Books: Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories
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Kathleen Norris >> Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories
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The old woman speculatively measured the girl's superb figure, her
glowing strength, her eager, resolute face. Mary Bell was like a
spirited horse, wild to be given her head.
"You're worth three men," said the storekeeper.
"Got light boots?"
"Yes," said the girl, thrilled and quivering.
"You run git 'em!" said Mrs. Bates, "and git your good lantern. I'll
be gitting another lantern, and some whiskey. Poor little fellers! I
hope to God they're all sneakin' home--afraid of a lickin'!--this
very minute. And Mary Bell, you tell your mother I'll close up, and
come and sit with her!"
It was a sorry search-party, after all, that presently rattled out
of town in the old wagon. On the back seat sat the impassive and
good-natured Chinese boy, and a Swedish cook discovered at the last
moment in the railroad camp and pressed into service. On the front
seat Mary Bell was wedged in between the driver and Grandpa Barry, a
thin, sinewy old man, stupid from sleep. Mary Bell never forgot the
silent drive. The evening was turning chilly, low clouds scudded
across the sky, little gusts of wind, heavy with rain, blew about
them. The fall of the horse's feet on the road and the rattle of
harness and wheels were the only sounds to break the brooding
stillness that preceded the storm. After a while the road ran level
with the marshes, and they got the rank salt breeze full in their
faces; and in the last light they could see the glitter of dark
water creeping under the rushes. The first flying drops of rain
fell.
"And right over the ridge," said Mary Bell to herself, "they are
dancing!"
A fire had been built at the edge of the marsh, and three figures
ran out from it as they came up: two boys and a heavy middle-aged
man. It was for Mary Bell to tell Henderson that it would be hours
before he could look for other help than this oddly assorted
wagonful. The man's disappointment was pitiful.
"My God--my God!" he said heavily, as the situation dawned on him,
"an' I counted on fifty! Well, 'tain't your fault, Mary Bell!"
They all climbed out, and faced the trackless darkening stretch of
pools and hummocks, the treacherous, uncertain ground beneath a
tangle of coarse grass. Even with fifty men it would have been an
ugly search.
The marsh, like all the marshes thereabout, was intersected at
irregular intervals by decrepit lines of fence-railing, running down
from solid ground to the water's edge, half a mile away. These
divisions were necessary for various reasons. In duck season the
hunters who came up from San Francisco used them both as guides and
as property lines, each club shooting over only a given number of
sections. Between seasons the farmers kept them in repair, as a
control for the cattle that strayed into the marsh in dry weather.
The distance between these shaky barriers was some two or three
hundred feet. At their far extremity, the posts were submerged in
the restless black water of the bay.
Mary Bell caught Henderson's arm as he stood baffled and silent.
"Mr. Henderson!" she said eagerly, "don't you give in! While we're
waiting for the others we can try for the boys along the fences!
There's no danger, that way! We can go way down into the marsh,
holding on,--and keep calling!"
"That's what I say!" shrilled old Barry, fired by her tone.
The Chinese boy had already taken hold of a rail, and was warily
following it across the uneven ground.
"They've BEEN there three hours, now!" groaned Henderson; but even
as he spoke he beckoned to the two little boys. Mary Bell recognized
the two survivors.
"You keep those flames so high, rain or no rain," Henderson charged
them, "that we can see 'em from anywheres!"
A moment later the searchers plunged into the marsh, facing bravely
away from lights and voices and solid earth.
Stumbling and slipping, Mary Bell followed the fence. The rain
slapped her face, and her rubber boots dragged in the shallow water.
But she thought only of five little boys losing hope and courage
somewhere in this confusing waste, and her constant shouting was
full of reassurance.
"Nobody would be scared with this fence to hang on to!" she assured
herself, "no matter how fast the tide came in!" She rested a moment
on the rail, glancing back at the distant fire, now only a dull
glow, low against the sky.
Frequently the rail was broken, and dipped treacherously for a few
feet; once it was lacking entirely, and for an awful ten feet she
must bridge the darkness without its help. She stood still, turning
her guttering lantern on waving grasses and sinister pools. "They
are all dancing now!" she said aloud, wonderingly, when she had
reached the opposite rail, with a fast-beating heart. After an
endless period of plunging and shouting, she was at the water's very
edge.
There was light enough to see the ruffled, cruel surface of the
river, where its sluggish forces swept into the bay. Idly bumping
the grasses was something that brought Mary Bell's heart into her
throat. Then she cried out in relief, for it was not the thing she
feared, but the little deserted boat, right side up.
"That means they left her!" said Mary Bell, trembling with nervous
terror. She shouted again in the darkness, before turning for the
homeward trip. It seemed very long. Once she thought she must be
going aimlessly back and forth on the same bit of rail, but a moment
more brought her to the missing rail again, and she knew she had
been right. Blown by the wind, struck by the now flying rain,
deafened by the gurgling water and the rising storm, she fought her
way back to the fire again. The others were all there, and with them
three cramped and chilled little boys, crying fright and relief, and
clinging to the nearest adult shoulder. The Chinese boy and Grandpa
Barry had found them, standing on a hummock that was still clear of
the rising tide, and shouting with all their weary strength.
"Oh, thank God!" said Mary Bell, her heart rising with sudden hope.
"We'll get the others, now, please God!" said Henderson, quietly.
"We were working too far over. You said they were all right when you
left them, Lesty?" he said to one of the shivering little lads.
"Ye-es, sir!" chattered Lesty, eagerly, shaking with nervousness.
"They was both all right! Davy wanted to git Billy over to the
fence, so if the tide come up!"--terror swept him again. "Oh, Mr.
Henderson, git 'em--git 'em! Don't leave 'em drowned out there!" he
sobbed frantically, clutching the big man with bony, wet little
hands.
"I'm going to try, Lesty!"
Henderson turned back to the marsh, and Mary Bell went too.
"Billy who?" said Mary Bell; but her heart told her, before
Henderson said it, that the answer would be, "Jim Carr's kid
brother!"
"Are you good for this?" said Henderson, when the four fittest had
reached that part of the marsh where the boys had been found.
She met his look courageously, his lantern showing her wet, brave
young face, crossed by dripping strands of hair.
"Sure!" she said.
"Well, God bless you!" he said; "God--bless--you! You take this
fence, I'll go over to that 'n."
The rushing, noisy darkness again. The horrible wind, the slipping,
the plunging again. Again the slow, slow progress; driven and
whipped now by the thought that at this very instant--or this one--
the boys might be giving out, relaxing hold, abandoning hope, and
slipping numb and unconscious into the rising, chuckling water.
Mary Bell did not think of the dance now. But she thought of rest;
of rest in the warm safety of her own home. She thought of the sunny
dooryard, the delicious security of the big kitchen; of her mother,
so placid and so infinitely dear, on her couch; of the serene
comings and goings of neighbors and friends. How wonderful it all
seemed! Lights, laughter, peace,--just to be back among them again,
and to rest!
And she was going away from it all, into the blackness. Her lantern
glimmered,--went out. Mary Bell's cramped fingers let it fall. Her
heart pounded with fear of the inky dark.
She clung to the fence with both arms, panting, resting. And while
she hung there, through rain and wind, across darkness and space,
she heard a voice, a gallant, sturdy little voice, desperately
calling,--
"Jim! Ji-i-m!"
Like an electric current, strength surged through Mary Bell.
"O God! You've saved 'em, you've got 'em safe!" she sobbed, plunging
frantically forward. And she shouted, "All right--all right,
darling! Hang on, boys! Just HANG ON! Hal-lo, there! Billy! Davy!
Here I am!"
Down in pools, up again, laughing, crying, shouting, Mary Bell
reached them at last, felt the heavenly grasp of hard little hands
reaching for hers in the dark, brushed her face against Billy Carr's
wet little cheek, and flung her arm about Davy Henderson's square
shoulders. They had been shouting and calling for two long hours,
not ten feet from the fence.
Incoherent, laughing and crying, they clung together. Davy was alert
and brave, but the smaller boy was heavy with sleep.
"Gee, it's good you came!" said Davy, simply, over and over.
"You've got your boots on!" she shouted, close to his ear; "they're
too heavy! We've got a long pull back, Davy,--I think we ought to go
stocking feet!"
"Shall we take off our coats, too?" he said sensibly.
They did so, little Billy stumbling as Mary Bell loosened his hands
from the fence. They braced the little fellow as well as they could,
and by shouted encouragement roused him to something like
wakefulness.
"Is Jim coming?" he shouted.
Mary Bell assented wildly. "Start, Davy!" she urged. "We'll keep him
between us. Right along the fence! What is it?" For he had stopped.
"The other fellers?" he said pitifully.
She told him that they were safe, safe at the fire, and she could
hear him break down and begin to cry with the first real hope that
the worst was over.
"We're going to get out of this, ain't we?" he said over and over.
And over and over Mary Bell encouraged him.
"Just one more good spurt, Davy! We'll see the fire any minute now!"
In wind and darkness and roaring water, they struggled along. The
tide was coming in fast. It was up to Mary Bell's knees; she was
almost carrying Billy.
"What is it, Davy?" she shouted, as he stopped again.
"Miss Mary Bell, aren't we going toward the river!" he shouted back.
The sickness of utter despair weakened the girl's knees. But for a
moment only. Then she drew the elder boy back, and made him pass
her. Neither one spoke.
"Remember, they may come to meet us!" she would say, when Davy
rested spent and breathless on the rail. The water was pushing about
her waist, and was about his armpits now; to step carelessly into a
pool would be fatal. Billy she was managing to keep above water by
letting him step along the middle rail, when there was a middle
rail. They made long rests, clinging close together.
"They ain't ever coming!" sobbed Davy, hopelessly. "I can't go no
farther!"
Mary Bell managed, by leaning forward, to give him a wet slap, full
in the face. The blow roused the little fellow, and he bravely
stumbled ahead again.
"That's a darling, Davy!" she shouted. A second later something
floating struck her elbow; a boy's rubber boot. It was perhaps the
most dreadful moment of the long fight, when she realized that they
were only where they had started from.
Later she heard herself urging Davy to take just ten steps more,--
just another ten. "Just think, five minutes more and we're safe,
Davy!" some one said. Later, she heard her own voice saying, "Well,
if you can't, then hang on the fence! DON'T let go the fence!" Then
there was silence. Long after, Mary Bell began to cry, and said
softly, "God, God, you know I could do this if I weren't carrying
Billy." After that it was all a troubled dream.
She dreamed that Davy suddenly said, "I can see the fire!" and that,
as she did not stir, he cried it again, this time not so near. She
dreamed that the sound of splashing boots and shouting came down
across the dark water, and that lights smote her eyelids with sharp
pain. An overwhelming dread of effort swept over her. She did not
want to move her aching body, to raise her heavy head. Somebody's
arm braced her shoulders; she toppled against it.
She dreamed that Jim Carr's voice said, "Take the kid, Sing! He's
all right!" and that Jim Carr lifted her up, and shouted out, "She's
almost gone!"
Then some one was carrying her across rough ground, across smooth
ground, to where there was a fire, and blankets, and voices--voices-
-voices.
"It makes me choke!" That was Mary Bell Barber, whispering to Jim
Carr. But she could not open her eyes.
"But drink it, dearest! Swallow it!" he pleaded.
"You were too late, Jim, we couldn't hold on!" she whispered
pitifully. And then, as the warmth and the stimulant had their
effect, she did open her eyes; and the fire, the ring of faces, the
black sky, and the moon breaking through, all slipped into place.
"Did you come for us, Jim?" she murmured, too tired to wonder why
the big fellow should cry as he put his face against hers.
"I came for you, dear! I came back to sit with you on the steps. I
didn't want to dance without my girl, and that's why I'm here. My
brave little girl!"
Mary Bell leaned against his shoulder contentedly.
"That's right; you rest!" said Jim. "We're all going home now, and
we'll have you tucked away in bed in no time. Mrs. Bates is all
ready for you!"
"Jim," whispered Mary Bell.
"Darling?"--he put his mouth close to the white lips.
"Jim, will you remind Aunty Bates to hang up my party dress real
carefully? In all the fuss some one's sure to muss it!" said Mary
Bell.
WHAT HAPPENED TO ALANNA
A capped and aproned maid, with a martyred expression, had twice
sounded the dinner-bell in the stately halls of Costello, before any
member of the family saw fit to respond to it.
Then they all came at once, with a sudden pounding of young feet on
the stairs, an uproar of young voices, and much banging of doors.
Jim and Danny, twins of fourteen, to whom their mother was wont
proudly to allude as "the top o' the line," violently left their own
sanctum on the fourth floor, and coasted down such banisters as lay
between that and the dining-room. Teresa, an angel-faced twelve-
year-old in a blue frock, shut 'The Wide, Wide World' with a sigh,
and climbed down from the window-seat in the hall.
Teresa's pious mother, in moments of exultation, loved to compare
and commend her offspring to such of the saints and martyrs as their
youthful virtues suggested. And Teresa at twelve had, as it were,
graduated from the little saints, Agnes and Rose and Cecilia, and
was now compared, in her mother's secret heart, to the gracious
Queen of all the Saints. "As she was when a little girl," Mrs.
Costello would add, to herself, to excuse any undue boldness in the
thought.
And indeed, Teresa, as she was to-night, her blue eyes still clouded
with Ellen Montgomery's sorrows, her curls tumbled about her hot
cheeks, would have made a pretty foil in a picture of old Saint
Anne.
But this story is about Alanna of the black eyes, the eight years,
the large irregular mouth, the large irregular freckles.
Alanna was outrunning lazy little Leo--her senior, but not her match
at anything--on their way to the dining-room. She was rendering
desperate the two smaller boys, Frank X., Jr., and John Henry Newman
Costello, who staggered hopelessly in her wake. They were all
hungry, clean, and good-natured, and Alanna's voice led the other
voices, even as her feet, in twinkling patent leather, led their
feet.
Following the children came their mother, fastening the rich silk
and lace at her wrists as she came. Her handsome kindly face and her
big shapely hands were still moist and glowing from soap and warm
water, and the shining rings of black hair at her temples were
moist, too.
"This is all my doin', Dad," said she, comfortably, as she and her
flock entered the dining-room. "Put the soup on, Alma. I'm the one
that was goin' to be prompt at dinner, too!" she added, with a
superintending glance for all the children, as she tied on little
John's napkin.
F.X. Costello, Senior, undertaker by profession, and mayor by an
immense majority, was already at the head of the table.
"Late, eh, Mommie?" said he, good-naturedly. He threw his newspaper
on the floor, cast a householder's critical glance at the lights and
the fire, and pushed his neatly placed knives and forks to right and
left carelessly with both his fat hands.
The room was brilliantly lighted and warm. A great fire roared in
the old-fashioned black marble grate, and electric lights blazed
everywhere. Everything in the room, and in the house, was costly,
comfortable, incongruous, and hideous. The Costellos were very rich,
and had been very poor; and certain people were fond of telling of
the queer, ridiculous things they did, in trying to spend their
money. But they were very happy, and thought their immense, ugly
house was the finest in the city, or in the world.
"Well, an' what's the news on the Rialter?" said the head of the
house now, busy with his soup.
"You'll have the laugh on me, Dad," his wife assured him, placidly.
"After all my sayin' that nothing'd take me to Father Crowley's
meetin'!"
"Oh, that was it?" said the mayor. "What's he goin' to have,--a
concert?"
"--AND a fair too!" supplemented Mrs. Costello. There was an
interval devoted on her part to various bibs and trays, and a low
aside to the waitress. Then she went on: "As you know, I went,
meanin' to beg off. On account of baby bein' so little, and Leo's
cough, and the paperers bein' upstairs,--and all! I thought I'd just
make a donation, and let it go at that. But the ladies all kind of
hung back--there was very few there--and I got talkin'--"
"Well,'tis but our dooty, after all," said the mayor, nodding
approval.
"That's all, Frank. Well! So finally Mrs. Kiljohn took the coffee,
and the Lemmon girls took the grab-bag. The Guild will look out for
the concert, and I took one fancy-work booth, and of course the
Children of Mary'll have the other, just like they always do."
"Oh, was Grace there?" Teresa was eager to know.
"Grace was, darlin'."
"And we're to have the fancy-work! You'll help us, won't you,
mother? Goody--I'm in that!" exulted Teresa.
"I'm in that, too!" echoed Alanna, quickly.
"A lot you are, you baby!" said Leo, unkindly.
"You're not a Child of Mary, Alanna," Teresa said promptly and
uneasily.
"Well--WELL--I can help!" protested Alanna, putting up her lip.
Can't I, mother? "CAN'T _I_, mother?"
"You can help ME, dovey," said her mother, absently. "I'm not goin'
to work as I did for Saint Patrick's Bazaar, Dad, and I said so!
Mrs. O'Connell and Mrs. King said they'd do all the work, if I'd
just be the nominal head. Mary Murray will do us some pillers--
leather--with Gibsons and Indians on them. And I'll have Lizzie
Bayne up here for a month, makin' me aprons and little Jappy
wrappers, and so on."
She paused over the cutlets and the chicken pie, which she had been
helping with an amazing attention to personal preference. The young
Costellos chafed at the delay, but their mother's fine eyes saw them
not.
"Kelley & Moffat ought to let me have materials at half price," she
reflected aloud. "My bill's two or three hundred a month!"
"You always say that you're not going to do a thing, and then get in
and make more than any other booth!" said Dan, proudly.
"Oh, not this year, I won't," his mother assured him. But in her
heart she knew she would.
"Aren't you glad it's fancy-work?" said Teresa. "It doesn't get all
sloppy and mussy like ice-cream, does it, mother?"
"Gee, don't you love fairs!" burst out Leo, rapturously.
"Sliding up and down the floor before the dance begins, Dan, to work
in the wax?" suggested Jimmy, in pleasant anticipation. "We go every
day and every night, don't we, mother?"
"Ask your father," said Mrs. Costello, discreetly.
But the Mayor's attention just then was taken by Alanna, who had
left her chair to go and whisper in his ear.
"Why, here's Alanna's heart broken!" said he, cheerfully, encircling
her little figure with a big arm.
Alanna shrank back suddenly against him, and put her wet cheek on
his shoulder.
"Now, whatever is it, darlin'?" wondered her mother,
sympathetically, but without concern. "You've not got a pain, have
you, dear?"
"She wants to help the Children of Mary!" said her father, tenderly.
"She wants to do as much as Tessie does!"
"Oh, but, Dad, she CAN'T!" fretted Teresa. "She's not a Child of
Mary! She oughtn't to want to tag that way. Now all the other girls'
sisters will tag!"
"They haven't got sisters!" said Alanna, red-cheeked of a sudden.
"Why, Mary Alanna Costello, they have too! Jean has, and Stella has,
and Grace has her little cousins!" protested Teresa, triumphantly.
"Never mind, baby," said Mrs. Costello, hurriedly. "Mother'll find
you something to do. There now! How'd you like to have a raffle book
on something,--a chair or a piller? And you could get all the names
yourself, and keep the money in a little bag--"
"Oh, my! I wish I could!" said Jim, artfully. "Think of the last
night, when the drawing comes! You'll have the fun of looking up the
winning number in your book, and calling it out, in the hall."
"Would I, Dad?" said Alanna, softly, but with dawning interest.
"And then, from the pulpit, when the returns are all in,"
contributed Dan, warmly, "Father Crowley will read out your name,--
With Mrs. Frank Costello's booth--raffle of sofa cushion, by Miss
Alanna Costello, twenty-six dollars and thirty-five cents!"
"Oo--would he, Dad?" said Alanna, won to smiles and dimples by this
charming prospect.
"Of course he would!" said her father. "Now go back to your seat,
Machree, and eat your dinner. When Mommer takes you and Tess to the
matinee to-morrow, ask her to bring you in to me first, and you and
I'll step over to Paul's, and pick out a table or a couch, or
something. Eh, Mommie?"
"And what do you say?" said that lady to Alanna, as the radiant
little girl went back to her chair.
Whereupon Alanna breathed a bashful "Thank you, Dad," into the
ruffled yoke of her frock, and the matter was settled.
The next day she trotted beside her father to Paul's big furniture
store, and after long hesitation selected a little desk of shining
brass and dull oak.
"Now," said her father, when they were back in his office, and
Teresa and Mrs. Costello were eager for the matinee, "here's your
book of numbers, Alanna. And here, I'll tie a pencil and a string to
it. Don't lose it. I've given you two hundred numbers at a quarter
each, and mind the minute any one pays for one, you put their name
down on the same line!"
"Oo,--oo!" said Alanna in pride. "Two hundred! That's lots of money,
isn't it, Dad? That's eleven or fourteen dollars, isn't it, Dad?"
"That's fifty dollars, goose!" said her father making a dot with the
pencil on the tip of her upturned little nose.
"Oo!" said Teresa, awed. Hatted, furred, and muffed, she leaned on
her father's shoulder.
"Oo--Dad!" whispered Alanna, with scarlet cheeks.
"So NOW!" said her mother, with a little nod of encouragement and
warning. "Put it right in your muff, lovey. Don't lose it. Dan or
Jim will help you count your money, and keep things straight."
"And to begin with, we'll all take a chance!" said the mayor,
bringing his fat palm, full of silver, up from his pocket. "How old
are you, Mommie?"
"I'm thirty-seven,--all but, as well you know, Frank!" said his
wife, promptly.
"Thirty-six AND thirty-seven for you, then!" He wrote her name
opposite both numbers. "And here's the mayor on the same page,--
forty-four! And twelve for Tessie, and eight for this highbinder on
my knee, here! And now we'll have one for little Gertie!"
Gertrude Costello was not yet three months old, her mother said.
"Well, she can have number one, anyway!" said the mayor. "You make a
rejooced rate for one family, I understand, Miss Costello?"
"I DON'T!" chuckled Alanna, locking her thin little arms about his
neck, and digging her chin into his eye. So he gave her full price,
and she went off with her mother in a state of great content,
between rows and rows of coffins, and cases of plumes, and handles
and rosettes, and designs for monuments.
"Mrs. Church will want some chances, won't she, mother?" she said
suddenly.
"Let Mrs. Church alone, darlin'," advised Mrs. Costello. "She's not
a Catholic, and there's plenty to take chances without her!"
Alanna reluctantly assented; but she need not have worried. Mrs.
Church voluntarily took many chances, and became very enthusiastic
about the desk.
She was a pretty, clever young woman, of whom all the Costellos were
very fond. She lived with a very young husband, and a very new baby,
in a tiny cottage near the big Irish family, and pleased Mrs.
Costello by asking her advice on all domestic matters and taking it.
She made the Costello children welcome at all hours in her tiny,
shining kitchen, or sunny little dining-room. She made them candy
and told them stories. She was a minister's daughter, and wise in
many delightful, girlish, friendly ways.
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