ORDERED TO VACATE.
Poor Fair was so ill from fright and grief the next day that she was
unable to rise from her bed, and the woman who had spent the night with
her sent in her little girl to spend the day.
In the late afternoon she felt better, and rose and dressed herself,
thinking that some of her factory friends would be sure to call after
work hours.
She was not disappointed, for about tea time Alice Stevens came in and
gave her a hearty hug and kiss. The little girl slipped away to her
mother, and then Fair said eagerly:
“Alice, you’ve come to stay with me?”
Alice’s pretty, good-natured face grew suddenly grave.
“Oh, Fair, don’t be mad with me! I can’t stay. My mother isn’t willing.”
“Why not?” asked Fair sharply.
“Oh, because----”
Alice stopped in embarrassment, and Fair understood without further
words.
“Your mother thinks I ought to live with that wretch?” she said
disdainfully; and Alice’s sorrowful silence gave assent.
“But--Lucy Miller?” the unfortunate girl asked falteringly.
“I came by her house, and her father and mother wouldn’t let her come.
They are more down on you even than my mother. I think it’s a shame.
Lucy cried and begged, but it was no use.”
Fair sat silent and frightened. What was she to do?
She looked up presently, and said timidly:
“Maybe your mother would let me come and stay at your house? I would
pay her whatever she asked as soon as I got my wages.”
Alice Stevens put her arms around her friend, and hid her reddening
cheeks against her shoulder.
“Oh, Fair, I wish she would, but”--with a half sob--“I asked her, and
she said no, that Carl Bernicci might prosecute her for harboring his
disobedient wife. Don’t blame me, dear; it wasn’t my fault.”
“No, dear, I don’t blame you. Give my love to Lucy. I thank you both,”
Fair answered, with a sort of apathetic despair, and, after a little,
she told Alice of all that had happened last night.
“You see how it is. I am always in danger from him, yet I cannot find
one friend to stand by me in my trouble,” she cried bitterly.
“I am so sorry! I only wish I might stay,” sobbed Alice Stevens, crying
out of sympathy.
She stayed a little longer, then rose, saying anxiously:
“Fair, don’t you think you can get that good woman to stay with you
to-night?”
“I will try, dear, but then I shall have no one to go to work with me
to-morrow, and, oh, I am such a coward I dare not go out alone,” Fair
answered dejectedly.
Alice regarded her in perplexed silence a moment, then blurted out:
“Fair, I’m afraid you’ll have to give in and live with him for the sake
of peace.”
The beautiful brown eyes flashed angrily, and Fair cried out:
“That is what they all say, but I will never do it--never! Why, Alice,
if I could forgive him the deception he practiced on me, I could never
pardon the death of my mother, which he caused. Before I would live
with such a fiend as Carl Bernicci I would kill myself!”
Alice went away sad at heart, but not half so sad as the hapless girl
she left behind her, for a new suspicion had entered Fair’s mind.
She began to fear that Sadie’s telegram was a bogus one, sent to draw
her faithful friend away from her side.
“For how else could that wretch ever have known so quickly of her
absence?” she thought.
Mrs. Burns stayed with her again that night, but Fair feared to tell
the kind soul of her secret dread; consequently she had no one to
accompany her to work, and she stayed at home several days through
sheer terror of venturing out.
Then a new danger began to menace her. The grim fiend, Hunger, was at
her door.
Always subsisting on meager fare, the two girls had been wont to
purchase their eatables day by day, as they returned from work. Fair
had had but a few pennies in her purse when Sadie left, and all
these were gone now. She had sent the little Burns girl out every
day to purchase bread for her, but now pennies and bread were alike
exhausted. Fair had been without food two days.
If she had made known her wretched condition to the people in the
house, they would have divided their scanty portion with the unhappy
orphan girl; but her lips were sealed. She had some of her dead
mother’s unconquerable pride. She could not beg.
“I must perish miserably, like a rat in a trap!” she exclaimed, in
anguish of spirit; and so wretched and despondent had she become that
she would have welcomed death as a relief from her deplorable condition.
Oh, those wretched days, those sleepless nights, and that knawing
hunger--how they wore on the fresh young beauty, paling and thinning it
to exquisite delicacy. The large eyes grew dim and wide, and the tears
were always trembling on the exquisitely fringed lashes. She wrote much
in the little journal those days, and the thoughts she inscribed there
were so full of sadness that they must have brought tears to “eyes
unused to weep.”
It was on the third day since she had tasted food that her landlady
came up to speak to her, and Fair’s pale face grew paler yet as she
noticed the hard light in the woman’s face and the set line of her lips.
“Miss Fielding, I’ve heard a curious tale about you, and I want to know
the truth,” she said shortly. “It seems like the man that was in your
room that night was your husband, after all.”
“Who has been telling you these tales about me, Mrs. Levy?” Fair asked
falteringly.
“I had it from one of your companions at the shroud factory--a tall,
light-complected young lady, with blue eyes. She called to see why you
didn’t come to work, and when I told her about that night and the man
in your room, she ups with the whole story.”
“Belva Platt!” Fair exclaimed bitterly.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Levy, “that was her name. So you know her, and it’s
true? Well, really, Miss Fielding, I had a better opinion of you. Jest
to think of a young one like you marrying for money and then cutting
out and deserting the man because he wasn’t as rich as you thought. And
then to pretend like you did that night--it was a shame.”
“If you will let me explain, Mrs. Levy,” Fair pleaded; but the woman
was evidently prejudiced against her by the artful Belva, and all the
poor girl could say met with small belief or respect.
“Oh, pshaw! Your mother had the heart disease, and would have died just
as likely as not if he hadn’t tetched the door,” she said. “And it was
your fault, anyway. You knew your mother couldn’t stand excitement,
so what made you lock the door against your husband and create such a
racket?”
Fair knew that all this had been put into Mrs. Levy’s mouth by her
artful enemy, and she ceased the vain attempt to win the woman’s good
opinion. Weak and wretched as she was, she could only sob forlornly in
her handkerchief, and Mrs. Levy continued crossly:
“Well, all I’ve got to say is you’ve got to leave this house. I can’t
let you stay here a day longer. I’m liable to be sued by your husband
for harboring his wife. So pack your things, and get out as soon as
possible; and if you want my advice, it’s go home to your husband!”
Frightened at being turned adrift on the cold world, Fair pleaded
piteously to stay; but to no purpose. The woman sternly ordered her to
go that day.
“If I might only stay until I hear from Sadie,” she sighed; “I think
she will be home soon. It’s more than a week since she went away.”
“And you ain’t heard from her yet?”
“No.”
“Then you may take my word that she went away to get rid of you. So get
your things up and leave in an hour.”
“Mrs. Levy, I have nowhere to take my few possessions, so I will leave
them to my dear friend Sadie. I do not think I shall need them any
more,” said Fair, with a look so strange that the woman jumped to the
conclusion that she meant to commit suicide; but so hardened had her
heart become that she only answered:
“Take or leave them, as you please; but I give you an hour to get out,
no more,” and then she banged out of the room, muttering something
about poor and proud, and too good to live with a poor husband, while
Fair turned, with a breaking heart, to write a few lines to Sadie, her
dear friend.