A FRIEND IN NEED.
Alone in the streets of a great city, in the night-time—so young, so
beautiful, without a home, a dollar, or a friend, what could the poor
girl do?
Utter hopelessness is almost rest. Catharine could not understand this,
and wondered within herself at the strange apathy that possessed her in
this the most forlorn moment of her life.
She wandered on, careless of the direction, without object and dreamily.
Once or twice she sat down on a door-step to rest, but it was only for a
moment, and when she arose it was to forget that a transient repose had
been obtained. At last in the drear waste of her thoughts she remembered
the Irish woman who had been so kind to her at Bellevue, and around this
thought centred other reflections that almost amounted to a resolution.
But even this emotion died away when she reflected, that, kind as the
woman was, there existed no means of ascertaining exactly where she
lived.
Still Catharine wandered on; what else could she do? Even from the
door-steps she might at any moment be driven forth as an intruder. It
was evidently getting late; the noises of city life were gradually
hushed, and the growing stillness appalled her. Never, in her whole
existence, had she been so utterly alone.
Awaking from her apathy, as it were from a dull dream, she found herself
upon the corner of two thoroughfares, on the east side of the town. The
stores were all closed, and the streets on either hand almost deserted.
“Where _can_ I go?—what will become of me?” she murmured, looking around
with affright. “Will no one have pity on me?”
That moment a woman passed her carrying a basket of clothes on her arm.
“She is going home,” said Catharine, gazing after her through the
blinding tears that filled her eyes.
“Did you speak to me, ma’am?” inquired the woman, turning back at the
sound of her voice.
A faint cry broke from the poor girl, and seizing the woman joyfully by
the arm, she called out.
“Oh, is it you?—is it you?”
Mary Margaret Dillon sat down her basket in utter astonishment, and
seizing the hand that detained her, shook it heartily.
“Well, if this isn’t something, innyhow; me jist thinking of ye, and
here ye are to the fore; but ye’re looking white as me apron yet, bad
luck to the doctors—come by, and let us have a word of talk togither.”
“Will you let me go with you?” inquired Catharine, anxiously, for she
had been so often and so cruelly rebuffed that this kindness scarcely
seemed real.
“Will I let ye go with me, bless ye’re sowl; that’s a question to put to
a Christian woman, now, isn’t it? In course I’ll let ye go with me; why
not?”
“But I have no home, nor a cent to pay for—for—everybody has abandoned
me—I haven’t a friend in the wide world.”
“Hist, now, that’s talkin’ traison and rank hathenism. Where d’ye think
is Mary Margaret Dillon, with her strong hands and a shanty over her
head which no one else has a right to, baring a triflin’ claim on the
lot o’ ground. Isn’t that a home for ye, I’d like to know?”
“But I shall be trouble—I shall crowd you,” faltered Catharine,
trembling with anxiety to have her objections overruled.
“Did ye ever see a poor man’s house so full that one more couldn’t find
a corner to rest in—faix, if ye did, it wasn’t in the cabin of an
out-and-out Irishman,” said Margaret, lifting her basket of clothes and
settling herself for a walk. “Come along; I want ye to see the childer,
bliss’em, and the old mon, to say nothin’ of the pig and three geese,
that’ll be proud as anythin’ to have ye for company.”
“Thank you—oh, thank you with all my heart. I will go; perhaps I can do
something to pay for the trouble,” said Catharine, to whom this vision
of a home seemed like a glimpse of paradise; and folding her shawl about
her, she prepared to move on with a feeling almost of cheerfulness,
certainly of intense gratitude.
“No trouble in life,” answered Margaret, briskly. “The old man and the
childer’ll just resave ye as if ye was one of ’em. Come along, come
along, and we’ll have a taste of supper and a drop of tae as a
remimbrance of this matein atween old friends, d’ye see?”
“Let me help with your basket.”
“No, no, jist be aisy there; ye’re not strong enough for that, and faix
it’s a sin and a shame that sich a dilicate young crathur should iver be
put to the work; home or not, my opinion is ye’re a born lady, and that
I’ll stick to agin the world.”
They walked on together, Margaret talking cheerfully, and Catharine
mingling some painful thoughts with her gratitude.
“Mary Margaret,” she said, at length, in a low, mournful voice, “you
will never turn against me, as the others have, because I cannot give
you proof that—that the poor baby they buried away from me was honestly
mine; you will take my word for it, I feel almost sure!”
“I don’t want ye’r word; one look in ye’r purty face is enough for me,
and I’d stand up for ye agin the whole univarse, with old Ireland to the
fore.”
“Thank you—God bless you for that,” answered Catharine, and for the
first time in many days a smile broke over her face. “You are so honest
and so kind, Margaret, I could not bear that you should think ill of
me.”
Margaret did not answer at once, but walked on thoughtfully.
“In course,” she said at last, “I belave ivery word ye tell me; but if
it wasn’t so—if ye had been a poor, desaved crathur instid of the swate
innicent ye are, I wouldn’t turn, agin ye anyhow. It ain’t Christian,
and, accordin’ to my idees, it ain’t modest for a woman to hold a poor,
fallen feller crathur down in the gutter foriver and iver. The blissed
Saviour, who was holier than us all, didn’t do it, and, by all the holy
saints, Mary Margaret Dillon niver will either.”
Catharine drew a deep sigh.
“Don’t sigh in that way, darlint,” exclaimed Margaret, kindly. “D’ye
know that ivery time ye draw a deep breath like that it drinks a drop of
blood from ye’r heart? Don’t sigh agin, that’s a darlint.”
“I was thinking,” replied Catharine, “how much worse it would have ended
if I had really been so wicked as they think I am; it seems to me as if
I must have laid down on the first door-step and died. Nothing but my
own sense of right has given me strength to live—and after all, what
have I to live for now?”
“Hist, darlint, hist, this is talkin’ like a hathen. Ye’re to live
because the blissid Saviour thinks it’s good for ye, and that’s enough
for a Christian. Besides, it’s mane and low-lived to give way, wid the
first dash of trouble, especially when we see every day that the Saviour
makes ye strong and more determined.”
Catharine submitted to this rebuke for her momentary repining with
gentle patience. The simple piety and honest good sense of Mary Margaret
had its effect upon her, and before she reached the shanty where the
good woman lived, something of hopefulness sprang up in her heart. She
could not help feeling that there was something providential in her
encounter with the good Irishwoman at the moment of her utmost need.
This gave strength to many hopeful impulses that are always latent in
the bosom of the young.