Mother Bunch

“ Another time Mother Bunch was in a little meadow, not far from her house, on the 30th of April, before sunrising. A handsome maid, seeing her alone, came to her, and said, "Mother Bunch, good morrow, how do you do? Pray, what makes you abroad so early in the morning? You seem to be in a deep study." "Daughter, you say very true; I am studying who shall be my next husband, and if thou wilt but please to stay a little while, thou shalt see a pretty art, which thou never saw before, to teach you how to know your sweetheart." ”

“ This was curious; for Mother Bunch had the loudest tongue and the most stalwart arm in Paradise Row; she was, in short, the terror of the place and the adjacent neighborhood. Bet, however, approached her without a particle of fear; she knew that Mother Bunch was a good friend as well as a good foe.
"I ha' come," she said, going straight up to her. "And here are the boys. This one is Cap'n, and this one is Gen'ral. They're rare 'uns for fighting, poor lads; and they ain't cowards. Have you got the room for us, Mother Bunch?" ”

“ You were an angel on the earth; and yet you will die like me, who have fallen as low as a woman can fall,” added the unfortunate, casting down her eyes.
“It is strange,” answered Mother Bunch, thoughtfully. “Starting from the same point, we have followed different roads, and yet we have reached the same goal—disgust of life. For you, my poor sister, but a few days ago, life was so fair, so full of pleasure and of youth; and now it is equally heavy with us both. After all, I have followed to the end what was my duty,” added she, mildly. “Agricola no longer needs me. He is married ”

“ A horror, is it not? I cause you horror, my sainted mother, my angelic mother! See to what life has brought me. A great, powerful, and beautiful love has only lasted a short time with me, and has left my heart dead to every fresh ardour. Mother, no one will take the place of Maria Guasco in my existence; she has been all, and that all has descended into the tomb. Afterwards I tried to attach myself to an idea, to a sentiment, to a loving duty, but the creature herself for whom I wished to live, for whom I wished to fight my life, spurned me and fled from me. ”

“ Her mother's utter loneliness suggested the solitude of the soul which only living for others could alleviate. Continually on trial before those whom she knew, her mother was like all men and women before God sitting in judgment. It was easy to conceive a half-divine Spirit, all malice, in the image of her father; and to love so cold and enigmatic a mother confidently was in itself a sort of mysticism. ”

“ Her words, except those last ones fixed by the solemnity of death, she did not so much remember, but the tenor of her mother’s teachings, her influence, her personality, were indelibly stamped on her mind. In every grief her first impulsive thought was, “Oh, my mamma!” as though even that mute appeal was a consolation; while the reflection, “Would Mamma like to have me?” influenced her actions more than the actual presence of many a living mother. Never a night did she omit to kneel and repeat the prayer she had learned at her knee. ”

“ This story roused as much horror as the Cherry Tree Carol. Yet countless obscure mothers have so dreamed, have been so deceived; some of them born in Protestant communities have become Johanna Southcotts and lost our sympathy; but if we imagine such a mother as a simple country girl living amongst settled opinions, the theme grows emotional and philosophical. ”

“ The two men looked at each other and at last the son said soberly, “He is in gaol, mother.” The two men looked at each other again and the cousin’s son scratched his head for a while and looked away and seemed foolish and as though he did not know what to say, and so the son spoke again, “Mother, I doubt he can be saved. He and twenty more are set for death and in the morning.” ”

“ Nevertheless, when he entered that room his mind took on the attitude of prayer and he felt that somehow the Presence got close to him, so that questions that had perplexed him were made clear.
As he stood that night looking about the plain walls, his eyes fell upon that picture of Stephen Marshall's mother. A mother! Ah! if there were a mother somewhere to whom that girl could go! Some one who would understand her; be gentle and tender with her; love her, as he should think a real mother would do—what a difference that would make! ”

“ Margy pleaded.
"I'm not going to stay here, Daddy, if the rest go," declared Laddie.
But Mun Bun just walked gravely over to his father and put up both his arms.
"Mun Bun go with Daddy," he said confidently.
"The blessed baby!" cried Aunt Jo.
"It doesn't look much as though they appreciated your hospitality, Josephine," said Daddy Bunker to his sister, smiling over the top of Mun Bun's head as he held the little fellow.
"Oh!" cried Rose instantly, "we have had an awfully nice time here. We always do have nice times here. But we wan [36] t to go with Daddy, and so does Mother." ”

“ At the sight of Doris, Miss Judy always ceased to be an old maid and became a young mother. For there is a motherhood of the spirit as well as the motherhood of the flesh, and the one may be truer than the other. ”

“ Rose Bunker's idea was too good to tell in general. Some ideas are too good to keep; but Russ and Rose decided that this one was not in that class. They determined to tell nobody—not even Mammy June or Daddy or Mother Bunker—about what they proposed to do to help the old colored woman.
They had tried once, and failed. And Philly and Alice and Frane, Junior, had laughed at them. Now they proposed to do what Rose had thought of, and keep it secret from everybody. ”

“ Every thing I see remains unchanged; it is only Clara and myself who were doomed to sink into death and wretchedness! My mother—cruel mother!—it is all my mother!" Oppressed with grief, Julia sank into silence, and she suffered herself to be carried into the rooms which once constituted the sleeping apartments and dressing-room of herself and Anna Maria. ”

“ In these days when she was so racked and weak the son’s wife did all well and everything she knew to do for her husband’s mother’s sake, nor was she lacking in any small duty. The blind maid strove to do her poor best too for her mother, but she was slow and could not see a need in time, and often the son’s wife pushed the maid aside and said, “Do you sit down somewhere, good sister, and out of my way, for I swear you are the most help so!” ”

“ The mother made known her want at last and said, “Then do you know any maid, my sister, in that village where you lived before you were wed? A maid like yourself I would like very well, easy tempered and quick to bear and good [203] enough at labor. The house I can tend myself yet for many a year, and if she be not so good in the house I can endure it.”
The good cousin’s wife laughed at this loudly and looked at her man and cried, “I do not know if he would say your son would count it curse or blessing to have one like me.” ”

“ Seeing the young girl move thus about the house the mother’s heart would melt within her and she suffered for what fate might befall this young thing when she must wed her somewhere. For wed she must be somehow, lest after the mother died there be not one to care for the maid nor one to whom she truly could belong, since a woman belongs first to the husband’s house and not to that house where she was born. Often and often the mother thought of this and she wondered who would have a maid who was blind, and if none would have her then what would happen to her in the end. ”

“ Then I dreamed that my mother was in the star all luminous, holy, happy, looking down in constant guardianship of her outcast boy! Oh, can a child ever be outcast utterly to mother? Can it be that she, who so loved me and so loved God, can hate me now, loving her and loving God as I do? God knows my heart! Will he not tell her all? Her constant mandate to me was, ‘keep a loyal heart, an undefiled conscience.’ I’ve tried to do both, but then her soul loathed apostacy. Does she loathe me for leaving Israel’s fold? My heart all torn, cries to-day, ‘Mother, mother!’ I’m sure she can not hate me. ”

“ It isn't fair," said Rosemary, with a little difficulty. "Not only Dad and Bess and the maids, but you and I, too, we can't help idolizing mamma. And sometimes we never think of mother—our own mother!—except as tired and sick and struggling—that's all I remember, anyway. And mamma is all strength and sweetness and health." ”

“ But still the older woman never blamed the son’s wife any more that she was childless. No, she said no more of that, believing somehow dimly that her own sins might be the cause.
But she rose from her bed at last, and when the autumn was well gone the sharpness of her pain had ebbed with it and she was dreary all day long but not frantic, and she could think of her maid, but the edge of pain was gone. At last she even said to her own heart, “Aye, perhaps even what they say is true, perhaps it is better that my maid is dead. There are so many things worse than death.” ”

“ And she blamed herself lest if by any chance she should have found a nearer place to wed her maid, a village where she could go each month or so, or even found a poor man willing to move to the hamlet for a little price that she could promise. Yet even when she thought of this she groaned within her heart and doubted that her son and son’s wife would have spared even this small price, for they kept the money now. So she thought most heavily, “Yet I cannot hope she will never be beaten. Few houses be there like ours where neither man nor his mother will beat a maid new come. ”

“ This may seem somewhat inconsistent with her habit of occasionally abandoning them in the woods or in the ditches. But she had an unbounded confidence in the kindly maternity of Nature, and trusted her children to the breast of the Great Mother as freely as she did herself in her own motherlessness. ”

“ No one reclined in the grateful shade of the fruit-trees; and the song of a mother, and the mimic shouts of children, which once echoed around them, were no longer heard. It is not difficult to surmise the fate of the family — the father killed — the mother and the children driven forth — helpless wanderers. ”

“ Rose was all unprepared for this. She almost screamed in a voice of agony, “O mamma! mamma! O God! kill me where I stand for making my mother weep!”
“My girl,” said the baroness in a broken voice, and with the most touching dignity, “may you never know what a mother feels who finds herself shut out from her daughters’ hearts. Sometimes I think it is my fault; I was born in a severer age. A mother nowadays seems to be a sort of elder sister. ”

“ I am and I doubt I can ever go again and pick a bit of fuel—a useless old crone now, who ought to die—”
These last words the old woman said many times a day and every time she said them she waited to hear the son’s wife speak as she now did, “Do not say it, old mother! What would we do if we had not you to watch the door while we are in the field and see that the little ones do not fall into the pond?”
The old mother coughed loudly at this and gasped out of the midst of her coughing, “It is true—I do that—the door must be watched in these evil times with thieves and robbers everywhere. ”

“ The kneeling mother in the foreground, with her dead children before her, is the most intense representation of agony I ever saw. Yet the face is calm, her eyes thrown up to heaven, but her lips undistorted, and the muscles of her face, steeped as they are in suffering, still and natural. ”

“ The smallest Bunkers—Margy, whose real name was Margaret, and Mun Bun, whose real name was Monroe Ford—were quite as anxious to get out from under the heap of boxes as the others. Mother Bunker and Aunt Jo ran to their assistance, and soon the six were on their feet to be hugged and scolded a little by both their mother and aunt.
"But they do get into such mischief all the time," sighed Mother Bunker. "I shall be glad when Daddy gets back and decides what to do for the winter. ”

“ Of course, a mammy can't be just what Mother Bunker is to us; but Mammy June is nice."
"She's lots better to us than our mother, in some ways," said Alice bluntly. "Mother doesn't want us to play noisy in the house. She has headaches and stays on the couch a lot. We have to step soft and can't talk loud. ”

“ But the mother is yet too busy for my resignation. You Percival, are my hope; you see the partial hand of nature has endowed your sister Mary with a beauty, which all must acknowledge; I dread it, as her misfortune. You know her artless, unsuspecting nature, the cheerful gaiety of her temper, and her soft, compliant disposition. Guard her, as you wish for a mother's blessing! Your father's pursuits in life, his excessive fondness for his dear girl, and, I may say it to you, his want of mental attainments, must disqualify him for the guide of her youthful career. ”

“ But my maid’s own silver that I gave her would have paid for that!”
But she did not say the words. It came upon her like a chill cloud across the day that she had need to fear these people. Yes, these two evil men, these wild women—but there her son was tugging at her sleeve to hasten her and so she answered steadily, “I will say nothing now. The maid is dead and not all the angers in the world nor any words can bring her back again.” ”

“ Upon them the chill refuse of chaos was cast down. Soiled snow, soiled creatures. They crawled from their crannies and over-ran them. They bore in their eyes the Sign of exile in chaos.
Now different streets—budding teeming streets: different himself, glowing through packed streets.
Women sat in shawls on the housesteps: doors opened into reeking, into pregnant darkness: children in rags among filth of gutters: horses rattling their carts through laughter of children. Mothers had gray long breasts—they held them to sweet red lips. Mothers had shrill words—they spoke love. ”