LUCY, AND MATTIE, AND POPPIE.
The Saturday following Tom's departure Lucy had a whole holiday, and
she resolved to enjoy it. Not much resolution was necessary for that;
for everything now was beautiful, and not even her grannie's fits
of ill-humor could destroy her serenity. The old woman had, however,
her better moments, in which she would blame her other self for her
unkindness to her darling; only that repentance was forgotten the
moment the fit came again. The saddest thing in the whole affair was
to see how the prospect of wealth, and the loss of that prospect,
worked for the temperamental ruin of the otherwise worthy old woman.
Her goodness had had little foundation in principle; therefore, when
the floods came and the winds blew, it could not stand against them.
Of course prosperity must be better for some people, so far as we can
see, for they have it; and adversity for others, for they have it;
but I suspect that each must have a fitting share of both; and no
disposition, however good, can be regarded as tempered, and tried, and
weather-proof, till it has had a trial of some proportion of both. I am
not sure that both are absolutely necessary to all; I only say that we
cannot be certain of the character till we have seen it outstand both.
The last thing Mrs. Boxall said to Lucy as she went out that morning,
rousing herself from a dark-hued reverie over the fire, was:
"Lucy, if you marry that man I'll go to the work-house."
"But they won't take you in, grannie, when you've got a grand-daughter
to work for you."
"I won't take a farthing of my own properly but as my own right."
"Thomas won't have a farthing of it to offer you, grannie, I'm afraid.
He quarreled with his father just about that, and he's turned him out."
"Then I _must_ go to the work-house."
"And I'll bring you packets of tea and snuff, as they do for the old
goodies in the dusters, grannie," said Lucy, merrily.
"Go along with you. You never had any heart but for your beaux."
"There's a little left for you yet, dear grannie. And for beaux, you
know as well as I do that I never had but one."
So saying, she ran away, and up the court to Mr. Spelt's shop.
"Where's Poppie, Mr. Spelt?" she asked.
"In the house, I believe, miss."
"Will you let her come with me to the Zoölogical Gardens to-day?"
"With all my heart, miss. Shall I get down, and run up and tell her?"
"No, thank you; on no account. I'll go up myself."
She found Poppie actually washing cups and saucers, with her sleeves
tucked up, and looking not merely a very lovely, but a very orderly
maiden. No doubt she was very odd still, and would be to the end of
her days. What she would do when she was too old (which would not
be till she was too frail) to scud, was inconceivable. But with all
such good influences around her--her father, Mattie, Mr. Fuller, Lucy
Burton--it was no wonder that the real woman in her should have begun
to grow, and, having begun, should promise well for what was yet
to be. There is scarcely anything more marvelous in the appearance
of simple womanliness under such circumstances in the child of the
streets, than there is in its existence in the lady who has outgrown
the ordinarily evil influences of the nursery, the school-room, and the
boarding-schools. Still, I must confess that anything like other people
might well be a little startling to one who had known Poppie a year
before and had not seen her since. Lucy had had a great deal to do with
the change; for she had been giving her regular lessons with Mattie
for the last few months. The difficulty was, to get Poppie to open her
mental eyes to any information that did not come by the sight of her
bodily eyes. The conveyance of facts to her, not to say of thoughts or
feelings, by words, except in regard to things she was quite used to,
was almost an impossibility. For a long time she only stared and looked
around her now and then, as if she would be so glad to scud, if she
dared. But she loved Lucy, who watched long and anxiously for some sign
of dawning interest. It came at last. Nor let my reader suspect the
smallest atom of satire in her most innocent remark: "Was Jesus a man?
I s'posed he wor a clergyman!" But having once got a glimpse of light,
her eyes, if they opened slowly, strengthened rapidly. Her acquisition
was not great, that is, but she learned to think with an amount of
reality which showed that, while she retained many of the defects of
childhood, she retained also some of its most valuable characteristics.
The contrast with Mattie was very remarkable. Poppie was older than
Mattie, I have said; but while Mattie talked like an old woman, Poppie
talked like a baby. The remarks of each formed a strange opposition,
both in manner and form, to her appearance, as far as bodily growth was
concerned. But the faces were consistent with the words. There was,
however, a very perceptible process of what may be called a double
endosmose and exosmose going on between them. Poppie was getting wiser,
and Mattie was getting merrier. Sometimes, to the delight of Mr.
Kitely, they would be heard frolicking about his house like kittens.
Such a burst, however, would seldom last long; for Mrs. Boxall resented
it as unfeeling toward her misfortunes, and generally put a stop to it.
This did not please Mr. Kitely at all. It was, in fact, the only thing
that he found annoying in the presence of Mrs. Boxall in his house. But
he felt such a kindly pity for the old woman that he took no notice of
it, and intimated to Mattie that it was better to give up to her.
"The old lady is cranky to-day. She don't feel comfortable in her
inside," he would say; and Mattie would repeat the remark to Poppie,
as if it were her own. There was one word in it, however, which, among
others of her vocabulary, making the antique formality of her speech so
much the more ludicrous, she could not pronounce.
"The old lady don't feel over comfibittle in her inside to-day. We must
drop it, or she'll be worse," Mattie would gravely remark to Poppie,
and the tumult would be heard no more that day, or at least for an
hour, when, if they were so long together, it might break out again.
Every now and then some strange explosion of Arab habits or ways of
thinking would shock Mattie: but from seeing that it did not shock Miss
Burton so much, she became, by degrees, considerably less of a little
prig. Childhood revived in her more and more.
"Will you come with me to-day, Poppie, to see the wild beasts?" said
Lucy.
"But they'll eat us, won't they?"
"Oh, no, child. What put that into your head?"
"I thought they always did."
"They always would if they could. But they can't."
"Do they pull their teeth out, then?"
"You come and see. I'll take care of you."
"Is Mattie going?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll come."
She threw down the saucer she was washing, dried her hands in her
apron, and stood ready to follow.
"No, no, Poppie; that won't do. You must finish washing up and drying
your breakfast things. Then you must put on your cloak and hat, and
make yourself look nice and tidy, before I can take you."
"If it's only the beasts, miss! They ain't very particular, I guess."
Was this the old word of Chaucer indigenous, or a slip from the
American slip?
"It's not for the beasts, but because you ought always to be tidy.
There will be people there, of course, and it's disrespectful to other
people to be untidy."
"I didn't know, miss. Would they give I to the bears?"
"Poppie, you're a goose. Come along. Make haste."
The children had never seen any but domestic animals before, and their
wonder and pleasure in these strange new forms of life were boundless.
Mattie caught the explosive affection from Poppie, and Lucy had her
reward in the outbursts of interest, as varied in kind as the animals
themselves, that rose on each side of her. The differences, too,
between the children were very notable. Poppie shrieked with laughter
at the monkeys; Mattie turned away, pale with dislike. Lucy overcame
her own feelings in the matter for Poppie's sake, but found that Mattie
had disappeared. She was standing outside the door, waiting for them.
"I can't make it out," she said, putting her hand into Lucy's.
"What can't you make out, Mattie?"
"I can't make out why God made monkeys." Now, this was a question
that might well puzzle Mattie. Indeed, Lucy had no answer to give
her. I dare say Mr. Fuller might have had something to say on the
subject, but Lucy could only reply, "I don't know, my dear;" for she
did not fancy it a part of a teacher's duty to tell lies, pretending
acquaintance with what she did not know anything about. Poppie had no
difficulty about the monkeys; but the lions and tigers, and all the
tearing creatures were a horror to her; and if she did not put the
same question as Mattie had put about the monkeys, it was only because
she had not yet felt any need for understanding the creation of God in
relation to him. In other words, she had not yet begun to construct
her little individual scheme of the universe, which, sooner or later,
must, I presume, be felt by every one as an indispensable necessity.
Mr. Fuller would have acknowledged the monkeys as to him a far more
important difficulty than the ferocious animals, and would probably
have accepted the swine as a greater perplexity than either. Perhaps
the readiest answer--I say _readiest_ only, but I would not use the
word answer at all, except it involved the elements of solution--for
Lucy to give would have been:
"They disgust you, you say, Mattie? Then that is what God made them
for."
A most incomplete, but most true and important reply--and the
_readiest_.
Poppie shouted with delight to see the seals tumble into the water,
dive deep, then turn on their backs and look up at her. But their
large, round, yet pathetic, dog-like eyes, fixed upon her, made the
tears come in Mattie's eyes, as they dreamed up and down and athwart
the water-deeps with such a gentle power as destroyed all notion of
force to be met or force to overcome.
Another instance or two, to show the difference between the children,
and we shall return to the business of my story. There are, or were
then, two or three little animals in a cage--I forget the name of them:
they believe in somersaults--that the main object of life is to run
round and round, doing the same thing with decency and order--that is,
turning heels over head every time they arrive at a certain spot.
With these pretty enough, and more than comical enough creatures,
Poppie was exquisitely delighted. She laughed and clapped her hands and
shouted:
"Now, now! Do it again. There you are! Heels over head. All right,
little one! Round you go. Now, now! There you are!" and so on.
Mattie turned away, saying only to Lucy:
"They don't make anything of it. They're no farther on at night than
they were in the morning. I hate roundabouts. Poor little things!"
They came to the camel's house, and, with other children, they got upon
his back. After a short and not over comfortable ride, they got down
again. Poppie took hold of Lucy's sleeve, and, with solemn face, asked:
"Is it alive, miss?"
"How can you ask such a question, Poppie?"
"I only wanted to know if it was alive."
She was not sure that he did not go by machinery. Mattie gazed at her
with compassionate superiority, and said:
"Poppie, I should like to hear what you tell Mr. Spelt when you get
home. You _are_ ignorant."
At this Poppie only grinned. She was not in the least offended. She
even, I dare say, felt some of the same admiration for herself that one
feels for an odd plaything.
Lucy's private share of the day's enjoyment lay outside the gardens.
There the buds were bursting everywhere. Out of the black bark, all
begrimed with London smoke and London dirt, flowed the purest green.
Verily there is One that can bring a clean thing out of an unclean.
Reviving nature was all in harmony with Lucy's feelings this day. It
was the most simply happy day she had ever had. The gentle wind with
its cold and its soft streaks fading and reviving, the blue sky with
its few flying undefined masses of whiteness, the shadow of green all
around--for when she looked through the trees, it was like looking
through a thin green cloud or shadow--the gay songs of the birds, each
of which, unlike the mocking-bird within, was content to sing his own
song--a poor thing, it might be, but his own--his notion of the secret
of things, of the well-being of the universe--all combined in one
harmony with her own world inside, and made her more happy than she had
ever been before, even in a dream.
She was walking southward through the Park, for she wanted to take the
two children to see Mrs. Morgenstern. They were frolicking about her,
running hither and thither, returning at frequent intervals to claim
each one of her hands, when she saw Mr. Sargent coming toward her. She
would not have avoided him if she could, for her heart was so gay that
it was strong as well. He lifted his hat. She offered her hand. He took
it, saying:
"This is more than I deserve, Miss Burton, after the abominable way I
behaved to you last time I saw you. I see you have forgiven me. But I
dare hardly accept your forgiveness. It is so much more than I deserve."
"I know what it is to suffer, Mr. Sargent, and there is no excuse I
could not make for you. Perhaps the best proof I can give that I wish
to forget all that passed on that dreadful evening is to be quite open
with you still. I have seen Mr. Worboise since then," she went on,
regardless of her own blushes. "He had been led astray, but not so much
as you thought. He brought me back the ring you mentioned."
If Mr. Sargent did not place much confidence in the reformation Lucy
hinted at, it is not very surprising. No doubt the fact would destroy
any possibly lingering hope he yet cherished, but this was not all; he
was quite justified in regarding with great distrust any such change
as her words implied. He had known, even in his own comparatively
limited experience, so many cases of a man's having, to all appearance,
entirely abjured his wicked ways for the sake of a woman, only to
return, after marriage, like the sow that was washed, to his wallowing
in the mire, that his whole soul shrunk from the idea of such an
innocent creature falling a prey to her confidence in such a man as
Worboise most probably was. There was nothing to be said at present on
the subject, however, and after a few more words they parted--Lucy, to
pursue her dream of delight--Mr. Sargent, lawyer-like, to make further
inquiry.