Mrs. Porter

“ And there, under a soiled dress belonging to Cynthia, she found a travelling-bag closely packed.
With a soundless groan, Mrs. Porter dropped the dress, closed the closet-door, and moved back to the centre of the room.
“My God! my God!” she cried. “I can't stand it! She's fully made up her mind.”
Mrs. Porter left the room, and, passing her husband, whose placid face appeared intermittently in a red disk of light on the end of the porch, she went down the steps into the yard and thence around the house towards the orchard and grape-arbor. ”

“ For the remainder of her life she liked to fish.
At Sylvan Lake she met a Geneva druggist, Charles Darwin Porter. Their acquaintance developed into a romance, and they were married in 1886. For a year they lived near the Court House in Decatur; thereafter they took up residence in the village of Geneva.
The new Mrs. Porter assumed the duties of a housewife just the same as any other American girl who married and settled down. As her husband’s business grew and prospered, he became interested in the local bank and served as its presiding officer and cashier. ”

“ Bobby is—here, you know, dear!"
"No, no, don't say it," sobbed the woman wildly. "You don't understand—you don't understand!" And she turned and hurried away, a tall black shadow of grief, followed by the anguished eyes of the man, and the wistful puzzled eyes of the boy.
It was not a long walk to the tree-embowered plot of ground where the marble shafts and slabs glistened in the sunlight, and the Lady in Black knew the way; yet she stumbled and reached out blindly, and she fell, as if exhausted, before a little stone marked "Kathleen." ”

“ Each one will be filled with all the field and woods legitimately falling to its location and peopled with the best men and women I have known.’”
This promise Mrs. Porter has kept in her latest novel, A Daughter of the Land, the story of Kate Bates, an American through and through, who fought for her freedom against long odds, renouncing the easy path of luxury that leads to loss of self-respect. It is Mrs. Porter’s finest novel, this story of a woman’s life from her teens to well past forty, from school days to her second marriage. ”

“ THE FIRST SHOT MURRAY gave Mrs. Porter’s message to the chauffeur, and then took the vacant seat in the roadster.
“Just drop me at the house,” he directed as the car left the garage. “And, remember, Jones, Mrs. Porter says you must bring out a new nurse from the hospital; that you are not to return without one. Here’s the letter to the Washington doctor.”
“Whose place is the new nurse to take?” inquired the chauffeur, slipping the note in his pocket. “Miss Deane’s or Mrs. Hall’s?”
“Mrs. Porter didn’t mention, but I hope it is Mrs. Hall who is to go, she’s always complaining about the help.” ”

“ She had, in common with her three brothers and her charming sister, the advantage of a wise and loving mother—a woman pious without cant, and worldly-wise without being worldly. Mrs. Porter was born at Durham, and when very young bestowed her hand and heart on Major Porter. An old friend of the family assures us that two or three of their children were born in Ireland, and that certainly Jane was amongst the number. ”

“ Porter; this is my day off from the Tribune.”
With a relieved air Mrs. Porter walked toward the pantry. “Will you stay upstairs with Millicent, Dorothy, until I return?” she asked. “Mrs. Hall is still with her, but—” Mrs. Porter let the swing door close and beckoned her nephew and Dorothy to come nearer. “I am dissatisfied with Mrs. Hall,” she went on in an undertone. “In the last week her manner to me is totally altered—”
“Perhaps she resents your fondness for Vera,” suggested Wyndham, as Dorothy made no remark. “Professional jealousy may account for any peculiarity of manner.” ”

“ Just ahead, her aunt's black silk skirt rustled luxuriously. Behind her an open door allowed a glimpse of soft-tinted rugs and satin-covered chairs. Beneath her feet a marvellous carpet was like green moss to the tread. On every side the gilt of picture frames or the glint of sunlight through the filmy mesh of lace curtains flashed in her eyes.
"Oh, Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly," breathed the little girl, rapturously; "what a perfectly lovely, lovely house! How awfully glad you must be you're so rich!"
"Pollyanna!" ejaculated her aunt, turning sharply about as she reached the head of the stairs. ”

“ The opening scenes are laid in the Indiana of the 1880s. The village is called Ashwater. For what seems an excessive time our attention is concentrated upon Elizabeth as a little girl and Junior Moreland as a little boy. Nothing could be more typical of Mrs. Porter than the attention she bestows upon her heroine in childhood—the exact detail of Mahala’s dress, the recorded precision of her unfailingly correct behaviour. If there is something unnatural about the child, there is everything natural to a child in Mrs. Porter’s fiction. In picturing the richest man in the village Mrs. ”

“ Porter’s parlour as if he had known that lady all her life. He looked at her books without asking permission. He moved about with a wonderful airiness of movement which never brought him into anybody’s way. He fascinated Mrs. Kempster, and subjugated her husband, and impressed everybody by that strong individuality which raises some men a head and shoulders above the common herd. It would have been the same had there been a hundred people in the room instead of five.
Mrs. Porter relapsed into silence, and the conversation was carried on chiefly by Cuthbert Ramsay and the Curate, until Mrs. ”

“ Well, it only shows, don’t it? If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.”
Meanwhile the two men had been examining the books, and now Davidson spoke.
“I’m sorry to say I’m afraid there’s [58] something wrong here, Mrs Porter. These are not the same books.”
It would make too long a business to detail all Mrs Porter’s outcries, and the questionings that followed. The upshot was this. Early in January the gentleman had come to see over the Chapel, and thought a great deal of it, and said he must come back in the spring weather and take some photografts. ”

“ Porter repelled me with an almost vindictive air; and I do not think it would be any good for me to plead for my poor friend again. If you or Lady Cheriton would talk to her——”
“I will get my wife to manage her. It is a matter in which a woman would have more influence than you or I. In the mean time, if there is anything I can do to make Mercy Porter’s life easier, I shall be very glad to do it, for her father’s sake.”
“You are very good; but she is not in want, and she seems content with her lot.”
“What is she doing for a living?”
“Her employment is fine needlework. ”

“ Porter, in South Pasadena. At seventy-six years of age she is in possession of active mental faculties, with the prospect of continued long life in the land of sunshine.
Mrs. Porter was graduated from the public schools of Caribou, and has always taken an interest in educational matters. Elected as a member of the School Committee of Caribou in 1882, she served in that capacity one year, being one of the first women in the State of Maine to hold such a position. ”

“ I was standing in the window staring out at nothing—it wasn't quite dark yet—when again I had that queer feeling that somebody was looking at me. I turned—and there was Father. He had come in and was sitting in the big chair by the table. But this time he didn't look right away as usual and give me a chance to slip quietly out of the room, as I always had before. Instead he said:
"What are you doing there, Mary?"
"N-nothing." I know I stammered. It always scares me to talk to
Father.
"Nonsense!" Father frowned and hitched in his chair. ”

“ From the door Genevieve called back incoherently—the hug had been as short in duration as it had been sudden in action:
"I don't think I can be late now, Miss Jane, ever—with that lovely thing to keep time for me. And I wanted you to know—next year, when I come back, I'm just sure I shall cook and sew beautifully, and do my practising and everything, without once being told. And if I do sprain my ankle I'll be a perfect angel—truly I will. And I won't ever keep folks waiting, either, or—mercy! there's Nancy's first ring now, and I'm not one bit ready!" ”

“ Mary, who investigated the cause of these tremors on her pillow, bedewed it with delicious though bitter tears, when her alarmed soul whispered that she nourished for this amiable foreigner "a something than friendship dearer."
"Ah! is it come to this?" cried she, pressing down her saturated eyelids with her hand. "Am I at last to love a man who, perhaps, never casts a thought on me? How despicable shall I become in my own eyes!" ”

“ And to the old lady’s denials John’s wife returned, with a tinge of sharpness: “But, really, mother, I’d rather you didn’t. It frets the nurses and--forgive me--but you know you will forget and talk to him in ’baby-talk’!”
The days came and the days went, and Nancy Wetherby stayed more and more closely to her rooms. She begged one day for the mending-basket, but her daughter-in-law laughed and kissed her.
“Tut, tut, mother, dear!” she remonstrated. “As if I’d have you wearing your eyes and fingers out mending a paltry pair of socks!” ”

“ There’s a good strong woman coming next week for the kitchen work. Oh, it’s all right,” assured Alma, quickly, in response to the look on her mother’s face. “Why, I’m rich! Only think of those orders! And then you shall dress in silk or velvet, or calico--anything you like, so long as it doesn’t scratch nor prick,” she added merrily, bending forward and fastening the lace collar. “And you shall----”
“Ma-ry?” It was Nathan at the foot of the back stairway.
“Yes, Nathan.”
“Ain’t it ’most supper-time?”
“Bless my soul!” cried Mrs. Kelsey, springing to her feet.
“An’, Mary----”
“Yes.” ”

“ She who should have had the greatest interest in establishing this evidence was leaning on the arm of Miss Porter and directing, with wavering finger and a wild air, the movements of the men, who, in a frenzy caught from her own, dug here and dug there as that inexorable finger pointed.
Sobs choked Miss Porter; but Mrs. Ocumpaugh was beyond all such signs of grief. Her eyes moved; her breast heaved; now and then a confused command left her lips, but that was all. ”

“ Come, let's go find Rover," he finished, stooping and lifting the small boy to his shoulder. The next moment the dining-room door had banged behind them.
"Dear, dear!" laughed Mrs. Clayton, a little hysterically, turning to her husband. "You don't happen to be expecting a letter, do you, Charles?"
"I do happen to be—and a very important one, too," returned the man; and Mrs. Clayton, after a nervous glance at his frowning face, subsided into her chair with a murmured word of regret. When luncheon was over she slipped from the room and joined in the hunt for Rover. ”

“ This time it was a question from the little old lady, and again the peculiar gleam leaped to her eyes.
"Yes, yes," answered two voices. And then the young woman added: "It was so absurd, her starting off like this all alone to Boston! Why, we wrote her to come to us—to live with us. We offered her a home. We both did."
"A home!" The word had caused the gleam to leap into flame now. "Yes, and what kind of a home would it be?" demanded the little old woman, sitting suddenly erect. "What kind of a home would it be?" ”

“ There she was plumped unceremoniously into a chair while five pair of hands attacked her coat, her gloves, her veil, and her hat; and all amid a deafening clamor of shouts and chatter.
“There!” ejaculated the tallest girl, after the coat and gloves had been tossed into one chair, and the hat and veil into another. “Now you're all fixed comfy, and mother said you were to make yourself right at home, and that we must love you and tend right up to you, because you'd be lonesome without her!”
“What'd you bring uth?” demanded the smaller boy, flinging himself into her lap. ”

“ Lady Sara always embarrassed and pained him; Miss Euphemia teased him to death; but to-night the storm which had agitated the breast of her ladyship having subsided into thoughtfulness, it imparted so abstracted an air to her ever-lovely countenance, that, merely to elude communication with Euphemia, he remained near her, and by paying those attentions which, so situated, he could not avoid, he so deluded the wretched Lady Sara, as to subdue her melancholy into an enchanting softness which to any other man might have rendered her the most captivating woman on earth. ”

“ The laugh was uppermost and almost parted the firm-set lips, when a side glance at the quivering face of the little woman in the big chair turned the laugh into a half-stifled sob. Then Alma spoke.
“Mother, dear, listen. Do you think a silk dress and a stiff collar can make you and father any dearer to me? Do you think an ‘ain’t’ or a ‘hain’t’ can make me love either of you any less? Do you suppose I expect you, after fifty years’ service for others, to be as careful in your ways and words as if you’d spent those fifty years in training yourself instead of in training six children? ”

“ Alma Lane has gone to a drug store across the street. I don't know where father and Harold are. They went off together, and—oh, here they are!" she broke off in relief, as the two wanderers appeared.
"And now," summoned Mr. Hartley, "we'll be off to our car! Why, where are the rest of us?"
"Well, they—they aren't all here," frowned Genevieve, a little anxiously.
As at Sunbridge, it was a rush and a scramble at the last. Tilly, Elsie, and Bertha came back, but Genevieve went to look for Alma Lane; and when Alma returned without having seen Genevieve, Harold had to run post-haste for her. ”