MATTIE FOR POPPIE.
One bright morning, when the flags in the passage were hot to her feet,
and the shoes she had lost in the snow-storm had not the smallest
chance of recurring to the memory of Poppie, in this life at least,
Mattie was seated with Mr. Spelt in his workshop, which seemed to the
passer-by to be supported, like the roof of a chapter-house, upon
the single pillar of Mr. Dolman, with his head for a capital--which
did not, however, branch out in a great many directions. She was not
dressing a doll now, for Lucy had set her to work upon some garments
for the poor, Lucy's relation with whom I will explain by and by.
"I've been thinking, mother," she said--to Mr. Spelt, of course--"that
I wonder how ever God made me. Did he cut me out of something else, and
join me up, do you think? If he did, where did he get the stuff? And if
he didn't, how did he do it?"
"Well, my dear, it would puzzle a wiser head than mine to answer that
question," said Mr. Spelt, who plainly judged ignorance a safer refuge
from Mattie than any knowledge he possessed upon the subject. Her
question, however, occasioned the return, somehow or other, of an old
suspicion which he had not by any means cherished, but which would
force itself upon him now and then, that the splendid woman, Mrs.
Spelt, "had once ought" to have had a baby, and, somehow, he never knew
what had come of it. She got all right again, and the baby was nowhere.
"I wish I had thought to watch while God was a-making of me, and then
I should have remembered how he did it," Mattie resumed. "Ah! but I
couldn't," she added, checking herself, "for I wasn't made till I was
finished, and so I couldn't remember."
This was rather too profound for Mr. Spelt to respond to in any way.
Not that he had not a glimmering of Mattie's meaning, but that is a
very different thing from knowing what to answer. So he said nothing,
except what something might be comprised in a bare assent. Mattie,
however, seemed bent on forcing conversation, and, finding him silent,
presently tried another vein.
"Do you remember a conversation we had, in this very place"--that was
not wonderful, anyhow--"some time ago--before my last birthday--about
God being kinder to some people than to other people?" she asked.
"Yes, I do," answered Mr. Spelt, who had been thinking about the matter
a good deal since. "Are you of the same mind still, Mattie?"
"Well, yes, and no," answered Mattie. "I think now there may be
something in it I can't quite get at the bottom of. Do you know,
mother, I remembered all at once, the other day, that when I was a
little girl, I used to envy Poppie. Now, where ever was there a child
that had more of the blessings of childhood than me?"
"What made you envy Poppie, then, Mattie?"
"Well, you see, my father's shop was rather an awful place, sometimes.
I never told you, mother, what gained me the pleasure of your
acquaintance. Ever since I can remember--and that is a very long time
ago now--I used now and then to grow frightened at father's books.
Sometimes, you know, they were all quiet enough. You would generally
expect books to be quiet, now wouldn't you? But other times--well, they
wouldn't be quiet. At least, they kept thinking all about me, till my
poor head couldn't bear it any longer. That always was my weak point,
you know."
Mr. Spelt looked with some anxiety at the pale face and great forehead
of the old little woman, and said:
"Yes, yes, Mattie. But we've got over all that, I think, pretty well by
now."
"Well, do you know, Mr. Spelt, I have not even yet got over my fancies
about the books. Very often, as I am falling asleep, I hear them all
thinking;--they can hardly help it, you know, with so much to think
about inside them. I don't hear them exactly, you know, for the one
thinks into the other's thinks--somehow, I can't tell--and they blot
each other out like, and there is nothing but a confused kind of a
jumble in my head till I fall asleep. Well, it was one day, very like
this day--it was a hot summer forenoon, wasn't it, mother?--I was
standing at that window over there. And Poppie was playing down in the
court. And I thought what a happy little girl she was, to go where
she pleased in the sunshine, and not need to put on any shoes. Father
wouldn't let me go where I liked. And there was nothing but books
everywhere. That was my nursery then. It was all round with books. And
some of them had dreadful pictures in them. All at once the books began
talking so loud as I had never heard them talk before. And I thought
with myself--'I won't stand this any longer. I will go away with
Poppie.'
"So I ran down stairs, but because I couldn't open the door into the
court, I had to watch and dodge father among the book-shelves. And when
I got out, Poppie was gone--and then, what next, mother?"
"Then my thread knotted, and that always puts me out of temper, because
it stops my work. And I always look down into the court when I stop.
Somehow that's the way my eyes do of themselves. And there I saw a tiny
little maiden staring all about her as if she had lost somebody, and
her face looked as if she was just going to cry. And I knew who she
was, for I had seen her in the shop before. And so I called to her and
she came. And I asked her what was the matter."
"Well, and I said, 'It's the books that will keep talking:' didn't I?"
"Yes. And I took you up beside me. But you was very ill after that, and
it was long before you came back again after that first time."
This story had been gone over and over again between the pair; but
every time that Mattie wanted to rehearse the one adventure of her
life, she treated it as a memory that had just returned upon her. How
much of it was an original impression and how much a rewriting by the
tailor upon the blotted tablets of her memory, I cannot tell.
"Well, where was I?" said Mattie, after a pause, laying her hands on
her lap and looking up at the tailor with eyes of inquiry.
"I'm sure I don't know, Mattie," answered Mr. Spelt.
"I was thinking, you know, that perhaps Poppie has her share of what's
going on, after all."
"And don't you think," suggested her friend, "that perhaps God doesn't
want to keep all the good-doing to himself, but leaves room for us to
have a share in it? It's very nice work that you're at now--isn't it
Mattie?"
"Well, it is."
"As good as dressing dolls?"
"Well, it's no end of better."
"Why?"
"Because the dolls don't feel a bit better for it, you know."
"And them that'll wear that flannel petticoat will feel better for it,
won't they?"
"That they will, _I_ know."
"But suppose everybody in the world was as well off as you and me,
Mattie--you with your good father, and--"
"Well, my father ain't none so good, just. He swears sometimes."
"He's good to you, though, ain't he?"
"I don't know that either, mother: he spoils me," answered Mattie, who
seemed to be in a more than usually contradictory humor this morning.
"Supposing, though, that everybody had a father that spoiled them, you
wouldn't have any such clothes to make, you know."
"But they wouldn't want them."
"And you would be forced to go back to your dolls as have no father or
mother and come across the sea in boxes."
"I see, I see, mother. Well, I suppose I must allow that it is good of
God to give us a share in making people comfortable. You see he could
do it himself, only he likes to give us a share. That's it, ain't, it
mother?"
"That's what I mean, Mattie."
"Well, but you'll allow it does seem rather hard that I should have
this to do now, and there's Poppie hasn't either the clothes to wear or
to make."
"Can't you do something for Poppie, then?"
"Well, I'll think about it, and see what I can do."
Here Mattie laid aside her work, crept on all fours to the door, and
peeped over into the passage below.
"Well, Poppie," she began, in the intellectually condescending tone
which most grown people use to children, irritating some of them by it
considerably,--"Well, Poppie, and how do _you_ do?"
Poppie heard the voice, and looked all round, but not seeing where it
came from, turned and scudded away under the arch. Though Mattie knew
Poppie, Poppie did not know Mattie, did not know her voice at least.
It was not that Poppie was frightened exactly--she hardly ever was
frightened at anything, not even at a policeman, but she was given to
scudding; and when anything happened she did not precisely know what to
do with, she scudded: at least if there was no open drain or damaged
hoarding at hand. But she did not run far this time. As soon as she got
under the shelter of the arch, she turned behind a sort of buttress
that leaned against the bookseller's house, and peeped back toward the
court.
At that moment Lucy came out of the house. She came down the passage,
and as Mattie was still leaning over the door, or the threshold,
rather, of the workshop, she saw her, and stopped. Thereupon Poppie
came out of her "coign of vantage," and slowly approached, just like
a bird or a tame rabbit--only she was not by any means so tame as the
latter.
"Are you getting on with that petticoat, Mattie?" said Lucy.
"Yes, miss, I am. Only not being used to anything but boys' clothes, I
am afraid you won't like the tailor's stitch, miss."
"Never mind that. It will be a curiosity, that's all. But what do you
think, Mattie? The kind lady who gives us this work to do for the poor
people, has invited all of us to go and spend a day with her."
Mattie did not answer. Lucy thought she did not care to go. But she was
such an oddity that she wanted very much to take her.
"She has such a beautiful garden, Mattie! And she's _so_ kind."
Still Mattie made no reply. Lucy would try again.
"And it's such a beautiful house, too, Mattie! I'm sure you would like
to see it. And," she added, almost reduced to her last resource, "she
would give us such a nice dinner, _I_ know!"
This at length burst the silence, but not as Lucy had expected.
"Now that's just what I'm determined I will not stand," said the little
maid.
"What _do_ you mean, Mattie?" exclaimed Lucy, surprised and bewildered.
"I'll tell you what I mean, and that soon enough," said Mattie.
"It's all very kind of Mrs. Morgingturn to ask you and me, what are
well-to-do people, and in comfortable circumstances, as people say,
to go and spend this day or that with her. And do you know, Mr.
Spelt"--here Mattie drew herself in and turned her face right round
from Lucy to the tailor, for the side of her mouth which she used for
speech was the left, and the furthest from Spelt--"it just comes into
my head that this kind lady who gives me petticoats to make instead of
doll's trousers, is doing the very thing you read about last night out
of the New Testament before I went into bed. It's so nice now there's
light enough to read a little before we part for the night! ain't it,
mother?"
"I know, I know," said the tailor in a low voice, not wishing to
intrude himself into the conversation.
"What did Mr. Spelt read to you, Mattie?" asked Lucy.
"He read about _somebody_--"
It was very remarkable how Mattie would use the name of God, never
certainly with irreverence, but with a freedom that seemed to indicate
that to her he was chiefly if not solely an object of metaphysical
speculation or, possibly, of investigation; while she hardly ever
uttered the name of the Saviour, but spoke of him as _Somebody_. And
I find that I must yet further interrupt the child herself to tell an
anecdote about her which will perhaps help my reader to account for the
fact I am about to finish telling. She was not three years old when
she asked her mother, a sweet, thoughtful woman, in many ways superior
to her husband, though not intellectually his equal--who made the tree
in Wood Street? Her mother answered, of course, "God made it, my pet;"
for by instinct, she never spoke of her God without using some term
of endearment to her child. Mattie answered--"I would like it better
if a man made it"--a cry after the humanity of God--a longing in the
heart of the three years' child for the Messiah of God. Her mother
did not know well enough to tell her that a man, yes, _the_ man did
make them--"for by Him all things were made;"--but Mattie may have had
some undefined glimmering of the fact, for, as I have said, she always
substituted _Somebody_ for any name of the Lord. I cannot help wishing
that certain religious people of my acquaintance would, I do not say
follow queer little Mattie's example, but take a lesson from queer
little Mattie.
"He read about _somebody_ saying you shouldn't ask your friends and
neighbors who could do the same for you again, but you should ask them
that couldn't, because they hadn't a house to ask you to, like Poppie
there."
Lucy looked round and saw the most tattered little scarecrow--useless
even as such in the streets of London, where there are only dusty
little sparrows and an occasional raven--staring at--I cannot call
it a group--well, it was a group vertically, if not laterally--and
not knowing or caring what to make of it, only to look at Lucy, and
satisfy her undefined and undefinable love by the beholding of its
object. She loved what was lovely without in the least knowing that
it was lovely, or what lovely meant. And while Lucy gazed at Poppie,
with a vague impression that she had seen the child before, she could
not help thinking of the contrast between the magnificent abode of the
Morgensterns--for magnificent it was, even in London--and the lip of
the nest from which the strange child preached down into the world the
words "friends and neighbors."
But she could say nothing more to Mattie till she had told, word
for word, the whole story to Mrs. Morgenstern, who, she knew, would
heartily enjoy the humor of it. Nor was Lucy, who loved her Lord very
truly, even more than she knew, though she was no theologian like
Thomas, in the least deterred from speaking of _Somebody_, by the fact
that Mrs. Morgenstern did not receive him as the Messiah of her nation.
If he did not hesitate to show himself where he knew he would not be
accepted, why should she hesitate to speak his name? And why should
his name not be mentioned to those who, although they had often been
persecuted in his name by those who did not understand his mind, might
well be proud that the man who was conquering the world by his strong,
beautiful will, was a Jew.
But from the rather severe indisposition of her grandmother, she was
unable to tell the story to Mrs. Morgenstern till the very morning of
the gathering.