Part 7

Like many people who live much alone, she had the habit of talking to herself--she was talking then. I heard her say, “That’s fifteen years ago, you fool! yes, all of that. Now, what the devil did I do it for?”

I felt quite certain she was referring to the invitation she had given to me, and I shook with laughter. When she opened the door, her eyes were snapping viciously and her brows were brought together in an inky frown; only her hair was white, her brows were black as they had ever been, but when she saw me standing, my hands behind me, evidently studying the portrait, the frown unknit itself, her eyes softened, and when I asked: “Who are they, the handsome girl and the laughing, little man?” she answered proudly: “They are my treasures, my man-child Philip, and my Edith, gift-of-God; because of whom I have not cursed Him long ago and died.”

At the words, “my treasures,” I suddenly recalled her speech at the lake, and instinctively my eyes turned towards it. She caught the look, and, going to the window, she went on: “My treasures, precious beyond rubies, they lie out there now; I watch them and wait for the sign.”

Then, pointing with her long, bony finger, she said: “You see that dark line out there on the water; no, no, the darker, purplish one? That’s where they lie. Yes, yes, my prettys, I know, I know! but it’s weary waiting, dearies; weary, weary!”

Her voice died away so drearily that I felt the tears rising in my eyes. A movement of mine made her turn to me. She put her hand up and passed it across her brow and eyes once or twice, and then, quite naturally, she went on: “I was wondering, when I came in, what I asked you here for.”

I interrupted to say: “I think it was to give me pleasure.” “No,” she answered, “it wasn’t that. I know now. I thought I’d like to hear some one talk again.”

I felt a bit flattered at that, but she finished with: “I haven’t heard anyone talk at home since my parrot died.”

Down sat my vanity, flat. The old lady had taken off her bonnet, and, as she motioned me to a chair, she said, musingly: “I never can quite remember whether I learned to swear from the parrot, or the parrot learned from me.”

She heaved a sigh and proceeded to prepare the tray for our coffee. As she moved about she continued her remarks: “Yes, we did a fairish bit of swearing between us, Poll and I; her name, by the way, was not Poll, but Sally, and, of course, I suppose some one must have taught her to do it, but it was delicious to hear the ‘bloomin’’ cussing she would give to any one who called her Sarah. Yes, all things considered, there was in the past considerable profanity in this room.”

And I, glancing at the splendid frame against the whitewashed wall, recklessly made answer: “And it is not absolutely absent at this moment.”

Her bright, old eye glanced from wall to frame, then back to me, her quick comprehension making my unfinished thought her finished one in an instant. She wagged her head and said: “That’s not bad, you girl,” then, with somewhat unnerving loudness, she went on: “She’s young and green, oh! but upon my soul, she’s not a fool.” Then addressing me again: “So you know some French sayings, do you? Not many though, I think; but look, you, young ears are sharp, and you should have been here before the hangings of my bed fell to bits. They were of brocatelle and lined with silk, and they cursed that whitewashed wall so venomously, had you been here in the bed, you’d not have slept one wink, unless your soul’s already gray instead of white,” and she laughed that odd, stinging laughter that was so like the crackling of thin ice upon a wintry day.

While she had talked and laughed and nodded, she had prepared her coffee, and we seated ourselves at either side of the little table, she taking care to sit facing the tossing lake.

Oh, that tray! It really seemed as though the things thereon must come to blows, so fiercely did they contradict each other. The coffee pot of make and material precisely like those good “Bridgets” purchase for the use of honest “Patricks.” The knives and forks--they appeared a bit later--were of that brand which always makes you wish that you were dead, they make of life a thing so hideous. While cheek by jowl with these rough things stood a few pieces of old porcelain, deserving, each one of them, a satin-lined box to rest in. And to keep them in countenance, there were four spoons of silver, paper-thin, initials and dates quite worn away, and all a trifle bent and dented in spite of the owner’s care of them; while the linen, I could have cried over that eye-destroying mass of delicate darning. Truly, there were places in my napkin where the darning had itself been darned again. But the coffee, like the fire, which had been increased by the addition of one small cube of coal, was inadequate in quantity, but the quality? oh, well, it was perfection, that’s all; absolute perfection.

I tasted it and smiled, and sighed. She understood, and snapped her old eyes at me approvingly, and _she_ tasted and sighed, and then she slowly said: “Whenever I drink good coffee I always rejoice that God created it. It would have been an infernal shame had it been invented by some fool man!”

I laughed aloud--I always did, I’m sorry to confess--whenever she swore, she did it in such an impersonal way, never, never in anger, never, even when she was busily engaged in flaying alive some victim of her memory and her tongue. She generally swore to herself, and nearly always when in a reflective mood. When I laughed, she gave me a glance and asked quickly: “What is it, eh? Did I swear? Well, don’t you do it, that’s all. But Lord! you won’t have to live fifteen or twenty years alone with a ‘cussing’ parrot, as I did. For some time after Sally died I used to say ‘damnation.’ Oh, I don’t say it now; don’t open your eyes any wider, you’ll meet with an accident. But, you see, for nearly twenty years that bird told me twice a day that her coffee was ‘too damnation hot,’ and after she was gone I had to say it now and then to break the silence.”

As she talked she fidgeted uneasily with her spoon and cup; at last she broke out with: “My dear, I asked you just to have coffee with me, but now--well, to tell you the truth--I am quite faint. I breakfast at half-past six, that I may have the strong morning light for my work, and somehow I feel a bit exhausted to-day, and--and I’d like my dinner now, if you can pardon an old woman’s offence against all conventionalities, and stay and dine with me!”

Could I have known, I would have taken the coffee only and denied my hunger; but I knew nothing, and cheerfully consented to dine with her. I wondered where her kitchen was, and, supposing she would be some time preparing the simplest meal, I looked about for something to help me pass away the time. There was no paper, and but one book in the room, a family bible that might have been bound in a pair of old boots--its leather was so browned with age, so worn, so scruffed it looked. I went over to take it up, when my hostess, with distinct satisfaction in her voice, announced, “Dinner!” All my life long my generally-absent appetite has been pursued like an “_ignus fatuus_” by those near to me, but this time my appetite met its match; old Myra’s saw mine and went it about four better. The knives and forks had now appeared, simply as a mockery, I believe. Lying on a plate were four biscuits, or, as we called them then, crackers. They belonged to that branch of the cracker family known as “soda”--soda crackers, and while I looked on in stupid wonder, she carefully opened a handsomely-cut, glass box, with a silver lid, which, beyond the shadow of a doubt, had been her powder-box in days gone by, and delicately lifted out _four little, thin scraps_ of smoked beef--four crackers and those scraps of beef--no more, no less--and we fell to and “dined” upon them. But when I saw her trying not to eat too eagerly, I had a lump in my throat bigger than our whole dinner. No wonder her weight was less than a pound for each year of her weary life. I wished I could gather her up in my arms and kiss the fierceness out of her eyes and promise her fire enough for real comfort, and coffee, and food--real food--that would not make the promise of nourishment to the eye to break it to the stomach. My thoughts were broken by “You, girl! is there anything the matter with your dinner?”

“Nothing in the world,” I cried, “but I was not very hungry, and, in fact, I do want to get back to my coffee.”

“Well,” she answered, “I must say you eat fairer than ever Sally did, for, I give you my word, for years on end that parrot cheated me out of at least half a cracker every day of her life, and yet, my dear, when she died she was as thin as I am.”

When I was about leaving her, she said to me: “You, girl, I like you! You are queer. You are uneven, and you make me guess. You know more and you know less than most girls of your age, and, thank God, you don’t giggle! You may come again.” She paused and looked at me with a deprecating expression, and finished almost meekly: “That is, if you care to share your spare time with me.”

I told her, and I told her truly, how glad I should be to come. How glad I was to live in Lake street too, and so near to her, and then, rather shyly, I added: “I think, if you will let me, I will tell you my name, Mrs. Worden”--and I mentioned it.

She was looking out at the dreary lake again, and, without withdrawing her eyes, she made answer: “H’m’m! Clara, eh? Cla--ra, Claire--Clarice--that’s a fool name, Clarice? but Clara--that’s light, illustrious, clear, bright! My dear, I’m glad you are named Clara. It’s a good name. I hope it may fit you as well as mine has fitted me. My French mother meant to call me Marie, which is, you know, a form of Mary--‘Star of the Sea,’ and he who did the sprinkling and the crossing and the rest was deaf, and he named me Myra--‘she who weeps.’ Good God! Good God! Have I not been well named? ‘She who weeps.’ The tears are all gone from the eyes, now, and they are dry enough, but hot, my dearies--so very hot! Internal, cruel tears that ooze slowly, like drops of thin, old blood, still fall from my heart, my dearies, while I wait and wait. Aye, it was before the altar, and with the sign of the sacred cross, and the touch of the holy-water on my brow, that he baptized me ‘Myra’--‘she who weeps!’”

I stole out of the room, where well-bred hunger showed its teeth so plainly, and softly closed the door, leaving her in the gathering darkness, a ghost talking to other ghosts, from whom she was separated by the thinnest, frailest shell of mortality I ever saw.

And so we went our ways, and did the work that fell to us. Some nights I pranced cheerily about the stage in country dances, and made announcements anent that carriage that always seemed to be waiting for some one in the old plays, particularly the comedies. “My Lord, the carriage waits!” It is a famous line, a short one, I know, but powerful enough to produce temporary paralysis of the limbs and complete dumbness, for the moment, in strong and lusty youths and maidens. Well, I was on most friendly terms with that line, and some nights said nothing more, while on other nights I went on and played really first-class parts, that being the manner in which we used to work our way upward from the very bottom, and felt no shame in it either; but _nous avons changés tout cela_.

While I was thus bobbing up and down upon the restless waters of my profession, my strange “old lady,” who had grown to be my friend, was sitting “like a gray, old Fate, toiling, toiling, weaving” the fairy-like stitches that made whole again the torn or injured among rare and precious laces. Her knowledge of them was wonderful, her love for them almost tender. She would shake her head and croon over them, when they were, in her words, “badly hurt.” The day she came nearest to loving me was the day I said I thought laces were the poetry of a woman’s wardrobe. “Aye, aye,” she answered, “that’s a good word and well said, girl Clara. It’s strange that, without teaching or information, your keen instinct guides you to the _real_ beauties of life as surely as the sense of smell guides a young hound on the trail. There’s nothing made by the hand of poverty that is so beautiful as lace; so delicate yet so strong. Ah! girl Clara, some day, may you see a bit of Venetian ‘point,’ ‘round point,’ but if you do, you’ll smash a commandment, mark my words!”

Laces were sent to her from distant cities, and the package I had caught up from under the horses’ feet came, as did many others, from the then greatest merchant of New York. She had received much work from the South, but the war deprived her of that. So she went on cutting her expenses down to meet her earnings, starving quite slowly and making her moan to no man.

One day I paid a long-promised, much-dreaded visit to a young friend of mine. We had made our first appearance in the ballet together, the same night, the same play, and she was still in the ballet. She was the young person who gave me the decorated fly-trap for a Christmas gift. Somehow that remarkable selection of a gift always seems to have had something to do with her remaining so many years the chief ornament of that ballet. I had gone with her from rehearsal to her boarding-house. Now, there are boarding-houses and boarding-houses, but this was just a boarding-house. The sadly experienced ones will understand exactly what I mean. The happy, inexperienced ones may just skip the sentence.

Rehearsal had been long, so we were late for dinner and we seated ourselves at the long, narrow, untidy, unfriendly-looking table, with heavy forebodings. Everything seemed to have been devoured by the boarders before us, except the pickles. They alone coldly and sourly faced us. But when the slatternly waitress came in, I asked myself why, oh, why had I come at all? A slattern with a cheerful face is hard to bear, but a slattern who sulks is more than even a boarder should be asked to endure. I saw my friend, whose name was Mary, quail as this fell creature looked insolently at her; but before our doom was sealed the landlady passed through the room. Now, Mary always said that had she been alone that incident would have passed for nothing, and that she would have dined on pickles and cold water, or not dined at all, but I was there, and Mrs. Bulkley knew of me, and being stricken for the moment with madness, saw in me a possible boarder, therefore she paused and greeted me, and rather unnecessarily explained that the dinner was all gone, but added that she reckoned they could scrape something together for us. And Mary rather ungratefully whispered, “she was used to living on scrapings now.” While we waited, the sulky slattern, regardless of our presence, proceeded with her duties, snatching everything from the table, except the shame-faced cover and the pickles.

Presently Mrs. Bulkley appeared, and our dinner materialized in the form of liver and bacon and warmed potatoes, a vulgar dish, but, being freshly cooked, a welcome one to two tired and hungry girls. Had it not been for the table-cover we might have been quite happy, but the sins of the boarders against it had been many, and as they had not yet been washed away, they were not pleasant to look upon.

Just as we were being served, Mary remarked that she had “seen that awful, old Mrs. Worden giving a gentleman fits in the street that morning, and that two other gentlemen were waiting for him, and they had laughed at him,” and she ended by asking me “had I ever seen her?”

“Oh, yes,” I answered, “I saw her in her room yesterday.”

“What?” cried Mrs. Bulkley, dropping the spoon noisily from her hand. “What’s that? You saw Mrs. Worden in her room, her own room where she lives? Oh, nonsense, you don’t mean our Mrs. Worden! She hasn’t had a soul inside that room since old poll Sal died.”

I explained that my Mrs. Worden was “Myra,” owner of Sally, living at number so-and-so Lake street, mender of laces, etc., and then Mrs. Bulkley dropped herself, a friendly chair catching her; then she said: “Well, I’m dummed!” Then she took off her spectacles and wiped them on a corner of the table-cover, which made them worse, as I knew it would, and she took them off again and wiped them on a grimy handkerchief, and put them on, and looked hard at me and said: “She had you in her room, and you a theatre-girl? Well, then, she’s breaking up at last. Well! Well!”

She leaned her head upon her ugly, old hand, and I asked:

“Do you know her personally?”

“Do I know her!” she snapped out at me. “Don’t she come here every once in a while? and sometimes she takes tea with me!”

“Yes,” faintly murmured Mary, “and when she comes, a clean cloth goes on the table, and every boarder in the house who has ‘a past,’ keeps in his or her own room.”

I smiled comprehendingly, while Mrs. Bulkley went on: “Do I know her? good Lord! haven’t I known her since I was a green girl in my early ’teens?”

I was startled. Looking at her foxy, false front, her steel-bowed spectacles, her leathery skin, and the small framed platter she wore on her chest as a breast-pin, it was so hard to believe she had ever had any ‘’teens’ at all!

“Yes,” she went on, “I know her, as my mother before me did. She worked for Mrs. Worden for more than eighteen years, and now she’s breaking up. Here, Hannah, make me some tea! You, oh, well, yes--you may make enough for us three, and bring it here. I feel all tuckered out.”

And the old body did look worried and anxious. I was surprised, and I was grateful for her interest in Mrs. Worden, for whom I now had a real affection as well as a great pity.

“Oh, Mrs. Bulkley!” I cried, “don’t be uneasy; Mrs. Worden seems quite as well as usual. She works as hard as ever, too, and she is very kind to me.”

“There!” exclaimed Mrs. Bulkley, “that settles it! Myra Worden kind to anyone in her eighty-third year? She’s breaking; she’ll get the sign she’s been waiting for so long pretty soon, I reckon, poor thing!”

I simply could not help putting the question: “Do you know, Mrs. Bulkley, why Mrs. Worden hates theatres so bitterly?”

“Do I know, my Suz!--Oh, here’s the tea, and glad I am for it!”