Books: Lovey Mary
A >>
Alice Hegan Rice >> Lovey Mary
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
LOVEY MARY
BY
ALICE HEGAN RICE
AUTHOR OF
"Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch"
1903
TO
CALE YOUNG RICE
WHO TAUGHT ME THE SECRET
OF PLUCKING ROSES FROM
A CABBAGE PATCH
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I A CACTUS-PLANT
II A RUNAWAY COUPLE
III THE HAZY HOUSEHOLD
IV AN ACCIDENT AND AN INCIDENT
V THE DAWN OF A ROMANCE
VI THE LOSING OF MR. STUBBINS
VII NEIGHBORLY ADVICE
VIII A DENOMINATIONAL GARDEN
IX LABOR DAY
X A TIMELY VISIT
XI THE CHRISTMAS PLAY
XII REACTION
XIII AN HONORABLE RETREAT
XIV THE CACTUS BLOOMS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"They met at the pump." ..... Frontispiece
"'Now the Lord meant you to be plain.'"
"'Come here, Tom, and kiss your mother.'"
"''T ain't no street...; this here is the Cabbage Patch.'"
"She puffed her hair at the top and sides."
"'She took on mighty few airs fer a person in mournin'.'"
"She sat on the door-step, white and miserable." 67
"Mrs. Wiggs took pictures from her walls and chairs from her parlor to
beautify the house of Hazy."
"Mr. Stubbins, sitting in Mrs. Wiggs's most comfortable chair, with a
large slice of pumpkin-pie in his hand."
"'Stick out yer tongue.'"
"Asia held out her hands, which were covered with warm red mitts."
"Master Robert Redding was right side up again, sobbing himself quiet
in Lovey Mary's arms."
"'Have you ever acted any?' he asked."
"Europena stepped forward."
"Sang in a high, sweet voice, 'I Need Thee Every Hour.'"
"'Haven't you got any place you could go to?'"
Susie Smithers at the keyhole
"Lovey Mary waved until she rounded a curve."
LOVEY MARY
CHAPTER I
A CACTUS-PLANT
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear,...
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,--
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
BROWNING'S "A Death in the Desert."
Everything about Lovey Mary was a contradiction, from her hands and
feet, which seemed to have been meant for a big girl, to her high
ideals and aspirations, that ought to have belonged to an amiable one.
The only ingredient which might have reconciled all the conflicting
elements in her chaotic little bosom was one which no one had ever
taken the trouble to supply.
When Miss Bell, the matron of the home, came to receive Lovey Mary's
confession of repentance, she found her at an up-stairs window making
hideous faces and kicking the furniture. The depth of her repentance
could always be gaged by the violence of her conduct. Miss Bell looked
at her as she would have looked at one of the hieroglyphs on the
Obelisk. She had been trying to decipher her for thirteen years.
Miss Bell was stout and prim, a combination which was surely never
intended by nature. Her gray dress and tight linen collar and cuffs
gave the uncomfortable impression of being sewed on, while her rigid
black water-waves seemed irrevocably painted upon her high forehead.
She was a routinist; she believed in system, she believed in order,
and she believed that godliness was akin to cleanliness. When she
found an exception to a rule she regarded the exception in the light
of an error. As she stood, brush in hand, before Lovey Mary, she
thought for the hundredth time that the child was an exception.
"Stand up," she said firmly but not unkindly. "I thought you had too
much sense to do your hair that way. Come back to the bath-room, and I
will arrange it properly."
Lovey Mary gave a farewell kick at the wall before she followed Miss
Bell. One side of her head was covered with tight black ringlets, and
the other bristled with curl-papers.
"When I was a little girl," said Miss Bell, running the wet comb
ruthlessly through the treasured curls, "the smoother my hair was the
better I liked it. I used to brush it down with soap and water to make
it stay."
Lovey Mary looked at the water-waves and sighed.
"If you're ugly you never can get married with anybody, can you, Miss
Bell?" she asked in a spirit of earnest inquiry.
Miss Bell's back became stiffer, if possible, than before.
"Marriage isn't the only thing in the world. The homelier you are the
better chance you have of being good. Now the Lord meant you to be
plain"--assisting Providence by drawing the braids so tight that the
girl's eyebrows were elevated with the strain. "If he had meant you to
have curls he would have given them to you."
[Illustration: "'Now the Lord meant you to be plain'"]
"Well, didn't he want me to have a mother and father?" burst forth
Lovey Mary, indignantly, "or clothes, or money, or nothing? Can't I
ever get nothing at all 'cause I wasn't started out with nothing?"
Miss Bell was too shocked to reply. She gave a final brush to the
sleek, wet head and turned sorrowfully away. Lovey Mary ran after her
and caught her hand.
"I'm sorry," she cried impulsively. "I want to be good. Please--
please--"
Miss Bell drew her hand away coldly. "You needn't go to Sabbath-school
this morning," she said in an injured tone; "you can stay here and
think over what you have said. I am not angry with you. I never allow
myself to get angry. I don't understand, that's all. You are such a
good girl about some things and so unreasonable about others. With a
good home, good clothes, and kind treatment, what else could a girl
want?"
Receiving no answer to this inquiry, Miss Bell adjusted her cuffs and
departed with the conviction that she had done all that was possible
to throw light upon a dark subject.
Lovey Mary, left alone, shed bitter tears on her clean gingham dress.
Thirteen years ought to reconcile a person even to gingham dresses
with white china buttons down the back, and round straw hats bought at
wholesale. But Lovey Mary's rebellion of spirit was something that
time only served to increase. It had started with Kate Rider, who used
to pinch her, and laugh at her, and tell the other girls to "get on to
her curves." Curves had signified something dreadful to Lovey Mary;
she would have experienced real relief could she have known that she
did not possess any. It was not Kate Rider, however, who was causing
the present tears; she had left the home two years before, and her
name was not allowed to be mentioned even in whispers. Neither was it
rebellion against the work that had cast Lovey Mary into such depths
of gloom; fourteen beds had been made, fourteen heads had been combed,
and fourteen wriggling little bodies had been cheerfully buttoned into
starchy blue ginghams exactly like her own.
Something deeper and more mysterious was fermenting in her soul--
something that made her long passionately for the beautiful things of
life, for love and sympathy and happiness; something that made her
want to be good, yet tempted her constantly to rebel against her
environs. It was just the world-old spirit that makes the veriest
little weed struggle through a chink in the rock and reach upward
toward the sun.
"What's the matter with your hair, Lovey Mary? It looks so funny,"
asked a small girl, coming up the steps.
"If anybody asts you, tell 'em you don't know," snapped Lovey Mary.
"Well, Miss Bell says for you to come down to the office," said the
other, unabashed. "There's a lady down there--a lady and a baby. Me
and Susie peeked in. Miss Bell made the lady cry; she made her wipe
the powders off her compleshun."
"And she sent for me?" asked Lovey Mary, incredulously. Such a ripple
in the still waters of the home was sufficient to interest the most
disconsolate.
"Yes; and me and Susie's going to peek some more."
Lovey Mary dried her tears and hurried down to the office. As she
stood at the door she heard a girl's excited voice protesting and
begging, and Miss Bell's placid tones attempting to calm her. They
paused as she entered.
"Mary," said Miss Bell, "you remember Kate Rider. She has brought her
child for us to take care of for a while. Have you room for him in
your division?"
As Lovey Mary looked at the gaily dressed girl on the sofa, her
animosity rekindled. It was not Kate's bold black eyes that stirred
her wrath, nor the hard red lips that recalled the taunts of other
days: it was the sight of the auburn curls gathered in tantalizing
profusion under the brim of the showy hat.
"Mary, answer my question!" said Miss Bell, sharply.
With an involuntary shudder of repugnance Lovey Mary drew her gaze
from Kate and murmured, "Yes, 'm."
"Then you can take the baby with you," continued Miss Bell, motioning
to the sleeping child. "But wait a moment. I think I will put Jennie
at the head of your division and let you have entire charge of this
little boy. He is only a year old, Kate tells me, so will need
constant attention."
Lovey Mary was about to protest, when Kate broke in:
"Oh, say, Miss Bell, please get some other girl! Tommy never would
like Lovey. He's just like me: if people ain't pretty, he don't have
no use for 'em."
"That will do, Kate," said Miss Bell, coldly. "It is only pity for the
child that makes me take him at all. You have forfeited all claim upon
our sympathy or patience. Mary, take the baby up-stairs and care for
him until I come."
Lovey Mary, hot with rebellion, picked him up and went out of the
room. At the door she stumbled against two little girls who were
listening at the keyhole.
Up-stairs in the long dormitory it was very quiet. The children had
been marched away to Sunday-school, and only Lovey Mary and the
sleeping baby were on the second floor. The girl sat beside the little
white bed and hated the world as far as she knew it: she hated Kate
for adding this last insult to the old score; she hated Miss Bell for
putting this new burden on her unwilling shoulders; she hated the
burden itself, lying there before her so serene and unconcerned; and
most of all she hated herself.
"I wisht I was dead!" she cried passionately. "The harder I try to be
good the meaner I get. Ever'body blames me, and ever'body makes fun of
me. Ugly old face, and ugly old hands, and straight old rat-tail hair!
It ain't no wonder that nobody loves me. I just wisht I was dead!"
The sunshine came through the window and made a big white patch on the
bare floor, but Lovey Mary sat in the shadow and disturbed the Sunday
quiet by her heavy sobbing.
At noon, when the children returned, the noise of their arrival woke
Tommy. He opened his round eyes on a strange world, and began to cry
lustily. One child after another tried to pacify him, but each
friendly advance increased his terror.
"Leave him be!" cried Lovey Mary. "Them hats is enough to skeer him
into fits." She picked him up, and with the knack born of experience
soothed and comforted him. The baby hid his face on her shoulder and
held her tight. She could feel the sobs that still shook the small
body, and his tears were on her cheek.
"Never mind," she said. "I ain't a-going to let 'em hurt you. I'm
going to take care of you. Don't cry any more. Look!"
She stretched forth her long, unshapely hand and made grotesque
snatches at the sunshine that poured in through the window. Tommy
hesitated and was lost; a smile struggled to the surface, then broke
through the tears.
"Look! He's laughing!" cried Lovey Mary, gleefully. "He's laughing
'cause I ketched a sunbeam for him!"
Then she bent impulsively and kissed the little red lips so close to
her own.
CHAPTER II
A RUNAWAY COUPLE
"Courage mounteth with occasion."
For two years Lovey Mary cared for Tommy: she bathed him and dressed
him, taught him to walk, and kissed his bumps to make them well; she
sewed for him and nursed him by day, and slept with him in her tired
arms at night. And Tommy, with the inscrutable philosophy of
childhood, accepted his little foster-mother and gave her his all.
One bright June afternoon the two were romping in the home yard under
the beech-trees. Lovey Mary lay in the grass, while Tommy threw
handfuls of leaves in her face, laughing with delight at her grimaces.
Presently the gate clicked, and some one came toward them.
"Good land! is that my kid?" said a woman's voice. "Come here, Tom,
and kiss your mother."
Lovey Mary, sitting up, found Kate Rider, in frills and ribbons,
looking with surprise at the sturdy child before her.
Tommy objected violently to this sudden overture and declined
positively to acknowledge the relationship. In fact, when Kate
attempted to pull him to her, he fled for protection to Lovey Mary and
cast belligerent glances at the intruder.
Kate laughed.
"Oh, you needn't be so scary; you might as well get used to me, for I
am going to take you home with me. I bet he's a corker, ain't he,
Lovey? He used to bawl all night. Sometimes I'd have to spank him two
or three times."
Lovey Mary clasped the child closer and looked up in dumb terror. Was
Tommy to be taken from her? Tommy to go away with Kate?
"Great Scott!" exclaimed Kate, exasperated at the girl's manner. "You
are just as ugly and foolish as you used to be. I'm going in to see
Miss Bell."
Lovey Mary waited until she was in the house, then she stole
noiselessly around to the office window. The curtain blew out across
her cheek, and the swaying lilacs seemed to be trying to count the
china buttons on her back; but she stood there with staring eyes and
parted lips, and held her breath to listen.
[Illustration with caption: "'Come here, Tom, and kiss your mother.'"]
"Of course," Miss Bell was saying, measuring her words with due
precision, "if you feel that you can now support your child and that
it is your duty to take him, we cannot object. There are many other
children waiting to come into the home. And yet--" Miss Bell's voice
sounded human and unnatural--"yet I wish he could stay. Have you
thought, Kate, of your responsibility toward him, of--"
"Oh! Ough!" shrieked Tommy from the playground, in tones of distress.
Lovey Mary left her point of vantage and rushed to the rescue. She
found him emitting frenzied yells, while a tiny stream of blood
trickled down his chin.
"It was my little duck," he gasped as soon as he was able to speak. "I
was tissin' him, an' he bited me."
At thought of the base ingratitude on the part of the duck, Tommy
wailed anew. Lovey Mary led him to the hydrant and bathed the injured
lip, while she soothed his feelings. Suddenly a wave of tenderness
swept over her. She held his chubby face up to hers and said
fervently:
"Tommy, do you love me?"
"Yes," said Tommy, with a reproachful eye on the duck. "Yes; I yuv to
yuv. I don't yuv to tiss, though!"
"But me, Tommy, me. Do you love me?"
"Yes," he answered gravely, "dollar an' a half."
"Whose little boy are you?"
"Yuvey's 'e boy."
Satisfied with this catechism, she put Tommy in care of another girl
and went back to her post at the window. Miss Bell was talking again.
"I will have him ready to-morrow afternoon when you come. His clothes
are all in good condition. I only hope, Kate, that you will care for
him as tenderly as Mary has. I am afraid he will miss her sadly."
"If he's like me, he'll forget about her in two or three days,"
answered the other voice. "It always was 'out of sight, out of mind'
with me."
Miss Bell's answer was indistinct, and in a few minutes Lovey Mary
heard the hall door close behind them. She shook her fists until the
lilacs trembled. "She sha'n't have him!" she whispered fiercely. "She
sha'n't let him grow up wicked like she is. I won't let him go. I'll
hide him, I'll--"
Suddenly she grew very still, and for a long time crouched motionless
behind the bushes. The problem that faced her had but one solution,
and Lovey Mary had found it.
The next morning when the sun climbed over the tree-tops and peered
into the dormitory windows he found that somebody else had made an
early rise. Lovey Mary was sitting by a wardrobe making her last will
and testament. From the neatly folded pile of linen she selected a few
garments and tied them into a bundle. Then she took out a cigar-box
and gravely contemplated the contents. There were two narrow hair-
ribbons which had evidently been one wide ribbon, a bit of rock
crystal, four paper dolls, a soiled picture-book with some other
little girl's name scratched out on the cover, and two shining silver
dollars. These composed Lovey Mary's worldly possessions. She tied the
money in her handkerchief and put it in her pocket, then got up softly
and slipped about among the little white beds, distributing her
treasures.
"I'm mad at Susie," she whispered, pausing before a tousled head; "I
hate to give her the nicest thing I've got. But she's just crazy 'bout
picture-books."
The curious sun climbed yet a little higher and saw Lovey Mary go back
to her own bed, and, rolling Tommy's clothes around her own bundle,
gather the sleeping child in her arms and steal quietly out of the
room. Then the sun got too high up in the heavens to watch little
runaway orphan girls. Nobody saw her steal through the deserted
playroom, down the clean bare steps, which she had helped to wear
away, and out through the yard to the coal-shed. Here she got the
reluctant Tommy into his clothes, and tied on his little round straw
hat, so absurdly like her own.
"Is we playin' hie-spy, Yuvey?" asked the mystified youngster.
"Yes, Tommy," she whispered, "and we are going a long way to hide. You
are my little boy now, and you must love me better than anything in
the world. Say it, Tommy; say, 'I love you better 'n anybody in the
whole world.'"
"Will I det on de rollin' honor?" asked Tommy, thinking he was
learning his golden text.
But Lovey Mary had forgotten her question. She was taking a farewell
look at the home, every nook and corner of which had suddenly grown
dear. Already she seemed a thing apart, one having no right to its
shelter and protection. She turned to where Tommy was playing with
some sticks in the corner, and bidding him not to stir or speak until
her return, she slipped back up the walk and into the kitchen. Swiftly
and quietly she made a fire in the stove and filled the kettle with
water. Then she looked about for something more she might do. On the
table lay the grocery book with a pencil attached. She thought a
moment, then wrote laboriously under the last order: "Miss Bell I will
take kere Tommy pleas don't be mad." Then she softly closed the door
behind her.
A few minutes later she lifted Tommy out of the low shed window, and
hurried him down the alley and out into the early morning streets. At
the corner they took a car, and Tommy knelt by the window and absorbed
the sights with rapt attention; to him the adventure was beginning
brilliantly. Even Lovey Mary experienced a sense of exhilaration when
she paid their fare out of one of the silver dollars. She knew the
conductor was impressed, because he said, "You better watch Buddy's
hat, ma'am." That "ma'am" pleased her profoundly; it caused her
unconsciously to assume Miss Bell's tone and manner as she conversed
with the back of Tommy's head.
"We'll go out on the avenue," she said. "We'll go from house to house
till I get work. 'Most anybody would be glad to get a handy girl that
can cook and wash and sew, only--I ain't very big, and then there's
you."
"Ain't that a big house?" shouted Tommy, half way out of the window.
"Yes; don't talk so loud. That's the court-house."
"Where they make court-plaster at?" inquired Tommy shrilly.
Lovey Mary glanced around uneasily. She hoped the old man in the
corner had not heard this benighted remark. All went well until the
car reached the terminal station. Here Tommy refused to get off. In
vain Lovey Mary coaxed and threatened.
"It'll take us right back to the home," she pleaded. "Be a good boy
and come with Lovey. I'll buy you something nice."
Tommy remained obdurate. He believed in letting well enough alone. The
joys of a street-car ride were present and tangible; "something nice"
was vague, unsatisfying.
"Don't yer little brother want to git off?" asked the conductor,
sympathetically.
"No, sir," said Lovey Mary, trying to maintain her dignity while she
struggled with her charge. "If you please, sir, would you mind holding
his feet while I loosen his hands?"
Tommy, shrieking indignant protests, was borne from the car and
deposited on the sidewalk.
"Don't you dare get limber!" threatened Lovey Mary. "If you do I'll
spank you right here on the street. Stand up! Straighten out your
legs! Tommy! do you hear me?"
Tommy might have remained limp indefinitely had not a hurdy-gurdy
opportunely arrived on the scene. It is true that he would go only in
the direction of the music, but Lovey Mary was delighted to have him
go at all. When at last they were headed for the avenue, Tommy caused
another delay.
"I want my ducky," he announced.
The words brought consternation to Lovey Mary. She had fearfully
anticipated them from the moment of leaving the home.
"I'll buy you a 'tend-like duck," she said.
"No; I want a sure-'nough ducky; I want mine."
Lovey Mary was exasperated. "Well, you can't have yours. I can't get
it for you, and you might as well hush."
His lips trembled, and two large tears rolled down his round cheeks.
When he was injured he was irresistible. Lovey Mary promptly
surrendered.
"Don't cry, baby boy! Lovey'll get you one someway."
For some time the quest of the duck was fruitless. The stores they
entered were wholesale houses for the most part, where men were
rolling barrels about or stacking skins and hides on the sidewalk.
"Do you know what sort of a store they sell ducks at?" asked Lovey
Mary of a colored man who was sweeping out an office.
"Ducks!" repeated the negro, grinning at the queerly dressed children
in their round straw hats. "Name o' de Lawd! What do you all want wif
ducks?"
Lovey Mary explained.
"Wouldn't a kitten do jes as well?" he asked kindly.
"I want my ducky," whined Tommy, showing signs of returning storm.
"I don' see no way 'cept'n' gwine to de mahket. Efen you tek de cah
you kin ride plumb down dere."
Recent experience had taught Lovey Mary to be wary of street-cars, so
they walked. At the market they found some ducks. The desired objects
were hanging in a bunch with their limp heads tied together. Further
inquiry, however, discovered some live ones in a coop.
"They're all mama ducks," objected Tommy. "I want a baby ducky. I want
my little ducky!"
When he found he could do no better, he decided to take one of the
large ones. Then he said he was hungry, so he and Mary took turn about
holding it while the other ate "po' man's pickle" and wienerwurst.
It was two o'clock by the time they reached the avenue, and by four
they were foot-sore and weary, but they trudged bravely along from
house to house asking for work. As dusk came on, the houses, which a
few squares back had been tall and imposing, seemed to be getting
smaller and more insignificant. Lovey Mary felt secure as long as she
was on the avenue. She did not know that the avenue extended for many
miles and that she had reached the frayed and ragged end of it. She
and Tommy passed under a bridge, and after that the houses all seemed
to behave queerly. Some faced one way, some another, and crisscross
between them, in front of them, and behind them ran a network of
railroad tracks.
"What's the name of this street?" asked Lovey Mary of a small, bare-
footed girl.
"'T ain't no street," answered the little girl, gazing with
undisguised amazement at the strange-looking couple; "this here is the
Cabbage Patch."
[Illustration: "'T ain't no street...; this here is the Cabbage
Patch.'"]
CHAPTER III
THE HAZY HOUSEHOLD
"Here sovereign Dirt erects her sable throne,
The house, the host, the hostess all her own."
Miss Hazy was the submerged tenth of the Cabbage Patch. The submersion
was mainly one of dirt and disorder, but Miss Hazy was such a meek,
inefficient little body that the Cabbage Patch withheld its blame and
patiently tried to furnish a prop for the clinging vine. Miss Hazy, it
is true, had Chris; but Chris was unstable, not only because he had
lost one leg, but also because he was the wildest, noisiest, most
thoughtless youngster that ever shied a rock at a lamp-post. Miss Hazy
had "raised" Chris, and the neighbors had raised Miss Hazy.
When Lovey Mary stumbled over the Hazy threshold with the sleeping
Tommy and the duck in her arms, Miss Hazy fluttered about in dismay.
She pushed the flour-sifter farther over on the bed and made a place
for Tommy, then she got a chair for the exhausted girl and hovered
about her with little chirps of consternation.
"Dear sakes! You're done tuckered out, ain't you? You an' the baby got
losted? Ain't that too bad! Must I make you some tea? Only there ain't
no fire in the stove. Dear me! what ever will I do? Jes wait a minute;
I'll have to go ast Mis' Wiggs."
In a few minutes Miss Hazy returned. With her was a bright-faced
little woman whose smile seemed to thaw out the frozen places in Lovey
Mary's heart and make her burst into tears on the motherly bosom.
"There now, there," said Mrs. Wiggs, hugging the girl up close and
patting her on the back; "there ain't no hole so deep can't somebody
pull you out. An' here's me an' Miss Hazy jes waitin' to give you a
h'ist."