Read Ebook: The Little Gray Lady 1909 by Smith Francis Hopkinson

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Ebook has 118 lines and 7717 words, and 3 pages

THE LITTLE GRAY LADY

Once in a while there come to me out of the long ago the fragments of a story I have not thought of for years--one that has been hidden in the dim lumber-room of my brain where I store my by-gone memories.

These fragments thrust themselves out of the past as do the cuffs of an old-fashioned coat, the flutings of a flounce, or the lacings of a bodice from out a quickly opened bureau drawer. Only when you follow the cuff along the sleeve to the broad shoulder; smooth out the crushed frill that swayed about her form, and trace the silken thread to the waist it tightened, can you determine the fashion of the day in which they were worn.

And with the rummaging of this lumber-room come the odors: dry smells from musty old trunks packed with bundles of faded letters and worthless deeds tied with red tape; musty smells from dust-covered chests, iron bound, holding mouldy books, their backs loose; pungent smells from cracked wardrobes stuffed with moth-eaten hunting-coats, riding-trousers, and high boots with rusty spurs--cross-country riders these--roisterers and gamesters--a sorry lot, no doubt.

Or perhaps it is an old bow-legged high-boy--its club-feet slippered on easy rollers--the kind with deep drawers kept awake by rattling brass handles, its outside veneer so highly polished that you are quite sure it must have been brought up in some distinguished family. The scent of old lavender and spiced rose leaves, and a stick or two of white orris root, haunt this relic: my lady's laces must be kept fresh, and so must my lady's long white mitts--they reach from her dainty knuckles quite to her elbow. And so must her cobwebbed silk stockings and the filmy kerchief she folds across her bosom:

It is this kind of a drawer that I am opening now--one belonging to the Little Gray Lady.

As I look through its contents my eyes resting on the finger of a glove, the end of a lace scarf, and the handle of an old fan, my mind goes back to the last time she wore them. Then I begin turning everything upside down, lifting the corner of this incident, prying under that no bit of talk, recalling what he said and who told of it , and whose fault it was that the match was broken off, and why she, of all women in the world, should have remained single all those years. Why, too, she should have lost her identity, so to speak, and become the Little Gray Lady.

And yet no sobriquet could better express her personality: She was little--a dainty, elf-like littleness, with tiny feet and wee hands; she was gray--a soft, silver gray--too gray for her forty years ; and she was a lady in every beat of her warm heart; in every pressure of her white hand; in her voice, speech--in all her thoughts and movements.

She lived in the quaintest of old houses fronted by a brick path bordered with fragrant box, which led up to an old-fashioned porch, its door brightened by a brass knocker. This, together with the knobs, steps, and slits of windows on each side of the door, was kept scrupulously clean by old Margaret, who had lived with her for years.

But it is her personality and not her surroundings that lingers in my memory. No one ever heard anything sweeter than her voice; in and nobody ever looked into a lovelier face, even if there were little hollows in the cheeks and shy, fanlike wrinkles lurking about the corners of her lambent brown eyes. Nor did her gray hair mar her beauty. It was not old, dry, and withered--a wispy gray. It was a new, all-of-a-sudden gray, and in less than a week--so Margaret once told me--bleaching its brown gold to silver. But the gloss remained, and so did the richness of the folds, and the wealth and weight of it.

Inside the green-painted door, with its white trim and brass knocker and knobs, there was a narrow hall hung with old portraits, opening into a room literally all fireplace. Here there were gouty sofas, and five or six big easy-chairs ranged in a half-circle, with arms held out as if begging somebody to sit in them; and here, too, was an embroidered worsted fire screen that slid up and down a standard, to shield one's face from the blazing logs; and there were queer tables and old-gold curtains looped back with brass rosettes--ears really--behind which the tresses of the parted curtains were tucked; and there were more old portraits in dingy frames, and samplers under glass, and a rug which some aunt had made with her own hands from odds and ends; and a huge work-basket spilling worsteds, and last, and by no manner of means least, a big chintz-covered rocking-chair, the little lady's very own--its thin ankles and splay feet hidden by a modest frill. There were all these things and a lot more--and yet I still maintain that the room was just one big fireplace. Not alone because of its size , but because of the wonderful and never-to-be-told-of things which constantly took place before its blazing embers.

For this fireplace was the Little Gray Lady's altar. Here she dispensed wisdom and cheer and love. Everybody in Pomford village had sat in one or the other of the chairs grouped about it and had poured out their hearts to her. All sorts of pourings: love affairs, for instance, that were hopeless until she would take the girl's hand in her own and smooth out the tangle; to-say nothing of bickerings behind closed doors, with two lives pulling apart until her dear arms brought them together.

But all this is only the outside of the old mahogany high-boy with its meerschaum-pipe polish, spraddling legs, and rattling handles.

Now for the Little Gray Lady's own particular drawer.

It was Christmas Eve, and Kate Dayton, one of Pomford's pretty girls, had found the Little Gray Lady sitting alone before the fire gazing into the ashes, her small frame almost hidden in the roomy chair. The winter twilight had long since settled and only the flickering blaze of the logs and the dim glow from one lone candle illumined the room. This, strange to say, was placed on a table in a corner where its rays shed but little light in the room.

"Oh! Cousin Annie," moaned Kate , "I didn't mean anything. Mark came in just at the wrong minute, and--and--" The poor girl's tears smothered the rest.

"Don't let him go, dearie," came the answer, when she had heard the whole story, the girl on her knees, her head in her lap, the wee hand stroking the fluff of golden hair dishevelled in her grief.

"Oh, but he won't stay!" moaned Kate. "He says he is going to Rio--way out to South America to join his Uncle Harry."

"He won't go, dearie--not if you tell him the truth and make him tell you the truth. Don't let your pride come in; don't beat around the bush or make believe you are hurt or misunderstood, or that you don't care. You do care. Better be a little humble now than humble all your life. It only takes a word. Hold out your hand and say: 'I'm sorry, Mark--please forgive me.' If he loves you--and he does--"

The girl raised her head: "Oh! Cousin Annie! How do you know?"

She laughed gently. "Because he was here, dearie, half an hour ago and told me so. He thought you owed him the dance, and he was a little jealous of Tom."

"But Tom had asked me--"

"Yes--and so had Mark--"

"Yes--but he had no right--" She was up in arms again: she wouldn't--she couldn't--and again an outburst of tears choked her words.

The Little Gray Lady had known Kate's mother, now dead, and what might have happened but for a timely word--and she knew to her own sorrow what had happened for want of one. Kate and Mark should not repeat that experience if she could help it. She had saved the mother in the old days by just such a word. She would save the daughter in the same way. And the two were much alike--same slight, girlish figure; same blond hair and blue eyes; same expression, and the same impetuous, high-strung temperament. "If that child's own mother walked in this minute I couldn't tell 'em apart, they do favor one another so," old Margaret had told her mistress when she opened the door for the girl, and she was right. Pomford village was full of these hereditary likenesses. Mark Dab-ney, whom all the present trouble was about, was so like his father at his age that his Uncle Harry had picked Mark out on a crowded dock when the lad had visited him in Rio the year before, although he had not seen the boy's father for twenty years--so strong was the family likeness.

If there was to be a quarrel it must not be between the Dabneys and the Daytons, of all families. There had been suffering enough in the old days.

"Listen, dearie," she said in her gentle, crooning tone, patting the girl's cheek as she talked. "A quarrel where there is no love is soon forgotten, but a difference when both love may, if not quickly healed, leave a scar that will last through life."

"There are as good fish in the sea as were ever caught," cried the girl in sheer bravado, brushing away her tears.

"Don't believe it, dearie--and don't ever say it. That has wrecked more lives than you know. That is what I once knew a girl to say--a girl just about your age--"

"But she found somebody else, and that's just what I'm going to do. I'm not going to have Mark read me a lecture every time I want to do something he doesn't like. Didn't your girl find somebody else?"

"No--never. She is still unmarried."

"Yes--but it wasn't her fault, was it?"

"Yes--although she did not know it at the time. She opened a door suddenly and found her lover alone with another girl. The two had stolen off together where they would not be interrupted. He was pleading for his college friend--straightening out just some such foolish quarrel as you have had with Mark--but the girl would not understand; nor did she know the truth until a year afterward. Then it was too late."

The Little Gray Lady stopped, lifted her hand from the girl's head, and turned her face toward the now dying fire.

"And what became of him?" asked the girl in a hushed voice, as if she dared not awaken the memory.

"He went away and she has never seen him since."

For some minutes there was silence, then Kate said in a braver tone:

"And he married somebody else?"

"No."

"Well, then, she died?"

"No."

The Littie Lady had not moved, nor had she taken her eyes from the blaze. She seemed to be addressing some invisible body who could hear and understand. The girl felt its influence and a tremor ran through her. The fitful blaze casting weird shadows helped this feeling. At last, with an effort, she asked:

"You say you know them both, Cousin Annie?"

"Yes--he was my dear friend. I was just thinking of him when you came in."

The charred logs broke into a heap of coals; the blaze flickered and died. But for the lone candle in the corner the room would have been in total darkness.

"Shall I light another candle, Cousin Annie?" shivered the girl, "or bring that one nearer?"

"No, it's Christmas Eve, and I only light one candle on Christmas Eve."

"But what's one candle! Why, father has the whole house as bright as day and every fire blazing." The girl sprang to her feet and stepped nearer the hearth. She would be less nervous, she thought, if she moved about, and then the warmth of the fire was somehow reassuring. "Please let me light them all, Cousin Annie," she pleaded, reaching out her hand toward a cluster in an old-fashioned candelabra--"and if there aren't enough I'll get more from Margaret."

"No, no--one will do. It is an old custom of mine; I've done it for twenty years."

"But don't you love Christmas?" Kate argued, her nervousness increasing. The ghostly light and the note of pain in her companion's voice were strangely affecting.

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