much discipline at the hands of Fate. It should be remembered by the
unrelenting and conscientious disciplinarian who judges me, that I
had seen the ruin of some of my own hopes. Joys that I had planned
for full as eagerly as Mamie, delights that I had reared on more
likely foundations, had been swept away, and almost as suddenly. I am
entering here on no philosophy, I am merely stating facts; and I may
as well confess that I took comfort in the thought, that, though the
bureau, the washstand and the "chiffoneer" had fallen in the general
ruin, Mamie still had the sheets, the pillow-cases, the towels, the
muffin-rings, and the rest. It was even turning out a little like a
fairy-tale after all, for I really now wanted her to have these, and
in view of my own very meagre circumstances and my duties to others, I
could not with a clear conscience have afforded to give them to her.
She, as with a magic foresight, had contrived to relieve me of all
embarrassment.
Meanwhile, I heard nothing more of Mamie. Then one day, I had this
letter from her (I omit the independent spelling):--
"I thought I'd write to tell you that Anne has a good Papa. He's a
farmer. I'm married again." (Since she was not married before, the
"again" may refer to a second wedding ring.) "He's got a nice house. Do
come and see me." (Here followed very careful directions.) "I'd like
you to see our animals. We've got five chickens, one rooster, a cat and
a dog. He had a house already furnished. It's good furnished too. The
bed has got shams on the pillows."
It was not long after this that I had a letter from an old aunt of
Mamie's, of whom Mamie had several times spoken to me, and to whom she
used sometimes to write. The aunt said that, though she had always been
too poor to do anything for Mamie, still she took an interest in her.
She knew I had been good to her. If it wasn't too much trouble, would
I write and tell her how Mamie was, or would I send her her address if
she was not with me.
I wrote her with a good deal of pleasure that Mamie was happily married
(I did not quibble at the word) to a well-to-do farmer; that she had a
nicely furnished house, some animals, and that her husband loved Anne
devotedly; and I gave the desired address.
Then I wrote to Mamie and sent her her aunt's letter; and I told her
that I thought it would be a kindness if she would write to the old
lady.
In reply I had the following: "I know you meant to be kind. But I'm
sorry you wrote to my aunt. It wasn't my aunt at all. It was Bill."
Here also--I know it well--fact is less satisfactory than romance.
There should, no doubt, be the telling scene of a sequel. I never saw
Mamie again, however, and the unfocused waving of a fat, lovely little
hand in that crowded terminal is my last memory of Anne.
You who read this may be in some uneasiness as to Mamie. I confess
that I am not. I cannot forget the angels of grace that do undoubtedly
attend on such. If you will simply review what I have told you, I think
you will see that we need not be too anxious. One who can set aside
social customs and laws which the less privileged of us do not dare to
ignore; who can be married without clerk or benefit of clergy--rather,
after the manner of the owl and the pussy-cat, by the mere procuring
of a ring; who can protect her child from drowning by a canton-flannel
charm; improve health and digestion by a diet of burned bread-crusts;
rise above all fact and experience as successfully as if she were a
witch on a broomstick; and preserve her faith unspoiled, despite the
most blasting circumstances; who hob-nobs on such easy terms with the
Deity, and who can speak of her whom the poets prefer to name "Star of
the Deep," and the devout, "Queen of Heaven," as the Deity's "Maw-ma";
one who can, like a prestidigitateur, by a mere turn of the hand, make
your conscientious resolves vanish--and draw pity out of the place
where solemn indignation should have been, as magicians rabbits out of
a silk hat; who can carry off your much needed linen, and have it look
like a favor.--Need we worry about such a one? Need Pharaoh, having
seen the wonders, be anxious, do you think, as to how the departed
children of Israel would be maintained in the desert places where he
would so easily have perished?
* * * * *
But lest you should, nevertheless, have Mamie's welfare at heart, and
should entertain, with some misgivings, thought of what may have become
of Anne, there are yet other signs and wonders of which I shall ask to
be allowed to speak.
VI
MARGARET
Margaret, Mamie's successor, was a woman in the middle forties. There
were little shadowy modelings in her brow which made you think of the
smooth hollows of a shell. She gave one the impression of something
cast up from the sea and dragged back into it many times. She came of a
large family, and although her people had treated her badly (according
to her own story), she took pride nevertheless in speaking of them. "Me
brother Pat," I may say, was never spoken of without her head going up.
She had a taste for distinction, and pride of race was strong in her.
She was a born teller of tales. One of the best was of a wake to which
she was taken as a child.
"It was a grrrand wake! The folk from all arroond were there! And
they'd baked meats such as you'd have only in the rrrichest houses
here. I was eight year old. I went with me brother Pat. The dead man
had been a mean old man, savin' and hoardin', not spendin', even for
the poor. They do say the dead'll come back if ye worry them enough;
and it's likely it worried him something terrible to see all that
spendin' of his money, and all the neighbor folk he hated so, crowded
so close in his room and the dhrrrink goin' round. Anyway, however be
it, as I was lookin' at him from my corner, all eyes, for I'd never
seen a dead man before, God save us! up he rose from the dead, right
among all the candles, upsettin' some of them; and he screamed, yes,
screamed, too, like he'd just escaped from hell, with the devil's
fingers still hot on him! Some went by the windys, some by the door.
Five got broken legs gettin' out, and the priest, God save us! fell
down dead, and him a good man, too!"
This was but a small piece of ore from a rich mine. Give her but the
chance--she had a story for every occasion.
She went on a tour of inspection when she had been with us a few hours.
I felt sure that the beauty and meaning of the old run-down place, of
necessity hid from the profane, would never be lost on one of her keen
and psychic temperament. She came back glowing, and I thought really
reverent.
"Oh, it's a noble place," she said. "You can see plainer nor your
eyes, it's been lived in by the gentility! Look at them gables and
them chimneys! That house has the air of a grand lady, ma'am, sittin'
quiet with her hands folded. And them elms, too, like the grand slow
wavin' of a fan. Them parlors with their long windys have got the air
of havin' seen folk. Me brother Pat worked for a place like this once."
This with her head up and looking all round. "There's a rich squire
lived here at the least,"--with her eyes narrowed shrewdly and her head
nodding, I can give you no idea how knowingly. "Yes; and belike maybe
a lord. And there were ladies (seems I can see them, God save me!) and
little childer, I'll give warrant, little childer that knew how to
behave themselves in the like of these rooms. Don't it look dreamin'
now, ma'am? Wouldn't you say it was thinkin'?" This with her head on
one side, listening, it seemed, for the unseen presences to go by. By
and by she brightened, and came back to the present:--
"There's but one thing about it all I don't like, ma'am. It's the way
ye keep your pig. A sty way off from Christian fellowship is no place
to keep a pig. They're the childer of God, the way we are. We kept our
own, ma'am, in the old country as clean as your hand, so we could have
it friendly in the kitchen with us. I'm fond of animals, ma'am--the
puir things that can't talk!"
Besides her great fondness for animals Margaret had an extraordinary
understanding of them. She had a way of talking with bird and beast
that lent reality to the legends of St. Francis. The "Sermon to the
Birds" is no more intimate, nor that to the fishes more appropriate,
than the daily admonitions she gave the pig, the counsel she tendered
the chickens, to which they listened with grave attention, the pig as
if hypnotized, his two fore feet planted stolidly, his eyes fixed upon
her; the chickens with their heads turned consideringly, now on this
side now on the other, and with little guttural comments of question
or approval. The wolf reputed to have put his paw in the saint's hand
seemed infinitely less legendary to me after I had seen the pig,
released from his pen, follow her to the kitchen stoop, and, with
manners as gentlemanly as he could counterfeit, eat out of a pan she
held for him. When he had finished, she offered him her hand, as if to
pledge him to further good manners; and he made a clumsy pawing motion
and managed with her help to get a hoof into her palm. She gave it a
grave shake and released it.
"You're improvin'," was all she said; while the pig, delighted, no
doubt, with his new accomplishment, took to his four feet, with squeals
of delight, around the corner of the house.
One day there came from about her person a strange chirping, a trifle
muffled, like the chirping of a tiny chicken. She absolutely ignored
it. She held her head stiff and high, as she was wont to do when she
served us or when she referred to "me brother Pat." But when she saw
that the day could not after all be carried by a mere haughty ignoring
of facts, she spoke.
"Poor little uneducated abandoned fowl, ma'am, to cry out against its
own interests! I'm sorry, but I couldn't leave it in the cold. So, for
the love of its mother and God's mother, I'm carryin' it in me bosom
to keep it warm. And I'd think you'd be offended if I didn't believe
you're a follower of Him that carried the lambs there too!"
It was in such ways that she left you no argument, disarmed all
objection, and pursued her own way and predilections, as the saints,
the poor, and other chosen of the Lord have, I believe, always done.
Loyalty was, perhaps, the largest part of her code; but it was based
rather on the assumption that you were hers than that she was yours.
Guests came seldom to that old house; but the welcome she gave them
when they did come was a thing to warm the heart.
She assumed a devoted possession of me and my affairs. When these fared
ill, she was as Babylon desolated; when they went comparatively well,
she was overjoyed, her step lightened, her head went up; she was as a
city set upon a hill, that cannot be hid. But it was toward those whom
she took to be my enemies that she really shone. By shrewd guesses and
by dint of a few downright questions, she figured out that a deal of
sorrow and calamity had come to me through the selfishness of others.
That was enough for her! Might the Lord smite them! Might a murrain
seize them and their cattle!
"But they have no cattle, Margaret! They live in a very large city."
(It was always a temptation to see how she would right herself.)
"Then may devastation befittin' them fall on their basements and their
battlements! May their balustrades burst and a sign of pestilence
be put upon their door-sills! And--now God forgive me--whenever
He's willin' to take them--for it's He would know what to do with
them,"--this with a fierce knowing nod,--"He has my willin'ness they
should go! I'd think it a fairer earth without them, and I'd greet the
sun the friendlier in the morn'n' for knowin' he'd not set his bright
eye on them."
Many batter-cakes were stirred to rounded periods of this sort, and
omelettes beaten the stiffer for her indignation.
Once it came to her in a roundabout way that illness had fallen upon
one of these whom for my sake she despised. She looked shrewdly at
something at a very long distance, invisible to any but herself, winked
one eye very deliberately, with incredible calculation; then nodded
her head slowly, like a witch or sibyl.
"_What_ did I tell ye! The currrse is beginnin' to work!"
Funny as it was, there was something awful in it too.
"But, Margaret, I don't wish them any ill. I don't believe people make
others suffer like that if they are in their right minds. Perhaps they
think they are doing right."
"Of _courrrse_ they do! If they ever could think they were wrong,
there'd be salvation for them! But you see how clear it is that they're
doomed to destruction!"
"It's slow waitin' on the Lord," she said one day wearily. "And oh,
it's meself would like to stir them up a little cake befittin' them!"
I know she thought me a weakling as to hate. But for the insuperable
difficulty of several centuries, I believe she would have left me, to
ally herself with the Borgias.
When she had been with me some time, she had a serious illness. She had
been subject to periodical attacks of the kind, it seems, since her
girlhood.
"I didn't tell you," she said simply, "for if I had, ye wouldn't have
engaged me; and I liked the looks of ye." Then, triumphantly, "Nor was
I mistaken."
This was the beginning of a system of appeals, searching and frequent,
which yet never took the direct form of appeal.
"It's I can't be sayin' how I love this old house," she would say
irrelevantly one day; and the next, "Me brother Pat has been very
kind to me at times--at _times_!"--here a slow wink and nod at the
invisible,--"but it's not your own, God save me, that'll do for you in
misfortune! No, ma'am, it's not your own!"
She began giving me little presents, a lace collar first. I insisted
that I would rather she kept it herself.
"God save us! And all you've done for me!" Her tone was almost despair.
"And you wouldn't let me do that for you! A bit of a lace collar!"
The next time it was a strange mosaic cross; and the next, a
queerly contrived egg-beater; again, a very fine and beautiful
handkerchief--all of these produced from her trunk. She always had some
ingenious tale of how she had come by them.
Meanwhile her attacks were becoming more frequent. At such times she
was like one possessed by some spirit. Her mind would wander suddenly,
always to her childhood and the Green Isle. She would be calling the
cows home at evening, or talking to the pig. When the "spirit" left
her, she would be trembling and almost helpless for days, and needed
much care.
When she was well enough for me to leave her, I went to see her doctor
and her people. The first suggested the almshouse: the others thought
that they were not called on to keep her unless she would agree to do
exactly as they bade her do, and would renounce her proud ways.
Of course I kept her with me. There are extravagances of poverty
which may be allowed, as well as of wealth. Something, too, must be
conceded to the spirit of adventure and recklessness. It may be at
this crossroads that the provident will bid me adieu. I am sorry to
lose their company, for, despite their lesser distinction and certain
plebeian tendencies, I like the provident. But before they determine to
depart, I may be allowed to wonder whether they have ever been in such
close relation with the poor as I was then. Have they ever felt the
persistent appeal of a Margaret, I wonder, or seen her eyes go twenty
times a day to them as to one who held her fate in their keeping? I
think perhaps they will not have over-heard her say to the pig in a
moment of half-gay thankfulness, "Arrah! God save us! are ye glad as
ye should be ye're with people that have got a heart?" Or perhaps the
provident will scarcely have been vouchsafed a terrible understanding,
as I had at that time, of the dark possibilities of life, or have known
what it was to wonder where the next meals would come from.
"But," argue the provident, "could she not have gone to her people?"
Which, being interpreted, means: "Should she not have taken thankfully
the grudged and conditioned charity, with dominion, offered her by
those in more fortunate circumstances?"
And to that I answer, "If you think so, then I can only judge that
you know little 'how salt is the bread of others and how steep their
stairs'; and I can but refer you to one who has spoken immortally of
these matters."
One day, when she had been ill for more than a week, I told her that
she might stay on with me and be cared for, and have a certain very
moderate wage, and do only such little light work as she felt able to,
all the heavier being taken over by a stronger woman.
She pricked her head up and spoke from a white pillow, equal to fate
once more:--
"Now, God save us! If it isn't always good that be growin' out of evil!
I'll be yer _housekeeper_! And who'll ye have for a cook? 'Tis I'll be
keepin' the keys of things! Bring along the cook! Black or white, I
don't care. _I_ kin manage her!" (This threateningly.)
This was alarming, but I counted upon inspiration and ingenuity when
the time came.
I found a West India darky, whose condition also needed improving. She
was a fine type. She might have walked out of the jungles of Africa;
magnificently powerful, a little old. She was as irrevocably Protestant
as Margaret was Catholic. I urged each of them privately to remember
that they were both the Lord's children and therefore sisters. Augusta
accepted this in solemn religious spirit,--such a speech on my part
bound her to me forever,--but Margaret took it with a chip on her
shoulder.
"She can call herself a Christian if she likes, but it is an insult to
the Lord, for she's nothin' better nor a heathen! Black like that!"
"But, Margaret, you said you would not object to a black woman."
"No, ma'am, nor I don't!" said Margaret, veering swiftly after her own
manner; "it's her pink lips I can't shtand."
This was the beginning of their warfare; which, not inconsistently,
was made infinitely more bitter by Augusta's fixed resolve to be a
Christian.
Augusta had a predilection for hymns, one in particular, whose refrain
could be heard wailing and poignant and confident at odd moments:--
Oh, what a Father, oh, what a Friend!
He will be with you unto the end.
Oh, what a Father, oh, what a Friend!
He will be with you unto the end.
Margaret, like most of those of her creed, had a small opinion of
hymn-singing, and haughtily indulged in none of it. Moreover, she had
in very strong essence that secure sense of election and special
grace common with some of her faith. Let others attend mere temples
and mitigated meeting-houses, and presume to call them churches if
they like; let others take dark risks of undoctrinal salvation! Such
spiritual vagabondage must by contrast give but the greater assurance
of security to those elected since the beginning--a peculiar and a
chosen people. It can be seen, therefore, how Augusta's confident
appropriation of the Deity, with her reiterated boast of friendly
intimacy, wore upon this daughter of antique distinctions and ancient
privileges.
There was, of course, soon established a strongly vicious circle; for,
when Margaret became excessively trying and difficult to deal with,
Augusta would console and fortify herself with the reassurances of this
particular refrain; whereas, at the same time, this particular refrain
having the effect of rousing Margaret to still worse and worse moods,
these, in turn, made the consolations of the refrain even more than
ever indispensable to Augusta.
I do not know, I am sure, what would have been the final result of it
all save for the pig. When Margaret's limit of endurance was reached,
she would come out of the house, sometimes with her hands over her
ears, and make off at a kind of trot in the direction of the pig's
habitat. There, I am inclined to believe, she was able, after her own
manner, to find consolation and assuagement in her unrivaled place
in his affections, as well as in the friendly, grave, and undivided
attention which he always gave her.
Impossible as Margaret was, I could see that her appealing and lovable
qualities played on Augusta as they had long played on me.
"The poor afflicted soul!" said Augusta; "look at the poor thin
temples. You don't know, ma'am, how I pray for her every night!"
Margaret, passing by unexpectedly, over-heard this and cried out,--
"Oh, God save us! Then I am lost! The Lord will abandon me now for
sure! He'll never forgive me such company! That's the wurst yet!"
Then she went off for another of her long conversations with the pig.
When she came back she was in a changed mood.
"Don't mind what I say," she said to me. "If God can forgive me, I
don't know I'm sure, why you can't!" Then she put a rosy-cheeked apple
beside Augusta. "And I think you'll find this pleasant to the taste."
Remembering the Borgias, I should have been loath to taste it; but
Augusta bit into it with immediate Christian forgiveness. Yet late that
afternoon the wind had shifted again into the old quarter. Happening to
go into the woodshed, I found Augusta there crying.
"What in the world is the matter, Augusta?" I asked.
"I'm crying," she said, anticipating Shaw and Androcles, "because I'm a
Christian and I can't strike her!"
She raised her old bloodshot eyes, not to me, but to heaven. I have
seen the same look in the eyes of an old dog teased by a pert mongrel,
and crippled and rendered helpless by rheumatism as was Augusta by her
Christianity.
It was Margaret herself at last, who announced that she would be
obliged to leave me. She spoke with a dignity which she had held over,
I suppose, from regal years submerged but not forgotten.
"It's I will have to be goin'; I've stayed as long as I can. I've stood
a great deal,--for ye'll stand a terrible lot for them ye're fond
of,--and I've been terrible fond of you, more than of me own--and am
to this day. But I can't honest say it's of your deserving! There's
a sayin' that we love best them that mistreat us most, and I'm for
thinkin' it may be true. I'd have stayed to help you, but I must be
havin' _some_ thought of meself! Though you've treated me as I wouldn't
treat me own,"--this tellingly,--"and asked me to live under the roof
with one of them the Lord has abandoned, yet I've a kindly feelin' in
me heart still for ye, and if ye were in need and ye'd come to me,
maybe I wouldn't say ye nay--I don't know. I'm a forgivin' disposition,
more than is for me own good, God knows! I've hated yer enemies and
doomed them to desthruction!"
I patted her hand good-bye between two perfectly well-balanced desires
to laugh and to cry. She was so funny, so incredible, so bent, since
the foundation of the world, on proving herself right and everybody
else wrong. She was not Margaret, merely, whom chance and trouble had
brought into my path--she was a very piece of humanity, decked out in
unaccustomed bonnet and unlikely feather, best petticoat and a grand
pair of black kid gloves--humanity, the ancient, the amusing, the
faulty, the incredible, the pathetic, the endeared. And it was as that
that she rode away in the funny old jolting farm wagon, her chin in the
air, her eyes glancing around haughtily, scanning the old place she had
loved and clung to, but scanning it scornfully now, as if she had never
laid eyes on it before, and were saying, "Ye puir thing!--with yer air
of delapidation! Who--God save us--are you?"
I went back into the kitchen and caught Augusta wiping her eyes with
her apron, and was not altogether gay myself--while Margaret jolted
away fiercely, our two scalps at her belt.
"You mustn't worry too much about her, ma'am," said Augusta soothingly;
"the Lord is her friend, and He'll take care of her."
From incontrovertible precedent I felt sure that He would, with a
sureness I had never had as to my own less considerable destiny.
All this was some years ago. By a curious chance,--which has the air
of being something more considerable,--it was while I was writing these
very paragraphs about Margaret that I had a letter from her, the first
since she rode away. It was very characteristic, written in a scrawly
and benevolent hand:--
"Will you please let me hear, ma'am, whether you're dead or alive.
I've had you on my mind, and for six weeks I can't sleep night or day
for thinking of you.
"Your old servant,
"MARGARET."
Let no one tell me that this is mere coincidence. New proof it is,
to one who has long dealt with the poor, of strange powers of which
they are possessed. Here is a sister, I tell you,--"plainer nor your
eyes,"--to the old blind man, who used to come tap-tap, tap-tapping up
the shadowy stairs and into the nursery for the penny I had withheld.