being “awful easy to get along with,” if that phrase connotes living
quietly and seeking no one’s acquaintance. She went about domestic
duties with an extraordinary zest, cooked, cleaned, ran up and down
stairs endlessly; and spent hours in the garden applying her patently
unskilled energies to weeding and trimming it, or motionless in some
coign of vantage, watching the birds. Except for these robins and jays
and an occasional squirrel, she had no visitors, and defeated
expectations by never publicly falling foul of the Gowdy ash-heap, the
Gowdy garbage, or the Gowdy children, whatever her private
attitude toward them. Mrs. Gowdy, with characteristic sweet
thoughtfulness--everybody acclaimed her as the ideal wife for a
clergyman--introduced herself over the hedge after a few days with a
smiling word or two about the other’s courage in coming to live
alongside such a houseful. “We used to be afraid our youngsters were a
good deal of a trial to Miss Wilcox.”
“I don’t mind ’em, only when it sounds like somebody was getting hurt,”
said Mrs. Shields, whereat the experienced mother began to laugh.
“Oh, children are always getting hurt, you know. Mine seem to be made of
steel and india-rubber. They stand everything. Luella--that’s the maid I
have now--worries over them more than I do! She’s so good with them, and
perfectly devoted to Wilbur, especially.”
Mrs. Shields looked at her uncertainly.
“Well, Luella ain’t always on the job, is she? I don’t see how she can
be.”
“Oh, yes, she’s very efficient. I hardly ever give an order. Sometimes
coloured people are like that, wonderful with children and about the
housework too.” With other agreeable generalities, she moved away; and
Mrs. Shields, after a speculative stare at the retreating back, shook
her own overdressed head soberly, and moved away, too.
It happened that she did not encounter Doctor Gowdy until some time
later, on an occasion which turned out to be more or less momentous.
Pottering about among the flower beds, she heard without heeding a
piping excitement in the other back yard, and only looked across at last
when a heavier voice was added to the children’s. “Now, we must have a
coop, you know, boys. They have to be kept in a coop,” Doctor Gowdy was
expounding. “Let’s see! What shall we do? Oh, I’ll tell you! There’s
that old peach crate over there; you get that, Robbie, and I shouldn’t
wonder if Tom could nail some strips up the sides. Everybody must help,
that’s the only way to get along----” he kept on fluently in his
trained, carrying voice, while the boys circled about, squabbling over
his directions. Then, as he caught Mrs. Shields’s eye, smiled with a
gesture toward the basket in his hands.
“Day-old chicks. Wouldn’t you like to see them?” And in the direct,
hearty way which everybody so liked, without any ado of formalities, he
came over, the children hanging on and hampering him. The basket was
full of soft cheepings and movement; looking down into it, one got an
impression of little round, animated, cuddling patches of brown velvet,
striped with yellow, of little yellow heads and eyes with the bright
fixity of beads. Mrs. Shields exclaimed delightedly.
“Aren’t they cunning?” said the minister in sympathetic pleasure. “The
kiddies and I--we’re great pals, all of us together, you know--we’re
going to make a coop and raise them. First thing you know, we’ll have a
regular chicken farm!”
Mrs. Shields looked at his kind, eager face, at the basket of chickens,
at the surging children, at the littered yard, and spoke diffidently.
“Well, they’re awful cute, but--I guess it’s kinda work to bring up
chickens, ain’t it? I mean I thought people got all fixed for it, and
didn’t do nothing else.”
“Oh, no, you just feed and water them,” said Doctor Gowdy buoyantly.
“They ‘_do the rest_’--hey? Ha, ha!” He dropped to a confidential tone.
“It will be good for the children. Teaches them practical
humanity--Joe, Florence, stop it! You can’t both of you play with the
same chicken!”
Mrs. Shields returned to her gardening with an oddly dubious expression.
Judging by what she could hear, the coop was finally erected to
everybody’s satisfaction, and after an hour or so of vociferous children
and chickens, the latter appeared to lose their charm of novelty
temporarily, at least. There was quiet in both back yards; she was
trowelling industriously around the roots of a rosebush when Wilbur was
brought downstairs from his nap, and released from the house; and
directly his voice arose in gleeful squealings. “Chicky! Chicky!”
Mrs. Shields straightened up, listened a second, looked over the hedge.
What she saw caused her to drop the trowel and fly around to the alley,
bursting through the tumbledown gate into the parsonage grounds without
ceremony. “Wilbur! _Wilbur!_ Don’t do that! Don’t grab the chickies,
dearie! No, no! Mustn’t touch!”
“Make chicky go!” shouted Wilbur happily, squeezing a limp bit of brown
velvet between his sturdy little hands. The coop was upset; he danced
with joyful impatience among splintered slats and chickens. “Chicky
_go_!” He threw it down and kicked it. “_Go!_”
The chicken made a difficult movement, then settled down motionless with
filming eyes. “There now, see what you done! You’ve broke the chicky,
Wilbur. Poor chicky, now it won’t ever go any more!” said Mrs. Shields,
instinctively adapting her words to the child’s comprehension. “No,
_no_, Wilbur mustn’t play with chickies!”
“Chicky go!” screamed Wilbur. He was too quick for her; the chicken that
he aimed a lusty kick at escaped, but losing his balance and recovering,
he came down vigorously with his whole weight on another. “_Make_ chicky
go!”
All at once with dynamic suddenness, Mrs. Shield’s aspect underwent an
appalling transformation. Red spots flamed through the rouge on her
meagre cheeks; her eyes ceased to languish; they glared balefully. In a
twinkle she became years older, a formidable virago, a hag! She darted
out a tentacle of an arm, and whirled Wilbur away from his pastime with
a couple of stinging slaps. “You let them chickens alone, young one,
you hear me? You won’t, won’t you? I’ll learn you!”
Wilbur raised a long howl of protest, exerting fists and feet
impotently; Luella appeared at the kitchen door alarmed and inquiring,
and after one look, charged to the rescue. “Wha’ you doin’ t’ that
chile? Don’t you dare tech that chile!”
Mrs. Shields hurled at her an epithet foreign to the vocabularies of
real refined homes; the mulatto woman, in a fury, screeched a retort as
flavoursome; linguistically it was a battle of giants. Wilbur bawled
between them; what chickens survived scattered, peeping wildly, the
conflict assailed the very vault of heaven. At that pitch it actually
brought Mrs. Gowdy from the piano and “Hark, the herald angels sing”;
the rest of the children arrived in a scurry; the postman halted on his
round, petrified; a stray delivery boy, lingering, impartially
contributed his mite, “Yah-de-_dah_! Yee-i! Yee-i!” he yelped
ecstatically, and drifted on, a ship that passed in the night.
Wilbur fled to his mother, bellowing more in fright and anger than pain;
she received him with bewildered tenderness. “What is it? What has
happened? Tell Mother where it hurts, darling!” She gazed round
distractedly, seeking to interpret the blubbering and unintelligible
references to _ady_ and _chicky_. “What _is_ he trying to say?
Luella----?”
Luella plunged into dramatic recital with an effect of being all
eyeballs and incredibly rapid jaws. “--An’ Mis’ Gowdy, nex’ thing Ah
heah’d Wilbuh hollerin’ an’ Ah come runnin’ an’ heah she was lammin’ him
lak he was her own chile! An’ Ah ain’t gwine tek no talk lak she done
give me offa no white lady!”
“Hush, Luella, please----!”
“I’m real sorry I smacked the little fella,” said Mrs. Shields. Her ire
had flickered out as suddenly as it exploded; she spoke in visible
distress and remorse. “I didn’t go to hurt him, just to make him mind. I
only wanted to stop him stompin’ and slammin’ them chickens. I--I just
plumb couldn’t stand it. You look what he done, Mis’ Gowdy, you just
look. You wouldn’ta left him do that yourself if you’d been here.”
Mrs. Gowdy clicked regretfully, viewing the massacre.
“Tst! Tst! Why, Wilbur, did you hurt the chickies? Did mother’s little
boy do that? Don’t you remember mother’s often told you you mustn’t hurt
_anything_?”
“Make chicky go?” Wilbur suggested with reviving spirits. “Make _go_,
mamma?”
“No, Wilbur, can’t. My little boy must be kind to dumb animals,” said
Mrs. Gowdy in gentle reproof.
“He’s too little, he can’t understand, he don’t know any better. It
ain’t any use _telling_ him; there’d oughta be somebody after him,”
argued Mrs. Shields desperately. “I’m awful sorry, but I just _had_ to
make him quit it. I know I hadn’t no right to, but----”
“Yes? Yes!” said Mrs. Gowdy vaguely but forgivingly. The older children
stood around in a silence that conveyed a certain clannish hostility
toward Mrs. Shields, yet no very lively sympathy for Wilbur. Luella
retired sulkily, and Mrs. Gowdy looked after her with something as near
anxiety as her placid countenance could express. “I do hope she won’t
leave!”
“Mis’ Gowdy, I wouldn’ta done it, only there wasn’t none of you round,
and _somebody_ had to!”
“Yes? Well, perhaps it would have been better to telephone in and tell
me first. But never mind!” said Mrs. Gowdy kindly.
This episode resulted in a species of armed peace between the two
households, or on Mrs. Shields’s side at any rate. The others were
either too magnanimous or too irresponsible to hold a grudge; they
forgave and forgot even before the last of the chickens had come to its
end one way or another, that is, within the next twenty-four hours. Mrs.
Shields resolutely ignored their fate; she cleaned, gardened, spread
meals for the birds with her back carefully turned on the church
premises, and it was only by accident that from an upper window she
caught a glimpse one day of another slatted box not far from where the
wreckage of the first still lay, and of the family gathered around,
peering in, reaching down into it, exclaiming. “Bunny! Bunny!” they
chorused. Plainly, another course in humanity was being inaugurated. “My
God!” said Mrs. Shields aloud, and turned away with a despairing
philosophical shrug. At intervals for a week thereafter, escaping
rabbits scudded through her yard, or housed under the shrubbery,
proceedings which she unaccountably never witnessed. “Your bunnies? No,
I ain’t seen none round here,” she would assure the pursuing children
with her meaningless smile; and when the animals were recaptured,
exhibited none of the relief that might have been expected. But in a
little while the incursions ceased; the rabbits were apparently
disciplined to their prison. It stood in the same place, rain or shine,
day after day, and the “Bunny, bunny” was heard with less and less
frequency.
Perhaps sheer curiosity, perhaps some more creditable feeling at last
overcame Mrs. Shield’s self-enforced inhibitions; for one sultry
afternoon when the family were all out on a swimming and picnicking
expedition, conveyed in a parishioner’s automobile, she guiltily slipped
around through the alley into the other yard. There was one rabbit left
of the pair; it lay on its side in one corner of the stifling pen,
breathing hurriedly. Mrs. Shields cleaned out the pan in another corner
and filled it with fresh water; she put a little store of lettuce leaves
alongside. The creature turned a lack-lustre eye on her, without
stirring. She stood awhile contemplating it, or it might be some purpose
slowly forming in her mind. “For two cents I’d let you out,” she
remarked finally. “Only you’re so sick and weak you can’t get away. So
_that_ wouldn’t be any use!” She pondered awhile longer, then with an
air of decision, marched back into her own house and sat down to the
telephone. With her hand on the instrument, she seemed to waver,
reconsidering; then with a defiant gesture, snatched the receiver off
the hook.
A complacent patriot would have looked upon succeeding events as
demonstrating conclusively an efficiency in public office which some
other patriots are prone to question. Bright and early the next morning
there presented himself at the parsonage front door a massive, elderly,
decent, badged official, and incontinently agitated rumours filled the
air. Luella might be heard declaiming violently; Doctor Gowdy, Mrs.
Gowdy uplifted mild, startled argument; everybody united in silencing
the children. A caucus was held in the back yard; and then the officer
departed. It was most melodramatic and intriguing; there were
communicants of Saint Luke’s, not to mention innumerable outsiders, who
would have envied Mrs. Shields her proscenium-box location, but she
herself took no advantage of it, and it was without alacrity that she
answered the doorbell when the officer visited her in turn.
He touched his hat. “Good morning! Is this where the lady telephoned for
the Humane S’ciety----?” He stopped short abruptly, staring, seeming to
labour vainly with some stupendous fact well-nigh beyond his grasp.
“Well, well, _well_! Look who’s here!” he managed to get out, after a
long minute.
Mrs. Shields did not answer; she stood before him, her bearing sullen,
hostile, a little frightened.
“Look who’s here!” the officer ejaculated again, apostrophizing the
ceiling; then he brought his gaze down, and sent it everywhere, alertly
exploring. “You living here?”
“Yeh. What’s matter my living here? I gotta live _some_where. I ain’t
doin’ nothing.”
“Naw, I guess you ain’t, Tillie, or everybody’s heard before this,” the
other agreed amiably. “But say, was it you called the S’ciety, honest?”
“Yeh. What of it?”
“Why, nothin’. Nothin’ ’t all,” said the official soothingly; a grin
slowly worked its way across his features. “Only, it’s kinda funny when
you think about it, ain’t it? Don’t it strike you kinda funny?”
“It strikes me you was needed,” said Mrs. Shields, glowering at him. “It
strikes me you’n your old S’ciety better get busy.”
“Sure, sure! We’re going to. Only the rev’rend next door, and you
sickin’ the authorities onta him----” Some obscurely humorous aspect of
the situation overcame him; he propped himself against the doorpost,
shaken with chuckles.
“When you’re through----?” said Mrs. Shields with chilly venom.
“Oh, all right! All right, Tillie!” He wiped his eyes, saluted her with
burlesque obsequiousness, and went off down the walk; at the street
another convulsion overtook him.
Miss Martha Wilcox, meanwhile, in contented ignorance of all these
happenings, dreamed on, spending the rent, recounting it and spending it
over again, Alnaschar-wise; with apologies to herself, she did actually
spend some of it, here and there. It fairly burned a hole in her pocket,
and there seemed no harm in a few small indulgences; she had gone
without so long! But now Mrs. Seabury descended on her, headlong as
usual, this time with a face of portentous gloom.
“Martha, have you _heard_? Oh, well, I know you _haven’t_ heard! That’s
the reason I’m here. It just got around to me, and I didn’t wait a
minute. I’ve come right over to tell you; it’s the part of kindness. I
mean about that woman you’ve got in your house. You haven’t heard?”
Miss Martha anticipated battle, murder, and sudden death. “No. What is
it? Is she----?”
“Oh, nothing’s happened to her! Goodness, it’s a great deal worse than
_that_!” She lowered her voice with cautious glances right and left,
though they were alone. “Martha, it’s just got out who she is! You know
everybody thought there was _something_ the matter, she was so weird
looking. Well, she’s _notorious_! The notorious Tillie Shields, that’s
what they call her. You said her name was Matilda. Well, that’s who she
is!” Mrs. Seabury concluded, leaning back in triumph.
For an instant Miss Martha was conscious only of acute vexation.
“Notorious _how_, Eliza? What way?” she stammered, groping for
objections, refutations.
“Oh, for mercy’s sake, the way they all are!” Mrs. Seabury rejoined in
sharp impatience. “Well, to be sure, you’ve never been married,” she
added more leniently, and followed up this apparently irrelevant
statement with others very much to the point. “She had a _place_--one of
those _places_--in the red-light district, you know. It was a good while
ago--I don’t suppose she’s really notorious any more, she’s too old. But
that’s who she is, the notorious Tillie Shields.”
Miss Martha, envisaging calamity, averted her mind in desperate
unwillingness, desperate hope. “But how do you know? Who told you?”
“Why, Martha, it’s all over! _Everybody’s_ heard! It seems she had a
fuss with the Gowdy’s cook over their cat or the birds or something----”
Mrs. Seabury entered into graphic and approximately accurate details,
winding up with: “And the officer used to be on the police force, so, of
course, he recognized her right away! I _told_ you you oughtn’t to have
taken her without a reference.”
“But the bank said----”
“Oh, the bank!” said Mrs. Seabury scornfully. “She probably keeps a big
account there, and that’s all they care about. It’s awful to think how
that money was made, but that’s nothing to a bank.--Oh, nobody suspects
_you_ of knowing, Martha,” she interrupted herself quickly, misreading
her friend’s silence. “Nobody would believe _that_ of you for a minute.
We all _know_ you didn’t know.”
Poor Miss Wilcox, in horror, found herself for a moment wishing
vehemently that nobody _knew_. All her castles lay in ruins; and there
were those bills that had seemed so trifling, looming monumentally now!
She must undertake the abhorrent duty of putting Mrs. Shields out; and
where or when would she get another tenant? She went to the house,
flinching in expectation of the encounter with this person whom she now
classified with formless dread as _one of those women_; to be sure,
previous experience had revealed nothing alarming about her, but now
that Mrs. Shields knew herself discovered, it would undoubtedly be
different. She did not answer the bell, and Miss Martha, worriedly
investigating, at length came upon her in the back yard where she had
just finished scrubbing and refilling the bird-bath. Leaning on the
broom, she was awaiting the approach of a robin; she saw Miss Wilcox out
of the corner of her eye, and made a slight arresting gesture. The bird
came on, with a kind of wary confidence, his bright, sidewise glance
fixed on her.
“He’s just playing scairt. He knows me,” Mrs. Shields whispered. “But
_you_ better keep back a second.”
Miss Wilcox received a definite and most disconcerting shock. She had
come prepared as conscious Virtue--and her logical opponent, conscious
Vice, failed her! The notorious Tillie Shields did not look in the least
notorious; she looked like an ignorant, dull, good-hearted woman, old
and alone, cheaply pathetic with her paint and her terrific trade
simper. It was with reluctance and difficulty that Miss Martha began to
state her errand, but before she was halfway through, the other
understood.
“I s’pose Pete Maguire’s been talking,” she said with a flash of
resentful conviction. “Anyhow, I had a hunch I’d get in bad, right when
I was settin’ there at the ’phone. I don’t care! I’m glad I done it. I’d
done it, even ’f I’d known for certain!”
“I’m sorry I have to ask you to--to move,” Miss Martha began again, with
miserable diffidence. “But I--I----”
“Oh, it’s all right,” said Tillie Shields, submissively. “I’ll find some
other place to go. I always find a place, for a while, anyhow.”
Obviously she spoke in no intention of enlisting sympathy; it was a mere
statement of fact. Yet Miss Martha was remotely perturbed; and now, to
her dismay, she saw the other’s chin quiver and two tears tracking down
the paint.
“I--I liked it awful well here. Them birds----” She swallowed hard,
bringing her features under control with an effort. “Ever’thing’s been
took good care of. If it hadn’t been for next door----” She began to
talk impetuously; it was a childishly incoherent, confident outpouring.
“Miss Wilcox, you _know_ how they do! Miss Wilcox, I can’t _see_ how
folks can do that way! That rabbit had a great sore on its side! And
Doctor Gowdy’s a _preacher_!” Her voice rose in rebellious bewilderment.
“He--why, he talks beautiful in church--I’ve _heard_ him----”
So had Miss Martha. Fragments of the doctor’s noble and touching
utterances on the text: “_Inasmuch as ye do it unto the least of these,
my brethren, ye have done it unto me._” inconveniently returned to her.
“I _can’t see_----” Mrs. Shields reiterated helplessly. And neither
could Martha Wilcox. The puzzle was too much for her. Nobody, not even
the notorious Tillie Shields, had intentionally done any wrong, yet the
cumulative result of all their acts seemed to be heartbreakingly wrong,
somehow; she herself, were it not for needing the income, could have let
Mrs. Shields live there for nothing--but she could not let her live
there for eighty-five dollars a month!
“I’m so sorry----!” was all that she could say.
NOT WANTED
BY JESSE LYNCH WILLIAMS
From _Saturday Evening Post_
Phil had read it in a book. But life did not come true to literature.
When they put his first-born in his arms a strange nausea suffused this
father’s frame and he handed the warm little bundle back to his sister
hastily, as if it were hot.
“Take it away,” he whispered to Mary. “I might break it.”
And he bolted out of the room, for the doctor said he could see Nell
now. The only joy he felt was over a less vainglorious but more
important matter than becoming a father. The beautiful brave mother was
all right.
This young man had not wanted to become a father; not in the least. He
and Junior’s mother had been happy together. Now they would have to be
happy apart, if at all, for whole years at a time, until Junior was big
enough to stand trips to the wilds of Alaska or Africa or wherever else
mining engineers had to go. Nell had always gone along until this
usurper spoiled their life together. So Junior was really doing a
scandalous thing, coming between husband and wife. No wonder that Phil
had not wanted him.
Well, Junior’s mother wanted him anyway. She wanted him terrifically,
more than anything in the world except Junior’s father. And as her
husband wanted her to have everything she desired, why, probably it was
all right. There was not much else that she had lacked.
Junior did not seem to understand that he wasn’t wanted by his father
and took to Phil from the first. “All babies do,” said the jealous young
aunt. “It’s a great gift and it’s wasted on a man.” Mary was a maiden,
but she had hopes.
“He’s so big and so kind,” said the contented mother. “Children, dogs,
and old ladies always adore Phil.”
With Junior it was clearly a case of love at first sight, and he did not
act as if he were a victim of unrequited affection. For example, unlike
a woman scorned, he had no fury for his father at all except when Phil
left the room. Then he howled. His father could soothe him when even his
mother failed, and Junior would settle down into Phil’s arms with a sigh
of voluptuous satisfaction, quite as if he belonged there; and of
course, he did. That was the dismaying part about it to his father, who
scowled and looked bored. This made the young mother laugh; and that in
turn made Junior laugh, too, and look down at her from the eminence of
his father’s arms, as if trying to wink and say, “Rather a joke on the
old man.”
“I suppose I’ve got to do this all my life,” said Phil.
“All your life,” said Nell, rubbing it in; “but after a while you’ll
like it.”
She had great faith in her son’s charm.