said Harry. "I have known wonderful instances of the contrivance, and
ingenuity, and perseverance of these creatures in getting back home."
"Well," said Jim, "I know a regiment of our press boys and reporters,
who go all up and down the highways and byways, alleys and lanes of
New York, looking into cracks and corners, and I'll furnish them with
a description of Jack, and tell them _I_ want him; and I'll be bound
we'll have him forthcoming. There's some use in newspaper boys, now
and then."
And Jim sat down by Mrs. Betsey, and entered into the topic of Jack's
characteristics, ways, manners and habits, with an interest which went
to the deepest heart of the good little old lady, and excited in her
bosom the brightest hopes.
The evening passed off pleasantly. By this time, the habitual comers
felt enough at home to have the sort of easy enjoyment that a return
to one's own fireside always brings.
Alice, Jim, Eva, Angelique, and Mr. St. John discussed the forthcoming
Christmas-tree for the Sunday-school, and made lists of purchases to
be made of things to be distributed among them.
"Let's give them things that are really useful," said St. John.
"For my part," said Eva, "in giving to such poor children, whose
mothers have no time to entertain them, and no money to buy
pretty things, I feel more disposed to get bright, attractive
playthings--dolls with fine, fancy dresses, and so on; it gives a
touch of poetry to the poor child's life."
"Well, I've dressed four dolls," said Angie; "and I offer my services
to dress a dozen more. My innate love of finery is turned to good
account here."
"I incline more to useful things," said Alice.
"Well," said Eva, "suppose we do both, give each child one useful
thing and one for fancy?"
"Well," said Alice, "the shopping for all this list of eighty children
will be no small item. Jim, we shall have to call in your services."
"I'm your man," said Jim. "I know stores where the fellows would run
their feet off to get a good word from us of the press. I shall turn
my influence in to the service of the church."
"Well," said Alice, "we shall take you with us, when we go on our
shopping tour."
"I know a German firm where you can get the real German candles, and
glass balls, and all the shiners and tinklers to glorify your tree,
and a little angel to stick on the top. A tip-top notice from me in
the paper will make them shell out for us like thunder."
Mr. St. John opened his large, thoughtful, blue eyes on Jim with
an air of innocent wonder. He knew as little of children and their
ways as most men, and was as helpless about all the details of their
affairs as he was desirous of a good result.
"I leave it all in your hands," he said, meekly; "only, wherever I can
be of service, command me."
It was probably from pure accident that Mr. St. John as he spoke
looked at Angie, and that Angie blushed a little, and that Jim Fellows
twinkled a wicked glance across at Alice. Such accidents are all the
while happening, just as flowers are all the while springing up by the
wayside. Wherever man and woman walk hand in hand, the earth is sown
thick with them.
It was a later hour than usual when Miss Dorcas and Mrs. Betsey came
back to their home.
"Is Jack come home?" was the first question.
No, Jack had not come.
_CHAPTER XXXIV._
GOING TO THE BAD.
It was the week before Christmas, and all New York was stirring and
rustling with a note of preparation. Every shop and store was being
garnished and furbished to look its best. Christmas-trees for sale
lay at the doors of groceries; wreaths of ground-pine, and sprigs and
branches of holly, were on sale, and selling briskly. Garlands and
anchors and crosses of green began to adorn the windows of houses, and
were a merchantable article in the stores. The toy-shops were flaming
and flaunting with a delirious variety of attractions, and mammas
and papas with puzzled faces were crowding and jostling each other,
and turning anxiously from side to side in the suffocating throng
that crowded to the counters, while the shopmen were too flustered to
answer questions, and so busy that it seemed a miracle when anybody
got any attention. The country-folk were pouring into New York to
do Christmas shopping, and every imaginable kind of shop had in its
window some label or advertisement or suggestion of something that
might answer for a Christmas gift. Even the grim, heavy hardware
trade blossomed out into festal suggestions. Tempting rows of knives
and scissors glittered in the windows; little chests of tools for
little masters, with cards and labels to call the attention of papa
to the usefulness of the present. The confectioners' windows were
a glittering mass of sugar frostwork of every fanciful device, gay
boxes of bonbons, marvelous fabrications of chocolate, and sugar
rainbows in candy of every possible device; and bewildered crowds of
well-dressed purchasers came and saw and bought faster than the two
hands of the shopmen could tie up and present the parcels. The grocery
stores hung out every possible suggestion of festal cheer. Long
strings of turkeys and chickens, green bunches of celery, red masses
of cranberries, boxes of raisins and drums of figs, artistically
arranged, and garnished with Christmas greens, addressed themselves
eloquently to the appetite, and suggested that the season of festivity
was at hand.
The weather was stinging cold--cold enough to nip one's toes and
fingers, as one pressed round, doing Christmas shopping, and to give
cheeks and nose alike a tinge of red. But nobody seemed to mind
the cold. "Cold as Christmas" has become a cheery proverb; and for
prosperous, well-living people, with cellars full of coal, with bright
fires and roaring furnaces and well-tended ranges, a cold Christmas is
merely one of the luxuries. Cold is the condiment of the season; the
stinging, smarting sensation is an appetizing reminder of how warm and
prosperous and comfortable are all within doors.
But did any one ever walk the streets of New York, the week before
Christmas, and try to imagine himself moving in all this crowd of
gaiety, outcast, forsaken and penniless? How dismal a thing is a crowd
in which you look in vain for one face that you know! how depressing
the sense that all this hilarity and abundance and plenty is not for
you! Shakespeare has said, "How miserable it is to look into happiness
through another man's eyes--to see that which you might enjoy and
may not, to move in a world of gaiety and prosperity where there is
nothing for you!"
Such were Maggie's thoughts, the day she went out from the kindly
roof that had sheltered her, and cast herself once more upon the
world. Poor hot-hearted, imprudent child, why did she run from her
only friends? Well, to answer that question, we must think a little.
It is a sad truth, that when people have taken a certain number of
steps in wrong-doing, even the good that is in them seems to turn
against them and become their enemy. It was in fact a residuum of
honor and generosity, united with wounded pride, that drove Maggie
into their street, that morning. She had overheard the conversation
between Aunt Maria and Eva; and certain parts of it brought back to
her mind the severe reproaches which had fallen upon her from her
Uncle Mike. He had told her she was a disgrace to any honest house,
and she had overheard Aunt Maria telling the same thing to Eva,--that
the having and keeping such as she in her home was a disreputable,
disgraceful thing, and one that would expose her to very unpleasant
comments and observations. Then she listened to Aunt Maria's argument,
to show Eva that she had better send her mother away and take another
woman in her place, because she was encumbered with such a daughter.
"Well," she said to herself, "I'll go then. I'm in everybody's way,
and I get everybody into trouble that's good to me. I'll just take
myself off. So there!" and Maggie put on her things and plunged into
the street and walked very fast in a tumult of feeling.
She had a few dollars in her purse that her mother had given her to
buy winter clothing; enough, she thought vaguely, to get her a few
days' lodging somewhere, and she would find something honest to do.
Maggie knew there were places where she would be welcomed with an evil
welcome, where she would have praise and flattery instead of chiding
and rebuke; but she did not intend to go to them just yet.
The gentle words that Eva had spoken to her, the hope and confidence
she had expressed that she might yet retrieve her future, were a
secret cord that held her back from going to the utterly bad.
The idea that somebody thought well of her, that somebody believed
in her, and that a lady pretty, graceful, and admired in the world,
seemed really to care to have her do well, was a redeeming thought.
She would go and get some place, and do something for herself, and
when she had shown that she could do something, she would once
more make herself known to her friends. Maggie had a good gift at
millinery, and, at certain odd times, had worked in a little shop on
Sixteenth Street, where the mistress had thought well of her, and made
her advantageous offers. Thither she went first, and asked to see
Miss Pinhurst. The moment, however, that she found herself in that
lady's presence, she was sorry she had come. Evidently, her story had
preceded her. Miss Pinhurst had heard all the particulars of her ill
conduct, and was ready to the best of her ability to act the part of
the flaming sword that turned every way to keep the fallen Eve out of
paradise.
"I am astonished, Maggie, that you should even think of such a thing
as getting a place _here_, after all's come and gone that you know of;
I am astonished that you could for one moment think of it. None but
young ladies of good character can be received into our work-rooms.
If I should let such as you come in, my respectable girls would feel
insulted. I don't know but they would leave in a body. I think _I_
should leave, under the same circumstances. No, I wish you well,
Maggie, and hope that you may be brought to repentance; but, as to the
shop, it isn't to be thought of."
Now, Miss Pinhurst was not a hard-hearted woman; not, in any
sense, a cruel woman; she was only on that picket duty by which
the respectable and well-behaved part of society keeps off the
ill-behaving. Society has its instincts of self-protection and
self-preservation, and seems to order the separation of the sheep and
the goats, even before the time of final judgment. For, as a general
thing, it would not be safe and proper to admit fallen women back into
the ranks of those unfallen, without some certificate of purgation.
Somebody must be responsible for them, that they will not return
again to bad ways, and draw with them the innocent and inexperienced.
Miss Pinhurst was right in requiring an unblemished record of moral
character among her shop-girls. It was her mission to run a shop
and run it well; it was not her call to conduct a Magdalen Asylum:
hence, though we pity poor Maggie, coming out into the cold with the
bitter tears of rejection freezing her cheek, we can hardly blame Miss
Pinhurst. She had on her hands already all that she could manage.
Besides, how could she know that Maggie was really repentant? Such
creatures were so artful; and, for aught she knew, she might be coming
for nothing else than to lure away some of her girls, and get them
into mischief. She spoke the honest truth, when she said she wished
well to Maggie. She did wish her well. She would have been sincerely
glad to know that she had gotten into better ways, but she did not
feel that it was her business to undertake her case. She had neither
time nor skill for the delicate and difficult business of reformation.
Her helpers must come to her ready-made, in good order, and able to
keep step and time: she could not be expected to make them over.
"How hard they all make it to do right!" thought Maggie. But she was
too proud to plead or entreat. "They all act as if I had the plague,
and should give it to them; and yet I don't want to be bad. I'd a
great deal rather be good if they'd let me, but I don't see any
way. Nobody will have me, or let me stay," and Maggie felt a sobbing
pity for herself. Why should she be treated as if she were the very
off-scouring of the earth, when the man who had led her into all this
sin and sorrow was moving in the best society, caressed, admired,
flattered, married to a good, pious, lovely woman, and carrying all
the honors of life?
Why was it such a sin for _her_, and no sin for him? Why could he
repent and be forgiven, and why must she never be forgiven? There
wasn't any justice in it, Maggie hotly said to herself--and there
wasn't; and then, as she walked those cold streets, pictures without
words were rising in her mind, of days when everybody flattered
and praised her, and he most of all. There is no possession which
brings such gratifying homage as personal beauty; for it is homage
more exclusively belonging to the individual self than any other.
The tribute rendered to wealth, or talent, or genius, is far less
personal. A child or woman gifted with beauty has a constant talisman
that turns all things to gold--though, alas! the gold too often turns
out like fairy gifts; it is gold only in seeming, and becomes dirt and
slate-stone on their hands.
Beauty is a dazzling and dizzying gift. It dazzles first its possessor
and inclines him to foolish action; and it dazzles outsiders, and
makes them say and do foolish things.
From the time that Maggie was a little chit, running in the street,
people had stopped her, to admire her hair and eyes, and talk all
kinds of nonsense to her, for the purpose of making her sparkle and
flush and dimple, just as one plays with a stick in the sparkling
of a brook. Her father, an idle, willful, careless creature, made a
show plaything of her, and spent his earnings for her gratification
and adornment. The mother was only too proud and fond; and it was no
wonder that when Maggie grew up to girlhood her head was a giddy one,
that she was self-willed, self-confident, obstinate. Maggie loved ease
and luxury. Who doesn't? If she had been born on Fifth Avenue, of one
of the magnates of New York, it would have been all right, of course,
for her to love ribbons and laces and flowers and fine clothes, to
be imperious and self-willed, and to set her pretty foot on the neck
of the world. Many a young American princess, gifted with youth and
beauty and with an indulgent papa and mamma, is no wiser than Maggie
was; but nobody thinks the worse of her. People laugh at her little
saucy airs and graces, and predict that she will come all right by and
by. But then, for her, beauty means an advantageous marriage, a home
of luxury and a continuance through life of the petting and indulgence
which every one loves, whether wisely or not.
But Maggie was the daughter of a poor working-woman--an Irishwoman at
that--and what marriage leading to wealth and luxury was in store for
her?
To tell the truth, at seventeen, when her father died and her mother
was left penniless, Maggie was as unfit to encounter the world as you,
Miss Mary, or you, Miss Alice, and she was a girl of precisely the
same flesh and blood as yourself. Maggie cordially hated everything
hard, unpleasant or disagreeable, just as you do. She was as unused to
crosses and self-denials as you are. She longed for fine things and
pretty things, for fine sight-seeing and lively times, just as you
do, and felt just as you do that it was hard fate to be deprived of
them. But, when worse came to worst, she went to work with Mrs. Maria
Wouvermans. Maggie was parlor-girl and waitress, and a good one too.
She was ingenious, neat-handed, quick and bright; and her beauty drew
favorable attention. But Mrs. Wouvermans never commended, but only
found fault. If Maggie carefully dusted every one of the five hundred
knick-knacks of the drawing-room five hundred times, there was nothing
said; but if, on the five hundred and first time, a moulding or a
crevice was found with dust in it, Mrs. Wouvermans would summon Maggie
to her presence with the air of a judge, point out the criminal fact,
and inveigh, in terms of general severity, against her carelessness,
as if carelessness were the rule rather than the exception.
Mrs. Wouvermans took special umbrage at Maggie's dress--her hat, her
feathers, her flowers--not because they were ugly, but because they
were pretty, a great deal too pretty and dressy for her station. Mrs.
Wouvermans's ideal of a maid was a trim creature, content with two
gowns of coarse stuff and a bonnet devoid of adornment; a creature
who, having eyes, saw not anything in the way of ornament or luxury;
whose whole soul was absorbed in work, for work's sake; content with
mean lodgings, mean furniture, poor food, and scanty clothing; and
devoting her whole powers of body and soul to securing to others
elegancies, comforts and luxuries to which she never aspired. This
self-denied sister of charity, who stood as the ideal servant, Mrs.
Wouvermans's maid did not in the least resemble. Quite another thing
was the gay, dressy young lady who, on Sunday mornings, stepped forth
from the back gate of her house with so much the air of a Murray Hill
demoiselle that people sometimes said to Mrs. Wouvermans, "Who is that
pretty young lady that you have staying with you?"--a question that
never failed to arouse a smothered sense of indignation in that lady's
mind, and added bitterness to her reproofs and sarcasms, when she
found a picture-frame undusted, or pounced opportunely on a cobweb in
some neglected corner.
Maggie felt certain that Mrs. Wouvermans was on the watch to find
fault with her--that she wanted to condemn her, for she had gone to
service with the best of resolutions. Her mother was poor and she
meant to help her; she meant to be a good girl, and, in her own mind,
she thought she was a very good girl to do so much work, and remember
so many different things in so many different places, and forget so
few things.
Maggie praised herself to herself, just as you do, my young lady,
when you have an energetic turn in household matters, and arrange and
beautify, and dust, and adorn mamma's parlors, and then call on mamma
and papa and all the family to witness and applaud your notability.
At sixteen or seventeen, household virtue is much helped in its
development by praise. Praise is sunshine; it warms, it inspires, it
promotes growth: blame and rebuke are rain and hail; they beat down
and bedraggle, even though they may at times be necessary. There was
a time in Maggie's life when a kind, judicious, thoughtful, Christian
woman might have kept her from falling, might have won her confidence,
become her guide and teacher, and piloted her through the dangerous
shoals and quicksands which beset a bright, attractive, handsome young
girl, left to make her own way alone and unprotected.
But it was not given to Aunt Maria to see this opportunity; and, under
her system of management, it was not long before Maggie's temper grew
fractious, and she used to such purpose the democratic liberty of
free speech, which is the birthright of American servants, that Mrs.
Wouvermans never forgave her.
Maggie told her, in fact, that she was a hard-hearted, mean, selfish
woman, who wanted to get all she could out of her servants, and to
give the least she could in return; and this came a little too near
the truth ever to be forgotten or forgiven. Maggie was summarily
warned out of the house, and went home to her mother, who took her
part with all her heart and soul, and declared that Maggie shouldn't
live out any longer--she should be nobody's servant.
This, to be sure, was silly enough in Mary, since service is the law
of society, and we are all more or less servants to somebody; but
uneducated people never philosophize or generalize, and so cannot help
themselves to wise conclusions.
All Mary knew was that Maggie had been scolded and chafed by Mrs.
Wouvermans; her handsome darling had been abused, and she should get
into some higher place in the world; and so she put her as workwoman
into the fashionable store of S. S. & Co.
There Maggie was seen and coveted by the man who made her his prey.
Maggie was seventeen, pretty, silly, hating work and trouble, longing
for pleasure, leisure, ease and luxury; and he promised them all. He
told her that she was too pretty to work, that if she would trust
herself to him she need have no more care; and Maggie looked forward
to a rich marriage and a home of her own. To do her justice, she loved
the man that promised this with all the warmth of her Irish heart. To
her, he was the splendid prince in the fairy tale, come to take her
from poverty and set her among princes; and she felt she could not
do too much for him. She would be such a good wife, she would be so
devoted, she would improve herself and learn so that she might never
discredit him.
Alas! in just such an enchanted garden of love, and hope, and joy, how
often has the ground caved in and let the victim down into dungeons of
despair that never open!
[Illustration: GOING TO THE BAD.
"_The sweet-faced woman calls the attention of her husband. He frowns,
whips up the horse, and is gone.... Bitterness possesses Maggie's
soul.... Why not go to the bad?_"--p. 327.]
Maggie thinks all this over as she pursues her cheerless, aimless
way through the cold cutting wind, and looks into face after face that
has no pity for her. Scarcely knowing why she did it, she took a car
and rode up to the Park, got out, and wandered drearily up and down
among the leafless paths from which all trace of summer greenness had
passed.
Suddenly, a carriage whirred past her. She looked up. There he
sat, driving, and by his side so sweet a lady, and between them a
flaxen-haired little beauty, clasping a doll in her chubby arms!
The sweet-faced woman looks pitifully at the haggard, weary face, and
says something to call the attention of her husband. An angry flush
rises to his face. He frowns, and whips up the horse, and is gone. A
sort of rage and bitterness possess Maggie's soul. What is the use of
trying to do better? Nobody pities her. Nobody helps her. The world is
all against her. Why not go to the bad?
_CHAPTER XXXV._
A SOUL IN PERIL.
It will be seen by the way in which we left poor Maggie that she
stood in just one of those critical steep places of life where a
soul is in pain and peril; where the turning of a hair's breadth may
decide between death and life. And it is something, not only to the
individual, but to the whole community, what a woman may become in one
of these crises of life.
Maggie had a rich, warm, impulsive nature, full of passion and energy;
she had personal beauty and the power that comes from it; she had in
her all that might have made the devoted wife and mother, fitted to
give strong sons and daughters to our republic, and to bring them up
to strengthen our country. But, deceived, betrayed, led astray by the
very impulses which should have ended in home and marriage, with even
her best friends condemning her, her own heart condemning her, the
whole face of the world set against her, her feet stood in slippery
places.
There is another life open to the woman whom the world judges and
rejects and condemns; a life short, bad, desperate; a life of revenge,
of hate, of deceit; a life in which woman, outraged and betrayed by
man, turns bitterly upon him, to become the tempter, the betrayer, the
ruiner of man,--to visit misery and woe on the society that condemns
her.
Many a young man has been led to gambling, and drinking, and
destruction; many a wife's happiness has been destroyed; many a mother
has wept on a sleepless pillow over a son worse than dead,--only
because some woman, who at a certain time in her life might have been
saved to honor and good living, has been left to be a vessel of wrath
fitted to destruction. For we have seen in Maggie's history that there
were points all along, where the girl might have been turned into
another and a better way.