“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!”
The tea was good, and I saw by the gratified astonishment of Mary’s face that it was a treat. When the “Busy B” (as Mrs. Bulkley was generally called behind her back) had had her first cup, as a pick-me-up—a sort of green-tea cocktail—she felt better. She loosened her specs and let them slide well down her nose, so she could look at me over their tops; she planted her black alpaca elbow on the dingy table, and unlimbered, ready for conversation, while, for the first time in my life, I recognized these signs in a landlady without instantly taking flight. “Why,” she began, “it was like this: Right from the first every one said she’d throwed herself away when she took up with that great, big, pink-and-white chuckle-head, Phil Worden. But she was just plumb crazy in love with him. I suppose he must have cared a little for her at first, but mother always said he just married her out of vanity—like gals do sometimes—she being the biggest catch in town. Good looks, and money and family the hull thing! Well, anyway, he was a foolin’ her, or thought he was, before they was married a year. She knew of it in no time. Mother thought there’d be an awful rumpus, but Mrs. Worden shut herself up all afternoon alone, and walked and walked, but when supper-time come she just met him as kind and as sweet! Oh! Myra used to be sweet enough in them days, and she just talked and laughed, and he looked like a great school-boy expecting a good trouncing. Well, that blowed over, but Myra Worden was always on the watch, I reckon, after that. Mother used to say he was, somehow, afraid of her. She loved books—good Lord! the books she had; lots of ’em writ in French, too; and she first off tried to talk of ’em to him, same as to visitors, and he didn’t know a thing about ’em. Then she tried to read them to him, and mother said she didn’t know which one she felt the sorriest for, him or her; him trying to keep awake, or her trying to hide her disappointment. Well, by-and-by, she gives it all up, and, if you’ll believe me, that educated, fine-minded woman just took to readin’ out loud to him a nasty, low-down paper—I can’t just call its name now, but all about cock-fights—oh, yes! they had dog-fights and cock-fights in my time, my dear—and ring fights, and horse-races, and he’d just drink it all in, every word. She was fond of music, and he couldn’t tell one tune from another, he said; but that was just an excuse, because he hated to have to sit and listen to decent music. Common fiddling suited him well enough. He was almost stupid in behavior or sulky-like in company—proper company; but if, by chance, he was left home at night and his wife was out, he’d carry on with the servants, and sing songs, and play tricks with the cards, and imitate things—pigs gruntin’ and corks poppin’, and that like, until you’d laugh to split. In that sort of way, mother used to say, she thought he felt afraid of his wife’s finding out his real disposition, and she—why, she just followed him about with them black eyes of hers, and fair worshipped him. She was nigh tickled to death when her girl baby came into the world; yellow-headed like him. She was only like him in color, however, for of all the domineerin’ little hectoring brats I ever saw! Well, as I was saying, Mrs. Worden was the law of this town then, and it was card parties and coach parties and sleigh parties and lake moonlight parties, accordin’ to the time a year, and dinners and suppers and ‘routs’—that’s what they called ’em then, I remember—and people used to come from other places and they’d stay a week at a time, and them weeks was Phil Worden’s picnics, his two-forty-on-a-plank days, I tell you. Now, I never see nobody so dead crazy about theatres as Miss Worden was. Whenever a company came here she had the first box, and every night of her life, unless she gave a ‘rout,’ she was in that old theatre. Yes, I know it, an alley now, and only a few low variety shows go there, and no women ever enters its doors, but then it was, my Suz! it just was a fine theatre. Well, Phil was fond of the show, too, and she was awful proud of that, and it was ‘my Philip is so fond of the play,’ and ‘Mr. Worden will be at the theatre whether or no—’ Poor soul! it was so seldom they liked the same things, but Lord! even then she was deceivin’ herself. He didn’t care for no play; he just went for them dances they used to have between the acts, and the slack wire performers and that like; but he knew every man and woman behind the scenes, and knocked about with them in the daytime, and I don’t mean no slurs against you two girls now, but in them days actors was a rather common lot. The men nearly all drank too much, and, what’s worse, some of the women did, too; and well, one crowd came here for a long stay, and Phil Worden was just cock of the walk with them, and before long there was talk about one special female. She wasn’t even a leadin’ actor among ’em, just a brazen hussy who put paint an inch thick on her cheeks and daubed her mouth with a dye thing they called ‘vinegar rouge,’ because it wouldn’t come off easy, and she was poorer than Job, and all at once she had beaver bonnets and velvet pelisses and feathers and long gloves and a muff big enough for a bass drum. And because the woman was drunk oftener and oftener, and in her cups was a noisy and quarrelsome jade who would fight her best friend, and talked everything right out, all Cleveland began to wink and nod and say Phil Worden. Well, of course, Myra must have suspected, but never one cross word did she give him, nor show him the frown mother said she had on pretty often them days when he was away. But, one day, in he comes, near supper-time—even Mrs. Worden took her dinner at two o’clock them times, and people said it was all airs to have dinner so sinful late. Well, in he comes, all bunged up, a sight to see! His eye was all swelled up, and there was blood smears on his face, and his lip was hurt. Mother happened to be right there when he came in, and she looked first thing at Mrs. Worden, and she said her eyes flashed fire. She stood right in her tracks, looking in her husband’s face, and her hands were shut tight, and at last she said, and her voice cut like a knife: ‘How did you get your hurt, Mr. Worden?’ and he looked away across the room and mumbled something about ‘sky-larking with a fellow who was drunk and hit harder than he knew,’ and she, as white as death and as cold as ice, said: ‘You lie, you coward! You lie! Not even a drunken man fights with his nails! A woman did that work for you—’ and she threw open the door and pointed for him to go, but in came the two children in their gowns, with the nurse behind, to tell them both good-night. Her arm fell like a log, and she made a spring and caught him by the shoulder and turned him so the young ones couldn’t see his face, and pushed him towards her dressin’-room and said all in one moment, ‘poor daddy! has got hurted, so mammy must tell you good-night alone this time,’ and when she kissed them the boy said, ‘Sall ’ou tiss him hurt, mammy?’ and she says: ‘God knows! God knows!’ and mother said she got away with the dresses she was carryin’ and only knows that Myra nursed him faithfully till he was able to face the world again, and for her pay, one week later he left her, to follow the third-rate actress, who beat him in her drunken frenzies—like the dog he was. He left a letter for her. My mother stood, shaking like a leaf with fright, but Mrs. Worden stood like a rock and read it all out loud: ‘How he was not her equal, how she had been too generous and too kind,’ and then mother said he quite worked up there, and blamed her hard for not flying out at him when he done wrong. He said he could have stood it better if she had abused him, but she held her tongue or only spoke gently to him, and at the very end that’s what he said, ‘You should have lashed me, I could have understood that, but your tongue was not sharp enough,’ and then she stopped, my mother said, and then she read that line again, ‘your tongue was not sharp enough,’ and then, says she, with blazing eyes and white lips, ‘By God! no other man shall make that complaint of me! I’ll sharpen my tongue like a serpent’s, and adder’s poison shall lurk under my lips!’ and then suddenly she began to laugh and laughed and laughed, and while we all went a running for doctors, she laughed her way into the fever that came nigh to killin’ her.”
The tears were on my cheeks, and my tea was stone cold, when Mrs. Bulkley paused to refill her exhausted lungs and swallow another bracer. Mary had, meantime, been steadily eating, grinding with the regularity of a machine, swallowing with the satisfaction of a gourmet. She had devoured her own share of the meal and was now making predatory attacks upon certain portions belonging by rights to me, and I, believing that the “Busy B” was only getting her second wind and would start again directly, told her in a whisper to go ahead and eat it all, an arrangement satisfactory to us both, since I preferred Mrs. Worden’s story to eating, and Mary preferred eating to any story of any woman alive or dead. Mrs. Bulkley was about to resume her narrative, when she paused to shout an order to the cook in the kitchen “not to use none of that good butter in no cooking out there,” and I actually felt my flesh creep. It was the double shock that told upon the nerves. There was first that awful attack upon poor Lindley Murray, pounding him with negatives, then there were the rending possibilities connected with the butter that would be used in the cooking out there. And I was glad that I was not Mary. Mary, hearing that order, had simply let her eyebrows slide up her forehead a bit and then slide down again, while she went on eating. Mrs. Bulkley suddenly remarked: “I see you’re crying; well, well, I used to cry about Myra Worden myself, sometimes. But when you get old your tears come harder, like everything else, pretty nigh. I don’t know’s I exactly sense why you should cry for her losin’ that great hulk of a fellow, though.”
“Oh!” I cried, “her pride, think of that! To have been abandoned for some great woman, some rare beauty, would have been bad enough, but to have been cast aside for a gross and common thing that cursed and tore him like a beast, and all in the very face of the public! How could she bear it all, poor thing?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Bulkley, “she done it somehow. But I must tell you a queer sort of thing about when she was sick—yet it jest shows you what dummed fools women be. Mrs. Worden had the most amazin’ head of hair I ever seen in my born days, as black as jet and hangin’ to a length I darsen’t name, for fear you’d think it lies, and thick! good mercy! Well, she was in for a long sickness, the doctor said, and no nurse could do anything with that mop of hern; and so they ups and cuts it off, and mother cryin’ like a baby when they done it. But when she found out herself what they had done to her—good Lord! she give a screech, and wrung her hands and sobbed: ‘It was the only thing that Philip ever loved about me. He called it his great, black mantle, and once he wound it round and round and round his strong, white throat, and now it’s gone; thanks to these meddlin’ fools, who don’t see that I can’t die!’ and she jest cursed every man and woman in the house, and raved over that hair of hern every hour when she was out of her head—when she was right-minded she never let on she noticed about it. Well, at last she got well, and straight she put on the widow’s weeds that she’s worn for five and fifty years. Poor soul! she held her head so high and looked so hard right into folks’s eyes, they darsen’t ask the questions nor make the remarks they’d like to. And she used to spend an awful lot of time and money on the poor—and she jest guarded them children as though they was chuck full of dimonds. But ’twas then she began to use the sharp edge of her tongue. She didn’t talk about folks, she never was one for slander, but the things she’d say to ’em was jest awful, and the worst of it all was, that she always told the truth. If she’d jest been abusive and have made up things outen whole cloth, nobody would ’a cared much; but what was it, now, that big lawyer said about her once? Let’s see, she had been giving him a hidin’ right before folks, and when she was done, he says, ‘The woman who is armed with sarcasm and truth is a woman whose tongue is sharp on both edges.’ Yes, them’s the words.
“But trouble jest follow’d right along after, yes, and pretty close after. ‘Mrs. Myra Worden,’ that’s what her cards said then; they used to say Mrs. Philip Worden—but when the black went on the ‘Philip’ came off. Mother said that she never heard her speak that name but jest once, after the time she stood laughin’ like mad over his last letter. Some one told Mrs. Worden that some one else had said that ‘she had a tongue like a serpent’s,’ and mother says her eyes give a flash and she throw’d up her head and she said almost wild-like: ‘I swore me an oath and I’m keepin’ it. You should have waited; my nails are long now, and sharp; already I have a serpent’s tongue. I might yet learn to cuff, and curse and tear you with the rest! Ah! you should have waited, Philip!’ My Suz! then came the trouble. Didn’t the biggest man, most, we had in town up and blow out his miserable, dishonest, old brains, because he had first lost his own money, and then had thrown away a hull lot of Myra Worden’s after it—expectin’ to get both back, he said. It was an awful loss. She didn’t say anythin’, hardly, but she shook her head a bit, while she watched the young ones playing; she only cared for their sakes. Some one said to her, ‘Such a disgrace, I do wonder what his family will do?’ and she says so quiet-like: ‘Get a much larger monument than is usual, and see that it’s of whitest Carrara, I suppose. That’s what’s generally done in such cases.’
“Well, she give up livin’ in that house, and give up all the carriages but jest a family affair that the children could be sent about in, and came down to Lake Street. It was a pretty house, but Lord! not like her a bit. And if you’ll believe me, that girl, that Edith of hern, cut up more monkey-shines and was madder than a hornet about it. Little Phil thought it was fine; fact was, the little devil was in the lake about half his time, but nobody liked to tell, and everybody knew the dog would take care of him anyhow. They got along all right for a while, she living for the work she could do for the poor and for the love of them children, and they for lessons and fun. My Suz! she had ’em so they could jabber French all the time they was dressin’ and until lunch, and then at that meal that Dutch woman she had, great flat-faced, stupid thing, used to pitch in and make ’em eat that meal in Dutch, or German she call’d it—though I vum! I can’t see no difference between the two. And dancin’ lessons! and, O, Lord! I can’t remember half they were studyin’ at, and so their mother let ’em have lots of play too. So one day, she’d promised to take ’em to the circus at night, and they were sure the day would be a year long; and some one invited ’em to go out on the lake for a sail, and she ups and says, ‘no.’ Well, they was mad; but she was weather-wiser than any woman I ever see, and she said to ’em, ‘No, my dearies, it’s fair now, but it’s a treacherous fairness. I dare not let you go.’ Well, after sulkin’ a bit, they asked if they might go and spend the day at Auntie Anna’s? She wasn’t their true aunt, they jest called her that, and she was nothin’ but a slave to ’em, and spoiled ’em—well, don’t talk! ‘But,’ said their mother, ‘if you go there to take tea, you will not have time to dress for the circus!’ ‘Why, then, dress us now; we’ll be careful of our things, mammy,’ said Edith, ‘and then we’ll come right from tea, by our ownselves—oh! please, mammy, yes by our ownselves, and we’ll stand on the corner over there and wave our hands and handkerchers to you for a sign for you to come to us, and then we’ll all go on up town together.’ They were jest sot on that plan. They felt it would be so big for them to come alone, those few blocks, and then to stand on the corner and make signs for her to come to them, and seein’ as she had already cross’d them once, she consented, and right away they were dressed and started off under the servant’s care to their auntie’s house for the rest of the day. When they had kissed her good-by about a dozen times—for the way they loved her jest was a caution now, I tell you—little Phil runs back and he up and said, ‘Mammy, I’ll take care of Edie—she’s the biggest, but I’m the strongest, and I’m the nearest to a man, ain’t I? So, I’ll hold her hand all the way when we’re alone, mammy, and I won’t let anybody speak to her, ’till you come down to us,’ and she kissed him again, and called him, as she often did, her ‘man-child,’ and away he went after Edie. The next time she saw the poor, little things, Phil was a keepin’ his word.
“Mrs. Worden went on with her doin’s, whatever they was, and along couple hours later she sees the sky darkenin’. There had been a good many small boats out on the water, and she felt uneasy when she noticed ’twas getting dark. Everythin’ along the bank was different then to what it’s now, you know. Some of them long slopes was all green and right pretty to sit out on, and lots of people used to walk there and look at the lake and do their sparkin’, and sometimes people would crowd the bank to watch a wreck and shout and yell, if anyone was saved. Well, as I was sayin’, Mrs. Worden she goes to look out, when a girl comes screechin’ to her ‘that a boat had been capsized, and the folks that had gone out to save the upset people were now in danger from the wind that was blowin’, and there was crowds out there watchin’ already!’ Mrs. Worden wraps herself up in a cloak and goes out, too, to the bank. Lord! Lord! that storm! and the shortness of it. I had a sailor boardin’ here then—nasty, drunken brute he was, too—he said somethin’ about their having where he come from what was called a ‘black squall,’ and that that was one. Well, I don’t know nothin’ about black squalls, but I do know, and you know, and every one else as knows ‘Old Erie’ at all, knows there ain’t no lake on God’s earth that’s as treacherous or as lightenin’ quick in evil-doing, and when Mrs. Worden gets out there, the crowd was already cryin’ out, and wringin’ hands, and runnin’ up and down. And, sure enough, there right close in was a bit of a pleasure boat of some sort, and, oh, dear! I can’t tell you no rights or wrongs, I was there too, but when I seen them poor creatures hold out their arms towards us standin’ safe on solid ground, I jest sot right down on the bank, for my legs couldn’t hold me up. Then a rumor ran through the crowd that there was children on the boat, and one great groan went up, and Mrs. Worden says: ‘God pity some poor mother’s heart! my own children might have been there, for they begged to go out to-day, but I forbade it,’ and right behind her stopped a woman who had come up runnin’ like mad, and was movin’ her lips and not makin’ a single sound, and that woman was Aunt Anna. At that moment a vivid flash of color was seen on the deck, it was a girl’s pink dress; next instant the crowd groaned: ‘The children, oh! God! see the children! and they are holdin’ hands, they look this way!’ A man was standin’, holdin’ a pair of glasses to his eyes, and without a word Mrs. Worden put out her shakin’ hand and seized them, while the silent woman, with the ashen grey face, fell down upon her knees and bowed her head behind her. The instant the glass was at her eyes Mrs. Worden stopped shakin’. She stood solid as a rock and she jest said: ‘Oh! Mother of God!’ and there she stood, and it was only a moment or two after that, oh! well, there was awful screechin’ from the women and some groans from the men, and it was all over. I looked at her. She took the glass from her eyes, and holdin’ it in her hand a minute, she stood looking down at it, then she gave a kind of start-like, and she holds it out to the man, and she said slowly, each word kind of by itself, ‘I thank you, sir, it is a good glass,’ and she turned and walked a step or two, and then without a sound, fell all her length, upon the ground. They carried her to her home, but Aunt Anna was taken to another house and cared for, and there she told how she had not been strong enough to refuse them, when they had entreated, and the people who invited them were old friends of hers, and would, she knew, be very careful; but where she took on the worst, was when she told about how the dog had to be tied, to keep him from following them. The ladies feared he might jump into the water and get in the boat again and spoil their dresses; and he fought like mad to get loose, and howled and barked his voice clean away. And I haven’t no doubt but he’d a saved one of ’em, for he was that strong, and a regular water-dog, and he’d brought the boy out against his will more than once, when people had sent him after Phil just for fun. Well, Aunt Anna was afraid of her life to meet Mrs. Worden, but she needn’t have been, for she hardly noticed her when she did see her. The doctors that come that time didn’t like her doin’s at all. She never cried a minute. That’s the truth, and she had seen her own and only children go to the bottom of the lake hand in hand. People that went there cried; the help just cried buckets full, and she looked at ’em, and one day she said: ‘I wonder how they do it? I can’t!’ and the doctor, once he got kind of mad-like, and he says: ‘Bend, woman, bend, or you’re bound to break! Do you think you have the strength to bear this blow as you bore the other one?’ but she only answered calmly: ‘I am what I am! I did not make myself.’ When he left he felt all upsot and he was cross as a bear with a sore head, and he said when Aunt Anna came up to ask about her, ‘She will cry, or die, or go mad; and the last looks the likeliest to me,’ and off he went. The minister he tried what he could do. He was a pudgy, kind-hearted man, and he had young children of his own, and he tried to talk resignation and that sort of thing, and she jest said to him when he got good and through, ‘Has your house been made desolate to you in one hour?’ and he jest burst right out crying, and he says, ‘Ah! you poor woman, how can you bear it?’ and she jumped from her chair and lifted up her face, and beating on her breast with both her clinched fists, she almost screamed out: ‘Bear it? Bear it? Why I—’ she stopped right in a minute and she sat down and said, ‘You will pardon me, won’t you? But, see now, you have little ones, yours, your own blood in their veins, and you can imagine, can’t you, the hunger, the agony of hunger I suffer for a sight of my little ones’ faces? I could wait a thousand years if only I could see them then, but they’re out there!’ waving her hand toward the lake. ‘Never, never, shall I see them again!’ and he, poor, old man, he jest sobbed and said: ‘Never, till the sea gives up its dead!’ At them words she gave a great cry—that’s the way the minister put it—she gave a great cry and she said: ‘My God! My God! I had forgotten—when the sea gives up its dead, and His words stand firmer than the everlasting hills!’ She threw herself upon her knees, and holding up her hands she cried out loud, ‘Lord, thou hast sent my soul down into hell, but for Thy great words, will I praise Thee forever!’ She turned and kissed the minister’s hand and blessed him for reminding her. ‘They are truthful children, and have long memories,’ she said, ‘and when the sea gives up its dead, they will give the promised sign, and I will join them, and we will all go on together. So I will watch and wait, just watch and wait for my dear ones’ sign!’ And that was full fifty years ago, for I was but eighteen then, and Myra Worden has watched at that lake’s side faithful ever since; though from that day people have called her mad, and I suppose she is, poor soul.”