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MISS MARTHA MOON.
Let me look back and see what first things I first remember!
All about my uncle first; but I keep him to the last. Next, all about
Rover, the dog--though for roving, I hardly remember him away from my
side! Alas, he did not live to come into the story, but I must mention
him here, for I shall not write another book, and, in the briefest
summary of my childhood, to make no allusion to him would be disloyalty.
I almost believe that at one period, had I been set to say who I was, I
should have included Rover as an essential part of myself. His tail was
my tail; his legs were my legs; his tongue was my tongue!--so much more
did I, as we gambolled together, seem conscious of his joy than of my
own! Surely, among other and greater mercies, I shall find him again! The
next person I see busy about the place, now here now there in the house,
and seldom outside it, is Miss Martha Moon. The house is large, built at
a time when the family was one of consequence, and there was always much
to be done in it. The largest room in it is now called the kitchen, but
was doubtless called the hall when first it was built. This was Miss
Martha Moon's headquarters.
She was my uncle's second cousin, and as he always called her Martha, so
did I, without rebuke: every one else about the place called her Miss
Martha.
Of much greater worth and much more genuine refinement than tens of
thousands the world calls ladies, she never claimed the distinction.
Indeed she strongly objected to it. If you had said or implied she was
a lady, she would have shrunk as from a covert reflection on the quality
of her work. Had she known certain of such as nowadays call themselves
lady-helps, I could have understood her objection. I think, however, it
came from a stern adherence to the factness--if I may coin the word--of
things. She never called a lie a fib.
When she was angry, she always held her tongue; she feared being unfair.
She had indeed a rare power of silence. To this day I do not know, but
am nevertheless sure that, by an instinct of understanding, she saw into
my uncle's trouble, and descried, more or less plainly, the secret of it,
while yet she never even alluded to the existence of such a trouble. She
had a regard for woman's dignity as profound as silent. She was not of
those that prate or rave about their rights, forget their duties, and
care only for what they count their victories.
She declared herself dead against marriage. One day, while yet hardly
more than a child, I said to her thoughtfully,
"I wonder why you hate gentlemen, Martha!"
"Hate 'em! What on earth makes you say such a wicked thing, Orbie?" she
answered. "Hate 'em, the poor dears! I love 'em! What did you ever see to
make you think I hated your uncle now?"
"Oh! of course! uncle!" I returned; for my uncle was all the world to me.
"Nobody could hate uncle!"
"She'd be a bad woman, anyhow, that did!" rejoined Martha. "But did
anybody ever hate the person that couldn't do without her, Orbie?"
My name--suggested by my uncle because my mother died at my birth--was a
curious one; I believe he made it himself. Belorba it was, and it means
Fair Orphan.
"I don't know, Martha," I replied.
"Well, you watch and see!" she returned. "Do you think I would stay here
and work from morning to night if I hadn't some reason for it?--Oh, I
like work!" she went on; "I don't deny that. I should be miserable if I
didn't work. But I'm not bound to this sort of work. I have money of my
own, and I'm no beggar for house-room. But rather than leave your uncle,
poor man! I would do the work of a ploughman for him."
"Then why don't you marry him, Martha?" I said, with innocent
impertinence.
"Marry him! I wouldn't marry him for ten thousand pounds, child!"
"Why not, if you love him so much? I'm sure he wouldn't mind!"
"Marry him!" repeated Miss Martha, and stood looking at me as if here at
last was a creature she could not understand; "marry the poor dear man,
and make him miserable! I could love any man better than that! Just you
open your eyes, my dear, and see what goes on about you. Do you see so
many men made happy by their wives? I don't say it's all the wives'
fault, poor things! But the fact's the same: there's the poor husbands
all the time trying hard to bear it! What with the babies, and the
headaches, and the rest of it, that's what it comes to--the husbands are
not happy! No, no! A woman can do better for a man than marry him!"
"But mayn't it be the husband's fault--sometimes, Martha?"
"It may; but what better is it for that? What better is the wife for
knowing it, or how much happier the husband for not knowing it? As soon
as you come to weighing who's in fault, and counting how much, it's all
up with the marriage. There's no more comfort in life for either of them!
Women are sent into the world to make men happy. I was sent to your
uncle, and I'm trying to do my duty. It's nothing to me what other women
think; I'm here to serve your uncle. What comes of me, I don't care, so
long as I do my work, and don't keep him waiting that made me for it. You
may think it a small thing to make a man happy! I don't. God thought him
worth making, and he wouldn't be if he was miserable. I've seen one woman
make ten men unhappy! I know my calling, Orbie. Nothing would make me
marry one of them, poor things!"
"But if they all said as you do, Martha?"
"No doubt the world would come to an end, but it would go out singing,
not crying. I don't see that would matter. There would be enough to make
each other happy in heaven, and the Lord could make more as they were
wanted."
"Uncle says it takes God a long time to make a man!" I ventured to
remark.
Miss Martha was silent for a moment. She did not see how my remark bore
on the matter in hand, but she had such respect for anything my uncle
said, that when she did not grasp it she held her peace.
"Anyhow there's no fear of it for the present!" she answered. "You heard
the screed of banns last Sunday!"
I thought you would have a better idea of Miss Martha Moon from hearing
her talk, than from any talk about her. To hear one talk is better than
to see one. But I would not have you think she often spoke at such
length. She was in truth a woman of few words, never troubled or
troubling with any verbal catarrh. Especially silent she was when any one
she loved was in distress. I have seen her stand moveless for moments,
with a look that was the incarnation of essential motherhood--as if her
eyes were swallowing up sorrow; as if her soul was ready to be the
sacrifice for sin. Then she would turn away with a droop of the eye-lids
that seemed to say she saw what it was, but saw also how little she could
do for it. Oh the depth of the love-trouble in those eyes of hers!
Martha never set herself to teach me anything, but I could not know
Martha without learning something of the genuine human heart. I gathered
from her by unconscious assimilation. Possibly, a spiritual action
analogous to exosmose and endosmose, takes place between certain souls.
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