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THE UNCALLED
A Novel
by
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
Author of "Lyrics of Lowly Life"
New York
International Association of Newspapers and Authors
1901
Copyright, 1898
by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Copyright, 1898
by Dodd, Mead and Company
North River Bindery Co.
Printers and Binders
New York
Dedicated
TO MY WIFE
THE UNCALLED
CHAPTER I
It was about six o'clock of a winter's morning. In the eastern sky faint
streaks of grey had come and were succeeded by flashes of red,
crimson-cloaked heralds of the coming day. It had snowed the day before,
but a warm wind had sprung up during the night, and the snow had
partially melted, leaving the earth showing through in ugly patches of
yellow clay and sooty mud. Half despoiled of their white mantle, though
with enough of it left to stand out in bold contrast to the bare places,
the houses loomed up, black, dripping, and hideous. Every once in a
while the wind caught the water as it trickled from the eaves, and sent
it flying abroad in a chill unsparkling spray. The morning came in,
cold, damp, and dismal.
At the end of a short, dirty street in the meanest part of the small
Ohio town of Dexter stood a house more sagging and dilapidated in
appearance than its disreputable fellows. From the foundation the walls
converged to the roof, which seemed to hold its place less by virtue of
nails and rafters than by faith. The whole aspect of the dwelling, if
dwelling it could be called, was as if, conscious of its own meanness,
it was shrinking away from its neighbours and into itself. A sickly
light gleamed from one of the windows. As the dawn came into the sky, a
woman came to the door and looked out. She was a slim woman, and her
straggling, dusty-coloured hair hung about an unpleasant sallow face.
She shaded her eyes with her hand, as if the faint light could hurt
those cold, steel-grey orbs. "It 's mornin'," she said to those within.
"I 'll have to be goin' along to git my man's breakfast: he goes to work
at six o'clock, and I 'ain't got a thing cooked in the house fur him.
Some o' the rest o' you 'll have to stay an' lay her out." She went back
in and closed the door behind her.
"La, Mis' Warren, you ain't a-goin' a'ready? Why, there 's everything to
be done here yit: Margar't 's to be laid out, an' this house has to be
put into some kind of order before the undertaker comes."
"I should like to know what else I 'm a-goin' to do, Mis' Austin.
Charity begins at home. My man 's got to go to work, an' he 's got to
have his breakfast: there 's cares fur the livin' as well as fur the
dead, I say, an' I don't believe in tryin' to be so good to them that 's
gone that you furgit them that 's with you."
Mrs. Austin pinched up her shrivelled face a bit more as she replied,
"Well, somebody ought to stay. I know I can't, fur I 've got a ter'ble
big washin' waitin' fur me at home, an' it 's been two nights sence I
've had any sleep to speak of, watchin' here. I 'm purty near broke
down."
"That 's jest what I 've been a-sayin'," repeated Mrs. Warren. "There 's
cares fur the livin' as well as fur the dead; you 'd ought to take care
o' yoreself: first thing you know you 'll be flat o' yore own back."
A few other women joined their voices in the general protest against
staying. It was for all the world as if they had been anxious to see the
poor woman out of the world, and, now that they knew her to be gone, had
no further concern for her. All had something to do, either husbands to
get off to work or labours of their own to perform.
A little woman with a weak voice finally changed the current of talk by
saying, "Well, I guess I kin stay: there 's some cold things at home
that my man kin git, an' the childern 'll git off to school by
themselves. They 'll all understand."
"That 's right, Melissy Davis," said a hard-faced woman who had gone on
about some work she was doing, without taking any notice of the
clamorous deserters, "an' I 'll stay with you. I guess I 've got about
as much work to do as any of you," she added, casting a cold glance at
the women who were now wrapped up and ready to depart, "an' I was n't so
much of a friend of Margar't's as some of you, neither, but on an
occasion like this I know what dooty is." And Miss Hester Prime closed
her lips in a very decided fashion.
"Oh, well, some folks is so well off in money an' time that they kin
afford to be liberal with a pore creature like Margar't, even ef they
did n't have nothin' to do with her before she died."
Miss Prime's face grew sterner as she replied, "Margar't Brent was n't
my kind durin' life, an' that I make no bones o' sayin' here an' now;
but when she got down on the bed of affliction I done what I could fur
her along with the best of you; an' you, Mandy Warren, that 's seen me
here day in an' day out, ought to be the last one to deny that.
Furthermore, I did n't advise her to leave her husband, as some people
did, but I did put in a word an' help her to work so 's to try to keep
her straight afterwards, though it ain't fur me to be a-braggin' about
what I done, even to offset them that did n't do nothin'."
This parting shot told, and Mrs. Warren flared up like a wax light. "It
's a wonder yore old tracts an' the help you give her did n't keep her
sober sometimes."
"Ef I could n't keep her sober, I was n't one o' them that set an' took
part with her when she was gittin' drunk."
"'Sh! 'sh!" broke in Mrs. Davis: "ef I was you two I would n't go on
that way. Margar't 's dead an' gone now, an' what 's past is past. Pore
soul, she had a hard enough time almost to drive her to destruction; but
it 's all over now, an' we ought to put her away as peaceful as
possible."
The women who had all been in such a hurry had waited at the prospect
of an altercation, but, seeing it about to blow over, they bethought
themselves of their neglected homes and husbands, and passed out behind
the still irate Mrs. Warren, who paused long enough in earshot to say,
"I hope that spiteful old maid 'll have her hands full."
The scene within the room which the women had just left was anything but
an inviting one. The place was miserably dirty. Margaret had never been
a particularly neat housewife, even in her well days. The old rag carpet
which disfigured the floor was worn into shreds and blotched with
grease, for the chamber was cooking- and dining- as well as
sleeping-room. A stove, red with rust, struggled to send forth some
heat. The oily black kerosene lamp showed a sickly yellow flame through
the grimy chimney.
On a pallet in one corner lay a child sleeping. On the bed, covered with
a dingy sheet, lay the stark form out of which the miserable life had so
lately passed.
The women opened the blinds, blew out the light, and began performing
the necessary duties for the dead.
"Anyhow, let her body go clean before her Maker," said Miss Hester
Prime, severely.
"Don't be too hard on the pore soul, Miss Hester," returned Mrs. Davis.
"She had a hard time of it. I knowed Margar't when she was n't so low
down as in her last days."
"She ought n't never to 'a' left her husband."
"Oh, ef you 'd 'a' knowed him as I did, Miss Hester, you would n't never
say that. He was a brute: sich beatin's as he used to give her when he
was in liquor you never heerd tell of."
"That was hard, but as long as he was a husband he was a protection to
her name."
"True enough. Protection is a good dish, but a beatin's a purty bitter
sauce to take with it."
"I wonder what 's ever become of Brent."
"Lord knows. No one 'ain't heerd hide ner hair o' him sence he went away
from town. People thought that he was a-hangin' around tryin' to git a
chance to kill Mag after she got her divorce from him, but all at once
he packed off without sayin' a word to anybody. I guess he's drunk
himself to death by this time."
When they had finished with Margaret, the women set to work to clean up
the house. The city physician who had attended the dead woman in her
last hours had reported the case for county burial, and the undertaker
was momentarily expected.
"We 'll have to git the child up an' git his pallet out of the way, so
the floor kin be swept."
"A body hates to wake the pore little motherless dear."
"Perhaps, after all, the child is better off without her example."
"Yes, Miss Hester, perhaps; but a mother, after all, is a mother."
"Even sich a one as this?"
"Even sich a one as this."
Mrs. Davis bent over the child, and was about to lift him, when he
stirred, opened his eyes, and sat up of his own accord. He appeared
about five years of age. He might have been a handsome child, but
hardship and poor feeding had taken away his infantile plumpness, and he
looked old and haggard, even beneath the grime on his face. The kindly
woman lifted him up and began to dress him.
"I want my mamma," said the child.
Neither of the women answered: there was something tugging at their
heart-strings that killed speech.
Finally the little woman said, "I don't know ef we did right to let him
sleep through it all, but then it was sich a horrible death."
When she had finished dressing the child, she led him to the bed and
showed him his mother's face. He touched it with his little grimy
finger, and then, as if, young as he was, the realization of his
bereavement had fully come to him, he burst into tears.
Miss Hester turned her face away, but Mrs. Davis did not try to conceal
her tears. She took the boy up in her arms and comforted him the best
she could.
"Don't cry, Freddie," she said; "don't cry; mamma's--restin'. Ef you
don't care, Miss Prime, I 'll take him over home an' give him some
breakfast, an' leave him with my oldest girl, Sophy. She kin stay out o'
school to-day. I 'll bring you back a cup o' tea, too; that is, ef you
ain't afeared--"
"Afeared o' what?" exclaimed Miss Prime, turning on her.
"Well, you know, Miss Hester, bein' left alone--ah--some people air
funny about--"
"I 'm no fool, Melissy Davis. Take the child an' go on."
Miss Hester was glad of the chance to be sharp. It covered the weakness
to which she had almost given way at sight of the child's grief. She
bustled on about her work when Mrs. Davis was gone, but her brow was
knit into a wrinkle of deep thought. "A mother is a mother, after all,"
she mused aloud, "even sich a one."