Miss Ware

“ Few women, in our community, and with "troops of friends," have been more thrown upon themselves at an early age, or have led a more truly single life until life's meridian, than did Mary Pickard. But the moment she became Mary Ware she lived for another,—as unreservedly and devotedly as woman ever did. Principle and affection alone would have prompted this, as a pleasure; the circumstances in which she was placed, from first to last, made it a duty, and still a delight. ”

“ All the girls who had occupied the room since Warwick Hall had been a school! Blue eyes and brown, laughing faces and wistful ones, girls in gorgeous full dress, pluming themselves for some evening entertainment, girls in dainty undress and unbound hair, exchanging bed-time confidences as they prepared for the night, ambitious little saints and frivolous little sinners—they were all there, somewhere in the dim background of the mirror, and because of them there was a subtle charm about the room to Mary, which she would not have felt if she had been its first occupant. ”

“ Ware and Norman came in glowing from their sleigh-ride.
"You certainly must have had a good time," exclaimed Mary, noticing the unusual animation of her mother's face. "You ought to go to a birthday dinner every night if it can shake you up and make you look as young and bright-eyed as you do now." [82]
"Oh, it isn't that," laughed Mrs. Ware, as Jack took her heavy coat from her and Mary her furs. ”

“ But a very tender regard lay under his smile of amusement, for the attitude she had taken, and a feeling of reverence possessed him as he saw her in the new light which this revelation of her spiritual life gave him. "Nobody is good enough for little Mary Ware," he had said once, when she was a romping child. ”

“ Ware writes to Miss Forbes that Mary is not yet able to bear any visitor, not even one as intimate as she, whose society and sympathy they so much desired. And he adds, in concluding his letter to that excellent friend, "Emma," whom they had not seen since their return from Europe: "Since we met, we have all seen changes and trials, and are at least more experienced in the discipline of Providence. I esteem myself quite well; and if my cup were not dashed with the bitterness of Mary's ill health, I should have more sources of happiness than I could perhaps bear rightly." ”

“ Julie smiled. It was so comfortable to talk with some one who understood them. “Miss Ware would not agree with you,” she said. “She considers us lost to the finer things, beyond redemption. She dislikes us, you know, and we never go there; but she comes here sometimes 101 and asks us all sorts of questions and wants to know about our recipes and things as if we could not comprehend any other subject. Hester calls it ‘talking shop’ and we hate it—not the work but the being excluded from other things.”
“I understand perfectly. Miss Ware is a bit, well, narrow, like most Radnor people. ”

“ It was a perfect June day, the kind that makes one feel that with a sky so fair and an earth so sweet life is too full to ask anything more of heaven. Time and again in the pauses that fell between their remarks, Mary's voice jubilantly broke out in the refrain of an old hymn that they all loved: "Happy day, oh, happy day!" And when Jack's deep bass out on the porch and Mrs. Ware's sweet alto in the pantry took up the words to the accompaniment of swishing broom and clattering cups, Norman hummed them too, like a big, contented bumblebee in a field of clover. ”

“ Mary waited a moment, then with an impatient shrug of her shoulders picked up her embroidery hoops again. In her present mood it irritated her to be told that waiting was good for her. The legend itself irritated her. She wondered how any one could find any comfort in it, least of all her mother, whose life had been so largely a desert of hard work and hard times.
Presently, as if in answer to her thought, Mrs. Ware looked up, saying, "You spoke just now of the call of the road. It is strange how strongly I've felt it all afternoon, only my call takes me backward. ”

“ You're the prey of a designing woman. That Miss Ware is a harpy. The thing's obvious. Leaving out personal appearance and a few other things, you're quite a catch for a girl like that. Did you tell her what income you'd got?"
"I didn't state it exactly. I said that I thought we could depend on six hundred a year, or a little more."
"Quite so. As I happen to know, and as Miss Ware's solicitors will soon discover when she presses her action for breach of promise, you've got nine hundred a year from salary and investments. She never meant to marry you. ”

“ Of her standard of duty we know something already; and they who also know the demands of a large parish upon a minister's wife, who resolves not only to make her house free and pleasant to all who will enter it, but also to share all of her husband's labors for which she is competent, can form an idea of what Mary found to do. "Mrs. Ware, at home and abroad, was the busiest woman of my acquaintance," is the reason given by one of her female friends for not seeking her society [Pg 194] as much as she desired. ”

“ Although the women, both young and old, in the circles where Ware moved had demonstrated to themselves, by trying every rivet in his celibate harness, that as far as they were concerned he was an immovable, immutable and foreordained bachelor, it was an odd fact that he had never in his own mind given up either the intention or the hope that there would some day be a Lady Ware—the kind he wanted. ”

“ She walked over to the mantel, where a photograph of Mrs. Ware stood in a silver frame. It was one which Joyce had colored, and was so life-like that Mary's eyes often sought it questioningly. Now she leaned towards it, gazing into the sweet face that seemed to smile helpfully back at her until she found the answer to her own question.
"You always liked him," she whispered. "You always saw the best in him and made excuses for him. You would have been so happy to have had me settle in Lone-Rock if you had been there. ”

“ In closing the first and only year of Mary Ware's "parish life," we remember that it was also the first year of her married life, and an immediate entrance upon the office of a mother. To her views of this office we have already referred, but have feared to say all we know to be true of her discharge of its duties. There is a veil which we may not raise, a sanctuary which none can enter. ”

“ I am sure that I am not myself; I have not yet come to act freely in my new position in life; I am not 'at home,'—shall I ever be in this world?"
Thus did Mary Ware write to a friend and true sympathizer, whose residence in Milton was one of the great inducements that had drawn her to that place. She had been there but a short time, and had not yet risen from the complete exhaustion of body and mind—the effect of years of solicitude, exertion, and suffering—for which she made too little allowance. ”

“ Ware were separated for a time, she taking lodgings with her infant at Waltham Abbey, and he making an excursion alone for his health. Soon after he left her, Mary wrote to him thus:—"I am quite sure it was best for you to go, though there was some risk in it. If you only keep a sharp watch upon your 'excitables,' not mistaking the effect of them for strength, and so do not overdo, you will, I doubt not, be better for the jaunt; you will be gaining much mental satisfaction, and I am sure that will help the body.... Yours to 'Miss Pickard' is just received. ”

“ Even before their entrance some curiosity had been awakened by remarks which floated in from the rear platform, where they were bidding farewell to some friends who had come to see them off.
"Do write and tell us what your next adventures are, Mary," exclaimed one clear voice. "Your family ought to be named Gulliver instead of Ware, [2] for you are always travelling around to such queer, out-of-the-way places. ”

“ It made me feel for a little while—oh, I can hardly explain it—as if the old Mary Ware that I used to be was a million miles away, and as if the Mary Ware sitting here in Riverville was an entirely dif [192] ferent person. I couldn't make it seem possible that the 'me' who was sitting there in the hot June dusk, looking down on the lively streets, was the same person who only a few days before had no other excitement in life than making Jack's coffee or ironing Norman's shirts back in the hills of Arizona. ”

“ Often have we heard her lamenting the necessity of spending so much of life in mere drudgery, ministering to the perishing but never-satisfied body; a necessity and service that devolve upon many women, and take from them the opportunity of high mental and spiritual culture, unless they carry into these daily duties and petty cares a calm spirit and a cheerful tone, with an elevated and steadfast purpose. Such was Mary's habitual endeavor. ”

“ There is no loyalty like the loyalty of a little school-girl for the older girl whom she has enshrined in her heart as her ideal; no sentiment like the intense admiration which puts a halo around everything the beloved voice ever praised, or makes sacred everything the beloved fingers have touched. Mary Ware at sixteen had not outgrown any of the ardent admiration for Lloyd Sherman which had seized her when she was only eleven, and now the desire to be like her flared up stronger than ever. ”

“ I find it is a very different thing to be lone Polly Pickard, beating about the world, conscious that it could not interfere with any one's comfort or convenience if she were out of it, and to call myself Mary Ware, with all the appendages which belong to her,—the cares and comforts, the duties and privileges, from which she cannot disconnect herself. ”

“ So it is; and I trust that I shall enjoy all that we should do from the privilege allowed us. But I can tell you, under the rose, that there is no pleasure in all this wide creation like that of sitting down in a quiet corner, no matter what may be around us, holding communion with home; and I fully believe that all travellers would tell you the same, if their pride would let them.
"We have, as you may have learned, fulfilled in part your first wish, Harriet,—we have seen Miss Edgeworth, but not Sir Walter. ”

“ Ware, "you're such a born home-maker, that I'd like to see you that before all else. I believe you could make a home so much better than your neighbors, that like the creator of the proverbial mouse-trap, you would have the world making a beaten track to your door, even though you lived in the woods. As the old Colonel once said, you can be an honor to your sex and one of the most interesting women of your generation."
Although she spoke jokingly there was such a note of belief in her voice that Mary caught her by the arm and shook it, saying playfully, "Peacock! ”

“ Mary was still young, when she wrote to her father,—"I am no advocate for destroying that delicacy which forms, or ought to form, so great a part of the female character. But such a degree of it as is not compatible with sufficient firmness to command one's self in danger, appears to me to be false modesty, or 'sickly [Pg 22] sensibility of soul,'—beneath the dignity of beings endowed with power for higher feelings." Here is that union of humility and courage which marked her whole course. ”

“ She had never dreamed that the world held such music as the flood of melody which came rolling up from below. It seemed to lift her out of herself and into another world; a world of nameless longings and exalted ambitions, of burning desire to do great deeds. Something was calling her—calling and calling with the compelling note of a far-off yet insistent trumpet, and as she gazed at the mailed hand with the spear rising triumphantly out of the ruby heart, she began to understand. A feeling of awe crept over her, that she, little Mary Ware, should be hearing the same call that Edryn heard. ”

“ The feeling exhilarated her, deepened the glow in her face, the happy eagerness in her eyes, until every one around her felt the contagion of her high hopefulness.
"I don't know what it is you're always looking so pleased over," the old postmaster said to her one day, "but every time after you've been in here, I catch myself smiling away as broadly as if I'd heard some good news myself."
"Maybe," answered Mary, "it's because I feel all the time as if I'm just going to hear some. It's so interesting wondering what turn things will take. ”

“ As years went on, everybody who sat by Henry Ware's fireside, and was kindled and made welcome by his undiminished and unconquerable cheeriness, felt at the same time chilled and paralyzed by the courteous, unexceptionable dignity of Mrs. Ware. Even I, having the freedom of a daughter in their house, and loving my uncle hardly less than I loved my father, had never once supposed that anybody could love Aunt Ann, or that she would permit it. I always felt a little terror when I saw Annie kiss her, or my uncle put his arm around her. ”

“ Language so strong as this, from a nature so calm as Mary Ware's, means a great deal. Nor can we marvel. For what a change is that through which a true woman passes,—from wife to widow! Is it not greater than even the first change? Often has Mary referred to the difference, which few could feel as she had, between her former isolation as to natural ties, and her adoption into a large and united family circle. ”

“ One noticed first the alertness of the face under the stylish hat with its bronze quills, and then the girlish simplicity of dress and manner which showed at a glance that she was a thorough little gentlewoman. Her [3] mother, who followed, gave the same impression; gray-gowned, gray-gloved, bearing a parting gift of sweet violets, all that she could carry, in both hands.
One literal minded woman who had overheard Mary's remarks about lairs and new trails, and who had been on the watch for something wild all across the state of Texas, looked up in disappointment. ”