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[Illustration: NORMAN WAS A HANDSOME BOY WHEN SHE MARRIED MR. DECKER.]
Little Fishers: and Their Nets
BY
PANSY
AUTHOR OF "CHRISTIE'S CHRISTMAS," "A HEDGE FENCE," "GERTRUDE'S
DIARY," "THE MAN OF THE HOUSE," "INTERRUPTED,"
"THE HALL IN THE GROVE," "AN ENDLESS
CHAIN," "MRS. SOLOMON SMITH LOOKING
ON," "FOUR GIRLS AT CHAUTAUQUA,"
"RUTH ERSKINE'S CROSSES,"
"SPUN FROM FACT,"
ETC., ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED_
BOSTON
D LOTHROP COMPANY
FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS
COPYRIGHT 1887
BY
D LOTHROP COMPANY
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
CHAPTER I.
THE DECKERS' HOME 7
CHAPTER II.
BEGINNING HER LIFE 24
CHAPTER III.
THE TRUTH IS TOLD 43
CHAPTER IV.
NEW FRIENDS 63
CHAPTER V.
A GREAT UNDERTAKING 85
CHAPTER VI.
HOW IT SUCCEEDED 106
CHAPTER VII.
LONG STORIES TO TELL 125
CHAPTER VIII.
A SABBATH TO REMEMBER 143
CHAPTER IX.
A BARGAIN AND A PROMISE 164
CHAPTER X.
PLEASURE AND DISAPPOINTMENT 179
CHAPTER XI.
A COMPLETE SUCCESS 204
CHAPTER XII.
AN UNEXPECTED HELPER 226
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LITTLE PICTURE MAKERS 240
CHAPTER XIV.
THE CONCERT 257
CHAPTER XV.
A WILL AND A WAY 271
CHAPTER XVI.
AN ORDEAL 288
CHAPTER XVII.
THE FLOWER PARTY 304
CHAPTER XVIII.
A SATISFACTORY EVENING 320
CHAPTER XIX.
READY TO TRY 334
CHAPTER XX.
THE WAY MADE PLAIN 351
CHAPTER XXI.
THE NEW ENTERPRISE 365
CHAPTER XXII.
TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE 382
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE CROWNING WONDER 400
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE PAST AND PRESENT 418
Little Fishers: and Their Nets.
CHAPTER I.
THE DECKERS' HOME.
JOE DECKER gave his chair a noisy shove backward from the table, over
the uneven floor, shambled across the space between it and the kitchen
door, a look of intense disgust on his face, then stopped for his
good-morning speech:
"You may as well know, first as last, that I've sent for Nan. I've
stood this kind of thing just exactly as long as I'm going to. There
ain't many men, I can tell you, who would have stood it so long. Such a
meal as that! Ain't fit for a decent dog!
"Nan is coming in the afternoon stage. There must be some place fixed
up for her to sleep in. Understand, now, that has _got_ to be done, and
I won't have no words about it."
Then he slammed the door, and went away.
Yes, he was talking to his wife! She could remember the time when he
used to linger in the door, talking to her, so many last words to say,
and when at last he would turn away with a kind "Well, good-by, Mary!
Don't work too hard."
But that seemed ages ago to the poor woman who was left this morning
in the wretched little room with the door slammed between her and her
husband. She did not look as though she had life enough left to make
words about anything. She sat in a limp heap in one of the broken
chairs, her bared arms lying between the folds of a soiled and ragged
apron.
Not an old woman, yet her hair was gray, and her cheeks were faded, and
her eyes looked as though they had not closed in quiet restful sleep
for months. She had not combed her hair that morning; and thin and
faded as it was, it hung in straggling locks about her face.
I don't suppose you ever saw a kitchen just like that one! It was
heated, not only by the fierce sun which streamed in at the two
uncurtained eastern windows, but by the big old stove, which could
smoke, not only, and throw out an almost unendurable heat on a warm
morning like this, when heat was not wanted, but had a way at all
times of refusing to heat the oven, and indeed had fits of sullenness
when it would not "draw" at all.
This was one of the mornings when the fire had chosen to burn; it had
swallowed the legs and back of a rickety chair which the mistress in
desperation had stuffed in, when she was waiting for the teakettle to
boil, and now that there was nothing to boil, or fry, and no need for
heat, the stump of wood, wet by yesterday's rain, had dried itself and
chosen to burn.
The west windows opened into a side yard, and the sound of children's
voices in angry dispute, and the smell of a pigsty, came in together,
and seemed equally discouraging to the wilted woman in the chair.
The sun was already pretty high in the sky, yet the breakfast-table
still stood in the middle of the room.
I don't know as I can describe that table to you. It was a square one,
unpainted, and stained with something red, and something green, and
spotted with grease, and spotted with black, rubbed from endless hot
kettles set on it, or else from one kettle set on it endless times;
it must have been that way, for now that I think of it, there was but
one kettle in that house. No tablecloth covered the stains; there was a
cracked plate which held a few crusts of very stale bread, and a teacup
about a third full of molasses, in which several flies were struggling.
More flies covered the bread crusts, and swam in a little mess of what
had been butter, but was now oil, and these were the only signs of food.
It was from this breakfast-table that the man had risen in disgust.
You don't wonder? You think it was enough to disgust anybody? That
is certainly true, but if the man had only stopped to think that the
reason it presented such an appearance was because he had steadily
drank up all that ought to have gone on it during the months past,
perhaps he would have turned his disgust where it belonged--on himself.
The woman had not tried to eat anything. She had given the best she had
to the husband and son, and had left it for them. She was very willing
to do so. It seemed to her as though she never could eat another
mouthful of anything.
Can you think of her, sitting in that broken chair midway between the
table and the stove, the heat from the stove puffing into her face; the
heat from the sun pouring full on her back, her straggling hair silvery
in the sunlight, her short, faded calico dress frayed about the ankles,
her feet showing plainly from the holes of the slippers into which they
were thrust, her hands folded about the soiled apron, and such a look
of utter hopeless sorrow on her face as cannot be described?
No, I hope you cannot imagine a woman like her, and will never see one
to help you paint the picture. And yet I don't know; since there are
such women--scores of them, thousands of them--why should you not know
about them, and begin now to plan ways of helping them out of these
kitchens, and out of these sorrows?
Mrs. Decker rose up presently, and staggered toward the table; a dim
idea of trying to clear it off, and put things in something like order,
struggled with the faintness she felt. She picked up two plates, sticky
with molasses, and having a piece of pork rind on one, and set them
into each other. She poured a slop of weak tea from one cracked cup
into another cracked cup, her face growing paler the while. Suddenly
she clutched at the table, and but for its help, would have fallen.
There was just strength enough left to help her back to the rickety
chair. Once there, she dropped into the same utterly hopeless position,
and though there was no one to listen, spoke her sorrowful thoughts.
"It's no use; I must just give up. I'm done for, and that's the truth!
I've been expecting it all along, and now it's come. I couldn't clear
up here and get them any dinner, not if he should kill me, and I don't
know but that will be the next thing. I've slaved and slaved; if
anybody ever tried to do something with nothing, I'm the one; and now
I'm done. I've just got to lie down, and stay there, till I die. I wish
I _could_ die. If I could do it quick, and be done with it, I wouldn't
care how soon; but it would be awful to lie there and see things go on;
oh, dear!"
She lifted up her poor bony hands and covered her face with them and
shook as though she was crying. But she shed no tears. The truth is,
her poor eyes were tired of crying. It was a good while since any tears
had come. After a few minutes she went on with her story.
"It isn't enough that we are naked, and half-starved, and things
growing worse every day, but now that Nan mast come and make one more
torment. 'Fix a place for her to sleep!' Where, I wonder, and what
with? It is too much! Flesh and blood can't bear any more. If ever a
woman did her best I have, and done it with nothing, and got no thanks
for it; now I've got to the end of my rope. If I have strength enough
to crawl back into bed, it is all there is left of me."
But for all that, she tried to do something else. Three times she made
an effort to clear away the few dirty things on that dirty table, and
each time felt the deadly faintness creeping over her, which sent her
back frightened to the chair. The children came in, crying, and she
tried to untie a string for one, and find a pin for the other; but her
fingers trembled so that the knot grew harder, and not even a pin was
left for her to give them, and she finally lost all patience with their
cross little ways and gave each a slap and an order not to come in the
house again that forenoon.
The door was ajar into the most discouraged looking bedroom that you
can think of. It was not simply that the bed was unmade; the truth is,
the clothes were so ragged that you would have thought they could not
be touched without falling to pieces; and they were badly stained and
soiled, the print of grimy little hands being all over them. Partly
pushed under, out of sight, was a trundle-bed, that, if anything,
looked more repulsive than the large one. There was an old barrel in
the corner, with a rough board over it, and a chair more rickety than
either of those in the kitchen, and this was the only furniture there
was in that room.
The only bright thing there was in it was the sunshine, for there was
an east window in this room, and the curtain was stretched as high as
it could be. To the eyes of the poor tired woman who presently dragged
herself into this room, the light and the heat from the sun seemed
more than she could bear, and she tugged at the brown paper curtain so
fiercely that it tore half across, but she got it down, and then she
fell forward among the rags of the bed with a groan.
Poor Mrs. Decker! I wonder if you have not imagined all her sorrowful
story without another word from me!
It is such an old story; and it has been told over so many times, that
all the children in America know it by heart.
Yes; she was the wife of a drunkard. Not that Joe Decker called himself
a drunkard; the most that he ever admitted was that he sometimes took a
drop too much! I don't think he had the least idea how many times in a
month he reeled home, unable to talk straight, unable to help himself
to his wretched bed.
I don't suppose he knew that his brain was never free from the effects
of alcohol; but his wife knew it only too well. She knew that he was
always cross and sullen now, when he was not fierce, and she knew that
this was not his natural disposition. No one need explain to her how
alcohol would effect a man's nature; she had watched her husband change
from month to month, and she knew that he was growing worse every day.
There was another sorrow in this sad woman's heart. She had one boy
who was nearly ten years old, when she married Mr. Decker; and people
had said to her often and often, "What a handsome boy you have, Mrs.
Lloyd; he ought to have been a girl." And the first time she had felt
any particular interest in Joe Decker was when he made her boy a kite,
and showed him how to fly it, and gave him one bright evening, such
as fathers give their boys. This boy's father had died when he was
a baby, and the Widow Lloyd had struggled on alone; caring for him,
keeping him neatly dressed, sending him to school as soon as he was old
enough, bringing him up in such a way that it was often and often said
in the village, "What a nice boy that Norman Lloyd is! A credit to his
mother!" And the mother had sat and sewed, in the evenings when Norman
was in bed, and thought over the things that fathers could do for boys
which mothers could not; and then thought that there were things which
mothers could do for girls that fathers could not, and Mr. Joseph
Decker, the carpenter, had a little girl, she had been told, only a few
years younger than her Norman. And so, when Mr. Decker had made kites,
not only, but little sail boats, and once, a little table for Norman to
put his school books on, with a drawer in it for his writing-book and
pencil, and when he had in many kind and manly ways won her heart, this
respectable widow who had for ten years earned her own and her boy's
living, married him, and went to keep his home for him, and planned as
to the kind and motherly things which she would do for his little girl
when she came home.
Alas for plans! She knew, this foolish woman, that Mr. Decker sometimes
took a drink of beer with his noon meal, and again at night, perhaps;
but she said to herself, "No wonder, poor man; always having to eat his
dinner out of a pail! No home, and no woman to see that he had things
nice and comfortable. She would risk but what he would stay at home,
when he had one to stay in, and like a bit of beefsteak better than the
beer, any day."
She had not calculated as to the place which the beer held in his
heart. Neither had he. He was astonished to find that it was not easy
to give it up, even when Mary wanted him to. He was astonished at first
to discover how often he was thirsty with a thirst that nothing but
beer would satisfy. I have not time for all the story. The beer was not
given up, the habit grew stronger and stronger, and steadily, though at
first slowly, the Deckers went down. From being one of the best workmen
in town, Mr. Decker dropped down to the level of "Old Joe Decker,"
whom people would not employ if they could get anybody else. The little
girl had never come home save for a short visit; at first the new
mother was sorry, then she was glad.
As the days passed, her heart grew heavier and heavier; a horrible fear
which was almost a certainty, had now gotten hold of her--that her
handsome, manly Norman was going to copy the father she had given him!
Poor mother!
I would not, if I could, describe to you all the miseries of that long
day! How the mother lay and tossed on that miserable bed, and burned
with fever and groaned with pain. How the children quarreled and cried,
and ran into mother, and cried again because she could give them no
attention, and made up, and ran out again to play, and quarreled again.
How the father came home at noon, more under the influence of liquor
than he had been in the morning; and swore at the table still standing
as he had left it at breakfast time, and swore at his wife for "lying
in bed and sulking, instead of doing her work like a decent woman," and
swore at his children for crying with hunger; and finally divided what
remained of the bread between them, and went off himself to a saloon,
where he spent twenty-five cents for his dinner, and fifty cents for
liquor. How Norman came home, and looked about the deserted kitchen
and empty cupboard, and looked in at his mother, and said he was sorry
she had a headache, and sighed, and wished that he had a decent home
like other fellows, and wished that a doctor could be found, who didn't
want more money than he was worth, to pay him for coming to see a
sick woman, and then went to a bakery and bought a loaf of bread, and
a piece of cheese, and having munched these, washed them down with
several glasses of beer, went back to his work. Meantime, the playing
and the quarreling, and the crying, went on outside, and Mrs. Decker
continued to sleep her heavy, feverish sleep.
Several times she wakened in a bewilderment of fever and pain, and
groaned, and tried to get up, and fell back and groaned again, and lost
her misery in another unnaturally heavy sleep, and the day wore away
until it was three o'clock in the afternoon. The stages would be due in
a few minutes--the one that brought passengers over from the railroad
junction a mile away. The children in the yard did not know that one
of them was expected to stop at their house; and the father when he
came home at noon had been drinking too much liquor to remember it; and
Norman had not heard of it, and for his mother's sake would have been
too angry to have met it if he had; so Nan was coming home with nobody
to welcome her.
If you had seen her sitting at that moment, a trim little maiden in the
stage, her face all flushed over the prospect of seeing father, and the
rest, in a few minutes, you would not have thought it possible that she
could belong to the Decker family.
She had not seen her home in seven years. She had been a little thing
of six when she went away with the Marshall family.
It had all come about naturally. Mrs. Marshall was their neighbor, and
had known her mother from childhood; and when she died had carried the
motherless little girl home with her to stay until Mr. Decker decided
what to do; and he was slow in deciding, and Mrs. Marshall had a family
of boys, but no little girl, and held the motherless one tenderly for
her mother's sake; and when the Marshalls suddenly had an offer of
business which made it necessary for them to move to the city, they
clung to the little girl, and proposed to Mr. Decker that she should go
with them and stay until he had a place for her again.
Apparently he had not found a place for her in all these seven years,
for she had never been sent for to come home.
The new wife had wanted her at first, to be mother to her, as she
fancied Mr. Decker was going to be father to her boy. But it did not
take her very many months to get her eyes open to the thought that
perhaps the girl would be better off away from her father; and of late
years she had looked on the possible home-coming with positive terror.
Her own little ones had nothing to eat, sometimes, save what Norman
provided; and if "he"--and by this Mrs. Decker meant her husband; he
had ceased to be "Mr. Decker" to her, or "Joseph," or even Joe--if
"he" should take a notion to turn against the girl, life would be more
terrible to them in every way; and on the other hand, if he should
fancy her, and because of her, turn more against the wife, or Norman,
what would become of them then?
So the years had passed, and beyond an occasional threat when Joe
Decker was at his worst, to "send for Nan right straight off," nothing
had been said of her home-coming. The threat had come oftener of late,
for Joe Decker had discovered that there was just now nothing that his
wife dreaded more than the presence of this step-daughter; and his
present manly mood was to do all he could for the discomfort of his
wife! That was one of the elevating thoughts which liquor had given him!
Three o'clock. The stages came rattling down the stony road. Few people
who lived on this street had much to do with the stage; they could
not afford to ride, and they did not belong to the class who had much
company.
So when the heavy carriages kept straight on, instead of turning the
corner below, it brought a swarm of children from the various dooryards
to see who was coming, and where.
"It's stopped at Decker's, as true as I live!" said Mrs. Job Smith,
peeping out of her clean pantry window to get a view. "I heard that
Joe had sent for little Nan, but I hoped it wasn't true. Poor Nan! if
the Marshalls have treated her with any kind of decency, it'll be a
dreadful change, and I'm sorry enough for her. Yes, that must be Nan
getting out. She's got the very same bright eyes, but she has grown a
sight, to be sure!" Which need not have seemed strange to Mrs. Smith,
if she had stopped to remember that seven years had passed since Nan
went away.
The little woman got down with a brisk step from the stage, and watched
her trunk set in the doorway, and got out her red pocket-book, and paid
the fare, and then looked about her doubtfully. Could this be home!