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Mary Cary, Frequently Martha

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<h2>VI</h2> <h2>"MY LADY OF THE LOVELY HEART"</h2> Beautiful gloriousness! Miss Katherine has come back! What a different place some people can make the same place! Yesterday there wasn't an interesting thing in Yorkburg. Nothing but dust and shabby old houses and poky people who knew nothing to talk about, and to-day—oh, to-day it's dear! I love it! You see, after that wedding everything went wrong. The girls said it wasn't fair for me to be punished so much more than the rest, and they wanted to tell the Board about it; but for once I agreed with Miss Bray. "I did it. I made it up and fixed everything, and you all just agreed," I said. "And if anybody has to pay, I'm the one to do it." And I paid all right. Paid to the full. But it's over now, and I'm not going to think about it any more. When a thing is over, that should be the end of it, Miss Katherine says, and with me what she says goes. Miss Bray is away. If some of her relations liked her well enough to have her stay a few months with them, she could get leave of absence; but she's never been known to stay but four weeks. She's gone to visit her sister somewhere in Fauquier County. Her sister's husband always leaves home for his health when she arrives, and Miss Bray says she thinks it's so queer he has the same kind of spells at the same time every year. But now Miss Katherine's back, nothing matters. Nothing! Yesterday I was just a squirrel in a cage. All day long I was saying: "Well, Squirrel, turn your little wheel. That's all you can do; turn your little wheel." And inside I was turning as hard and fast as a sure-enough squirrel turns; but outside I was just mechanical. I wonder sometimes I don't blaze up right before people's eyes. I'm so often on fire—that is, my mind and heart are—that I think at times my body will surely catch. Thus far it hasn't, but if I don't go somewhere, see something, do something different, it's apt to, and the doctors won't have a name for the new kind of inflammation. I'm going to die after a while, and I'm so afraid I will do it before I travel some that if I were a boy child I'd go anyhow. But I can't go. That is, not yet. Miss Katherine has been travelling for two months up North. She's been with her brother and his wife. The wife is sick, or she thinks she is, which Miss Katherine says is a hard disease to cure, and she's kept them moving from place to place. They wanted Miss Katherine to go to Europe with them this fall, but she isn't going. She's been twice, and says she don't want to go. But I don't believe it's that. I believe it's something else. But sufficient unto the day is the happiness thereof! I'm going to enjoy her staying, and already everything seems different. You see, Miss Katherine lives here just for love, and when you do things for love you do them differently from the way you do them for money. We are just Charity children, some not knowing who they are, I being one of that kind; but she never treats us as if she thinks of that. If we were relations she liked, she couldn't be kinder or nicer, and when a child is in trouble Miss Katherine is the one that's gone to at once. She is never too tired or too busy to listen, but she's awful firm; and there's no nonsense or sullenness or shamming where she is. She can see through the insides of your soul, up to the top and down to the tip, and in front of her eyes you are just your plain self. Only that, and nothing more. They are gray, her eyes are, with a dark rim around the gray part; and she has the longest black lashes I ever saw. Her hair is black, too, like an Eastern Princess and in the morning when she puts her cap on and her nurse's white dress, which she wears when on duty, I call her to myself, "My Lady of the Lovely Heart," and I could kneel down and say my prayers to her. I don't, though, for she would tell me pretty quick to get up. She doesn't like things like that, and, of course, it would look queer. But I don't know anybody who isn't queer about something. Either stupid queer, or silly queer, or smart queer, or beautiful queer, or religious queer, or selfish queer, or some other kind. Miss Bray is the Queen of Queers. But Miss Katherine is queer, too. If she wasn't, she wouldn't stay at this Orphan Asylum, just to help us children, and doing it as cheerfully as if she were happier here than she would be anywhere else. If her staying isn't queerness, beautiful queerness, what is it? I don't understand it, and I don't believe I ever will understand how any one who can get ice-cream will take prunes. But Miss Katherine has got a way of seeing the funny side of things, and sometimes I can't tell whether she minds prunes and pruny things or not. I'm sure she does, but she says, when you can't change a thing, don't let it change you, and that an inward disposition is hard on other people. I don't know what that means, but I think it's the same as saying there's no use in always chewing the rag. Martha is right much inclined to be a chewer. Miss Webb is, too. She is Miss Katherine's best friend, and I just love to hear her talk. She always comes once a week, often twice, to spend the evening at the Asylum with Miss Katherine, and sometimes when they think I'm asleep, I'm not. I'd be a nuisance if I kept popping up and saying, "I'm not asleep, speak low." So when I can't, really can't, sleep, though I do try, I hear them talking, and the things Miss Webb says are a great relief to my feelings. She doesn't come to supper, orphan-asylum suppers being refreshments to stay from, not come to, but nearly always they make something on a chafing-dish. Something that's good, painful good. Miss Webb says Miss Katherine's stomach has some rights, which is true; and when they begin to cook, I just sleep away, breathing regular and easy, so they won't know I am awake, for fear they might think I am not asleep on purpose. But I have to hold on to the bed and stuff my ears and nose so as not to hear and smell, for I am that hungry I could eat horse if it had Worcestershire sauce on it. And that is what they put in their things, which shows that in eating, even, Miss Katherine preaches sense and practises taste. Miss Webb just laughs at theories, and brings all sorts of good things with her. She says doctors have wronged more stomachs than they've ever righted by all this dieting business, and, while there's sense in some of it, there's more nonsense; and as for her, she don't believe in it. I don't know anything about it; but I don't, either. They always save me some of whatever they make, which I get the next day. But if I could rise out of bed and eat as much as I want out of that chafing-dish, there would be a funeral Miss Bray would like to attend. The corpse would be Mary Cary, died Martha. There is a screen at the foot of my bed, put there so the light won't bother me and so I won't be seen. And, thinking I am asleep, Miss Katherine and Miss Webb talk on as if I were dead; and it's very interesting the things they talk about. Of course, Miss Webb came over last night, and, after talking about two hours, she said: "Oh, I forgot to tell you. Lizzie Lane is going to marry Bob Rogers, and right away. I don't suppose you've heard." "Yes, I have; Lizzie wrote me." And Miss Katherine took the hair-pins out of her hair and let it fall down her back. "What made her change her mind? What is she marrying him for?" "How do I know?" And Miss Webb tasted the chocolate to see if it was sweet enough. "How does anybody know what a man is married for? In most cases you can't risk a guess. Lizzie is a woman, therefore 'hath reason or unreason for her act.'" "How did it happen? What made her change her mind?" and Miss Katherine threw her hair-pins on the bureau and stooped down to get her slippers. "How does Lizzie explain it?" "She says she was so sleepy she doesn't remember whether she said yes or no. But Bob remembers, and the wedding is to be week after next. He's courted her three times a year for seven years; but since he's been living North he hasn't even written to her, and she didn't know he was in town until he came up that night to see her. "He stayed until after one o'clock, and didn't mention marriage. But as he got up to go he told her his house was going to send him on a six months' trip to Japan. If she would marry him and go, say so. If not, say that, too, but for the last time. Lizzie said she'd go." Miss Katherine fastened her kimono, put her feet up on the chair in front of her, and clasped her hands behind her head. "I don't wonder at the unhappy marriages," she said. "The queer part is there aren't more of them. Why did Bob wait eight years to talk to Lizzie like this? Why is it a man has so little understanding of a woman?" "Why? Because he's a Man. The Lord made him, and there must be some reason for him; but even the Lord must sometimes get worn out at his dumbness. However—" She stopped, for the chocolate was boiling over; then she began to sing: <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> "Before marriage, men love most. After marriage, women best. Marriage many changes makes— Heart is happy or heart breaks." </div> </div> And she sang it so many times that I went to sleep and dreamed the dream I love most. I see hundreds and hundreds of little creatures (they are the Mary part of little children), and they are afraid and shivering and standing about, not knowing where to go or what to do. And then Miss Katherine is in the midst of them, smiling and beckoning, and they follow and follow, and wings come out. Just tiny ones at first, and then larger and larger, and presently they fly all around her, and she points the way, smiling and cheering. And then they rise higher and higher, and off they go, and she is alone. Tired out but glad, because she taught them how to use their wings. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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