VIMARGARET
Margaret, Mamie's successor, was a woman in the middle forties. There were little shadowy modelings in her brow which made you think of the smooth hollows of a shell. She gave one the impression of something cast up from the sea and dragged back into it many times. She came of a large family, and although her people had treated her badly (according to her own story), she took pride nevertheless in speaking of them. "Me brother Pat," I may say, was never spoken of without her head going up. She had a taste for distinction, and pride of race was strong in her. She was a born teller of tales. One of the best was of a wake to which she was taken as a child.
"It was a grrrand wake! The folk from all arroond were there! And they'd baked meats such as you'd have only in the rrrichest houses here. I was eight year old. I went with me brother Pat. The dead man had been a mean old man, savin' and hoardin', not spendin', even for the poor. They do say the dead'll come back if ye worry them enough; and it'slikely it worried him something terrible to see all that spendin' of his money, and all the neighbor folk he hated so, crowded so close in his room and the dhrrrink goin' round. Anyway, however be it, as I was lookin' at him from my corner, all eyes, for I'd never seen a dead man before, God save us! up he rose from the dead, right among all the candles, upsettin' some of them; and he screamed, yes, screamed, too, like he'd just escaped from hell, with the devil's fingers still hot on him! Some went by the windys, some by the door. Five got broken legs gettin' out, and the priest, God save us! fell down dead, and him a good man, too!"
This was but a small piece of ore from a rich mine. Give her but the chance—she had a story for every occasion.
She went on a tour of inspection when she had been with us a few hours. I felt sure that the beauty and meaning of the old run-down place, of necessity hid from the profane, would never be lost on one of her keen and psychic temperament. She came back glowing, and I thought really reverent.
"Oh, it's a noble place," she said. "Youcan see plainer nor your eyes, it's been lived in by the gentility! Look at them gables and them chimneys! That house has the air of a grand lady, ma'am, sittin' quiet with her hands folded. And them elms, too, like the grand slow wavin' of a fan. Them parlors with their long windys have got the air of havin' seen folk. Me brother Pat worked for a place like this once." This with her head up and looking all round. "There's a rich squire lived here at the least,"—with her eyes narrowed shrewdly and her head nodding, I can give you no idea how knowingly. "Yes; and belike maybe a lord. And there were ladies (seems I can see them, God save me!) and little childer, I'll give warrant, little childer that knew how to behave themselves in the like of these rooms. Don't it look dreamin' now, ma'am? Wouldn't you say it was thinkin'?" This with her head on one side, listening, it seemed, for the unseen presences to go by. By and by she brightened, and came back to the present:—
"There's but one thing about it all I don't like, ma'am. It's the way ye keep your pig. A sty way off from Christian fellowship is noplace to keep a pig. They're the childer of God, the way we are. We kept our own, ma'am, in the old country as clean as your hand, so we could have it friendly in the kitchen with us. I'm fond of animals, ma'am—the puir things that can't talk!"
Besides her great fondness for animals Margaret had an extraordinary understanding of them. She had a way of talking with bird and beast that lent reality to the legends of St. Francis. The "Sermon to the Birds" is no more intimate, nor that to the fishes more appropriate, than the daily admonitions she gave the pig, the counsel she tendered the chickens, to which they listened with grave attention, the pig as if hypnotized, his two fore feet planted stolidly, his eyes fixed upon her; the chickens with their heads turned consideringly, now on this side now on the other, and with little guttural comments of question or approval. The wolf reputed to have put his paw in the saint's hand seemed infinitely less legendary to me after I had seen the pig, released from his pen, follow her to the kitchen stoop, and, with manners as gentlemanly as he could counterfeit, eat out of a pan she heldfor him. When he had finished, she offered him her hand, as if to pledge him to further good manners; and he made a clumsy pawing motion and managed with her help to get a hoof into her palm. She gave it a grave shake and released it.
"You're improvin'," was all she said; while the pig, delighted, no doubt, with his new accomplishment, took to his four feet, with squeals of delight, around the corner of the house.
One day there came from about her person a strange chirping, a trifle muffled, like the chirping of a tiny chicken. She absolutely ignored it. She held her head stiff and high, as she was wont to do when she served us or when she referred to "me brother Pat." But when she saw that the day could not after all be carried by a mere haughty ignoring of facts, she spoke.
"Poor little uneducated abandoned fowl, ma'am, to cry out against its own interests! I'm sorry, but I couldn't leave it in the cold. So, for the love of its mother and God's mother, I'm carryin' it in me bosom to keep it warm. And I'd think you'd be offended if I didn'tbelieve you're a follower of Him that carried the lambs there too!"
It was in such ways that she left you no argument, disarmed all objection, and pursued her own way and predilections, as the saints, the poor, and other chosen of the Lord have, I believe, always done.
Loyalty was, perhaps, the largest part of her code; but it was based rather on the assumption that you were hers than that she was yours. Guests came seldom to that old house; but the welcome she gave them when they did come was a thing to warm the heart.
She assumed a devoted possession of me and my affairs. When these fared ill, she was as Babylon desolated; when they went comparatively well, she was overjoyed, her step lightened, her head went up; she was as a city set upon a hill, that cannot be hid. But it was toward those whom she took to be my enemies that she really shone. By shrewd guesses and by dint of a few downright questions, she figured out that a deal of sorrow and calamity had come to me through the selfishness of others. That was enough for her! Might the Lordsmite them! Might a murrain seize them and their cattle!
"But they have no cattle, Margaret! They live in a very large city."
(It was always a temptation to see how she would right herself.)
"Then may devastation befittin' them fall on their basements and their battlements! May their balustrades burst and a sign of pestilence be put upon their door-sills! And—now God forgive me—whenever He's willin' to take them—for it's He would know what to do with them,"—this with a fierce knowing nod,—"He has my willin'ness they should go! I'd think it a fairer earth without them, and I'd greet the sun the friendlier in the morn'n' for knowin' he'd not set his bright eye on them."
Many batter-cakes were stirred to rounded periods of this sort, and omelettes beaten the stiffer for her indignation.
Once it came to her in a roundabout way that illness had fallen upon one of these whom for my sake she despised. She looked shrewdly at something at a very long distance, invisible to any but herself, winked one eye very deliberately,with incredible calculation; then nodded her head slowly, like a witch or sibyl.
"Whatdid I tell ye! The currrse is beginnin' to work!"
Funny as it was, there was something awful in it too.
"But, Margaret, I don't wish them any ill. I don't believe people make others suffer like that if they are in their right minds. Perhaps they think they are doing right."
"Ofcourrrsethey do! If they ever could think they were wrong, there'd be salvation for them! But you see how clear it is that they're doomed to destruction!"
"It's slow waitin' on the Lord," she said one day wearily. "And oh, it's meself would like to stir them up a little cake befittin' them!"
I know she thought me a weakling as to hate. But for the insuperable difficulty of several centuries, I believe she would have left me, to ally herself with the Borgias.
When she had been with me some time, she had a serious illness. She had been subject to periodical attacks of the kind, it seems, since her girlhood.
"I didn't tell you," she said simply, "forif I had, ye wouldn't have engaged me; and I liked the looks of ye." Then, triumphantly, "Nor was I mistaken."
This was the beginning of a system of appeals, searching and frequent, which yet never took the direct form of appeal.
"It's I can't be sayin' how I love this old house," she would say irrelevantly one day; and the next, "Me brother Pat has been very kind to me at times—attimes!"—here a slow wink and nod at the invisible,—"but it's not your own, God save me, that'll do for you in misfortune! No, ma'am, it's not your own!"
She began giving me little presents, a lace collar first. I insisted that I would rather she kept it herself.
"God save us! And all you've done for me!" Her tone was almost despair. "And you wouldn't let me do that for you! A bit of a lace collar!"
The next time it was a strange mosaic cross; and the next, a queerly contrived egg-beater; again, a very fine and beautiful handkerchief—all of these produced from her trunk. She always had some ingenious tale of how she had come by them.
Meanwhile her attacks were becoming more frequent. At such times she was like one possessed by some spirit. Her mind would wander suddenly, always to her childhood and the Green Isle. She would be calling the cows home at evening, or talking to the pig. When the "spirit" left her, she would be trembling and almost helpless for days, and needed much care.
When she was well enough for me to leave her, I went to see her doctor and her people. The first suggested the almshouse: the others thought that they were not called on to keep her unless she would agree to do exactly as they bade her do, and would renounce her proud ways.
Of course I kept her with me. There are extravagances of poverty which may be allowed, as well as of wealth. Something, too, must be conceded to the spirit of adventure and recklessness. It may be at this crossroads that the provident will bid me adieu. I am sorry to lose their company, for, despite their lesser distinction and certain plebeian tendencies, I like the provident. But before they determine to depart, I may be allowed to wonder whetherthey have ever been in such close relation with the poor as I was then. Have they ever felt the persistent appeal of a Margaret, I wonder, or seen her eyes go twenty times a day to them as to one who held her fate in their keeping? I think perhaps they will not have over-heard her say to the pig in a moment of half-gay thankfulness, "Arrah! God save us! are ye glad as ye should be ye're with people that have got a heart?" Or perhaps the provident will scarcely have been vouchsafed a terrible understanding, as I had at that time, of the dark possibilities of life, or have known what it was to wonder where the next meals would come from.
"But," argue the provident, "could she not have gone to her people?" Which, being interpreted, means: "Should she not have taken thankfully the grudged and conditioned charity, with dominion, offered her by those in more fortunate circumstances?"
And to that I answer, "If you think so, then I can only judge that you know little 'how salt is the bread of others and how steep their stairs'; and I can but refer you to one who has spoken immortally of these matters."
One day, when she had been ill for more than a week, I told her that she might stay on with me and be cared for, and have a certain very moderate wage, and do only such little light work as she felt able to, all the heavier being taken over by a stronger woman.
She pricked her head up and spoke from a white pillow, equal to fate once more:—
"Now, God save us! If it isn't always good that be growin' out of evil! I'll be yerhousekeeper! And who'll ye have for a cook? 'Tis I'll be keepin' the keys of things! Bring along the cook! Black or white, I don't care.Ikin manage her!" (This threateningly.)
This was alarming, but I counted upon inspiration and ingenuity when the time came.
I found a West India darky, whose condition also needed improving. She was a fine type. She might have walked out of the jungles of Africa; magnificently powerful, a little old. She was as irrevocably Protestant as Margaret was Catholic. I urged each of them privately to remember that they were both the Lord's children and therefore sisters. Augusta accepted this in solemn religious spirit,—such a speech on my part bound her to me forever,—butMargaret took it with a chip on her shoulder.
"She can call herself a Christian if she likes, but it is an insult to the Lord, for she's nothin' better nor a heathen! Black like that!"
"But, Margaret, you said you would not object to a black woman."
"No, ma'am, nor I don't!" said Margaret, veering swiftly after her own manner; "it's her pink lips I can't shtand."
This was the beginning of their warfare; which, not inconsistently, was made infinitely more bitter by Augusta's fixed resolve to be a Christian.
Augusta had a predilection for hymns, one in particular, whose refrain could be heard wailing and poignant and confident at odd moments:—
Oh, what a Father, oh, what a Friend!He will be with you unto the end.Oh, what a Father, oh, what a Friend!He will be with you unto the end.
Margaret, like most of those of her creed, had a small opinion of hymn-singing, and haughtily indulged in none of it. Moreover, she had in very strong essence that securesense of election and special grace common with some of her faith. Let others attend mere temples and mitigated meeting-houses, and presume to call them churches if they like; let others take dark risks of undoctrinal salvation! Such spiritual vagabondage must by contrast give but the greater assurance of security to those elected since the beginning—a peculiar and a chosen people. It can be seen, therefore, how Augusta's confident appropriation of the Deity, with her reiterated boast of friendly intimacy, wore upon this daughter of antique distinctions and ancient privileges.
There was, of course, soon established a strongly vicious circle; for, when Margaret became excessively trying and difficult to deal with, Augusta would console and fortify herself with the reassurances of this particular refrain; whereas, at the same time, this particular refrain having the effect of rousing Margaret to still worse and worse moods, these, in turn, made the consolations of the refrain even more than ever indispensable to Augusta.
I do not know, I am sure, what would have been the final result of it all save for the pig.When Margaret's limit of endurance was reached, she would come out of the house, sometimes with her hands over her ears, and make off at a kind of trot in the direction of the pig's habitat. There, I am inclined to believe, she was able, after her own manner, to find consolation and assuagement in her unrivaled place in his affections, as well as in the friendly, grave, and undivided attention which he always gave her.
Impossible as Margaret was, I could see that her appealing and lovable qualities played on Augusta as they had long played on me.
"The poor afflicted soul!" said Augusta; "look at the poor thin temples. You don't know, ma'am, how I pray for her every night!"
Margaret, passing by unexpectedly, over-heard this and cried out,—
"Oh, God save us! Then I am lost! The Lord will abandon me now for sure! He'll never forgive me such company! That's the wurst yet!"
Then she went off for another of her long conversations with the pig. When she came back she was in a changed mood.
"Don't mind what I say," she said to me."If God can forgive me, I don't know I'm sure, why you can't!" Then she put a rosy-cheeked apple beside Augusta. "And I think you'll find this pleasant to the taste."
Remembering the Borgias, I should have been loath to taste it; but Augusta bit into it with immediate Christian forgiveness. Yet late that afternoon the wind had shifted again into the old quarter. Happening to go into the woodshed, I found Augusta there crying.
"What in the world is the matter, Augusta?" I asked.
"I'm crying," she said, anticipating Shaw and Androcles, "because I'm a Christian and I can't strike her!"
She raised her old bloodshot eyes, not to me, but to heaven. I have seen the same look in the eyes of an old dog teased by a pert mongrel, and crippled and rendered helpless by rheumatism as was Augusta by her Christianity.
It was Margaret herself at last, who announced that she would be obliged to leave me. She spoke with a dignity which she had held over, I suppose, from regal years submerged but not forgotten.
"It's I will have to be goin'; I've stayed as long as I can. I've stood a great deal,—for ye'll stand a terrible lot for them ye're fond of,—and I've been terrible fond of you, more than of me own—and am to this day. But I can't honest say it's of your deserving! There's a sayin' that we love best them that mistreat us most, and I'm for thinkin' it may be true. I'd have stayed to help you, but I must be havin'somethought of meself! Though you've treated me as I wouldn't treat me own,"—this tellingly,—"and asked me to live under the roof with one of them the Lord has abandoned, yet I've a kindly feelin' in me heart still for ye, and if ye were in need and ye'd come to me, maybe I wouldn't say ye nay—I don't know. I'm a forgivin' disposition, more than is for me own good, God knows! I've hated yer enemies and doomed them to desthruction!"
I patted her hand good-bye between two perfectly well-balanced desires to laugh and to cry. She was so funny, so incredible, so bent, since the foundation of the world, on proving herself right and everybody else wrong. She was not Margaret, merely, whom chance andtrouble had brought into my path—she was a very piece of humanity, decked out in unaccustomed bonnet and unlikely feather, best petticoat and a grand pair of black kid gloves—humanity, the ancient, the amusing, the faulty, the incredible, the pathetic, the endeared. And it was as that that she rode away in the funny old jolting farm wagon, her chin in the air, her eyes glancing around haughtily, scanning the old place she had loved and clung to, but scanning it scornfully now, as if she had never laid eyes on it before, and were saying, "Ye puir thing!—with yer air of delapidation! Who—God save us—are you?"
I went back into the kitchen and caught Augusta wiping her eyes with her apron, and was not altogether gay myself—while Margaret jolted away fiercely, our two scalps at her belt.
"You mustn't worry too much about her, ma'am," said Augusta soothingly; "the Lord is her friend, and He'll take care of her."
From incontrovertible precedent I felt sure that He would, with a sureness I had never had as to my own less considerable destiny.
All this was some years ago. By a curiouschance,—which has the air of being something more considerable,—it was while I was writing these very paragraphs about Margaret that I had a letter from her, the first since she rode away. It was very characteristic, written in a scrawly and benevolent hand:—
"Will you please let me hear, ma'am, whether you're dead or alive. I've had you on my mind, and for six weeks I can't sleep night or day for thinking of you."Your old servant,"Margaret."
"Will you please let me hear, ma'am, whether you're dead or alive. I've had you on my mind, and for six weeks I can't sleep night or day for thinking of you.
"Your old servant,"Margaret."
Let no one tell me that this is mere coincidence. New proof it is, to one who has long dealt with the poor, of strange powers of which they are possessed. Here is a sister, I tell you,—"plainer nor your eyes,"—to the old blind man, who used to come tap-tap, tap-tapping up the shadowy stairs and into the nursery for the penny I had withheld.
Margaret had come back also. Useless to suppose that I could hide from her in the silence and shadows of the intervening years. She had with her shrewd eye found me out. She had come, like the blind man, not to exactmoney of me, no; but like a witch disembodied, and through the mail, she had come to levy a more precious tax—to collect as of old the old sympathetic affection; the old toll I had paid her so often before; the tribute she had demanded and received times without number—not for labors rendered, no, nor for accountable values received, but rather by a kind of royal prerogative. Indeed, I take it to be a thing proved, to which this is but slight additional testimony, that these are, how much more than kings,—and it would seem by the grace of God,—sovereigns and rulers over us.
But there is still further testimony, of another order, which I feel called on to bear.