Mark Dunn - We Five

“What a deliciously morose woman!” exclaimed Mrs. Barton, who signed her desire for a morning embrace from her only child by extending her arms and twiddling her fingers.

Maggie obliged. The two held themselves thusly across the bed until Maggie felt pinioned and succeeded in wriggling herself free and then popping up from the bed like the little clown sprung from the box. Mrs. Barton took this opportunity to give her daughter a good looking-over. “Tut, tut, tut. You’re much too pretty to spend your day in the back of that woman’s dreary dress shop, stitching away with those other girls like prisoners in a women’s gaol.”

“You mustn’t speak so unkindly of Mrs. Colthurst. She’s a good woman and a generous and thoughtful taskmistress. Only last week she rewarded us with yet another twenty-minute interval in the fresh air and fortifying sunshine; we are now permitted three opportunities during the workday to leave that windowless workroom and take a bit of a stretch.”

“Permit me, then, to disparage her for the opposite reason. I shall mark the very odd stripe of liberality to her character.”

“Do as you wish, Mamma, but I believe Mrs. Colthurst’s kindness devolves from her great fondness for us. And in my mind, there is not a thing odd or wrong about it.”

“Then I shall confine myself to my feelings about your daily absence from this house. Surely, I cannot be singular in pining away for a missing daughter. Doesn’t Carrie’s mother feel similarly deprived?”

“I suspect, Mamma, that it isn’t my society you are missing so much as my lack of attendance to your every hourly need. Which distinguishes you from Mrs. Hale. Carrie’s mother doesn’t lie abed all day as you are wont to do, with sufficient opportunity for indulging in troubling contemplations. She occupies herself in her solitary hours with industrious and conscientious endeavours. She plays upon the harp. She bakes muffins for the poor. Then in the evening, when Carrie returns, the two are pleasantly restored to the company of one another, but neither will have considered the separation as any sort of trial. To be quite honest, Mamma, I’ve never seen such sensible affection demonstrated betwixt a mother and daughter.”

Mrs. Barton’s eyes flashed; her nostrils dilated. It was a look half put up and half sincere. “I noted three, perhaps four, things in that last peroration which pricked this particular mother’s soul — the last being the most distressing. Have we nothing between us which remotely resembles the affection shown by Carrie and Sylvia Hale for one another?”

“I’ve seen little evidence of it.”

Mrs. Barton flung a palm to her chest and gasped.

“Hold, Mamma. Let me finish. We haven’t the same affection because its character bears no similarity to our own. Carrie and her mother are in some ways more like friends than relations. We are different. You are the mother and I am the daughter, and we know our rôles and we do credit to them.” Maggie cleared her throat. “After a fashion.”

Mrs. Barton’s frown transformed into a fully blown pout. “I think that I should like to be your friend someday.”

“And yet, with all candour, Mamma, I would not choose you for a friend. I simply would not.”

Clara Barton rose from her bed and then promptly put herself down upon the edge. Her hands made themselves into little fists that bunched and clutched the folds of the counterpane with straitened vexation. “Such a thing to say to one you love! Or do you love me?”

Maggie sate down next to her mother. She took one of Clara’s hands and laid it within the cradle of her own unturned palms. “Stuff! Of course I love you. I simply mean that as much as I esteem Carrie, I could never be Carrie, and as much as, I’m certain, you esteem Mrs. Hale, you could never be Mrs. Hale. The idea, for example, of spending the entirety of one’s evening reading aloud to one’s mother would be the death of me. You know I can scarcely hold myself still long enough to read a book.”

“No, but do you not, my daughter, keep yourself still and staid to stitch and baste all the day long?”

“I do not always sit as I sew, Mamma. Sometimes I pace, if you must know. As for books, we haven’t money to buy a single one.”

“Nonsense! We could buy a book if we wanted. Mrs. Colthurst gives you a good wage. And the annuity your late uncle left us provides a bit of quarterly interest. We are not paupers.”

Downstairs the clock on the hearth mantel had begun to chime the time: seven thirty (or very nearly seven thirty, for the clock ran fast). Maggie sprang from the bed. “Now I am late.” She reached down and kissed her mother on the cheek and then pivoted on her heel to face the door, poised for swift retreat. Just as suddenly she bethought herself of that thing which often troubled her. “Oh. The palpitations that came again last night — have they now suspended?”

Mrs. Barton nodded, smiling pleasantly. “This morning, my dear daughter, I am ticking as regularly as a newly wound clock. My vision is restored as well. It was so cloudy yesterday, but now it is clear.”

“Was it the drops Dr. Osborne gave you?”

“Most assuredly! Molly’s father is a veritable wonder. How fortunate for me that you and Molly are such good friends or I should never have known him — so skilled he is, and so kind and considerate. And I shouldn’t even mention how very little he charges.”

Maggie shook her head intemperately. “Dr. Osborne cannot charge much above what he does, Mamma, or word would get out that he is practising the medical arts without proper training or proper credentials. In truth, you and I both know he’s a dentist-surgeon. He pulls teeth. Whatever facility he purports to have for healing the sick — and I shall be charitable — has been gained in a most haphazard and piecemeal fashion.”

Mrs. Barton bristled. “ However the gift has come to him, he is the best I have ever had, and I am quite on my way to a full recovery.”

“And he drinks.”

“I thought you were late.”

“I should simply like to remind you that Doctor Osborne, as you have chosen to denominate him, drinks. He drinks gin. More gin than is prudent, according to Molly, who, I fancy, frets about him daily. If you are setting your cap for this doctor, who is not, in fact, a doctor in any proper legal sense, I would rather you not.”

Mrs. Barton gaped in disgust. “What an inestimable privilege it is for me to be receiving such sauce and pepper from you, and at such an early hour!” Mrs. Barton folded her arms in a harlequinade of parental disapproval.

Maggie held her ground. “You are a widow, Mamma. And he is a widow er , and I would rather not have him for a father, and that is that.” She turned again to go.

“You know very well and good,” said Mrs. Barton, addressing her daughter’s back, “it was the death of Molly’s mother and that baby which drove him to the spirits. But two years have passed and he drinks far less than he used to, for he has told me it is no longer necessary to apply such a heavy salve to his mourning heart, when the heart seems to be mending itself sufficiently without medicinal assistance.”

“Medicinal indeed,” mumbled Maggie.

“What was that you said?”

“No film or cloud has ever passed over my eyes, Mamma. What I see, and see quite clearly, is a woman who wishes to marry a certain dentist who would be a doctor, and if I am to place myself before this looking-glass…” Which Maggie did, taking the opportunity of reflection to adjust her bonnet. “…I would see, as well, a daughter who could not under any imaginable circumstances permit her mother to do so.”