It would have been idle to inquire into the antecedents, or even the
circumstances, of old Mother Beggarlegs. She would never tell; the
children, at all events, were convinced of that; and it was only the
children, perhaps, who had the time and the inclination to speculate.
Her occupation was clear; she presided like a venerable stooping hawk,
over a stall in the covered part of the Elgin market-place, where she
sold gingerbread horses and large round gingerbread cookies, and brown
sticky squares of what was known in all circles in Elgin as taffy. She
came, it was understood, with the dawn; with the night she vanished,
spending the interval on a not improbable broomstick. Her gingerbread
was better than anybody’s; but there was no comfort in standing, first
on one foot and then on the other, while you made up your mind--the
horses were spirited and you could eat them a leg at a time, but there
was more in the cookies--she bent such a look on you, so fierce and
intolerant of vacillation. She belonged to the group of odd characters,
rarer now than they used to be, etched upon the vague consciousness of
small towns as in a way mysterious and uncanny; some said that Mother
Beggarlegs was connected with the aristocracy and some that she had been
“let off” being hanged. The alternative was allowed full swing, but in
any case it was clear that such persons contributed little to the common
good and, being reticent, were not entertaining. So you bought your
gingerbread, concealing, as it were, your weapons, paying your copper
coins with a neutral nervous eye, and made off to a safe distance,
whence you turned to shout insultingly, if you were an untrounced young
male of Elgin, “Old Mother Beggarlegs! Old Mother Beggarlegs!” And why
“Beggarlegs” nobody in the world could tell you. It might have been
a dateless waggery, or it might have been a corruption of some more
dignified surname, but it was all she ever got. Serious, meticulous
persons called her “Mrs” Beggarlegs, slightly lowering their voices and
slurring it, however, it must be admitted. The name invested her with
a graceless, anatomical interest, it penetrated her wizened black and
derisively exposed her; her name went far indeed to make her dramatic.
Lorne Murchison, when he was quite a little boy was affected by this
and by the unfairness of the way it singled her out. Moved partly by
the oppression of the feeling and partly by a desire for information
he asked her sociably one day, in the act of purchase, why the gilt was
generally off her gingerbread. He had been looking long, as a matter
of fact, for gingerbread with the gilt on it, being accustomed to the
phrase on the lips of his father in connection with small profits.
Mother Beggarlegs, so unaccustomed to politeness that she could not
instantly recognize it, answered him with an imprecation at which he,
no doubt, retreated, suddenly thrown on the defensive hurling the usual
taunt. One prefers to hope he didn’t, with the invincible optimism one
has for the behaviour of lovable people; but whether or not his kind
attempt at colloquy is the first indication I can find of that active
sympathy with the disabilities of his fellow-beings which stamped him
later so intelligent a meliorist. Even in his boy’s beginning he had a
heart for the work; and Mother Beggarlegs, but for a hasty conclusion,
might have made him a friend.
It is hard to invest Mother Beggarlegs with importance, but the date
helps me--the date I mean, of this chapter about Elgin; she was a person
to be reckoned with on the twenty-fourth of May. I will say at once, for
the reminder to persons living in England that the twenty-fourth of May
was the Queen’s Birthday. Nobody in Elgin can possibly have forgotten
it. The Elgin children had a rhyme about it--
The twenty-fourth of May
Is the Queen’s Birthday;
If you don’t give us a holiday,
We’ll all run away.
But Elgin was in Canada. In Canada the twenty-fourth of May WAS the
Queen’s Birthday; and these were times and regions far removed from the
prescription that the anniversary “should be observed” on any of those
various outlying dates which by now, must have produced in her immediate
people such indecision as to the date upon which Her Majesty really
did come into the world. That day, and that only, was the observed, the
celebrated, a day with an essence in it, dawning more gloriously than
other days and ending more regretfully, unless, indeed, it fell on a
Sunday when it was “kept” on the Monday, with a slightly clouded feeling
that it wasn’t exactly the same thing. Travelled persons, who had spent
the anniversary there, were apt to come back with a poor opinion of
its celebration in “the old country”--a pleasant relish to the
more-than-ever appreciated advantages of the new, the advantages
that came out so by contrast. More space such persons indicated, more
enterprise they boasted, and even more loyalty they would flourish,
all with an affectionate reminiscent smile at the little ways of a
grandmother. A “Bank” holiday, indeed! Here it was a real holiday, that
woke you with bells and cannon--who has forgotten the time the ancient
piece of ordnance in “the Square” blew out all the windows in the
Methodist church?--and went on with squibs and crackers till you didn’t
know where to step on the sidewalks, and ended up splendidly with
rockets and fire-balloons and drunken Indians vociferous on their way to
the lock-up. Such a day for the hotels, with teams hitched three abreast
in front of their aromatic barrooms; such a day for the circus, with
half the farmers of Fox County agape before the posters--with all their
chic and shock they cannot produce such posters nowadays, nor are there
any vacant lots to form attractive backgrounds--such a day for Mother
Beggarlegs! The hotels, and the shops and stalls for eating and
drinking, were the only places in which business was done; the public
sentiment put universal shutters up, but the public appetite insisted
upon excepting the means to carnival. An air of ceremonial festivity
those fastened shutters gave; the sunny little town sat round them,
important and significant, and nobody was ever known to forget that they
were up, and go on a fool’s errand. No doubt they had an impressiveness
for the young countryfolk that strolled up and down Main Street in their
honest best, turning into Snow’s for ice-cream when a youth was disposed
to treat. (Gallantry exacted ten-cent dishes, but for young ladies
alone, or family parties, Mrs Snow would bring five-cent quantities
almost without asking, and for very small boys one dish and the
requisite number of spoons.) There was discrimination, there was choice,
in this matter of treating. A happy excitement accompanied it, which you
could read in the way Corydon clapped his soft felt hat on his head as
he pocketed the change. To be treated--to ten-cent dishes--three times
in the course of the day by the same young man gave matter for private
reflection and for public entertainment, expressed in the broad grins of
less reckless people. I speak of a soft felt hat, but it might be more
than that: it might be a dark green one, with a feather in it; and here
was distinction, for such a hat indicated that its owner belonged to the
Independent Order of Foresters, who Would leave their spring wheat for
forty miles round to meet in Elgin and march in procession, wearing
their hats, and dazzlingly scatter upon Main Street. They gave the day
its touch of imagination, those green cocked hats; they were lyrical
upon the highways; along the prosaic sidewalks by twos and threes they
sang together. It is no great thing, a hat of any quality; but a small
thing may ring dramatic on the right metal, and in the vivid idea of
Lorne Murchison and his sister Advena a Robin Hood walked in every
Independent Forester, especially in the procession. Which shows the
risks you run if you, a person of honest livelihood and solicited vote,
adopt any portion of a habit not familiar to you, and go marching about
with a banner and a band. Two children may be standing at the first
street corner, to whom your respectability and your property may at once
become illusion and your outlawry the delightful fact.
A cheap trip brought the Order of Green Hats to Elgin; and there were
cheap trips on this great day to persuade other persons to leave it. The
Grand Trunk had even then an idea of encouraging social combination for
change of scene, and it was quite a common thing for the operatives of
the Milburn Boiler Company to arrange to get themselves carried to the
lakeside or “the Falls” at half a dollar a head. The “hands” got it up
themselves and it was a question in Elgin whether one might sink one’s
dignity and go as a hand for the sake of the fifty-cent opportunity,
a question usually decided in the negative. The social distinctions of
Elgin may not be easily appreciated by people accustomed to the rough
and ready standards of a world at the other end of the Grand Trunk; but
it will be clear at a glance that nobody whose occupation prescribed a
clean face could be expected to travel cheek by jowl, as a privilege,
with persons who were habitually seen with smutty ones, barefaced smut,
streaming out at the polite afternoon hour of six, jangling an empty
dinner pail. So much we may decide, and leave it, reflecting as we go
how simple and satisfactory, after all, are the prejudices which can
hold up such obvious justification. There was recently to be pointed
out in England the heir to a dukedom who loved stoking, and got his
face smutty by preference. He would have been deplorably subversive of
accepted conventions in Elgin; but, happily or otherwise, such persons
and such places have at present little more than an imaginative
acquaintance, vaguely cordial on the one side, vaguely critical on the
other, and of no importance in the sum.
Polite society, to return to it, preferred the alternative of staying
at home and mowing the lawn or drinking raspberry vinegar on its own
beflagged verandah; looking forward in the afternoon to the lacrosse
match. There was nearly always a lacrosse match on the Queen’s Birthday,
and it was the part of elegance to attend and encourage the home team,
as well as that of small boys, with broken straw hats, who sneaked an
entrance, and were more enthusiastic than anyone. It was “a quarter” to
get in, so the spectators were naturally composed of persons who could
afford the quarter, and persons like the young Flannigans and Finnigans,
who absolutely couldn’t, but who had to be there all the same. Lorne and
Advena Murchison never had the quarter, so they witnessed few lacrosse
matches, though they seldom failed to refresh themselves by a sight
of the players after the game when, crimson and perspiring, but still
glorious in striped jerseys, their lacrosses and running shoes slung
over one shoulder, these heroes left the field.
The Birthday I am thinking of, with Mrs Murchison as a central figure in
the kitchen, peeling potatoes for dinner, there was a lacrosse match of
some importance for the Fox County Championship and the Fox County Cup
as presented by the Member for the South Riding. Mrs Murchison remains
the central figure, nevertheless, with her family radiating from her,
gathered to help or to hinder in one of those domestic crises which
arose when the Murchisons were temporarily deprived of a “girl.”
Everybody was subject to them in Elgin, everybody had to acknowledge and
face them. Let a new mill be opened, and it didn’t matter what you paid
her or how comfortable you made her, off she would go, and you might
think yourself lucky if she gave a week’s warning. Hard times shut down
the mills and brought her back again; but periods of prosperity were
very apt to find the ladies of Elgin where I am compelled to introduce
Mrs Murchison--in the kitchen. “You’d better get up--the girl’s gone,”
Lorne had stuck his head into his sister’s room to announce, while
yet the bells were ringing and the rifles of the local volunteers were
spitting out the feu de joie. “I’ve lit the fire an’ swep’ out the
dining-room. You tell mother. Queen’s Birthday, too--I guess Lobelia’s
about as mean as they’re made!” And the Murchisons had descended to face
the situation. Lorne had by then done his part, and gone out into the
chromatic possibilities of the day; but the sense of injury he had
communicated to Advena in her bed remained and expanded. Lobelia, it was
felt, had scurvily manipulated the situation--her situation, it might
have been put, if any Murchison had been in the temper for jesting.
She had taken unjustifiable means to do a more unjustifiable thing,
to secure for herself an improper and unlawful share of the day’s
excitements, transferring her work, by the force of circumstances, to
the shoulders of other people since, as Mrs Murchison remarked, somebody
had to do it. Nor had she her mistress testified the excuse of fearing
unreasonable confinement. “I told her she might go when she had done her
dishes after dinner,” said Mrs Murchison, “and then she had only to come
back at six and get tea--what’s getting tea? I advised her to finish her
ironing yesterday, so as to be free of it today; and she said she would
be very glad to. Now, I wonder if she DID finish it!” and Mrs Murchison
put down her pan of potatoes with a thump to look in the family clothes
basket. “Not she! Five shirts and ALL the coloured things. I call it
downright deceit!”
“I believe I know the reason she’ll SAY,” said Advena. “She objects to
rag carpet in her bedroom. She told me so.”
“Rag carpet--upon my word!” Mrs Murchison dropped her knife to exclaim.
“It’s what her betters have to do with! I’ve known the day when that
very piece of rag carpet--sixty balls there were in it and every one I
sewed with my own fingers--was the best I had for my spare room, with
a bit of ingrain in the middle. Dear me!” she went on with a smile that
lightened the whole situation, “how proud I was of that performance! She
didn’t tell ME she objected to rag carpet!”
“No, Mother,” Advena agreed, “she knew better.”
They were all there in the kitchen, supporting their mother, and it
seems an opportunity to name them. Advena, the eldest, stood by the long
kitchen table washing the breakfast cups in “soft” soap and hot water.
The soft soap--Mrs Murchison had a barrelful boiled every spring in
the back yard, an old colonial economy she hated to resign--made a
fascinating brown lather with iridescent bubbles. Advena poured cupfuls
of it from on high to see the foam rise, till her mother told her for
mercy’s sake to get on with those dishes. She stood before a long low
window, looking out into the garden and the light, filtering through
apple branches on her face showed her strongly featured and intelligent
for fourteen. Advena was named after one grandmother; when the next
girl came Mrs Murchison, to make an end of the matter, named it Abigail,
after the other. She thought both names outlandish and acted under
protest, but hoped that now everybody would be satisfied. Lorne came
after Advena, at the period of a naive fashion of christening the young
sons of Canada in the name of her Governor-General. It was a simple
way of attesting a loyal spirit, but with Mrs Murchison more particular
motives operated. The Marquis of Lorne was not only the deputy of the
throne, he was the son-in-law of a good woman of whom Mrs Murchison
thought more, and often said it, for being the woman she was than for
being twenty times a Queen; and he had made a metrical translation of
the Psalms, several of which were included in the revised psalter for
the use of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, from which the whole
of Knox Church sang to the praise of God every Sunday. These were
circumstances that weighed with Mrs Murchison, and she called her son
after the Royal representative, feeling that she was doing well for him
in a sense beyond the mere bestowal of a distinguished and a euphonious
name, though that, as she would have willingly acknowledged, was “well
enough in its place.”
We must take this matter of names seriously; the Murchisons always did.
Indeed, from the arrival of a new baby until the important Sunday of
the christening, nothing was discussed with such eager zest and such
sustained interest as the name he should get--there was a fascinating
list at the back of the dictionary--and to the last minute it was
problematical. In Stella’s case, Mrs Murchison actually changed her mind
on the way to church; and Abby, who had sat through the sermon
expecting Dorothy Maud, which she thought lovely, publicly cried with
disappointment. Stella was the youngest, and Mrs Murchison was thankful
to have a girl at last whom she could name without regard to her own
relations or anybody else’s. I have skipped about a good deal, but I
have only left out two, the boys who came between Abby and Stella. In
their names the contemporary observer need not be too acute to discover
both an avowal and to some extent an enforcement of Mr Murchison’s
political views; neither an Alexander Mackenzie nor an Oliver Mowat
could very well grow up into anything but a sound Liberal in that part
of the world without feeling himself an unendurable paradox. To christen
a baby like that was, in a manner, a challenge to public attention; the
faint relaxation about the lips of Dr Drummond--the best of the
Liberals himself, though he made a great show of keeping it out of
the pulpit--recognized this, and the just perceptible stir of the
congregation proved it. Sonorously he said it. “Oliver Mowat, I baptize
thee in the Name of the Father--” The compliment should have all the
impressiveness the rite could give it, while the Murchison brothers and
sisters, a-row in the family pew, stood on one foot with excitement as
to how Oliver Mowat would take the drops that defined him. The verdict
was, on the way home, that he behaved splendidly. Alexander Mackenzie,
the year before, had roared.
He was weeping now, at the age of seven, silently, but very copiously,
behind the woodpile. His father had finally cuffed him for importunity;
and the world was no place for a just boy, who asked nothing but
his rights. Only the woodpile, friendly mossy logs unsplit, stood
inconscient and irresponsible for any share in his black circumstances;
and his tears fell among the lichens of the stump he was bowed on till,
observing them, he began to wonder whether he could cry enough to make a
pond there, and was presently disappointed to find the source exhausted.
The Murchisons were all imaginative.
The others, Oliver and Abby and Stella, still “tormented.” Poor Alec’s
rights--to a present of pocket-money on the Queen’s Birthday--were
common ones, and almost statutory. How their father, sitting comfortably
with his pipe in the flickering May shadows under the golden pippin,
reading the Toronto paper, could evade his liability in the matter was
unfathomable to the Murchisons; it was certainly illiberal; they had a
feeling that it was illegal. A little teasing was generally necessary,
but the resistance today had begun to look ominous and Alec, as we know,
too temerarious, had retired in disorder to the woodpile.
Oliver was wiping Advena’s dishes. He exercised himself ostentatiously
upon a plate, standing in the door to be within earshot of his father.
“Eph Wheeler,” he informed his family, “Eph Wheeler, he’s got
twenty-five cents, an’ a English sixpence, an’ a Yankee nickel. An’ Mr
Wheeler’s only a common working man, a lot poorer’n we are.”
Mr Murchison removed his pipe from his lips in order, apparently, to
follow unimpeded the trend of the Dominion’s leading article. Oliver
eyed him anxiously. “Do, Father,” he continued in logical sequence. “Aw
do.”
“Make him, Mother,” said Abby indignantly. “It’s the Queen’s BIRTHDAY!”
“Time enough when the butter bill’s paid,” said Mrs Murchison.
“Oh the BUTTER bill! Say, Father, aren’t you going to?”
“What?” asked John Murchison, and again took out his pipe, as if this
were the first he had heard of the matter.
“Give us our fifteen cents each to celebrate with. You can’t do it under
that,” Oliver added firmly. “Crackers are eight cents a packet this
year, the small size.”
“Nonsense,” said Mr Murchison. The reply was definite and final, and its
ambiguity was merely due to the fact that their father disliked giving
a plump refusal. “Nonsense” was easier to say, if not to hear than “No.”
Oliver considered for a moment, drew Abby to colloquy by the pump, and
sought his brother behind the woodpile. Then he returned to the charge.
“Look here, Father,” he said, “CASH DOWN, we’ll take ten.”
John Murchison was a man of few words, but they were usually impregnated
with meaning, especially in anger. “No more of this,” he said.
“Celebrate fiddlesticks! Go and make yourselves of some use. You’ll get
nothing from me, for I haven’t got it.” So saying, he went through the
kitchen with a step that forbade him to be followed. His eldest son,
arriving over the backyard fence in a state of heat, was just in time
to hear him. Lorne’s apprehension of the situation was instant, and his
face fell, but the depression plainly covered such splendid spirits that
his brother asked resentfully, “Well, what’s the matter with YOU?”
“Matter? Oh, not much. I’m going to see the Cayugas beat the Wanderers,
that’s all; an’ Abe Mackinnon’s mother said he could ask me to come back
to tea with them. Can I, Mother?”
“There’s no objection that I know of,” said Mrs Murchison, shaking her
apron free of stray potato-parings, “but you won’t get money for the
lacrosse match or anything else from your father today, _I_ can assure
you. They didn’t do five dollars worth of business at the store all day
yesterday, and he’s as cross as two sticks.”
“Oh, that’s all right.” Lorne jingled his pocket and Oliver took
a fascinated step toward him. “I made thirty cents this morning,
delivering papers for Fisher. His boy’s sick. I did the North Ward--took
me over’n hour. Guess I can go all right, can’t I?”
“Why, yes, I suppose you can,” said his mother. The others were dumb.
Oliver hunched his shoulders and kicked at the nearest thing that had
paint on it. Abby clung to the pump handle and sobbed aloud. Lorne
looked gloomily about him and went out. Making once more for the back
fence, he encountered Alexander in the recognized family retreat. “Oh,
my goodness!” he said, and stopped. In a very few minutes he was back
in the kitchen, followed sheepishly by Alexander, whose grimy face
expressed the hope that beat behind his little waistcoat.
“Say, you kids,” he announced, “Alec’s got four cents, an’ he says he’ll
join up. This family’s going to celebrate all right. Come on down town.”
No one could say that the Murchisons were demonstrative. They said
nothing, but they got their hats. Mrs Murchison looked up from her
occupation.
“Alec,” she said, “out of this house you don’t go till you’ve washed
your face. Lorne, come here,” she added in a lower voice, producing a
bunch of keys. “If you look in the right-hand corner of the top small
drawer in my bureau you’ll find about twenty cents. Say nothing about
it, and mind you don’t meddle with anything else. I guess the Queen
isn’t going to owe it all to you.”