THE LITTLE MADAM.
"How is the Little Madam?" Dolly had heard Skipper Joe ask of Mrs. Park
one day when they were at the Marchant House.
"She's as well and happy as usual," was the reply.
"Jest the same here, I s'pose," he continued, touching his forehead
significantly.
"Just the same."
"Well, it's queer--queer," said Skipper Joe, meditatively. "Don't never
sense nothin' o' what's happened. It's queer--dum queer."
So when Dolly heard one morning a buzzing as though a swarm of
honey-bees had taken possession of the dancing-hall, and opening the
door and peeping in saw a little woman spinning off in the south-east
corner who looked exactly like a picture, just as though she might have
stepped that moment out of Grimm's fairy tales, she knew at once, by a
sort of intuition, that this was the Little Madam.
This small woman was exceedingly small, short as well as slight; her
skin was dark, a clear, soft dark, and she had black, velvety eyes,
with long eyelashes, and small hands and feet, smaller than Dolly's.
She wore over her black hair a kind of mantle of white muslin, which
framed her face like a nun's coif, and was crossed upon her bosom. Her
scanty gown was white, too, a peculiarity which specially struck Dolly
in a latitude where white was reserved for church-going and other state
occasions.
She was stepping briskly back and forth by the side of her
spinning-wheel, drawing out the long thread, and then with the reverse
motion of her wheel winding it upon the spindle back and forth, like
a true fairy godmother. The sunbeams fell athwart the wheel and the
reel and the tiny tripping figure, and it all did really look so much
like a picture that might dissolve any moment, like the mirage of the
Marshfield marshes, that Dolly did not venture to speak lest it might
vanish. The little woman seemed busy with happy thoughts, for she
smiled to herself as she crooned a song, the air of which was sweet,
but the words were foreign.
Altogether, Dolly's curiosity was deeply excited; and as she softly
closed the door and ran down-stairs to find Ned, the first words she
said to him were,
"Who is that little woman in the hall?"
"The Little Madam," replied Ned, just as Dolly expected, and pegging
away on the kite he was making.
"And who is the Little Madam?" queried Dolly; "and how did she
come--on a broom, or in a pumpkin-shell coach with mice for horses?"
"Halloo! what's up?" exclaimed Ned, looking up.
"I wish you'd tell _who_ the Little Madam is, and _where_ she came
from, and all about her. I never knew a thing about her till this
minute, and where have you kept her hid?"
"Hid!" ejaculated Ned, bewildered. "Why, she lives on Hemlock Island."
"And _where_, for pity's sake, is Hemlock Island? Oh, Ned, Ned! I'm
dying with curiosity to know all about her, and do put up that old kite
and tell me--a good long yarn, like one of Skipper Joe's."
Ned laughed good-naturedly. "I can spin my yarn and work on my kite
too, Dolly; and I do suppose she looks queer to you. But I'm used to
her, you know. I've known her almost ever since I've known anybody.
But there isn't much of a story. Only Skipper Joe picked her up at sea
somewhere, drifting round in an old boat or something, an' brought her
to mother; an' she's sort o' crazy--don't know who she is herself, nor
where she lived, nor what happened to her, nor anything. She likes to
be by herself, so father lets her live in his old house on Hemlock
Island; and she's learned to spin, and spins for folks, an' knits, an'
winters she lives here."
"Not much of a story, Ned! I should think so, indeed! Why, she might be
a princess, a real princess. Picked up drifting in a boat--oh, it's
splendid! Say, Ned," said Dolly, coaxingly, "take me down to Hemlock
Island, will you?"
"All right," replied Ned.
The Little Madam did not dine with the family that day. Her dinner,
such as she liked--a potato salad, a glass of milk, and a custard--was
taken up to her by Thankful herself, who remarked as she walked off
with the tray, "She's a poor loony cretur', one o' them folks mentioned
in Scriptur', I reckon--them that's hungry, 'n sick, 'n in prison."
Thankful never waited upon people whom she considered able to wait upon
themselves, and seemed to consider an apology necessary for so doing.
The early morning of the next day saw Dolly and Ned on their way
to Hemlock Island. There was a third person with them--I think we
may call him a person. The stage which brought Dolly's trunks from
Boston brought him also. He was walking along by Dolly's side, with
Dolly's hand upon his tawny head and a look of supreme content in his
intelligent eyes. This third person was a magnificent St. Bernard,
Dolly's playmate in her cradle and her faithful friend and servitor
ever since. He had fished her out of the frog-pond on the Common in her
later babyhood, into which she had fallen while Nora her nurse was just
a-speakin' with her friend, a neighboring coachman, and he had badly
bitten an old woman who attempted to kidnap her once upon a time when
she had wandered off down Joy Street.
The road to Hemlock Island was a true by-way, a serpentine lane which
ran part of the way between high grassy banks overrun with wild vines
and flowering herbs like an English lane, and part of the way was
shaded by trees of hickory and pine. Why called Hemlock Island is a
mystery, unless it was because no hemlocks grew there; neither was it
an island: it was a promontory making out into Wintuxet Lake, and it
had a fine growth of wood, with extensive pasturage, where large herds
of cattle and flocks of sheep grazed through the summer.
Around the enclosure wherein stood the Little Madam's dwelling a
hundred cattle were placidly feeding that day. The lane came to an end
in the Little Madam's front yard. The house was small, consisting of
one room, besides a bedroom and lean-to, and it was a perfect bower
of a nest, being entirely overgrown with woodbine, with the exception
of the windows and door, even to the chimney-top, from which a long
streamer waved like a ship's pennant. Morning-glories blossomed out
from the woodbine, and the Little Madam's love of flowers betrayed
itself in a perfect burst of bloom on either side of the path leading
from the gate to the door.
The Little Madam was not the first exile, if exile she may be called,
who had found shelter in this quiet spot. To the west of her dwelling,
in the pasture, was an old well, around which the "Bouncing Bets," or
more politely speaking, the "French Pinks," ran riot, and hard by a
slight depression in the turf indicated the spot where once stood the
dwelling of an exiled family from Acadie. The family had planted a
garden there, and the place was and is known to this day as "the French
Garden." Perhaps Longfellow's Evangeline found a brief resting-place
here--who knows?
As Dolly and Ned entered the wide-open door, a voice, a soft muffled
voice, said, "How do! how do! Shake hands!" and immediately the owner
of the voice, an imperial white Australian cockatoo, erected his
canary-colored crest, opened wide his wings, and uttered a loud, hoarse
cry.
"He doesn't like Gaston--he's afraid of him, Dolly," said Ned.
"Gaston, go out and lie down," said Dolly; and with an indignant look
at the cockatoo as the cause of his expulsion, Gaston walked out with
true canine dignity, and lay down on the door-step in the sun.
"What a lovely, queer-looking place!" said Dolly, looking around.
The cockatoo had subsided, and from his perch was bowing graciously,
holding out his claw and saying, "Shake hands, shake hands."
Ned took his claw, when again he shrieked, elevating his crest and
opening wide his wings. "He's showing off, now; he wants you to admire
him," said Ned.
"Pretty cockatoo! pretty cockatoo!" laughed Dolly, and thereat he
sprang upon her wrist and bestowed a kiss, a true sibilant kiss, upon
her pouting lips, and before she could remonstrate he was back upon
his perch, chuckling audibly, and saying, "Pretty cockatoo! pretty
cockatoo! Kiss me, kiss me!"
His second scream had brought in the Little Madam, somewhat flushed and
breathless, from her beehives.
"Ah, it is you, my good Ned, is it?" she said. "I feared the bad boy.
Bad boy tease my pretty cockatoo." She held out her hand and the bird
sprang upon it, making soft, cooing sounds the while, and caressing her
with his beak and wings.
"Skipper Joe brought it to her, Dolly," said Ned.
"Yes, Skipper Joe; he my good friend," said the Little Madam. She did
not talk much, but looked smilingly from Ned to Dolly, and brought out
a plate of pink-cheeked peaches and purple grapes for them. She had a
bewildered, seeking look in her beautiful eyes, as though she might
be seeking for that lost life of hers, and Dolly became so absorbed
watching her as she sat with crossed hands, now smiling, now falling
into a reverie, that she quite forgot the peach she was eating. But
Ned, to whom the Little Madam was a more familiar object, ate the
fruit with boyish appetite, and emptied the plate.
The room, which was an unusually large room,--as well it might be,
being the only one--had the same dainty characteristics as its
mistress. The Little Madam herself and the cockatoo gave to it a
foreign air. Boxes of sweet-scented flowers bloomed in the windows,
which drew the bees that buzzed in and out, and about the Little Madam
familiarly, lighting on her nun's coif. An immense gray, basket-like
fungus, which the Little Madam must have found in some of her wood
rambles, was nailed against the wall and filled with wild vines, which
grew thriftily in this apparently congenial atmosphere.
There seemed to be a secret understanding between this little lady
and what we human beings are pleased to call the dumb creation--the
birds, the insects, the beasts. But are they really _dumb_? Does not
each kind have a language which we in our ignorance cannot understand?
Did not Gaston speak when he roused from his sleep, walked up to the
Little Madam, and put his big tawny head under her little brown hand?
This was as plain as human speech. It said, "I trust you," and so Dolly
interpreted it.
"See Ned!" she exclaimed, "Gaston never takes to strangers--he hates
to have them touch him; and there he is asking the Little Madam to pat
him."
For days Dolly could not get the thought of her out of her mind.
"She isn't really crazy, is she, Auntie?" she asked one day, returning
again to the exhaustless topic.
"No," was Mrs. Park's reply. "She has simply forgotten everything up to
a certain time."
"And what do you suppose made her, Auntie? Ned says Skipper Joe found
her drifting in a boat."
"Yes; a ship on which Skipper Joe was first mate picked her up
somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Of course they could find out nothing
by her, because she remembers nothing. That was ten years ago. She has
learned to speak English tolerably well, and she never speaks anything
else, though she sings foreign songs which Skipper Joe says are
Portuguese. Skipper Joe brought her here to me. She is fond of being
out-of-doors, and used to wander off in summer-time, till your Uncle
Harry fitted up the old house for her. She seems very happy there."
"But, Auntie, it must be very lonely down there," continued Dolly.
"Isn't she ever afraid?"
"She is not like others, you must remember, Dolly; she does not know
what fear is. Though lately I have seen some signs of it, and I am a
little troubled about some things of which, if I tell you, Dolly, you
must not speak."
"Oh no, indeed!" said Dolly, rapturously, charmed, as most of us are,
at the prospect of a secret being imparted to our keeping.
"I suppose," continued Mrs. Park, "she is, or rather was, a Catholic,
and some ignorant people here have found it out and profess to look
upon her with horror. And some troublesome boys, who only want an
excuse for doing so, have been teasing her lately. That was what she
meant by 'bad boy.' We could stop the boys teasing her if it were not
for some older people who ought to know better."
"Oh, what a shame!" exclaimed Dolly, indignantly. "What a mean, mean
thing to tease such a helpless little woman!"
"My dear Dolly," replied Mrs. Park, with that wisdom we gain by
experience, "that is the very reason they tease her, because she is
helpless. Cowards do not dare to touch those who are able to defend
themselves," and Dolly was silent for some moments.
"Well, she has some good friends any way," she said at last--"you and
Uncle and Skipper Joe and Thankful."
"And Thankful is a host in herself," replied Mrs. Park, smiling; "and
you must watch over her too, Dolly. Go and see her often; she seems to
have taken a great liking to you and Gaston."
And Dolly was proud of the trust reposed in her.