Chapter 7

“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.

“Yes, 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.

Tilly went to her client. “Did he look like he was anxious?” was the mother's greeting. “Oh, I just know he and Minnie will be hunting me everywhere. Maybe I had better go home, 'stead of to Baxter.”

“No, you hadn't,” said Tilly, with decision. “Mother's going to Baxter, too, and if you like, minnit you're safely off, I'll go tell your folks.”

“You're real kind, I'd be ever so much obliged. And you don't mind your ma travelling alone? ain't that nice for her!” She seemed much cheered by the prospect of company and warmed into confidences.

“I am kinder lonesome, sometimes, that's a fact,” said she, “and I kinder wish I lived in a block or a flat like your ma. You see, Minnie teaches in the public school and she's away all day, and she don't like to have me make company of the hired girl, though she's a real nice girl. And there ain't nothing for me to do, and I feel like I wasn't no use any more in the world. I remember that's what our old minister in Ohio said once. He was a real nice old man; and they HAD thought everything of him in the parish; but he got old and his sermons were long; and so they got a young man for assistant; and they made HIM a _pastor americus_, they called it--some sort of Latin. Folks did say the young feller was stuck up and snubbed the old man; anyhow, he never preached after young Lisbon come; and only made the first prayers. But when the old folks would ask him to preach some of the old sermons they had liked, he only would say, 'No, friends, I know more about my sermons, now.' He didn't live very long, and I always kinder fancied being a AMERICUS killed him. And some days I git to feeling like I was a kinder AMERICUS myself.”

“That ain't fair to your children,” said Tilly; “you ought to let them know how you feel. Then they'd act different.”

“Oh, I don't know, I don't know. You see, miss, they're so sure they know better'n me. Say, Mrs. Louder, be you going to visit relatives in Baxter?”

“No, ma'am, I'm going to take care of a sick lady,” said Jane, “it's kinder queer. Her name's Ferguson, her----”

“For the land's sake!” screamed Mrs. Higbee, “why, that's my 'Liza!” She was in a flutter of surprise and delight, and so absorbed was Tilly in getting her and her unwieldy luggage into the car, that Jane's daughter forgot to kiss her mother good-by.

“Put your arm in QUICK,” she yelled, as Jane essayed to kiss her hand through the window; “don't EVER put your arm or your head out of a train!”--the train moved away--“I do hope she'll remember what I told her, and not lend anybody money, or come home lugging somebody else's baby!”

With such reflections, and an ugly sensation of loneliness creeping over her, Tilly went to assure Miss Minnie Higbee of her mother's safety. She described her reception to Harry Lossing and Alma, later. “She really seemed kinder mad at me,” says Tilly, “seemed to think I was interfering somehow. And she hadn't any business to feel that way, for SHE didn't know how I'd fooled her brother with that bird-cage. I guess the poor old lady daren't call her soul her own. I'd hate to have my mother that way--so 'fraid of me. MY mother shall go where she pleases, and stay where she pleases, and DO as she pleases.”

“That makes me think,” says Alma, “I heard you were going to move.”

“Yes, we are. Mother is working too hard. She knows everybody in the building, and they call on her all the time; and I think the easiest way out is just to move.”

Alma and Mr. Lossing exchanged glances. There is an Arabian legend of an angel whose trade it is to decipher the language of faces. This angel must have perceived that Alma's eyes said, with the courage of a second in a duel, “Go on, now is the time!” and that Harry's answered, with masculine pusillanimity, “I don't like to!”

But he spoke. “Very likely your mother does sometimes work too hard,” said he. “But don't you think it would be harder for her not to work? Why, she must have been in the building ever since my father bought it; and she's been a janitor and a fire inspector and a doctor and a ministering angel combined! That is why we never raised the rent to you when we improved the building, and raised it on the others. My father told me your mother was the best paying tenant he ever had. And don't you remember how, when I used to come with him, when I was a little boy, she used to take me in her room while he went the rounds? She was always doing good to everybody, the same way. She has a heart as big as the Mississippi, and I assure you, Miss Louder, you won't make her happy, but miserable, if you try to dam up its channel. She has often told me that she loved the building and all the people in it. They all love her. I HOPE, Miss Louder, you'll think of those things before you decide. She is so unselfish that she would go in a minute if she thought it would make you happier.” The angel aforesaid, during this speech (which Harry delivered with great energy and feeling), must have had all his wits busy on Tilly's impassive features; but he could read ardent approval, succeeded by indignation, on Alma's countenance, at his first glance. The indignation came when Tilly spoke. She said: “Thank you, Mr. Lossing, you're very kind, I'm sure”--Harry softly kicked the wastebasket under the desk--“but I guess it's best for us to go. I've been thinking about it for six months, and I know it will be a hard struggle for mother to go; but in a little while she will be glad she went. It's only for her sake I am doing it; it ain't an easy or a pleasant thing for me to do, either----” As Tilly stopped her voice was unsteady, and the rare tears shone in her eyes.

“What's best for her is the only question, of course,” said Alma, helping Harry off the field.

In a few days Tilly received a long letter from her mother. Mr. Ferguson was doing wonders for the Russians; the family were all very kind to her and “nice folks” and easily pleased. (“Of COURSE they're pleased with mother's cooking; what would they be made of if they weren't!” cried Tilly.) It was wonderful how much help Mrs. Higbee was about the house, and how happy it made her. Mrs. Ferguson had seemed real glad to see her, and that made her happy. And then, maybe it helped a little, her (Jane Louder's) telling Mrs. Ferguson (“accidental like”) how Tilly treated her, never trying to boss her, and letting her travel alone. Perhaps, if Mrs. Ferguson kept on improving, they might let her come home next week. And the letter ended:

“I will be so glad if they do, for I want to see you so bad, dear daughter, and I want to see the old home once more before we leave. I guess the house you tell me about will be very nice and convenient. I do thank you, dear daughter, for being so nice and considerate about the Russians. Give my love to Mrs. Carleton and all of them; and if little Bobby Green hasn't missed school since I left, give him a nickel, please; and please give that medical student on the fifth floor--I forget his name--the stockings I mended. They are in the first drawer of the walnut bureau. Good-by, my dear, good daughter.

“MOTHER, JANE M. LOUDER.”

When Tilly read the letter she was surrounded by wall-paper and carpet samples. Her eyes grew moist before she laid it down; but she set her mouth more firmly.

“It is an awful short time, but I've just got to hurry and have it over before she comes,” said she.

Next week Jane returned. She was on the train, waiting in her seat in the car, when Captain Ferguson handed her Tilly's last letter, which had lain in the post-office for three days.

It was very short:

“DEAR MOTHER: I shall be very glad indeed to see you. I have a surprise which I hope will be pleasant for you; anyhow, I truly have meant it for your happiness.

“Your affectionate daughter,

“M. E. LOUDER.”

There must have been, despite her shrewd sense, an obtuse streak in Tilly, else she would never have written that letter. Jane read it twice. The paper rattled in her hands. “Tilly has moved while I was gone,” she said; “I never shall live in the block again.” She dropped her veil over her face. She sat very quietly in her seat; but the conductor who came for her ticket watched her sharply, she seemed so dazed by his demand and was so long in finding the ticket.

The train rumbled and hissed through darkening cornfields, into scattered yellow lights of low houses, into angles of white light of street-arcs and shop-windows, into the red and blue lights dancing before the engines in the station.

“Mother!” cried Tilly's voice.

Jane let her and Harry Lossing take all her bundles and lift her out of the car. Whether she spoke a word she could not tell. She did rouse a little at the vision of the Lossing carriage glittering at the street corner; but she had not the sense to thank Harry Lossing, who placed her in the carriage and lifted his hat in farewell.

“What's he doing all that for, Tilly?” cried she; “there ain't--there ain't nobody dead--Maria Carleton------” She stared at Tilly wildly.

Tilly was oddly moved, though she tried to speak lightly. “No, no, there ain't nothing wrong, at all. It's because you've done so much for the Russians--and other folks! Now, ma, I'm going to be mysterious. You must shut your eyes and shut your mouth until I tell you. That's a dear ma.”

It was vaguely comforting to have Tilly so affectionate. “I'm a wicked, ungrateful woman to be so wretched,” thought Jane; “I'll never let Tilly know how I felt.”

In a surprisingly short time the carriage stopped. “Now, ma,” said Tilly.

A great blaze of light seemed all about Jane Louder. There were the dear familiar windows of the Lossing block.

“Come up-stairs, ma,” said Tilly.

She followed like one in a dream; and like one in a dream she was pushed into her own old parlor. The old parlor, but not quite the old parlor; hung with new wall-paper, shining with new paint, soft under her feet with a new carpet, it looked to Jane Louder like fairyland.

“Oh, Tilly,” she gasped; “oh, Tilly, ain't you moved?”

“No, nor we ain't going to move, ma--that's the surprise! I took the money I'd saved for moving, for the new carpet and new dishes; and the Lossings they papered and painted. I was SO 'fraid we couldn't get done in time. Alma and all the boarders are coming in pretty soon to welcome you, and they've all chipped in for a little banquet at Mrs. Carleton's--why, mother, you're crying! Mother, you didn't really think I'd move when it made you feel so bad? I know I'm set and stubborn, and I didn't take it well when Mr. Lossing talked to me; but the more I thought it over, the more I seemed to myself like that hateful Minnie. Oh, mother, I ain't, am I? You shall do just exactly as you like all the days of your life!”

AN ASSISTED PROVIDENCE

IT was the Christmas turkeys that should be held responsible. Every year the Lossings give each head of a family in their employ, and each lad helping to support his mother, a turkey at Christmastide. As the business has grown, so has the number of turkeys, until it is now well up in the hundreds, and requires a special contract. Harry, one Christmas, some two years ago, bought the turkeys at so good a bargain that he felt the natural reaction in an impulse to extravagance. In the very flood-tide of the money-spending yearnings, he chanced to pass Deacon Hurst's stables and to see two Saint Bernard puppies, of elephantine size but of the tenderest age, gambolling on the sidewalk before the office. Deacon Hurst, I should explain, is no more a deacon than I am; he is a livery-stable keeper, very honest, a keen and solemn sportsman, and withal of a staid demeanor and a habitual garb of black. Now you know as well as I any reason for his nickname.

Deacon Hurst is fond of the dog as well as of that noble animal the horse (he has three copies of “Black Beauty” in his stable, which would do an incalculable amount of good if they were ever read!); and he usually has half a dozen dogs of his own, with pedigrees long enough for a poor gentlewoman in a New England village. He told Harry that the Saint Bernards were grandsons of Sir Bevidere, the “finest dog of his time in the world, sir;” that they were perfectly marked and very large for their age (which Harry found it easy to believe of the young giants), and that they were “ridiculous, sir, at the figger of two hundred and fifty!” (which Harry did not believe so readily); and, after Harry had admired and studied the dogs for the space of half an hour, he dropped the price, in a kind of spasm of generosity, to two hundred dollars. Harry was tempted to close the bargain on the spot, hot-headed, but he decided to wait and prepare his mother for such a large addition to the stable.

The more he dwelt on the subject the more he longed to buy the dogs.

In fact, a time comes to every healthy man when he wants a dog, just as a time comes when he wants a wife; and Harry's dog was dead. By consequence, Harry was in the state of sensitive affection and desolation to which a promising new object makes the most moving appeal. The departed dog (Bruce by name) had been a Saint Bernard; and Deacon Hurst found one of the puppies to have so much the expression of countenance of the late Bruce that he named him Bruce on the spot--a little before Harry joined the group. Harry did not at first recognize this resemblance, but he grew to see it; and, combined with the dog's affectionate disposition, it softened his heart. By the time he told his mother he was come to quoting Hurst's adjectives as his own.

“Beauties, mother,” says Harry, with sparkling eyes; “the markings are perfect--couldn't be better; and their heads are shaped just right! You can't get such watch-dogs in the world! And, for all their enormous strength, gentle as a lamb to women and children! And, mother, one of them looks like Bruce!”

“I suppose they would want to be housedogs,” says Mrs. Lossing, a little dubiously, but looking fondly at Harry's handsome face; “you know, somehow, all our dogs, no matter how properly they start in a kennel, end by being so hurt if we keep them there that they come into the house. And they are so large, it is like having a pet lion about.”

“These dogs, mother, shall never put a paw in the house.”

“Well, I hope just as I get fond of them they will not have the distemper and die!” said Mrs. Lossing; which speech Harry rightly took for the white flag of surrender.