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SINCE my experience with the case of “Sallie,” I feel a hesitation in
presenting a new heroine to the attention of the public.
You see, I do not mind the real sorrow that I experienced when my
sincere efforts to improve the condition of this child came to naught.
But I was staggered and sickened by the fact that most of my friends
were rejoiced at her downfall.
I do not remember anything that gave more genuine joy to the town than
the relapse of this wretched girl into the slums from which she had been
lifted. It was the occasion of general hilarity—this falling back of an
immortal soul into Death—this terrible spectacle of a child staggering
blindly from sunlight into shame. I was poked in the ribs facetiously. A
perfect shower of chuckles fell on my ear. It was the joke of the
season—this triumph of the Devil over the body of a girl. One mad young
wag, who, with a keen nose for a joke, followed her into her haunts of
crime, came back, his honest face convulsed with laughter, and bearing
on his lips a statement from her, to the literal effect that “I was a
d—d fool.”
I was staggered, I say, at the enjoyment created by the downfall of this
girl. For myself, I can hardly imagine a more pitiful sight than her
childish figure, as with face averted and hands raised, blinded by the
white light of virtue and bewildered by her new condition, she slipped
back in despair to her old shame. I may be a “d—d fool,” but I cannot
find the heart to laugh at that.
I don’t know how it is, but I have a mania for looking into cases of
this sort. It is not philanthropy with me; it is a disease.
At the editorial desk, I sit opposite a young man of a high order of
mind.
He makes it a point to compass the problems of nations. I dodge them. He
has settled, to his own agreement, every European problem of the past
decade. Those problems have settled me. He soars—I plod. Once in a
while, when he yearns for a listener, he reaches down for my scalp, and
lifts me up to his altitude, where I shiver and blink, until his
talented fingers relax, and I drop home. It delights him to adjust his
powerful mind to the contemplation of contending armies,—I swash around
with the swarm that hangs about me.
His hero is Bismarck, that phlegmatic miracle that has yoked impulse to
an ox, and having made a chess-board of Europe, plays a quiet game with
the Pope. My hero is a blear-eyed sot, that having for four years waged
a gigantic battle with drink, and alternated between watery Reform and
positive Tremens, is now playing a vague and losing game with
Spontaneous Combustion. My friend discusses Bismarck’s projects with a
vastness of mind that actually makes his discourse dim, and I slip off
to try my hero’s temper, and see whether I shall have him wind his
intoxicated arms about my neck and envelop me in an atmosphere of whisky
and reform, or fall recumbent in the gutter, his weak but honest face
upturned to the sky, and his moist, white hand working vaguely upward
from his placid breast, in token of abject surrender.
Bismarck is a bigger man than Bob.
But I can’t help thinking that Bob is engaged in the most thrilling and
desperate conflict. Anyhow, I had rather see his watery eyes grow clear
and his paroxysmal arms grow steadfast, than to see Bismarck wipe out
every potentate in Europe. It’s a grave thing to watch the conflicts of
kings, and see nations embattled rushing against each other. But there
are greater and deeper conflicts waged in our midst every day, when the
legions of Despair swarm against stout hearts, and Hunger and Suffering
storm the citadel of human lives!
But I started to tell you of my new heroine.
Her name is Jane.
She presented herself one morning about three months ago. A trim,
slender figure, the growth of nine years. It was such a small area of
poverty that I felt capable of attending to it myself. But I remembered
that small beggars usually represent productive but prostrated parents
and a brood of children. The smaller the beggar the larger the family. I
therefore summoned the good little woman who guides my household
affairs.
She claims to be an expert in beggars. She has certain tests that she
applies to all comers. Her fundamental rule is that all applicants are
entitled to cold bread on first call. After this she either grades them
up to cake and preserves, or holds them to scraps. I remember that she
kept Col. Nash on dry biscuit for thirteen months, while other
applicants have gone up to pie in three visits. I never felt any
hesitation in taking her judgment after that, for of all wheedling
mendicants Col. Nash, the alleged scissors-grinder, takes the lead.
But Jane was not a beggar. She carried on her arm a basket. It was
filled with some useless articles that she wanted to sell. Would the
lady look at them? Oh! of course! They were bits of splints embroidered
with gay worsted. What were they for? Why, she didn’t know. She just
thought somebody would buy them, and she needed some money so badly.
“Who is your mother?”
“I haven’t any. She is dead. I have a father, though.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s sick most of the time. He works when he is well.”
“What’s his name?”
“Robert ——!”
(Saints! My “Bob!” Sick indeed! The weak rascal!)
Jane was asked in, and I began to investigate. I learned that this child
was literally alone in the world. She had a sister, a puny two-year-old,
and a drunken father—my flabby friend. They lived in a rickety hovel,
out of which the last chair had been sold to pay rent. The mother, a
year an invalid, had been accustomed to work little trifles in splints
and worsted. She dying, the child picked up the splints, and worked
grotesque baby fancies in wood and worsted. She had no time for weeping.
Her hunger dried her eyes. The cooing baby by her side, crying for
bread, made her forget the dead mother. So she fashioned the splints
together, and with a brave heart went out to sell them.
Bob reformed at the bedside of his dying wife. Possibly at that moment
the angels that had come to guide the woman home swept away the mist of
the man’s debauch, and gave him a glimpse of the pure life that lay
behind. Certain it is that his moist, uncertain hands crept vaguely up
the cover till they caught the wasted cheeks of his wife, and his shaggy
head bent down till his quivering lips found hers. And the poor wife,
yielding once more to the love that had outlived shame and desertion,
turned her eyes from her children and fixed them on her husband. Ah! how
this earthly hope and this earthly love chased even the serenity of
Heaven from her face, and lighted it with tender rapture! How quickly
this drunkard supplanted God in the dying woman’s soul? “Oh, Bob! my
darling!” she gasped, and raising her face toward him with a masterful
yearning, she died.
“Mother didn’t seem to know we were there after father came,” Jane told
me. And I wondered if the child had not been hurt, that all her months
of patient love and watching had been forgotten in a tempest of love for
a vagabond husband that had wrought nothing but disaster and death.
After the funeral, through which he went in a dazed sort of stupor, Bob
got drunk, I don’t know why or how. He seemed tenderer since then than
before. I noticed that he reformed oftener and got over it quicker. A
piece of crape that Jane had fixed about his hat seemed to possess
sacred properties to him. When he touched it and swore abstinence, he
generally held out two or three days. One night, as he lay in the
gutter, a cow, full of respect for his person, and yet unable to utterly
control her hunger, chewed his hat. Since then he seemed to have lost
his moorings, and drifted about on a currentless drunk.
He was always kind to Jane and the little biddie. In his maudlin way he
would caress them, and cry over them, and reform with them, and promise
to work for them. Even when he ate their last crust of bread, he
accompanied the action with a sort of fumbling pomposity that robbed it
of its horror. He never did it without promising to go out at once and
bring back a sack of flour. Once he went so high as to promise four
sacks. So that the child, in love like her mother with the old rascal,
and like her mother fresh always in faith, was rather rejoiced than
otherwise when he ate the bread. Did he bring the flour?
“Why, how could he? They had to bring him home. So of course I did not
blame him. Poor father!”
I must do Bob the justice to say that he never earned a cent in all
these days that he did not intend giving to Jane. Of course he never did
it, but I desire him to have the credit of his intention. If the Lord
held the best of us strictly to performance and ruled out intention, we
wouldn’t be much better in his sight than Bob is in ours.
One day I was sitting behind a window looking at Jane, who stood in the
kitchen door. Her oldish-looking, chipper little face was turned
straight to me. It was a pretty face. The brown eyes were softened with
suffering, and fear and anxiety had driven all color from her thin
cheeks. I noticed that her mouth was never still. Though she was alone
and silent, her lips quivered and trembled all the time. At times they
would break into a dumb sob. Then she would draw them firmly together.
Again they would twitch convulsively in the terrible semblance of a
smile. Then in that pretty, feminine way she would pucker them together.
Long suffering had racked the child until she was all awry, and her
nerves were plunging through her tender frame like devils.
“Jane, were you ever hungry?”
“Sir!” and she started painfully, while her starved heart managed to
send a thin coating of scarlet into her cheeks. She was a proud little
body, and never talked of her sorrows.
May the Lord forgive me for repeating the question!
“Sometimes, sir, when I couldn’t sell anything. Last Saturday we had
only some bread for dinner. We never had anything else until Sunday
night. I wouldn’t have minded it then, but Mary cried so for bread that
I went out, and a lady that I knew gave me some things.”
Now, think of that. From a crust at Saturday noon, on nothing till
Sunday night. Of all the abundant marketing of Saturday evening; of all
the luxuries of Sunday breakfast and dinner, not a crumb for this poor
child. While we were dressing our children for their trip to
Sunday-school, or their romp over the hills, this poor child, gnawed by
hunger, deserted by her drunken father, holding a starving baby, sat
crouched in a hovel, given up to despair and hopelessness. And that,
too, within the sound of the bells that made the church-steeples thrill
with music, and called God’s people to church!
A friend who had heard Jane’s story had given me three dollars for her.
I gave it to her, and told her that as her rent was paid, she could with
this lay in some provisions. She was crying then, but she dried her
tears and hurried off.
* * * * *
“Will you please come here and look?” called a lady whose call I always
obey, about an hour afterward.