 | CHAPTER XVIII.
THE “METHODY TUNE.” Hedged in |  |
18. CHAPTER XVIII.
THE “METHODY TUNE.”
SOME lives are like pond-lilies, — you think
that you have gathered all the gold and
snow of them, and when you go to look for your
treasure, behold a little plain brown folded bud!
The story of Eunice Trent seems to close
away from my touch in very much this shy, unornamented
fashion; veined and delicate, pearled
and tinted, indeed, like the sheath of the sleeping
lily, but, like that, a suggestion of color, a
hint of wealth.
They were not the miracles, but the maxims,
of Christianity which saved her; and things
befell her not miraculously, but in an ordinary,
quiet manner, no more of interest to the romance-searcher
than the Golden Rule. Her
life was in most respects as uneventful as washing-day,
especially in her latter years. It took
you, and you it, quite as a matter of course. It
corner. She “lived along,” as we say, taught
her school, took care of Margaret, made Christina's
wedding clothes, had a class in Sunday
school, watched with sick people, had what is
called a “kind way about her,” commanded the
confidence, enforced the respect, due to a common
virtuous woman's common virtuous life.
When I have said this, I seem to have said a
very simple thing, and Eunice Trent was capable
of very complex things; had certain heroic,
stony elements in her which make women famous
in pestilence, war, famine, which, had
chance so befallen her, would have given to her
history a tragic or triumphant chapter, in which
he who runneth might have read her possibilities.
But to those of us who knew and loved her, in
the very simplicity of her patient and peculiar
life the peculiarly patient victory of it lay. We
who lifted the waxen eyelids and touched the
golden crown of the dreaming flower knew them
sweeter that they were shielded, and rarer for
their drooping.
To have lived out her disgrace would have
been a far more rapid process, if a kind of stake-and-cross
of social martyrdom; if that capacity of self-abnegation
(marked in Eunice) which shames
down shame itself in almost any history, but to
which the consequences of a woman's sin yield
last and hardest, had had outlets of noticeable,
memorable action.
This, I think, she felt keenly at the time of a
certain visit which she paid, of her own fancy,
and alone, to Thicket Street.
This was immediately after she had, in accordance
with the doctor's orders (which her increasing
attacks of spasmodic pain at the heart rendered
imperative), finally and reluctantly left her
desk at school; at which the Board had protested,
and the children cried, to Margaret's complete
content.
So, perhaps, she felt a more marked than usual
vacancy of life and purpose on the shimmering
sunny morning when she stepped into a sooty
yellow omnibus in South Atlas, striking as near
as she might by wheels for her old home.
“Thicket Street? H—m—m,” the driver
peered at her through his little loop-hole with
curious eyes. “Hain't made a mistake, have
Don't go very nigh Thicket Street — our line
don't. Let you off at the nighest p'int, since
it 's a Land of Liberty, — yes; but it 's not what
you may call an over-pleasant place for a lady.
Sure there 's no mistake?”
“Quite sure,” said Eunice, who — whether from
the stentorian tones of the driver, or from his
fierce black whiskers, grown inches since she saw
them, which choked up the loop-hole and hung
through like a feather duster when he tried to
talk to her — had recognized No. 23.
23 did not, however, recognize in Eunice, in
her careful black, the poor little tramp who had
once stolen a night's lodging in his omnibus.
“The best stuff aboard,” he thought, making
a driver's shrewd inventory of his passengers
through the loop-hole.
Eunice had been but a few moments one of
23's passengers when 23 pulled up at a street
corner for a little dumpy woman, with a little
dumpy girl beside her, and a very little, very
dumpy baby in her arms.
“Bundle in there, and be quick about it!”
said 23.
The little woman, who did not seem as much
offended as might have been expected of her at
this somewhat free-and-easy manner of being addressed
by your omnibus-driver, bundled in, and
bundled the baby in, and bundled in the little
girl, and when they had all bundled into a seat
together Eunice saw that it was Marthy Ann.
“Got the young uns shod?” roared 23, through
the loop-hole.
“Good gracious me, Dan! I 'm not deef, and
there 's no need of tellin' the passengers all as I
went into town for,” said Marthy, blushing as
prettily as ever a little woman of her size blushed
in the world. “Though I did buy the baby a
pair of red ankle-ties, and, thinks says I, I 'll give
'em to her to carry and keep her still, and what
should she do but try to swallow 'em, and one of
'em sticking down her throat like to strangle her,
and when I pulled it out, there it is, all turned
violet in a streak across the toes, — the mischief!”
“Give her t' other,” suggested 23. “Make her
suck 'em both alike.”
“I thought of that,” said Marthy; “a violet
foxing would n't be bad.”
Marthy was so grave and pretty and happy
about this bit of chatter, and she seemed, as she
used to seem, so fond of her new baby, and 23 so
fond of her, that Eunice felt her heart warmed
through by Marthy almost as much as had poor
Nixy, listening to her lullaby on the kitchen
lounge. She drew her veil and watched the
children behind it; the little girl sat close beside
her, and attracted by the whiteness of her hand,
which lay, half gloved, upon her lap, she put up
her little finger and felt it over shyly. Eunice
raised the child's hand gently to her lips (wondering
if such a happy little matron as Marthy
would be quite willing that she should kiss her
child), and slipped a tiny silver piece (as large as
the hand would hold) into it, as she laid it back.
“Hush!” she whispered, “can you tell your
mother something for me, if I ask you to?”
The child nodded, — a dumpy little nod, but
emphatic.
“And not tell her — mind! — till I have got
out of the omnibus?”
The little girl shook her head shrewdly.
“I want you then to tell her, — and you
can have the silver, — I want you to tell your
and God bless you!”
“How funny! What for?”
“Because your mother is a good woman — a
good woman; and once, long ago, she was kind
to a poor little girl to whom nobody else was
kind — but just your father there; and so I
want you to tell her, for it is easy for you to
remember: God bless them, and God bless the
baby, and God bless you!”
“Might as well bless 'em in a heap, it would n't
take so long,” said the little miss, with an economical
air; “but I 'll 'member.”
Lest the young lady should not have “'membered,”
and if, by any of those chance winds
such as carry seeds to islands, 23 should ever see
this page, he is hereby requested to deliver to
Marthy the message left by the “best stuff
aboard” on the sunny, shimmering morning
when the baby added violet foxings to her scarlet
shoes.
When 23 had dropped her, according to promise,
at the “nighest p'int” to Thicket Street, Eunice
veiled herself with care, feeling rather too
weak and weary to meet the risk (if risk there
than ashamed that Thicket Street should recognize
her.
Her heart was full as she strolled up and down
the miserable place. Its foul ditches, its dwarfs
and cripples, its shrieking children, the shamed
and drunken tip of the roofs, the concert-saloons,
Jeb's, No. 19, the codfish on the wharves, the
nauseated sunlight, the very chickweed in the
chill triangular shadows, came into her vision
dully, with at first no more than the familiar
horror of a favorite nightmare. She very seldom
afterwards made reference to the hour which she
spent in the place, but I have understood that
she said, shuddering, once to Margaret: —
“It looked just as I have seen it every night
of my life since I came out of it, and just as I
expect to see it every night till I die.”
It was not until Jeb, casting accounts on his
nails in his doorway, with a legion of ghostly
handbills fluttering about his ponderous figure,
touched his cap to her, and a ragged little Peters
boy, some relative of poor Ann's (she knew him
by the feeble, flexile family mouth), begged coppers
of her, that she roused herself from her somnambulistic
her secret object in coming to Thicket Street, —
the discovery of the whereabouts and belongings
of old Monsieur Jacques.
But when she walked, paying little attention
to her surroundings, dreamily through the guitar-shop
door, she walked over, not Monsieur Jacques,
but a mop with a little old Scotch woman at the
end of it, who asked her shortly — I refer to the
woman, not the mop — what was her business,
if she pleased? and instructed her to gang awa'
fra out the soapsuds an she had a care for sich
dainty-shod feet as them she bro't wi' her, delayin'
folks of a busy morn.
“I beg your pardon,” said Eunice, stepping
back; “but I came to find — can you tell me
where I can find an old guitar-maker who —
there are guitars about: perhaps he is here, ill?
I should like, if I may, to go and see him.”
“Gang awa',” said the Scotch woman, scrubbing
the floor violently, and without looking up, —
“gang awa' and welcoom, gin ye 'll tell him the
mess o' clearin' up he 's made me. Look a' that
for a job o' sweepin' — an' that — an' the dust
all alang o' the instremeents, for a decent body to
water-gruel thro' a ten-day fever into the bargain!”
“Dead!” echoed Eunice.
“Deid,” repeated the old woman, nodding.
“Deid just this day week, at nine o' the nicht;
an' mony 's the time I 've warned him o' the consequences,
to a landlady o' partikkelarity, o' refusin'
to dust the instremeents in case o' sickness,
pereel, or sudden death, — fra' all o' which, good
Lor', deliver us!”
“Dead — a week ago — poor old Jacques!
He used to be careful enough to dust his guitars,”
said Eunice, sitting down upon a water-pail in
the doorway (the only seat offering), which the
Scotch woman had turned bottom upwards to
dry, and taking a sad survey of the little guitar-shop;
old Jacques's red wig stared emptily at
her from a high shelf, — dusty, like the “instremeents”;
and a pair of torn pink kid gloves, likewise
very dusty, lay upon a little cricket which
Nixy used to fancy drawing to the old man's feet
when he sang of l'amour or l'Empereur, especially
when he talked of “Rue Richelieu” or Dahlia.
Beyond these and one old favorite fiddle, cracked
the little shop looked familiar to her; and the
confusion of the landlady's pails and brooms gave
a cold, unnatural air to the room, like a dead face
dressed by hired hands. Eunice could not help
thinking how gently Dahlia would have swept
and dusted the dreary place, and how the
“femme blanche” would have cried over the
pink kids, and the red wig, and the cracked
fiddle; what a lonesome dying the poor old man
must have made of it, — “ten day of water-gruel”
and the Scotch woman!
“He fell into drearsome ways,” said the landlady,
scrubbing up her words into a great many
syllables, “afore he died, — moped and pined like;
played nae music and sang nae sangs, an' allooed
the dust to set and choke him, as ye see. It 's
my opinion,” added the Scotch woman, solemnly,
“that he choked to death — of dust — that 's it;
choked. Your doctors may talk o' fevers to me
an they list; I 've seen folks choked o' dust afore
now, in judgment on their slovensome ways an'
manners. I 've seen it! I 've got a bill o' the
instremeents to pay me for my pains an' trouble
alang o' the auld mon's undertakin' to be sick
be cleaned up, worse luck to him!”
“Were you alone with him when he died?”
asked Eunice; “and did he suffer long? I will
make it worth your while to stop and tell me all
you can remember.”
“He suffered lang enow,” said the woman, lifting
her eyes — and Eunice thought what hard
eyes they were to be the last that old Jacques
should see — for the first time, and taking a
keen measure of her visitor's dress and manner.
Having done this, she stopped scrubbing, wiped
her hands, sat down on one of her brooms, and
proceeded, — “suffered lang enow, an' bad enow,
— pains in the head, legs, heart, pains here an'
there an' allwheres; so he lies and shuts his eyes,
an' once he caes for a bit Bible or Testament or
prayer-buik like, I couldna quite mak' it out;
but there wasna one in the shop, sic a heathen
was he; an' when I offered out o' charitee to
cover the kirk prayers o' my ain an' lend it till
him for a space, if he wouldna hurt it, he shook
his head decided, an' wouldna hear o't. As
fast as he grew worse he took to singin'; an' at
the last, — at nine o' the clock this day nicht, in
stars (it 's alway my luck to sit up wi' a corpse
by munelicht, which is a bad sign — a bad
sign!), — in a nicht a' mune an' stars, an' still,
he sang as you mought hear him across the street,
an' sang as he war bent on singin' o' himsel' to
sleep like, — of which the noise was a great inconvenience;
an' sae singin' an' playin' in the
air wi' his fingers on guitars as nae mon but
himsel' could see, he dropped off, plump! wi' the
stroke o' nine.”
“Could you understand what he sang? What
were the words?” asked Eunice.
“Some o' his heathenish French jabber,” answered
the landlady, coldly. “I couldna mak'
head nae tail o't, only o' the words as he dropped
off wi', — an' them, I tak' it, was Methody, —
`Depths,' I made it, `Depths o' mercy! Depths
o' mercy!' o'er an' o'er, till it war like to ring in
a body's head fore'er, — wi' his eyes quite open,
an' them fingers playin' an' feelin' o'er the
guitars as nae mon else could see nor feel.
`Depths o' mercy!' that war it; then follerin'
after for a bit, —
Depths of mercy! — still —'
off at the stroke o' nine precise, an' I puts the
prayer-buik (when I 'd covered it) aneath his
chin, and I watches the corpse by munelicht,
despite the luck, for there was naebody else to
keep things decent, an' a' the nicht, though ye
mayna believe it, I know as them guitars as
nae livin' eye could see went soundin' an' singin'
through the air, an' the tune they sang war the
Methody tune; an' doon in the shop — I 'd take
my oath o't — doon in the shop, at twelve o'
the nicht, I steppin' doon to see that all war well
locked up, the guitars upo' the counter sounded
there before my eyes, an' nae mortal hand to
touch 'em, — an' they sounded a' the Methody
tune at me, till I grew cauld to my shoes, an' I
stood in the munelicht amid the awesome soundin',
a wishin' that I hadna been aye too busy
an' poor an' fretsome an' cross to hae treated the
auld mon mair kindly like, for he was a peaceable
auld mon, an' ne'er did harm to naebody.”
The woman rubbed her cold eyes with a mopend,
— there were no tears in them; tears seemed
to have frozen out of them years ago, but they
were full of a chilly kind of discomfort, — and
cricket, kicking away into the corner, as she did
so, one of the dusty old pink gloves. Eunice
picked it up and carried it away with her.
She had scarcely paid the Scotch woman for
her trouble, and left the guitar-shop, and was
making her way in haste, sick and sad at heart,
up and out of the wretched street, when she
came upon a miserable figure of a woman lying
half in the gutter, half upon the filthy sidewalk,
with her head upon her arm. Some children
were using her as a target for apple-cores and
pebbles; a drunken fellow, in passing, kicked
her heavily out of his way. The woman lifted
her head as Eunice went by, and Eunice stopped.
She hesitated for a moment, trembling and
sick, wondering how and if she could touch her,
then, suddenly stooping, laid her ungloved hand
upon the woman's cheek in a very gentle manner.
“Moll! Poor Moll!”
Moll stared stupidly.
“Look up here; do you know me? — Nixy
Trent?”
Moll crawled up a little from the gutter, and
sat upon her heels, staring still.
“Nix! Who the devil made a lady of you?”
“God's folks,” said Eunice, giving the first
answer that occurred to her, in Nixy's old
phrase, certain, at least, that Moll would understand
it.
“God's folks indeed!” sneered Moll, most miserably;
“I 'd like to see God's folks, nor yet their
Master, trouble themselves about me! I 'm sick.
Struck through the lungs. Consumption. See,
don't ye?” — she held up her face, emaciated
and livid till it was shocking to see, full in the
pallid sunlight, — “I 'm sick; and I 'm dying,
what 's more. Can't crawl no further 'n the gutter
now. Last week I could get up the street.
It 's all the comfort I get, — the sun on me.
You 'd never guess, if you died for it, how cold it
is in the attic. Once a day I crawl down stairs
— this way — on my hands. At night I crawl
up. I 'm dying like a dog, and starving too, —
and damned besides. How many o' `God's folks'
do you know as would take me in and let me
go to hell from their fine houses, — curse 'em!
I tell you I 'm dying!”
She fell down again weakly, and lay with her
haggard face upon her arm, and her hair in the
mud.
“There are places. There are folks,” said
Eunice, earnestly, continuing to drop into Nixy's
old, simple, trustful language. “I told you so,
Moll, long ago. I tried it. I found them. If
you want to die like a decent woman, I promise
I 'll find you a place to do it in.”
“I 'd like to die in a bed with a white cover
to it — just washed,” said Moll, slowly. “Don't
know as I 'm partikkelar about nothin' else. I 'd
as lieves do it one place as t' other. I 'd go to a
'sylum or somewheres, if there was sun, and
folks to get me there. Don't make no odds.
I 've heard they lay you out neat — in white
shrouds — at the 'sylum. I want to die in something
— clean,” added Moll, trying to move a little
out of the ditch. “This mud sticks to you so!
And I 've got nobody to bring me water. And
the well 's dirty, if I had. But it don't make no
odds! Got to get used to going without water in
t' other world, I take it. Will I be here day after
to-morrow? Yes, — in the sun, — in the mud
here, — if I ain't got to the thirsty place afore
then; and thankee for your trouble, Nix. No,
don't stop to get me water now — nor move me.
I 'd rather sleep. You 'll draw a crowd if you
watch for ye — if ye 'll find a white spread — and
the sun stays out so long. There! Go, and be
quick about it!”
Mrs. Zerviah Myrtle had the control of a bed
“with a white spread — just washed,” in the
hospital of the Magdalen Home, and Moll, at
Mrs. Purcell's petition, went into it.
She lingered in it, in a stupid, dozing condition,
for several weeks, paying little or no attention
to nurse or doctor, visitor, chaplain, or trustee;
but, waking suddenly one rainy morning, she
asked for “Nix.” It happened to be inspection-day,
and Mrs. Zerviah Myrtle happened to be at
the Home inspecting, and so it happened that
“Nix” was identified and sent for.
“Shall I not read to you, or — pray — or perhaps
sing a hymn?” Mrs. Myrtle, sitting down
by Moll's bedside, asked, after the messenger
had departed to bring Eunice. “She cannot get
here before night, and if you were to grow worse,
you know, and no religious assistance —”
“I 'll hang on till Nix comes,” interrupted
Moll, wearily turning away her face.
“But if you are not prepared for the great
change,” urged Mrs. Myrtle, looking much distressed.
“Must run my chances,” said Moll, doggedly.
“I 'm too sick to hear religion, — much obleeged
to you. That dress of yourn rustles all kind o'
through my head. Is that a prayer-book you 've
laid along down there on my feet? It 's awful
heavy to me.”
The prayer-book was not heavier than Mrs.
Myrtle's heart as she rustled, sighing, away.
“Religious effort among the masses,” she sadly
said to the chaplain of the institution, “is not,
I am becoming convinced, at all my forte. I
have no knack at it; I am no more apt in it than
I should be in making bread. I find it extremely
depressing!”
The chaplain (a modest man with a shrill
voice) took off his spectacles, and shrilly said, —
“Make pin-cushions, ma'am!”
“Pin-cushions, my dear sir?”
“Pin-cushions,” said the chaplain; but he
modestly put on his spectacles, and modestly
said no more.
It was, as Mrs. Myrtle had said that it would
storm, reached the Home.
Moll, in her white bed, lay in a stupor; had
not spoken, they said, for more than an hour
past; her hand only gave signs of life; it moved
up and down feebly across the coverlet, pulling
off imaginary specks and shreds, feeling, apparently,
to see how “clean” it was. Eunice, after
waiting for a time in silence, to see if she would
not speak, roused her at last by saying, —
“You wanted me, Moll?”
“Nix? Yes. How wet you are!” Moll opened
her sunken eyes. “It was a rainy night to come
out in. And I only wanted you to ask you — if
you don't mind — to let me take hold of your
hand. There!” She took the hand which
Eunice held out to her, and laid it up between
her own, against her cheek, and, so lying, slept
again.
“Was there nothing more, Moll?” asked Eunice
presently.
“Nothing more,” said Moll.
By and by she whispered a word or two, which
Eunice, by careful listening, — the rain beat so
upon the windows, — caught.
“Is there any of them — the folks — God's
folks you tell on — the other side?”
“The other side?”
“The other side of this which is going to happen
to me, — the other side of layin' here an'
dyin'. If I thought there was —” said Moll.
She broke off there, and neither spoke nor
listened afterwards, except that once, Eunice,
feeling a slight stirring of the cheek which lay
against her hand, and bending her own down
close upon it, heard, or seemed, or dreamed that
she seemed to hear, the echo, the breath, the
shade, of another whisper, —
“If I thought there was —”
| CHAPTER XVIII.
THE “METHODY TUNE.” Hedged in | |