Miss Harriet Pyne was often congratulated upon the good fortune of
having such a helper and friend as Martha. As time went on this tall,
gaunt woman, always thin, always slow, gained a dignity of behavior and
simple affectionateness of look which suited the charm and dignity of
the ancient house. She was unconsciously beautiful like a saint, like
the picturesqueness of a lonely tree which lives to shelter unnumbered
lives and to stand quietly in its place. There was such rustic
homeliness and constancy belonging to her, such beautiful powers of
apprehension, such reticence, such gentleness for those who were
troubled or sick; all these gifts and graces Martha hid in her heart.
She never joined the church because she thought she was not good enough,
but life was such a passion and happiness of service that it was
impossible not to be devout, and she was always in her humble place on
Sundays, in the back pew next the door. She had been educated by a
remembrance; Helena’s young eyes forever looked at her reassuringly from
a gay girlish face. Helena’s sweet patience in teaching her own
awkwardness could never be forgotten.
“I owe everything to Miss Helena,” said Martha, half aloud, as she sat
alone by the window; she had said it to herself a thousand times. When
she looked in the little keepsake mirror she always hoped to see some
faint reflection of Helena Vernon, but there was only her own brown old
New England face to look back at her wonderingly.
Miss Pyne went less and less often to pay visits to her friends in
Boston; there were very few friends left to come to Ashford and make
long visits in the summer, and life grew more and more monotonous. Now
and then there came news from across the sea and messages of
remembrance, letters that were closely written on thin sheets of paper,
and that spoke of lords and ladies, of great journeys, of the death of
little children and the proud successes of boys at school, of the
wedding of Helena Dysart’s only daughter; but even that had happened
years ago. These things seemed far away and vague, as if they belonged
to a story and not to life itself; the true links with the past were
quite different. There was the unvarying flock of ground-sparrows that
Helena had begun to feed; every morning Martha scattered crumbs for them
from the side doorsteps while Miss Pyne watched from the dining-room
window, and they were counted and cherished year by year.
Miss Pyne herself had many fixed habits, but little ideality or
imagination, and so at last it was Martha who took thought for her
mistress, and gave freedom to her own good taste. After a while, without
any one’s observing the change, the every-day ways of doing things in
the house came to be the stately ways that had once belonged only to the
entertainment of guests. Happily both mistress and maid seized all
possible chances for hospitality, yet Miss Harriet nearly always sat
alone at her exquisitely served table with its fresh flowers, and the
beautiful old china which Martha handled so lovingly that there was no
good excuse for keeping it hidden on closet shelves. Every year when the
old cherry-trees were in fruit, Martha carried the round white old
English dish with a fretwork edge, full of pointed green leaves and
scarlet cherries, to the minister, and his wife never quite understood
why every year he blushed and looked so conscious of the pleasure, and
thanked Martha as if he had received a very particular attention. There
was no pretty suggestion toward the pursuit of the fine art of
housekeeping in Martha’s limited acquaintance with newspapers that she
did not adopt; there was no refined old custom of the Pyne housekeeping
that she consented to let go. And every day, as she had promised, she
thought of Miss Helena,—oh, many times in every day: whether this thing
would please her, or that be likely to fall in with her fancy or ideas
of fitness. As far as was possible the rare news that reached Ashford
through an occasional letter or the talk of guests was made part of
Martha’s own life, the history of her own heart. A worn old geography
often stood open at the map of Europe on the light-stand in her room,
and a little old-fashioned gilt button, set with a bit of glass like a
ruby, that had broken and fallen from the trimming of one of Helena’s
dresses, was used to mark the city of her dwelling-place. In the changes
of a diplomatic life Martha followed her lady all about the map.
Sometimes the button was at Paris, and sometimes at Madrid; once, to her
great anxiety, it remained long at St. Petersburg. For such a slow
scholar Martha was not unlearned at last, since everything about life in
these foreign towns was of interest to her faithful heart. She satisfied
her own mind as she threw crumbs to the tame sparrows; it was all part
of the same thing and for the same affectionate reasons.