"I'll tell her," said Tilly.
She had advanced a little space before a young girl in a bright blue silk gown flung a radiant presence between her and the door. "Oh, Miss Tilly," she murmured, blushing, "will you just give your mother this?—it's—it's Jim's photograph. You tell her it's ALL right; and SHE was exactly right, and I was wrong. She'll understand."
Tilly, with a look of resignation, accepted a stiff package done up in white tissue paper. She had now only three steps to take: she took two, only two, for—"Miss Tilly, PLEASE!" a voice pealed around the corner, while a flushed and breathless young woman, with a large baby toppling over her lean shoulder, staggered into view. "My!" she panted, "ain't it tiresome lugging a child! I missed the car, of course, coming home from ma's. Oh, say, Tilly, your mother was so good, she said she'd tend Blossom next time I went to the doctor's, and——"
"I'll take the baby," said Tilly. She hoisted the infant on to her own shoulder with her right arm. "Perhaps you'll be so kind's to turn the handle of the door," said she in a slightly caustic tone, "as I haven't got any hands left. Please shut it, too."
As the young mother opened the door, Tilly entered the parlor. For a second she stood and stared grimly about her. The furniture of the room was old-fashioned but in the best repair. There was a cabinet organ in one corner. A crayon portrait of Tilly's father (killed in the civil war) glared out of a florid gilt frame. Perhaps it was the fault of the portrait, but he had a peevish frown. There were two other portraits of him, large ghastly gray tintypes in oval frames of rosewood, obscurely suggesting coffins. In these he looked distinctly sullen. He was represented in uniform (being a lieutenant of volunteers), and the artist had conscientiously gilded his buttons until, as Mrs. Louder was wont to observe, "It most made you want to cut them off with the scissors." There were other tintypes and a flock of photographs in the room. What Mrs. Louder named "a throw" decorated each framed picture and each chair. The largest arm-chair was drawn up to a table covered with books and magazines: in the chair sat Mrs. Louder, reading.
At Tilly's entrance she started and turned her head, and then one could see that the tears were streaming down her cheeks.
"Now, MOTHER!" exploded Tilly. Kicking the door open, she marched into the bed-chamber. An indignant sweep of one arm sent the miscellany of gifts into a rocking-chair; an indignant curve of the other landed the baby on the bed. Tilly turned on her mother. "Now, mother, what did you promise—HUSH! will you?" (The latter part of the sentence a fierce "ASIDE" to the infant on the bed.) In a second Mrs. Louder's arms were encircling him, and she was soothing him on her broad shoulder, where I know not how many babies have found comfort.
Jane Louder was a tall woman—tall and portly. She had a massive repose about her, a kind of soft dignity; and a stranger would not guess how tender was her heart. Deprecatingly she looked up at her only child, standing in judgment over her. Her eyes were fine still, though they had sparkled and wept for more than half a century. They were not gray, like Tilly's, but a deep violet, with black eyelashes and eyebrows. Black, once, had been the hair under the widow's cap, now streaked with silver; but Jane Louder's skin was fresh and daintily tinted like her daughter's, for all its fine wrinkles. Her voice when she spoke was mellow and slow, with a nervous vibration of apology. "Never mind, dear," she said, "I was just reading 'bout the Russians."
"I KNEW it! You promised me you wouldn't cry about the Russians any more."
"I know, Tilly, but Alma Brown lent this to me, herself. There's a beautiful article in it about 'The Horrors of Hunger.' It would make your heart ache! I wish you would read it, Tilly."
"No, thank you. I don't care to have my heart ache. I'm not going to read any more horrors about the Russians, or hear them either, if I can help it. I have to write Mr. Lossing's letters about them, and that's enough. I've given all I can afford, and you've given more than you can afford; and I helped get up the subscription at the shops. I've done all I could; and now I ain't going to have my feelings harrowed up any more, when it won't do me nor the Russians a mite of good."
"But I cayn't HELP it, Tilly. I cayn't take any comfort in my meals, thinking of that awful black bread the poor children starve rather than eat; and, Tilly, they ain't so dirty as some folks think! I read in a magazine how they have GOT to bathe twice a week by their religion; and there's a bath-house in every village. Tilly, do you know how much money they've raised here?"
"Over three thousand. This town is the greatest town for giving—give to the cholera down South, give to Johnstown, give to Grinnell, give to cyclones, give to fires. The Freeman always starts up a subscription, and Mr. Bayard runs the thing, and Mr. Lossing always gives. Mother, I tell you HE makes them hustle when he takes hold. He's the chairman here, and he has township chairmen appointed for every township. He's so popular they start in to oblige him, and then, someway, he makes them all interested. I must tell you of a funny letter he had to-day from a Captain Ferguson, out at Baxter. He's a rich farmer with lots of influence and a great worker, Mr. Lossing says. But this is 'most word for word what he wrote: 'Dear Sir: I am sorry for the Russians, but my wife is down with the la grippe, and I can't get a hired girl; so I have to stay with her. If you'll get me a hired girl, I'll get you a lot of money for the Russians.'"
"Did he git a girl? I mean Mr. Lossing."
"No, ma'am. He said he'd try if it was the city, but it was easier finding gold-mines than girls that would go into the country. See here, I'm forgetting your presents. Mother, you look real dragged and—queer!"
"It's nothing; jist a thought kinder struck me 'bout—'bout that girl."
Tilly was sorting out the parcels and explaining them; at the end of her task her mind harked back to an old grievance. "Mother," said she, "I've been thinking for a long time, and I've made up my mind."
"Yes, dearie." Mrs. Louder's eyes grew troubled. She knew something of the quality of Tilly's mind, which resembled her father's in a peculiar immobility. Once let her decision run into any mould (be it whatsoever it might), and let it stiffen, there was no chance, any more than with other iron things, of its bending.
"Positively I could hardly get up the stairs today," said Tilly—she was putting her jacket and hat away in her orderly fashion; of necessity her back was to Mrs. Louder—"there was such a raft of people wanting to send stuff and messages to you. You are just working yourself to death; and, mother, I am convinced we have got to move!"
Mrs. Louder dropped into a chair and gasped. The baby, who had fallen asleep, stirred uneasily. It was not a pretty child; its face was heavy, its little cheeks were roughened by the wind, its lower lip sagged, its chin creased into the semblance of a fat old man's. But Jane Louder gazed down on it with infinite compassion. She stroked its head as she spoke.
"Tilly," said she, "I've been in this block, Mrs. Carleton and me, ever since it was built; and, some way, between us we've managed to keep the run of all the folks in it; at least when they were in any trouble. We've worked together like sisters. She's 'Piscopal, and I guess I'm Unitarian; but never a word between us. We tended the Willardses through diphtheria and the Hopkinses through small-pox, and we steamed and fumigated the rooms together. It was her first found out the Dillses were letting that twelve-year-old child run the gasoline stove, and she threatened to tell Mr. Lossing, and they begged off; and when it exploded we put it out together, with flour out of her flour-barrel, for the poor, shiftless things hadn't half a sack full of their own; and her and me, we took half the care of that little neglected Ellis baby that was always sitting down in the sticky fly-paper, poor innocent child. He's took the valedictory at the High School, Tilly, now. No, Tilly, I couldn't bring myself to leave this building, where I've married them, and buried them, and born them, you may say, being with so many of their mothers; I feel like they was all my children. Don't ASK me."
Tilly's head went upward and backward with a little dilatation of the nostrils. "Now, mother," said she in a voice of determined gentleness, "j
ust listen to me. Would I ask you to do anything that wouldn't be for your happiness? I have found a real pretty house up on Fifteenth Street; and we'll keep house together, just as cosey; and have a woman come to wash and iron and scrub, so it won't be a bit hard; and be right on the street-cars; and you won't have to drudge helping Mrs. Carleton extra times with her restaurant."
"But, Tilly," eagerly interrupted Mrs. Louder, "you know I dearly love to cook, and she PAYS me. I couldn't feel right to take any of the pension money, or the little property your father left me, away from the house expenses; but what I earn myself, it is SUCH a comfort to give away out of THAT."
Tilly ran over and kissed the agitated face. "You dear, generous mother!" cried she, "I'LL give you all the money you want to spend or give. I got another rise in my salary of five a month. Don't you worry."
"You ain't thinking of doing anything right away, Tilly?"
"Don't you think it's best done and over with, after we've decided, mother? You have worked so hard all your life I want to give you some ease and peace now."
"But, Tilly, I love to work; I wouldn't be happy to do nothing, and I'd get so fleshy!"
Tilly only laughed. She did not crave the show of authority. Let her but have her own way, she would never flaunt her victories. She was imperious, but she was not arrogant. For months she had been pondering how to give her mother an easier life; and she set the table for supper, in a filial glow of satisfaction, never dreaming that her mother, in the kitchen, was keeping her head turned from the stove lest she should cry into the fried ham and stewed potatoes. But, at a sudden thought, Jane Louder laid her big spoon down to wipe her eyes.
"Here you are, Jane Louder"—thus she addressed herself—"mourning and grieving to leave your friends and be laid aside for a useless old woman, and jist be taken care of, and you clean forgetting the chance the Lord gives you to help more'n you ever helped in your life! For shame!"
A smile of exaltation, of lofty resolution, erased the worry lines on her face. "Why, it might be to save twenty lives," said she; but in the very speaking of the words a sharp pain wrenched her heart again, and she caught up the baby from the floor, where he sat in a wall of chairs, and sobbed over him: "Oh, how can I go away when I got to go for good so soon? I want every minnit!"
She never thought of disputing Tilly's wishes. "It's only fair," said Jane. "She's lived here all these years to please me, and now I ought to be willing to go to please her."
Neither did she for a moment hope to change Tilly's determination. "She was the settest baby ever was," thought poor Jane, tossing on her pillow, in the night watches, "and it's grown with every inch of her!"
But in the morning she surprised her daughter. "Tilly," said she at the breakfast-table, "Tilly, I got something I must do, and I don't want you to oppose me."
"Good gracious, ma!" said Tilly; "as if I ever opposed you!"
"You know how bad I have been feeling about the poor Russians———"
"Well?"
"And how I've wished and wished I could do something—something to COUNT? I never could, Tilly, because I ain't got the money or the intellect; but s'posing I could do it for somebody else, like this Captain Ferguson who could do so much if he just could get a hired girl to take care of his wife. Well, I do know how to cook and to keep a house neat and to do for the sick——"
Tilly could restrain herself no longer; her voice rose to a shout of dismay—"Mother Louder, you AIN'T thinking of going to be the Ferguson's hired girl!"
"Not their hired girl, Tilly; just their help, so as he can work for those poor starving creatures." Jane strangled a sob in her throat. Tilly, in a kind of stupor of bewilderment, frowned at her plate. Then her clouded face cleared. If Mrs. Louder had surprised her daughter, her daughter repaid the surprise. "Well, if you feel that way, mother," said she, "I won't say a word; and I'll ask Mr. Lossing to explain to the Fergusons and fix everything. He will."
"You're real good, Tilly."
"And while you're gone I guess it will be a good plan to move and git settled——"
For some reason Tilly's throat felt dry, she lifted her cup. She did not intend to look across the table, but her eyes escaped her. She set the coffee down untasted. The clock was slow, she muttered; and she left the room.
Jane Louder remained in her place, with the same pale face, staring at the table-cloth.
"It don't seem like I COULD go, now," she thought dully to herself; "the time's so awful short, I don't s'pose Maria Carleton can git up to see me more'n once or twice a month, busy as she is! I got so to depend on seeing her every day. A sister couldn't be kinder! I don't see how I am going to bear it. And to go away, beforehand——"
For a long while she sat, her face hardly changing. At last, when she did push her chair away, her lips were tightly closed. She spoke to the little pile of books lying on the table in the corner. "I cayn't—these are my own and you are strangers!" She walked across the room to take up the same magazine which Tilly had found her reading the day before. When she began reading she looked stern—poor Jane, she was steeling her heart—but in a little while she was sniffing and blowing her nose. With a groan she flung the book aside. "It's no use, I would feel like a murderer if I don't go!" said she.
She did go. Harry Lossing made all the arrangements. Tilly was satisfied. But, then, Tilly had not heard Harry's remark to his mother: "Alma says Miss Louder is trying to make the old lady move against her will. I dare say it would be better to give the young woman a chance to miss her mother and take a little quiet think."
Tilly saw her mother off on the train to Baxter, the Fergusons' station. Being a provident, far-sighted, and also inexperienced traveller, she had allowed a full half-hour for preliminary passages at arms with the railway officials; and, as the train happened to be an hour late, she found herself with time to spare, even after she had exhausted the catalogue of possible deceptions and catastrophes by rail. During the silence that followed her last warning, she sat mentally keeping tally on her fingers. "Confidence men"—Tilly began with the thumb—"Never give anybody her check. Never lend anybody money. Never write her name to anything. Don't get out till conductor tells her. In case of accident, telegraph me, and keep in the middle of the car, off the trucks. Not take care of anybody's baby while she goes off for a minute. Not take care of babies at all. Or children. Not talk to strangers—good gracious!"
Tilly felt a movement of impatience; there, after all her cautions, there was her mother helping an old woman, an utterly strange old woman, to pile a bird-cage on a bandbox surmounting a bag. The old woman was clad in a black alpaca frock, made with the voluminous draperies of years ago, but with the uncreased folds and the brilliant gloss of a new gown. She wore a bonnet of a singular shape, unknown to fashion, but made out of good velvet. Beneath the bonnet (which was large) appeared a little, round, agitated old face, with bobbing white curls and white teeth set a little apart in the mouth, a defect that brought a kind of palpitating frankness into the expression.
"Now, who HAS mother picked up now?" thought Tilly. "Well, praise be, she hasn't a baby, anyhow!"
She could hear the talk between the two; for the old woman being deaf, Mrs. Louder elevated her voice, and the old woman, herself, spoke in a high, thin pipe that somehow reminded Tilly of a lost lamb.
"That's just so," said Mrs. Louder, "a body cayn't help worrying over a sick child, especially if they're away from you."
"Solon and Minnie wouldn't tell me," bleated the other woman, "they knew I'd worry. Kinder hurt me they should keep things from me; but they hate to have me upset. They are awful good children. But I suspicioned something when Alonzo kept writing. Minnie, she wouldn't tell me, but I pinned her down and it come out, Eliza had the grip bad. And, then, nothing would do but I must go to her—why, Mrs. Louder, she's my child! But they wouldn't hark to it. 'Fraid to have me travel alone——"
"I guess they take awful good care of you," said Mrs. Louder; and she sighed.
"Y
es, ma'am, awful." She, too, sighed.
As she talked her eyes were darting about the room, eagerly fixed on every new arrival.
"Are you expecting anyone, Mrs. Higbee?" said Jane. They seemed, at least, to know each other by name, thought Tilly; it was amazing the number of people mother did know!
"No," said Mrs. Higbee, "I—I—fact is, I'm kinder frightened. I—fact is, Mrs. Louder, I guess I'll tell you, though I don't know you very well; but I've known about you so long—I run away and didn't tell 'em. I just couldn't stay way from Liza. And I took the bird—for the children; and it's my bird, and I was 'fraid Minnie would forget to feed it and it would be lonesome. My children are awful kind good children, but they don't understand. And if Solon sees me he will want me to go back. I know I'm dretful foolish; and Solon and Minnie will make me see I am. There won't be no good reason for me to go, and I'll have to stay; and I feel as if I should FLY—Oh, massy sakes! there's Solon coming down the street——"
She ran a few steps in half a dozen ways, then fluttered back to her bag and her cage.
"Well," said Mrs. Louder, drawing herself up to her full height, "you SHALL go if you want to."
"Solon will find me, he'll know the bird-cage! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!"
Then a most unexpected helper stepped upon the stage. What is the mysterious instinct of rebellion to authority that, nine cases out of ten, sends us to the aid of a fugitive? Tilly, the unconscious despot of her own mother, promptly aided and abetted Solon's rebel mother in her flight.
"Not if I carry it," said she, snatching up the bird-cage; "run inside that den where they sell refreshments; he'll see ME and go somewhere else."
It fell out precisely as she planned. They heard Solon demanding a lady with a bird-cage of the agent; they heard the agent's reply, given with official indifference, "There she is, inside." Directly, Solon, a small man with an anxious mien, ran into the waiting-room, flung a glance of disappointment at Tilly, and ran out again.
Stories of a Western Town Page 8