 | CHAPTER VII.
“GOD'S FOLKS.” Hedged in |  |
7. CHAPTER VII.
“GOD'S FOLKS.”
MY friend Mrs. Purcell is a woman whom it
is impossible to describe.
Although I am stepping all unbidden into the
straightforward history of Eunice Trent, to attempt
her description.
If I call her a remarkable woman, I have
nothing to show for the adjective. She never
headed a “cause,” delivered a lecture, wrote a
book, had a “mission.” She darns her own
stockings, bakes her own bread, goes to the
“sewing-circle,” believes in her minister, takes
life on patience, heaven on trust.
If I call her a beautiful woman, I must dissect
my language: she has been a sick woman, and
long sick; her cheeks lack tint, her hands life;
she has worn old dresses on occasions, her own
hair always; I believe that her features are irregular,
her figure emaciated. She is also a
Margaret Purcell, are “widows indeed” — are apt
to become monotonous, romance growing rusty
in them with their bombazine, all the colors of
life fading pale as their caps.
If I call her a literary woman, I shall make a
great mistake; she makes a business of a book,
not a passion; can criticise Milton, but loses
Paradise without emotion.
It is not difficult, as you see, to put Mrs. Purcell
into words, negatively. Positively, I should
say that she is intelligent, rather than literary;
fascinating, not beautiful; more sensible than remarkable,
— then I should try again.
An open wood-fire, an April day, supper-time,
Pre-Raphaelitism, autumn leaves, cologne-water,
— she has reminded me in turn of all these.
Having had my fancy and my comprehension
thus abused, I am always ready on demand, like
Mr. Hobbs, to “give her up.”
When I have added that I am speaking rather
of what she was than is, and yet seem to be
speaking none the less of what she is than was,
since she rules, like the Récamier, as royally at
seventy as at seventeen, I have, perhaps, exhausted
then, of useless metaphors, it was upon Margaret
Purcell's parlor that Nixy, through the window,
looked; and Margaret and her daughter sat
therein alone together.
There was much color, of the shades which retain
rather than reflect light, about the room;
pale walls, pictures, a guitar, books, — these things
lay about Mrs. Purcell as naturally as the folds of
her dress. She and the young lady were sitting
as she and Christina generally sit of an evening,
— the one on a cricket at the other's feet, in the
light of a very soft porcelain-shaded lamp. Christina
still had on her little white jacket, unbuttoned
at the throat and thrown back. As Nixy
came to the window, she was sitting with her face
slightly upturned, and Margaret, as it happened,
was stroking the happy face (Christina always
has a happy face) slowly and softly — a little absently,
for they were talking — with her thin
ringed hand.
Nixy, from the dark, looked in. She thought
of Thicket Street and Moll. She wondered,
very bitterly for Nixy, for she was learning in an
immature fashion to be bitter, what that snow-white
No. 19. She wondered, and this was not bitter,
if the lady with the thin hands were ill,
unhappy. She thought of Lize, of Marthy Ann.
She thought of the Burley Street Nursery, and
Mrs. Zerviah Myrtle's prayer-book, — an odd
jumble of things. She wondered if Mrs. Myrtle
were more religious than Monsieur Jacques; if
the lady here with the white daughter were religious;
if it were because people were white and
religious that they all turned her from their
doors; then, abruptly, how she would look sitting
in the light of a porcelain lamp, with a white
sack on.
She had pressed her haggard young face close
to the window-glass, eager to see the young lady,
and lost in her broken, miserable musing.
She meant to go back to Thicket Street. That
was quite settled. She would beg no longer at
the doors of a better life. She remembered with
a regret as keen as if she had fallen from heaven,
not Thicket Street, her life as her life had been
a year ago; remembered her dream about the
hill, and all the paths which blocked her down.
Was her story marked upon her face, that nobody
Was she scarred, stained? This puzzled her;
she did not feel exactly stained. She did not feel
like a bad girl. She had wanted to be good.
But, there being nobody to help her, “nowheres,
no folks,” there was an end.
All the “chances” closed with spring-locks
when she drew near. The hand of every man
was against her. All the world held up its
dainty skirts. All the world had hedged her
in.
These things, confusedly, came to her looking
in at Margaret Purcell's window. Another thing,
very distinctly, came to her.
It was a new respect for Moll Manners's judgment.
Moll was right about the devil: “Go you
must.”
She felt very cold, for the wind was rising.
She drew her shawl together, and, turning, would
have left the window, but it seemed to her, very
strangely and suddenly, as if the golden web had
tied her there. All the lights of the town nodded
brightly; all the trees rustled like a whisper.
Street-music, somewhere in the distance, reminded
her of the concert-saloon, and she stood still.
in the golden mist and die, than go back to
Thicket Street. Life and Thicket Street being
one, life grew so horrible! Years in Thicket
Street, “unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved,” piled
on her fancy like years in hell.
“I 'd like to know if God hain't got any folks,”
she said. God did not often occur to her.
Some one across the street — Mr. Hobbs's
rude customer, perhaps — was watching the little
straggler. This she discovered somewhat
suddenly, started, and, in starting, hit Mrs. Purcell's
window with her elbow.
So Christina, a little alarmed, turned her happy
face and saw her, wan and white, looking in.
And so, from very womanly pity, she and Margaret
went out, rashly and royally enough, and
drew the girl within the door.
When Mrs. Purcell had done this, she repented
of it, undoubtedly, for it was very imprudent. I
never knew a woman who had so much of what
Ecce Homo calls “the enthusiasm of humanity”
as Margaret Purcell; and, on the whole, I think
I never knew a woman make so few blunders on
it. Christianity, like any other business, should
also, it loses nothing by the courage to
speculate occasionally.
My friend at least is shrewd enough to hold
her tongue, on necessity, about her ventures.
So, having thoroughly followed her impulses,
and then thoroughly alarmed herself at having
admitted this wanderer — beggar, thief, infected,
or worse, or who knew what? — into her family,
and at night, neither her daughter nor her guest
(for poor Nixy was now her guest, according to
Margaret's code of etiquette) was permitted to
detect either her uneasiness or her regret.
“You are sick!” she said, decidedly. “Come
to the fire.”
Nixy came, staggering a little. She heard
Christina say, as the porcelain-shielded lamp
flashed light on her, — “I saw that girl to-night!
Out by the fence,” and wished that the young
lady would keep still. She wanted to hear the
other woman talk; liked the sound of her voice;
was reminded, in a stupid fashion, of Lize,
speaking of her boy, — and then, in the heat,
spread out her hands, tried to speak, failed, and
fell.
“Right on my parlor carpet!” thought Mrs.
Purcell, as Nixy dropped, prone and wretched,
in the rich, warm room.
Nixy had not fainted. It seemed to be rather
the utter giving out of heart than body. Something
in the atmosphere of the room stunned
her. Something in Mrs. Purcell's voice (Margaret
has rather an unusual voice, combining, I
have often fancied, the elements of a battle-cry
and a cradle-song) struck her harder than blows.
She put it in her own words more emphatically
than I can in mine, when, looking up into the
lady's face, pale and suffocated, she gasped, —
“I 'm gin out!”
Mrs. Purcell's reply was equally apt: —
“Christina, open the window!”
What with air and supper, and what with rubbings
and warmings, and all manner of womanly
“fussing,” Nixy by and by revived a little.
The room, the house, the people, their touch,
words, astonished her. They did not seem “wonderful,”
like Mrs. Zerviah Myrtle's curtained
chamber. They reminded her rather, as I said,
of Lize; of Marthy and Marthy's baby; of autumn
woods and butterflies; of certain moments,
to rest, and sat half buried in leaves and
sunshine, warmed and weak, with her eyes shut,
and her heart so quiet that she could not remember,
if she tried, who Nixy Trent might be.
Those were the times when she had felt “still
and clean.”
She sat crouched on a cricket by Mrs. Purcell's
fire, with her hands folded, and a slight quivering,
like that of a sensitive-plant about to close,
at the corners of her mouth. She had not —
never could have had, I think — a coarse mouth.
Christina, in her little white sack, puzzled and
compassionate, sat on the other side of the grate,
and tried to be hospitable. “For we cannot turn
her out of doors to-night,” her mother had said.
“I 'm glad she is better,” said Christina, half
to her mother, half to the stranger, not knowing
what else to say. Christina had a very simple,
straightforward way of speaking; it struck Nixy,
as it strikes every one, pleasantly, and she looked,
for the first time, fully into her face. The young
lady, she thought, had eyes like a white star.
“I 'll go now, if you want me to,” she said.
“O no!” said Christina.
“But I am better, as you said, and I am not
a beggar. I 'll put up somewheres else, where
folks is poor, and don't mind the likes of me so
much.”
Mrs. Purcell noticed then, what she often noticed
afterwards, — the curious mingling of rough
and elegant grammar in Nixy's language.
Christina turned to her mother, much disturbed,
making Nixy no answer. Mrs. Purcell
had been pacing the room. This was rather a
mannish habit for Margaret; she acquired it from
walking the house with her husband, who was a
nervous man. She had been pacing the room,
not knowing whether to be most pitiful or most
perplexed.
“Christina,” she said, after a little thought,
“will you step up stairs and put the little gray
room in order? — and, if I want you, I will call
you.”
Christina, disappointed, like any other girl,
obeyed. Margaret drew the chair which she had
vacated near to Nixy; she had not liked to question
the girl with her daughter by.
“You must have journeyed far,” she began,
hesitatingly, reluctant to seem inquisitive. “Mrs.
have said of her. It was one of her “ideas”
at that time, as at most times in her life, that because
you are what would be denominated “below
her” is, if any, an additional reason why you
should be treated with courtesy. The family
affairs of her butcher are as sacred from her intrusion
as Mr. Longfellow's. She will wait her
gardener's invitation to cross his threshold. I
have heard her beg her cook's pardon, and bid
good morning to her chambermaid. So she
asked this question of Nixy, with the manner in
which she would have inquired for the health of,
for instance, Mrs. Zerviah Myrtle; more deferentially,
it must be owned, than she had been
known to address that lady, when they had met,
as they occasionally had, at the meetings of the
“Magdalen Home Trustees.”
“From the city,” said Nixy. In appearance,
Nixy was examining the knick-knacks upon the
étagère, near which she sat; in fact, she was
considering whether she should tell this lady
the truth; it seemed rather a pity to cheat her,
especially as she had not been the gainer from
lying to Mrs. Myrtle.
“Have you no friends?”
“No. One old woman as nursed me, — but I
ran away; and an old fellow with guitars, — but
he 's of no account.”
“An old woman who — you have been ill
then?”
“Sick enough.” She finished her sentence in
a whisper.
There was a pause. Mrs. Purcell thanked
fortune that she had sent Christina up stairs.
Nixy ate her hat-string, and wondered if she
would be allowed to sleep in “the little gray
room” now. Mrs. Purcell broke the silence by
saying, gently, —
“You look very young.”
“Nigh sixteen.”
“Not sixteen!”
Christina was scarcely older than that. Again
Mrs. Purcell thanked fortune that she had sent
her daughter up stairs. Again she paused, and
again she broke the pause gently, this time with
a broken voice, to say, —
“You poor little girl!”
Nixy lifted her quick eyes. For the first time
they filled, but they did not overflow; and that
not cry.
“What became of the child? Do not tell me
if you object.”
“Just as lieves. I left him on her steps. Carried
him round 'long 's I could. I promised Lize
I 'd try to like him. But I could n't. Nobody 'd
have me. Nobody 'd have me anyway; folks is
all afraid I 'll hurt the children, and such. He
was an awful heavy baby for three weeks!”
“Three weeks!”
“Less 'n three when I come off. I s'pose I
got kind o' tuckered out walkin' so early; mebbe
that 's the reason I dropped on your carpet;
't ain't the first time I 've dropped on folks's carpets
comin' in and restin' sudden. I was sorry,
for it is a pretty carpet. I 'm all mud gener'lly.
She had him picked off the steps, and Boggs
took it to a Nursery. I never asked no more
questions. I did n't care much.”
“Who took it?”
“A lady as I ran steps for two weeks. Had
one of her own about as old as the other, I
reckon.”
“So you have been at work?” Mrs. Purcell
which astonished herself no more than it did Nixy.
“O yes. She turned me off, you know, when
folks told her. She thought it was her duty.
Very like. I don't know; I don't know very
much. Nobody never learned me.”
“Have you been looking for work all this
while?”
“A week since, — yes. Housework, factories,
shops, saloons. Nobody wants me. I 'm not a
beggar. I wanted to stay honest. It don't seem
to be any use. There ain't anywheres, nor there
ain't any folks. I 'm going back to-morrow.”
She spoke the last words like a person in dull
pain, a little thickly and stupidly. Mrs. Purcell
began to pace the room again.
“Going back where?”
“To Thicket Street, that 's where I come
from, — Thicket Street. 'T ain't so much matter
there, you see. I 'd — rather — not; but nobody
wants me, and I 'm tired of being a beggar.
Thank ye kindly, ma'am, for letting me set by
your fire, and I think I 'll be going. Somebody
better used to poor folks will take me in.”
Mrs. Purcell colored.
“If you will not be unhappy to stay with me,”
she said, stopping her walk across the room suddenly,
“stay till to-morrow. I should like, perhaps,
to talk with you again. My daughter will
— no, I will show you to your room myself.”
| CHAPTER VII.
“GOD'S FOLKS.” Hedged in | |