Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
LOVEY MARY
BY
ALICE HEGAN RICE
AUTHOR OF
"Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch"
1903
TO
CALE YOUNG RICE
WHO TAUGHT ME THE SECRET
OF PLUCKING ROSES FROM
A CABBAGE PATCH
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I A CACTUS-PLANT
II A RUNAWAY COUPLE
III THE HAZY HOUSEHOLD
IV AN ACCIDENT AND AN INCIDENT
V THE DAWN OF A ROMANCE
VI THE LOSING OF MR. STUBBINS
VII NEIGHBORLY ADVICE
VIII A DENOMINATIONAL GARDEN
IX LABOR DAY
X A TIMELY VISIT
XI THE CHRISTMAS PLAY
XII REACTION
XIII AN HONORABLE RETREAT
XIV THE CACTUS BLOOMS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"They met at the pump." ..... Frontispiece
"'Now the Lord meant you to be plain.'"
"'Come here, Tom, and kiss your mother.'"
"''T ain't no street...; this here is the Cabbage Patch.'"
"She puffed her hair at the top and sides."
"'She took on mighty few airs fer a person in mournin'.'"
"She sat on the door-step, white and miserable." 67
"Mrs. Wiggs took pictures from her walls and chairs from her parlor to
beautify the house of Hazy."
"Mr. Stubbins, sitting in Mrs. Wiggs's most comfortable chair, with a
large slice of pumpkin-pie in his hand."
"'Stick out yer tongue.'"
"Asia held out her hands, which were covered with warm red mitts."
"Master Robert Redding was right side up again, sobbing himself quiet
in Lovey Mary's arms."
"'Have you ever acted any?' he asked."
"Europena stepped forward."
"Sang in a high, sweet voice, 'I Need Thee Every Hour.'"
"'Haven't you got any place you could go to?'"
Susie Smithers at the keyhole
"Lovey Mary waved until she rounded a curve."
LOVEY MARY
CHAPTER I
A CACTUS-PLANT
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear,...
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,--
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
BROWNING'S "A Death in the Desert."
Everything about Lovey Mary was a contradiction, from her hands and
feet, which seemed to have been meant for a big girl, to her high
ideals and aspirations, that ought to have belonged to an amiable one.
The only ingredient which might have reconciled all the conflicting
elements in her chaotic little bosom was one which no one had ever
taken the trouble to supply.
When Miss Bell, the matron of the home, came to receive Lovey Mary's
confession of repentance, she found her at an up-stairs window making
hideous faces and kicking the furniture. The depth of her repentance
could always be gaged by the violence of her conduct. Miss Bell looked
at her as she would have looked at one of the hieroglyphs on the
Obelisk. She had been trying to decipher her for thirteen years.
Miss Bell was stout and prim, a combination which was surely never
intended by nature. Her gray dress and tight linen collar and cuffs
gave the uncomfortable impression of being sewed on, while her rigid
black water-waves seemed irrevocably painted upon her high forehead.
She was a routinist; she believed in system, she believed in order,
and she believed that godliness was akin to cleanliness. When she
found an exception to a rule she regarded the exception in the light
of an error. As she stood, brush in hand, before Lovey Mary, she
thought for the hundredth time that the child was an exception.
"Stand up," she said firmly but not unkindly. "I thought you had too
much sense to do your hair that way. Come back to the bath-room, and I
will arrange it properly."
Lovey Mary gave a farewell kick at the wall before she followed Miss
Bell. One side of her head was covered with tight black ringlets, and
the other bristled with curl-papers.
"When I was a little girl," said Miss Bell, running the wet comb
ruthlessly through the treasured curls, "the smoother my hair was the
better I liked it. I used to brush it down with soap and water to make
it stay."
Lovey Mary looked at the water-waves and sighed.
"If you're ugly you never can get married with anybody, can you, Miss
Bell?" she asked in a spirit of earnest inquiry.
Miss Bell's back became stiffer, if possible, than before.
"Marriage isn't the only thing in the world. The homelier you are the
better chance you have of being good. Now the Lord meant you to be
plain"--assisting Providence by drawing the braids so tight that the
girl's eyebrows were elevated with the strain. "If he had meant you to
have curls he would have given them to you."
[Illustration: "'Now the Lord meant you to be plain'"]
"Well, didn't he want me to have a mother and father?" burst forth
Lovey Mary, indignantly, "or clothes, or money, or nothing? Can't I
ever get nothing at all 'cause I wasn't started out with nothing?"
Miss Bell was too shocked to reply. She gave a final brush to the
sleek, wet head and turned sorrowfully away. Lovey Mary ran after her
and caught her hand.
"I'm sorry," she cried impulsively. "I want to be good. Please--
please--"
Miss Bell drew her hand away coldly. "You needn't go to Sabbath-school
this morning," she said in an injured tone; "you can stay here and
think over what you have said. I am not angry with you. I never allow
myself to get angry. I don't understand, that's all. You are such a
good girl about some things and so unreasonable about others. With a
good home, good clothes, and kind treatment, what else could a girl
want?"
Receiving no answer to this inquiry, Miss Bell adjusted her cuffs and
departed with the conviction that she had done all that was possible
to throw light upon a dark subject.
Lovey Mary, left alone, shed bitter tears on her clean gingham dress.
Thirteen years ought to reconcile a person even to gingham dresses
with white china buttons down the back, and round straw hats bought at
wholesale. But Lovey Mary's rebellion of spirit was something that
time only served to increase. It had started with Kate Rider, who used
to pinch her, and laugh at her, and tell the other girls to "get on to
her curves." Curves had signified something dreadful to Lovey Mary;
she would have experienced real relief could she have known that she
did not possess any. It was not Kate Rider, however, who was causing
the present tears; she had left the home two years before, and her
name was not allowed to be mentioned even in whispers. Neither was it
rebellion against the work that had cast Lovey Mary into such depths
of gloom; fourteen beds had been made, fourteen heads had been combed,
and fourteen wriggling little bodies had been cheerfully buttoned into
starchy blue ginghams exactly like her own.
Something deeper and more mysterious was fermenting in her soul--
something that made her long passionately for the beautiful things of
life, for love and sympathy and happiness; something that made her
want to be good, yet tempted her constantly to rebel against her
environs. It was just the world-old spirit that makes the veriest
little weed struggle through a chink in the rock and reach upward
toward the sun.
"What's the matter with your hair, Lovey Mary? It looks so funny,"
asked a small girl, coming up the steps.
"If anybody asts you, tell 'em you don't know," snapped Lovey Mary.
"Well, Miss Bell says for you to come down to the office," said the
other, unabashed. "There's a lady down there--a lady and a baby. Me
and Susie peeked in. Miss Bell made the lady cry; she made her wipe
the powders off her compleshun."
"And she sent for me?" asked Lovey Mary, incredulously. Such a ripple
in the still waters of the home was sufficient to interest the most
disconsolate.
"Yes; and me and Susie's going to peek some more."
Lovey Mary dried her tears and hurried down to the office. As she
stood at the door she heard a girl's excited voice protesting and
begging, and Miss Bell's placid tones attempting to calm her. They
paused as she entered.
"Mary," said Miss Bell, "you remember Kate Rider. She has brought her
child for us to take care of for a while. Have you room for him in
your division?"
As Lovey Mary looked at the gaily dressed girl on the sofa, her
animosity rekindled. It was not Kate's bold black eyes that stirred
her wrath, nor the hard red lips that recalled the taunts of other
days: it was the sight of the auburn curls gathered in tantalizing
profusion under the brim of the showy hat.
"Mary, answer my question!" said Miss Bell, sharply.
With an involuntary shudder of repugnance Lovey Mary drew her gaze
from Kate and murmured, "Yes, 'm."
"Then you can take the baby with you," continued Miss Bell, motioning
to the sleeping child. "But wait a moment. I think I will put Jennie
at the head of your division and let you have entire charge of this
little boy. He is only a year old, Kate tells me, so will need
constant attention."
Lovey Mary was about to protest, when Kate broke in:
"Oh, say, Miss Bell, please get some other girl! Tommy never would
like Lovey. He's just like me: if people ain't pretty, he don't have
no use for 'em."
"That will do, Kate," said Miss Bell, coldly. "It is only pity for the
child that makes me take him at all. You have forfeited all claim upon
our sympathy or patience. Mary, take the baby up-stairs and care for
him until I come."
Lovey Mary, hot with rebellion, picked him up and went out of the
room. At the door she stumbled against two little girls who were
listening at the keyhole.
Up-stairs in the long dormitory it was very quiet. The children had
been marched away to Sunday-school, and only Lovey Mary and the
sleeping baby were on the second floor. The girl sat beside the little
white bed and hated the world as far as she knew it: she hated Kate
for adding this last insult to the old score; she hated Miss Bell for
putting this new burden on her unwilling shoulders; she hated the
burden itself, lying there before her so serene and unconcerned; and
most of all she hated herself.
"I wisht I was dead!" she cried passionately. "The harder I try to be
good the meaner I get. Ever'body blames me, and ever'body makes fun of
me. Ugly old face, and ugly old hands, and straight old rat-tail hair!
It ain't no wonder that nobody loves me. I just wisht I was dead!"
The sunshine came through the window and made a big white patch on the
bare floor, but Lovey Mary sat in the shadow and disturbed the Sunday
quiet by her heavy sobbing.
At noon, when the children returned, the noise of their arrival woke
Tommy. He opened his round eyes on a strange world, and began to cry
lustily. One child after another tried to pacify him, but each
friendly advance increased his terror.
"Leave him be!" cried Lovey Mary. "Them hats is enough to skeer him
into fits." She picked him up, and with the knack born of experience
soothed and comforted him. The baby hid his face on her shoulder and
held her tight. She could feel the sobs that still shook the small
body, and his tears were on her cheek.
"Never mind," she said. "I ain't a-going to let 'em hurt you. I'm
going to take care of you. Don't cry any more. Look!"
She stretched forth her long, unshapely hand and made grotesque
snatches at the sunshine that poured in through the window. Tommy
hesitated and was lost; a smile struggled to the surface, then broke
through the tears.
"Look! He's laughing!" cried Lovey Mary, gleefully. "He's laughing
'cause I ketched a sunbeam for him!"
Then she bent impulsively and kissed the little red lips so close to
her own.