Clemence Part 9

"'There, there, dearie, don't take on so,' said good-natured Mrs.

Maloney. 'It's not dead she is at all. You see, the father came home, after bein' on a bit of a spree, with a touch of delirium, and raised a good deal of a fuss, and they took him away where he'll have to behave himself till the whisky gets out of his head.'

"'There, she's comin' to now, raise her up, Mis' Macarty, till I give her a little of this to drink. How do you feel now, poor thing?'

"'Why, what is it all about? How came I here?' said Mrs. Way, wildly; then, as her memory returned to her, she clasped Angel's little figure closely, and wept convulsively.

"'Don't take on so!' and, 'Let her alone, I tell you, it will do her good!' and, 'Do you want the woman to git the hysterics?' came indiscriminately from the females bending over her. Then Mrs. Maloney bustled away to make her a reviving cup of tea, and little widow Macarty, with her soft voice and pleasant way, soothed the heart-broken woman.

"'Never you mind, ma'am, everybody has trouble of some kind. Remember the children that's left, and keep your strength to work for them.'

"'You are good and kind,' moaned the sufferer, 'but I've nothing to reward your services.'

"'Can't I do a neighbor a kindness without their talking about pay?

Suppose I should fall sick myself, maybe I'd have to pay before hand to get a little help. Your lookin' better a ready. Don't make the tea too strong, Mrs. Maloney, to excite her, and I think a bit of dry toast would be just the thing to sort of tempt her appet.i.te.'

"Mrs. Way sat up, and a Doctor, who had been sent for, dressed her wounds, and p.r.o.nounced her case not dangerous. 'You need not antic.i.p.ate any great harm from the blow, madam,' he said, 'but your general health needs recuperating. Your mind acts on your body, and you must be kept free from excitement of any kind.'

"'Free from excitement,' she thought bitterly, after all was hushed in silence, and she lay weak and faint, watching the slumbers of the innocent children beside her. 'My G.o.d, pity me!' 'What have I done to deserve this cruel fate?' She thought of the long, miserable hours she had pa.s.sed alone with her helpless darlings, listening for the unsteady footsteps of him who had vowed to protect her, and guard her from life's ills. And this was the end. She wished she could die, but for the children, what would become of them? 'Free from excitement,' indeed. An unprotected woman, with two small children, and only one pair of hands to work with, and these disabled, and food and fire to get, and a roof to shelter them, to say nothing of warm comfortable clothing.'

"'She got up too quick, and worried too much,' said the Doctor, when he was called again a few weeks later. 'I can do nothing for her. Where's that wretch of a husband?'

"'In the workhouse,' sobbed Mrs. Maloney. 'What will become of the children when she's dead?'

"'Have to send them to the Orphan Asylum, I suppose. Dear me! I never could see what poor people wanted with so many children, anyway,' and the elegant Dr. Dash sauntered down the four flights of stairs, humming a fas.h.i.+onable opera, and speculating how much that beautiful Miss...o...b..rne really possessed in her own right.

"'Indeed, they won't go to the Orphan Asylum,' said little Mrs. Macarty, 'if I have to work and sustain them myself. The sweet, pretty darlings!

How would I feel if that was my own Katy, now?'

"n.o.body being able to say just how she would feel in that emergency, she bustled round, sniffing at imaginary Orphan Asylums, and nodding her head sagaciously, saying, 'We will show them a thing or two about Orphan Asylums, won't we now?'

"But little Angel had a plan of her own. Away down in her child's heart there was a sacred memory of a mother's anxious, tear-stained face, and grandma trying to comfort her with the message that had been the solace of her own grief-stricken old age:

"'Never despair, daughter! Remember, 'whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.' I had a heavenly dream about William, last night, and I feel sure that he'll find the right way at last. We'll pray for him together, and surely G.o.d will hear us.'

"'I believe that, Mother Way,' said the wife, eagerly. 'I could not die and leave him to perish. He loves his children devotedly, and I believe this child (drawing Angel nearer to her) has been sent by G.o.d for his salvation.'

"'May the Lord bless and strengthen her for the work,' said grandma in a tremulous voice, laying her thin hand upon the child's head, and Angel felt from that moment set apart, consecrated, as it were, by the last words of that dying saint, for that night, Grandma Way went to heaven.

She remembered it now, and knew the time had come for her to act her part. Mrs. Macarty became her sole confidential adviser.

"'I am twelve years old,' said Angel, 'and baby Matie is nearly two; I can take care of her, if you will show me a little now and then, and I am going to try and get along here till my father comes back again.'

"'Just hear the little woman, now,' said her listener, in open-mouthed admiration. 'Sure it would be a tiptop way to manage, and I'll do my best to help you through with it.'

"And this committee of two on ways and means proved so efficient, that when William Way returned, sober and downcast, Angel just lifted up little Mary, as bright and happy as if nothing had ever occurred to sadden them, and that this very room had not recently been the scene of a dreadful tragedy, of which the helpless babes were the only witnesses.

"'Ain't it wonderful?' said Mrs. Maloney, that same day; 'Way's got off with just sixty days, and come back again, and that child putting on the airs of a woman, a tryin' to keep house for him.'

"'And I'm sure that's right enough,' said Mrs. Macarty. 'They could not make it out that he killed the woman directly, and who cares for poor folks? She's dead and gone, and that's the end of her. Little them that makes the laws care! If it was one of them there rich men on the avenue, or a flaunting theater actress, or somebody had got jealous of somebody else, and committed murder, there'd be a fine sensation. An' there'd be pictures in all the shop windows, of how he or she looked in all sorts of situations, how they looked when they was a dyin', and how they looked after they was dead; and what the murderer eat for his supper the night it all got found out, or whether he did not eat anything at all; and how many fine ladies had been to console him, and how many equally fine ministers had been to pray with him. The newsboys would be shriekin' 'murder!' at every crossin', and every corner you turned, it would be 'hev a paper, mum, with the latest proceedings about the trial?' And to crown all, you'd come home, half distracted, to find the children playing with little gallowses, and askin' when pa was goin' to murder somebody, till you felt chilled to the very marrow of your bones.'

'But poor folks, that live in attics, ain't considered human. I tell you what, though, if Mis' Way had a seen her children starving, and stole a loaf of bread to save their lives, there would have been a stir about it, and a pile of policemen from here to the corner, to 'enforce the law,' and they'd have talked in all the churches, about the depravity of the poor in these cities, and then sent another thousand or two to the heathens. The Lord only knows what the world's a comin' to.'

'And the Lord only cares, I don't,' said Mrs. Maloney, flouncing off.

The honest truth was, she was a little jealous of her more intelligent neighbor, (for human nature is much the same from the garret to the drawing-room.) Mrs. Macarty needn't think _she_ was talked down, if she did, now and then, get in a word that she had picked up out to service, that the rest of the folks in the block could not understand. One of the Maloney's, direct from Galway, wasn't to be put down by any low Irish.

She'd go in and see the babies herself, and patronize them too. So, for spite, she took a dish of steaming potatoes, and left little Mike roaring, and went in to have a gossip.

"'Oh, thank you, Mrs. Maloney,' said Angel, who was fluttering around, setting the table, 'this will be so nice for papa--there he comes now.'

"A footstep sounded without, and the man came in, looking haggard and wan. 'The dirty villain,' muttered Mrs. Maloney, shuffling past him; but Angel came forward, and smoothed the hot temples, and talked in her pretty, bird-like voice. Two great tears rolled out from the hollow eyes, and a prayer that G.o.d must have heard, welled up from the depths of a penitent heart.

"Three peaceful, happy years rolled away. Angel was a tall girl of fifteen, and Mary five. They lived in a little cottage in the outskirts of the town, and the neighbors envied them their contented lot, and even strangers paused to admire their pretty home, and these fair, beautiful children. But sin once more entered their little Paradise. William Way again relapsed into dissipation, and 'the state of that man was worse than before.' The fire died out upon the hearth stone, and want, with gaunt, wolfish face, met them wherever they turned. And he, who should have protected, gave them only blows and curses. Everything went for drink. Angel tried courageously to find employment, but her slender wages were rudely taken from her, and half the time they went cold and hungry. Little Mary had always been extremely delicate, and she sunk under it and died, and was buried beside her mother. Angel despaired then, and went on for the future in a kind of maze of bewilderment, doing that which her hand found to do mechanically. Only G.o.d, who had bereft her, pitied her still, and helped her to resist temptation when it came to her.

"As her mother had done before her, Angel dragged out the weary years, almost hopeless; and the one object of her toil and solicitude, was only a pitiful wreck of the former stalwart William Way. Only a miserable, wretched creature, that grovelled in the mire of its own degradation, and from whose bosom the last spark of manhood seemed to have forever fled. To look upon him, you would ask, 'Can this being have a soul?'

"And fifteen more years dragged their weary round, and Angel was thirty, and a haggard, care-worn woman. It was a sin and a shame, people said, to wreck that girl's life, when she had many a chance where she might have married, and enjoyed the comfort of having a home of her own. And there were even those mean enough to deride her for her sacrifice, and tell her she had no ambition, and call her a fool for her pains; but she did not mind them.

"She felt glad that she had not, when, one day, the Doctor p.r.o.nounced, over a broken limb that he was bandaging, that William Way was not long for this world.

"'It's wonderful how he has held on so long, at the dreadful rate he has gone on, but the last few years have told on him. He can't survive this last shock.'

"There was but little time for preparation for a future world; but Angel had faith, and, even at the eleventh hour, it met with its reward. When she closed the dying eyes, she felt that she could trust the penitent soul to the mercy of Him who created it, and 'who can make the vilest clean.'

"For herself, she knew that 'when time shall be no more,' she should find eternal peace."

There was a quick, gasping sob, and Clemence looked up, as she finished, to see a little figure in faded blue calico, flying frantically down the road.

"Which of the scholars left?" she asked.

"Only Ruth Lynn," said Maurice Wayne. "_Her_ father used to drink, and fell in the mill pond about a year ago, and got drowned. Her mother's sick, too, and Dr. Little says she can't live, and has give up goin' to see her any longer, 'cause she can't pay. He's stingy mean to do it, for he goes twice a day to see that spiteful old Mrs. March, and I'm sure _she_ can't live, for ma said yesterday that all her money couldn't save her. When I grow up, I'm going to be a doctor, and I'll look after every poor person twice as good as I will a rich one. That's what I'll do."

"I did not know before that Ruth's mother was so very ill," said Clemence. "I must go and see her."

She forgot it again, though, until about a week after, when the roll was called, and she marked again "absent" after Ruth's name, as she had already done several times before.

"She can't come any more," said Maurice, "her mother's worse, and they say she won't live much longer."

Clemence felt conscience-stricken at having forgotten her, and set out for the little one-roomed cabin directly after school was dismissed.

She found the direst poverty and wretchedness. A dark-haired, strong-featured woman lay on a couch under a window, where there was scarcely a whole pane of gla.s.s, and which was stuffed full of rags to keep out the draught. A stove, at which a frowsy neighbor was cooking some fat slices of pork, for the sick woman, filled the apartment with stifling heat and greasy odors.

"There's the schoolma'am," she heard in a loud whisper, as she paused for a moment upon the threshold. The invalid tried to raise herself, and gave a look of dismay at the squalid scene. Poor Mrs. Lynn had been a noted housekeeper, in her days of prosperity, and even at her greatest need, n.o.body could ever call her neglectful, either of her house or little Ruth, who, though always poorly clad, looked clean and wholesome.

Clemence read the whole at a glance.

"Do not apologise," she interrupted, as the strange neighbor poured out a profusion of deprecatory exclamations, "I heard that Mrs. Lynn was ill, and came over to see if I could not a.s.sist in some way. Don't allow me to disturb you, madam. How does she feel now?"

"Well, pretty poorly; ain't it so, Mrs. Lynn? Don't you feel as though your time was short here below? School-ma'am's been askin."

"Yes, I'm most gone," was the feeble response, "and I should rejoice to be freed from my troubles, only for the child. I don't have faith to see just how it's a goin to work for the best, for there will be none to comfort little Ruth after I'm gone."

"Well, you must just trust in the Lord. That's what the minister told you, and he knows, for he's had a good chance to try it, preachin' all the time without half enough pay, and a donation now and then. Any way, it will be all the same a hundred years hence. There's the vittals I've been gettin ready, and now this young woman's come to sit by you, I'll run home and look after Tommy. Expect he's in the cistern by this time.