OUT OF STEP WITH THE TIMES
"No," Sadie told Helen, afterward, "I am very sure that poor Lurcher man
doesn't drink. Some says he does; but you never notice it on him. It's
just his eyes."
"His eyes?" queried Helen, wonderingly.
"Yes. He's sort of blind. His eyelids keep fluttering all the time. He
can't control them. And, if you notice, he usually lifts up the lid of one
eye with his finger before he makes one of his base-runs for the next
post. Chee! I'd hate to be like that."
"The poor old man! And can nothing be done for it?"
"Plenty, I reckon. But who's goin' to pay for it? Not him--he ain't got it
to pay. We all has our troubles down here, Helen."
The girls had come down from the home of Sadie again, and Helen was
preparing to leave her friend.
"Aren't there places to go in the city to have one's eyes examined? Free
hospitals, I mean?"
"Sure! And they got Lurcher to one, once. But all they give him was a
prescription for glasses, and it would cost a lot to get 'em. So it didn't
do him no good."
Helen looked at Sadie suddenly. "How much would it take for the glasses?"
she asked.
"I dunno. Ten dollars, mebbe."
"And do you s'pose he could have that prescription now?" asked Helen,
eagerly.
"Mebbe. But why for?"
"Perhaps I could--could get somebody uptown interested in his case who is
able to pay for the spectacles."
"Chee, that would be bully!" cried Sadie.
"Will you find out about the prescription?"
"Sure I will," declared Sadie. "Nex' time you come down here, Helen, I'll
know all about it. And if you can get one of them rich ladies up there to
pay for 'em--Well! it would beat goin' to a swell restaurant for a
feed--eh?" and she laughed, hugged the Western girl, and then darted
across the sidewalk to intercept a possible customer who was loitering
past the row of garments displayed in front of the Finkelstein shop.
But Helen did not get downtown again as soon as she expected. When she
awoke the next morning there had set in a steady drizzle--cold and
raw--and the panes of her windows were so murky that she could not see
even the chimneys and roofs, or down into the barren little yards.
This--nor a much heavier--rain would not have ordinarily balked Helen. She
was used to being out in all winds and weathers. But she actually had
nothing fit to wear in the rain.
If she had worn the new cheap dress out of doors she knew what would
happen. It would shrink all out of shape. And she had no raincoat, nor
would she ask her cousins--so she told herself--for the loan of an
umbrella.
So, as long as it rained steadily, it looked as though the girl from
Sunset Ranch was a sure-enough "shut-in." Nor did she contemplate this
possibility with any pleasure.
There was nothing for her to do but read. And one cannot read all the
time. She had no "fancy-work" with which to keep her hands and mind busy.
She wondered what her cousins did on such days. She found out by keeping
her ears and eyes open. After breakfast Belle went shopping in the
limousine. There was an early luncheon and all three of the Starkweather
girls went to a matinee. In neither case was Helen invited to go--no,
indeed! She was treated as though she were not even in the house. Seldom
did either of the older girls speak to her.
"I might as well be a ghost," thought Helen.
And this reminded her of the little old lady who paced the ghost-walk
every night--the ex-nurse, Mary Boyle. She had thought of going to see her
on the top floor before; but she had not been able to pluck up the
courage.
Now that her cousins were gone from the house, however, and Mrs. Olstrom
was taking a nap in her room, and Mr. Lawdor was out of the way, and all
the under-servants mildly celebrating the free afternoon below stairs,
Helen determined to venture out of her own room, along the main passage of
the top floor, to the door which she believed must give upon the front
suite of rooms which the little old lady occupied.
She knocked, but there was no response. Nor could she hear any sound from
within. It struck Helen that the principal cruelty of the Starkweathers'
treatment of this old soul was her being shut away alone up here at the
top of the house--too far away from the rest of its occupants for a cry to
be heard if the old lady should be in trouble.
"If they shut up a dog like this, he would howl and thus attract attention
to his state," muttered Helen. "But here is a human being----"
She tried the door. The latch clicked and the door swung open. Helen
stepped into a narrow, hall-like room, well furnished with old-fashioned
furniture (probably brought from below stairs when Mr. Starkweather
re-decorated the mansion) with one window in it. The door which evidently
gave upon the remainder of the suite was closed.
As Helen listened, however, from behind this closed door came a cheerful,
cracked voice--the same voice she had heard whispering the lullaby in the
middle of the night. But now it was tuning up on an old-time ballad, very
popular in its day:
"Wait till the clouds roll by, Jennie--
Wait till the clouds roll by!
Jennie, my own true loved one--
Wait till the clouds roll by."
"She doesn't sound like a hopeless prisoner," thought Helen, with
surprise.
She waited a minute longer and, as the thin yet still sweet voice stopped,
Helen knocked timidly on the inner door. Immediately the voice said, "Come
in, deary. 'Tis not for the likes of you to be knockin' at old Mary's
door. Come in!"
Helen turned the knob slowly and went into the room. The moment she
crossed the threshold she forgot the clouds and rain and gloominess which
had depressed her. Indeed, it seemed as though the sun must be ever
shining into this room, high up under the roof of the Starkweather
mansion.
In the first place, it was most cheerfully papered and painted. There were
pretty, simple, yellow and white hangings. The heavier pieces of old
furniture had gay "tidies" or "throws" upon them to relieve the sombreness
of the dark wood. The pictures on the walls were all in white or gold
frames, and were of a cheerful nature--mostly pictures of childhood, or
pictures which would amuse children. Evidently much of the furnishings of
the old nursery had been brought up here to Mary Boyle's sitting-room.
Helen had a glimpse, through a half-open door, of the bedroom--quite as
bright and pretty. There was a little stove set up here, and a fire burned
in it. It was one of those stoves that have isinglass all around it so
that the fire can be seen when it burns red. It added mightily to the
cheerful tone of the room.
How neat everything appeared! Yet the very neatest thing in sight was the
little old lady herself, sitting in a green-painted rocker, with a low
sewing-table at her side, wooden needles clicking fast in her fleecy
knitting.
She looked up at Helen with a little, bird-like motion--her head a bit on
one side and her glance quizzical. This, it proved, was typical of Mary
Boyle.
"Deary, deary me!" she said. "You're a _new_ girl. And what do you want
Mary to do for you?"
"I--I thought I'd come and make you a little call," said Helen, timidly.
This wasn't at all as she expected to find the shut-in! Instead of gloom,
and tears, and the weakness of age, here were displayed all the opposite
emotions and qualities. The woman who was forgotten did not appear to be
an object of pity at all. She merely seemed out of step with the times.
"I'm sure you're very welcome, deary," said the old nurse. "Draw up the
little rocker yonder. I always keep it for young company," and Mary Boyle,
who had had no young company up here for ten or a dozen years, spoke as
though the appearance of a youthful face and form was of daily
occurrence.
"You see," spoke Helen, more confidently, "we are neighbors on this top
floor."
"Neighbors; air we?"
"I live up here, too. The family have tucked me away out of sight."
"Hush!" said the little old woman. "We shouldn't criticise our bethers.
No, no! And this is a very cheerful par-r-rt of the house, so it is."
"But it must be awful," exclaimed Helen, "to have to stay in it all the
time!"
"I don't have to stay in it all the time," replied the nurse, quickly.
"No, ma'am. I hear you in the night going downstairs and walking in the
corridor," Helen said, softly.
The wrinkled old face blushed very prettily, and Mary Boyle looked at her
visitor doubtfully.
"Sure, 'tis such a comfort for an old body like me," she said, at last,
"to make believe."
"Make believe?" cried Helen, with a smile. "Why, _I'm_ not old, and I love
to make believe."
"Ah, yis! But there is a differ bechune the make-believes of the young and
the make-believes of the old. _You_ are playin' you're grown up, or
dramin' of what's comin' to you in th' future--sure, I know! I've had them
drames, too, in me day.
"But with old folks 'tis different. We do be har-r-rking back instead of
lookin' for'ard. And with me, it's thinkin' of the babies I've held in me
ar-r-rms, and rocked on me knee, and walked the flure wid when they was
ailin'--An' sure the babies of _this_ house was always ailin', poor little
things."
"They were a great trouble to you, then?" asked Helen, softly.
"Trouble, is it?" cried Mary Boyle, her eyes shining again. "Sure, how
could a blessid infant be a trouble? 'Tis a means of grace they be to the
hear-r-rt--I nade no preacher to tell me that, deary. I found thim so. And
they loved me and was happy wid me," she added, cheerfully.
"The folks below think me a little quare in me head," she confided to her
visitor. "But they don't understand. To walk up and down the nursery
corridor late at night relaves the ache here," and she put her little,
mitted hand upon her heart. "Ye see, I trod that path so often--so
often----"
Her voice trailed off and she fell silent, gazing into the glow of the
fire in the stove. But there was a smile on her lips. The past was no time
to weep over. This cheerful body saw only the bright spots in her long,
long life.
Helen loved to hear her talk. And soon she and Mary Boyle were very well
acquainted. One thing about the old nurse Helen liked immensely. She asked
no questions. She accepted Helen's visit as a matter of course; yet she
showed very plainly that she was glad to have a young face before her.
But the girl from Sunset Ranch did not know how Mrs. Olstrom might view
her making friends with the old lady; so she made her visit brief. But she
promised to come again and bring a book to read to Mary Boyle.
"Radin' is a great accomplishment, deary," declared the old woman. "I
niver seemed able to masther it--although me mistress oft tried to tache
me. But, sure, there was so much to l'arn about babies, that ain't printed
in no book, that I was always radin' them an' niver missed the book
eddication till I come to be old. But th' foine poethry me mistress useter
be radin' me! Sure, 'twould almost put a body to slape, so swate and grand
it was."
So, Helen searched out a book of poems downstairs, and the next forenoon
she ventured into the front suite again, and read ta Mary Boyle for an
hour. The storm lasted several days, and each day the girl from the West
spent more and more time with the little old woman.
But this was all unsuspected by Uncle Starkweather and the three girls. If
Mrs. Olstrom knew she said nothing. At least, she timed her own daily
visits to the little old woman so that she would not meet Helen in the
rooms devoted to old Mary's comfort.
Nor were Helen's visits continued solely because she pitied Mary Boyle.
How could she continue to pity one who did not pity herself?
No. Helen received more than she gave in this strange friendship. Seeking
to amuse the old nurse, she herself gained such an uplift of heart and
mind that it began to counteract that spirit of sullenness that had
entered into the Western girl when she had first come to this house and
had been received so unkindly by her relatives.
Instead of hating them, she began to pity them. How much Uncle
Starkweather was missing by being so utterly selfish! How much the girls
were missing by being self-centred!
Why, see it right here in Mary Boyle's case! Nobody could associate with
the delightful little old woman without gaining good from the association.
Instead of being friends with the old nurse, and loving her and being
loved by her, the Starkweather girls tucked her away in the attic and
tried to ignore her existence.
"They don't know what they're missing--poor things!" murmured Helen,
thinking the situation over.
And from that time her own attitude changed toward her cousins. She began
to look out for chances to help them, instead of making herself more and
more objectionable to Belle, Hortense, and Flossie.