Chapter IV: Part 4

As she talked she fidgeted uneasily with her spoon and cup; at last she broke out with: “My dear, I asked you just to have coffee with me, but now--well, to tell you the truth--I am quite faint. I breakfast at half-past six, that I may have the strong morning light for my work, and somehow I feel a bit exhausted to-day, and--and I’d like my dinner now, if you can pardon an old woman’s offence against all conventionalities, and stay and dine with me!”

Could I have known, I would have taken the coffee only and denied my hunger; but I knew nothing, and cheerfully consented to dine with her. I wondered where her kitchen was, and, supposing she would be some time preparing the simplest meal, I looked about for something to help me pass away the time. There was no paper, and but one book in the room, a family bible that might have been bound in a pair of old boots--its leather was so browned with age, so worn, so scruffed it looked. I went over to take it up, when my hostess, with distinct satisfaction in her voice, announced, “Dinner!” All my life long my generally-absent appetite has been pursued like an “_ignus fatuus_” by those near to me, but this time my appetite met its match; old Myra’s saw mine and went it about four better. The knives and forks had now appeared, simply as a mockery, I believe. Lying on a plate were four biscuits, or, as we called them then, crackers. They belonged to that branch of the cracker family known as “soda”--soda crackers, and while I looked on in stupid wonder, she carefully opened a handsomely-cut, glass box, with a silver lid, which, beyond the shadow of a doubt, had been her powder-box in days gone by, and delicately lifted out _four little, thin scraps_ of smoked beef--four crackers and those scraps of beef--no more, no less--and we fell to and “dined” upon them. But when I saw her trying not to eat too eagerly, I had a lump in my throat bigger than our whole dinner. No wonder her weight was less than a pound for each year of her weary life. I wished I could gather her up in my arms and kiss the fierceness out of her eyes and promise her fire enough for real comfort, and coffee, and food--real food--that would not make the promise of nourishment to the eye to break it to the stomach. My thoughts were broken by “You, girl! is there anything the matter with your dinner?”

“Nothing in the world,” I cried, “but I was not very hungry, and, in fact, I do want to get back to my coffee.”

“Well,” she answered, “I must say you eat fairer than ever Sally did, for, I give you my word, for years on end that parrot cheated me out of at least half a cracker every day of her life, and yet, my dear, when she died she was as thin as I am.”

When I was about leaving her, she said to me: “You, girl, I like you! You are queer. You are uneven, and you make me guess. You know more and you know less than most girls of your age, and, thank God, you don’t giggle! You may come again.” She paused and looked at me with a deprecating expression, and finished almost meekly: “That is, if you care to share your spare time with me.”

I told her, and I told her truly, how glad I should be to come. How glad I was to live in Lake street too, and so near to her, and then, rather shyly, I added: “I think, if you will let me, I will tell you my name, Mrs. Worden”--and I mentioned it.

She was looking out at the dreary lake again, and, without withdrawing her eyes, she made answer: “H’m’m! Clara, eh? Cla--ra, Claire--Clarice--that’s a fool name, Clarice? but Clara--that’s light, illustrious, clear, bright! My dear, I’m glad you are named Clara. It’s a good name. I hope it may fit you as well as mine has fitted me. My French mother meant to call me Marie, which is, you know, a form of Mary--‘Star of the Sea,’ and he who did the sprinkling and the crossing and the rest was deaf, and he named me Myra--‘she who weeps.’ Good God! Good God! Have I not been well named? ‘She who weeps.’ The tears are all gone from the eyes, now, and they are dry enough, but hot, my dearies--so very hot! Internal, cruel tears that ooze slowly, like drops of thin, old blood, still fall from my heart, my dearies, while I wait and wait. Aye, it was before the altar, and with the sign of the sacred cross, and the touch of the holy-water on my brow, that he baptized me ‘Myra’--‘she who weeps!’”

I stole out of the room, where well-bred hunger showed its teeth so plainly, and softly closed the door, leaving her in the gathering darkness, a ghost talking to other ghosts, from whom she was separated by the thinnest, frailest shell of mortality I ever saw.

And so we went our ways, and did the work that fell to us. Some nights I pranced cheerily about the stage in country dances, and made announcements anent that carriage that always seemed to be waiting for some one in the old plays, particularly the comedies. “My Lord, the carriage waits!” It is a famous line, a short one, I know, but powerful enough to produce temporary paralysis of the limbs and complete dumbness, for the moment, in strong and lusty youths and maidens. Well, I was on most friendly terms with that line, and some nights said nothing more, while on other nights I went on and played really first-class parts, that being the manner in which we used to work our way upward from the very bottom, and felt no shame in it either; but _nous avons changés tout cela_.

While I was thus bobbing up and down upon the restless waters of my profession, my strange “old lady,” who had grown to be my friend, was sitting “like a gray, old Fate, toiling, toiling, weaving” the fairy-like stitches that made whole again the torn or injured among rare and precious laces. Her knowledge of them was wonderful, her love for them almost tender. She would shake her head and croon over them, when they were, in her words, “badly hurt.” The day she came nearest to loving me was the day I said I thought laces were the poetry of a woman’s wardrobe. “Aye, aye,” she answered, “that’s a good word and well said, girl Clara. It’s strange that, without teaching or information, your keen instinct guides you to the _real_ beauties of life as surely as the sense of smell guides a young hound on the trail. There’s nothing made by the hand of poverty that is so beautiful as lace; so delicate yet so strong. Ah! girl Clara, some day, may you see a bit of Venetian ‘point,’ ‘round point,’ but if you do, you’ll smash a commandment, mark my words!”

Laces were sent to her from distant cities, and the package I had caught up from under the horses’ feet came, as did many others, from the then greatest merchant of New York. She had received much work from the South, but the war deprived her of that. So she went on cutting her expenses down to meet her earnings, starving quite slowly and making her moan to no man.

One day I paid a long-promised, much-dreaded visit to a young friend of mine. We had made our first appearance in the ballet together, the same night, the same play, and she was still in the ballet. She was the young person who gave me the decorated fly-trap for a Christmas gift. Somehow that remarkable selection of a gift always seems to have had something to do with her remaining so many years the chief ornament of that ballet. I had gone with her from rehearsal to her boarding-house. Now, there are boarding-houses and boarding-houses, but this was just a boarding-house. The sadly experienced ones will understand exactly what I mean. The happy, inexperienced ones may just skip the sentence.

Rehearsal had been long, so we were late for dinner and we seated ourselves at the long, narrow, untidy, unfriendly-looking table, with heavy forebodings. Everything seemed to have been devoured by the boarders before us, except the pickles. They alone coldly and sourly faced us. But when the slatternly waitress came in, I asked myself why, oh, why had I come at all? A slattern with a cheerful face is hard to bear, but a slattern who sulks is more than even a boarder should be asked to endure. I saw my friend, whose name was Mary, quail as this fell creature looked insolently at her; but before our doom was sealed the landlady passed through the room. Now, Mary always said that had she been alone that incident would have passed for nothing, and that she would have dined on pickles and cold water, or not dined at all, but I was there, and Mrs. Bulkley knew of me, and being stricken for the moment with madness, saw in me a possible boarder, therefore she paused and greeted me, and rather unnecessarily explained that the dinner was all gone, but added that she reckoned they could scrape something together for us. And Mary rather ungratefully whispered, “she was used to living on scrapings now.” While we waited, the sulky slattern, regardless of our presence, proceeded with her duties, snatching everything from the table, except the shame-faced cover and the pickles.

Presently Mrs. Bulkley appeared, and our dinner materialized in the form of liver and bacon and warmed potatoes, a vulgar dish, but, being freshly cooked, a welcome one to two tired and hungry girls. Had it not been for the table-cover we might have been quite happy, but the sins of the boarders against it had been many, and as they had not yet been washed away, they were not pleasant to look upon.

Just as we were being served, Mary remarked that she had “seen that awful, old Mrs. Worden giving a gentleman fits in the street that morning, and that two other gentlemen were waiting for him, and they had laughed at him,” and she ended by asking me “had I ever seen her?”

“Oh, yes,” I answered, “I saw her in her room yesterday.”

“What?” cried Mrs. Bulkley, dropping the spoon noisily from her hand. “What’s that? You saw Mrs. Worden in her room, her own room where she lives? Oh, nonsense, you don’t mean our Mrs. Worden! She hasn’t had a soul inside that room since old poll Sal died.”

I explained that my Mrs. Worden was “Myra,” owner of Sally, living at number so-and-so Lake street, mender of laces, etc., and then Mrs. Bulkley dropped herself, a friendly chair catching her; then she said: “Well, I’m dummed!” Then she took off her spectacles and wiped them on a corner of the table-cover, which made them worse, as I knew it would, and she took them off again and wiped them on a grimy handkerchief, and put them on, and looked hard at me and said: “She had you in her room, and you a theatre-girl? Well, then, she’s breaking up at last. Well! Well!”

She leaned her head upon her ugly, old hand, and I asked:

“Do you know her personally?”

“Do I know her!” she snapped out at me. “Don’t she come here every once in a while? and sometimes she takes tea with me!”

“Yes,” faintly murmured Mary, “and when she comes, a clean cloth goes on the table, and every boarder in the house who has ‘a past,’ keeps in his or her own room.”

I smiled comprehendingly, while Mrs. Bulkley went on: “Do I know her? good Lord! haven’t I known her since I was a green girl in my early ’teens?”

I was startled. Looking at her foxy, false front, her steel-bowed spectacles, her leathery skin, and the small framed platter she wore on her chest as a breast-pin, it was so hard to believe she had ever had any ‘’teens’ at all!

“Yes,” she went on, “I know her, as my mother before me did. She worked for Mrs. Worden for more than eighteen years, and now she’s breaking up. Here, Hannah, make me some tea! You, oh, well, yes--you may make enough for us three, and bring it here. I feel all tuckered out.”

And the old body did look worried and anxious. I was surprised, and I was grateful for her interest in Mrs. Worden, for whom I now had a real affection as well as a great pity.

“Oh, Mrs. Bulkley!” I cried, “don’t be uneasy; Mrs. Worden seems quite as well as usual. She works as hard as ever, too, and she is very kind to me.”

“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.”

I bowed my head upon my hands; dully I heard Mrs. Bulkley going on about some bank’s failure, something about a fire that had followed close upon the failure, and the word ruin, many times repeated, but my real attention was fixed upon a picture that rose before me. I saw, as plainly as I ever saw anything in my life, a great, level plain, and far away against the angry sunset sky, a line of low unwooded hills encircled it. It was unspeakably dreary--no trees, no water, no rise and fall, dip or break in the monotonous, dead level of the ground. Far away to the left, in the growing darkness, I saw the towers and cupolas of a fair, white city, and from its distant gates a path was worn across the dismal plain--a path so faint, so narrow, it could only have been made by one lone traveler’s feet. At the very farthest end, and on either side, there were faint outlines as of fallen bodies, and there were broken urns, and jars, and some withered garlands; but for all its greater length, it was narrow, faint and bare. And while I looked, suddenly, at its opposite end, that nearest to the hills, there appeared the figure of that traveler whose weary feet had worn that piteous path. Behind her, the fair, white city; before her, the bleak and savage hills. The tall figure, in its sombre garments, seemed the very spirit of desolation. The face was turned away from me, but there was that in the figure which made my heart leap up in quick recognition, and then, so truly as you live, _then_ I heard a voice, clear and distinct, but seemingly very, very far away, and it said: “I am Myra, ‘she who weeps!’”

I gave a start so violent that I turned my tea-cup completely over, and, putting it hastily to rights again, saw Mrs. Bulkley looking her grimy handkerchief over carefully to find a promising bit to rub her glasses with. Her false front was much awry, and her small eyes were red, and she was finishing, as she had begun, with the assertion that “Mrs. Worden was breaking up, no doubt of that, since she had taken up with a theatre-girl, of all people on the footstool, well! well!”

I thanked the “Busy B” for her tea and her information, and I greatly fear I proved an unsatisfactory confidant for Mary, who dearly loved plenty of “oh’s!” and “ah’s!” and “did you ever’s?” while she poured forth tales of the numbers of magnificent male creatures who madly pursued her through life, she always baffling them, however. By the way, she must have kept up her habit of baffling the magnificent ones, because she eventually married a baker with a veritable low-comedy name, by the side of which “Bowersocks,” would look grave and dignified.

The pain I felt in hearing Mrs. Worden coarsely and disrespectfully spoken of opened my eyes to the extent of the veneration and affection I had grown to feel for her. That creature in whom the world saw a desolate woman, whose haughty, old head was held high, and whose piercing, hawk’s eye spied out its weakness, but in whom I saw the wearily faithful, old watcher, by the restless lake, waiting through the long years, always “waiting for the sign.” To me, her sorrows had made her sacred.

I had never seen any creature who seemed so absolutely bloodless as did old Mrs. Worden, and no matter how often I might meet her, the moment my eye took in the waxen pallor of her face, I experienced an uncanny feeling of familiarity. I would ask myself, “Of whom does she remind me?” knowing all the time that I had never seen anyone who resembled her in the slightest degree.

But one day as she sat, as ever, facing the lake, with her eyes cast down upon her cup, the cold, dull light falling upon the clear-cut features of her wax-white face, turning it into a veritable mask of death, I looked steadily at the hollow of her temples--not the faintest pulsation there. I gazed steadily at her throat--not a pulse-beat could I see, though I knew my own full throat would throb and swell at times as though it had an independent existence. As I looked, I thought, if she should run a needle deep into her finger I believe nothing would follow its withdrawal, and so, like a flash, it leaped into my mind who she was like. The very counterpart of old King Duncan! He of the mighty tragedy--the victim of that woman who raved in her crime-haunted sleep; not of pity at his “taking off,” not of remorse, but only of that stupendous surprise: “Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him!”

The good, old man with the wool-white locks, and the saintly soul housed in the parchment-like body--yes! like this he looked. Yet her dagger thrust had been followed by a rush of royal blood that not only “laced” all his followers and “pooled” about his body, but stained her hand with a stain too deep for an ocean’s waves to wash away.

Never since have I read or thought of Duncan without seeing Mrs. Worden’s features beneath the golden round of sovereignty. All the life, the strength, the spirit she had left, was gathered up into the fire of her eyes, and when the ashes of her lids covered their glow, her face was as the face of Duncan, dead. Were Mrs. Worden living now, she would probably be called a “mind reader.” Then many people declared her to be clairvoyant. Be that as it may, she had, beyond doubt, a wonderful power of reading or guessing other people’s thoughts, a power which added greatly to the terror with which she inspired some of her townsmen whose thoughts were not always of a quality or nature to invite close feminine inspection. As for myself, she had divined my thoughts, time and again, with a calm exactitude that filled me with awe; and that day, while I still gazed at her mask-like face, she raised her eyes, looked steadily into mine a moment, and in an even voice asked: “Well? Whom am I like? The Witch of Endor?” and, without a moment’s pause, obediently as a little child, I made answer: “No, ma’am, you are like King Duncan!”

A quick frown knit her black brows. Never since that far-away day of the giving of the shawl-pin, had she, by word or sign, hinted at her knowledge of my being an actress, and I saw the allusion to Macbeth was unwelcome to her. However, she quickly recovered from her annoyance, and, with her usual aptness, asked: “Do you find the likeness purely physical, or do I, like the old soldier king, ‘lag superfluous on the stage of life’?”

To which I gaily and gratefully replied: “At all events I shall not, like Mistress Macbeth, try to ‘push you from your stool’!”

And her answer, to my annoyance, was: “How--how--is she going to do it?”

She was thinking aloud, but I knew only too well that her question referred to me; and equally well I knew that a bad quarter of an hour was directly before me. Several times the old lady had declared that I was going to make my mark in the world, but she was greatly puzzled, very naturally, to know how I was to do it. She had, therefore, fallen into a way of analyzing my character, before my very face, with positively brutal frankness, and, so far, she had always failed to find out how I was to attain the success she foretold for me.

Really, it seemed a form of vivisection she subjected me to, and I squirmed in unpleasant anticipation when I heard that: “How--how is she going to do it?”

I had no suggestion to offer, so I drank my coffee silently. She studied my face a moment, and then she said: “Yes--yes, you will, I tell you! But, _how_! You are not aggressive enough to win by _force_! Oh, you can fight fast enough, flaring nostrils! but you will always fight on the defensive. You are clever, but you are not clever enough! Intellect isn’t going to win for you. How _are_ you going to do it? Yet you are to dominate, to have power. I’ve seen it in the arch of your bared foot, in the unbeautiful square of your shoulders, in the tenacious grasp of your hand. If you had great beauty now--there, don’t redden that way: never blush above the eyes, it’s not becoming--you are all right; you’re straight, and fair, and wholesome. You have enough good looks for men to hang their lies upon, but you have not a world-conquering beauty. Deuce take me, girl, if I can make it!”

While she had been harrying me I had once turned my head to see why the room had darkened so noticeably, and saw a heavy fog was creeping in from the lake, and now that she had come to her “giving it up” place, she turned her eyes slowly toward their usual resting place, the lake, and a quick change came over her. She started a little, then her head drooped slowly until her chin rested on her hand. With unwinking eyes she stared straight ahead of her, while gradually the brightness all died out of them, a slightly distressed raising of her brows threw deep furrows across her forehead, her nostrils were pinched, her thin lips tight pressed, while over all her face grew a look only to be described by one word--a look of woe!

It wrung my heart! I looked and looked at her--the tears rose thick in my eyes, then slowly, slowly I seemed to understand, to _know_, what was grieving her. It was the surrounding fog, silently, steadily, blotting out everything between heaven and earth! Even her longing mother’s eyes could not pierce that soft density, could not distinguish the purplish, dark line that, to her belief, marked her darlings’ resting place out there in the great lake.

I bore it as long as I could, and then I leant across the tiny table, and, laying my warm hand upon her chill one, I said: “Dear Mrs. Worden, do not grieve, the fog often lifts at sunset. Then, perhaps, you may see the purple line before the night comes on!”

Her eyes came slowly back to mine, she smiled gratefully at me, and then all suddenly the fire flashed into them again. She rose to her feet, her head held high in her imperious way, and cried, triumphantly: “I have it now, girl! You have given me the clue! You will succeed by your power of sympathy! You will not fight the world, you will open your great heart to its sorrows, and the many-headed public will neither growl at nor tear you, but will come at your call, your friend and your defender. When you know you have succeeded, say once to yourself, ‘Old Myra saw, old Myra told me true.’”

Then with an indescribably tragic gesture she pressed one hand upon her breast and said: “She who weeps!” while her other hand fell softly upon my head, and she murmured, “Clear, Light, Illustrious!”

Her tone thrilled me, there was such sincerity, such intensity in it. I sat quite silent, but I drew her cold hand down and pressed my check against it, and that moment there came a heavy knocking on the lower front door. I sprang up, saying: “Let me go, Mrs. Worden, please!” and, without awaiting permission, went cautiously down the sagging stairs and found a man at the door with the usual sealed package for Mrs. Worden. When the signing for it was all over, I ran back, calling out joyously, “Lace! lace! Mrs. Worden--more lace! You will open it before I go, won’t you, so that I may see it?”