Mrs. Briggs

“ Ritter stirred against the cushions; his hand lay limp in her clasp. "Yes, little one," he said, "Yes. Your heart is like your voice, fathomless and pure. The carriage has stopped now, and there is the candle, burning up yonder under the eaves. Can you find your way alone, without help? I am strangely weary."
His voice was low, and the words came slowly, with an effort. He passed his hand over his face:
"Good-night—Brünnhild'!"
He held her hands and drew her towards him: "Good-night, little one. There are shadows under your eyes, and your lip quivers; you are pale.—Good-night." ”

“ What a trim little maid brings in the top-boots which horrify Mrs. B! What a snug dressing-room he has, complete in all its appointments, and in which he appears trying on the delightful hunting-cap which Mrs. Briggs flings into the fire! How cosy all the Briggs party seem in their dining-room: Briggs reading a Treatise on Dog-breaking by a lamp; Mamma and Grannie with their respective needleworks; the children clustering round a great book of prints—a great book of prints such as this before us, which, at this season, must make thousands of children happy by as many firesides! ”

“ Briggs was well to do in the world, a circumstance owing to his long course of patient industry and economical habits. Several of his children were now nearly men and women grown, full of life and fond of fun, as most young folks are. Mrs. Briggs also was very fond of society, and a little vain of her smart family of children, as well as of her good cooking. ”

“ Briggs was perceptible. I kept my patient on the platform until every other [Pg 242] passenger had gone: I marched him up and down the main area of the station. Each time I caught sight of a woman who looked a possible Mrs. Briggs I steered my charge into her vicinity. In spite of a piece of information which Briggs had imparted to me on the journey—namely, that he expected soon to become a father—I was surprised that his wife had not come to the station to welcome him. However, it was plain that Briggs himself was not particularly surprised, nor, what was more important, disappointed. ”

“ Briggs we’d think there was no such thing as home life in Washington.”
“Oh, there’s a lot of it,” Briggs asserted, jocularly. “Only they keep it dark.”
“It seems to me there’s nothing but wire-pulling, wire-pulling, everybody trying to get ahead of everybody else. It makes me sick. Still, I suppose I’m doing a little of that myself just now,” she went on, with a nervous laugh. “What do you suppose I come here for to-day, Mr. Briggs? I ought to be ashamed bothering your wife just when she’s going to have a big party. But I knew it would just break my girls’ hearts if they didn’t come to-night. ”

“ The Kapellmeister watched the door grimly as it shut behind the miller, and then he glanced about the garret. "Poor," he said, "Humph! A place for a beggar!" His eyes roved from the pallet in the corner to the pitcher and the basin, the clothes on the pegs, the cobwebs hanging, the geraniums crushed on the sill.
Then he lifted the girl's head and held it between his hands, looking down at her face, supporting her in his arms. The lashes lay heavy on her cheeks and the tendrils of hair, curly and golden, lay on her neck and her forehead. Her throat was bare; it was white and full. ”

“ Briggs are in such blissful ignorance of real suffering.’—‘My love,’ returned the egotistical gentleman, in a low and pious voice, ‘you mistake me;—I feel grateful—very grateful. I trust our friends may never purchase their experience as dearly as we have bought ours; I hope they never may!’
Having put down Mrs. Briggs upon this theme, and settled the question thus, the egotistical gentleman turned to us, and, after a few preliminary remarks, all tending towards and leading up to the point he had in his mind, inquired if we happened to be acquainted with the Dowager Lady Snorflerer. ”

“ Briggs would never consider herself in that light, and daily prayed that death might intervene between her and the poor farm. It was then that the child friend of her girlhood looked her up and asked her to come and live under the Carr roof tree. Mrs. Briggs accepted, never dreaming but that Philetus' welcome would be as warm as his wife's. ”

“ Briggs told all her history amidst those perfectly uncalled-for sobs and ejaculations of wonder with which women of her soft nature salute an old acquaintance, or regard a rencontre in the street; for though people meet other people every day, yet some there are who insist upon discovering miracles; and women, even though they have disliked each other, begin to cry when they meet, deploring and remembering the time when they last quarrelled. So, in a word, Briggs told all her history, and Becky gave a narrative of her own life, with her usual artlessness and candour. ”

“ Briggs.
When they were in the hall, he said, “Next Wednesday Randolph is to have a birthday party. I shall be glad to see you here.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Gilbert, gratefully. “I 196thank you all the more, because it shows that you believe in my innocence. But all the same, I would rather not accept. I shall still be resting under this false charge, and Mrs. Briggs evidently believes me guilty.”
“Women are apt to be prejudiced,” said Mr. Briggs, apologetically. ”

“ Would she tell her husband? The answer to that question depended wholly on whether she believed the charge he had made against her husband’s integrity. West knew well enough that Mrs. Briggs [Pg 154] had an absolute belief in her husband, and this knowledge had often caused him a contemptuous bitterness. Why should a man like Briggs be allowed to deceive such a woman as that? If Mrs. Briggs still kept her faith in her husband, there was no reason why she should not reveal the episode of the previous night—none except the woman’s natural fear of creating a scandal. ”

“ More than once that evening, Ivory wished he had not brought her, and more than twice he wished Susan Briggs might forget that he did bring her.
The brisk running and bustle at blind man's buff drew the elderly people to the door of the fore room, where they stood and looked on. When James had caught about half the company, Mrs. Briggs could not stand it any longer. She slipped off her shoes, and in she went right among them, and joined in the game; and she ran about lighter and quicker than any girl there. ”

“ Briggs ceremoniously took it, and set huge slices of bread and jam before the gaunt mountaineer, who found his feet in an instant; received a slice on the palm of his outspread hand; lifted it cautiously, his yellow teeth showing hungrily; smelled it suspiciously, thrust forth his tongue, and slowly tasted the strange mixture on the surface; then, with confidence established, finished it in four gulps, and, like a greyhound, looked eagerly for more. Briggs laughed and pointed to the tray on the steps, but the Hualpai shook his head and drew back shyly. ”

“ Yet another philosophy.
'Miss Briggs,' came a man's voice from the stairs.
'Coming, sir,' yelled Miss Briggs in the penetrating tone that calling from cellar to attic teaches.
'Where are my boots?' said the voice on the stairs.
'I'll get 'em for you, sir,' cried Miss Briggs shuffling to the door on her worn slippers.
Life is a hard thing, thought Victoria again. Another woman for the scrap heap. Fourteen hours work a day, nightmares of unlet rooms, boots to black and coals to carry, dirt, loneliness, harsh words and at the end 'I dunno.' Is that to be my fate? she wondered. ”

“ One smash of the fist and Bevans went staggering toward the forward companion ladder, near the foot of which a little knot of seamen, white, brown and yellow, had gathered in cheerful expectation of seeing murder done.
Briggs balanced himself, a strange figure in his [8] dandified silk and polished boots, with his topi hat awry, head thrust forward, brows scowling, massive neck swollen with rage and drink. Under the smudgy gleam of the lantern on the mizzen, his crimson face, muffled in jetty beard, and the evil-glowering eyes of him made a picture of wrath. ”

“ The girl shook her head:
"I have nothing for you," she said, "No—not a crumb. The last went yesterday. Poor birds! It is terrible to be hungry, to have your head swim, and your limbs tremble, and the world grow blind and dim before your eyes. Is it so with you, dear doves?"
She rose slowly and a little unsteadily, crossing the garret to the pegs where the clothes hung.
"There may be a few Pfennigs left," she said, "without touching that. No—no, there is nothing!"
She felt in the pockets of the cloak, pressing deep into the corners with the tips of her fingers, searching. ”

“ Very spruce and fine was Captain Briggs; very much content with life and with the strength that in him lay, that excellent May morning, as with firm stride and clear eye he walked up State Street, in Boston Town. The wounds which would have killed a weaker man had long since healed on him. Up from the water-front he walked, resplendent in his best blue suit, and with a gold-braided cap on his crisp hair. His black beard was carefully trimmed and combed ”

“ Briggs’s mother enters from [17] the right. Mrs. Briggs is a handsome woman of forty-five or fifty, not now in a gracious mood. She comes in decisively, halts, and stares at Mrs. Curtis’ back. Then she looks over the room in an annoyed and puzzled manner. Mr. Briggs’s sister Jessie comes in from the left. She is a pretty girl of about twenty, but her expression is now rather cross. Her dress and equipment show that she has just come in from the golf course.)
JESSIE (calling as she comes in)
Lancelot! (She halts, puzzled, and looks inquiringly at her mother.) Mamma, where’s Lancelot? ”

“ Briggs' early school-days were spent in the public schools of Iowa. Later her education was continued in the young ladies' seminary in Council Bluffs, Iowa, receiving prizes for excellent scholarship. In the month of August, 1861, her family removed to Ouincy, III., where she resumed her studies and there enjoyed the advantages of the best schools until she was nineteen years old. In religious belief Mrs. Briggs is strictly a Presbyterian, was born "in the faith," and has always lived the radical life of a consistent Christian. ”

“ The Kapellmeister held her gently and a film came over his eyes as he gazed:
"How young she is!" he murmured, "like some beautiful boy. Her chin is firm—there is will power there. Her brows are intelligent; her whole personality is one of feeling and temperament. It is a face in a thousand. What is her name, her history? How has she suffered? Why is she alone? There are lines of pain about the mouth—the eyes!"
He raised her suddenly in his arms and started to his feet; and as he did so, she opened her lids slowly and gazed at him. "Velasco—" she murmured. ”

“ Guy urged with a faint smile; but Briggs went on as if he had not been interrupted.
“The man counts only in relation to the woman. If the woman is all right, why, there’s no excuse for the man’s not being right.” Briggs tightly closed his lips. “If he isn’t, it shows there’s something radically wrong in him. There is no happiness like the happiness of a youthful marriage founded on love and character; but there is no Hell so awful as the unhappiness that comes when a marriage like that strikes disaster.” ”

“ With his habit of generalizing he instantly reflected that it must be a terrible thing for a man to live with an emotional woman.
That night it was arranged that the Burrell girls, instead of going home with their father and mother, should go to Mrs. Briggs for the Winter. Burrell insisted upon putting the matter on the most rigid business basis, and offered Helen Briggs a recompense in money that she considered wholly out of proportion to what was just. Briggs maintained in the discussion an air of jocular remoteness and, in spite of Helen’s objection, Burrell established his own conditions. ”

“ He was drunk, he was mad; he was clasping the thing, forcing it, pressing it, swaying it, and the strings leaped after his will.
She fell back against the wall, steadying herself, and her eyes drank in the sight of him as her ears the sound—the slight, swaying figure, the dark head bowed with his hair like a mane, the arm with the bow, the abandon of the wrist, the white, flashing fingers. She drew a quick breath. ”

“ So loudly and so violently that the sound of his grief penetrated to the library where Granny was sitting, and brought her out into the hall, frightened and anxious to know what was wrong.
"He nearly drowned himself, that's what is the matter, mum," answered Briggs, with a certain gloomy satisfaction, in reply to the old lady's anxious questions. "It's nothing but a chance he isn't at the bottom of the deepest end of the pond at this very same minute that I speak to you!" ”

“ He peered at the lotus-bud handle, the wavy blade of steel, the dark groove where still lay the poison, the curaré.
“Merciful God!” whispered Captain Briggs, and covered his eyes with a shaking hand. He suddenly stretched out hands that shook. “Oh, haven’t I suffered enough and repented enough? Haven’t I labored enough and paid enough?” He pressed a hand to his forehead, moist and cold. “He’s all I’ve got, Lord—the boy is all I’ve got! Take me, me—but don’t let vengeance come through him! The sin was mine! Let me pay! Don’t drag him down to hell! Take me—but let him live and be a man!” ”