Lovey Mary
Copyright© 2024 by Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
Chapter 6: The Losing of Mr. Stubbins
“Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.”
If the Cabbage Patch had pinned its faith upon the efficiency of the matrimonial agency in regard to the disposal of Miss Hazy, it was doomed to disappointment. The events that led up to the final catastrophe were unique in that they cast no shadows before.
Miss Hazy’s letters, dictated by Mrs. Wiggs and penned by Lovey Mary, were promptly and satisfactorily answered. The original of the spirit picture proved to be one Mr. Stubbins, “a prominent citizen of Bagdad Junction who desired to marry some one in the city. The lady must be of good character and without incumbrances.” “That’s all right,” Mrs. Wiggs had declared; “you needn’t have no incumbrances. If he’ll take keer of you, we’ll all look after Chris.”
The wooing had been ideally simple. Mr. Stubbins, with the impetuosity of a new lover, demanded an early meeting. It was a critical time, and the Cabbage Patch realized the necessity of making the first impression a favorable one. Mrs. Wiggs took pictures from her walls and chairs from her parlor to beautify the house of Hazy. Old Mrs. Schultz, who was confined to her bed, sent over her black silk dress for Miss Hazy to wear. Mrs. Eichorn, with deep insight into the nature of man, gave a pound-cake and a pumpkin-pie. Lovey Mary scrubbed, and dusted, and cleaned, and superintended the toilet of the bride elect.
The important day had arrived, and with it Mr. Stubbins. To the many eyes that surveyed him from behind shutters and half-open doors he was something of a disappointment. Mrs. Wiggs’s rosy anticipations had invested him with the charms of an Apollo, while Mr. Stubbins, in reality, was far from godlike. “My land! he’s lanker ‘n a bean-pole,” exclaimed Mrs. Eichorn, in disgust. But then Mrs. Eichorn weighed two hundred, and her judgment was warped. Taking everything into consideration, the prospects had been most flattering. Mr. Stubbins, sitting in Mrs. Wiggs’s most comfortable chair, with a large slice of pumpkin-pie in his hand, and with Miss Hazy opposite arrayed in Mrs. Schultz’s black silk, had declared himself ready to marry at once. And Mrs. Wiggs, believing that a groom in the hand is worth two in the bush, promptly precipitated the courtship into a wedding.
The affair proved the sensation of the hour, and “Miss Hazy’s husband” was the cynosure of all eyes. For one brief week the honeymoon shed its beguiling light on the neighborhood, then it suffered a sudden and ignominious eclipse.
The groom got drunk.
Mary was clearing away the supper-dishes when she was startled by a cry from Miss Hazy:
“My sakes! Lovey Mary! Look at Mr. Stubbins a-comin’ up the street! Do you s’pose he’s had a stroke?”
Lovey Mary ran to the window and beheld the “prominent citizen of
Bagdad Junction” in a state of unmistakable intoxication. He was
bareheaded and hilarious, and used the fence as a life-preserver. Miss
Hazy wrung her hands and wept.
“Oh, what’ll I do?” she wailed. “I do b’lieve he’s had somethin’ to drink. I ain’t goin’ to stay an’ meet him, Mary; I’m goin’ to hide. I always was skeered of drunken men.”
“I’m not,” said Mary, stoutly. “You go on up in my room and lock the door; I’m going to stay here and keep him from messing up this kitchen. I want to tell him what I think of him, anyhow. I just hate that man! I believe you do, too, Miss Hazy.”
Miss Hazy wept afresh. “Well, he ain’t my kind, Mary. I know I’d hadn’t orter marry him, but it ‘pears like ever’ woman sorter wants to try gittin’ married oncet anyways. I never would ‘a’ done it, though, if Mrs. Wiggs hadn’t ‘a’ sicked me on.”
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