LILITH’S STRUGGLES
Perhaps in some long twilight hour,
Like those we have known of old,
When past shadows round you gather,
And your present friends grow cold,
You may stretch your hands out towards me.
Ah! you will—I know not when.
I shall nurse my love, and keep it
Faithfully for you till then.
_A. A. Proctor._
Lilith found her new home a safe enough retreat. Let any young woman go
into a strange house, in a strange city, under the circumstances in
which Lilith entered the Widow Downie’s, and if she feel compelled to
observe a strict silence concerning her own past life, she need not tell
her story. Her neighbors will make up one to fit her, and, what is more,
will believe in it.
Try to get at the origin of such a story, and you may trace it to “They
say,” but no farther.
The advent of Lilith in the boarding-house of Mrs. Downie caused a great
deal of gossip, in which, strange to say, there was not a word of
ill-nature, of criticism, or of adverse reflection upon the young
creature.
She was so child-like, so pretty, and so desolate, that the hearts of
all her fellow-lodgers were drawn towards her.
By “putting this and that” together, by unconsciously exaggerating all
they heard, and by involuntarily drawing upon their imaginations, they
had formed a theory, which they took for fact, in regard to Lilith.
The talk ran something like this:
“Mrs. Ponsonby, a very dear friend of Mrs. Downie, brought her from the
South, to try to get something to do in New York.”
“They say her father was a rich planter, who was totally ruined in the
late war.”
“Not at all. He was a wealthy banker of Richmond, who failed in ’65.”
“A great mistake. She was the only child of a Baltimore broker, who——”
“Oh, no! A Washington merchant, who became a bankrupt last year, and——”
And so forth, and so forth.
At last, however, the chaotic story came into form and shape and
permanent existence, as follows:
Miss Wilding—for that was the way in which Mrs. Downie had heard and
repeated the word when Lilith, remembering that her husband had
forbidden her to use his name, had replied to the landlady’s inquiries
by giving the one to which she had the next best right, and saying, “My
name is Wyvil,” whereupon the landlady thought she said, “Wilding,” and
thought, from her child-like appearance, that she was, of course, a
single woman, and reported her as Miss Wilding—Miss Wilding, then,
according to the crystalized gossip of the house, was the only child of
a wealthy Virginia planter, who had been ruined by the war, and had
died, leaving his motherless daughter entirely destitute. Mrs. Ponsonby
had become so much interested in the young orphan that she had brought
her to New York to get something to do, and had very wisely brought her
straight to Mrs. Downie’s boarding-house, and had very properly become
surety for her board, for Mrs. Downie, with all her goodness of heart,
was too poor to lose the board money, which Mrs. Ponsonby was quite rich
enough to pay without feeling it.
Lilith was also spared troublesome questions, because the inmates of the
house, though poor enough in this world’s goods, were too refined openly
to intrude upon the reserve of the young stranger; and also because,
when once the good landlady, in the motherly kindness of her heart, had
questioned Lilith concerning her troubles, the poor girl had burst into
such a passion of tears that Mrs. Downie became very much distressed,
and after doing all she could to soothe the mourner’s sorrow, she not
only resolved never again to allude to the subject, but she warned all
her young inmates to observe the same caution.
“’Cause she can’t bear it, my dears. She can’t, indeed. It ’most kills
her to hear it mentioned. And no wonder. Them tender Southern girls as
has never been used to anything but love and softness and sweetness all
their lives, to be suddenly thrown upon a rough, hard, bitter world, you
know, my dears, it is very trying. We must never speak to her about the
past, and never breathe a word before her about the war. I dare say her
poor father was killed in battle, or died in one of them military
prisons, or something like that, which it breaks her heart to think
about. We must just try to make her forget it, my dears,” concluded Mrs.
Downie.
And her sympathetic hearers promised all she required, and from that
time emulated each other in their kindness to the young stranger.
Mrs. Downie’s household were in some respects a peculiar people, of whom
the gentle landlady was the controlling spirit.
One word about Sophie Downie. She had been a wife, and was now a widow
only in name.
Her late husband, William Downie, had been a Methodist minister of
sincere piety and much eloquence.
They had been neighbors’ children in a country village, and had been
engaged to each other almost from their childhood.
He was “called” to the service of the Lord from his boyhood, and the two
widows, Sophie’s mother and his own mother, had joined their slender
means to send him to college, to be educated for the ministry.
“For,” said his own mother, “he is all that I have in the world, and why
shouldn’t I spend all that I can on him?”
“And,” said Sophie’s mother, “he is just the same as my own son, and
he’ll marry Sophie and take care of me when I get old, so why shouldn’t
I spend all that I can spare in helping him?”
So the boy was sent to college, and in due time went honorably through
his course, graduated and was ordained.
He was to marry Sophie as soon as he should obtain his first parish.
Within a few months after his ordination he was appointed by the
convention to the Methodist church in New York City near which his widow
now kept her boarding-house.
He had held his pulpit but a few weeks, during which Sophie was busily
engaged in preparing for their wedding and their housekeeping, when he
was suddenly stricken down with a disease known to be fatal from its
onset.
As soon as he knew that he was to leave this world he sent for his
promised bride, and she came to him, accompanied by their two mothers.
And in the sick-chamber the long-engaged, faithful lovers were united.
He lingered a few days after his marriage, constantly attended by Sophie
and the two mothers, and then passed peacefully away to the better
world.
The three grieving women took his remains to their native village and
laid them in their last resting place in the old church-yard.
Soon afterwards his mother departed and left all the little remnant of
her savings to Sophie.
“For she is all the same as a daughter to me, and I have no other
child,” said the poor widow to the lawyer who drew up the will.
We live in a changeful country. Few of us have the good or the bad
fortune to
“Live where our fathers lived
And die where they died.”
It would be tedious and irrelevant to this story to tell of the various
circumstances that finally led Sophie and her mother to sell out all
their possessions in the little country village, and to open a
boarding-house in New York, in the immediate vicinity of that church
which had been the scene of William Downie’s short ministry.
For many years the house was nominally kept by the elder lady; but it
was entirely managed by the younger.
Many opportunities had the pretty little widow of marrying a second
time; but she remained faithful to the memory of her first love.
She had never even permitted a lover to become a suitor; for as soon as
her delicate perceptions discovered that this or that young “brother” in
the church, or boarder in the house, had cast an eye of “favor” on her,
the very shrinking of her nature threw such a sphere of coldness around
her that, however gentle and courteous her manner might be to the
aspirant, he dared not cross the invisible boundary of that circle.
One of her most ardent admirers said, when “chaffed” on the subject of
his infatuation:
“She is as sweet and gentle, as kind and courteous as it is possible for
woman to be; but it would take a fellow with more impudence than I
possess to make love to her, or to ask her to marry him. There is a sort
of ‘Thus far, no farther shalt thou go’ about her that I defy any man to
transgress.”
He was right.
And so, without any second love, without coquetry, and without vanity,
the pretty, gentle girl-widow grew from youth to middle age. Then she
lost her mother, and became the nominal, as she had long been the
actual, head of the boarding-house.
It would be difficult to explain or even to understand how Mrs. Downie
had managed to succeed in eliminating from the house and from her circle
of acquaintances all persons who were uncongenial to her own gentle and
generous spirit, and in filling them with those who were in perfect
accord with her, and with each other. It was the progressive work of
years, however.
But now, at the time that Lilith first entered her house, it was filled
with a little society to whom she seemed less a landlady than a loving
mother, and whom she absolutely ruled—not by force of intellect, or
position, or power, but by unselfish goodness. Always, since her
mother’s departure, she had one or more of adopted children—little
waifs, picked up in the streets of New York, and whom she lodged, fed
and clothed, and sent to the public schools until they were old enough
to be put out to learn trades.
When any hard-headed, practical brother or sister would expostulate with
her on the extravagance of her benevolence and the imprudence of her
neglect to provide comfortably for her old age, she would answer,
simply:
“Why, Lor’s, you know if my poor, dear husband had lived we should have
had a large family of children by this time, most like. But as I haven’t
got none of my own, I feel as if I ought to take care of other people’s
orphans. Seems to me that people without children should take care of
children without parents, so far as they can. And as for the rest of it,
I know that if I take care of the destitute the Lord will take care of
me.”
Acting on this simple faith, the gentle little widow had brought up and
provided for no less than seven girls and five boys.
And that is the reason why, at the age of sixty, she had not a dollar in
the savings bank.
But oh! the treasure she had laid up in heaven!
At the present time she had a boy and girl, nearly grown up, and when
these should be well provided for, by being put in the way of getting
their own living, she meant to take two more to bring up—if she should
live long enough to do so.
So much for the kindly mistress of the house.
Her circle of lodgers consisted of seven persons. First, there was the
young Methodist minister, John Moore, who occupied the same pulpit that
had once been filled for a few weeks by William Downie. And here let it
be explained, that whenever there came to that church a young unmarried
minister, he was always recommended to Mrs. Downie’s boarding-house as
to a haven where he would be perfectly safe not only from the harpies of
business, but from the harpies of matrimony, where he would really find
“the comforts of a home,” and possibly the society of some fair, good
girl, suitable to be the companion of his life and labor.
Next there was Mrs. Lane, the widow of an officer in the Union army, who
had fallen in the battle of the Wilderness, and who eked out her small
pension by decorating china for a large wholesale house, and supported a
son at Yale College.
Then there was a Mrs. Farquier—the widow of a colonel in the Confederate
army. She was an artist, and made drawings for the illustrated papers
and magazines.
These two women, whose husbands had fallen on opposite sides of the same
war, were great friends.
Next there were the two Misses Ward, orphan sisters, and teachers in the
public schools.
Lastly, there was Lilith, who shared the landlady’s room, and was
expected to share it until the young Methodist minister should marry and
take possession of the parsonage that was being fitted up for him.
Lilith, who had been madly driven from her home by the goad of her
husband’s stinging words:
“I never loved you! I married you only to please my dying father. In a
very few hours I shall leave this house, never to return while you
desecrate it with your presence!”
Lilith, who had fled away, without any definite purpose but to escape
from the humiliations that had been heaped upon her, and to support her
life, until she should die, by some honest toil—Lilith had now ample
leisure to come to her senses and to reflect upon her past and her
future.
Ample leisure indeed! Her days and nights were spent in solitude and
meditation, for immediately after breakfast, every morning, her
fellow-lodgers, workers all of them, scattered to their various
occupations—the minister to study, to write, or to make duty calls; the
two widows to their rooms to work at their arts; the two young teachers
to their schoolrooms, and the good landlady to market, and then to her
household duties.
Lilith, left alone, would wander through the parlor, up the stairs and
into the room she shared with Mrs. Downie, and then back again, in an
aimless, dreary manner. She could settle herself to nothing, take
interest in nothing—
“Her past a waste, her future void.”
Her life seemed to have come to a standstill. There seemed nothing to
hope for in heaven or on earth.
There were days of such deep despondency that life seemed a burden too
heavy to be borne, and she longed for death—days when the unrest of her
soul craved the rest of oblivion in the grave.
There were moments, too, when athwart the utter darkness of her soul
flashed the lightning of consciousness that she might change all this
and bring renewed life, action and happiness to herself; that she might
write to her husband, or return to her home and implore him to believe
in her and to bear with her until she should be at liberty to clear up
the mystery that rested as a cold, dark storm-cloud between them.
And at such moments she might have acted on the impulse and hastened
back to Cloud Cliffs, but for the memory of his fierce, cruel, stinging
words:
“I never loved you! I married you only to please my dying father. In a
very few hours I shall leave this house, never to return while you
desecrate it with your presence!”
Every time these words recurred to her mind they overwhelmed her with a
fresh sense of unspeakable humiliation.
“Oh, no!” she said to herself—“no! my heart seems dying in my bosom, but
I must not listen to its moan! I must not go back until he himself shall
repent and retract and entreat me to return! I can die, but I cannot go
back. I cannot.”
And indeed existence for Lilith was now a mere death in life.
All her efforts to obtain employment by advertising and by answering
advertisements had signally failed. There seemed to be no use for her in
the whole world. No one on earth seemed to want her in any capacity.
Mrs. Downie, watching her with motherly tenderness, ventured one day to
say:
“Honey, you must be awful lonesome here days, when everybody has gone
about their business and left you by yourself.”
“It does not matter, Mrs. Downie. Don’t trouble yourself about me, dear
heart,” said Lilith.
“But I must! I can’t help it! Emmy Ponsonby has never been to see you
since that night she fetched you here, nyther, has she?”
“No, Mrs. Downie!”
“Well, I reckon she’s still with the weddingers in Boston, or else
there’s another baby coming around somewheres. ’Mong so many married
daughters there’s always a baby coming ’round in Emmy’s family,
sometimes two or three of ’em in a year, and I reckon that is what’s the
matter now. ’Cause Emmy Ponsonby never forgets her friends or her
promises.”
“She was very, very good to me, and I had no claim on her,” sighed
Lilith.
“Oh, yes, but you had a claim on her, honey; as you have on me and on
every grown-up woman as is able to help a motherless child like you,”
said Mrs. Downie, so tenderly that Lilith’s eyes filled with tears.
“Mrs. Downie,” she said, “I want to ask you something.”
“Ask away, then, honey.”
“You have taken me here a stranger in your house. I have been here four
weeks and you have never given me your bill——”
“I was waiting till you got something to do, honey,” interrupted the
landlady.
“And—this is what I wanted to ask you: Suppose I should be here for
eight weeks or for twelve weeks, without paying you?”
“Well, honey, it wouldn’t so much matter as you might think; because,
you see, dear, you don’t occupy a room. You only sleep on a little bed
in my room; so really your being here don’t make no odds. I have six
rooms as I let to boarders, and that is what supports the house. They
are all let, and you don’t take up none of them, so your being in the
house don’t make no odds at all, let alone it being a comfort to have
you.”
“Dear Mrs. Downie——” began Lilith, with the tears running over her eyes;
but her voice faltered and her words died in silence.
“Look here, honey, it is borne in on me as if you would just stop
calling me Mrs. Downie—not but what I am fond of the name, and proud of
it for poor, dear Will’s sake—but if you would just stop ceremonials and
call me Aunt Sophie, like the rest of the children do, and would come
closer up to me, in your heart, like you would feel more at home with
me, and would be more better satisfied, and wouldn’t have no doubts nor
troubles about board and such. Couldn’t you now, honey?”
Lilith left her chair and came and sat down in the good woman’s lap,
dropped her head upon her bosom, and put her arms around her neck.
“That’s right, dearie. Now remember, I am your Aunt Sophie,” said Mrs.
Downie, folding the young creature in a close embrace.
“I never knew a mother or a sister or an aunt. It comforts me to be
allowed to call you aunt.”
“That is right, dear. Now I’m going to propose another thing; that is,
for you to go to market with me every morning, when you feel like it. It
will amuse you, and take your thoughts offen troubles it is unprofitable
to dwell on. And then, dearie, sometimes you might go to meeting with me
in week evenings. We often have a real good, warm time at our meetings,”
said the good woman, with a cheerful glow in her gentle countenance.
“I thank you, dear, dear Aunt Sophie. I should like to go anywhere with
you,” said Lilith, as she kissed her friend, and arose to her feet.
No more was said about the board bill, the subject of which had been
introduced by Lilith herself.
But the next morning, as Mrs. Downie was putting on her bonnet to go to
market, she spied an envelope directed as follows:
“TO AUNT SOPHIE, FROM LILITH.”
She took it from the toilet cushion upon which it was pinned, and found
three ten-dollar greenbacks inclosed in a short letter, which she read:
“DEAR AUNT SOPHIE: If I were in need, there is no one in this whole
world to whom I should be so entirely willing to be indebted as to
yourself. And if I were in want, it would be to you, first of all, to
whom I should come for help, feeling sure of obtaining it. But, dear
friend, I am not so poor in funds as I am supposed to be. I have enough
to keep me for a year at least, even if I should get no work to do. So,
please take the inclosed without any qualms to your benevolent heart. I
shall still be infinitely indebted to you for love, sympathy and
protection. LILITH.”
Mrs. Downie read the note, looked at the money, and communed with
herself:
“Now what did the child go and do that sort of thing in that way for?
Trapping me into taking the money in that manner. She knew very well
that if she had handed it to me I wouldn’t have touched it. She a
gallant soldier’s orphan, too. And now I s’pose if I hand it to her she
won’t take it back, no way! Now I wonder if she has got a plenty of
money, sure enough? Sufficient to keep her for a whole year, as she
says? If she has, this would be a convenience, and a real godsend, just
at this time, too, when I am trying to make up the rent. Yet I don’t
like to take it offen that poor child, nyther, and she only occupying a
cot in my bed-room. Well, I’ll go and try to make her take it back, and
if she won’t, why, she won’t, and I’ll put it to the rent money, and get
that off my mind to-day.”
So saying, the landlady went in search of Lilith, whom she found in the
parlor, ready and waiting to go to market with her friend.
“Well, Aunt Sophie, we have a fine day for our walk,” began Lilith.
“Yes, honey; but before we go you must take this back again,” said the
good woman, trying to force the money into Lilith’s hand, “’cause I
don’t want to charge you any board until I can give you a room, my dear;
and that won’t be until Brother Moore gets married and goes. And then I
will take pay.”
Lilith opened her hand with the palm down, so that it could hold
nothing, saying, at the same time:
“And I will not impose myself on you, dear Aunt Sophie, until all my
funds are spent, and then—I shall continue to stay with
you—perhaps—until you turn me out.”
“That would be forever, then, honey; or, leastways, it would be as long
as I should live, for I should never do that cruel thing on no account,”
said the old lady.
And so the strife in generosity was ended, and the two friends left the
house together.
As they walked down the avenue, Mrs. Downie said:
“I think, dear, as you would be a great deal happier if you were to have
some regular employment. You came here to get something to do, didn’t
you, now?”
“Yes, Aunt Sophie,” said Lilith, sadly.
“Well, have you tried?”
“Yes, Aunt Sophie. I have advertised in the New York papers, and I have
answered advertisements, but have not yet succeeded in getting anything
to do.”
“What did you advertise for?”
“For the situation of private governess in a family, or assistant
teacher in a school, or translator, or copyist, or as companion for an
invalid lady or an elderly lady, or as amanuensis to a literary lady.
For all these situations I have advertised at various times, and have
received not one reply.”
“Ah, dearie me! Every road to business is so overcrowded! But you said
you answered some of the advertisements of such places as you would like
to take.”
“Yes, but no notice was taken of any of my letters.”
“Ah, you see, child, I suppose there were hundreds of applications for
every place, and they couldn’t answer all the applicants.”
“No, I suppose not,” said Lilith, patiently.
“And it costs so much to advertise,” sighed Mrs. Downie.
“Yes,” said Lilith. “And so I have given up advertising on my own
account, and I only answer the advertisements of others. That does not
cost so much; only the paper and postage stamp.”
“Well, dear, I hope you will succeed at last,” said the old lady.
“Yes. ‘It is a long lane that has no turning,’ as our homely proverb has
it,” said Lilith.
“Yes, dear, I know it. ‘It is a long lane that has no turning,’ and the
worst of it is that when the lane does turn it doesn’t always turn into
‘Fresh fields and pastures green,’
but into some dusty highway a deal harder to travel than was the long
lane itself! But there! I ought not to have said that. I don’t want to
discourage you, dearie,” suddenly said Aunt Sophie, with a qualm of
compunction.
“I saw an advertisement in this morning’s _Pursuivant_ that pleased me
and that I have answered. I have brought my answer to drop it into the
post. But I scarcely hope that anything will come of it.”
“What was it for, dearie?”
“A companion for a widow going abroad. The applicant must be a young
lady, healthy, agreeable, well educated, competent to speak French,
Italian and Spanish. Oh, I have all the list of requirements at my
fingers’ ends, you see.”
Aunt Sophie stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, to the great
annoyance of other foot-passengers, and stared in mild wonder at her
companion.
“Now, where in all this wide world do that widow expect to find a young
lady, accomplished as all that comes to, who is in need to go out and
get her living?” she inquired.
“Oh, dear Aunt Sophie, there are many, many among the impoverished
children of the South who, in the days of their prosperity, had received
such education.”
“And do you think you would suit, my dear?”
“I can but try. I must try, you know.”
“Well, I hope that widow will be willing to give a high salary for all
that she wants.”
“The advertisement says that a liberal salary will be given; but also
adds that the highest testimonials of character and competency will be
required.”
“Well, my dear, you can furnish them, anyhow.”
“I don’t know. I have my college testimonials, or could get them; but
for the rest—”
“Well, you have Mrs. Ponsonby.”
“But she knows so little of me,” sighed Lilith, as she reflected how
that good, credulous woman had come to her side in the spirit of
compassion and had taken her respectability quite for granted.
“Well, honey, don’t sigh, that’s a dearie; because if you don’t get the
place it makes no odds. I dare say that widow is some poor, infirm old
lady going to travel for her health, who would be no end of a trial to
you. And you know if you never get nothing to do, you can always live
long o’ me and be comfortable always. ’Deed I feel so drawn to you,
dearie, that I would like to adopt you if you would let me. It would
make no odds, leastways not much at the end of the year. And I meant to
adopt two more as soon as ever John and Mary are provided for. And I
reckon I had better adopt one like you than another child. I mightn’t
live to see the child grow up, for I am getting old. Will you think of
what I tell you, dearie?”
“Think of it? I shall never forget it so long as I live, dear Aunt
Sophie,” warmly responded Lilith.
“Here is the post,” said Mrs. Downie, pausing at the pillar box, into
which Lilith dropped her letter.