start. Very softly she spoke: “I only want to look at him a minute, Pat,
jest a minute. I ain't seen him for so long.”
“And is it any longer for you than for me?” retorted the husband. “Ye
know what ye promised if I'd be taking you here, unbeknownst. Don't look
his way! Look like ye was a stranger to him. Don't let us be mortifying
him wid our country ways. Like as not 'tis the prisidint, himself, he
is colloguein' wid, this blessed minute. Shtep back and be a stranger to
him, woman!”
A stranger to him, his own mother! But she stepped back; she turned her
patient face. Then--Tommy saw her.
A wave of red flushed all over his face. He took two steps down the
aisle, and caught the little figure in his arms.
“Why, mother?” he cried, “why, mother, where did you drop from?”
And before Mrs. Carriswood could speak she saw him step back and push
young Sackville forward, crying, “This is my father, this is the boy
that knew your grandmother.”
He did it so easily; he was so entirely unaffected, so perfectly
unconscious, that there was nothing at all embarrassing for anyone. Even
the Cabinet girl, with a grandmother in very humble life, who must be
kept in the background, could not feel disconcerted.
For this happy result Mrs. Carriswood owns a share of the credit. She
advanced on the first pause, and claimed acquaintanceship with the
Fitzmaurices. The story of their last meeting and Tommy's first triumph
in oratory came, of course; the famous horseshoe received due mention;
and Tommy described with much humor his terror of the stage. From the
speech to its most effective passage was a natural transition; equally
natural the transition to Tommy's grandmother, the Irish famine, and the
benevolence of Lady Sackville.
Everybody was interested, and it was Sackville himself, who brought the
Fitzmaurices' noble ancestors, the apocryphal Viscounts Fitzmaurice of
King James's creation, on to the carpet.
He was entirely serious. “My grandmother told me of your
great-grandfather, Lord Fitzmaurice; she saw him ride to hounds once,
when she was a little girl. They say he was the boldest rider in
Ireland, and a renowned duellist too. King James gave the title to his
grandfather, didn't he? and the countryside kept it, if it was given
rather too late in the day to be useful. I am glad you have restored the
family fortunes, Mr. Fitzmaurice.”
The Cabinet girl looked on Tommy with respect, and Miss Van Harlem
blushed like an angel.
“All is lost,” said Mrs. Carriswood to herself; yet she smiled. Going
home, she found a word for Tommy's ear. The old Virginian dinner had
been most successful. The Fitzmaurices (who had been almost forced into
the banquet by Beatoun's imperious hospitality) were not a wet blanket
in the least. Patrick Fitzmaurice, brogue and all, was an Irish
gentleman without a flaw. He blossomed out into a modest wag; and told
two or three comic stories as acceptably as he was used to tell them to
a very different circle--only, carrying a fresher flavor of wit to this
circle, perhaps, it enjoyed them more. Mrs. Fitzmaurice looked scared
and ate almost nothing, with the greatest propriety, and her fork in her
left hand. Yet even she thawed under Miss Van Harlem's attentions and
gentle Mrs. Beatoun's tact, and the winning ways of the last Beatoun
baby. She took this absent cherub to her heart with such undissembled
warmth that its mother ever since has called her “a sweet, funny little
old lady.”
They were both (Patrick and his wife) quite unassuming and retiring,
and no urging could dissuade them from parting with the company at the
tavern door.
“My word, Tommy, your mother and I can git home by ourselves,” whispered
honest Patrick; “we've not exceeded--if the wines WERE good. I never
exceeded in my life, God take the glory!”
But he embraced Tommy so affectionately in parting that I confess Mrs.
Carriswood had suspicions. Yet, surely, it is more likely that his brain
was--let us not say TURNED, but just a wee bit TILTED, by the joy and
triumph of the occasion rather than by Beatoun's port or champagne.
But Mrs. Carriswood's word had nothing to do with Tommy's parents,
ostensibly, though, in truth, it had everything to do. She said: “Will
you dine with us to-morrow, quite _en famille_, Thomas?”
“I ought to tell you, I suppose, that I find your house a pretty
dangerous paradise, Mrs. Carriswood,” says Tommy.
“And I find you a most dangerous angel, Thomas; but--you see I ask you!”
“Thank you,” answers Tommy, in a different tone; “you've always been
an angel to me. What I owe to you and Harry Lossing--well, I can't
talk about it. But see here, Mrs. Carriswood, you always have called me
Tommy; now you say Thomas; why this state?”
“I think you have won your brevet, Thomas.”
He looked puzzled, and she liked him the better that he should not make
enough of his conduct to understand her; but, though she has called him
Tommy often since, he keeps the brevet in her thoughts. In fact, Mrs.
Carriswood is beginning to take the Honorable Thomas Fitzmaurice and his
place in the world seriously, herself.
MOTHER EMERITUS
THE Louders lived on the second floor, at the head of the stairs, in the
Lossing Building. There is a restaurant to the right; and a new doctor,
every six months, who is every kind of a healer except “regular,” keeps
the permanent boarders in gossip, to the left; two or three dressmakers,
a dentist, and a diamond merchant up-stairs, one flight; and half a
dozen families and a dozen single tenants higher--so you see the Louders
had plenty of neighbors. In fact, the multitude of the neighbors is one
cause of my story.
Tilly Louder came home from the Lossing factory (where she is a
typewriter) one February afternoon. As she turned the corner, she was
face to the river, which is not so full of shipping in winter that one
cannot see the steel-blue glint of the water. Back of her the brick
paved street climbed the hill, under a shapeless arch of trees. The
remorseless pencil of a railway has drawn black lines at the foot of
the hill; and, all day and all night, slender red bars rise and sink
in their black sockets, to the accompaniment of the outcry of tortured
steam. All day, if not all night, the crooked pole slips up and down the
trolley wire, as the yellow cars rattle, and flash, and clang a spiteful
little bell, that sounds like a soprano bark, over the crossings.
It is customary in the Lossing Building to say, “We are so handy to the
cars.” The street is a handsome street, not free from dingy old brick
boxes of stores below the railway, but fast replacing them with fairer
structures. The Lossing Building has the wide arches, the recessed
doors, the balconies and the colonnades of modern business architecture.
The occupants are very proud of the balconies, in particular; and,
summer days, these will be a mass of greenery and bright tints. To-day,
it was so warm, February day though it was, that some of the potted
plants were sunning themselves outside the windows.
Tilly could see them if she craned her neck. There were some bouvardias
and fuchsias of her mother's among them.
“It IS a pretty building,” said Tilly; and, for some reason, she
frowned.
She was a young woman, but not a very young woman. Her figure was slim,
and she looked better in loose waists than in tightly fitted gowns. She
wore a dark green gown with a black jacket, and a scarlet shirt-waist
underneath. Her face was long, with square chin and high cheek-bones,
and thin, firm lips; yet she was comely, because of her lustrous black
hair, her clear, gray eyes, and her charming, fair skin. She had another
gift: everything about her was daintily neat; at first glance one said,
“Here is a person who has spent pains, if not money, on her toilet.”
By this time Tilly was entering the Lossing Building. Half-way up the
stairway a hand plucked her skirts. The hand belonged to a tired-faced
woman in black, on whose breast glittered a little crowd of pins and
threaded needles, like the insignia of an Order of Toil.
“Please excuse me, Miss Tilly,” said the woman, at the same time
presenting a flat package in brown paper, “but WILL you give this
pattern back to your mother. I am so very much obliged. I don't know how
I WOULD git along without your mother, Tilly.”
“I'll give the pattern to her,” said Tilly, and she pursued her way.
Not very far. A stout woman and a thin young man, with long, wavy, red
hair, awaited her on the landing. The woman held a plate of cake which
she thrust at Tilly the instant they were on the same level, saying:
“The cake was just splendid, tell your mother; it's a lovely recipe, and
will you tell her to take this, and see how well I succeeded?”
“And--ah--Miss Louder,” said the man, as the stout woman rustled away,
“here are some _Banner of Lights;_ I think she'd be interested in some
of the articles on the true principles of the inspirational
faith----” Tilly placed the bundle of newspapers at the base of her
load--“and--and, I wish you'd tell your dear mother that, under the
angels, her mustard plaster really saved my life.”
“I'll tell her,” said Tilly.
She had advanced a little space before a young girl in a bright blue
silk gown flung a radiant presence between her and the door. “Oh,
Miss Tilly,” she murmured, blushing, “will you just give your mother
this?--it's--it's Jim's photograph. You tell her it's ALL right; and SHE
was exactly right, and _I_ was wrong. She'll understand.”
Tilly, with a look of resignation, accepted a stiff package done up in
white tissue paper. She had now only three steps to take: she took two,
only two, for--“Miss Tilly, PLEASE!” a voice pealed around the corner,
while a flushed and breathless young woman, with a large baby toppling
over her lean shoulder, staggered into view. “My!” she panted, “ain't it
tiresome lugging a child! I missed the car, of course, coming home
from ma's. Oh, say, Tilly, your mother was so good, she said she'd tend
Blossom next time I went to the doctor's, and----”
“I'll take the baby,” said Tilly. She hoisted the infant on to her own
shoulder with her right arm. “Perhaps you'll be so kind's to turn the
handle of the door,” said she in a slightly caustic tone, “as I haven't
got any hands left. Please shut it, too.”
As the young mother opened the door, Tilly entered the parlor. For a
second she stood and stared grimly about her. The furniture of the room
was old-fashioned but in the best repair. There was a cabinet organ in
one corner. A crayon portrait of Tilly's father (killed in the civil
war) glared out of a florid gilt frame. Perhaps it was the fault of the
portrait, but he had a peevish frown. There were two other portraits of
him, large ghastly gray tintypes in oval frames of rosewood, obscurely
suggesting coffins. In these he looked distinctly sullen. He was
represented in uniform (being a lieutenant of volunteers), and the
artist had conscientiously gilded his buttons until, as Mrs. Louder
was wont to observe, “It most made you want to cut them off with the
scissors.” There were other tintypes and a flock of photographs in the
room. What Mrs. Louder named “a throw” decorated each framed picture and
each chair. The largest arm-chair was drawn up to a table covered with
books and magazines: in the chair sat Mrs. Louder, reading.
At Tilly's entrance she started and turned her head, and then one could
see that the tears were streaming down her cheeks.
“Now, MOTHER!” exploded Tilly. Kicking the door open, she marched into
the bed-chamber. An indignant sweep of one arm sent the miscellany of
gifts into a rocking-chair; an indignant curve of the other landed the
baby on the bed. Tilly turned on her mother. “Now, mother, what did
you promise--HUSH! will you?” (The latter part of the sentence a fierce
“ASIDE” to the infant on the bed.) In a second Mrs. Louder's arms were
encircling him, and she was soothing him on her broad shoulder, where I
know not how many babies have found comfort.
Jane Louder was a tall woman--tall and portly. She had a massive repose
about her, a kind of soft dignity; and a stranger would not guess how
tender was her heart. Deprecatingly she looked up at her only child,
standing in judgment over her. Her eyes were fine still, though they had
sparkled and wept for more than half a century. They were not gray, like
Tilly's, but a deep violet, with black eyelashes and eyebrows. Black,
once, had been the hair under the widow's cap, now streaked with
silver; but Jane Louder's skin was fresh and daintily tinted like her
daughter's, for all its fine wrinkles. Her voice when she spoke was
mellow and slow, with a nervous vibration of apology. “Never mind,
dear,” she said, “I was just reading 'bout the Russians.”
“I KNEW it! You promised me you wouldn't cry about the Russians any
more.”
“I know, Tilly, but Alma Brown lent this to me, herself. There's a
beautiful article in it about 'The Horrors of Hunger.' It would make
your heart ache! I wish you would read it, Tilly.”
“No, thank you. I don't care to have my heart ache. I'm not going to
read any more horrors about the Russians, or hear them either, if I can
help it. I have to write Mr. Lossing's letters about them, and that's
enough. I've given all I can afford, and you've given more than you can
afford; and I helped get up the subscription at the shops. I've done all
I could; and now I ain't going to have my feelings harrowed up any more,
when it won't do me nor the Russians a mite of good.”
“But I cayn't HELP it, Tilly. I cayn't take any comfort in my meals,
thinking of that awful black bread the poor children starve rather than
eat; and, Tilly, they ain't so dirty as some folks think! I read in a
magazine how they have GOT to bathe twice a week by their religion; and
there's a bath-house in every village. Tilly, do you know how much money
they've raised here?”
“Over three thousand. This town is the greatest town for giving--give
to the cholera down South, give to Johnstown, give to Grinnell, give to
cyclones, give to fires. _The Freeman_ always starts up a subscription,
and Mr. Bayard runs the thing, and Mr. Lossing always gives. Mother,
I tell you HE makes them hustle when he takes hold. He's the chairman
here, and he has township chairmen appointed for every township. He's
so popular they start in to oblige him, and then, someway, he makes them
all interested. I must tell you of a funny letter he had to-day from
a Captain Ferguson, out at Baxter. He's a rich farmer with lots of
influence and a great worker, Mr. Lossing says. But this is 'most word
for word what he wrote: 'Dear Sir: I am sorry for the Russians, but my
wife is down with the la grippe, and I can't get a hired girl; so I have
to stay with her. If you'll get me a hired girl, I'll get you a lot of
money for the Russians.'”
“Did he git a girl? I mean Mr. Lossing.”
“No, ma'am. He said he'd try if it was the city, but it was easier
finding gold-mines than girls that would go into the country. See here,
I'm forgetting your presents. Mother, you look real dragged and--queer!”
“It's nothing; jist a thought kinder struck me 'bout--'bout that girl.”
Tilly was sorting out the parcels and explaining them; at the end of her
task her mind harked back to an old grievance. “Mother,” said she, “I've
been thinking for a long time, and I've made up my mind.”
“Yes, dearie.” Mrs. Louder's eyes grew troubled. She knew something of
the quality of Tilly's mind, which resembled her father's in a peculiar
immobility. Once let her decision run into any mould (be it whatsoever
it might), and let it stiffen, there was no chance, any more than with
other iron things, of its bending.
“Positively I could hardly get up the stairs today,” said Tilly--she was
putting her jacket and hat away in her orderly fashion; of necessity
her back was to Mrs. Louder--“there was such a raft of people wanting to
send stuff and messages to you. You are just working yourself to death;
and, mother, I am convinced we have _got to move!_”
Mrs. Louder dropped into a chair and gasped. The baby, who had fallen
asleep, stirred uneasily. It was not a pretty child; its face was heavy,
its little cheeks were roughened by the wind, its lower lip sagged,
its chin creased into the semblance of a fat old man's. But Jane Louder
gazed down on it with infinite compassion. She stroked its head as she
spoke.
“Tilly,” said she, “I've been in this block, Mrs. Carleton and me, ever
since it was built; and, some way, between us we've managed to keep
the run of all the folks in it; at least when they were in any trouble.
We've worked together like sisters. She's 'Piscopal, and I guess I'm
Unitarian; but never a word between us. We tended the Willardses through
diphtheria and the Hopkinses through small-pox, and we steamed and
fumigated the rooms together. It was her first found out the Dillses
were letting that twelve-year-old child run the gasoline stove, and
she threatened to tell Mr. Lossing, and they begged off; and when it
exploded we put it out together, with flour out of her flour-barrel, for
the poor, shiftless things hadn't half a sack full of their own; and her
and me, we took half the care of that little neglected Ellis baby that
was always sitting down in the sticky fly-paper, poor innocent child.
He's took the valedictory at the High School, Tilly, now. No, Tilly, I
couldn't bring myself to leave this building, where I've married them,
and buried them, and born them, you may say, being with so many of their
mothers; I feel like they was all my children. Don't ASK me.”
Tilly's head went upward and backward with a little dilatation of the
nostrils. “Now, mother,” said she in a voice of determined gentleness,
“just listen to me. Would I ask you to do anything that wouldn't be for
your happiness? I have found a real pretty house up on Fifteenth Street;
and we'll keep house together, just as cosey; and have a woman come to
wash and iron and scrub, so it won't be a bit hard; and be right on the
street-cars; and you won't have to drudge helping Mrs. Carleton extra
times with her restaurant.”
“But, Tilly,” eagerly interrupted Mrs. Louder, “you know I dearly love
to cook, and she PAYS me. I couldn't feel right to take any of the
pension money, or the little property your father left me, away from
the house expenses; but what I earn myself, it is SUCH a comfort to give
away out of THAT.”
Tilly ran over and kissed the agitated face. “You dear, generous
mother!” cried she, “I'LL give you all the money you want to spend or
give. I got another rise in my salary of five a month. Don't you worry.”
“You ain't thinking of doing anything right away, Tilly?”
“Don't you think it's best done and over with, after we've decided,
mother? You have worked so hard all your life I want to give you some
ease and peace now.”
“But, Tilly, I love to work; I wouldn't be happy to do nothing, and I'd
get so fleshy!”
Tilly only laughed. She did not crave the show of authority. Let her
but have her own way, she would never flaunt her victories. She was
imperious, but she was not arrogant. For months she had been pondering
how to give her mother an easier life; and she set the table for supper,
in a filial glow of satisfaction, never dreaming that her mother, in the
kitchen, was keeping her head turned from the stove lest she should cry
into the fried ham and stewed potatoes. But, at a sudden thought, Jane
Louder laid her big spoon down to wipe her eyes.
“Here you are, Jane Louder”--thus she addressed herself--“mourning
and grieving to leave your friends and be laid aside for a useless old
woman, and jist be taken care of, and you clean forgetting the chance
the Lord gives you to help more'n you ever helped in your life! For
shame!”
A smile of exaltation, of lofty resolution, erased the worry lines on
her face. “Why, it might be to save twenty lives,” said she; but in the
very speaking of the words a sharp pain wrenched her heart again, and
she caught up the baby from the floor, where he sat in a wall of chairs,
and sobbed over him: “Oh, how can I go away when I got to go for good so
soon? I want every minnit!”
She never thought of disputing Tilly's wishes. “It's only fair,” said
Jane. “She's lived here all these years to please me, and now I ought to
be willing to go to please her.”
Neither did she for a moment hope to change Tilly's determination.
“She was the settest baby ever was,” thought poor Jane, tossing on her
pillow, in the night watches, “and it's grown with every inch of her!”
But in the morning she surprised her daughter. “Tilly,” said she at the
breakfast-table, “Tilly, I got something I must do, and I don't want you
to oppose me.”
“Good gracious, ma!” said Tilly; “as if I ever opposed you!”
“You know how bad I have been feeling about the poor Russians------”
“Well?”
“And how I've wished and wished I could do something--something to
COUNT? I never could, Tilly, because I ain't got the money or the
intellect; but s'posing I could do it for somebody else, like this
Captain Ferguson who could do so much if he just could get a hired girl
to take care of his wife. Well, I do know how to cook and to keep a
house neat and to do for the sick----”
Tilly could restrain herself no longer; her voice rose to a shout of
dismay--“Mother Louder, you AIN'T thinking of going to be the Ferguson's
_hired girl!_”
“Not their hired girl, Tilly; just their help, so as he can work for
those poor starving creatures.” Jane strangled a sob in her throat.
Tilly, in a kind of stupor of bewilderment, frowned at her plate. Then
her clouded face cleared. If Mrs. Louder had surprised her daughter, her
daughter repaid the surprise. “Well, if you feel that way, mother,” said
she, “I won't say a word; and I'll ask Mr. Lossing to explain to the
Fergusons and fix everything. He will.”
“You're real good, Tilly.”
“And while you're gone I guess it will be a good plan to move and git
settled----”
For some reason Tilly's throat felt dry, she lifted her cup. She did not
intend to look across the table, but her eyes escaped her. She set the
coffee down untasted. The clock was slow, she muttered; and she left the
room.
Jane Louder remained in her place, with the same pale face, staring at
the table-cloth.
“It don't seem like I COULD go, now,” she thought dully to herself; “the
time's so awful short, I don't s'pose Maria Carleton can git up to see
me more'n once or twice a month, busy as she is! I got so to depend on
seeing her every day. A sister couldn't be kinder! I don't see how I am
going to bear it. And to go away, beforehand----”
For a long while she sat, her face hardly changing. At last, when she
did push her chair away, her lips were tightly closed. She spoke to the
little pile of books lying on the table in the corner. “I cayn't--these
are my own and you are strangers!” She walked across the room to take up
the same magazine which Tilly had found her reading the day before.
When she began reading she looked stern--poor Jane, she was steeling her
heart--but in a little while she was sniffing and blowing her nose.
With a groan she flung the book aside. “It's no use, I would feel like a
murderer if I don't go!” said she.
She did go. Harry Lossing made all the arrangements. Tilly was
satisfied. But, then, Tilly had not heard Harry's remark to his mother:
“Alma says Miss Louder is trying to make the old lady move against her
will. I dare say it would be better to give the young woman a chance to
miss her mother and take a little quiet think.”
Tilly saw her mother off on the train to Baxter, the Fergusons' station.
Being a provident, far-sighted, and also inexperienced traveller, she
had allowed a full half-hour for preliminary passages at arms with the
railway officials; and, as the train happened to be an hour late, she
found herself with time to spare, even after she had exhausted the
catalogue of possible deceptions and catastrophes by rail. During the
silence that followed her last warning, she sat mentally keeping tally
on her fingers. “Confidence men”--Tilly began with the thumb--“Never
give anybody her check. Never lend anybody money. Never write her
name to anything. Don't get out till conductor tells her. In case of
accident, telegraph me, and keep in the middle of the car, off the
trucks. Not take care of anybody's baby while she goes off for a minute.
Not take care of babies at all. Or children. Not talk to strangers--good
gracious!”