MOLLY'S STORY.
THEY had been writing a long time, when the Little Colonel looked up
with a mischievous smile. "Joyce will think that this is a wondahful
place," she said. "I've told her all about my bein' chased by a
Barley-bright witch, and how ugly she was, and what Davy said about her
goin' through keyholes. It sounds so real when I read it ovah that I
could half-way make myself believe that she is one. I'm goin' to slip
across into her room now, and see if I can't find the broomstick that
she rides around on at night. If there'd just be a black cat sittin' on
her pillow, I could almost believe what Davy said about her hoodoo word.
Wouldn't she be mad if she knew what was in this letter? I told Joyce
how mean she'd acted about the fishin'-worms too, and how she's scowled
at us evah since we came."
Betty looked up with a preoccupied smile, for she had long ago finished
her letter to Eugenia and was busy with some verses that she was trying
to write about the rain. The rhymes were falling into place almost as
easily and musically as the rain-drops tinkling down the eaves, and her
face was flushed with the pleasure of it. She was so wrapped up in her
own thoughts that she did not understand what Lloyd was saying, and
smiled a reply without the faintest idea of what it was that she
proposed to do.
Lloyd laid down her pen, and, tiptoeing across the narrow passage that
divided Betty's room from Molly's, opened the door and looked in. She
had thought that the parlour bedroom down-stairs was queer, and that
Betty's room was pitifully bare and common, but such cheerlessness as
this she had certainly never seen before, and scarcely imagined.
It was an attic-like room over the kitchen, with such a low sloping
ceiling that she could touch it with her hand, except when she stood in
the middle of the room. There was a rough, unpainted floor, a cot, a
dry-goods box covered with newspaper, on which stood a tin basin and a
broken-nosed water-pitcher. Some nails, driven along the wall, held a
row of clothes, and a chair with both rockers broken off was propped
against the wall. Lloyd looked around her with a shiver. The only bright
spot in the room was a bunch of golden-rod in a bottle, and the only
picture, a page torn from an illustrated newspaper, and pinned to the
wall.
Wondering what kind of a picture such a creature as the Barley-bright
witch would choose to decorate her room, Lloyd walked across to examine
it. It was the front page from an old _Harper's Weekly_. The date caught
her eye first: December 25, 1897. And then she found herself looking
into a room still more pitiful than the one in which she stood, for the
pictured room was part of an old New York tenement, and sobbing in the
corner was a ragged, half-starved little waif, heartbroken because Santa
Claus had passed her by, and she had found an empty stocking on
Christmas morning.
Lloyd could not see the face hidden in the tattered apron, which the
disappointed little hands held up. She could not hear the sobs that she
knew were shaking the thin little shoulders, but she felt the misery of
the scene as forcibly as if the real child stood before her. As she
stood and looked, she knew that if all the troubles and disappointments
of her whole life could be put together, they would be as only a drop
compared to the grief of the poor little creature in the picture.
"Oh, Betty!" she called. "Come heah quick! I want to show you
something."
The distress in Lloyd's voice made Betty hurry across the passage with
her pen in her hand, wondering what could be the matter.
"Look!" exclaimed Lloyd, pointing to the picture. "How can Molly keep
such a thing in her room? Do you s'pose she was evah like that? It's
enough to make her cry every time she looks at it."
"Maybe she used to be like that," said Betty, examining the picture
carefully, "and maybe she keeps it here to remind her how much better
off she is now than she used to be."
"I can't see that her room is much nicer," said Lloyd, looking around
with an expression of disgust.
"It always has been used as a sort of storeroom," explained Betty. "This
is the first time I've been in here since I came back, and I didn't know
how it had been fixed for Molly. Cousin Hetty hasn't any time or money
to spend making it look nice. Besides, she is only in here for a little
while. She is to have my room when I go away. If I'm abroad all winter,
and with Joyce next summer, and at Locust going to school the year
after, as godmother has planned, I suppose I'll never be back here again
to really live. I'm going to make a new pincushion and a cover for my
bureau, and put a white curtain at the window before I leave. Maybe it
will look as fine to Molly as my white and gold room did to me at the
House Beautiful. It isn't any wonder she feels jealous of us, when she
hasn't a single nice thing in the whole world."
"Maybe I oughtn't to have written such spiteful things about her to
Joyce," said Lloyd, whose heart began to soften and whose conscience
pricked as she turned again to the picture.
But even while they were planning the changes they would make in the
gable room for Molly, there was a stealthy step on the stairs, and Molly
herself stood in the door, glaring at them like an angry tigress.
"How _dare_ you!" she cried, stamping her foot in a furious rage. "How
dare you come in here spying on me and making fun of my things and
looking at my picture! You sha'n't look at my little Dot when she is so
miserable. You sha'n't put eyes on her again!"
With a white angry face she dashed past them, tore the picture from the
wall, and with it held tightly against her threw herself face downward
on the cot.
"We were not spying on you," began Lloyd, indignantly. "We were not
making fun of your things!"
"I know better. Get out of this room, both of you! This minute!" cried
Molly, lifting her white face in which her angry eyes burned like
flames. Then she buried her head in her pillow, sobbing bitterly: "If
y-you were an or-orphan--and hadn't but one thing in the world, you
wouldn't want p-people to come sp-spying on _you_, that way."
Puzzled and almost frightened at such an outburst, the girls retreated
to the doorway, and then as she continued to storm at them they went
back to Betty's room. They could hear her sobbing even with the door
shut. Presently Betty said: "I'm going in there again, and see if I can
find out what's the matter. I am an orphan, too, and maybe I can coax
her to tell me, when she knows how sorry I am for her."
People wondered sometimes at Betty's way of walking into their hearts;
but sympathy is an open sesame to nearly all gates, and sympathy was
Betty's unfailing key. It was always ready in her loving little hand.
Presently, when Molly's wild burst of angry sobbing had subsided
somewhat, Betty ventured back to her. Lloyd heard a low murmuring of
voices, first Betty's and then Molly's, as one little orphan poured out
her story to the other. It was nearly an hour before Betty came back to
her room. Lloyd had written another letter while she waited, and now
sat leaning against the window-sill, listening to the monotonous
drip-drop-drip-drop from a leaky spout above the window.
"Well, what was it?" she asked, eagerly, as Betty opened the door.
"Oh, you never heard anything so pitiful," exclaimed Betty, sitting down
on her bed and drawing her feet up under her comfortably before she
began. "It is just like a story in a book.
"Molly says that when she was little her father was a railroad
conductor, and she and her mother and grandmother and baby sister lived
in a little house at the edge of town. It was near enough the railroad
track for them to wave to her father, from the front door, whenever his
train passed. He could come home only once a week. She and Dot thought
he was the best father anybody ever had, for he never came home without
something in his pockets for them, and he rode them around on his
shoulders and played with them all the time he was in the house. He was
always bringing things to their mother, too, a pretty cup and saucer or
a pot of flowers, or something to wear; and as for the old grandmother,
she spent her time telling the neighbours how good her son was to her.
"But Molly says one summer they moved away from the house by the
railroad track and took a smaller one in town, where there wasn't any
garden and trees, and where there wasn't even any grass, except a narrow
strip in the front yard. Her father had lost his place as a conductor,
and was out of work for a long time. By and by they sold their piano and
the carpets and the nicest chairs. Then they moved again. This time it
was to a cottage without even a strip of grass. The front door opened
out on the pavement and there was no place for them to play except on
the streets. Their father never brought anything home to them any more,
and never played with them. They couldn't understand what made him so
cross, or what made their mother cry so much, until one day she heard
some of their neighbours talking.
"She and Dot were waiting in the corner grocery for a loaf of bread, and
she heard one woman say to another, in a low tone, 'Those are Jim
Conner's children, poor little kids. My man says he used to be one of
the best conductors on the road, but he lost his job when he took to
getting drunk every Saturday night. He's going down-hill now, fast as a
man can go. Heaven only knows what'll become of his family if he doesn't
put on the brakes soon.'
"Then Molly knew what was the matter, and she didn't make her mother
cry by asking any more questions when they moved again the next week.
That time they had only two rooms up-stairs over a barber shop, and
Molly's mother died that summer. Then her father drank harder than ever,
and never brought any money home, and by fall they had sold nearly
everything that was left, and moved into one room in an old
tenement-house, up two flights of stairs.
"Their grandmother had to go away every morning to look for work. She
was too old to wash, or she might have had plenty to do. Sometimes she
got odd jobs of cleaning, and sometimes she made buttonholes for a pants
factory. It took nearly all the money she could make to pay the rent of
that room, and often and often, Molly said, there were days when they
had nothing but scraps of stale bread to eat. Sometimes there wasn't
even that, and she and Dot would be so cold and hungry that they would
huddle together in a corner and cry. She said it made her feel so awful
to hear poor little Dot sobbing for something to eat, that she would
have gone out on the streets and begged, but their grandmother always
locked them up when she went away."
"What for?" interrupted Lloyd, who was listening with breathless
attention.
"She was afraid that their father would come home drunk and find them
alone. He didn't live with them any more, but several times, before she
began locking them up, he staggered in, and frightened them dreadfully.
Their ragged clothes and their half-starved looks seemed to make him
furious. It hurt his conscience, I suppose, and that made him want to
hurt somebody. Molly says he beat them sometimes till the neighbours
interfered. More than once he shut them up in a dark closet, trying to
make them tell where their grandmother kept her money. They couldn't
tell him, for she didn't have any money, but he kept them shut up in the
dark, hours at a time.
"One night he came in crosser than they had ever seen him, and threw
things around dreadfully. He struck his old mother in the face, beat
Molly, and threw a stick of wood at little Dot. It just missed putting
out her right eye, and made such a deep cut over it that they had to
send for a doctor to sew it up. He said she would carry the scar all her
life, and he could not see how the blow had missed killing her.
"It nearly broke the old grandmother's heart. She sat up all night, and
Molly says she remembers that time like a dreadful dream. Half the time
the old woman was rocking Dot in her arms, crying over her, and half the
time she was walking the floor.
"Molly says that now, when she shuts her eyes at night, she can hear her
saying, over and over, 'Oh, my Jimmy! My Jimmy! To think that my only
child should come to this! Oh, my Jimmy! The baby boy that was my
sunshine, how can it be that _you've_ become the sorrow of my life!'
Then she'd walk up and down the room as if she were crazy, calling out,
'But it's the drink that did it! It's the drink, and a curse be on
everything that helps to bring it into the world.'
"Molly says that she looked so terrible, with her white hair streaming
over her shoulders, and her eyes staring, that she hid her face in the
bedclothes. But she couldn't shut out the words. She shouted them so
loud that the family in the next room couldn't sleep, and knocked on the
wall for her to stop. But she only went on walking and wringing her
hands and calling, 'A curse on all who buy and all who brew! A curse on
every distiller! On every saloon-keeper! On every man who has so much as
a finger in this business of death! May all the shame and the sin and
the sorrow they have sown in other homes be reaped a hundredfold in
their own!'
"I suppose it made such a strong impression on Molly, hearing her
grandmother take on so terribly, that she remembered every word, and
will as long as she lives. She said the rain poured that night till it
leaked down on the bed, and she and Dot had to snuggle up together at
the foot, to keep dry. Her grandmother walked the floor till daylight.
The neighbours complained of her, and said that her troubles had
unsettled her mind, and that she would have to be sent some place to be
taken care of. All she could talk about was the drink that had ruined
her Jimmy, and the awful things she prayed would happen to anybody who
had anything to do with making or selling whiskey.
"She couldn't work any longer, and they were almost starving. One day
she was taken to the almshouse, and the family in the next room took
care of Molly and Dot until arrangements could be made to send them to
an orphan asylum. It was hard to get them into one, you know, because
their father was living.
"They stayed several weeks with those people, and Molly helped take care
of the baby, for she was a big girl, eleven years old, then. Dot was
seven, but so little and starved that she looked scarcely half that old.
She couldn't do much to help, but they sent her on errands sometimes.
"One day she went to the meat-shop around the corner, and _she never
came back_. Molly hunted in all the alleys and courtyards for her, until
some one brought her a message from her father, that he had taken Dot
away to another town. He didn't care what became of Molly, he said. She
had been saucy to him, but no orphan asylum should have his baby. He'd
hide her where she wouldn't be found in a hurry.
"Molly says she would have liked it at the asylum if Dot could have been
with her, but because she couldn't it made her hate everything and
everybody in the world. There was a big distillery in sight of her
window. She could see the roof the first thing in the morning, when she
opened her eyes, and the last thing at night. Many a time before she got
out of bed she'd think of her grandmother's words and repeat them just
like it was her prayers. She'd think 'It's drink that put me here, and
it's what separated me from Dot,' and then she'd say, 'A curse on those
who sell, and those who make it, and on every hand that helps to bring
it into the world! Amen.'"
"How dreadful!" exclaimed the Little Colonel, with a shudder. "She is as
bad as a heathen."
"But you can't wonder at it," said Betty. "We would have felt the same
way in her place. Suppose it was your Papa Jack that had been made a
drunkard, and that he'd begin to be mean to you, and make so much
trouble that godmother would die, and you'd have to leave the House
Beautiful and be sent to an asylum, and all on account of the saloons.
Wouldn't _you_ hate them and everything that helped keep them going?"
Lloyd only shivered at the thought, without answering. It was not
possible for her to suppose such a horrible thing about her beloved
father, but she felt the justice of Betty's view.
"While she was at the asylum," continued Betty, "some one sent a pile of
old magazines, and among them she found the picture that we saw. She
says that it looks exactly like Dot, and that is the way she used to
stand and cry sometimes when she was cold and hungry, and there wasn't
anything in the house to eat. It makes her perfectly miserable whenever
she looks at it, but it is so much like Dot that she can't bear to give
it up. Now you see why she didn't like us. It didn't seem fair to her
that we should have so much to make us happy, when she has so little.
She has had a hard enough time to spoil anybody's disposition, I think."
Lloyd was in tears by this time, and reaching across the table for the
letter she had written about the Barley-bright witch, she began tearing
it into pieces.
"Oh, if I'd only known," she said, "I never would have written those
things about her. I'll write another one this afternoon, and tell Joyce
all about her. Is she still crying in there, Betty?"
"No, she stopped before I left. I told her we would all try to find her
little sister, and that I was sure godmother could do it, even if
everybody else failed. But she didn't seem to think that there was much
hope."
"Did you tell her about Fairchance?" asked Lloyd, "or Joyce's finding
Jules's great-aunt Desiré, that time she went to the Little Sisters of
the Poor?"
"No," said Betty.
"Then let me tell her," cried the Little Colonel, starting up eagerly.
She ran on into Molly's room, while thoughtful Betty slipped down-stairs
to offer her services in Molly's place, that she might listen
undisturbed to Lloyd's tale of comfort,--all about Jonesy and his
brother, and the bear, who had found a fair chance to begin life again,
in the home that the two little knights built for them, in their efforts
to "right the wrong and follow the king." All about old great-aunt
Desiré, who had been found in a pauper's home and brought back to her
own again, through the Gate of the Giant Scissors, on Christmas Day in
the morning.
"It is too good to be true," sighed Molly, when Lloyd had finished. "It
might happen to some people, but it's too good to happen to me. It
sounds like something out of a story-book."
"Most of the things in story-books had to happen first before they were
written about," answered the Little Colonel. "You've got so many friends
now that surely some of them will be able to do something to find her."
Presently Molly looked up, saying, in a hesitating way, "Several people
have been good to me before, but I never thought about them doing it
because they were my _friends_. I thought they treated me kindly just
because they pitied me, and that made me cross."
Lloyd was turning the little ring that Eugenia had given her around on
her finger, and something in the touch of the little lover's knot of
gold recalled all that she had resolved about the "Road of the Loving
Heart." It was the ring that made her say, gently, "You mustn't think
that about Betty and me. We'll be your really truly friends just as we
are Joyce's and Eugenia's."
Then to Molly's great surprise the Little Colonel's pretty face leaned
over hers an instant, and she felt a quick kiss on her forehead. She lay
there a moment longer without speaking, and then sat up, a bright smile
flashing across her tear-swollen face. "Somehow the whole world seems
different," she cried. "It seems so queer to think I've really got
_friends_ like other people."
There was a warm glow in the Little Colonel's heart when she went back
to Betty's room. The consciousness that she had carried comfort and
sunshine into another's life brightened the rainy day until it no longer
seemed dark and dreary. That comfortable consciousness was still with
her in the afternoon, when she sat down to write another letter to
Joyce,--a letter, not filled this time with her own mishaps and
misfortunes, but so full of sympathy for Molly's troubles that no one
who read it could fail to be touched and interested.