The Romance of a Plain Man Read online

  CHAPTER VI

  CONCERNING CARROTS

  When I had finished my work, I rose from my knees and stood waiting forJohn Chitling's directions.

  "Run along to the next street," he said kindly, "an' you can tell myhouse, I reckon, by the number of children in the gutter. It's the housewith the most children befo' it. You'll find my wife cookin', likelyenough, in the kitchen, an' all you've got to say is that I told you totell her that you were hungry. She won't ax you many questions,--thatain't her way,--but she'll jest set to work an' feed you."

  Reassured by this description, I whistled to Samuel, and crossed thenarrow street, crowded with farmers' wagons and empty wheelbarrows, to arow of dingy houses, with darkened basements, which began at the corner.By the number of ragged and unwashed children playing among the old tincans in the gutter before the second doorway, I concluded that this wasthe home of John Chitling; and I was about to enter the close, dimlylighted passage, when a chorus of piercing screams from the smallChitlings outside, brought before me a large, slovenly woman, withslipshod shoes, and a row of curl papers above her forehead. When shereached the doorway, a small crowd had already gathered upon thepavement, and I beheld a half-naked urchin of a year or thereabouts,dangled, head downwards, by the hand of a passing milkman.

  "The baby's gone an' swallowed a cent, ma," shrieked a half-dozen treblevoices.

  "Well, the Lord be praised that it wa'nt a quarter!" exclaimed Mrs.Chitling, with a cheerful piety, which impressed me hardly less than didthe placid face with which she gazed upon the howling baby. "There,there, it ain't near so bad as it might have been. Don't scream so,Tommy, a cent won't choke him an' a quarter might have."

  "But it was _my cent_, an' I ain't got a quarter!" roared Tommy, stillunconsoled.

  "Well, I'll give you a quarter when my ship comes in," responded hismother, at which the grief of the small financier began gradually tosubside.

  "I had it right in my hand," he sniffled, with his knuckles at his eyes,"an' I jest put it into the baby's mouth for keepin'."

  By this time Mrs. Chitling had received the baby into her arms, andturning with an unruffled manner, she bore him into the house, where shestopped his mouth with a spoonful of blackberry jam. As she replaced thejar on the shelf she looked down, and for the first time became aware ofmy presence.

  "He ain't swallowed anything of yours, has he?" she enquired. "If he hasyou'll have to put the complaint in writing because the neighbours areal'ays comin' to me for the things that are inside of him. I've neverbeen able to shake anything out of him," she added placidly, "except oneof Mrs. Haskin's bugle beads."

  She delivered this with such perfect amiability that I was emboldened tosay in my politest manner, "If you please, ma'am, Mr. Chitling told me Iwas to say that he said that I was hungry."

  "So the baby really ain't took anything of yours?" she asked, relieved."Well, I al'ays said he didn't do half the damage they accused him of."

  As I possessed nothing except the clothes in which I stood, and eventhat elastic urchin could hardly have accommodated these, I hastened toassure her that I was the bearer of no complaint. This appeared to winher entirely, and her large motherly face beamed upon me beneath theaureole of curl papers that radiated from her forehead. With a singlemovement she cleared a space on the disorderly kitchen table and slappeddown a plate, with a piece missing, as if the baby had taken a bite outof it.

  "To think of yo' goin' hungry at yo' age an' without a mother," shesaid, opening a safe, and whipping several slices of bacon and a coupleof eggs into a skillet. "Why, it would make me turn in my grave if Ithought of one of my eleven wantin' a bite of meat an' not havin' it."

  As she switched about in her cheerful, slovenly way, I saw that herskirt had sagged at the back into what appeared to be an habitual gap,and from beneath it there showed a black calico petticoat of a dingyshade. But when a little later she sat me at the table, with Samuel'sbreakfast on the floor beside me, I forgot her slatternly dress, herhalo of curl papers, and her slipshod shoes, while I plied my fork andmy fingers under the motherly effulgence of her smile. Tied into a highchair in one corner, the baby sat bolt upright, with his thumb in hismouth, deriving apparently the greatest enjoyment from watching myappetite; and before I had finished, the ten cheerful children troopedin and gathered about me. "Give him another cake, ma!" "It's my turn tohelp him next, ma!" "I'll pour out his coffee for him!" "Oh, ma, let mefeed the dog," rose in a jubilant chorus of shrieks.

  "An' he ain't got any mother!" roared Tommy suddenly, and burst intotears.

  A sob lodged in my throat, but before the choking sound of it reached myears, I felt myself enfolded in Mrs. Chitling's embrace. As I looked upat her from this haven of refuge, it seemed to me that her curl paperswere transfigured into a halo, and that her face shone with a heavenlybeauty.

  I was given a bed in the attic, with the six younger Chitlings, and twodays later, when my father tracked me to my hiding-place, I hid underthe dark staircase in the hall, and heard my protector deliver aneloquent invective on the subject of stepmothers. It was the oneoccasion in my long acquaintance with her when I saw her fairly rousedout of her amiable inertia. Albemarle, the baby, had spilled bacon gravyover her dress that very morning, and I had heard her console himimmediately with the assurance that there was "a plenty more in thedish." But possessed though she was with that peculiar insight whichdiscerns in every misfortune a hidden blessing, in stepmothers, I found,and in stepmothers alone, she could discern nothing except sermons.

  "To think of yo' havin' the brazen impudence to come here arter the harmyou've done that po' defenceless darling boy," she said, with a nobledignity which obscured somehow her slovenly figure and her dirtykitchen. Peering out from under the staircase, I could see that myfather stood quite humbly before her, twirling his hatbrim nervously inhis hands.

  "I ax you to believe, mum, what is the gospel truth," he replied, "thatI wa'nt meanin' any harm to Benjy."

  "Not meanin' any harm an' you brought him a stepmother befo' six monthswas up?" she cried. "Well, that ain't _my_ way of lookin' at it, forI've a mother's heart and it takes a mother's heart to stand the tricksof children," she added, glancing down at the gravy stains on her bosom,"an' it ain't to be supposed--is it?--that a stepmother should have amother's heart? It ain't natur--is it?--I put it to you, that any man orwoman should be born with a natchel taste for screamin' an' kickin' an'bein' splashed with gravy, an' the only thing that's goin' to cultivatethem tastes in anybody is bringin' ten or eleven of 'em into the world.Lord, suh, I wa'nt born with the love of dirt an' fussin' any mo' thanyou. It just comes along o' motherhood like so much else. Now it standsto reason that you ain't goin' to enjoy the trouble a child makes unlessthat child is your own. Why, what did my baby do this mornin' when hewas learnin' to walk, but catch holt of the dish an' bring all the gravydown over me. Is thar any livin' soul, I ax you plainly, expected to seethe cuteness in a thing like that except a mother? An' what I say isthat unless you can see the cuteness in a child instead of the badness,you ain't got no business to bring 'em up--no, not even if you are thePresident himself!--"

  Just here I distinctly heard my father murmur in his humble voicesomething about having named an infant after the office and not the man.But so brief was the pause in Mrs. Chitling's flow of remonstrance thathis interjection was overwhelmed almost before it was uttered. Her veryslovenliness, expressing as it did what she had given up rather thanwhat she was, served in a measure to increase the solemn majesty withwhich she spoke; and I gathered easily that my father's small wits werevanquished by the first charge of her impassioned rhetoric.

  "I thank you kindly, mum, it is all jest as you say," he replied, withthe submissiveness of utter defeat, "but, you see, a man has got to givea thought to his washin'. It stands to reason--don't it?"--he concludedwith a flash of direct inspiration, "that thar ain't any way to get awoman to wash free for you except to marry her."

  The logic of this appeared to impress even Mrs.
Chitling, for shehesitated an instant before replying, and when she finally spoke, Ithought her tone had lost something of its decision.

  "An' to make it worse you took a yaller-headed one an' they're the kindthat gad," she retorted feebly.

  My father shook his head, while a stubborn expression settled on hissheepish features.

  "Thar's the cookin' an' the washin' for her to think of," he said. "Iain't got any use for a woman that ain't satisfied with the pleasures ofhome."

  "The moral kind are, Mr. Starr," rejoined Mrs. Chitling, who hadrelapsed into a condition of placid indolence. "An' as far as I amconcerned since the first of my eleven came, I've never wanted to put onmy bonnet an' set foot outside that do'. My kitchen is my kingdom," sheadded, with dignity, "an' for my part, I ain't got any use for thosewomen who are everlastingly standin' up for thar rights. What does awoman want with rights, I say, when she can enjoy all the virtues? Whatdoes she want to be standin' up for anyway as long as she can set?"

  "Thar's no doubt that it is true, mum," rejoined my father; and when hetook his leave a few minutes afterwards, their relations appeared tohave become extremely friendly,--not to say confidential. For an instantI trembled in my hiding-place, half expecting to be delivered into hishands. But he departed at last without discovering me, and I emergedfrom the darkness and stood before Mrs. Chitling, who had begunabsent-mindedly to take down her curl papers.

  "Most likely it ain't his fault arter all," she observed, for herjudgment of him had already become a part of the general softness andpliability of her criticism of life; "he seems to be a nice sensiblebody with proper ideas about women. I like a man that knows a woman'splace, an' I like a woman that knows it, too. Yo' ma was a decent,sober, hard-workin' person, wa'nt she, Benjy?"

  I replied that she was always in her kitchen and generally in herwashtub, except when she went to funerals.

  "Well, I ain't any moral objection to a funeral now an' then, or someother sober kind of entertainment," returned Mrs. Chitling, removing hercurl papers in order to put on fresh ones, "but what I say is that thewoman who wants pleasure outside her do' ain't the woman that she oughtto be, that's all. What can she have, I ax, any mo' than she's got?Ain't she got everything already that the men don't want? Ain'tsweetness an' virtue, an' patience an' long suffering an' childbearin'enough for her without her impudently standin' up in the face of men an'axin' for mo'? Had she rather have a vote than the respect of men, an'ain't the respect of men enough to fill any honest female's life?"

  In the beginning of her discourse, she had turned aside to slap aportion of cornmeal into a cracked yellow bowl, and after pouring alittle water out of a broken dipper, she began whipping the dough with along, irregular stroke that scattered a shower of fine drops at everyrevolution of her hand. Two of the children had got into a fight over abasin of apple parings, and she left her yellow bowl and separated themwith a hand that bestowed a patch of wet meal on the hair of one and onthe face of another. Not once did she hasten her preparations orrelinquish the cheerful serenity which endowed her large, loose figurewith a kind of majesty.

  The next day I started in as general assistant and market boy to JohnChitling, and when I was not sorting over ripe vegetables or barrels ofapples fresh from the orchard, I was toiling up the long hill, with asplit basket, containing somebody's marketing, on my arm. By degrees Ilearned the names of John Chitling's patrons, the separate ways to theirhouses, which always seemed divided by absurd distances, and the facesof the negro cooks who met me at the kitchen steps and relieved me of myburden. In the beginning I was accompanied on my rounds by a fat,smudge-nosed youth some six or eight years my senior, who smoked viletobacco and enlivened the way by villainous abuses of John Chitling andthe universe. For the first months, I fear, my outlook upon thecustomers I served was largely coloured by his narratives, but when atlast he dropped off and went on a new job at the butcher's, I arrivedgradually at a more correct, and certainly a more charitable, point ofview. By the end of the winter I had ceased to believe that JohnChitling was a skinflint and his customers all vipers.

  In the bright soft weather of that spring the city opened into a bloomof faint pink and white, which comes back to me like a delicatefragrance. The old gardens are gone now, with their honeysuckle arbours,their cleanly swept walks, bordered by rows of miniature box, theirdeep, odorous bowers of microphylla and musk cluster roses. Yet I canlook back still through the gauzy shadows of elms and sycamores; I canhear still the rich, singing call of the negro drivers, as the coveredwagons from country farms passed sleepily through the hot sunshine whichfell between the arching trees; and I can smell again the air steeped ina fragrance that is less that of flowers than of the subtle atmosphereof an unforgettable youth. To-day the city is the same city no longer,nor is the man who writes this the market boy who toiled up the longhill in the blossoming spring, with the seeds of the future quickeningin brain and heart.

  The morning that I remember best is the one on which I carried the day'smarketing to an old grey house, with beds of wallflowers growing closeagainst the stuccoed bricks, and a shrub that flowered bright yellowglancing through the tall gate at the rear. I had passed the wallflowersas was my custom, and entering the gate at the back, had delivered mybasket at the kitchen door, when, as I turned to retrace my steps, I wasdetained by the scolding voice of the pink-turbaned negro cook.

  "Hi! if you ain' clean furgit de car'ots!" she cried.

  Now the carrots had been placed in the basket, as I had seen with my owneyes, by the hands of John Chitling himself, and I had been cautioned atthe time not to drop them out in my ascent of the steep hill. There wasa lady in the grey house, he had informed me, who was supposed tosubsist upon carrots alone, and who was in consequence extremelyparticular as to their size and flavour.

  "Are you sure they ain't among the vegetables?" I asked. "I saw them putin myself."

  "Huh! en you seed 'em fall out, too, I lay!" rejoined the negress,protruding her thick red lips as she turned the basket upside down withan indignant blow.

  "If they're lost, I'll go back and bring others," I said, thinkingdisconsolately of the hill.

  "En you 'ould be back hyer agin in time fur supper," retorted theoutraged divinity. "Wat you reckon Miss Mitty wants wid car'ots fur 'ersupper? Dey is hern, dey ain' mine, but ef'n dey 'us mine I'd lamn youtwel you couldn't see ter set. Hit's bad enough ter hev ter live erlongin de same worl' wid de slue-footed po' white trash widout hevin' dema-snatchin' de car'ots outer yo' ve'y mouf."

  My temper, never of the mildest, was stung quickly to a retort, and Iwas about to order her to hold her tongue and return me my basket, whenthe door into the house opened and shut, and the little girl of theenchanted garden appeared in the flesh before me.

  "I want the plum cake you promised me, Aunt Mirabella," she cried; "andoh! I hope you've stuffed it full of plums!" Then her glance fell uponme and I saw her thick black eyebrows arch merrily over her sparklinggrey eyes. "It's my boy! My dear common boy!" she exclaimed, with a rushtoward me. For the first time I noticed then that she was dressed inmourning, and that her black clothes intensified the dark brightness ofher look. "Oh, I _am_ glad to see you," she added, seizing my hand.

  I gazed up at her, wounded rather than pleased. "I shan't be a commonboy always," I answered.

  "Do you mind my calling you one? If you do, I won't," she said, andwithout waiting a minute, "What are you doing here? I thought you livedover on Church Hill."

  "I don't now. Ma died and I ran away."

  "My mother died, too," she returned softly, "and then grandmama."

  For a moment there was a pause. Then I said with a kind of stubbornpride, "I ran away."

  The sadness passed from her and she turned on me in a glow of animation."Oh, I should just love dearly to run away!" she exclaimed.

  "You couldn't. You're a girl."

  "I could, too, if I chose."

  "Then why don't you choose?"

  "Because of Aunt Mitty and Aunt Matoaca. They
haven't anybody but me."

  "I left my father," I replied proudly, "and I didn't care one singlebit. That's the trouble with girls. They're always caring."

  "Well, I'm not caring for you," she retorted with crushing effect,shaking back the soft cloud of hair on her shoulders.

  "Boys don't care," I rejoined with indifference, taking up my marketbasket.

  She detained me with a glance. "There's one thing they careabout--dreadfully," she said.

  "No, there ain't."

  Without replying in words she went over to the stove, and standing ontiptoe, gingerly removed a hot plum cake, small and round and shapedlike a muffin, from the smoking oven.

  "I reckon they care about plum cake," she remarked tauntingly, and asshe held it toward me it smelt divinely.

  But my pride was in arms, for I remembered the cup of milk she hadrefused disdainfully more than three years ago in our little kitchen.

  "No, they don't," I replied with a stoicism that might have added lustreto a nobler cause.

  In my heart I was hoping that she would drop the cake into my basket inspite of my protest, not only sparing my pride by an act of magnanimity,but allowing me at the same time the felicity of munching the plums onmy way back to the Old Market. But the next moment, to my surprise andindignation, she took a generous bite of the very dainty she had offeredme, making, while she ate it, provoking faces of a rapturous enjoyment.

  I was lingering in the doorway with a scornful yet fascinated gaze onthe diminishing cake, when the pink-turbaned cook, who had gone out toempty a basin of pea shells, entered and resumed her querulous abuse.

  "De bes' thing you kin do is ter clear out," she said, "you en yo'car'ots. He ain' fit'n fur you ter tu'n yo' eyes on, honey," she addedto the child, "en I don' reckon yo' ma would let yo' wipe yo' foot on'im ef'n she 'uz alive. Yes'm, Miss Mitty, I'se a-comin'!"

  Her voice rose high in response to a call from the house, but before shecould leave the kitchen, the door behind the little girl opened, and alady said reprovingly:--

  "Sally, Sally, haven't I told you to keep away from the kitchen?"

  "Oh, Aunt Mitty, I had to come for my plum cake," pleaded Sally, "andAunt Matoaca said that I might."

  An elderly lady, all soft black and old yellow lace, stood in thedoorway. Then before she could answer a second one appeared at her side,and I had a vision of two slender maidenly figures, who reminded me,meek heads, drooping faces, and creamy lace caps, of the wallflowers inthe border outside blooming in a patch of sunshine close against the oldgrey house. At first there seemed to me to be no visible differencebetween them, but after a minute, I saw that the second one was gentlerand smaller, with a softer smile and a more shrinking manner.

  "It was my fault, Sister Mitty," she said, "I told Sally that she mightcome after her plum cake."

  Her voice was so low and mild that I was amazed the next instant to hearthe taller lady respond.

  "Of course, Sister Matoaca, you were at liberty to do as you thoughtright, but I cannot conceal from you that I consider a person of yourdangerous views an unsafe guardian for a young girl."

  She advanced a step into the kitchen, and as Miss Matoaca followed hershe replied in an abashed and faltering voice:--

  "I am sorry, Sister Mitty, that we do not agree in our principles. Thereis nothing else that I will not sacrifice to you, but when a question ofprinciple is concerned, however painful it is to me, I must be firm."

  At this, while I was wondering what terrible thing a principle couldpossibly turn out to be, I saw Miss Mitty draw herself up until shefairly towered like a marble column about the shrinking figure in frontof her.

  "But such principles, Sister Matoaca!" she exclaimed.

  A flush rose to the clear brown surface of the little lady's cheek, andmore than ever, I thought, she resembled one of the wallflowers in theborder outside. Her head, with its shiny parting of soft chestnut hair,was lifted with a mild, yet spirited gesture, and I saw the delicatelace at her throat and wrists tremble as if a faint wind had passed.

  "Remember, sister, that my ancestors as well as yours fought againstoppression in three wars," she said in her sweet low voice that had, tomy ears, the sound of a silver bell, "and it has become my painful duty,after long deliberation with my conscience, to inform you--I considerthat taxation without representation is tyranny."

  "Sally, go into the house," commanded Miss Mitty, "I cannot permit youto hear such dangerous sentiments expressed."

  "Let me go, Sister Mitty," said Miss Matoaca, for the flash of spirithad left her as wan and drooping as a blighted flower; "I will gomyself," and turning meekly, she left the kitchen, while Sally took asecond cake from the oven and came over to where I stood.

  "I'll just put this into your basket anyway," she remarked, "even if youdon't care about it."

  "Come, child," urged Miss Mitty, waiting, "but give the boy his cakefirst."

  The cake was put into my hands, not into the basket, and I took a large,delicious mouthful of it while I went by the meek wallflowers standingin a row, like prim maiden ladies, against the old grey house.