ONCE upon a time there
was a little scullery-maid, who, like all scullery- maids, spent most of her
time in a kitchen. It was the kitchen of a boarding-house, and you can imagine
what a disagreeable place it was -- full of unpleasant smells, and usually
piled high with dirty dishes which the scullery-maid must wash. It was dark, it
was greasy, the cook had a bad temper, and the chimney smoked.
You would have thought
the little scullery-maid would have been glad to get out of it the instant her
work was done, even though the only place to which she could go was one corner
of an attic on the top floor. But, oddly enough, she often left her attic room
and slipped back down to the kitchen after every one had gone.
For, much as she hated
the kitchen, there was one thing about it she loved. It overhung a rippling
little river, which ran down from the mountains above the city, and which was
always talking to itself and to any one else who would listen. All day long it
talked, but then its voice was drowned in the rattle of pots and pans and the
angry commands of the bad-tempered cook. The scullery-maid sometimes went out
on a little platform, directly over the water, where she sat and peeled a
mountain of potatoes. There she could hear the river much more plainly; and she
was always deeply disappointed when the cook decided to have the potatoes
boiled in their jackets, for on those days she had no opportunity to hear even
for a moment the singing voice of the clear stream.
But at night -- that
was the time! The kitchen was quiet then, and although the door to the platform
was locked, she could put her head out of the window and see and hear the dear
little river almost as if she were floating on its surface in a boat. She came
to know every one of its moods, and how it looked and how it sang in fair
weather and in foul. Sometimes it was as merry as a child, and went along laughing
and chuckling to itself till a smile came on the scullery- maid's dirty face in
answer. Sometimes, on dark nights, it whispered something mournful and yet so
sweet that she felt her heart swell. On moonlight nights it glided smoothly
along like a moonbeam, with only a gentle lapping where it passed the pillars
of the platform, and a low, happy murmur from the other bank.
But under the stars it
was the best of all. Then it sang so gallant and heartening a song that the
little scullery-maid forgot how she hated the kitchen and the greasy dishes,
forgot that she had no friends and no sweetheart. She only felt glad that she
was alive, and faced bravely a long future of bad-tempered cooks and unpleasant
smells.
Now one of the people
who lived in the boarding-house was a poet -- a really, truly poet, although
people did not know it yet, for he was only a young man and looked like any one
else, except that he often forgot to shave himself. One evening he was invited
out to a fashionable late supper -- a great event with him, for he was very
poor. When he dressed, he noticed that as usual he had not shaved for two or
three days, so that a blond stubble bristled all over his cheeks and chin. It
was too late to ring for anything, so he took his little pitcher and went
downstairs to the kitchen to get some warm water.
He had very old
slippers on his feet, and they were so worn and soft that they made no noise as
he walked; so that the little scullery-maid, leaning out of the window, did not
hear him, any more than he saw her in the dark room. As he dipped his pitcher
in the reservoir of water, he caught his sleeve on a pan and it came crashing
down on the stove. It was a question which was more startled, the girl or the
poet. They stood and stared at each other in the dusk. He saw a very dirty
little maid with a plain face and no figure at all, and she saw a very handsome
young man, for it was so dark that she could not see that he needed to shave.
"Who in the world
are you?" asked the poet.
"I am the scullery-maid,"
she said.
"Good heavens, do
you have to stay in this awful place at night as well as by day?"
The poet was like other
poets, and could not bear to think of unpleasant things, although he was glad
enough to be benefited by their results.
"No, I don't have
to stay here."
"Why under the sun
do you come back, then?"
Now the scullery-maid
was very ignorant and simple-minded -- you can imagine how much so from the
fact that she could not think of anything to say but the truth.
"I come back to listen
to the river," she said.
The poet stared.
"Why do you do
that?" he asked.
"I do not know
exactly why. I -- I like it."
There was a long
silence, in which the poet heard the gallant song of the little river rushing
past under the stars, hurrying along it knew not whither, but still happy and
sure that its path was safe. Tears came into his eyes, and he set the pitcher
of hot water down on the stove. He had a sudden realization of what the voice
of the stream meant to the ugly little scullery-maid. After the manner of
poets, he knew at once, much better than she did, what it said to her. He felt
a whole poem chanting in his heart.
"You poor
child!" he said, and laid his hand on her shoulder. His voice was very
soft. Nobody else had ever spoken to her so before. "You poor child! I
know why you like to hear it."
And with that he went
up-stairs and wrote the loveliest poem you can imagine -- all about the little
scullery-maid, and how she hated the kitchen, and her ugly, unhappy life, and
yet how sweetly the little river sang to her and told her to be brave. The
tears were in his eyes many times as he wrote, and he forgot all about the
supper to which he had been invited, for he was a real poet.
The scullery-maid stood
still exactly where he had left her. For once she did not hear the voice of the
river. She heard some one saying, "You poor child! You poor child!"
It seemed to her she must have dreamed it, and yet there was the pot of hot
water, glimmering white in the dusk. There it was in the morning, too, although
of course the water had grown cold.
The poet sent the poem
he had written in the night to a great editor -- one who had refused every
single thing the poet had written before. The editor was as bad-tempered as he
was great, but he wiped his eyes after he had read the poem about the dirty little
scullery-maid and the song of the river, and sent for the poet at once, to tell
him to write more like it. This the poet was already doing. He had forgotten
everything else, and imagined that he too was a maid and lived in a greasy
kitchen with only the sound of a river for comfort.
For that is the way
with a poet. If he gets interested in somebody's point of view, he steps in and
pushes the owner out of the way and lives his life for a while. The
scullery-maid below stairs did not know that the blond young man on the fourth
floor was washing her dishes, peeling her potatoes, and dreading with her the
harsh voice of the cook; but so he was. In the evening he stood beside her as
she listened to the song of the river; and he stole her simple, ignorant thoughts,
one by one, and carried away on the tip of his pen the love for the little
stream which filled her heart.
When he had taken them
all, and written them down so beautifully that he made himself cry many times,
he put them all in a book. Then he forgot about them and fell to imagining he
was some one else. For that is the way with a poet.
But the editor did not
forget, nor did any one who read the poems. Everywhere in the city people were
moved to tears by the beauty of the river's song and the sadness of the little
scullery-maid. Gray-haired business folk, lovely ladies of society, unhappy
young men and old women -- all imagined, while they read the poems, that they,
too, were scullery- maids and that the river sang to them; and they faced
whatever was unhappy or ugly in their own lives with more courage because of
what it said. They did not say much in praise of the little book, but they
dried their eyes when they had finished it, and went to buy another copy to
send to a friend. Most remarkable of all, they treated their own scullery-maids
with more kindness, which is a tremendous thing for a poem to have
accomplished. The editor who had recognized before any one else how lovely the
poems were was surer than ever that he was a great man.
Scullery-maids were
quite heroines, and even the ugly little one in the kitchen of the
boarding-house seemed so important that the grocer's boy tried to be her
sweetheart. He was a good fellow, and wished to be kind to her, but she would
have none of him, because he was not blond, and did not put his hand on her
shoulder and say in a tender voice, "You poor child!" -- in other
words, because he was not a poet; whereas, if she had but known it, it was a
lucky thing for her that he was not.
She was so ignorant and
neglected that she had never learned to read, and she was almost the only one
in the city who did not have the joy of the poems about her river. She found
out where the poet's room was, and whenever she could she would slip away to
try and catch a glimpse of him. But though he passed her several times on the
stairs, he did not notice her. He was so busy living the life of an old, old
woman whom he had seen on the other side of town that he could think of nothing
else. Still, it was a joy to the scullery-maid even to see him, and as she sat
on the platform, peeling potatoes, she thought how yellow his hair was, and how
blue his eyes, instead of listening to the river which had comforted her so
long.
And then, one day, the
poet got so much money from the sale of his little book that he decided to move
away to a better boarding-place. When the little scullery-maid heard the news,
as she washed the dishes in the greasy kitchen, something snapped inside her
head, and she could no longer hear any sound of the river at all.
That day, as she sat
peeling the potatoes, the little river flowed past, silently, silently, and yet
with so dizzying a gleam that, as she looked long and miserably at it, she lost
her balance and fell into the water and was drowned. It was probably the best
thing that could have happened to her. For when one can no longer hear any
sound of brave song through the hateful noise of dreary toil, when one has lost
one's singing river, there is not much to live for, is there?
She was carried down the
current and cast ashore on the beach where the river runs into the sea. The
poet, walking on the beach, saw her lying there, and straightway fell to
imagining the most romantic ideas about an unhappy love story. The tears came
to his eyes, although that was nothing surprising for him. A beautiful poem
sang in his heart, so that he forgot all about the poor little scullery-maid
lying dead at his feet. For that is the way with a poet.
Dorothy Canfield