My acquaintance with Mrs. Angel dates from the hour she called upon me, in response to my application at a ladies' furnishing store for a seamstress; and the growth of the acquaintance, as well as the somewhat peculiar character which it assumed, was doubtless due to the interest I betrayed in the history of her early life, as related to me at different times, frankly and with unconscious pathos and humor.
Her parents were of the "poor white" class and lived in some remote Virginian wild, whose precise locality, owing to the narrator's vague geographical knowledge, I could never ascertain. She was the oldest of fifteen children, all of whom were brought up without the first rudiments of an education, and ruled over with brutal tyranny by a father whose sole object in life was to vie with his neighbors in the consumption of "black jack" and corn whiskey, and to extract the maximum of labor from his numerous progeny,—his paternal affection finding vent in the oft-repeated phrase, "Durn 'em, I wish I could sell some on 'em!" The boys, as they became old enough to realize the situation, ran away in regular succession;—the girls, in the forlorn hope of exchanging a cruel master for one less so, drifted into matrimony at the earliest possible age. Mrs. Angel, at the age of sixteen, married a man of her own class, who found his way in course of time to Washington and became a day-laborer in the Navy Yard.
It would be interesting, if practicable, to trace the subtle laws by which this woman became possessed of a beauty of feature and form, and color, which a youth spent in field-work, twenty subsequent years of maternity and domestic labor, and a life-long diet of the coarsest description, have not succeeded in obliterating. Blue, heavily fringed eyes, wanting only intelligence to make them really beautiful; dark, wavy hair, delicately formed ears, taper fingers, and a fair, though faded complexion, tell of a youth whose beauty must have been striking.
She seldom alluded to her husband at all, and never by name, the brief pronoun "he" answering all purposes, and this invariably uttered in a tone of resentment and contempt, which the story of his wooing sufficiently accounts for.
"His folks lived over t'other side the mount'n," she related, "an' he was dead sot an' de-termined he'd have me. I never did see a man so sot! The Lord knows why! He used ter foller me 'round an' set an' set, day in an' day out. I kep' a-tellin' of him I couldn't a-bear him, an' when I said it, he'd jess look at me an' kind o' grin like, an' never say nothin', but keep on a-settin' 'roun'. Mother she didn't dare say a word, 'cause she knowed father 'lowed I should have him whether or no. ''Taint no use, Calline,' she'd say, 'ye might as well give up fust as last.' Then he got ter comin' every day, an' he an' father jess sot an' smoked, an' drunk whiskey, an' he a-starin' at me all the time as if he was crazy, like. Bimeby I took ter hidin' when he come. Sometimes I hid in the cow-shed, an' sometimes in the woods, an' waited till he'd cl'ared out, an' then when I come in the house, father he'd out with his cowhide, an' whip me. 'I'll teach ye,' he'd say, swearin' awful, 'I'll teach ye ter honor yer father an' mother, as brought ye inter the world, ye hussy!' An' after a while, what with that, an' seein' mother a-cryin' 'roun', I begun ter git enough of it, an' at last I got so I didn't keer. So I stood up an' let him marry me; but," she added, with smouldering fire in her faded blue eyes, "I 'lowed I'd make him sorry fur it, an' I reckon I hev! But he won't let on. Ketch him!"
This, and her subsequent history, her valorous struggle with poverty, her industry and tidiness, her intense, though blindly foolish, love for her numerous offspring, and a general soft-heartedness toward all the world, except "niggers" and the father of her children, interested me in the woman to an extent which has proved disastrous to my comfort—and pocket. I cannot tell how it came about, but at an early period of our acquaintance Mrs. Angel began to take a lively interest in my wardrobe, not only promptly securing such articles as I had already condemned as being too shabby, even for the wear of an elderly Government employé, but going to the length of suggesting the laying aside of others which I had modestly deemed capable of longer service. From this, it was but a step to placing a species of lien upon all newly purchased garments, upon which she freely commented, with a view to their ultimate destination. It is not pleasant to go through the world with the feeling of being mortgaged as to one's apparel, but though there have been moments when I have meditated rebellion, I have never been able to decide upon any practicable course of action.
I cannot recall the time when Mrs. Angel left my room without a package of some description. She carries with her always a black satchel, possessing the capacity and insatiability of a conjurer's bag, but, unlike that article, while almost anything may be gotten into it, nothing ever comes out of it.
Her power of absorption was simply marvellous. Fortunately, however, the demon of desire which possesses her may be appeased, all other means failing, with such trifles as a row of pins, a few needles, or even stale newspapers.
"He reads 'em," she explained, concerning the last, "an' then I dresses my pantry shelves with 'em."
"It is a wonder your husband never taught you to read," I said once, seeing how wistfully she was turning the pages of a "Harper's Weekly."