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Three Lives
_Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena_
GERTRUDE STEIN
_Donc je suis malheureux et ce n'est ni ma faute ni celle de
la vie._[1]
Jules Laforgue
[Footnote 1: Therefore I am unhappy and it is neither my fault
nor that of life.]
Contents
page
The Good Anna 1
Melanctha 47
The Gentle Lena 142
THE GOOD ANNA
Part I
The tradesmen of Bridgepoint learned to dread the sound of "Miss
Mathilda", for with that name the good Anna always conquered.
The strictest of the one price stores found that they could give
things for a little less, when the good Anna had fully said that "Miss
Mathilda" could not pay so much and that she could buy it cheaper "by
Lindheims."
Lindheims was Anna's favorite store, for there they had bargain days,
when flour and sugar were sold for a quarter of a cent less for a
pound, and there the heads of the departments were all her friends and
always managed to give her the bargain prices, even on other days.
Anna led an arduous and troubled life.
Anna managed the whole little house for Miss Mathilda. It was a funny
little house, one of a whole row of all the same kind that made a
close pile like a row of dominoes that a child knocks over, for they
were built along a street which at this point came down a steep hill.
They were funny little houses, two stories high, with red brick fronts
and long white steps.
This one little house was always very full with Miss Mathilda, an
under servant, stray dogs and cats and Anna's voice that scolded,
managed, grumbled all day long.
"Sallie! can't I leave you alone a minute but you must run to the door
to see the butcher boy come down the street and there is Miss Mathilda
calling for her shoes. Can I do everything while you go around always
thinking about nothing at all? If I ain't after you every minute you
would be forgetting all, the time, and I take all this pains, and when
you come to me you was as ragged as a buzzard and as dirty as a dog.
Go and find Miss Mathilda her shoes where you put them this morning."
"Peter!",--her voice rose higher,--"Peter!",--Peter was the youngest
and the favorite dog,--"Peter, if you don't leave Baby alone,"--Baby
was an old, blind terrier that Anna had loved for many years,--"Peter
if you don't leave Baby alone, I take a rawhide to you, you bad dog."
The good Anna had high ideals for canine chastity and discipline. The
three regular dogs, the three that always lived with Anna, Peter and
old Baby, and the fluffy little Rags, who was always jumping up into
the air just to show that he was happy, together with the transients,
the many stray ones that Anna always kept until she found them homes,
were all under strict orders never to be bad one with the other.
A sad disgrace did once happen in the family. A little transient
terrier for whom Anna had found a home suddenly produced a crop of
pups. The new owners were certain that this Foxy had known no dog
since she was in their care. The good Anna held to it stoutly that her
Peter and her Rags were guiltless, and she made her statement with so
much heat that Foxy's owners were at last convinced that these results
were due to their neglect.
"You bad dog," Anna said to Peter that night, "you bad dog."
"Peter was the father of those pups," the good Anna explained to Miss
Mathilda, "and they look just like him too, and poor little Foxy,
they were so big that she could hardly have them, but Miss Mathilda, I
would never let those people know that Peter was so bad."
Periods of evil thinking came very regularly to Peter and to Rags and
to the visitors within their gates. At such times Anna would be
very busy and scold hard, and then too she always took great care to
seclude the bad dogs from each other whenever she had to leave the
house. Sometimes just to see how good it was that she had made them,
Anna would leave the room a little while and leave them all together,
and then she would suddenly come back. Back would slink all the
wicked-minded dogs at the sound of her hand upon the knob, and then
they would sit desolate in their corners like a lot of disappointed
children whose stolen sugar has been taken from them.
Innocent blind old Baby was the only one who preserved the dignity
becoming in a dog.
You see that Anna led an arduous and troubled life.
The good Anna was a small, spare, german woman, at this time about
forty years of age. Her face was worn, her cheeks were thin, her mouth
drawn and firm, and her light blue eyes were very bright. Sometimes
they were full of lightning and sometimes full of humor, but they were
always sharp and clear.
Her voice was a pleasant one, when she told the histories of bad Peter
and of Baby and of little Rags. Her voice was a high and piercing one
when she called to the teamsters and to the other wicked men, what
she wanted that should come to them, when she saw them beat a horse or
kick a dog. She did not belong to any society that could stop them
and she told them so most frankly, but her strained voice and her
glittering eyes, and her queer piercing german english first made them
afraid and then ashamed. They all knew too, that all the policemen
on the beat were her friends. These always respected and obeyed
Miss Annie, as they called her, and promptly attended to all of her
complaints.
For five years Anna managed the little house for Miss Mathilda. In
these five years there were four different under servants.
The one that came first was a pretty, cheerful irish girl. Anna took
her with a doubting mind. Lizzie was an obedient, happy servant, and
Anna began to have a little faith. This was not for long. The pretty,
cheerful Lizzie disappeared one day without her notice and with all
her baggage and returned no more.
This pretty, cheerful Lizzie was succeeded by a melancholy Molly.
Molly was born in America, of german parents. All her people had been
long dead or gone away. Molly had always been alone. She was a tall,
dark, sallow, thin-haired creature, and she was always troubled with
a cough, and she had a bad temper, and always said ugly dreadful swear
words.
Anna found all this very hard to bear, but she kept Molly a long time
out of kindness. The kitchen was constantly a battle-ground. Anna
scolded and Molly swore strange oaths, and then Miss Mathilda would
shut her door hard to show that she could hear it all.
At last Anna had to give it up. "Please Miss Mathilda won't you speak
to Molly," Anna said, "I can't do a thing with her. I scold her, and
she don't seem to hear and then she swears so that she scares me. She
loves you Miss Mathilda, and you scold her please once."
"But Anna," cried poor Miss Mathilda, "I don't want to," and that
large, cheerful, but faint hearted woman looked all aghast at such a
prospect. "But you must, please Miss Mathilda!" Anna said.
Miss Mathilda never wanted to do any scolding. "But you must please
Miss Mathilda," Anna said.
Miss Mathilda every day put off the scolding, hoping always that Anna
would learn to manage Molly better. It never did get better and at
last Miss Mathilda saw that the scolding simply had to be.
It was agreed between the good Anna and her Miss Mathilda that Anna
should be away when Molly would be scolded. The next evening that it
was Anna's evening out, Miss Mathilda faced her task and went down
into the kitchen.
Molly was sitting in the little kitchen leaning her elbows on the
table. She was a tall, thin, sallow girl, aged twenty-three, by nature
slatternly and careless but trained by Anna into superficial neatness.
Her drab striped cotton dress and gray black checked apron increased
the length and sadness of her melancholy figure. "Oh, Lord!" groaned
Miss Mathilda to herself as she approached her.
"Molly, I want to speak to you about your behaviour to Anna!", here
Molly dropped her head still lower on her arms and began to cry.
"Oh! Oh!" groaned Miss Mathilda.
"It's all Miss Annie's fault, all of it," Molly said at last, in a
trembling voice, "I do my best."
"I know Anna is often hard to please," began Miss Mathilda, with a
twinge of mischief, and then she sobered herself to her task, "but
you must remember, Molly, she means it for your good and she is really
very kind to you."
"I don't want her kindness," Molly cried, "I wish you would tell me
what to do, Miss Mathilda, and then I would be all right. I hate Miss
Annie."
"This will never do Molly," Miss Mathilda said sternly, in her
deepest, firmest tones, "Anna is the head of the kitchen and you must
either obey her or leave."
"I don't want to leave you," whimpered melancholy Molly. "Well Molly
then try and do better," answered Miss Mathilda, keeping a good stern
front, and backing quickly from the kitchen.
"Oh! Oh!" groaned Miss Mathilda, as she went back up the stairs.
Miss Mathilda's attempt to make peace between the constantly
contending women in the kitchen had no real effect. They were very
soon as bitter as before.
At last it was decided that Molly was to go away. Molly went away to
work in a factory in the town, and she went to live with an old woman
in the slums, a very bad old woman Anna said.
Anna was never easy in her mind about the fate of Molly. Sometimes she
would see or hear of her. Molly was not well, her cough was worse, and
the old woman really was a bad one.
After a year of this unwholesome life, Molly was completely broken
down. Anna then again took her in charge. She brought her from her
work and from the woman where she lived, and put her in a hospital to
stay till she was well. She found a place for her as nursemaid to a
little girl out in the country, and Molly was at last established and
content.
Molly had had, at first, no regular successor. In a few months it was
going to be the summer and Miss Mathilda would be gone away, and old
Katie would do very well to come in every day and help Anna with her
work.
Old Katy was a heavy, ugly, short and rough old german woman, with a
strange distorted german-english all her own. Anna was worn out now
with her attempt to make the younger generation do all that it should
and rough old Katy never answered back, and never wanted her own
way. No scolding or abuse could make its mark on her uncouth and aged
peasant hide. She said her "Yes, Miss Annie," when an answer had to
come, and that was always all that she could say.
"Old Katy is just a rough old woman, Miss Mathilda," Anna said, "but
I think I keep her here with me. She can work and she don't give me
trouble like I had with Molly all the time."
Anna always had a humorous sense from this old Katy's twisted peasant
english, from the roughness on her tongue of buzzing s's and from the
queer ways of her brutish servile humor. Anna could not let old Katy
serve at table--old Katy was too coarsely made from natural earth for
that--and so Anna had all this to do herself and that she never liked,
but even then this simple rough old creature was pleasanter to her
than any of the upstart young.
Life went on very smoothly now in these few months before the summer
came. Miss Mathilda every summer went away across the ocean to be gone
for several months. When she went away this summer old Katy was so
sorry, and on the day that Miss Mathilda went, old Katy cried hard
for many hours. An earthy, uncouth, servile peasant creature old Katy
surely was. She stood there on the white stone steps of the little red
brick house, with her bony, square dull head with its thin, tanned,
toughened skin and its sparse and kinky grizzled hair, and her strong,
squat figure a little overmade on the right side, clothed in her blue
striped cotton dress, all clean and always washed but rough and harsh
to see--and she stayed there on the steps till Anna brought her in,
blubbering, her apron to her face, and making queer guttural broken
moans.
When Miss Mathilda early in the fall came to her house again old Katy
was not there.
"I never thought old Katy would act so Miss Mathilda," Anna said,
"when she was so sorry when you went away, and I gave her full wages
all the summer, but they are all alike Miss Mathilda, there isn't one
of them that's fit to trust. You know how Katy said she liked you,
Miss Mathilda, and went on about it when you went away and then she
was so good and worked all right until the middle of the summer, when
I got sick, and then she went away and left me all alone and took a
place out in the country, where they gave her some more money. She
didn't say a word, Miss Mathilda, she just went off and left me there
alone when I was sick after that awful hot summer that we had, and
after all we done for her when she had no place to go, and all summer
I gave her better things to eat than I had for myself. Miss Mathilda,
there isn't one of them has any sense of what's the right way for a
girl to do, not one of them."
Old Katy was never heard from any more.
No under servant was decided upon now for several months. Many came
and many went, and none of them would do. At last Anna heard of
Sallie.
Sallie was the oldest girl in a family of eleven and Sallie was just
sixteen years old. From Sallie down they came always littler and
littler in her family, and all of them were always out at work
excepting only the few littlest of them all.
Sallie was a pretty blonde and smiling german girl, and stupid and a
little silly. The littler they came in her family the brighter they
all were. The brightest of them all was a little girl of ten. She did
a good day's work washing dishes for a man and wife in a saloon, and
she earned a fair day's wage, and then there was one littler still.
She only worked for half the day. She did the house work for a
bachelor doctor. She did it all, all of the housework and received
each week her eight cents for her wage. Anna was always indignant when
she told that story.
"I think he ought to give her ten cents Miss Mathilda any way. Eight
cents is so mean when she does all his work and she is such a bright
little thing too, not stupid like our Sallie. Sallie would never learn
to do a thing if I didn't scold her all the time, but Sallie is a good
girl, and I take care and she will do all right."
Sallie was a good, obedient german child. She never answered Anna
back, no more did Peter, old Baby and little Rags and so though
always Anna's voice was sharply raised in strong rebuke and worn
expostulation, they were a happy family all there together in the
kitchen.
Anna was a mother now to Sallie, a good incessant german mother who
watched and scolded hard to keep the girl from any evil step. Sallie's
temptations and transgressions were much like those of naughty Peter
and jolly little Rags, and Anna took the same way to keep all three
from doing what was bad.
Sallie's chief badness besides forgetting all the time and never
washing her hands clean to serve at table, was the butcher boy.
He was an unattractive youth enough, that butcher boy. Suspicion began
to close in around Sallie that she spent the evenings when Anna was
away, in company with this bad boy.
"Sallie is such a pretty girl, Miss Mathilda," Anna said, "and she is
so dumb and silly, and she puts on that red waist, and she crinkles
up her hair with irons so I have to laugh, and then I tell her if she
only washed her hands clean it would be better than all that fixing
all the time, but you can't do a thing with the young girls nowadays
Miss Mathilda. Sallie is a good girl but I got to watch her all the
time."
Suspicion closed in around Sallie more and more, that she spent Anna's
evenings out with this boy sitting in the kitchen. One early morning
Anna's voice was sharply raised.
"Sallie this ain't the same banana that I brought home yesterday, for
Miss Mathilda, for her breakfast, and you was out early in the street
this morning, what was you doing there?"
"Nothing, Miss Annie, I just went out to see, that's all and that's
the same banana, 'deed it is Miss Annie."
"Sallie, how can you say so and after all I do for you, and Miss
Mathilda is so good to you. I never brought home no bananas yesterday
with specks on it like that. I know better, it was that boy was here
last night and ate it while I was away, and you was out to get another
this morning. I don't want no lying Sallie."
Sallie was stout in her defence but then she gave it up and she said
it was the boy who snatched it as he ran away at the sound of Anna's
key opening the outside door. "But I will never let him in again, Miss
Annie, 'deed I won't," said Sallie.
And now it was all peaceful for some weeks and then Sallie with
fatuous simplicity began on certain evenings to resume her bright red
waist, her bits of jewels and her crinkly hair.
One pleasant evening in the early spring, Miss Mathilda was standing
on the steps beside the open door, feeling cheerful in the pleasant,
gentle night. Anna came down the street, returning from her evening
out. "Don't shut the door, please, Miss Mathilda," Anna said in a low
voice, "I don't want Sallie to know I'm home."
Anna went softly through the house and reached the kitchen door. At
the sound of her hand upon the knob there was a wild scramble and
a bang, and then Sallie sitting there alone when Anna came into the
room, but, alas, the butcher boy forgot his overcoat in his escape.
You see that Anna led an arduous and troubled life.
Anna had her troubles, too, with Miss Mathilda. "And I slave and slave
to save the money and you go out and spend it all on foolishness,"
the good Anna would complain when her mistress, a large and careless
woman, would come home with a bit of porcelain, a new etching and
sometimes even an oil painting on her arm.
"But Anna," argued Miss Mathilda, "if you didn't save this money,
don't you see I could not buy these things," and then Anna would
soften and look pleased until she learned the price, and then wringing
her hands, "Oh, Miss Mathilda, Miss Mathilda," she would cry, "and you
gave all that money out for that, when you need a dress to go out in
so bad." "Well, perhaps I will get one for myself next year, Anna,"
Miss Mathilda would cheerfully concede. "If we live till then Miss
Mathilda, I see that you do," Anna would then answer darkly.
Anna had great pride in the knowledge and possessions of her cherished
Miss Mathilda, but she did not like her careless way of wearing always
her old clothes. "You can't go out to dinner in that dress, Miss
Mathilda," she would say, standing firmly before the outside door,
"You got to go and put on your new dress you always look so nice in."
"But Anna, there isn't time." "Yes there is, I go up and help you fix
it, please Miss Mathilda you can't go out to dinner in that dress and
next year if we live till then, I make you get a new hat, too. It's a
shame Miss Mathilda to go out like that."
The poor mistress sighed and had to yield. It suited her cheerful,
lazy temper to be always without care but sometimes it was a burden
to endure, for so often she had it all to do again unless she made a
rapid dash out of the door before Anna had a chance to see.
Life was very easy always for this large and lazy Miss Mathilda, with
the good Anna to watch and care for her and all her clothes and goods.
But, alas, this world of ours is after all much what it should be and
cheerful Miss Mathilda had her troubles too with Anna.
It was pleasant that everything for one was done, but annoying often
that what one wanted most just then, one could not have when one
had foolishly demanded and not suggested one's desire. And then Miss
Mathilda loved to go out on joyous, country tramps when, stretching
free and far with cheerful comrades, over rolling hills and
cornfields, glorious in the setting sun, and dogwood white and shining
underneath the moon and clear stars over head, and brilliant air and
tingling blood, it was hard to have to think of Anna's anger at the
late return, though Miss Mathilda had begged that there might be no
hot supper cooked that night. And then when all the happy crew of
Miss Mathilda and her friends, tired with fullness of good health and
burning winds and glowing sunshine in the eyes, stiffened and justly
worn and wholly ripe for pleasant food and gentle content, were all
come together to the little house--it was hard for all that tired crew
who loved the good things Anna made to eat, to come to the closed
door and wonder there if it was Anna's evening in or out, and then the
others must wait shivering on their tired feet, while Miss Mathilda
softened Anna's heart, or if Anna was well out, boldly ordered
youthful Sallie to feed all the hungry lot.
Such things were sometimes hard to bear and often grievously did
Miss Mathilda feel herself a rebel with the cheerful Lizzies, the
melancholy Mollies, the rough old Katies and the stupid Sallies.
Miss Mathilda had other troubles too, with the good Anna. Miss
Mathilda had to save her Anna from the many friends, who in the kindly
fashion of the poor, used up her savings and then gave her promises in
place of payments.
The good Anna had many curious friends that she had found in the
twenty years that she had lived in Bridgepoint, and Miss Mathilda
would often have to save her from them all.