Books: Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories

K >> Kathleen Norris >> Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories

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And in return Mrs. Costello did her many a kindly act, and sent her
almost daily presents in the most natural manner imaginable.

But Mrs. Church made Alanna very unhappy about the raffled desk. It
so chanced that it matched exactly the other furniture in Mrs.
Church's rather bare little drawing-room, and this made her eager to
win it. Alanna, at eight, long familiar with raffles and their ways,
realized what a very small chance Mrs. Church stood of getting the
desk. It distressed her very much to notice that lady's growing
certainty of success.

She took chance after chance. And with every chance she warned
Alanna of the dreadful results of her not winning, and Alanna, with
a worried line between her eyes, protested her helplessness afresh.

"She WILL do it, Dad!" the little girl confided to him one evening,
when she and her book and her pencil were on his knee. "And it
WORRIES me so."

"Oh, I hope she wins it," said Teresa, ardently. "She's not a
Catholic, but we're praying for her. And you know people who aren't
Catholics, Dad, are apt to think that our fairs are pretty--pretty
MONEY-MAKING, you know!"

"And if only she could point to that desk," said Alanna, "and say
that she won it at a Catholic fair."

"But she won't," said Teresa, suddenly cold.

"I'm PRAYING she will," said Alanna, suddenly.

"Oh, I don't think you ought, do you, Dad?" said Teresa, gravely.
"Do you think she ought, Mommie? That's just like her pouring her
holy water over the kitten. You oughtn't to do those things."

"I ought to," said Alanna, in a whisper that reached only her
father's ear.

"You suit me, whatever you do," said Mayor Costello; "and Mrs.
Church can take her chances with the rest of us."

Mrs. Church seemed to be quite willing to do so. When at last the
great day of the fair came, she was one of the first to reach the
hall, in the morning, to ask Mrs. Costello how she might be of use.

"Now wait a minute, then!" said Mrs. Costello, cordially. She
straightened up, as she spoke, from an inspection of a box of fancy-
work. "We could only get into the hall this hour gone, my dear, and
'twas a sight, after the Native Sons' Banquet last night. It'll be a
miracle if we get things in order for to-night. Father Crowley said
he'd have three carpenters here this morning at nine, without fail;
but not one's come yet. That's the way!"

"Oh, we'll fix things," said Mrs. Church, shaking out a dainty
little apron.

Alanna came briskly up, and beamed at her. The little girl was
driving about on all sorts of errands for her mother, and had come
in to report.

"Mother, I went home," she said, in a breathless rush, "and told
Alma four extra were coming to lunch, and here are your big
scissors, and I told the boys you wanted them to go out to Uncle
Dan's for greens, they took the buckboard, and I went to Keyser's
for the cheese-cloth, and he had only eighteen yards of pink, but he
thinks Kelley's have more, and there are the tacks, and they don't
keep spool-wire, and the electrician will be here in ten minutes."

"Alanna, you're the pride of me life," said her mother, kissing her.
"That's all now, dearie. Sit down and rest."

"Oh, but I'd rather go round and see things," said Alanna, and off
she went.

The immense hall was filled with the noise of voices, hammers, and
laughter. Groups of distracted women were forming and dissolving
everywhere around chaotic masses of boards and bunting. Whenever a
carpenter started for the door, or entered it, he was waylaid,
bribed, and bullied by the frantic superintendents of the various
booths. Messengers came and went, staggering under masses of
evergreen, carrying screens, rope, suit-cases, baskets, boxes,
Japanese lanterns, freezers, rugs, ladders, and tables.

Alanna found the stage fascinating. Lunch and dinner were to be
served there, for the five days of the fair, and it had been set
with many chairs and tables, fenced with ferns and bamboo. Alanna
was charmed to arrange knives and forks, to unpack oily hams and
sticky cakes, and great bowls of salad, and to store them neatly
away in a green room.

The grand piano had been moved down to the floor. Now and then an
audacious boy or two banged on it for the few moments that it took
his mother's voice or hands to reach him. Little girls gently played
The Carnival of Venice or Echoes of the Ball, with their scared eyes
alert for reproof. And once two of the "big" Sodality girls came up,
assured and laughing and dusty, and boldly performed one of their
convent duets. Some of the tired women in the booths straightened up
and clapped, and called "encore!"

Teresa was not one of these girls. Her instrument was the violin;
moreover, she was busy and absorbed at the Children of Mary's booth,
which by four o'clock began to blossom all over its white-draped
pillars and tables with ribbons and embroidery and tissue paper, and
cushions and aprons and collars, and all sorts of perfumed
prettiness.

The two priests were constantly in evidence, their cassocks and
hands showing unaccustomed dust.

And over all the confusion, Mrs. Costello shone supreme. Her brisk,
big figure, with skirts turned back, and a blue apron still further
protecting them, was everywhere at once; laughter and encouragement
marked her path. She wore a paper of pins on the breast of her silk
dress, she had a tack hammer thrust in her belt. In her apron
pockets were string, and wire, and tacks. A big pair of scissors
hung at her side, and a pencil was thrust through her smooth black
hair. She advised and consulted and directed; even with the priests
it was to be observed that her mild, "Well, Father, it seems to me,"
always won the day. She led the electricians a life of it; she
became the terror of the carpenters' lives.

Where was the young lady that played the violin going to stay? Send
her up to Mrs. Costello's.--Heavens! We were short a tablecloth! Oh,
but Mrs. Costello had just sent Dan home for one.--How on earth
could the Male Quartette from Tower Town find its way to the hall?
Mrs. Costello had promised to tell Mr. C. to send a carriage for
them.

She came up to the Children of Mary's booth about five o'clock.

"Well, if you girls ain't the wonders!" she said to the tired little
Sodalists, in a tone of unbounded admiration and surprise. "You make
me ashamed of me own booth. This is beautiful."

"Oh, do you think so, mother?" said Teresa, wistfully, clinging to
her mother's arm.

"I think it's grand!" said Mrs. Costello, with conviction. There was
a delighted laugh. "I'm going to bring all the ladies up to see it."

"Oh, I'm so glad!" said all the girls together, reviving visibly.

"An' the pretty things you got!" went on the cheering matron.
"You'll clear eight hundred if you'll clear a cent. And now put me
down for a chance or two; don't be scared, Mary Riordan; four or
five! I'm goin' to bring Mr. Costeller over here to-night, and don't
you let him off too easy."

Every one laughed joyously.

"Did you hear of Alanna's luck?" said Mrs. Costello. "When the
Bishop got here he took her all around the hall with him, and
between this one and that, every last one of her chances is gone.
She couldn't keep her feet on the floor for joy. The lucky girl!
They're waitin' for you, Tess, darlin', with the buckboard. Go home
and lay down awhile before dinner."

"Aren't you lucky!" said Teresa, as she climbed a few minutes later
into the back seat with Jim, and Dan pulled out the whip.

Alanna, swinging her legs, gave a joyful assent. She was too happy
to talk, but the other three had much to say.

"Mother thinks we'll make eight hundred dollars," said Teresa.

"GEE!" said the twins together, and Dan added, "If only Mrs. Church
wins that desk now."

"Who's going to do the drawing of numbers?" Jimmy wondered.

"Bishop," said Dan, "and he'll call down from the platform, 'Number
twenty-six wins the desk.' And then Alanna'll look in her book, and
pipe up and say, 'Daniel Ignatius Costello, the handsomest fellow in
the parish, wins the desk.'"

"Twenty-six is Harry Plummer," said Alanna, seriously, looking up
from her chance book, at which they all laughed.

"But take care of that book," warned Teresa, as she climbed down.
"Oh, I will!" responded Alanna, fervently.

And through the next four happy days she did, and took the
precaution of tying it by a stout cord to her arm.

Then on Saturday, the last afternoon, quite late, when her mother
had suggested that she go home with Leo and Jack and Frank and
Gertrude and the nurses, Alanna felt the cord hanging loose against
her hand, and looking down, saw that the book was gone.

She was holding out her arms for her coat when this took place, and
she went cold all over. But she did not move, and Minnie buttoned
her in snugly, and tied the ribbons of her hat with cold, hard
knuckles, without suspecting anything.

Then Alanna disappeared and Mrs. Costello sent the maids and babies
on without her. It was getting dark and cold for the small
Costellos.

But the hour was darker and colder for Alanna. She searched and she
hoped and she prayed in vain. She stood up, after a long hands-and-
knees expedition under the tables where she had been earlier, and
pressed her right hand over her eyes, and said aloud in her misery,
"Oh, I CAN'T have lost it! I CAN'T have. Oh, don't let me have lost
it!"

She went here and there as if propelled by some mechanical force, a
wretched, restless little figure. And when the dreadful moment came
when she must give up searching, she crept in beside her mother in
the carriage, and longed only for some honorable death.

When they all went back at eight o'clock, she recommenced her search
feverishly, with that cruel alternation of hope and despair and
weariness that every one knows. The crowds, the lights, the music,
the laughter, and the noise, and the pervading odor of pop-corn were
not real, when a shabby, brown little book was her whole world, and
she could not find it.

"The drawing will begin," said Alanna, "and the Bishop will call out
the number! And what'll I say? Every one will look at me; and HOW
can I say I've lost it! Oh, what a baby they'll call me!"

"Father'll pay the money back," she said, in sudden relief. But the
impossibility of that swiftly occurred to her, and she began hunting
again with fresh terror.

"But he can't! How can he? Two hundred names; and I don't know them,
or half of them."

Then she felt the tears coming, and she crept in under some benches,
and cried.

She lay there a long time, listening to the curious hum and buzz
above her. And at last it occurred to her to go to the Bishop, and
tell this old, kind friend the truth.

But she was too late. As she got to her feet, she heard her own name
called from the platform, in the Bishop's voice.

"Where's Alanna Costello? Ask her who has number eighty-three on the
desk. Eighty-three wins the desk! Find little Alanna Costello!"

Alanna had no time for thought. Only one course of action occurred
to her. She cleared her throat.

"Mrs. Will Church has that number, Bishop," she said.

The crowd about her gave way, and the Bishop saw her, rosy,
embarrassed, and breathless.

"Ah, there you are!" said the Bishop. "Who has it?"

"Mrs. Church, your Grace," said Alanna, calmly this time.

"Well, did you EVER," said Mrs. Costello to the Bishop. She had gone
up to claim a mirror she had won, a mirror with a gold frame, and
lilacs and roses painted lavishly on its surface.

"Gee, I bet Alanna was pleased about the desk!" said Dan in the
carriage.

"Mrs. Church nearly cried," Teresa said. "But where'd Alanna go to?
I couldn't find her until just a few minutes ago, and then she was
so queer!"

"It's my opinion she was dead tired," said her mother. "Look how
sound she's asleep! Carry her up, Frank. I'll keep her in bed in the
morning."

They kept Alanna in bed for many mornings, for her secret weighed on
her soul, and she failed suddenly in color, strength, and appetite.
She grew weak and nervous, and one afternoon, when the Bishop came
to see her, worked herself into such a frenzy that Mrs. Costello
wonderingly consented to her entreaty that he should not come up.

She would not see Mrs. Church, nor go to see the desk in its new
house, nor speak of the fair in any way. But she did ask her mother
who swept out the hall after the fair.

"I did a good deal meself," said Mrs. Costello, dashing one hope to
the ground. Alanna leaned back in her chair, sick with
disappointment.

One afternoon, about a week after the fair, she was brooding over
the fire. The other children were at the matinee, Mrs. Costello was
out, and a violent storm was whirling about the nursery windows.

Presently, Annie, the laundress, put her frowsy head in at the door.
She was a queer, warm-hearted Irish girl; her big arms were still
streaming from the tub, and her apron was wet.

"Ahl alone?" said Annie, with a broad smile.

"Yes; come in, won't you, Annie?" said little Alanna.

"I cahn't. I'm at the toobs," said Annie, coming in, nevertheless.
"I was doin' all the tableclot's and napkins, an' out drops your
little buke!"

"My--what did you say?" said Alanna, very white.

"Your little buke," said Annie. She laid the chance book on the
table, and proceeded to mend the fire.

Alanna sank back in her chair. She twisted her fingers together, and
tried to think of an appropriate prayer.

"Thank you, Annie," she said weakly, when the laundress went out.
Then she sprang for the book. It slipped twice from her cold little
fingers before she could open it.

"Eighty-three!" she said hoarsely. "Sixty--seventy--eighty-three!"

She looked and looked and looked. She shut the book and opened it
again, and looked. She laid it on the table, and walked away from
it, and then came back suddenly, and looked. She laughed over it,
and cried over it, and thought how natural it was, and how wonderful
it was, all in the space of ten blissful minutes.

And then, with returning appetite and color and peace of mind, her
eyes filled with pity for the wretched little girl who had watched
this same sparkling, delightful fire so drearily a few minutes ago.

Her small soul was steeped in gratitude. She crooked her arm and put
her face down on it, and sank to her knees.

"NEW white dress, is it?" said Mrs. Costello in bland surprise.
"Well, my, my, my! You'll have Dad and me in the poorhouse!"

She had been knitting a pink and white jacket for somebody's baby,
but now she put it into the silk bag on her knee, dropped it on the
floor, and with one generous sweep of her big arms gathered Alanna
into her lap instead. Alanna was delighted to have at last attracted
her mother's whole attention, after some ten minutes of unregarded
whispering in her ear. She settled her thin little person with the
conscious pleasure of a petted cat.

"What do you know about that, Dad?" said Mrs. Costello, absently, as
she stiffened the big bow over Alanna's temple into a more erect
position. "You and Tess could wear your Christmas procession
dresses," she suggested to the little girl.

Teresa, apparently absorbed until this instant in what the young
Costellos never called anything but the "library book," although
that volume changed character and title week after week, now shut it
abruptly, came around the reading-table to her mother's side, and
said in a voice full of pained reminder:

"Mother! EVERY ONE will have new white dresses and blue sashes for
Superior's feast!"

"I bet you Superior won't!" said Jim, frivolously, from the picture-
puzzle he and Dan were reconstructing. Alanna laughed joyously, but
Teresa looked shocked.

"Mother, ought he say that about Superior?" she asked.

"Jimmy, don't you be pert about the Sisters," said his mother,
mildly. And suddenly the Mayor's paper was lowered, and he was
looking keenly at his son over his glasses.

"What did you say, Jim?" said he. Jim was instantly smitten scarlet
and dumb, but Mrs. Costello hastily explained that it was but a bit
of boy's nonsense, and dismissed it by introducing the subject of
the new white dresses.

"Well, well, well! There's nothing like having two girls in
society!" said the Mayor, genially, winding one of Teresa's curls
about his fat finger. "What's this for, now? Somebody graduating?"

"It's Mother Superior's Golden Jubilee," explained Teresa, "and
there will be a reunion of 'lumnae, and plays by the girls, you
know, and duets by the big girls, and needlework by the Spanish
girls. And our room and Sister Claudia's is giving a new chapel
window, a dollar a girl, and Sister Ligouri's room is giving the
organ bench."

"And our room is giving a spear," said Alanna, uncertainly.

"A spear, darlin'?" wondered her mother. "What would you give that
to Superior for?" Jim and Dan looked up expectantly, the Mayor's
mouth twitched. Alanna buried her face in her mother's neck, where
she whispered an explanation.

"Well, of course!" said Mrs. Costello, presently, to the company at
large. Her eye held a warning that her oldest sons did not miss. "As
she says, 'tis a ball all covered with islands and maps, Dad. A
globe, that's the other name for it!"

"Ah, yes, a spear, to be sure!" assented the Mayor, mildly, and
Alanna returned to view.

"But the best of the whole programme is the grandchildren's part,"
volunteered Teresa. "You know, Mother, the girls whose mothers went
to Notre Dame are called the 'grandchildren.' Alanna and I are,
there are twenty-two of us in all. And we are going to have a
special march and a special song, and present Superior with a
bouquet!"

"And maybe Teresa's going to present it and say the salutation!"
exulted Alanna.

"No, Marg'ret Hammond will," Teresa corrected her quickly.
"Marg'ret's three months older than me. First they were going to
have me, but Marg'ret's the oldest. And she does it awfully nicely,
doesn't she, Alanna? Sister Celia says it's really the most
important thing of the day. And we all stand round Marg'ret while
she does it. And the best of it all is, it's a surprise for
Superior!"

"Not a surprise like Christmas surprises," amended Alanna,
conscientiously. "Superior sort of knows we are doing something,
because she hears the girls practising, and she sees us going
upstairs to rehearse. But she will p'tend to be surprised."

"And it's new dresses all 'round, eh?" said her father.

"Oh, yes, we must!" said Teresa, anxiously.

"Well, I'll see about it," promised Mrs. Costello.

"Don't you want to afford the expense, mother?" Alanna whispered in
her ear. Mrs. Costello was much touched.

"Don't you worry about that, lovey!" said she. The Mayor had
presumably returned to his paper, but his absent eyes were fixed far
beyond the printed sheet he still held tilted carefully to the
light.

"Marg'ret Hammond--whose girl is that, then?" he asked presently.

"She's a girl whose mother died," supplied Alanna, cheerfully.
"She's awfully smart. Sister Helen teaches her piano for nothing,--
she's a great friend of mine. She likes me, doesn't she, Tess?"

"She's three years older'n you are, Alanna," said Teresa, briskly,
"and she's in our room! I don't see how you can say she's a friend
of YOURS! Do you, mother?"

"Well," said Alanna, getting red, "she is. She gave me a rag when I
cut me knee, and one day she lifted the cup down for me when Mary
Deane stuck it up on a high nail, so that none of us could get
drinks, and when Sister Rose said, 'Who is talking?' she said Alanna
Costello wasn't 'cause she's sitting here as quiet as a mouse!'"

"All that sounds very kind and friendly to me," said Mrs. Costello,
soothingly.

"I expect that's Doctor Hammond's girl?" said the Mayor.

"No, sir," said Dan. "These are the Hammonds who live over by the
bridge. There's just two kids, Marg'ret and Joe, and their father.
Joe served the eight o'clock Mass with me one week,--you know, Jim,
the week you were sick."

"Sure," said Jim. "Hammond's a nice feller."

Their father scraped his chin with a fat hand.

"I know them," he said ruminatively. Mrs. Costello looked up.

"That's not the Hammond you had trouble with at the shop, Frank?"
she said.

"Well, I'm thinking maybe it is," her husband admitted. "He's had a
good deal of bad luck one way or another, since he lost his wife."
He turned to Teresa. "You be as nice as you can to little Marg'ret
Hammond, Tess," said he.

"I wonder who the wife was?" said Mrs. Costello. "If this little
girl is a 'grandchild,' I ought to know the mother. Ask her, Tess."

Teresa hesitated.

"I don't play with her much, mother. And she's sort of shy," she
began.

"I'll ask her," said Alanna, boldly. "I don't care if she IS going
on twelve. She goes up to the chapel every day, and I'll stop her
to-morrow, and ask her! She's always friendly to me."

Mayor Costello had returned to his paper. But a few hours later,
when all the children except Gertrude were settled for the night,
and Gertrude, in a state of milky beatitude, was looking straight
into her mother's face above her with blue eyes heavy with sleep, he
enlightened his wife further concerning the Hammonds.

"He was with me at the shop," said the Mayor, "and I never was
sorrier to let any man go. But it seemed like his wife's death drove
him quite wild. First it was fighting with the other boys, and then
drink, and then complaints here and there and everywhere, and Kelly
wouldn't stand for it. I wish I'd kept him on a bit longer, myself,
what with his having the two children and all. He's got a fine head
on him, and a very good way with people in trouble. Kelly himself
was always sending him to arrange about flowers and carriages and
all. Poor lad! And then came the night he was tipsy, and got locked
in the warehouse--"

"I know," said Mrs. Costello, with a pitying shake of the head, as
she gently adjusted the sleeping Gertrude. "Has he had a job since,
Frank?"

"He was with a piano house," said her husband, uneasily, as he went
slowly on with his preparations for the night. "Two children, has
he? And a boy on the altar. 'Tis hard that the children have to pay
for it."

"Alanna'll find out who the wife was. She never fails me," said Mrs.
Costello, turning from Gertrude's crib with sudden decision in her
voice. "And I'll do something, never fear!"

Alanna did not fail. She came home the next day brimming with the
importance of her fulfilled mission.

"Her mother's name was Harmonica Moore!" announced Alanna, who could
be depended upon for unfailing inaccuracy in the matter of names.
Teresa and the boys burst into joyous laughter, but the information
was close enough for Mrs. Costello.

"Monica Moore!" she exclaimed. "Well, for pity's sake! Of course I
knew her, and a sweet, dear girl she was, too. Stop laughing at
Alanna, all of you, or I'll send you upstairs until Dad gets after
you. Very quiet and shy she was, but the lovely singing voice! There
wasn't a tune in the world she wouldn't lilt to you if you asked
her. Well, the poor child, I wish I'd never lost sight of her." She
pondered a moment." Is the boy still serving Mass at St. Mary's,
Dan?" she said then.

"Sure," said Jim. For Dan was absorbed in the task of restoring
Alanna's ruffled feelings by inserting a lighted match into his
mouth.

"Well, that's good," pursued their mother. "You bring him home to
breakfast after Mass any day this week, Jim. And, Tess, you must
bring the little girl in after school. Tell her I knew her dear
mother." Mrs. Costello's eyes, as she returned placidly to the task
of labelling jars upon shining jars of marmalade, shone with their
most radiant expression.

Marg'ret and Joe Hammond were constant visitors in the big Costello
house after that. Their father was away, looking for work, Mrs.
Costello imagined and feared, and they were living with some vague
"lady across the hall." So the Mayor's wife had free rein, and she
used it. When Marg'ret got one of her shapeless, leaky shoes cut in
the Costello barn, she was promptly presented with shining new ones,
"the way I couldn't let you get a cold and die on your father,
Marg'ret, dear!" said Mrs. Costello. The twins' outgrown suits were
found to fit Joe Hammond to perfection, "and a lucky thing I thought
of it, Joe, before I sent them off to my sister's children in
Chicago!" observed the Mayor's wife. The Mayor himself heaped his
little guests' plates with the choicest of everything on the table,
when the Hammonds stayed to dinner. Marg'ret frequently came home
between Teresa and Alanna to lunch, and when Joe breakfasted after
Mass with Danny and Jim, Mrs. Costello packed his lunch with theirs,
exulting in the chance. The children became fast friends, and indeed
it would have been hard to find better playfellows for the young
Costellos, their mother often thought, than the clever, appreciative
little Hammonds.

Meantime, the rehearsals for Mother Superior's Golden Jubilee
proceeded steadily, and Marg'ret, Teresa, and Alanna could talk of
nothing else. The delightful irregularity of lessons, the enchanting
confusion of rehearsals, the costumes, programme, and decorations
were food for endless chatter. Alanna, because Marg'ret was so
genuinely fond of her, lived in the seventh heaven of bliss,
trotting about with the bigger girls, joining in their plans, and
running their errands. The "grandchildren" were to have a play,
entitled "By Nero's Command," in which both Teresa and Marg'ret
sustained prominent parts, and even Alanna was allotted one line to
speak. It became an ordinary thing, in the Costello house, to hear
the little girl earnestly repeating this line to herself at quiet
moments, "The lions,--oh, the lions!" Teresa and Marg'ret, in their
turn, frequently rehearsed a heroic dialogue which began with the
stately line, uttered by Marg'ret in the person of a Roman princess:
"My slave, why art thou always so happy at thy menial work?"

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