Lefty

“ That night, at the ringing of the factory bell, Letty sorted her loom as she was wont, in her orderly fashion, and went out slowly and singly, lingering behind the riotous troops of her companions, in order to be joined by George Ashe. There he was, by her side, a slight lad, more youthful-looking than Letty, though he was her senior, with that ineffable air of refinement which some people confusedly call a genteel address, and with one of those bright and spiritual faces, set in soft, dark, curly hair, which we are driven to look on in a man with dim doubts and forebodings. ”

“ What did it matter, when all the great red apples were being shaken from the Tree to be left to rot.
“If I were a man,” said Lettie, “I would go out west and be free. I should love it.”
She took the scarf from her head and let it wave out on the wind; the colour was warm in her face with climbing, and her curls were freed by the wind, sparkling and rippling.”
“Well—you’re not a man,” he said, looking at her, and speaking with timid bitterness. ”

“ It took all the influence of Letty’s controlling power to restrain him. She was not without fear at his fever, though it was not in her nature to show her fear. She was a woman who could be modestly silent alike in trepidation and mortification, in pain of body and anguish of mind.
“If I were you, George, I would go to the factory as usual,” proposed Letty, earnestly. “People will not believe at first in our fortune; I can scarcely believe in it myself. There may be some obstacle yet of which we are not aware, though the lawyer speaks fair. ”

“ Never mind, Letty never looked handsomer or happier than when she arranged the scanty furniture, and made the markets in the circumscribed flat in the ugly, crowded manufacturing town. Letty was such a young wife, so stately, and so sweet, so civil to her neighbours, so genuinely frank and kind to old friends, and above all, such a companion, friend, mistress, lady to George Ashe, though she had worked as a factory girl once, and he was never likely to be more than a poor clerk to the end of the chapter, that it was good to see her. ”

“ I stayed until he had recovered consciousness. “Lettie,” he wanted Lettie, so she had to remain at Highclose all night. I went home to tell my mother.
When I went to bed I looked across at the lighted windows of Highclose, and the lights trailed mistily towards me across the water. The cedar stood dark guard against the house; bright the windows were, like the stars, and, like the stars, covering their torment in brightness. The sky was glittering with sharp lights—they are too far off to take trouble for us, so little, little almost to nothingness. ”

“ Letty was taken notice of by no less a person than a clever, managing housekeeper in the family of a wealthy cotton lord; nay, Letty was engaged in marriage to a young man with education enough to be a clerk in the factory where she worked, and not only with such chance advantages in book-keeping, but with that intense love of the beautiful in all its shapes which belongs to some of the tenderest and most dependent of our race. Yet Letty was only the orphan daughter of a mechanic, who had been rather remarkable for his incapacity than for anything else. ”

“ In a few weeks Letty was about again. A pale, thin, serious, but energetic-looking woman. Could that be the once laughing, [Pg 246] blithe, singing Letty? It was the same bright, pure spirit, saddened but ennobled by the ordeal of trial and distress, and by a life’s aim the noblest and most sacred that ever lifted a womanly soul into the regions of a wisdom beyond her years. She soon returned her attention to business. Closely veiled, she walked silently through the quietest streets from her house to the warehouse ”

“ I would like to show you Letty in the physique before she leaves the factory this night, as it happens, never to return. She is not a little sprite of a woman, as it is the fashion of the day to find embodiments of latent power. ”

“ The exercise gave relief not only to his lawful resentment against Letty, but to those angers over his luck of last night which as “a good loser” he hadn’t been at liberty to show. No one knew the repressions he was obliged to put upon himself; but now his inhibitions could come off in this solitary passion of destruction.
When the coffee pot was a mere shapeless mass he picked up the empty cup. It was a thick stone-china cup, with a bar meant to protect his mustache across the top, a birthday present from Letty’s mother. The association of memories acted as a further stimulus. Smash! ”

“ The left hand, with its unconsciously developed power, of course usually unexercised, of mirror-writing, affords only a very crude illustration of what this implies, and a very imaginative illustration is in the flashing of the morning light as it reaches height after height of the beholder's outstretched world. ”

“ When you say that left-footedness is (only) as frequent as left-handedness, I am quite sure you are in error. I remember well, when I was a boy, observing the fact among labouring men engaged in what was called in Ireland ‘sodding’ potatoes, in ridges about five feet wide, instead of planting in drills, that in any given number of men, from four up to a dozen, right and left-footedness prevailed about equally. ”

“ There, it may be, a family, or possibly a tribe, dwelt, among whom left-handedness prevailed to an unusual extent, along with a degree of skill and dexterity, such as is frequently found to accompany the instinctive use of the left hand. ”

“ Our own left seems equally to mean the hand that is left after the right has been mentioned, or, in short, the other one. Many things which are lucky if seen on the right are fateful omens if seen to leftward. On the other hand, if you spill the salt, you propitiate destiny by tossing a pinch of it over the left shoulder. A murderer's left hand is said by good authorities to be an excellent thing to do magic with ”

“ It seems that sufficient care has not yet been taken to determine what constitutes left-handedness. The relative strength of the two hands is not enough to decide this, for mancinism, or left-sidedness, is a matter of relative skill as well as of relative strength. It is quite possible for a person to be left-handed in some respects, right-handed in others; thus (as happens to be the case with the present writer) he may be right-handed in regard to all those actions which are exercised habitually and socially, or which are the result of training, and left-handed in all other respects. ”

“ Inch by inch it moved, until first of all Letty saw a few wisps of dark hair, then a few more, then a thick cluster; then something white and shining—a protruding forehead; then dark, very dark brows; then two eyelids, yellow, swollen, and fortunately tightly closed; then—a purple conglomeration of Letty knew not what—of anything but what was [36] human. The sight was so monstrous it appalled her; and she was overcome with a species of awe and repulsion, for which the language of mortality has no sufficiently energetic expression. ”

“ Vague statements from time to time appear, affirming a prevalence of left-handedness among certain barbarous races. A writer in the Medical Record in 1886 says: “No purely left-handed race has ever been discovered, although there seems to be a difference in different tribes. Seventy per cent of the inhabitants of the Punjab use the left hand by preference; and the greater number of the Hottentots and Bushmen of South Africa also use the left hand in preference to the right.” ”

“ Charles Reade, styled “The Coming Man,” specially aiming at the development in the rising generation of the use of the left hand, so that the man of the future shall be ambidextrous or “either-handed,” he remarks: “There certainly is amongst mankind a vast weight of opinion against my position that man is by nature as either-handed as an ape; and that custom should follow nature. The majority believe the left arm and hand inferior to the right in three things: power, dexterity, and dignity. ”

“ In reality, a strongly developed left-handedness is, equally with a strongly developed right-handedness, an indication of exceptional dexterity. Such skill as that of the left-handed slingers of the tribe of Benjamin is in no way exceptional. All truly left-handed, as well as all truly right-handed persons, are more likely to be dexterous than those who are unconscious of any strong impulse to the use of either hand. The bias, whether to the right or the left, is, I feel assured, the result of special organic aptitude. ”

“ God bless my soul! What a little chap it is! Beginning to look after a cow at his time of life!—a budding farmer, upon my word! Letty, Australia is the place for him,—a wild prairie{76} and cattle, you know,—he is evidently a born rancher!”
Letty laughed, and they left the room together. Margaret watched them as they went downstairs, and gave a little regretful sigh.
“Poor dear Miss Letty!” she thought. “The sweetest lady that ever lived, and no man has ever been wise enough to find it out and marry her.” ”

“ Letty colored to the eyes—her deep, damask flush. The insult was worse than anything offered by Mrs. Courage; for Mrs. Courage after all was only a servant, and this a young lady of distinction. Letty had never seen anyone dressed with so much taste, not even the stars as they came on the studio lot in their everyday costumes. ”

“ Lethaby, in his Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth, observes: 'We may see embodied in this myth of the centre-stone the result of the general direction of thought; as each people were certainly "the people" first born and best beloved of the gods, so their country occupied the centre of the world. ”

“ The left-handed person systematically submits to disabilities in his efforts to comply with the usage of the majority, not only in holding his pen in the right hand, but in the direction and slope of the writing. A left-handed race would naturally write from right to left, sloping the letters towards the left, and so would place the right-handed penman at a like disadvantage, wholly independent of any supposed change in the functions or preponderating energy of either hemisphere of the brain. ”

“ Most people, in fact, are left-brained, that is, all their delicate and specialized movements are handed over to the charge of the left hemisphere. The ordinary right-handedness for such movements is only a consequence of that fact, a consequence which shows outwardly on account of that extensive decussation of the fibres whereby most of those from the left hemisphere pass to the right half of the body only. ”

“ And, as he reflected, the notes of the piano changed, and Letty shot into a gay chansonnette, trilling softly over the sharp little runs. The careless leisure of the air took off his thoughts with it. It would be a bad world in which they might not be happy. The story would hurt her, he was sure; indeed, he could conjure before him the start of pain in her eyes. ”

“ They were sitting in the window seat watching for us, mother and Alice and Lettie.
“You have been a long time!” said Lettie. “We’ve watched the sun go down—it set splendidly—look—the rim of the hill is smouldering yet. What have you been doing?” ”

“ New and tasty furniture adorned the best “sitting-room,” and Letty’s brilliant performance on by far the best piano in the village, caused many a hasty step to loiter on its way, as it passed the tailor’s door. Nor were the listeners confined to the outside of the house, for within were frequently found all the “most desirable” young men, who showed a decided preference for Letty’s fine music and lively conversation, to the more dignified, but less agreeable assemblages of the exclusives of the place. ”

“ Letty said; and at that some one jeered,—"How about yourself?"
There was a laugh, and when it quieted down, Letty answered in her clear voice,—
"If you were brave men, I should n't be frightened. But I don't know what cowards may do." ”

“ Young as the children were, any close student of human nature could trace the diverging possibilities of each mind already, and the uncomfortable little pang at Miss Letty’s heart was not hurting her without some cause. However, she was not of a morose or morbid disposition, and she would not allow herself to give way to these first premonitions of doubt as to Boy’s development. ”

“ Something had befallen her this very morning which had caused her to blush, and it was the first time in all her life that Lettice's cheek had grown red for anything she had done, or thought, or said, or listened to, in respect of any man whatever. Putting her father and brother on one side, no man had had the power, for very few had had the opportunity, to quicken the pulses in her veins as they were quickened now. ”

“ There he married couples and baptized children and met classes and told the truth. At one place where he had preached, married several couples, baptized over thirty, young and old, and met as many in classes, Mr. Lefferts told of a walk he took. It led him to the top of a little hill, from which a rich view was to be had, while a multitude of exquisite shrubs in flower gave another refreshment in their delicious fragrance. A little stream running down the side of the hill was used by the natives to water their plantations of taro, for which the side hill was formed into terraced beds. ”