VTHE LURE OF THE "CHIFFONEER"
One day, Mamie came to me, her face beaming.
"I want to do the right thing, so I'm going to give you a whole month's notice. Bill has rented some rooms. What do you think of that!"
I told her gently, but firmly, what I suspected concerning it.
She brought out his letter for proof.
"He's to pay for the rooms, and I'm to sendhim the money for the furniture. He'll get whatever kind I like. You've always been kind to me," she added, "but I think you've got a hard heart as to Bill."
Well, perhaps I had.
The month passed very happily. As his letters came, she would tell me what he had bought.
"It's a bureau with a marble top,—secondhand, Second Avenue,—but as good as new. Besides, some people would rather have antiques. And Idolike bureaus!"
Then it would be a table that set her singing her queer ragtime songs. Once there came word of three cushioned chairs. One letter announced a looking-glass. And once, as I went into the kitchen suddenly, there was Mamie, one arm above her head, the other holding her skirt, dancing for Anne to see, and to Anne's inexpressible wonder and delight. She sat there in her tub, leaning forward, beaming, fascinated, and holding tight to its sides as though we might all be personages in a fairy-tale, and she and the tub might any moment fly away.
At sight of me, Mamie stopped, flushingpink as a rose, apologetic, but unfeignedly happy.
"I couldn't help it! He's bought me achiffoneer!"
A moment later, as I passed through the hall, I could hear Mamie singing, "And she's going back to her Daddy, and her home, home,home!"—to some impromptu rigmarole tune of her own.
Soon after this she took the train to the nearest town and came back laden with packages—all manner of cheap household stuff picked up at the five-and-ten-cent store. It occurred to me that she might as well have a small empty trunk of mine that there was in the attic. She was delighted with the gift, and wore the key of it on a chain around her neck.
"I'd rather have that key than a locket!" she said, putting her hand over it affectionately. It was so that she repaid you tenfold. "It's wonderful," she would say, every little while, in joyful anticipation, "having your own home!"
For myself, despite many unmitigated realities, I could not help feeling that I was livingin something of a wonder story. Who knew but that, with those extraordinary powers of hers, which so readily rose above fact, who knew but that she might rub that key some day as Aladdin his lamp, and turn us all into triumphant heroes and heroines.
Mamie did not forget, as I said good-bye to her in the big city terminal where I finally left them, to give me parting advice, sisterly sympathy:—
"Now, don't you go and get discouraged. I know you've had troubles. Well, I've had trouble enough, too. You just keep right on, and hold your head high. There's no telling what'll come to them that holds their heads high. Look at me!"
I looked at her and could have felt convinced. Then we said our good-byes, and away they went. The last I saw of them in the crowd was Anne's hand still waving loyally to me over Mamie's shoulder quite a long time after her eyes had lost me.
I missed them exceedingly; and the blue-birds of that second spring hardly made up to me for the absence of Anne's birdlike voice. The new maid, Margaret, was interestingenough, but no one could ever quite take the place of those others.
With all this in mind, you will realize with what a sinking of the heart I found that there was more than Mamie to be missed. There could be no doubt in the matter, for there had been no outsider in the house at all of late; therefore it could be due to no other magic than hers that there was a grievous lessening of my scant stores of household belongings—sheets and pillow-cases, towels and a pair of blankets, napkins and, I think, a table-cloth, and some muffin-rings and kitchen conveniences, and I do not know what else.
Little bits of reality came drifting back to me—the key kept so faithfully always around her neck; my own gift of the trunk; and the sentiment—say now, if you like, the sentimentality—with which I had noted the fact that even that rather small trunk was too large for her poor belongings.
Then suddenly, the whole episode read to me like an Uncle Remus "Br'er Fox and Br'er Rabbit" tale, and I was not too discouraged to laugh—as the "Little Boy" is recorded always to have done—at the turn of the story,at the inevitable triumph of the cleverer of the two.
Yet for Mamie's sake, not to speak of my own, such an ending was not to be permitted. I had asked her to come to see me in town on one of the days of the week that I was always there, and to be sure to bring Anne to see me. She had assured me that she would, and that she would never forget me. Now I knew it would be necessary, rather, for me to go and find her. I rehearsed the scene mentally. I meant to tell her that she could keep all the things she had stolen. (Let them remain in the manner of coals of fire in her trunk!) I would first reduce her to powder in a solemn and serious manner, and then strew her upon the winds of my righteous indignation!Shewhom I had treated with unfailing kindness!Shewhom in sickness I had nursed!Shewhose many faults had been forgiven her, and in whom I had placed trust!She!—
Strangely enough, she did come to see me, that very next day I was in town. She seemed eager to get to me; nervous, too, like one whipped of her conscience. I felt my heart suddenly softening, and as quickly hardenedit. I really had not expected quick penitence of her, but even so, she must take the full punishment of my disapproval. There is a duty we owe in such matters. I would make nothing easy for her.
She sat down heavily, then suddenly put her hand over quickly on mine. I made no sign. Not even that should move me. Then in a hoarse whisper, a really hoarse whisper, almost a moan, she said,—
"Oh, how shall I tell you?Howshall I tell you?"
Stony pause. I looked coldly at her. It seemed, for a moment, that the irresistible force reallyhadmet the immovable body. Then all at once, she put her head down on her arm, sobbed, and spoke.
"Therewasn'tany bureau! Therewasn'tany chiffoneer! There wasn'tevenany rooms!"
An instant of time swirled past. Then I knew, as of old, that the power of the poor is an irresistible force, never—never—not even by the immovable body of our strongest determinations, to be withstood. My own iron resolves I saw converted suddenly into the flimsiest fiction—rent gossamer floating wide.
Oh! Oh! I could have put my face in my hands and wept. All her dreams gone! All her hopes! her pride! her cherished plans! her money! her faith—everything! How small the theft of a few pillow-cases and towels looked now that, at Fate's hands, she, poor thing, had had all this stolen from her! This was no time to reduce her to powder, when she was already reduced to floods of tears and I by no means far from the verge of them.
The story is too obvious to tell. Mamie's miracle had failed. The unreformable Bill had not reformed. But neither,—I hasten to add,—neither, it seems, was Mamie's ineradicable desire for a home eradicated. I have mentioned before my belief that Fate cannot finally affect the people of this extraordinary class. I believe them all to have been plunged more effectually than Achilles in some protective flood.
Mamie, with the help of the perpetually severe, perpetually tender-hearted matron, went out to work again. But there may be those who would be more interested to know what I did with my resolves, my righteous indignation, and, above all, with my conscience.As to my conscience, I cleared that. I wrote to the matron, warning her that in assigning Mamie to any place, it should be remembered that, valuable as Mamie was in many ways, she had a light-fingered tendency to collect household goods. From my later knowledge, I believe that the matron may have smiled at the ingenuousness of that. It might readily be thought superfluous to warn the expert physicist that water does not run up-hill.
As to my righteous indignation, it may seem to you a poor thing, but it never came back. Somehow I never quite forgot the grip of Mamie's hand on mine that day, and her hoarse voice as it announced the total ruin of her hopes; or the memory, by contrast, of her little singing dance before Anne at a happier season, with Anne leaning forward holding delightedly to the sides of the tub.
He is not apt to be the most severe in correction who has suffered much discipline at the hands of Fate. It should be remembered by the unrelenting and conscientious disciplinarian who judges me, that I had seen the ruin of some of my own hopes. Joys that I hadplanned for full as eagerly as Mamie, delights that I had reared on more likely foundations, had been swept away, and almost as suddenly. I am entering here on no philosophy, I am merely stating facts; and I may as well confess that I took comfort in the thought, that, though the bureau, the washstand and the "chiffoneer" had fallen in the general ruin, Mamie still had the sheets, the pillow-cases, the towels, the muffin-rings, and the rest. It was even turning out a little like a fairy-tale after all, for I really now wanted her to have these, and in view of my own very meagre circumstances and my duties to others, I could not with a clear conscience have afforded to give them to her. She, as with a magic foresight, had contrived to relieve me of all embarrassment.
Meanwhile, I heard nothing more of Mamie. Then one day, I had this letter from her (I omit the independent spelling):—
"I thought I'd write to tell you that Anne has a good Papa. He's a farmer. I'm married again." (Since she was not married before, the "again" may refer to a second wedding ring.) "He's got a nice house. Do comeand see me." (Here followed very careful directions.) "I'd like you to see our animals. We've got five chickens, one rooster, a cat and a dog. He had a house already furnished. It's good furnished too. The bed has got shams on the pillows."
It was not long after this that I had a letter from an old aunt of Mamie's, of whom Mamie had several times spoken to me, and to whom she used sometimes to write. The aunt said that, though she had always been too poor to do anything for Mamie, still she took an interest in her. She knew I had been good to her. If it wasn't too much trouble, would I write and tell her how Mamie was, or would I send her her address if she was not with me.
I wrote her with a good deal of pleasure that Mamie was happily married (I did not quibble at the word) to a well-to-do farmer; that she had a nicely furnished house, some animals, and that her husband loved Anne devotedly; and I gave the desired address.
Then I wrote to Mamie and sent her her aunt's letter; and I told her that I thought it would be a kindness if she would write to the old lady.
In reply I had the following: "I know you meant to be kind. But I'm sorry you wrote to my aunt. It wasn't my aunt at all. It was Bill."
Here also—I know it well—fact is less satisfactory than romance. There should, no doubt, be the telling scene of a sequel. I never saw Mamie again, however, and the unfocused waving of a fat, lovely little hand in that crowded terminal is my last memory of Anne.
You who read this may be in some uneasiness as to Mamie. I confess that I am not. I cannot forget the angels of grace that do undoubtedly attend on such. If you will simply review what I have told you, I think you will see that we need not be too anxious. One who can set aside social customs and laws which the less privileged of us do not dare to ignore; who can be married without clerk or benefit of clergy—rather, after the manner of the owl and the pussy-cat, by the mere procuring of a ring; who can protect her child from drowning by a canton-flannel charm; improve health and digestion by a diet of burned bread-crusts; rise above all fact and experienceas successfully as if she were a witch on a broomstick; and preserve her faith unspoiled, despite the most blasting circumstances; who hob-nobs on such easy terms with the Deity, and who can speak of her whom the poets prefer to name "Star of the Deep," and the devout, "Queen of Heaven," as the Deity's "Maw-ma"; one who can, like a prestidigitateur, by a mere turn of the hand, make your conscientious resolves vanish—and draw pity out of the place where solemn indignation should have been, as magicians rabbits out of a silk hat; who can carry off your much needed linen, and have it look like a favor.—Need we worry about such a one? Need Pharaoh, having seen the wonders, be anxious, do you think, as to how the departed children of Israel would be maintained in the desert places where he would so easily have perished?
But lest you should, nevertheless, have Mamie's welfare at heart, and should entertain, with some misgivings, thought of what may have become of Anne, there are yet other signs and wonders of which I shall ask to be allowed to speak.