THE DAVITTS
"The short and simple annals of the poor."
After taking leave of Flint and his companion in misfortune, Winifred
quickened her pace. The lengthening shadows warned her that if she
intended to return to the White House before supper was over, she had
no time to lose.
"Come, Paddy!" she said, laying her hand with a light, caressing
gesture on the shaggy red-brown head of the Irish setter, which had
kept closer guard than ever since the meeting with the strangers in
the road,--"come, Paddy! we must make a sprint for it."
The dog, glad enough to be allowed the luxury of a gallop, set off
pell-mell, and Winifred followed at a gait which soon brought her,
flushed and out of breath, before the unpainted house where the Davitt
family made their abode. It was not characterized by great order or
tidiness. Clothes-lines, hung with underwear of various shapes and
sizes, decorated the side-yard, and proclaimed Mrs. Davitt's calling.
A whole section of the front fence had taken itself off. The gate
swung aimlessly on one rusty hinge, and a brood of chickens wandered
at will over the unmown grass before the house: yet the place was not
wholly unattractive, for it bore evidences of human love and
happiness; and, after all, these are the objects for which the most
orderly and elegant mansions exist, if indeed they are so fortunate as
to attain them. These are the essence of a home.
An old dory filled with geranium and nasturtium brightened the centre
of the yard. Beneath the wide spreading maples, which lent their
unbought adornment to the shabby old house, hung a child's swing, and
near by stood a rickety express-cart, to which an unlucky goat was
tethered by a multi-colored harness made of rope, tape, and bits of
calico. The driver of this equipage, a tow-headed lad of some five
years old, stood with his thumb in his mouth, gazing with open-eyed
amazement at the young lady who thought it worth while to walk so
fast.
"Good afternoon, John!" said Winifred, when she had regained her
breath. "Is your mother at home?"
The practice of answering questions is an acquired habit, and comes
only after long acquaintance with society. Children left in a state of
nature rarely think it necessary or even safe to commit themselves so
far. John Davitt only pulled his thumb out of his mouth, poked his
pink toes deeper into the grass, and gave a hitch at the single
suspender supporting the ragged knickerbockers which formed two-thirds
of his costume.
"Oh!" continued the visitor, not in the least disconcerted by the lack
of response to her advances, "you don't want to leave your goat long
enough to go and ask about your mother, do you? Well, I should not
like to be asked to leave my colt if I were driving. People should do
their own errands, I think, and not be bothering other folks with
their business. You will not be afraid of my dog if I leave him here
while I go into the house, will you?"
"Whath hith name?" asked John, discovering for the first time that he
had a tongue and knew its use.
"Paddy," answered the visitor.
"I uthed to have a brother Paddy. He died."
"Then you must make friends with the dog for his sake. Would you like
to see how my Paddy can chase a stone?" With this Winifred picked up a
large pebble, and threw it far down the road. Paddy, with a bark of
animated enjoyment, made after it, with wagging tail and ears laid
back against his head. John laughed loud, wrinkled up his little pug
nose and showed his white teeth.
"Now when he brings it back, you throw it again, and I will go in and
try to find your mother; I think I see her now," she added, as she
turned the angle of the house and caught a glimpse of Mrs. Davitt,
seated in the wooden rocking-chair beside the kitchen-table, paring
potatoes.
To the casual glance she was only a homely old Irish woman who might
have been the original of "The shape which shape had none." The only
semblance of waist was the line drawn by her gingham apron-string. Her
form bulged where it should have been straight, and was straight where
it should have curved. Her face, however, had a gentle motherliness,
and still bore traces of the comeliness which had marked it a quarter
of a century earlier, when, as Bridget O'Hara, she had set sail from
"the owld counthry" to try her fortune in the new.
After a few months' experience of city life over here, she had drifted
to South East, where she found employment in a thread factory which
stood on the bank of the tiniest stream that ever, outside of England,
called itself a river. Its current ran swiftly, however; its mimic
falls were forced into the service of trade; and the wheels of the
thread factory whirred busily, except when bad times brought wheels
and bobbins to a standstill.
For three years after her arrival in South East, Bridget O'Hara stood
beside her wheel, and fed her bobbin faithfully. Her blue Irish eyes
were bright in those days, and her cheeks red as the roses of County
Meath, where the thatched homestead of the O'Haras lifted its humble
head. More than one of the men working in the factory took notice of
the blue eyes and the red cheeks, and would have been glad to secure
their owner for a wife; but she was not for any of them. Before she
had been in the village six months, she had given her faithful heart
to Michael Davitt, the young New England fisherman whose boat lay
below the bridge which she crossed every morning on her way to her
work in the factory. Many a time on bright spring mornings she
loitered on the bridge, leaning over its wooden railing to watch
Michael as he washed out his boat, and made ready for the day's sail.
Sometimes the talk grew so absorbing that the factory bell sounded out
its last warning call before Bridget could tear herself away, and
afterward, through the long day, shut up among the whirring wheels, in
the dust and heat of the big dreary room, she kept the vision of the
white flapping sail, and of Michael Davitt standing by the tiller of
the boat under the bridge.
At last the fisherman asked her to marry him, and she accepted him
joyously, undismayed by the diminutive proportions of their united
incomes.
"Sure, Mike dear," Bridget had declared cheerfully, "what's enough for
wan will be enough for two, and you'll never feel the bit I'll be
afther atin'."
This specious theory of political economy has beguiled into matrimony
many a young couple who fail to take account of the important
difference that what is enough for two may not be enough for three,
and still less for three times three. So it fell out with the Davitts.
For the first year of their married life, Bridget went on working in
the factory, and kept her tiny tenement tidy, and Michael mended nets
on the doorstep, and sold fish in summer, and loafed in the winter in
contented assurance that life would continue to treat him well. But
the next year opened less prosperously. Bridget was compelled to give
up her work in the factory, and when, in the middle of a particularly
rigorous winter, a baby was born to the house of Davitt, the outlook
would have appeared discouraging to any one less optimistic than
Bridget. But she found much cause for satisfaction in the thought that
the baby had come at this particular time, when Michael could be at
home to help take care of the house; and above all in the reflection
that the baby was a boy, "who'd not be thrubblin' any wan long, for
before we know it, Mike, me jewel, he'll be lookin' afther you and
me."
Part of her self-congratulation had justified itself, for the baby
Leonard had grown up into one of those helpful, "handy" lads who
sometimes are sent to be the salvation of impecunious households. At
an incredibly early age, he began to feel the responsibilities of the
family on his manly little shoulders, and as the procession of small
Davitts entered the world, he took each one under his protecting care.
Dennis, Ellen, Maggie, Tommy, Katie, and John had found their way into
the family circle, and no one hinted that there was not place and
porridge for the last as well as the first.
As the years went on, Michael Davitt lost whatever alertness of
temperament he might once have possessed. New England seems to endow
some of her children with such a surplus of energy, that she is
compelled to subtract a corresponding amount from the share of others.
Michael Davitt was one of the others. His experiences as a fisherman
had persuaded him that it was useless to put forth effort, unless he
had wind and tide in his favor. Consequently, his life was spent in
waiting for encouragement from the forces of nature,--encouragement
which never came; so that at last he gave up the struggle, and sat by
the chimney-corner all winter, as contentedly as he sat on the stern
of his boat all summer, ready to move if circumstances favored, but
serene under all conditions. His silence was as marked as his
serenity. On occasions, he could be moved to smiles, but seldom to
speech. He sat quiet and unmoved amid the family hubbub, his long
limbs twisted together, his arms folded above his somewhat hollow
chest, and his protruding tusks of teeth firmly fastened over his
nether lip, as if constraining it to silence.
Tommy might lift off the cover of the beehive, and rush into the house
shrieking with wrath and terror over the result; Maggie might upset
the milk, and John drag the kitten about the room by its tail,--no
matter! the father of the family continued to sit unmoved as Brahma.
But when Leonard entered the door, some appearance of life began to
show itself in Michael. He untwisted his legs, moved a little to make
room on the settle, and even went so far as to make an entering wedge
of conversation with a "Well, Leon!"
Leonard Davitt was a boy to warm any father's heart,--stout and
strong, hearty and frank, cheerful as the day was long, with the smile
and jest of his race ready for any chance comer. This light-heartedness
had made him a favorite not only in his own family, but among all the
youth and maidens who dwelt in the outlying farmhouses around South
East; but of late an unaccountable change had come over the lad. This
merry, careless happiness had deserted him. He had taken to going
about with hair unbrushed, and a "dejected 'havior of his visage."
The noisy mirth of his little brothers and sisters irritated him, and
their noisier quarrels exasperated him. He kept away from them as much
as he could, and when he was not off in his boat, he sat on the fence
under the maples as taciturn as Michael himself. The children wondered
at him, and gradually began to draw away at his approach, instead of
rushing toward him as of old. Maggie, who was fifteen now, and worked
in the factory, suspected the cause of his trouble, and once ventured
to rally him on "the girl that was so cool she'd give a man the mitten
in summer;" but her pleasantry was ill-received. Leonard scowled at
her, and stalked away muttering to himself.
His mother saw him from her window, and she too knew what was the
trouble with her boy; but she only dropped a few tears among the
potato-parings, and resolved to make griddle-cakes for supper,--as
though Leonard were still a child whose heart could be cheered
through his stomach. As Mrs. Davitt laid down her knife to wipe her
eyes, she heard the barking of a dog, and then a rapid double knock on
the half-open kitchen-door.
"Come in, Miss," she said, rising and wiping her hands on her gingham
apron. "Come in and take the rocker. Don't be standin' when sittin'
down is chape enough, even for the poor. It's yourself hezn't forgot
me, nor me bit o' farina."
"No, indeed, Mrs. Davitt, I did not forget you: but you won't get your
farina after all; for I met some poor men in distress, and I handed
over all the sea-moss to them."
"Poor craytyurs! Wuz they that hungry they could ate it raw?"
"Hardly," answered Winifred, smiling at her remembrance of the
peculiarly well-fed looking recipients of her bounty, "they were not
hungry at all; but they had come to grief with a molasses jug. The
carriage and everything in it was sticky, and I don't know what they
would have done to get it clean without your moss; but you shall
surely have some more to-morrow, and now tell me how you are feeling."
"Is it meself? Thank ye kindly, me dear. I'm jest accordin' to the
common, save where I'm worse; me legs ache me nights, and I fale the
washin' in me back some days; but if me moind wuz right, it's little
I'd moind the thrubble in me bones."
"Why, what is wrong, Mrs. Davitt?" Winifred asked with sympathy in her
voice. "The children all look well. John's cheeks are red as apples,
and Katie is as round as a butter-ball."
"Oh, the childers is all right," answered Mrs. Davitt, with an air of
mystery, but evidently not unwilling to be pressed further as to the
source of her trouble.
"Surely it is not your husband? He looked better than usual this
morning when he came around to the White House, and he had as fine a
catch of fish as I have seen this summer."
"Yea, himself's all right."
"Then it must be Leonard; but I am sure he is a boy of whom any mother
might be proud."
"Proud? Yea, but many's the proud heart is the sore heart."
"Tell me all about it," said her young visitor, laying her delicate
hand on the red fingers which still clasped the bone-handled steel
knife. Mrs. Davitt looked down for a moment in silence, playing with
the bent joint of her stiff third finger, then she broke out with a
fierceness in curious contrast to her usual gentle speech.
"It's that Tilly Marsden. Bad luck to her for a bowld hussy! She's
put the insult on Leonard."
"The insult?"
"Yea, 'tis the same as an insult for all the neighbors to take notice
of, whin a gurrl ez hez been kapin' company with a man fur goin' on
two years, walks by him now with her nose in the air, lek wan wuz too
good to be shpakin' with the praste himself."
"Don't be too hard on Tilly, Mrs. Davitt," remonstrated Winifred,
soothingly. "Perhaps she is fond of Leonard still, but does not want
him to feel too sure of her. I dare say you were a little like that
yourself, when you were a girl."
"Thrue fer ye, me dear!" Mrs. Davitt answered, with that delightful
Irish readiness to be diverted from her woes to a more cheerful frame
of mind. "Thrue fer ye! I'd never let Michael be sayin' me heart wuz
caught before ever he'd shpread the net."
"Then, depend upon it, Tilly feels the same."
"Mebbe it's the thruth you're afther findin' out; but I misthrust, and
it's meself will never fergive her if she breaks the heart of the best
by in the counthry."
The possibility was too much for the sorrowful mother. She threw her
apron over her head, and abandoned herself once more to despair,
swaying to and fro disconsolately in the black wooden chair from the
back of which the gilt had been half rubbed away by quarter of a
century of rocking.
"Do you think it could possibly do any good for me to talk with
Leonard?" Winifred ventured, quite dubious in her own mind of the
wisdom of the proceeding.
"Ow, if yez would, 'twould like be the savin' o' the by. He'll not
bear any of us to shpake wid him at all at all."
"Very well then, I will try to get him to talk about it. Only don't be
disappointed if I do not succeed! The chances are that he will not
listen to me."
"Not listen to yoursilf, is it!" cried Mrs. Davitt, once more
transported to the heights of hope. "Sure, the saints in Hiven would
lay down their harps to hear your swate vice. Yes, and aven to look at
ye, as ye shtand there, in that white dhress, jist like what wan o'
thimsilves 'ud be wearin'! How becomin' ye are to your clothes!"
Winifred smiled at the subtle flattery; but before she could muster an
appropriate acknowledgment, she caught sight of Leonard loitering at
the gate.
"There is Leon now; I will ask him to walk part way home with me. It
is growing dark, and you know," she added, laughing, "how timid I
am!"
Mrs. Davitt smiled in answer to the laugh, for Winifred's daring was
the talk of the countryside. She dried her eyes, and peered over her
spectacles at her visitor as she picked her way among the chickens,
feathered and human, who thronged about the doorstep, to the spot
where Leonard stood, listlessly hanging over the gate gazing idly up
and down the road.
Mrs. Davitt's heart beat anxiously as she marked the girl stop to
speak to him, and when at last she saw him turn and walk beside her up
the road, followed suspiciously by Paddy with the basket in his mouth,
she burst out into a tearful torrent of joy and thanksgiving.