Middy

“ Never, it seemed to Maddy, who sat and sang, while the night-bird on a distant tree, awakened by the low song, uttered a responsive note, and the hours crept on to midnight. Human nature could endure no more, and when the crazy man said to her, “Now sing of Him who died on Calvary,” Maddy’s answer was a gaping cry as she fell fainting on the pillow.
“It was only a nervous headache,” she said to the frightened Flora, who came at Uncle Joseph’s call, and helped her young mistress up to bed. “She should be better in the morning, and she would rather be alone.” ”

“ Having thus punished both her admirers, Miss Cary declined to dance—whether to keep her word; to avoid pleasing too much the young Federal Captain, or to soothe the ruffled spirits of his unsuccessful competitors, who may tell? For no one can thread the mazes of a girl’s caprice.
But this made little difference to Middleton. They strolled outside and found a seat. The moonlight appeared to Middleton more charming than he ever remembered it, and he discovered something which he had never known before. ”

“ Maddy was very happy after it was settled, and chatted gayly with her grandmother, while Guy went out with her grandfather, who wished to speak with him alone.
“Young man,” he said, “you have taken a deep interest in me and mine since I first came to know you, and I thank you for it all. I’ve nothing to give in return except my prayers, and those you have every day; you and that doctor. I pray for you two just as I do for Maddy. Somehow you three come in together. You’re uncommon good to Maddy. ’Tain’t every one like you who would offer and insist on learning her. ”

“ Didn’t Midget get tired of selling her flowers all day on the street? O yes, very tired; but the day’s hard work only made her evenings merrier; and the bed-time frolics with baby made Midget grow fat from laughing, if the old adage is true, “Laugh and grow fat.” There had been so many bright days, in Midget’s opinion, since baby came; that the little girl quite forgot that there were such thing as clouds. And so one day, when she went home, it gave her a dreadful shock to find poor old granny faint and ill upon the low bed, and two of the neighbors watching beside her. ”

“ I was beginning to be rather vain of my knowledge, for I spent my birthday guineas on it, and set aside the greater part of my pocket-money for similar investment; though I have no doubt, now, that the little I knew was extremely dear at the price.
"I might as well ask you," said Biddy, "how you manage?"
"No; because when I come in from the forge of a night, any one can see me turning to at it. But you never turn to at it, Biddy."
"I suppose I must catch it—like a cough," said Biddy, quietly; and went on with her sewing. ”

“ I repeated, with disdainful emphasis.
"Oh! there are many kinds of pride," said Biddy, looking full at me and shaking her head; "pride is not all of one kind———"
"Well? What are you stopping for?" said I.
"Not all of one kind," resumed Biddy. "He may be too proud to let any one take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, and fills well and with respect. To tell you the truth, I think he is: though it sounds bold in me to say so, for you must know him far better than I do."
"Now, Biddy," said I, "I am very sorry to see this in you. ”

“ I said to Biddy, plucking up the short grass within reach, much as I had once upon a time pulled my feelings out of my hair and kicked them into the brewery wall: "if I could have settled down and been but half as fond of the forge as I was when I was little, I know it would have been much better for me. ”

“ Maddy answered, through her tears. “There is no one else. Whom should I love, unless it were you? I know nobody but Guy.”
That name touched a sore, aching chord in the doctor’s heart, but he gave no sign of the jealousy which had troubled him, and for a moment there was silence in the room; then, as the doctor began faintly to realize that Maddy had refused him, there awoke within him a more intense desire to win her than he had ever felt before. ”

“ The fiddle was stilled that she might not awaken those asleep in the house, but her mind played at a crooked phrase, a distressed lack-melody that mounted with a perpetual question toward the constellations in the open sky above and in the grass below, Midi turned momentarily back upon herself in intense departure, and she reflected that a woman’s life is short and full of peril. ”

“ Pursuing my idea as I leaned back in my wooden chair, and looked at Biddy sewing away with her head on one side, I began to think her rather an extraordinary girl. For I called to mind now, that she was equally accomplished in the terms of our trade, and the names of our different sorts of work, and our various tools. In short, whatever I knew, Biddy knew. Theoretically, she was already as good a blacksmith as I, or better.
“You are one of those, Biddy,” said I, “who make the most of every chance. You never had a chance before you came here, and see how improved you are!” ”

“ If I had time I could tell you how, after days of watching and sadness, grandma made Midget understand that her sickness could not be cured on earth. But the end came, after all, too suddenly for little Midget’s comprehension, and when the kind neighbors had laid the old woman away, to rest forever from labor, our little heroine had only her laughing, crowing baby to comfort and cheer her.
She went to live with a kind woman who had known granny for years, and was but little better off in worldly goods than the old grandmother had been. Still, Midget could not starve ”

“ Little Midget is still nurse to baby May, still a bright, tidy, well-shod little girl, and best of all, baby still calls her “sissy Mid’it” and loves her as dearly as when, in the old times, Midget fed her on blue milk and crackers. ”

“ His black orbs stared with a disquieting fixity—a sort of inhuman power—from out of his foreign-looking face. That stare was his chief weapon in the subjugation of women—they called it magnetic, and no doubt it was so. It increased the fascination of his ugly good looks.
The gaze of each one seemed to fuse in that of the other. Hers, at first coldly curious, tentative, caught light, warmth, intensity from the sombre fire of his. Suddenly he said:
'In God's name, Biddy, how did you come to marry that rough brute.'
'IS he a rough brute! It's very rude of you to say so. ”

“ Mildred thought of her companion in the stage, and was about to ask his name, when a servant appeared, offering to show her to her room. It was one of those warm, languid days in early June, and Mildred soon began to feel the effects of her recent excitement and wearisome ride in the racking headache which came on so fast as to prevent her going down to dinner, and at last confined her to the bed, where she lay the entire afternoon, falling away at last into a deep, quiet sleep, from which about sunset she awoke greatly refreshed and almost free from pain. ”

“ While Biddy would search for them, clucking for hours
Over the barnyard and in 'mong the flowers.
The little log barn was a refuge at night
Where often poor Biddy for courage would fight;
And there, with her feathers above her young brood,
She tried to instruct them in ways to be good. ”

“ He hung over her bed and haunted her room, watching and praying for the return of consciousness and life. Not, perhaps, his peer in the first place, Mildred Middleton had not grown, had not kept pace with her husband, and she had truly of late fallen into deplorable habits for the head of a household. Nevertheless, he believed in her; loved her for her real warmth of heart, which her veil of sentimentality did not in any degree alter for him, for her optimism, her absolutely unfailing good nature, and for an intuitive womanliness he believed to be eminently her gift. ”

“ The frowsy head began to look smooth as the clustering curls would permit, the little, active body, always bent upon mischief, had busied itself in new ways, and began to look tidy and neat as the unavoidable rags would allow. Hands and face were clean as soap and water could make them, and Midget actually kept her boots laced since baby’s advent into the family. Granny also noticed that Midget grumbled less at having to go out in the early dawn for sticks,—in fact, the grumbling in course of time ceased altogether; for Midget was bent upon fattening the baby and making it grow. ”

“ She would know, and with a strange kind of nervous strength she arose, and throwing on the wrapper and slippers which lay near, descended the stairs, wondering to find herself so weak, and half shuddering at the deep stillness of the house; stillness broken only by the ticking of the clock and the purring of the house cat, which at sight of Maddy arose from its position near the door and came forward, rubbing its sides against her dress, and trying in various ways to evince its joy at seeing one whose caresses it had missed so long. ”

“ So, I walked a little further with Biddy, looking silently at her downcast eyes.
"I have not heard the particulars of my sister's death, Biddy."
"They are very slight, poor thing. She had been in one of her bad states—though they had got better of late, rather than worse—for four days, when she came out of it in the evening, just at tea-time, and said quite plainly, 'Joe.' As she had never said any word for a long while, I ran and fetched in Mr. Gargery from the forge. She made signs to me that she wanted him to sit down close to her, and wanted me to put her arms round his neck. ”

“ For the first time in his life, Midwinter saw his own shy uneasiness in the presence of strangers reflected, with tenfold intensity of nervous suffering, in the face of another man—and that man old enough to be his father. ”

“ It was not friendship alone which took him there, she was sure; and knowing that he was engaged, she feared for Maddy’s happiness at first, and afterward, when people began to talk, she feared for her good name. Something must be done, and though she dreaded it greatly, she was the one to do it. Accordingly, next day she started for the cottage, which Guy had just left, and this, in her opinion, accounted for the bright color in Maddy’s cheek and the sparkle in her eye. ”

“ And the children drew near to hear him sing, for they thought his song was pretty, until their fathers drove them home, saying, "That stuff has no educational value."
"Why haven't you a message?" they asked the boy.
"I come to tell you that the grass is green beneath your feet and that the sky is blue over your heads."
"Oh I but we know all that," they answered.
"Do you! Do you!" screamed the boy. "Do you think you could stop over your absurd labours if you knew how blue the sky is? You would be out singing on the hills with me!" ”

“ But when they had tired of telling him what a fool he was, and gone away, the tailor's little daughter crept out of the shadows and patted him on the shoulder.
"I say, boy!" she whispered. "I've brought you some supper. Father doesn't know." The boy blessed her and ate his supper while she watched him like his mother and when he had done she kissed him on the lips.
"There, boy!" she said.
"You have nice golden hair," the boy said.
"See! it shines in the dusk. It strikes me it's the only gold I shall get in this town." ”

“ For he had a feeling that if he did not recover a sad shadow would be cast over Biddy's life—a shadow that would not grow lighter but darker, he feared, as she came more fully to understand that her folly or childish naughtiness had been the cause of his illness and death. ”

“ How closely she stuck to business, and how patiently she looked forward to the hour when, released from duty, she would scamper home for a frolic with baby, we have neither time nor space to describe minutely, but we may say that with this new happiness in her heart, and with the importance of taking good care of her baby constantly in her mind, no wonder our little Midget grew gentle and good, and found the sunshine oftener than she used to. ”

“ It is a soft autumn evening, and the harvest-moon is red and round over the eastern skirt of woods. You are attending Madge to that little cottage-home where lives that gentle and doting mother, who, in the midst of comparative poverty, cherishes that refined delicacy which never comes to a child but by inheritance.
Madge has been passing the day with Nelly. Something—it may be the soft autumn air, wafting toward you the freshness of young days—moves you to speak as you have not ventured to speak, as your vanity has not allowed you to speak before. ”

“ Guy said you was learning so fast.” “Oh, grandpa, why didn’t you? I would have come so willingly,” and for an instant Maddy’s eyes flashed reproachfully upon the recreant Guy, standing aloof from the little group gathered about the bed, his arms folded together, and a moody look upon his face.
He was thinking of what had not yet entered Maddy’s mind, thinking of the future—Maddy’s future, when the aged form upon the bed should be gone, and the two comparatively helpless men be left alone.
“But it shall not be. The sacrifice is far too great. ”

“ She did not look at him, for her eyelids were cast down, and her lashes were wet with the tears she could scarcely keep from shedding. Guy had never known much about girls of Maddy’s age, and there was something extremely fascinating in the artless simplicity of this half child, half woman, sitting there before him, and asking him so demurely to like her. She was very pretty, he thought, and with proper culture would make a beautiful woman. ”

“ The elder of the strangers was a middle-aged man, in whose piercing black eyes and dark complexion we recognize the Mr. Middleton whom we left with Dr. Lacey in New Orleans. His companion was many years younger, and there was something in his appearance which instantly interested and attracted the notice of strangers. There was a nobleness in the intellectual cast of his high, white forehead, round which his rich brown hair lay in thick masses, as if unwilling to part with the curl which must have been natural to it in childhood. ”