there was her mother helping an old woman, an utterly strange old woman,
to pile a bird-cage on a bandbox surmounting a bag. The old woman was
clad in a black alpaca frock, made with the voluminous draperies of
years ago, but with the uncreased folds and the brilliant gloss of a
new gown. She wore a bonnet of a singular shape, unknown to fashion, but
made out of good velvet. Beneath the bonnet (which was large) appeared
a little, round, agitated old face, with bobbing white curls and white
teeth set a little apart in the mouth, a defect that brought a kind of
palpitating frankness into the expression.
“Now, who HAS mother picked up now?” thought Tilly. “Well, praise be,
she hasn't a baby, anyhow!”
She could hear the talk between the two; for the old woman being deaf,
Mrs. Louder elevated her voice, and the old woman, herself, spoke in a
high, thin pipe that somehow reminded Tilly of a lost lamb.
“That's just so,” said Mrs. Louder, “a body cayn't help worrying over a
sick child, especially if they're away from you.”
“Solon and Minnie wouldn't tell me,” bleated the other woman, “they knew
I'd worry. Kinder hurt me they should keep things from me; but they
hate to have me upset. They are awful good children. But I suspicioned
something when Alonzo kept writing. Minnie, she wouldn't tell me, but
I pinned her down and it come out, Eliza had the grip bad. And, then,
nothing would do but I must go to her--why, Mrs. Louder, she's my child!
But they wouldn't hark to it. 'Fraid to have me travel alone----”
“I guess they take awful good care of you,” said Mrs. Louder; and she
sighed.
“Yes, ma'am, awful.” She, too, sighed.
As she talked her eyes were darting about the room, eagerly fixed on
every new arrival.
“Are you expecting anyone, Mrs. Higbee?” said Jane. They seemed, at
least, to know each other by name, thought Tilly; it was amazing the
number of people mother did know!
“No,” said Mrs. Higbee, “I--I--fact is, I'm kinder frightened. I--fact
is, Mrs. Louder, I guess I'll tell you, though I don't know you very
well; but I've known about you so long--I run away and didn't tell
'em. I just couldn't stay way from Liza. And I took the bird--for the
children; and it's my bird, and I was 'fraid Minnie would forget to feed
it and it would be lonesome. My children are awful kind good children,
but they don't understand. And if Solon sees me he will want me to go
back. I know I'm dretful foolish; and Solon and Minnie will make me see
I am. There won't be no good reason for me to go, and I'll have to stay;
and I feel as if I should FLY--Oh, massy sakes! there's Solon coming
down the street----”
She ran a few steps in half a dozen ways, then fluttered back to her bag
and her cage.
“Well,” said Mrs. Louder, drawing herself up to her full height, “you
SHALL go if you want to.”
“Solon will find me, he'll know the bird-cage! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”
Then a most unexpected helper stepped upon the stage. What is the
mysterious instinct of rebellion to authority that, nine cases out of
ten, sends us to the aid of a fugitive? Tilly, the unconscious despot of
her own mother, promptly aided and abetted Solon's rebel mother in her
flight.
“Not if _I_ carry it,” said she, snatching up the bird-cage; “run inside
that den where they sell refreshments; he'll see ME and go somewhere
else.”
It fell out precisely as she planned. They heard Solon demanding a lady
with a bird-cage of the agent; they heard the agent's reply, given with
official indifference, “There she is, inside.” Directly, Solon, a small
man with an anxious mien, ran into the waiting-room, flung a glance of
disappointment at Tilly, and ran out again.
Tilly went to her client. “Did he look like he was anxious?” was the
mother's greeting. “Oh, I just know he and Minnie will be hunting me
everywhere. Maybe I had better go home, 'stead of to Baxter.”
“No, you hadn't,” said Tilly, with decision. “Mother's going to Baxter,
too, and if you like, minnit you're safely off, I'll go tell your
folks.”
“You're real kind, I'd be ever so much obliged. And you don't mind your
ma travelling alone? ain't that nice for her!” She seemed much cheered
by the prospect of company and warmed into confidences.
“I am kinder lonesome, sometimes, that's a fact,” said she, “and I
kinder wish I lived in a block or a flat like your ma. You see, Minnie
teaches in the public school and she's away all day, and she don't like
to have me make company of the hired girl, though she's a real nice
girl. And there ain't nothing for me to do, and I feel like I wasn't no
use any more in the world. I remember that's what our old minister
in Ohio said once. He was a real nice old man; and they HAD thought
everything of him in the parish; but he got old and his sermons were
long; and so they got a young man for assistant; and they made HIM a
_pastor americus_, they called it--some sort of Latin. Folks did say
the young feller was stuck up and snubbed the old man; anyhow, he never
preached after young Lisbon come; and only made the first prayers. But
when the old folks would ask him to preach some of the old sermons
they had liked, he only would say, 'No, friends, I know more about my
sermons, now.' He didn't live very long, and I always kinder fancied
being a AMERICUS killed him. And some days I git to feeling like I was a
kinder AMERICUS myself.”
“That ain't fair to your children,” said Tilly; “you ought to let them
know how you feel. Then they'd act different.”
“Oh, I don't know, I don't know. You see, miss, they're so sure they
know better'n me. Say, Mrs. Louder, be you going to visit relatives in
Baxter?”
“No, ma'am, I'm going to take care of a sick lady,” said Jane, “it's
kinder queer. Her name's Ferguson, her----”
“For the land's sake!” screamed Mrs. Higbee, “why, that's my 'Liza!” She
was in a flutter of surprise and delight, and so absorbed was Tilly in
getting her and her unwieldy luggage into the car, that Jane's daughter
forgot to kiss her mother good-by.
“Put your arm in QUICK,” she yelled, as Jane essayed to kiss her hand
through the window; “don't EVER put your arm or your head out of a
train!”--the train moved away--“I do hope she'll remember what I told
her, and not lend anybody money, or come home lugging somebody else's
baby!”
With such reflections, and an ugly sensation of loneliness creeping over
her, Tilly went to assure Miss Minnie Higbee of her mother's safety. She
described her reception to Harry Lossing and Alma, later. “She really
seemed kinder mad at me,” says Tilly, “seemed to think I was interfering
somehow. And she hadn't any business to feel that way, for SHE didn't
know how I'd fooled her brother with that bird-cage. I guess the poor
old lady daren't call her soul her own. I'd hate to have my mother that
way--so 'fraid of me. MY mother shall go where she pleases, and stay
where she pleases, and DO as she pleases.”
“That makes me think,” says Alma, “I heard you were going to move.”
“Yes, we are. Mother is working too hard. She knows everybody in the
building, and they call on her all the time; and I think the easiest way
out is just to move.”
Alma and Mr. Lossing exchanged glances. There is an Arabian legend of
an angel whose trade it is to decipher the language of faces. This angel
must have perceived that Alma's eyes said, with the courage of a second
in a duel, “Go on, now is the time!” and that Harry's answered, with
masculine pusillanimity, “I don't like to!”
But he spoke. “Very likely your mother does sometimes work too hard,”
said he. “But don't you think it would be harder for her not to work?
Why, she must have been in the building ever since my father bought
it; and she's been a janitor and a fire inspector and a doctor and a
ministering angel combined! That is why we never raised the rent to you
when we improved the building, and raised it on the others. My father
told me your mother was the best paying tenant he ever had. And don't
you remember how, when I used to come with him, when I was a little boy,
she used to take me in her room while he went the rounds? She was always
doing good to everybody, the same way. She has a heart as big as the
Mississippi, and I assure you, Miss Louder, you won't make her happy,
but miserable, if you try to dam up its channel. She has often told me
that she loved the building and all the people in it. They all love her.
I HOPE, Miss Louder, you'll think of those things before you decide. She
is so unselfish that she would go in a minute if she thought it would
make you happier.” The angel aforesaid, during this speech (which Harry
delivered with great energy and feeling), must have had all his wits
busy on Tilly's impassive features; but he could read ardent approval,
succeeded by indignation, on Alma's countenance, at his first glance.
The indignation came when Tilly spoke. She said: “Thank you, Mr.
Lossing, you're very kind, I'm sure”--Harry softly kicked the
wastebasket under the desk--“but I guess it's best for us to go. I've
been thinking about it for six months, and I know it will be a hard
struggle for mother to go; but in a little while she will be glad
she went. It's only for her sake I am doing it; it ain't an easy or a
pleasant thing for me to do, either----” As Tilly stopped her voice was
unsteady, and the rare tears shone in her eyes.
“What's best for her is the only question, of course,” said Alma,
helping Harry off the field.
In a few days Tilly received a long letter from her mother. Mr. Ferguson
was doing wonders for the Russians; the family were all very kind to her
and “nice folks” and easily pleased. (“Of COURSE they're pleased with
mother's cooking; what would they be made of if they weren't!” cried
Tilly.) It was wonderful how much help Mrs. Higbee was about the house,
and how happy it made her. Mrs. Ferguson had seemed real glad to see
her, and that made her happy. And then, maybe it helped a little, her
(Jane Louder's) telling Mrs. Ferguson (“accidental like”) how Tilly
treated her, never trying to boss her, and letting her travel alone.
Perhaps, if Mrs. Ferguson kept on improving, they might let her come
home next week. And the letter ended:
“I will be so glad if they do, for I want to see you so bad, dear
daughter, and I want to see the old home once more before we leave. I
guess the house you tell me about will be very nice and convenient. I
do thank you, dear daughter, for being so nice and considerate about the
Russians. Give my love to Mrs. Carleton and all of them; and if little
Bobby Green hasn't missed school since I left, give him a nickel,
please; and please give that medical student on the fifth floor--I
forget his name--the stockings I mended. They are in the first drawer of
the walnut bureau. Good-by, my dear, good daughter.
“MOTHER, JANE M. LOUDER.”
When Tilly read the letter she was surrounded by wall-paper and carpet
samples. Her eyes grew moist before she laid it down; but she set her
mouth more firmly.
“It is an awful short time, but I've just got to hurry and have it over
before she comes,” said she.
Next week Jane returned. She was on the train, waiting in her seat in
the car, when Captain Ferguson handed her Tilly's last letter, which had
lain in the post-office for three days.
It was very short:
“DEAR MOTHER: I shall be very glad indeed to see you. I have a surprise
which I hope will be pleasant for you; anyhow, I truly have meant it for
your happiness.
“Your affectionate daughter,
“M. E. LOUDER.”
There must have been, despite her shrewd sense, an obtuse streak in
Tilly, else she would never have written that letter. Jane read it
twice. The paper rattled in her hands. “Tilly has moved while I was
gone,” she said; “I never shall live in the block again.” She dropped
her veil over her face. She sat very quietly in her seat; but the
conductor who came for her ticket watched her sharply, she seemed so
dazed by his demand and was so long in finding the ticket.
The train rumbled and hissed through darkening cornfields, into
scattered yellow lights of low houses, into angles of white light of
street-arcs and shop-windows, into the red and blue lights dancing
before the engines in the station.
“Mother!” cried Tilly's voice.
Jane let her and Harry Lossing take all her bundles and lift her out of
the car. Whether she spoke a word she could not tell. She did rouse a
little at the vision of the Lossing carriage glittering at the street
corner; but she had not the sense to thank Harry Lossing, who placed her
in the carriage and lifted his hat in farewell.
“What's he doing all that for, Tilly?” cried she; “there ain't--there
ain't nobody dead--Maria Carleton------” She stared at Tilly wildly.
Tilly was oddly moved, though she tried to speak lightly. “No, no, there
ain't nothing wrong, at all. It's because you've done so much for the
Russians--and other folks! Now, ma, I'm going to be mysterious. You must
shut your eyes and shut your mouth until I tell you. That's a dear ma.”
It was vaguely comforting to have Tilly so affectionate. “I'm a wicked,
ungrateful woman to be so wretched,” thought Jane; “I'll never let Tilly
know how I felt.”
In a surprisingly short time the carriage stopped. “Now, ma,” said
Tilly.
A great blaze of light seemed all about Jane Louder. There were the dear
familiar windows of the Lossing block.
“Come up-stairs, ma,” said Tilly.
She followed like one in a dream; and like one in a dream she was pushed
into her own old parlor. The old parlor, but not quite the old parlor;
hung with new wall-paper, shining with new paint, soft under her feet
with a new carpet, it looked to Jane Louder like fairyland.
“Oh, Tilly,” she gasped; “oh, Tilly, ain't you moved?”
“No, nor we ain't going to move, ma--that's the surprise! I took the
money I'd saved for moving, for the new carpet and new dishes; and the
Lossings they papered and painted. I was SO 'fraid we couldn't get done
in time. Alma and all the boarders are coming in pretty soon to
welcome you, and they've all chipped in for a little banquet at Mrs.
Carleton's--why, mother, you're crying! Mother, you didn't really think
I'd move when it made you feel so bad? I know I'm set and stubborn,
and I didn't take it well when Mr. Lossing talked to me; but the more I
thought it over, the more I seemed to myself like that hateful Minnie.
Oh, mother, I ain't, am I? You shall do just exactly as you like all the
days of your life!”
AN ASSISTED PROVIDENCE
IT was the Christmas turkeys that should be held responsible. Every year
the Lossings give each head of a family in their employ, and each
lad helping to support his mother, a turkey at Christmastide. As the
business has grown, so has the number of turkeys, until it is now
well up in the hundreds, and requires a special contract. Harry, one
Christmas, some two years ago, bought the turkeys at so good a bargain
that he felt the natural reaction in an impulse to extravagance. In
the very flood-tide of the money-spending yearnings, he chanced to
pass Deacon Hurst's stables and to see two Saint Bernard puppies, of
elephantine size but of the tenderest age, gambolling on the sidewalk
before the office. Deacon Hurst, I should explain, is no more a deacon
than I am; he is a livery-stable keeper, very honest, a keen and solemn
sportsman, and withal of a staid demeanor and a habitual garb of black.
Now you know as well as I any reason for his nickname.
Deacon Hurst is fond of the dog as well as of that noble animal the
horse (he has three copies of “Black Beauty” in his stable, which would
do an incalculable amount of good if they were ever read!); and he
usually has half a dozen dogs of his own, with pedigrees long enough
for a poor gentlewoman in a New England village. He told Harry that the
Saint Bernards were grandsons of Sir Bevidere, the “finest dog of his
time in the world, sir;” that they were perfectly marked and very
large for their age (which Harry found it easy to believe of the young
giants), and that they were “ridiculous, sir, at the figger of two
hundred and fifty!” (which Harry did not believe so readily); and, after
Harry had admired and studied the dogs for the space of half an hour,
he dropped the price, in a kind of spasm of generosity, to two hundred
dollars. Harry was tempted to close the bargain on the spot, hot-headed,
but he decided to wait and prepare his mother for such a large addition
to the stable.
The more he dwelt on the subject the more he longed to buy the dogs.
In fact, a time comes to every healthy man when he wants a dog, just
as a time comes when he wants a wife; and Harry's dog was dead.
By consequence, Harry was in the state of sensitive affection and
desolation to which a promising new object makes the most moving appeal.
The departed dog (Bruce by name) had been a Saint Bernard; and Deacon
Hurst found one of the puppies to have so much the expression of
countenance of the late Bruce that he named him Bruce on the spot--a
little before Harry joined the group. Harry did not at first recognize
this resemblance, but he grew to see it; and, combined with the dog's
affectionate disposition, it softened his heart. By the time he told his
mother he was come to quoting Hurst's adjectives as his own.
“Beauties, mother,” says Harry, with sparkling eyes; “the markings are
perfect--couldn't be better; and their heads are shaped just right!
You can't get such watch-dogs in the world! And, for all their enormous
strength, gentle as a lamb to women and children! And, mother, one of
them looks like Bruce!”
“I suppose they would want to be housedogs,” says Mrs. Lossing, a little
dubiously, but looking fondly at Harry's handsome face; “you know,
somehow, all our dogs, no matter how properly they start in a kennel,
end by being so hurt if we keep them there that they come into the
house. And they are so large, it is like having a pet lion about.”
“These dogs, mother, shall never put a paw in the house.”
“Well, I hope just as I get fond of them they will not have the
distemper and die!” said Mrs. Lossing; which speech Harry rightly took
for the white flag of surrender.
That evening he went to find Hurst and clinch the bargain. As it
happened, Hurst was away, driving an especially important political
personage to an especially important political council. The day
following was a Sunday; but, by this time, Harry was so bent upon
obtaining the dogs that he had it in mind to go to Hurst's house for
them in the afternoon. When Harry wants anything, from Saint Bernards to
purity in politics, he wants it with an irresistible impetus! If he
did wrong, his error was linked to its own punishment. But this is
anticipating, if not presuming; I prefer to leave Harry Lossing's
experience to paint its own moral without pushing. The event that
happened next was Harry's pulling out his check-book and beginning to
write a check, remarking, with a slight drooping of his eyelids, “Best
catch the deacon's generosity on the fly, or it may make a home run!”
Then he let the pen fall on the blotter, for he had remembered the
day. After an instant's hesitation he took a couple of hundred-dollar
bank-notes out of a drawer (I think they were gifts for his two sisters
on Christmas day, for he is a generous brother; and most likely there
would be some small domestic joke about engravings to go with them);
these he placed in the right-hand pocket of his waistcoat. In his
left-hand waistcoat pocket were two five-dollar notes.
Harry was now arrayed for church. He was a figure to please any woman's
eye, thought his mother, as she walked beside him, and gloried silently
in his six feet of health and muscle and dainty cleanliness. He was in a
most amiable mood, what with the Saint Bernards and the season. As they
approached the cathedral close, Harry, not for the first time, admired
the pure Gothic lines of the cathedral, and the soft blending of grays
in the stone with the warmer hues of the brown network of Virginia
creeper that still fluttered, a remnant of the crimson adornings of
autumn. Beyond were the bare, square outlines of the old college, with
a wooden cupola perched on the roof, like a little hat on a fat man,
the dull-red tints of the professors' houses, and the withered lawns and
bare trees. The turrets and balconies and arched windows of the boys'
school displayed a red background for a troop of gray uniforms and
blazing buttons; the boys were forming to march to church. Opposite the
boys' school stood the modest square brick house that had served the
first bishop of the diocese during laborious years. Now it was the
dean's residence. Facing it, just as you approached the cathedral, the
street curved into a half-circle on either side, and in the centre the
granite soldier on his shaft looked over the city that would honor him.
Harry saw the tall figure of the dean come out of his gate, the long
black skirts of his cassock fluttering under the wind of his big steps.
Beside him skipped and ran, to keep step with him, a little man in
ill-fitting black, of whose appearance, thus viewed from the rear, one
could only observe stooping shoulders and iron-gray hair that curled at
the ends.
“He must be the poor missionary who built his church himself,” Mrs.
Lossing observed; “he is not much of a preacher, the dean said, but he
is a great worker and a good pastor.”
“So much the better for his people, and the worse for us!” says Harry,
cheerfully.
“Why?”
“Naturally. We shall get the poor sermon and they will get the good
pastoring!”
Then Harry caught sight of a woman's frock and a profile that he knew,
and thought no more of the preacher, whoever he might be.
But he was in the chancel in plain view, after the procession of
choir-boys had taken their seats. He was an elderly man with thin
cheeks and a large nose. He had one of those great, orotund voices that
occasionally roll out of little men, and he read the service with a
misjudged effort to fill the building. The building happened to have
peculiarly fine acoustic properties; but the unfortunate man roared like
him of Bashan. There was nothing of the customary ecclesiastical dignity
and monotony about his articulation; indeed, it grew plain and plainer
to Harry that he must have “come over” from some franker and more
emotional denomination. It seemed quite out of keeping with his homely
manner and crumpled surplice that this particular reader should intone.
Intone, nevertheless, he did; and as badly as mortal man well could! It
was not so much that his voice or his ear went wrong; he would have had
a musical voice of the heavy sort, had he not bellowed; neither did his
ear betray him; the trouble seemed to be that he could not decide when
to begin; now he began too early, and again, with a startled air, he
began too late, as if he had forgotten.
“I hope he will not preach,” thought Harry, who was absorbed in a rapt
contemplation of his sweetheart's back hair. He came back from a tender
revery (by way of a little detour into the furniture business and the
establishment that a man of his income could afford) to the church and
the preacher and his own sins, to find the strange clergyman in the
pulpit, plainly frightened, and bawling more loudly than ever under the
influence of fear. He preached a sermon of wearisome platitudes; making
up for lack of thought by repetition, and shouting himself red in the
face to express earnestness. “Fourth-class Methodist effort,” thought
the listener in the Lossing pew, stroking his fair mustache, “with
Episcopal decorations! That man used to be a Methodist minister, and
he was brought into the fold by a high-churchman. Poor fellow, the
Methodist church polity has a place for such fellows as he; but he is a
stray sheep with us. He doesn't half catch on to the motions; yet I'll
warrant he is proud of that sermon, and his wife thinks it one of the
great efforts of the century.” Here Harry took a short rest from the
sermon, to contemplate the amazing moral phenomenon: how robust can be a
wife's faith in a commonplace husband!
“Now, this man,” reflected Harry, growing interested in his own fancies,
“this man never can have LIVED! He doesn't know what it is to suffer, he
has only vegetated! Doubtless, in a prosaic way, he loves his wife
and children; but can a fellow who talks like him have any delicate
sympathies or any romance about him? He looks honest; I think he is a
right good fellow and works like a soldier; but to be so stupid as he
is, ought to HURT!”
Harry felt a whimsical moving of sympathy towards the preacher. He
wondered why he continually made gestures with the left arm, never with
his right.