Mrs. Mccafferty Explains

by Elizabeth Jordan

MRS. McCAFFERTY EXPLAINS

By Elizabeth Jordan

IT was Miss Wesley, of the Vine Street Settlement House, who was the first to point out to Mary Morrison the path of duty that lay so clear and straight before her. Miss Wesley had a singularly discerning eye for the duty of others and an austerely simple method of bringing it to their attention. She sat back now in the revolving chair before her immaculate desk, in her exquisitely fresh little office, and turned upon Mrs. Morrison the stern regard of a pair of gray eyes whose keenness seemed oddly emphasized by the brilliance of the well-polished eye-glasses she wore. When she spoke, her voice held a suggestion of sorely tried nerves controlled by a steadfast Christian spirit. Seated humbly before her, and facing fully the light to which Miss Wesley had wisely turned her back, Mary Morrison gazed with moist, meek eyes upon this self-appointed oracle of her destiny.

"You ought to leave him at once," Miss Wesley announced with crisp conviction. "It's wrong for you to live with him another day. Isn't this the third time he has broken your arm?"

Mary Morrison's limp form straightened in quick rebuttal of this grave charge.

"Oh, no, indeed, Miss Wesley, ma'am," she cried eagerly. "It's only the second time. 'Twas me leg he broke the other time you're thinkin' about, an' Jim was awful sorry he done it. He told me he was when he come to the hospital."

Miss Wesley's thin lips curled as she considered this vindication of the gentleman under discussion.

"No doubt he was," she said with grim irony, wholly lost on her listener, "and I'm sure he would be annoyed if he thoughtlessly murdered you in one of his sprees and learned of it afterward. But that wouldn't help you much, would it?"

Mrs. Morrison murmured a vague confirmation of this logical surmise, and twisted the ends of her shawl nervously between her bare, toil-hardened hands.

"I don't b'lieve Jim would ever kill me, Miss Wesley ma'am," she hazarded earnestly. "He's like a lamb when he gits what he wants, even when he's drunk. It's 'most always my fault when he gits mad. That time he broke me leg, if I'd a' remembered to have them little sausages he wanted ready when he come home, I wouldn't a' had hardly no trouble at all. I can 'most always kam him right down by givin' him somethin' to eat."

"Except when you haven't the money to buy it," Miss Wesley reminded her, relentlessly. "Did you have it for the sausages that time?"

"N-no. Jim was out o' work."

"He usually is, isn't he?"

Mrs. Morrison hung her head.

"I thought so."

"But I might a' had the money," Mary Morrison went on, apologetically. "I might a' been workin' that day. I could a' got a dollar washin' for Mrs. Vance, an' Jim knowed it. But I felt kind o' sick, an' so——"

"And so Jim tossed you downstairs in his natural disappointment, and broke your leg."

Jim's loyal wife was almost at the end of her defences now, but she had one last gun to fire before she surrendered.

"It got well real quick," she stammered, deprecatingly. "The doctors said they never seen nothin' like the quick way it got well. An' I was real comfortable at the hospital."

Miss Wesley wheeled about in her chair and regarded her protégée for a long instant without speaking. There was genuine interest and speculation in the gaze. She would have given the same calm scrutiny to the enlargement of a microscopical disease germ. The little tenement woman squirmed in her chair under the direct, soul-searching look. It abashed her.

"Mary Morrison," announced Miss Wesley, breaking at last a silence that was becoming painful, "I'm going to speak to you as if you were a rational human being, and I hope you will appreciate the compliment. Listen to me. Try to follow me. Try to think of yourself as if you were some one else. Try to imagine what you would think of some one else who acted as you are acting now."

She paused dramatically, and Mary Morrison, awed by these impressive preliminaries, lifted her shawl to her face and wept vaguely into it.

"Here is what you are doing," the voice of her accuser went on: "You were a self-respecting working girl when you married Jim Morrison five years ago. What are you now? A hard-working married woman, without pride, without dignity, without decency. You let yourself be thrown down-stairs and through windows by a worthless, drunken husband; you let him ill-treat you and starve you till you are forced to come to us for food and shelter. And when we've helped you, are you grateful? Do you follow our advice? You do not. You crawl back to that man like a whipped dog, and the whole disgusting experience is repeated."

Mary Morrison cowered into herself and sobbed appealingly, wiping her nose and eyes indiscriminately on the edges of the old shawl. But she sat still and listened, for she knew that this was friendship. Miss Wesley frowned at the sobs and turned upon her a glance of dark suspicion.

"Are you paying attention to what I say?" she demanded. "Do you understand what I mean?"

Mrs. Morrison asseverated tearfully but firmly that with the help of God she was enabled to comprehend the kind lady's words. Miss Wesley frowned again. She was frequently sceptical of the power of other intellects to follow the workings of her own, and it must be conceded that all too frequently in her Settlement experience events justified this distrust.

"God has nothing to do with it," she now announced impatiently. "He helps those who help themselves. And that's exactly what you've got to do now, Mary Morrison. You can't come to us any more if you insist on remaining with this man. If you will leave him we will take you in and find a position for you and make a self-respecting woman of you once more. You have no children, so you have no one to consider but yourself——"

Mary Morrison rose to her feet. Certain high lights on her nose, and a hat that was much askew on her head, did not make for dignity, but there was nevertheless a strong suggestion of this quality in the glance she turned on "the Settlement lady."

"Shure I have a right to look after Jim, Miss Wesley, ma'am," she said, with severe conviction, "and I ought a' be doin' it this blessed minute instid of settin' here chattin' with you."

She paused an instant, to let the "chattin"' sink in. It did. Miss Wesley went down with it, remained under for a perceptible period, and emerged gasping.

"He's wantin' his supper now, an' waitin' for it, an' gettin' mad likely, poor man," continued Jim's wife, constrainedly. "I've fifty cents from Mrs. Vance to-day, an' I'll buy his sausages on my way home. An' thank you kindly, ma'am, for I know you mean well."

"Sit down," said Miss Wesley trenchantly. Mrs. Morrison sat down. When Marion Wesley expressed a desire in that particular tone, it was generally gratified.

"We will pass from the gay social 'chattin',' Mary, with which we have thus far whiled away the hours," continued Miss Wesley, with anything but levity underlying her words, "to something that may strike even you as serious. Do you realize what effect this life of yours is having on your neighbors? Do you know that most of the women in your tenement are being brutally ill-treated by their husbands because yours has set the example? Do you know that they're taking it because you are taking it, and because their husbands throw up to them that you do take it? In the old days they protected themselves and their children in the police courts and by putting their husbands under bonds. Now—well, they like you, the poor creatures, because you're good to them and have helped them out in their deaths and their sicknesses. So they pay you the greatest compliment they know how to offer, by copying you slavishly, even to the cringing spirit in you which takes blows and abuse without resentment. They're doing this for you, and it's killing them. Think of what Mrs. Horan is suffering! and Mrs. Masters! and Mrs. McCafferty! Women with children to nurse cannot bear all you can bear. Don't you know that?"

Mary Morrison assuredly did. She revealed her knowledge now in the wide, self-conscious gaze she turned on the other woman, and in the sudden straightening of her thin shoulders, as if to bear the heavy burden of the responsibility placed upon them. The community call was a new call to Mary, but heart and soul responded to it—the former with a throb of very human fear, the latter dauntlessly. She turned on Miss Wesley a face stamped with a resolution that sat oddly on her weak, not uncomely features.

"I guess you're right, Miss Wesley, ma'am," she said dully. "I ain't thought about it that way; but I guess it's so. I'll go home now, an' I'll give Jim Morrison his sausages. An' as long as he behaves himself I'll be his true an' lovin' wife. But the nex' time he beats me—" her voice took on a militant note, her meek eyes had a blurred twinkle of determination—"the nex' time he beats me, I'll drag 'm by the hair of 's head through the halls, so's all them women kin see him. An' then"—this last with a long-drawn breath, as consigning herself desperately to the heroic—I'll leave 'm!"

She was gone, and Miss Wesley sat speechless at her desk in the strenuous atmosphere she had evoked—an atmosphere so filled with suggestion of rallies and bugle calls and advancing hosts, that the shouts of Patrick McCafferty, joyously pummelling his wife in the next tenement, seemed a natural and fitting accompaniment to her reflections.

•••••

True to her word, Mary Morrison reappeared two days later. One eye was closed, but as an organ revealing determination the other was all-sufficient. At first she could barely articulate through the swollen lips which Mr. Morrison had presented to her at their parting, as if allowing her to kiss his hand in ultimate farewell; but copious applications of cold water and raw beef enabled her to confide to Miss Wesley her suspicion that she had made a mistake in mentioning her resolution to Jim without sufficient provocation.

"Of course it wouldn't do no good to tell 'm when he was mad," she remarked listlessly, "so I had to do it when he wasn't. That made 'm mad right off. Any man, of course, ma'am, likes to know he can beat his woman if he wants to, even if he don't use th' privolodge. I told Jim when he was eatin' the sausages. I thought that was a good time. But you could see right off he didn't like it. He kep' frownin' an' wouldn't talk, though mostly he's that chatty when he's fed. But he didn't do nothin' till last night, when he come home drunk. He lepped at me, ma'am, like a tiger, and if I hadn't got a knife off th' kitchen table I dunno what he'd done t' me. I gotta holt o' him an' I made him think I was goin' to kill him, tho' Gawd knows I wouldn't hurt a hair o' his head. But me spirit was up, ma'am, an' I took him through the halls an' showed him to me fren's, with the knife agin his back, an' him as mild as a lamb. Then I took him back an' fed him an' put him to bed like a baby, an' I could a' got on with him fine after that, only I broke his spirit, ye see. 'Tis a proud spirit Jim has. He couldn't stand all th' women laughin' at him. So this mornin' he come home with a pistol—an' I left," ended Mary Morrison simply.

"It was high time," agreed Miss Wesley, whose emotions during the recital of this conjugal episode had been somewhat mixed. "Now you settle down here for a week or two and do some sewing for us. There's enough to keep you busy until we find just the right place for you. Then you can begin life over again and be a self-respecting, happy woman."

Mrs. Morrison obediently began life over, but to the most superficial observation it was plain that she was not happy. Existence in the Settlement house took on, moreover, a somewhat unsettled character, owing to the frequent visits of Mr. Morrison, in varying stages of intoxication, but invariably of one mind as to his legal and moral right to demand the return of his lawful wife. After an especially harrowing scene with him, complicated by a vicious attack on his meek-eyed spouse, whom he suddenly discovered when she was listening with flattering interest at the key-hole, Miss Wesley decided on radical measures.

"We've got to have him arrested," she announced. "He'll kill some one if he isn't. We'll have him put in bonds to keep the peace and let you alone. When you get into your new place we won't let him know where you are. Then you will be left in peace and your troubles will be over."

Jim's wife looked dubious. For several days, during which Mr. Morrison was languishing in the custody of the law, his spouse was apparently hard at work on the solution of some difficult problem. The nature of this was finally indicated to Miss Wesley by a few remarks that fell from Mrs. Morrison's tremulous lips.

"Mrs. Horan is a fine, strong woman, ma'am," she began conversationally one morning, after she had received Miss Wesley's instructions as to the day's sewing. She lingered by the door as she spoke, and "the Settlement lady" glanced up from her desk expectantly, knowing that this was only an exordium.

"She weighs two hunderd pounds," added Mary slowly, "an' Mike Horan"—this with great impressiveness—"he don't weigh a hunderd an' fifty. He's only a little man."

Miss Wesley frowned impatiently.

"What interest has the weight of the Horans——?" she began. But Mary Morrison, unheeding the interruption, continued to voice her elemental thoughts.

"Mrs. Masters's man don't weigh no more than Horan," she continued enthusiastically, "an' Mrs. Masters is real strong."

Getting now the drift of these statistics, Miss Wesley favored her protégée with a glance which would have held a warning for any speaker less self-absorbed, but this one rushed recklessly onward to her fate.

"Bridget McCafferty ain't got no childern," she continued enthusiastically.

"So you think a battle with her husband occasionally is in the nature of healthful exercise," Miss Wesley interrupted ironically, "and that Mrs. Horan and Mrs. Masters and other neighbors in your tenement can look out for themselves. Is that what you're leading up to?"

Mary Morrison blushed, but she stood by her guns.

"Yes, ma'am," she admitted feebly. "I don't think the men kin hurt 'em as much as you——"

Her voice died away under the spell of Miss Wesley's eye-glasses.

"Mary Morrison," remarked that lady frankly, "I'm ashamed of you."

Then she produced her trump card.

"There's one more point to consider," she added carelessly, "if you are no longer interested in the fate of your neighbors. If Jim Morrison kills you in a drunken rage, he will be killed for doing it. He will die in the electric chair. Had you forgotten that? If you don't value your own life, perhaps you will think of his and keep temptation out of his way by keeping away from him yourself."

Mrs. Morrison's face as she listened had turned chalky. This was a new point of view. The neighbors could look out for themselves, but she must look out for Jim. Without another word she gathered up her sewing and left the room, stumbling dazedly over the threshold as she went. "The Settlement lady" smiled, well satisfied.

"I fancy that will keep her quiet," she murmured. Then she forgot Mary and her affairs in consideration of the pressing need of one Sophia Kalofsky, who having that morning presented an ungrateful world with twins had now confidingly sent her oldest son to the Settlement house in quest of something wherewith to cover them.

The following week Mrs. James Morrison accepted a situation as seamstress in "a refined family hotel" uptown, and held it for a month. At the end of this period she sought Miss Wesley for the spiritual support that dauntless soul was so well able to supply.

"If I could just stop thinkin' about Jim, Miss Wesley, ma'am," she moaned at the end of her recital, "p'raps I could sleep. But I can't think of nothin' else, an' I can't eat, an' I'm gettin' that weak I can't work. I'm wonderin' if he's fed, an' warm an' looked after, an' I'm afraid he ain't. It's me nerves, I think, ma'am, goin' back on me."

Miss Wesley surveyed her appraisingly. It was true that she was ill—that was evident to the most careless glance. She had lost weight, her color was had, and there was a look in her faded eyes which Miss Wesley did not like to see there—the wild, strained look of one long sleepless and nervously overtaxed. Miss Wesley bit her lower lip reflectingly.

"You need diversion," she finally decided. "I'll tell you what I'll do for you, Mary. You have the afternoon off, haven't you? Well, I'll take you to the matinée. I've tickets for 'Rip Van Winkle.' It will do us both good. I'm tired, too."

This confession of human weakness was an unusual one for Miss Wesley, and Mary Morrison knew it. But she listened listlessly to the plan for her entertainment, though she felt vaguely flattered at being the attendant of "the Settlement lady" on one of her rare outings. She waited indifferently while Miss Wesley, quite enthusiastic now, arrayed herself for the street. It was early spring, and even the submerged tenement world that lay beyond the doors of the Settlement house held signs of Nature's awakening. A few pale crocuses were pushing their delicate heads through the soil of the Settlement garden; the solitary tree it held was budding out, the little stretch of grass it afforded was a tender green. Mary Morrison knew nothing of the rejuvenating effects of the spring season upon the human heart but she knew well that she was wretched, and why. Tears were in her tired eyes when Miss Wesley returned, ready for the expedition.

They reached the theatre after the curtain had gone up, and the house was dark when they entered. For a few moments Mary Morrison twisted restlessly in her seat. Then the appeal of the drama came to her and she leaned forward, fascinated.

The play moved on to the scene in which Gretchen, weary of her shiftless husband, turns him out into the storm. Suddenly the cajoling voice of the greatest "Rip" the world has known was interrupted by a voice in the audience. It came from an orchestra seat, in a row near the front, and from a woman who had risen in that seat to address space in wildly hysterical tones. It was Mary Morrison, and those who sat near her were privileged to behold the superb self-control of Miss Wesley, as she vainly sought to restore her guest to silence and her place. But Mary Morrison had experienced a sudden awakening. In shrieks she informed all within hearing that she was like the wretched woman on the stage; that she, too, had turned from a noble husband, leaving him alone in the world; but that by God's help she had seen her error and would return to him here and now. Which she indeed did, rushing wildly down the centre aisle in the dim light, while the play stopped, the audience stared, the attendants rushed forward, and Miss Wesley, with teeth set and almost disgraceful color, followed in her wake.

•••••

There was a touching reunion in a Vine Street tenement that night. How wholly complete and satisfactory it was Miss Wesley did not know until she was enlightened the following day by Mrs. Patrick McCafferty, who called to discuss certain small troubles of her own, and remained to pay tribute to the new-found happiness of Mary Morrison.

"Shure, 'tis a differ'nt man Jim is since she left him," remarked Mrs. McCafferty, comfortably, "an' I don't think she'll be after havin' any more trouble with him at all at all. He have took the pledge an' gone to worruk, an' wan of thim doctor min is watchin' him an' helpin' him. Jim says he's through wid th' drink, an' I guess he manes it."

Miss Wesley murmured vaguely that she hoped so, but it was evident that the hope was most perfunctory. The Irishwoman regarded her with entire comprehension.

"’Tis like a disaase, this drinkin', the doctors are sayin' now, Miss," she resumed confidently, "an' they towld me Pat at th' hospital they treat it as though 'twas. They want to treat Pat, too, but he won't let thim, yet. I think he will, later, an' I look at it like this: We wudn't go back on our min if they had consumption or m'asles or pneumony, wud we, now? Shure, we'd stay wid thim an' nurse thim. Why, then, wud we go back on thim whin they have th' drinkin' sickness? 'Be patient,' the doctor says, 'an' ye'll save him.' So Mary Morrison is goin' to save Jim, for if iver a soul was patient 'tis that same Mary Morrison. She's a lesson to us all. God helpin' me, I'll save Pat, too; but 'tis harrd wurruk," she added simply, "for me poor bye don't want to be saved—th' drink's that strong on him. He's too fond of th' disaase, Miss."

She sank into silence and Miss Wesley remained silent, too, feeling a new humility in the presence of this simple philosophy.

"’Twas a quare thing that started Jim," resumed Mrs. McCafferty at last, beginning to enjoy her new role of raconteur to "the Settlement lady." "I towld him th' reason Mary wuddent come back was because she feared he'd kill her an' git electhycooted for doin' that same. '’Tis yerself she's afraid fer,' says I to Jim, 'an' not herself. She'd be in her grave fine an' comfortable whin they'd be crispin' you up alive in elicthric chairs.' Jim Morrison didn't say a worrud whin I towld him that. He's English, an' ye know what they aare. But th' nixt day he wint to th' hospital an' talked it over wid th' doctor, man to man, an' he ain't been drunk since. Av course, he will," she added, benignly. "It ain't to be expected he can stop all at wance. But Mary Morrison will stand by till he's cured."

"You're all very patient with your husbands," conceded Miss Wesley, thoughtfully. "I can't understand why you women bear with them as you do."

"No, Miss" agreed Mrs. McCafferty politely, "I don't think ye can."

There was an intonation in her rich Irish voice which Miss Wesley caught and resented.

"Can you, then?" she asked with almost harsh abruptness, still under the influence of a sense of strong disapproval of an erring world. "Do you understand it?"

"I do," replied Mrs. McCafferty. "Shure I do."

She regarded Miss Wesley as she spoke with a glance which held more than "the Settlement lady" cared to analyze. There was amusement in it, and a fine tolerance, and feminine understanding, and genuine respect and liking, and something more which, if Marion Wesley had not been so successful and Bridget McCafferty so humble, might have been pity. For an instant the two women gazed at each other across the gulf which separated them. Then the glance of "the Settlement lady" shifted and fell.

Mrs. McCafferty nodded sagely, as if she had already said what it was and was merely emphasizing it by reiteration.

"Shure, Miss, we love 'em."