tractable, under Mr. Grubb’s fostering
care; but that blessed martyr had now been dead two years, and she began
to wear her former vacuous look, and to slip back into the past that was
still more dreadful than the present.
It seemed to Mrs. Grubb more than strange that she, with her desire for
freedom, should be held to earth by three children not flesh of her
flesh—and such children. The father of the twins had been a professional
pugilist, but even that fact could never sufficiently account for Pacific
Simonson. She had apparently inherited instincts from tribes of warlike
ancestors who skulked behind trees with battle-axes, and no one except
her superior in size and courage was safe from her violent hand. She had
little, wicked, dark eyes and crimson, swollen cheeks, while Atlantic had
flaxen hair, a low forehead, and a square jaw. He had not Pacific’s
ingenuity in conceiving evil; but when it was once conceived, he had a
dogged persistency in carrying it out that made him worthy of his twin.
Yet with all these crosses Mrs. Grubb was moderately cheerful, for her
troubles were as nebulous as everything else to her mind. She intended
to invent some feasible plan for her deliverance sooner or later, but she
was much more intent upon development than deliverance, and she never
seemed to have the leisure to break her shackles. Nothing really
mattered much. Her body might be occasionally in Eden Place, but her
soul was always in a hired hall. She delighted in joining the New Order
of Something,—anything, so long as it was an Order and a new one,—and
then going with a selected committee to secure a lodge-room or a hall for
meetings. She liked to walk up the dim aisle with the janitor following
after her, and imagine brilliant lights (paid for by collection), a neat
table and lamp and pitcher of iced water, and herself in the chair as
president or vice-president, secretary or humble trustee. There was that
about her that precluded the possibility of simple membership. She
always rose into office the week after she had joined any society. If
there was no office vacant, then some bold spirit (generally male) would
create one, that Mrs. Grubb might not wither in the privacy of the ranks.
Before the charter members had fully learned the alphabet of their order
and had gained a thorough understanding of the social revolution it was
destined to work, Mrs. Grubb had mastered the whole scheme and was
unfolding it before large classes for the study of the higher theory.
The instant she had a tale to tell she presumed the ‘listening earth’ to
be ready to hear it. The new Order became an old one in course of time,
and, like the nautilus. Mrs. Grubb outgrew her shell and built herself a
more stately chamber. Another clue to the universe was soon forthcoming,
for all this happened in a city where it is necessary only for a man to
open his lips and say, ‘I am a prophet’, and followers flock unto him as
many in number as the stars. She was never disturbed that the last clue
had brought her nowhere; she followed the new one as passionately as the
old, and told her breathless pupils that their feet must not be weary,
for they were treading the path of progress; that these apparently
fruitless excursions into the domain of knowledge all served as so many
milestones in their glorious ascent of the mountain of truth.
IV
MARM LISA IS TRANSPLANTED
IT was precisely as Rhoda thought and feared. The three strange beings
who had drifted within Mistress Mary’s reach had proved to belong to her
simply because they did not belong to anybody else. They did not know
their names, the streets in which they lived, or anything else about
which they were questioned, but she had followed them home to the corner
house of Eden Place, although she failed, on the occasion of that first
visit, to find Mrs. Grubb within. There was, however, a very voluble
person next door, who supplied a little information and asked
considerable more. Mrs. Sylvester told Mary that Mrs. Grubb was at that
moment presiding over a meeting of the Kipling Brothers in Unity Hall,
just round the corner.
‘They meet Tuesdays and Thursdays at four o’clock,’ she said, ‘and you’d
find it a real treat if you like to step over there.’
‘Thank you, I am rather busy this afternoon,’ replied Mary.
‘Do you wish to leave any name or message? Did you want a setting?’
‘A sitting?’ asked Mary vaguely. ‘Oh no, thank you; I merely wished to
see Mrs. Grubb—is that the name?’
‘That’s it, and an awful grievance it is to her—Mrs. S. Cora Grubb. You
have seen it in the newspapers, I suppose; she has a half column “ad.” in
the _Sunday Observer_ once a month. Wouldn’t you like your nails
attended to? I have a perfectly splendid manicure stopping with me.’
‘No, thank you. I hoped to see Mrs. Grubb, to ask if her children can
come and spend the morning with me to-morrow.’
‘Oh, that’ll be all right; they’re not her children; she doesn’t care
where they go; they stay in the back yard or on the sand-lot most of the
time: she’s got something more important to occupy her attention. Say, I
hope you’ll excuse me, but you look a little pale. If you were intending
to get some mental healing from Mrs. Grubb, why, I can do it; she found I
had the power, and she’s handed all her healing over to me. It’s a new
method, and is going to supersede all the others, we think. My hours are
from ten to twelve, and two to four, but I could take you evenings, if
you’re occupied during the day. My cures are almost as satisfactory as
Mrs. Grubb’s now, though I haven’t been healing but six months last
Wednesday.’
‘Fortunately I am very well and strong,’ smiled Mistress Mary.
‘Yes, that’s all right, but you don’t know how soon sickness may overtake
you, if you haven’t learned to cast off fear and practise the denials.
Those who are living in error are certain to be affected by it sooner or
later, unless they accept the new belief. Why don’t you have your nails
done, now you’re here? My manicure has the highest kind of a polish,—she
uses pumice powder and the rose of Peru lustre; you ought to try her; by
taking twenty tickets you get your single treatments for thirty-five
cents apiece. Not this afternoon? Well, some other time, then. It will
be all right about the children and very good of you to want them. Of
course you can’t teach them anything, if that’s your idea. Belief in
original sin is all against my theories, but I confess I can’t explain
the twins without it. I sometimes wonder I can do any healing with them
in the next house throwing off evil influences. I am treating Lisa by
suggestion, but she hasn’t responded any yet. Call again, won’t you?
Mrs. Grubb is in from seven to eight in the morning, and ten-thirty to
eleven-thirty in the evening. You ought to know her; we think there’s
nobody like Mrs. Grubb; she has a wonderful following, and it’s growing
all the time; I took this house to be near her. Good afternoon. By the
way, if you or any of your friends should require any vocal culture, you
couldn’t do better than take of Madame Goldmarker in No. 17. She can
make anybody sing, they say. I’m taking of her right along, and my voice
has about doubled in size. I ought to be leading the Kipling Brothers
now, but my patients stayed so late to-day I didn’t get a good start.
Good afternoon.’
The weeks wore on, and the children were old friends when Mary finally
made Mrs. Grubb’s acquaintance; but in the somewhat hurried interviews
she had with that lady at first, she never seemed able to establish the
kind of relation she desired. The very atmosphere of her house was
chaotic, and its equally chaotic mistress showed no sign of seeking
advice on any point.
‘Marm Lisa could hardly be received in the schools,’ Mary told the
listening neophytes one afternoon when they were all together. ‘There
ought of course to be a special place for her and such as she, somewhere,
and people are beginning to see and feel the importance of it here; but
until the thought and hope become a reality the State will simply put the
child in with the idiots and lunatics, to grow more and more wretched,
more hopeless, more stupid, until the poor little light is quenched in
utter darkness. There is hope for her now, I am sure of it. If Mrs.
Grubb’s neighbours have told me the truth, any physical malady that may
be pursuing her is in its very first stages; for, so far as they know in
Eden Place, where one doesn’t look for exact knowledge, to be sure, she
has had but two or three attacks (“dizziness” or “faintness” they called
them) in as many years. She was very strange and intractable just before
the last one, and much clearer in her mind afterwards. They think her
worse of late, and have advised Mrs. Grubb to send her to an insane
asylum if she doesn’t improve. She would probably have gone there long
ago if she had not been such a valuable watch-dog for the twins; but she
does not belong there,—we have learned that from the doctors. They say
decisively that she is curable, but that she needs very delicate
treatment. My opinion is that we have a lovely bit of rescue-work sent
directly into our hands in the very nick of time. All those in favour of
opening the garden gates a little wider for Marm Lisa respond by saying
“Ay!”’
There was a shout from the neophytes that shook the very rafters—such a
shout that Lisa shuttled across the room, and, sitting down on a stool at
Mistress Mary’s feet, looked up at her with a dull, uncomprehending
smile. Why were those beloved eyes full of tears? She could not be
displeased, for she had been laughing a moment before. She hardly knew
why, but Mistress Mary’s wet eyes tortured her; she made an ejaculation
of discomfort and resentment, and taking the corner of her apron wiped
her new friend’s face softly, gazing at her with a dumb sorrow until the
smile came back; then she took out her string and her doll and played by
herself as contentedly as usual.
It was thus that heaven began to dawn on poor Marm Lisa. At first only a
physical heaven: temporary separation from Atlantic and Pacific; a chair
to herself in a warm, sunshiny room; beautiful, bright, incomprehensible
things hanging on the walls; a soft gingham apron that her clumsy fingers
loved to touch; brilliant bits of colour and entrancing waves of sound
that roused her sleeping senses to something like pleasure; a smile
meeting her eyes when she looked up—oh! she knew a smile—God lets love
dwell in these imprisoned spirits! By-and-by all these new sensations
were followed by thoughts, or something akin to them. Her face wore a
brooding, puzzled look, ‘Poor little soul, she is feeling her
growing-pains!’ said Mistress Mary. It was a mind sitting in a dim
twilight where everything seems confused. The physical eye appears to
see, but the light never quite pierces the dimness nor reflects its
beauty there. If the ears hear the song of birds, the cooing of babes,
the heart-beat in the organ tone, then the swift little messengers that
fly hither and thither in my mind and yours, carrying echoes of sweetness
unspeakable, tread more slowly here, and never quite reach the spirit in
prison. A spirit in prison, indeed, but with one ray of sunlight shining
through the bars,—a vision of duty. Lisa’s weak memory had lost almost
all trace of Mr. Grubb as a person but the old instinct of fidelity was
still there in solution, and unconsciously influenced her actions. The
devotion that first possessed her when she beheld the twins as babies in
the perambulator still held sway against all their evil actions. If they
plunged into danger she plunged after them without a thought of
consequences. There was, perhaps, no real heroism in this, for she saw
no risks and counted no cost: this is what other people said, but
Mistress Mary always thought Marm Lisa had in her the stuff out of which
heroes and martyrs are made. She had never walked in life’s sunny
places; it had always been the valley of the shadow for her. She was
surrounded by puzzles with never any answer to one of them, but if only
she had comprehended the truth, it was these very puzzles that were her
salvation. While her feeble mind stirred, while it wondered, brooded,
suffered,—enough it did all these too seldom,—it kept itself alive, even
if the life were only like the flickering of a candle. And now the
candle might flicker, but it should never go out altogether, if half a
dozen pairs of women’s hands could keep it from extinction; and how
patiently they were outstretched to shield the poor apology for a flame,
and coax it into burning more brightly!
‘Let the child choose her own special teacher,’ said Mistress Mary; ‘she
is sure to have a strong preference.’
‘Then it will be you,’ laughed Helen.
‘Don’t be foolish; it may be any one of us and it will prove nothing in
any case, save a fancy that we can direct to good use. She seldom looks
at anybody but you,’ said Edith.
‘That is true,’ replied Mary thoughtfully. ‘I think she is attracted by
this glittering steel thing in my hair. I am going to weave it into
Helen’s curly crop some day, and see whether she misses it or transfers
her affection. I have made up my mind who is the best teacher for her,
and whom she will chose.’
Rhoda gave a comical groan. ‘Don’t say it’s I,’ she pleaded. ‘I dread
it. Please I am not good enough, I don’t know how; and besides, she
gives me the creeps!’
Mistress Mary turned on Rhoda with a reproachful smile, saying, ‘You
naughty Rhoda, with the brightest eyes, the swiftest feet, the nimblest
fingers, the lightest heart among us all, why do you want to shirk?’
Mistress Mary had noted the fact that Lisa had refused to sit in an
unpainted chair, but had dragged a red one from another room and
ensconced herself in it, though it was uncomfortably small.
Now Rhoda was well named, for she was a rose of a girl, with damask
cheeks that glowed like two Jacqueminot beauties. She was much given to
aprons of scarlet linen, to collars and belts of red velvet, and she had
a general air of being fresh, thoroughly alive, and in a state of dewy
and perennial bloom. Mary was right in her surmise, and whenever she
herself was out of Lisa’s sight or reach the child turned to Rhoda
instinctively and obeyed her implicitly.
V
HOW THE NEW PLANT GREW
‘NOW, Rhoda dear,’ said Mistress Mary one day, when Lisa had become
somewhat wonted to her new surroundings, ‘you are to fold your hands
respectfully in your lap and I will teach you things,—things which you in
your youth and inexperience have not thought about as yet. The other
girls may listen, too, and catch the drippings of my wisdom. I really
know little about the education of defective children, but, thank heaven,
I can put two and two together, as Susan Nipper said. The general plan
will be to train Lisa’s hands and speak to her senses in every possible
way, since her organs of sense are within your reach, and those of
thought are out of it. The hardest lesson for such a child to learn is
the subordination of its erratic will to our normal ones. Lisa’s
attention is the most hopeful thing about her and encourages me more than
anything else. It is not as if there were no mental processes existing;
they are there, but in a very enfeebled state. Of course she should have
been under skilled teaching the six years, but, late as it is, we
couldn’t think of giving up a child who can talk, use her right hand,
dress herself, go upon errands, recognise colours, wash dishes; who is
apparently neither vicious nor cunning, but who, on the contrary, has
lived four years under the same roof with Mrs. S. Cora Grubb without
rebellion or violence or treachery! Why, dear girls, such a task, if it
did not appeal to one on the moral, certainly would on the intellectual,
side. Marm Lisa will teach us more in a year, you may be sure, than we
shall teach her. Let us keep a record of our experiments; drop all
materials that seem neither to give her sensations nor wake her
discriminative power, and choose others that speak to her more clearly.
Let us watch her closely, both to penetrate the secret of her condition
and to protect the other children. What a joy, what a triumph to say to
her some dear day, a few years hence, “You poor, motherless bairn, we
have swept away the cobwebs of your dreams, given you back your will, put
a clue to things in your hand: now go on and learn to live and be
mistress of your own life under God!”’
It was at such a moment, when Mary’s voice trembled, and her eyes shone
through a mist of tears like two victorious stars, that a hush fell upon
the little group, and the spirit of the eternal child descended like a
dove, its pure wings stirring the silence of each woman’s heart. At such
a moment, their daily work, with its round of harsh, unlovely, beautiful,
discouraging, hopeful, helpful, heavenly duties, was transfigured, and so
were they. The servant was transformed by the service, and the service
by the servant. They were alone together, each heart knit to all the
others by the close bond of a common vocation; and though a heretofore
unknown experience, it seemed a natural one when Mistress Mary suddenly
bent her head, and said softly:
‘Father in heaven, it is by the vision of Thy relation to us that we can
apprehend our relation to these little ones. As we have accepted that
high trust, so make us loyal to it. When our feet grow weary and our
faith grows dim, help us to follow close after the ever perfect One who
taught even as we are trying to teach. He it was whom the common people
heard gladly. He it was who disdained not the use of objects and
symbols, remembering it was the childhood of the race. He it was who
spake in parables and stories, laying bare soul of man and heart of
nature, and revealing each by divine analogy. He it was who took the
little ones in His arms and blessed them; who set the child in the midst,
saying, “Except ye become as one of these.” May the afterglow of that
inspired teaching ever shine upon the path we are treading. May we bathe
our tired spirits in its warmth and glory, and kindle our torches at the
splendour of its light. We remember that He told us to feed His lambs.
Dear Lord, help all the faithful shepherds who care for the
ninety-and-nine that lie in the safe cover of the fold; help us, too, for
we are the wandering shepherds whose part it is to go out over the bleak
hills, up the mountain sides and rocky places, and gather in out of the
storm and stress of things all the poor, unshepherded, wee bit lammies
that have either wandered forlornly away from shelter, or have been born
in the wilderness, and know no other home. Such an one has just strayed
into the fold from the dreary hill-country. It needs a wiser shepherd
than any one of us. Grant that by gentleness, patience, and insight we
may atone somewhat for our lack of wisdom and skill. We read among Thy
mysteries that the divine Child was born of a virgin. May He be born
again and born daily in our hearts, already touched by that remembrance
and consecrated by its meaning. And this we ask for love’s sake. Amen.’
Then there was a space of silence—one of those silences in which we seem
to be caught up into the heart of things, when hidden meanings are
revealed, when the soul stretches itself and grows a little.
It was a few minutes later when Rhoda said, ‘I am fired with zeal, I
confess it. Henceforth my single aim shall be to bring Marm Lisa into
her lost kingdom and inheritance. But meanwhile, how, oh how shall I
master the hateful preliminaries? How shall I teach her to lace her
shoes and keep them laced, unless I invent a game for it? How shall I
keep her hair from dangling in her eyes, how keep her aprons neat?—though
in those respects she is no worse than Pacific Simonson. I promised her
a doll yesterday, and she was remarkably good. Do you object, Mistress
Mary?’
‘I don’t know how much rewards are used in these cases,’ answered Mary,
‘but why do you begin with them when the problem presents no insuperable
difficulties as yet? Whenever she herself, her awkward hands, her weak
will, her inattention, her restlessness, give her some task she likes,
some pleasure or occupation for which she has shown decided preference,
and thus make happiness follow close upon the heels of effort. We who
see more clearly the meaning of life know that this will not always
happen, and we can be content to do right for right’s sake. I don’t
object to your putting hosts of slumbering incentives in Lisa’s mind, but
a slumbering incentive is not vulgar and debasing, like a bribe.’
A plant might be a feeble and common thing, yet it might grow in beauty
and strength in a garden like Mistress Mary’s. Such soil in the way of
surroundings, such patient cultivation of roots and stems, such
strengthening of tendrils on all sorts of lovely props, such sunshine of
love, such dew of sympathy, such showers of kindness, such favouring
breezes of opportunity, such pleasure for a new leaf, joy for a bud,
gratitude for a bloom! What an atmosphere in which to grow towards
knowledge and goodness! Was it any wonder that the little people ‘all in
a row’ responded to the genius of Mistress Mary’s influence? They used
to sing a song calleth The Light Bird,’ in which some one, all unknown to
the children, would slip into the playground with a bit of broken
looking-glass, and suddenly a radiant fluttering disk of light would
appear on the wall, and dance up and down, above and below, hither and
yon, like a winged sunbeam. The children held out longing arms, and sang
to it coaxingly. Sometimes it quivered over Mistress Mary’s head, and
fired every delicate point of her steel tiara with such splendour that
the Irish babies almost felt like crossing themselves. At such times,
those _deux petits cœurs secs_, Atlantic and Pacific, and all the other
full-fledged and half-fledged scape-graces, forgot to be naughty, and the
millennium was foreshadowed. The neophytes declared Mistress Mary a bit
of a magician. Somehow or other, the evil imps in the children shrank
away, abashed by the soft surprise of a glance that seemed to hope
something better, and the good angels came out of their banishment,
unfolded their wings, and sunned themselves in the warmth of her
approving smile. Her spiritual antennæ were so fine, so fine, that they
discerned the good in everything; they were feeling now after the soft
spot in the rocky heart of Atlantic Simonson; they had not found it yet,
but they would—oh, they would in time; for if hope is the lover’s staff,
it is no less that of the idealist.
Marm Lisa looked upon the miracles that happened under Mistress Mary’s
roof with a sort of dazed wonder, but her intelligence grew a little day
by day; and though she sadly taxed everybody’s patience, she infused a
new spirit into all the neophytes.
Had not improvement been rapid, their untrained zeal might perhaps have
flagged. Had the mental symptoms, by their obscurity, baffled them or
defied them on every side, their lack of systematic, scientific training
for such a task might have made them discouraged: but delicate and
exacting as the work was, their love and enthusiasm, their insight and
patience, their cleverness and ingenuity, triumphed over all obstacles;
and luckily for their youth and comparative inexperience, they were
rewarded in marvellous measure.
Not that every day was bright and hopeful. The carefully kept record was
black enough on occasions, beginning with the morning when Helen, sitting
in the circle, felt a rough hand on her head, and Marm Lisa, without the
slightest warning of her intention, snatched Mary’s steel band forcibly
from her hair, and, taking it across the room, put it in its accustomed
place on its owner’s head. Everybody was startled, but Mary rose from
her chair quietly, and, taking the ornament in one hand and Marm Lisa in
the other, she came to Helen’s side.
‘I like to have my shining crown in Miss Helen’s hair,’ she said; ‘it is
such pretty, curly hair—stroke it softly, Lisa; she must wear it this
morning to please me, and then I will take it again for my own. Dear
Miss Helen, who is so sweet and good to the children, I love her,’ and
she kissed her fondly on each cheek.
Marm Lisa did not attempt to rebel but she was sullen, and refused her
work when it was offered her later.
Such occurrences were rare, however, for her obliquity always seemed
mental rather than moral.
Straws and bright papers, beads and pretty forms to thread on stout
laces, were given her to wean her from her favourite but aimless
string-play. There were days of restlessness which she wandered up and
down stairs, and could not be kept in her chair nor persuaded to stand in
her place in the circle. There were days, too, when she tore the bright
cardboards and glossy weaving-mats that ordinarily gave her such keen
pleasure; but this carelessness grew more and more infrequent, until it
ceased altogether, so that it had probably come more from her inability
to hold and move the materials and needles properly than from a wanton
instinct of destruction; for they would often see the tears drop from her
eyes upon her clumsy fingers as she strove to make them obey her feeble
behests. At such a moment there was always some one to fling herself
with passionate ardour and sympathy into this latest difficulty. A
stouter weaving-needle was invented, and a mat of pretty coloured morocco
substituted for the fragile paper; while the poor inert hands were held
and coaxed and strengthened every day by finger gymnastics.
As Lisa grew in power Rhoda grew in ingenuity, and failure in any one
particular only stimulated her genius of invention the more. Did she
spill paste, mucilage, water on her gingham aprons, and wipe anything and
everything on them that came in her way, Rhoda dressed her in daintier
ones of white cambric, with a ruffle at the neck and sleeves; the child’s
pleasure knew no bounds, and she kept the aprons clean. With Mrs.
Grubb’s permission her hair was cut shorter, and brushed back under a
round comb. No regiment of soldiers could have kept the comb in place.
It was taken away and a blue ribbon substituted. She untied the ribbon
every five minutes for two days, when Mary circumvented her by sewing a
blue ribbon on each sleeve. This seemed to divert her attention from the
head-band, and after a week or two she allowed it to remain without
interference. Mary gave her low shoes, hoping that the lessened trouble
of lacing them would make the task a possibility. There was no
improvement. If she laced them, it was only under supervision, and they
were always untied within the hour, the dangling laces tripping her
awkward feet. Slippers or old-fashioned shoes with elastic at the side
would have been an easy way out of the difficulty, but to Rhoda’s mind
that would have been a humiliating confession of failure. As a last
resort she bought brown shoes and brown laces.
‘If these do not succeed,’ she said, ‘I will have red ones made, paint
the tips blue, and give her yellow laces; but I will fix her mind on her
feet and arouse her pride in them, or die in the attempt.’
This extreme, fortunately, proved unnecessary, since for some unknown
reason the brown foot-gear appealed to Marm Lisa, and she kept the laces
tied. The salient peculiarity and encouraging feature of the child’s
development was that, save in rare cases, she did not slip back into her
old habits when the novelty of the remedy wore off; with her, almost
every point gained was a point kept. It was indeed a high Hill
Difficulty that she was climbing—so high that had she realised it she
would never have taken the first step of her own unaided will; but now
this impelling force behind her was so great, and the visions for ever
leading her on were so beautiful, that she ran nor grew weary, she walked
yet did not faint.
The other children, even the youngest of them, were more or less
interested in the novel enterprise, too, though they scarcely knew the
nature of it or how much was at stake. That a human mind was tottering
to its fall, and that Mistress Mary was engaged in preventing it, was
beyond their ken. They could see certain details, however, for they were
all one great family of little people, and it was no unaccustomed thing
for them to watch a moral conquest, though they had no conception of an
intellectual one.
Accordingly, there was a shout of triumph from a corner of the room one
morning,—such a shout that seventy or eighty youngsters held their breath
to see what was happening.
After weeks upon weeks of torn cards, broken threads, soiled patterns,
wrong stitches, weak hand held in place by strong hand, Marm Lisa had
sewed without help, and in one lesson, the outline of a huge red apple;
and there she stood, offering her finished work to Mistress Mary. The
angels in heaven never rejoiced more greatly over the one repentant
sinner than the tired shepherdesses over their one poor ewe lamb, as she
stood there with quivering hands and wet eyes, the first sense of
conscious victory written on her inscrutable brow, and within the turbid,
clouded brain the memory of a long struggle, and a hint, at least, of the
glory she had achieved.
Rhoda took the square of neat cardboard with the precious red circle that
meant so much, and ran into the playground with it, hugging it to her
heart, and crying and laughing over it like a child.
When she came back Mistress Mary put her arm round Lisa’s waist and said
to the whole great family: ‘Children, after trying hard, for ever so
long, Lisa has sewed this lovely picture all by herself. There is not a
wrong stitch, and one side is as neat as the other. What shall we say?’
‘Three cheers! The Chinese must go!’ shouted Pat Higgins, a patriotic
person of five years, whose father was an organiser of sand-lot meetings.
All the grown-ups laughed at this unexpected suggestion, but the cheers
were given with a good will, and Marm Lisa, her mind stirred to its
depths by the unwonted emotion, puzzled out the meaning of them and hid
it in her heart.
VI
FROM GRUBB TO BUTTERFLY
THE children were all nearly a year older when Mrs. Grubb one day climbed
the flight of wooden steps heading to Marm Lisa’s Paradise, and met, as
she did so, a procession of Mistress Mary’s neophytes who were wending
their way homeward.
The spectacle of a number of persons of either sex, or of both sexes,
proceeding in hue or grouped as an audience, acted on Mrs. Grubb
precisely as the taste of fresh blood is supposed to act on a tiger in
captivity. At such a moment she had but one impulse, and that was to
address the meeting. The particular subject was not vital, since it was
never the subject, but her own desire to talk, that furnished the
necessary inspiration. While she was beginning, ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’
in her clear, pheasant voice, her convictions, opinions, views,
prejudices, feelings, experiences, all flew from the different corners of
what she was pleased to call her brain, and focussed themselves on the
point in question.
If the discussion were in a field in which she had made no excursions
whatever, that trifling detail did not impose silence upon her. She
simply rose, and said:
‘Ladies and gentlemen, though a stranger in your midst, I feel I must say
a word of sympathy to you, and a word of encouragement for your cause.
It is a good and worthy movement, and I honour you for upholding it.
Often and often have I said to my classes, it matters not what face of
truth is revealed to you so long as you get a vision that will help you
to bless your fellow-men. To bless your fellow-men is the great task
before each and every one of us, and I feel to urge this specially upon
occasions like this, when I see a large and influential audience before
me. Says Rudyard Kipling, “I saw a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and
they were all my brothers.” Yes, all our brothers! The brotherhood of
man and the sisterhood of woman, those are the subjects that include all
others. I am glad to have met with you, and to have heard the eloquent
words of your speakers. If any of you would like to know more of my
work, I will gladly meet you in Room A at the close of this meeting.’
She then sat down amid applause. Never did Mrs. S. Cora Grubb cease
speaking without at least a ripple of approval that sometimes grew into a
positive ovation. What wonder, then, that she mistook herself for an
inspired person? It was easy to understand her popularity with her
fellow-men. Her eyes were as soft and clear as those of a child, her
hair waved prettily off her low, serene brow, her figure was plump and
womanly, and when her voice trembled with emotion (which in her was a
shallow well very near the surface) the charmingest pink colour came and
went in her cheeks. On such occasions more than one member of the
various brotherhoods thought what a cosy wife she would make, if removed
from the public arena to the ‘sweet, safe corner of the household fire.’
To be sure, she had not much logic, but plenty of sentiment; rather too
great a fondness for humanity, perhaps, but that was because she had no
husband and family of her own to absorb her superfluous sympathy and
energy. Mrs. Grubb was not so easily classified as these ‘brothers’
imagined, however, and fortunately for them she had no leanings towards
any man’s fireside. Mr. Grubb had died in the endeavour to understand
her, and it is doubtful whether, had he been offered a second life and
another opportunity, he would have thought the end justified the means.
This criticism, however, applies only to the family circle, for Mrs.
Grubb in a hall was ever winning, delightful, and persuasive. If she was
illogical, none of her sister-women realised it, for they were pretty
much of the same chaotic order of mind, though with this difference: that
a certain proportion of them were everywhere seeking reasons for their
weariness, their unhappiness, their poverty, their lack of faith and
courage, their unsatisfactory husbands and their disappointing children.
These ladies were apt to be a trifle bitter, and much more interested in
Equal Suffrage, Temperance, Cremation, and Edenic Diet than in subjects
like Palmistry, Telepathy, and Hypnotism, which generally attracted the
vague, speculative, feather-headed ones. These discontented persons were
always the most frenzied workers and the most eloquent speakers, and
those who were determined to get more rights were mild compared with
those who were determined to avenge their wrongs. There was, of course,
no unanimity of belief running through all these Clubs, Classes, Circles,
Societies, Orders, Leagues, Chapters, and Unions; but there was one bond
of aversion, and that was domestic service of any kind. That no woman
could develop or soar properly, and cook, scrub, sweep, dust, wash
dishes, mend, or take care of babies at the same time—to defend this
proposition they would cheerfully have gone to the stake. They were
willing to concede all these sordid tasks as an honourable department of
woman’s work, but each wanted them to be done by some other woman.
Mrs. Grubb really belonged to neither of these classes. She was not very
keen about more rights, nor very bloodthirsty about her wrongs. She
inhabited a kind of serene twilight, the sort that follows an especially
pink sunset. She was not wholly clear in her mind about anything, but
she was entirely hopeful about the world and its disposition to grow and
move in ever ascending spirals. She hated housework as much as any of
her followers, although she was seldom allowed to do anything for
herself. ‘I’ll step in and make your beds, Mrs. Grubb; I know you’re
tired.’ ‘I’ll sweep the front room, Mrs. Grubb; you give yourself out
so, I know you need rest.’ ‘Let me cook your supper while you get up
strength for your lecture; there are plenty of people to cook, but
there’s only one Mrs. Grubb!’ These were the tender solicitations she
was ever receiving.
As for theories, she had small choice. She had looked into almost every
device for increasing the sum of human knowledge and hastening the
millennium, and she thought them all more or less valuable. Her memory,
mercifully, was not a retentive one, therefore she remembered little of
the beliefs she had outgrown; they never left even a deposit in the
stretch of wet sand in which they had written themselves.