It is strange how small a residue will be left by how large a volume
of life. Experiences that run through weeks and months can be summed
up at last in an epigram. Not that I am one, let me say in passing,
who is given to that form of expression. The thing done has for me no
such interest as the thing doing--to dip again into that dictionary.
Yet the rest of my summer in Marshbury added very little to the picture
which I have begun to sketch. I had had my impression. I merely spent
my time turning it over, taking it in. And the most curious thing was
that, savouring the impression as much as I did, I could go away and
think no more about it. I went away, and I stayed away three years.
The attractions of Italy for the time outweighed all others. But
after my “beaker full of the warm South,” I had a whim to go back to
Marshbury. To speak in homely terms, I suppose it was on the same
principle that one likes a cold shower after a hot scrub. At any rate,
I am never so fond of the North as after a prolonged sojourn in the
South, or of America as after Europe. And the picture of my pagan came
to me again more strikingly than ever--that picture which would have
been so impossible in the country from which I returned, which was so
of the soil of that to which I went back. To Marshbury, therefore,
I proceeded; and, of course, for old times’ sake, I put up at Mrs.
Bennett’s. Indeed I could not put up anywhere else. They were all so a
part of the impression.
As for that, however--! I was not in the least prepared for the changes
it had undergone. I must even confess that I was at first a little
disappointed. I somehow felt that Marshbury had not honourably kept its
tryst with me. So does one insist on opposing one’s childish singleness
of idea to the richness of life! The background, to be sure, was
exactly as I remembered it. The hills looked just as they had from the
time of the Flood. So, I felt certain, did the houses and the people.
By whom I mean the lay figures, the supernumeraries. And Mrs. Bennett
herself, who was no supernumerary, was good enough to spare a shock
to my sensibilities. But that only made Mary seem the more unnatural.
She had suffered one of those metamorphoses to which the young are so
peculiarly susceptible--and which, apparently, no amount of experience
can ever teach their absent elders to foresee. The curious thing about
it was that I could trace, after the event, how impossible it would
have been for her to turn out otherwise. Even through her solidest days
she had always been prettier than she could help. It was only natural
that she should have grown up into a handsome dignity that barely fell
short of beauty and stateliness. And while she was little freer of
words than she ever had been, she no longer gave one the feeling that
she stood in want of them. Altogether she distinctly left me staring.
And she by no means put an end to it when, in response to my inquiry as
to whether she still went to Mr. Marvin’s, she replied:
“Yes. He’s got a girl now. He says she’s the one who used to sing to
him in the brook.”
This statement surprised but did not enlighten me. I did not know
whether to understand that the Pagan employed a maid or was somehow
in possession of a daughter. It appeared, however, that the latter
was the case. And it furthermore appeared--at least to my subliminal
consciousness--that in Mary a tacit forbearance with her master’s
failings, as being more of the head than of the heart, was less
unquestioning than it had been. It may have been that I saw more than
there was. I generally do. At any rate, when it occurred to me to ask
whether Marvin still kept up his bar, I certainly touched something. I
could see it in the way Mary told me that everything had changed since
the girl came. I felt for her. I felt, that is, as if some bungler had
got hold of my rather original little sketch and had finished it off in
the conventional old fashion.
Marvin had a child. That was the bare fact. But the full story I did
not get then. Nor, for that matter, do I suppose I ever shall. I did
pick up one thing and another, though, and the result of my pickings I
shall now attempt to set forth. It will take less time if I do it in
my own way. Particularly as I have no love for the dialect in which my
information came to me. If Truth lie within that pale, let me forever
go without!
The affair must have caused a good deal of scandal at the time.
Marshbury took even less pride in the possession of a Potter’s Field
than in its lack of tenants. And when a strange woman turned up from
somewhere, and had the ill grace to die in the Poorhouse, people felt
that their good intentions had been imposed upon. Although they did
grant that it was the best thing the woman had ever done.... But the
worst of it was that a shock-headed little girl of nine or ten was
left on the Overseers’ hands--a small imp into whom her mother’s devil
had returned with seven wickeder than himself. It took no time at all
for the matron of the Poorhouse to shake her head and sigh: “Blood
will tell!” Indeed, she openly expressed surprise that the Most High
in his mercy had neglected to take the child unto himself at the same
time as the mother. It certainly would have saved Mrs. Lovejoy an
infinity of trouble. The mischief that child was not up to! She was
as unmanageable as quicksilver. Her worst trick though, was running
away; and she had a passion for playing in the brook of which no amount
of whipping could cure her. Time and again the countryside was beaten
by night, the brook dragged from one end to the other, only to have
her turn up safe and sound and very hungry, without any idea where she
had been or what anxiety she had caused. Nothing ever happened to her,
either. It was so notorious that Mrs. Lovejoy would often have been
glad to let her go, just to have the child off her mind.
It did not take this inquiring young lady long to discover Marvin. Two
causes operated powerfully toward that effect. The first of them was
that she had been warned against him, as being the nearest and most
dangerous of her neighbours. The second was that her brook ran through
his orchard. Accordingly she waded singing upon him one day as he sat
with his book under an apple-tree.
“Well!” he exclaimed, as the childish voice suddenly stopped and he
looked up to find a bare-legged little apparition holding scant skirts
in both hands above the water. “Who are you?”
“I’m Sassy,” she answered, taking him in with big black eyes. “That
ain’t my real name, though. The old woman says it ain’t Christian. My
real name’s Daphne.”
“Well, well!” ejaculated Marvin. “Mary!” he called to that young woman,
who happened to be out at the pump, “here’s the naiad of the brook come
to pay me a visit!” And to the child, who balanced herself on a smooth
stone while she splashed an overhanging branch with her foot: “What old
woman is that?”
“Mis’ Lovejoy,” answered she of the unruly hair.
“Lovejoy,” repeated Marvin. “Love-Joy. That’s a nice name.” He was a
little at a loss for something to say. “Is she your mother?”
“Huh!” cried the child. “It may be a nice name, but it’s all that’s
nice about her. She’s just as horrid as she can be. I hate her. She
ain’t my mother a bit. It ’most seems as if I never had any.” And she
began to visit upon the water a series of spiteful kicks that spattered
even Marvin’s page.
“Oh!” said he.
The two then looked at each other for a minute. But it was the child
who spoke first.
“What do you do?”
“What do I do?” queried Marvin, puzzled. “I don’t do much of anything
that I know of.”
“I mean what do you do that’s bad?” promptly returned the child. “They
told me I mustn’t ever speak to you, because you’re bad. I’m bad too.
That’s why I came.”
“Oh!” laughed Marvin. “Supposing you tell me what _you_ do.”
“Lots of things--tear my clothes, and muddy my shoes, and sit in the
grass, and climb trees, and slap, and kick, and run away whenever I get
a chance. Most of all, though, I play in the brook. Are you as bad as
that?”
Marvin held out his hand.
“Just about!” he told her. “But don’t run away from here yet a while,
Daphne--or turn into a laurel. We have too many things to talk about,
you and I.”
So it was that Daphne and the Pagan first cemented the bonds of
friendship. In the eyes of the unappreciative community that harboured
them, however, it was but another point against them both. If Marvin
had known what pangs his small ally was compelled to endure in his
behalf, he would long before have done what he did. For, as Mrs.
Lovejoy had ever been one to live up to her word, Daphne spent an
increasing portion of her days in cupboards. She likewise became an
expert on the elastic properties of different domestic woods, and
subsisted chiefly on bread and water. But when not otherwise engaged
she spent all her time at Marvin’s, to the despair and dismay of all in
authority above her. “Birds of a feather!” they ominously whispered.
Until at last things got too serious for whispers, and Mrs. Lovejoy
took matters into her own hands.
It must have been quite a scene. The rumour of it still filled
Marshbury at the time of my second visit. Mary Bennett had been washing
windows in the kitchen, and I got the most authentic details. It seemed
that Mrs. Lovejoy swooped down like the wolf on the fold, one afternoon
when Daphne was missing, and discovered the two, as she expected, in
earnest colloquy. She did not wait for preliminaries. I must say I
rather admire it, too--that trait which will seek the point at any
cost, without fear or favour.
“I don’t know what you find in that child,” she said to Marvin--“born
of a common woman of the street that’s buried in the Potter’s Field,
and as full of Satan as an onion is of smell! But when we’re trying to
do our best for her, it seems too bad that you should come along with
your heathenish notions and just undo everything. I’ll thank you to
keep them to yourself. Sassy, you come along with me.”
“I won’t!” declared the child, roundly. And she ran for refuge into
Marvin’s arms.
Well, she stayed there. Of course there was a tremendous row. Mrs.
Lovejoy stormed, and Daphne cried, and Marvin manœuvred rather
helplessly between. And the upshot of it was that Mrs. Lovejoy retired
ignominiously from the field, leaving her adversary the somewhat
astonished possessor of an infant. Not that his title was uncontested.
Mrs. Lovejoy’s last word had been that she would put the matter
before the Overseers, and she did. If she was a harsh woman, she
was, according to her lights, a just one. She did what she thought
best in circumstances which she was not subtle enough to understand.
Sassy was an intolerable incubus to her, but for the good of Sassy’s
immortal soul she thought the waif should be saved from Marvin. After
much parleying, however, it was concluded to let the child stay. She
had been given her chance. The community had done its duty. And its
representative, in the person of Mrs. Lovejoy, realised that, after
all, there was a limit to the endurance of flesh and blood. It would
therefore perhaps be allowable to let the orphan go into hands that
were ready to care for her. The community promised itself that, under
this provision for the material aspect of the case, it would keep a
watchful eye on the child’s moral welfare.
I am not sure that the community did not envy for Marvin a little
moral discipline in the contract which he so unexpectedly undertook.
Certainly there were distinct elements of humour in the situation.
To drop an incorrigible youngster into the arms of a man who knew no
more about children than he did about the fourth dimension, and who
had risen in the morning without the faintest notion of adopting one,
might suggest very dubious results. But the brilliant success of the
experiment only served to let in a little light on the ignorance of
bachelors and the incorrigibility of waifs. The pair entered upon a
life which became no less amazing to themselves than to the community
at large. People could not imagine where the two discovered the secrets
of virtue and good humour with which they suddenly blossomed forth. It
amounted to another proof of their innate perversity.
At all events, for the first time in many days both of them were happy.
They paddled unmolested in their brook. They invented solemn mysteries
about their relation to it. They climbed their apple-trees. They dug
their garden. They kept house--without a bar. They told stories. They
explored the countryside for leagues around. Altogether they used to
make me wish, when I came to meet them on the hills, that I could be a
pagan too.