old estate. The house had not been lived in for years. It still
preserved an air of beauty and dignity, but its ancient pride and
fitness were turned toward decay. But if, like myself, it had fallen
on adversity and evil fortune, that was but the better reason I
should understand and love it. Wholly without what the world calls
comforts, yet how comforting it was in those chill and cheerless times!
Downfallen in the eyes of others, lowered from its proud estate, how
I have yet lifted my heart up to it under the stars, and paid it an
homage of love and thankfulness not matched, I think, in all its better
days.
Our precarious means being entirely dependent on such writing as I
could do, it would have been extravagance and bankruptcy for me to
assume the domestic duties. There was no one else. I was the only
woman of the household. It seemed to me that a working housekeeper
might solve the difficulty; one of that variety which lays not so much
stress upon wages as upon a home. I found a surprising number with
this tendency. In answer to a most modest advertisement, I received
sixty-four answers. Those whom, in the course of time, I at last
engaged, were in each case women who had seen happier conditions and
were by their own affidavits capable of standing anything. But I found
them to be, without exception, shrinkingly susceptible to physical
discomforts, and of these there were in that old house many.
These women were _nouveaux pauvres_ of a middle-class order and had
all the crudities of their condition. Each of them carried with her
a remnant of her "better days," as an inveterate shopper carries an
out-of-date sample, resolved, yet unable, to find its match. One of
them could not forget, and had no mind to let you forget, that her
husband had made four thousand a year; another had been to school in
Paris; and one always wore rubber gloves, "because," she assured me,
"as long as I can have my hands white, I can stand a great deal."
Another insisted on the most fluffy and unsubstantial desserts, and
thought the rest of the meal mattered little, so long as the finale had
a grand air. Another could not endure the odor of onions and fainted
at the sight of liver. Yet another, from reverses and humiliations
unendurable, had turned Christian Scientist. I learned afterward that
she came hoping to convert me to the idea that there is no poverty. I
wish I could have spared her the futility.
By and by I abandoned all hope of a working housekeeper. I knew that
what I needed was a "general houseworker."
Those who in extremity have sought servants in city employment bureaus
need not be told what is too old a tale. When the array of imposing
applicants had all declined the discomforts of my home, and the honor
of being employed by me, the manager explained, what I was dull not to
have known myself, that it might be wise to try some of the employment
bureaus in the poorer quarters. I found one finally at the head of the
Bowery, and climbed its rickety stairs.
They were a strange and varied lot that I came upon now: weird old
flat-footed fairies, given to feathers and elaborate head-dresses, or
young heavy Audreys who looked at you out of dull eyes. I explained
elaborately the conditions under which they would be called on to live.
I omitted nothing, not even the screech-owls, or the night sounds
that might or might not be wild cats. They came eagerly or sullenly,
according to their dispositions. But apparently none of them had at
all grasped what I said. For when they saw the place, and felt the
loneliness of which I had so thoroughly warned them, they turned and
fled. The house might have been haunted.
Finally I heard that one could engage servants of a certain order from
the Charities associations, such as the Society for Improving the
Condition of the Poor. To one of these I went.
The matron, a full-eyed woman who gave the impression of having to
discipline an over-kind heart by an assumption of great severity,
questioned me curtly. What surroundings had I to offer? My heart sank,
but I went over faithfully the disadvantages--the extreme loneliness
of the life, the necessity that those who entered on it should abandon
all hope of "movies." "Movies" there were not within twelve miles.
There were no conveniences, no department stores, no bargain sales,
nothing--only field and forest, stars and dawns and sunsets--nothing!
She lifted explanatory eyebrows, a little displeased, I thought.
"I mean the _moral_ surroundings." Then, at my pause, "I mean, are you
yourself a Christian woman?"
This was no Major Lobley. It is certain that she cared not a pin
whether I was "saved." She merely had it in mind to do her duty by her
flock. It was her duty to see that the poor, whose condition was to be
improved, were placed in Christian homes.
Being perhaps the better satisfied on this point, for a rather
faltering answer on my part, she sent a mild-eyed assistant for "Mamie
Faffelfinger."
She meanwhile explained in a businesslike way that Mamie was a
Catholic, brought up in an orphan asylum; her child was not a year
old; "the man"--(so the matron designated him curtly)--was not her
husband.
"You mean she would wish a home for the child too?"
The full-eyed woman ceased turning her pencil between her thumb and
fingers on the desk and gave me an aggressive look.
"Certainly. Most of these people haven't a crust to live on. If you do
not wish to employ that kind, there are the employment bureaus."
So they dawned on me like a blessing. These were not parvenu poor
who had been to school in Paris, who would insist on unsubstantial
desserts. Here were no head-dressy old fairies of questionable powers;
these were no exotic fruits of the "gardens of Proserpine"; here was
the good salt brine, here the ancient tides of reality--"the surge and
thunder of the Odyssey."
Meanwhile the matron was speaking:--
"The man is not her husband. But if you are a Christian, I am sure you
have no narrow scruples as to _that_. He drinks. She is half-starved.
I have told her we will get her and the child a place, if she will
promise to leave him." She glanced at the open doorway of her tiny
office: "Yes, Mamie, come in."
It was then that I first saw Mamie and Anne.
Mamie looked her part. She was pallid, rather pretty; very slight, with
a skin of extreme fineness. She had heavy-lidded eyes, that looked to
have seen much weeping, and a smile the more pathetic for its great
readiness.
As to Anne, a consistent story would require that she should be as
pallid as her mother, that her little hand, intent now on her mother's
hat-brim, should be a mere kite's claw; and there should have been
delicate dark rings under her eyes. But, far from being a kite's claw,
the hand on the hat-brim was as plump as ripe fruit, and her cheeks
were like smooth apricots perfect with the sun. But, after all, there
is no describing Anne. If you will look at the child held in the arms
of the Madonna of the Chair and then at the one in the arms of the
Sistine Madonna; then, if you will picture a child not quite a year
old, who might worthily be the little sister and companion of these,
you will have some idea, even though inadequate still, of what Anne
was, as she held tight to Mamie's rakish hat-brim and gave me the
solemn attention of her eyes.
I went over the requirements. I spoke of the loneliness. Not a town
within miles.
"Well, what do you think of that!" Mamie replied. But she was
unfeignedly eager to come.
"When could you be ready?"
"Oh, right away," she said. "I've got Anne's clothes here." She glanced
at a small paper bundle under one arm.
My good fairy, who pays me occasional visits, prevented my asking her
where her own clothes were.
The matron interposed. Mamie could stay right there until I was ready
to take her, late that afternoon. Then, when Mamie had gone into the
outer room, the matron explained.
"She hasn't any home to go to. He left her and raised money on her
furniture. They came and took it. She hasn't even a stick of it."
Tragic as this was, my mind was for the moment intent on something else.
"But she wears a wedding ring!" I said.
The matron pulled a heavy ledger toward her.
"Oh, yes; they all do. They'd go starved, but they'd buy a wedding
ring."
She pressed her lips together, shook her head, and began setting
down data,--my name, address, occupation, the names of two of my
friends,--they must be people of some standing, who could vouch for
me; then more as to Mamie, I suppose, in the interest of system and
statistics.
I can give you no idea of the comradeship of that journey with Mamie
and Anne. Mamie looked delightedly out of the car-window, noting
the most trifling points of interest with enthusiasm, and saying
every little while, "Well, what do you think of _that_!" Or she
would excitedly point out some speeding bird, or flitting house, or
other flying object, to Anne, and Anne would lurch forward to look,
her little nose sometimes touching the pane, and then would turn
good-naturedly and look at me, with every air of asking me if that
probably so-interesting object had managed to escape me also.
When we arrived at the house, Mamie was as cheerful as a sparrow. The
room on which flat-footed fairies and dull Audreys had looked with
unconcealed contempt or disapproval, she flew to. She settled in it
like a bird in her nest, and chirped contentedly to Anne,--
"Oh, Anne, look at the nice bureau! And the washstand! What do you
think of _that_!" Then she turned to me, with that winning comradely
smile: "I _like_ bureaus and washstands--furniture, I mean, and things.
It makes you think of home." And she drew her hand along the bureau.
I did not know then, but I soon found out, that this was the top and
bottom of all her longings, and this the real hunger of her heart,--a
hunger starved enough, of course, in all her orphan-asylum years,--a
craving for a place of her own.
Mamie talked much of "Bill." He filled her life and days, there could
be no doubt. If she swept, it was to his glory. If she scrubbed a
floor or kneaded dough, or bent affectionately over the scalloping
of a pie-crust, it was certainly for love of him that she lent these
her attention. She soon began sending him her weekly earnings. I
remonstrated, and suggested that it might be better to save her money
against another rainy day. She dusted her hands of flour and began
scraping the bread-board, vigorously, with the strength of her whole
body. I waited for my reply. At last it came.
"Well, I will say you've been good to me, and Anne loves you--but I
think you've got a hard heart."
Secretly I agreed with her. I retrenched and urged her to send only a
part of her money, saving the rest for furniture. Of course, I knew by
this time that the word "furniture" was to her like magic and a charm.
Meanwhile, fond as she was of Anne and proud of her, Mamie was bent on
not spoiling her. She used to put her in a wooden tub in the sunshine
on the floor of the kitchen, as Peter Pumpkin-Eater put his wife in the
pumpkin shell; and like Peter, there she kept her very well. And Anne,
more ingenuous and happier than Diogenes,--for she liked it and crowed
if people came into her sunshine,--would stay there perfectly happy and
delighted for the greater part of the day, playing with an apple or a
potato. I really never saw such a baby.
Meanwhile, although Bill was, it seems, drinking more than ever, with
the aid, of course, of Mamie's earnings, Mamie herself contrived to be
above fact and experience, and was sure he was actively reforming. In a
sense she really lived a charmed life.
It seemed that Fate and fact could deal her no blow which would finally
affect her. She knew Bill's failings better than the matron, by a
great deal; but if you suppose that these could spoil the pure romance
of life for her, or invalidate her dream of a home and furniture of
her own, cushioned chairs owned and sat upon by the reformed Bill and
herself, you are much mistaken.
She was a firm believer in miracles. "I know you don't believe in
them," she would say; "but at the Orphan Asylum there was a statue of
Saint Stephen that used to turn around over night, it really did, if it
was pleased with what you did."
Like so many of her class, Mamie had an incorrigible tendency toward
rumor. Knowledge comes not to these by laborious delving of their own,
but appears to be delivered to them out of the air as by bird auguries,
and by all manner of unauthenticated hearsay infinitely rather to be
trusted than fact. I take this to be in their case a survival of what
was believed, in ancient times, to be speech with Divinity. However
it may shock the modern mind to read of the Almighty giving out to
Moses, not merely the majestic laws graven on tables of stone, but
commands and detail and measurement of great exactness as to the stuff
and manner of fashioning and trimming the High Priest's breeches, to
the minds of Mamie and her class there would be in this little that
was shocking, they themselves believing and delighting in Divine
collaboration in even the most homely matters.
Anne wore on a string about her neck a little square of Canton flannel
which in the course of many months had become extremely grimy. I
suggested as tactfully as I could that this was not in keeping with the
laws of health, and might be, with a view to germs, a positive danger
to Anne.
Mamie smiled happily, indulgently.
"That's just where you're wrong! It's to _protect_ her from
danger--specially danger by drowning!"
Once I suggested that, if I were she, I would not feed Anne burned
bread-crusts.
"Oh, but they say they're good for a baby; they say they're splendid
for the digestion."
Useless to argue. She had always heard so. "They" said so.
So it is that knowledge comes to them, not laboriously, as does our
own, but by easy rumor, floating hearsay; and wisdom is brought to
them without effort of their own, as viands to a king. They are fed
by ravens. Their gourd grows overnight. Messengers still come and go
between heaven and earth to instruct them. There is not required of
them, the laboring class, that slavish mental toil exacted of the
world's great intellects. Angels and ministers of grace, however they
may have abandoned the wise, do still, it seems, defend them. They have
only to be of a listening mind and a believing heart, and they shall
know what is good for digestion, and what will save their children from
drowning.
Mamie, further, was able to maintain a remarkable equilibrium between
respectful service as a servant and what might have been the gracious
democracy of a ruler. She taught Anne to call me "Honey," and had it as
a surprise for me one morning. I will not deny that it was a surprise.
But if you think that so sweet an appellation in Anne's bird-like
voice, her golden head leaning over into the sunshine as she heard my
step, seemed to me to be lacking in dignity, then you and I are of
contrary opinions.
One day, when Mamie was dusting where hung a Fra Lippo Madonna, Anne
pointed a fat finger at it, demanding, "Honey?"
Mamie did not even pause.
"No," she said briskly, "that's not Honey. That's Lord and Lord's
mawma."
V
THE LURE OF THE "CHIFFONEER"
One day, Mamie came to me, her face beaming.
"I want to do the right thing, so I'm going to give you a whole month's
notice. Bill has rented some rooms. What do you think of that!"
I told her gently, but firmly, what I suspected concerning it.
She brought out his letter for proof.
"He's to pay for the rooms, and I'm to send him the money for the
furniture. He'll get whatever kind I like. You've always been kind to
me," she added, "but I think you've got a hard heart as to Bill."
Well, perhaps I had.
The month passed very happily. As his letters came, she would tell me
what he had bought.
"It's a bureau with a marble top,--secondhand, Second Avenue,--but as
good as new. Besides, some people would rather have antiques. And I
_do_ like bureaus!"
Then it would be a table that set her singing her queer ragtime songs.
Once there came word of three cushioned chairs. One letter announced
a looking-glass. And once, as I went into the kitchen suddenly, there
was Mamie, one arm above her head, the other holding her skirt, dancing
for Anne to see, and to Anne's inexpressible wonder and delight.
She sat there in her tub, leaning forward, beaming, fascinated, and
holding tight to its sides as though we might all be personages in a
fairy-tale, and she and the tub might any moment fly away.
At sight of me, Mamie stopped, flushing pink as a rose, apologetic,
but unfeignedly happy.
"I couldn't help it! He's bought me a _chiffoneer_!"
A moment later, as I passed through the hall, I could hear Mamie
singing, "And she's going back to her Daddy, and her home, home,
_home_!"--to some impromptu rigmarole tune of her own.
Soon after this she took the train to the nearest town and came back
laden with packages--all manner of cheap household stuff picked up at
the five-and-ten-cent store. It occurred to me that she might as well
have a small empty trunk of mine that there was in the attic. She was
delighted with the gift, and wore the key of it on a chain around her
neck.
"I'd rather have that key than a locket!" she said, putting her hand
over it affectionately. It was so that she repaid you tenfold. "It's
wonderful," she would say, every little while, in joyful anticipation,
"having your own home!"
For myself, despite many unmitigated realities, I could not help
feeling that I was living in something of a wonder story. Who knew
but that, with those extraordinary powers of hers, which so readily
rose above fact, who knew but that she might rub that key some day as
Aladdin his lamp, and turn us all into triumphant heroes and heroines.
Mamie did not forget, as I said good-bye to her in the big city
terminal where I finally left them, to give me parting advice, sisterly
sympathy:--
"Now, don't you go and get discouraged. I know you've had troubles.
Well, I've had trouble enough, too. You just keep right on, and hold
your head high. There's no telling what'll come to them that holds
their heads high. Look at me!"
I looked at her and could have felt convinced. Then we said our
good-byes, and away they went. The last I saw of them in the crowd was
Anne's hand still waving loyally to me over Mamie's shoulder quite a
long time after her eyes had lost me.
I missed them exceedingly; and the blue-birds of that second spring
hardly made up to me for the absence of Anne's birdlike voice. The new
maid, Margaret, was interesting enough, but no one could ever quite
take the place of those others.
With all this in mind, you will realize with what a sinking of the
heart I found that there was more than Mamie to be missed. There could
be no doubt in the matter, for there had been no outsider in the house
at all of late; therefore it could be due to no other magic than hers
that there was a grievous lessening of my scant stores of household
belongings--sheets and pillow-cases, towels and a pair of blankets,
napkins and, I think, a table-cloth, and some muffin-rings and kitchen
conveniences, and I do not know what else.
Little bits of reality came drifting back to me--the key kept so
faithfully always around her neck; my own gift of the trunk; and the
sentiment--say now, if you like, the sentimentality--with which I had
noted the fact that even that rather small trunk was too large for her
poor belongings.
Then suddenly, the whole episode read to me like an Uncle Remus "Br'er
Fox and Br'er Rabbit" tale, and I was not too discouraged to laugh--as
the "Little Boy" is recorded always to have done--at the turn of the
story, at the inevitable triumph of the cleverer of the two.
Yet for Mamie's sake, not to speak of my own, such an ending was not
to be permitted. I had asked her to come to see me in town on one of
the days of the week that I was always there, and to be sure to bring
Anne to see me. She had assured me that she would, and that she would
never forget me. Now I knew it would be necessary, rather, for me to
go and find her. I rehearsed the scene mentally. I meant to tell her
that she could keep all the things she had stolen. (Let them remain
in the manner of coals of fire in her trunk!) I would first reduce
her to powder in a solemn and serious manner, and then strew her upon
the winds of my righteous indignation! _She_ whom I had treated with
unfailing kindness! _She_ whom in sickness I had nursed! _She_ whose
many faults had been forgiven her, and in whom I had placed trust!
_She!_--
Strangely enough, she did come to see me, that very next day I was in
town. She seemed eager to get to me; nervous, too, like one whipped
of her conscience. I felt my heart suddenly softening, and as quickly
hardened it. I really had not expected quick penitence of her, but
even so, she must take the full punishment of my disapproval. There is
a duty we owe in such matters. I would make nothing easy for her.
She sat down heavily, then suddenly put her hand over quickly on mine.
I made no sign. Not even that should move me. Then in a hoarse whisper,
a really hoarse whisper, almost a moan, she said,--
"Oh, how shall I tell you? _How_ shall I tell you?"
Stony pause. I looked coldly at her. It seemed, for a moment, that the
irresistible force really _had_ met the immovable body. Then all at
once, she put her head down on her arm, sobbed, and spoke.
"There _wasn't_ any bureau! There _wasn't_ any chiffoneer! There wasn't
_even_ any rooms!"
An instant of time swirled past. Then I knew, as of old, that the power
of the poor is an irresistible force, never--never--not even by the
immovable body of our strongest determinations, to be withstood. My own
iron resolves I saw converted suddenly into the flimsiest fiction--rent
gossamer floating wide.
Oh! Oh! I could have put my face in my hands and wept. All her dreams
gone! All her hopes! her pride! her cherished plans! her money! her
faith--everything! How small the theft of a few pillow-cases and towels
looked now that, at Fate's hands, she, poor thing, had had all this
stolen from her! This was no time to reduce her to powder, when she was
already reduced to floods of tears and I by no means far from the verge
of them.
The story is too obvious to tell. Mamie's miracle had failed. The
unreformable Bill had not reformed. But neither,--I hasten to
add,--neither, it seems, was Mamie's ineradicable desire for a home
eradicated. I have mentioned before my belief that Fate cannot finally
affect the people of this extraordinary class. I believe them all to
have been plunged more effectually than Achilles in some protective
flood.
Mamie, with the help of the perpetually severe, perpetually
tender-hearted matron, went out to work again. But there may be those
who would be more interested to know what I did with my resolves, my
righteous indignation, and, above all, with my conscience. As to my
conscience, I cleared that. I wrote to the matron, warning her that in
assigning Mamie to any place, it should be remembered that, valuable as
Mamie was in many ways, she had a light-fingered tendency to collect
household goods. From my later knowledge, I believe that the matron may
have smiled at the ingenuousness of that. It might readily be thought
superfluous to warn the expert physicist that water does not run
up-hill.
As to my righteous indignation, it may seem to you a poor thing, but it
never came back. Somehow I never quite forgot the grip of Mamie's hand
on mine that day, and her hoarse voice as it announced the total ruin
of her hopes; or the memory, by contrast, of her little singing dance
before Anne at a happier season, with Anne leaning forward holding
delightedly to the sides of the tub.