suggestiveness of their profanity, and Captain Pember had been a past
master of the accomplishment. Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley could have
been no more discriminating than the local acknowledgment of his
proficiency in this line. No wonder Mrs. Pember looked back at the ten
years of her married life with a shudder. With the rigid training of
her somewhat dogmatic communion still potent, she listened in a
horrified expectancy, rather actual than figurative, for the heavens to
strike or the earth to swallow up her nonchalant husband. Nor was this
all. The weakness for grog, unfortunately supposed to be inherent in a
nautical existence, was carried by Captain Pember to an extent
inconsiderate even in the eyes of a seafaring public; and when, under
its genial influence, he knocked his wife down and tormented Mellony,
the opinion of this same public declared itself on the side of the
victims with a unanimity which is not always to be counted upon in such
cases.
In fact, her married life had, as it were, formalized many hitherto
somewhat vague details of Mrs. Pember's conception of the place of
future punishment; and when her husband died in an appropriate and
indecorous fashion as the result of a brawl, he continued to mitigate
the relief of the event by leaving in his wife's heart a haunting fear,
begotten of New England conscientiousness, that perhaps she ought not to
be so unmistakably glad of it. It was thus that, with Mellony's growth
from childhood to womanhood, the burning regret for her former unmarried
state, whose difficulties had been mainly theological, had become a no
less burning resolve that her child should never suffer as she had
suffered, but should be guarded from matrimony as from death. That she
failed to distinguish between individuals, that she failed to see that
young Baldwin was destitute of those traits which her sharpened vision
would now have detected in Pember's youth, was both the fault of her
perceptive qualities and the fruit of her impregnable resolve. She had
been hurt by Mellony's rebellion, but not influenced by so much as a
hair's-breadth.
Early one morning, two or three days later, Mrs. Pember, lying awake
waiting for the light to grow brighter that she might begin her day,
heard a slight sound outside, of a certain incisiveness out of
proportion to its volume. With an idleness that visited her only at
early day-break, she wondered what it was. It was repeated, and this
time, moved by an insistent curiosity blended with the recognition of
its probable cause, she rose and looked out of the window which was
close to the head of her bed. A little pier was a stone's throw from the
house on that side, at which were moored several boats belonging to the
fishermen about. It was as she thought; a stooping figure, dim and hazy
in the morning fog, which blurred the nearest outlines and veiled the
more distant, was untying one of the boats, and had slipped the oars
into the rowlocks.
"Going fishing early," she said to herself. "I wonder which of 'em it
is. They are all alike in this light."
Then she stood and looked out upon the morning world. It would soon be
sunrise. Meanwhile, the earth was silent, save for the soft rippling of
the untired waves that scarcely rose and fell in this sheltered harbor;
the land had been at rest through the short night, but they had climbed
and lapsed again steadily through its hours; the paling stars would soon
have faded into the haze. The expectation of the creature waited for the
manifestation.
Softly the boat floated away from its moorings. It seemed propelled
without effort, so quietly it slipped through the water. In the bottom
lay the sail and the nets, a shadowy mass; the boat itself was little
more than a shadow, as it glided on into the thicker fog which received
and enveloped it, as into an unknown vague future which concealed and
yet held promise and welcome.
Mrs. Pember glanced at the clock. It was very early, but to go back to
bed was hardly worth while. The sun was already beginning to glint
through the fog. She dressed, and, passing softly the door of the room
where Mellony slept,--rather fitfully of late,--began to make the fire.
The morning broadened and blazed into the day, and the whole town was
making ready for its breakfast. Mellony was later than usual,--her
mother did not hear her moving about, even; but she was unwilling to
disturb her; she would wait a while longer before calling her. At last,
however, the conviction of the immorality of late rising could no longer
be ignored, and she turned the knob of Mellony's door and stepped into
the room.
She had been mistaken in supposing that Mellony was asleep; the girl
must have risen early and slipped out, for the room was empty, and Mrs.
Pember paused, surprised that she had not heard her go. It must have
been while she was getting kindling-wood in the yard that Mellony had
left by the street door. And what could she have wanted so early in the
village?--for to the village she must have gone; she was nowhere about
the little place, whose flatness dropped, treeless, to the shore. Her
mother went again to the kitchen, and glanced up and down the waterside.
There was no one on the little wooden pier, and the boats swung gently
by its side, their own among them, so Mellony had not gone out in that.
Yes, she must have gone to the village, and Mrs. Pember opened the front
door and scanned the wandering little street. It was almost empty; the
early morning activity of the place was in other directions.
With the vague uneasiness that unaccustomed and unexplained absence
always produces, but with no actual apprehension, Mrs. Pember went back
to her work. Mellony had certain mild whims of her own, but it was
surprising that she should have left her room in disorder, the bed
unmade; that was not like her studious neatness. With a certain grimness
Mrs. Pember ate her breakfast alone. Of course no harm had come to
Mellony, but where was she? Unacknowledged, the shadow of Ira Baldwin
fell across her wonder. Had Mellony cared so much for him that her
disappointment had driven her to something wild and fatal? She did not
ask the question, but her lips grew white and stiff at the faintest
suggestion of it. Several times she went to the door, meaning to go out,
and up the street to look for her daughter, but each time something
withheld her. Instead, with that determination that distinguished her,
she busied herself with trifling duties. It was quite nine o'clock when
she saw Captain Phippeny coming up the street. She stood still and
watched him approach. His gait was more rolling than ever, as he came
slowly towards her, and he glanced furtively ahead at her house, and
then dropped his eyes and pretended not to have seen her. She grew
impatient to have him reach her, but she only pressed her lips together
and stood the more rigidly still. At last he stood in front of her
doorstone, his hat in his hand. The yellow shirt and the leathern jacket
were more succinctly audacious than ever, but doubt and irresolution in
every turn of his blue eyes and line of his weather-beaten face had
taken the place of the tolerant kindliness.
"It's a warm mornin', Mis' Pember," he observed, more disconcerted than
ever by her unsmiling alertness.
"You came a good ways to tell me that, Captain Phippeny."
"Yes, I did. Leastways I didn't," he responded. "I come to tell you
about--about Mellony."
"What about Mellony, Captain Phippeny?" she demanded, pale, but
uncompromising. "What have you got to tell me about Mellony Pember?" she
reiterated as he paused.
"Not Mellony Pember," gasped the captain, a three-cornered smile trying
to make headway against his embarrassment as he recalled the ancient
tale of breaking the news to the Widow Smith; "Mellony Baldwin."
"Mellony Baldwin!" repeated Mrs. Pember, stonily, not yet fully
comprehending.
The captain grew more and more nervous.
"Yes," he proceeded, with the haste of despair, "yes. Mis' Pember, you
see Mellony--Mellony's married."
"Mellony married!" Strangely enough she had not thought of that. She
grasped the doorpost for support.
"Yes, she up and married him," went on the captain more blithely. "I
hardly thought it of Mellony," he added in not unpleasurable reflection,
"nor yet of Ira."
"Nor I either." Mrs. Pember's lips moved with difficulty. Mellony
married! The structure reared with tears and prayers, the structure of
Mellony's happiness, seemed to crumble before her eyes.
"And I was to give you this;" and from the lining of his hat the
captain drew forth a folded paper.
"Then you knew about it?" said Mrs. Pember, in a flash of cold wrath.
"No, no, I didn't. My daughter's boy brought this to me, and I was to
tell you they was married. And why they set the job onto me the Lord he
only knows!" and Captain Phippeny wiped his heated forehead with
feeling; "but that's all _I_ know."
Slowly, her fingers trembling, she unfolded the note.
"I have married Ira, mother," she read. "He took me away in a boat early
this morning. It was the only way. I will come back when you want me. If
I am to be unhappy, I'd rather be unhappy this way. I can't be unhappy
your way any longer. I'm sorry to go against you, mother; but it's my
life, after all, not yours, MELLONY."
As Mrs. Pember's hands fell to her side and the note slipped from her
fingers, the daily tragedy of her married life seemed to pass before
her eyes. She saw Captain Pember reel into the house, she shuddered at
his blasphemy, she felt the sting of the first blow he had given her,
she cowered as he roughly shook Mellony's little frame by her childish
arm.
"She'd better be dead!" she murmured. "I wish she was dead."
Captain Phippeny pulled himself together. "No, she hadn't,--no, you
don't, Mis' Pember," he declared stoutly. "You're making a mistake. You
don't want to see Mellony dead any more'n I do. She's only got married,
when all's said and done, and there's a sight of folks gets married and
none the worse for it. Ira Baldwin ain't any great shakes,--I dono as he
is; he's kinder light complected and soft spoken,--but he ain't a born
fool, and that's a good deal, Mis' Pember." He paused impressively, but
she did not speak. "And he ain't goin' to beat Mellony, either; he ain't
that sort. I guess Mellony could tackle him, if it came to that,
anyhow. I tell you, Mis' Pember, there's one thing you don't take no
reckonin' on,--there's a difference in husbands, there's a ter'ble
difference in 'em!" Mrs. Pember looked at him vaguely. Why did he go on
talking? Mellony was married. "Mellony's got one kind, and you--well,"
he went on, with cautious delicacy, "somehow you got another. I tell you
it's husbands as makes the difference to a woman when it comes to
marryin'."
Mrs. Pember stooped, picked up the note, turned and walked into the
living-room and sat down. She looked about her with that sense of
unreality that visits us at times. There was the chair in which Mellony
sat the night of her rebellious outbreak,--Mellony, her daughter, her
married daughter. Other women talked about their "married daughters"
easily enough, and she had pitied them; now she would have to talk so,
too. She felt unutterably lonely. Her household, like her hope, was
shattered. She looked up and saw that Captain Phippeny had followed her
in and was standing before her, turning his hat in his brown, tattooed
hands.
"Mis' Pember," he said, "I thought, mebbe, now Mellony was married,
you'd be thinkin' of matrimony yourself agen." As Mrs. Pember gazed at
him dumbly it seemed as if she must all at once have become another
person. Matrimony had suddenly become domesticated, as it were. Her eyes
travelled over the horseshoe charm and the long gold chain, as she
listened, and from pocket to pocket. "And so I wanted to say that I'd
like to have you think of me, if you was making out the papers for
another v'yage. The first mate I sailed with, she says to me when she
died, 'You've been a good husband, Phippeny,' says she. I wouldn't say
anythin' to you, I wouldn't take the resk, if she hadn't said that to
me. Mis' Pember, and I'm tellin' it to you now because there's such a
difference; and I feel kinder encouraged by it to ask you to try me. I'd
like to have you marry me, Mis' Pember."
It was a long speech, and the captain was near to suffocation when it
was finished, but he watched her with anxious keenness as he waited for
her to reply. The stern lines of her mouth relaxed slowly. A brilliant
red geranium in the window glowed in the sunlight which had just reached
it. The world was not all dark. The room seemed less lonely with the
captain in it, as she glanced around it a second time. She scanned his
face: the buttonhole of a mouth had a kindly twist; he did not look in
the least like handsome Dick Pember. Mellony had married, and her world
was in fragments, and something must come after.
"I never heard as you weren't a good husband to Mis' Phippeny," she said
calmly, "and I dono as anybody'll make any objection if I marry you,
Captain Phippeny."
Memoir of Mary Twining
THE other day I spent several hours in looking over a lot of dusty
volumes which had fallen to me in the way of inheritance. In the
somewhat heterogeneous collection I came upon a brief memoir which,
after a glance within, I laid aside as worthy, at least, of perusal. The
other books were of little value of any sort--an orthodox commentary, an
odd volume of a county history, one or two cook-books, a worn and broken
set of certain standard British authors,--the usual assortment to be
found in a country farmhouse, whose occupants soon ceased to keep up
with the times. But this little book seemed to me unusual,--an opinion
subsequently confirmed by examination. I had long ago discovered the
fallacy of that tradition of early youth that a memoir is, of necessity,
dull, and I was in nowise unfavorably affected by the title, "Memoir of
Mary Twining." There proved to be something to me singularly quaint and
charming in this little sketch, something fresh and new in this voice
from bygone years. The subject of the memoir attracted me powerfully,
both from the simplicity and naturalness of her own words, and the
freedom and occasional depth of both thought and expression, in a day
when freedom and thinking for one's self were less the fashion of New
England maidens than they have since become. Or, it may be that the
Editor, notwithstanding an occasional stiffness and apparent want of
sympathy, has so well done his work, has understood so well what to give
us and what to keep from us, that the reader's interest is skilfully
fostered from the start. Be this as it may, I have not been able to
resist the temptation to write, myself, a little of this memoir and its
subject, to make a little wider, if I may, the public who have been told
the story of this life. Not that it was an exciting or an eventful one,
though lived in stirring times, but as I have already said, it seems to
have a certain charm which should not be left forgotten in country
garrets or unnoticed in second-hand bookstores. With no further apology
for this review of it, I shall let the book, as far as possible, speak
for itself.
Mary Twining was born in Middleport, Massachusetts, June 27, 1757. Her
father fought with Colonel Washington in the French and Indian War, and
subsequently under General Washington in a later disturbance. Her mother
was a granddaughter of one of the early colonial governors. Mary seems
to have come naturally enough by fine impulses and good breeding.
"It is not," says the conscientious biographer, "from any vain
Partiality for high-sounding names, or any poor Pretense of good blood,
which were most out of place in this our Republic, made so by the Genius
and enduring Fortitude of all classes of Men, that I claim for Mary
Twining stately Lineage, but that when such Accidents fall in the lives
of Human Beings, it is not a thing to make light of, but worthy of study
in its Results. Besides which is General Washington none the less a Good
Soldier in that he is a Gentleman."
I suspect the traditions of a loyal Englishman had not been wholly
eradicated from the mind of this biographer by a few years of plebeian
institutions. With equal truth he goes on, however, to say that what was
"of an Importance swallowing up the Lesser Matter of Lineage and
Station, Richard Twining was an upright and a God-fearing man, and Mary,
his wife, patterned in all things after the Behaviour of her godly
Ancestor." Either Richard or Mary, his wife, must have something
"patterned" after a liberal and occasionally self-willed model, else
whence came the spice of independence in the little Mary's character?
She was an only child, and only children were probably in the middle of
the eighteenth very much what they are in the close of the nineteenth
century,--little beings allowed greater liberties, and burdened with
heavier accountabilities, than where there are more to divide both.
There are several incidents told of her childhood, not particularly
remarkable, perhaps, but showing that her mind and her imagination were
alive. She was not by any means a precocious child; her mind was but
little, if at all, in advance of her years. If one may judge from
detached anecdotes and descriptions, she showed no more than the
receptivity and quickness natural to a bright and somewhat unusually
clear intellect. Through all these anecdotes there runs a vein denoting
what is less common in childhood than a certain precocity,--a keen sense
of justice. She appears to have reasoned of many things, usually taken
by childhood for granted, and assented to their results only if they
seemed to her childishness just. If after life showed her that the
affairs of this life can be but seldom regulated according to the ideas
of finite justice, she never seems to have lost a certain fairness of
judgment and opinion, which is rare in one of her sex and circumstances.
When five years old, her mother, wishing her to give up a pet doll to a
little crippled friend, told her that sympathy should suggest her doing
it; that it was a privilege to make another happy; that it was
selfishness to prefer her own pleasure of possession to that of another.
But Mary listened unmoved to these arguments. Nevertheless the struggle
was not a long one. With a good grace, after a few moments of silence,
she carried the doll to her unfortunate friend. "Mamma," she said
soberly, "she shall have it, for it is right that she should. I feel it.
I shall have many things that she can never have."
For the logic of five years it was no small thing to have settled this
question in this way. It would take too much time and too much space to
dwell on the anecdotes of her childhood. Indeed, the biographer does not
linger on them long himself.
"It is meet," he says, "to speak of these early Years, not from a desire
to show that there was aught in the Childhood of Mary Twining remarkable
or unnatural, that should be the Cause of Wonder or Admiration. But the
rather that there may be evinced the Presence, even in the Germ, of
certain Qualities of Soundness of Judgment and of Thoughtfulness unusual
in a Female, which grew with her Growth, and which were in later Years,
developed into stronger Traits by no unnatural means."
In 1773 she was sent away to a school in which she remained three years,
varied by occasional visits at home. She made several friends here, and
here, for the first time, kept a methodical and somewhat extended
diary. From this diary her biographer makes copious extracts. In fact,
from this period the memoir is chiefly made up from her several
journals, in whose continuity there are now and then large gaps, with
occasional notes. I shall make less copious extracts, principally those
bearing upon that matter of which we always, more or less consciously,
seek traces in the lives of individuals, distinguished or obscure, the
love story. But first for her school life, into which few whispers of
sentiment penetrated. It was no fashionable boarding-school to which she
was sent, attended by young ladies whose dreams of what they will soon
be doing in society monopolize the hours nominally devoted to literature
and the sciences. An old friend of her mother opened her house to a few
representatives of those families with whom she was acquainted, where,
under the best teachers the country afforded, they were trained in such
acquirements as were prescribed by the canons of the day. On the
fifteenth of September she says:--
"I have been something more than a week at the good School which my kind
Parents have chosen for me. There seems, after all, to be little doing
here. The few exercises in Mathematics, and the selections from the
works of the most Highly Endowed of the Authors of England appear to me
to be the most Profitable. As for the matter of Embroidery, I worked
with Patience, ten years ago, a Sampler which was not considered
discreditable, and it seems to me that of the multiplying of Stitches
there is no end, and it were, perhaps, as well to go no farther. My
daily Practice on the Spinet, may, perhaps, be the means of giving
Pleasure at some Future Time, but it is the Occasion of but little
Benefit in the Present, and of the Future can we be never certain."
The question of profitableness of a good many of her employments was
often in her mind during these three years. She cannot help feeling
that there are times when it is hard to contentedly fold the hands over
even the worsted marvels of a "not discreditable" sampler. A year later,
she says again:--
"More Practice and more Embroidery this afternoon. There are those of my
Companions who ask nothing better than such unvarying Exercises. In them
they find room for the employing of their Imagination and their Spirit.
I wonder if it be so great a Fault in me, that I find them wearying. It
is not that they are in themselves so distasteful, as it is that there
seemeth much work waiting to be done, which a woman's Hands might well
do, were it not reckoned somewhat unseemly."
"Her's was a somewhat restless Soul," says her biographer, "perplexing
itself with Questions which it was not for her to answer."
Yes, with questions with which many a restless woman's soul has since
perplexed itself, and which are now only beginning to attain solution.
It is pleasant to find, in these early times, when we fancy New England
maidens well content with their spinning and bread-making, hints that
there were enterprising spirits who thought the prescribed round a too
narrow one.
She finds some fault with one of her teachers for being too lenient with
her.
"I received no Reproof," she says, "to-day when I most Richly deserved
it. A Disturbance in the Hour for Study was entirely of my own making,
but the Person who is Master at that Hour refused, with Persistence, to
see it. I made it most evident, but he remarked, with a frown for a less
Offender, that he should hold Mistress Twining excused. I shall find
Occasion to address him on this Subject, for if I receive due Credit for
that which I do that is Well Done, I shall show no unwillingness to bear
the Brunt of my Superior's Displeasure for what is Ill Done. Moreover, I
will not have it otherwise."
"It were better," is the brief comment, "it were better had Mary
Twining shown more Regret for what she herself confesses was ill done,
rather than that she should take upon herself to correct the Faults of
those towards whom she was somewhat lacking in Reverence." But it is
droll enough to fancy the scene--the pretty schoolgirl gravely rebuking
her delinquent master for the too great partiality her own bright eyes
had won for her. Poor man! His was no sinecure. To hold rule over a
parcel of unruly girls, with the graces of one so tugging at his
heartstrings! His path might at least have been spared the thorn of
having his fault denounced by the very voice that had done the mischief.
During the last year of her stay she writes less. Did the objectlessness
of this education of hers pall upon the energy of her nature more and
more? Or was her woman's heart preparing the way for the answer to this
restless questioning? It is only now and then that we catch a glimpse of
this development, which was singularly mature and singularly free from
restriction.