A LOST MOTHER
Stargarde, lifting up her eyes and seeing that she was alone, hurried
down the steps to the next floor, to a room belonging to a boys’ club.
“Password,” muttered a sepulchral voice when she tapped lightly on the
door panels.
“Good boys,” she returned with a laugh. It was not the password. “Death
to the traitor,” was the signal for the night; but they knew her voice,
and a boy opened the door and slipped out.
“How do you do, Mike?” she said cheerfully; “can’t you let me in?” He
hesitated and she went on, “I want to see how your club room looks.
Don’t you want a new stove, and some chairs and pictures? I know where
you could get some, if you do.”
The boy’s pale face brightened. “Hold on,” he ejaculated; “I’ll tell
’em.”
He insinuated himself back into the room through the very narrowest
possible space; there was a sound of shuffling of furniture, and quickly
moving feet, then he told her she might enter. The atmosphere of the
room was thick with smoke; they could not clear that away, though a
window had been hastily opened, and the pure, cold air streamed in
through the dusky atmosphere.
Boys’ heads shone out of the cloud—not big boys, but half-grown ones,
boys who drove small coal carts about the city—all noticeable by their
universal blackness of hair and whiteness of faces recently washed.
There was a good fire in the stove; poor people will go hungry before
they will go cold, she knew that. Of books, games, anything to amuse the
lads, she saw nothing. A few empty boxes for seats were set about the
stove. On one of them a forgotten knave of clubs lay on his back
ruefully staring in the direction his fellows had gone, marked by a
suspicious bulge in the pocket of one of the oldest lads present.
“Good-evening, Harry, Jim, Joe, Will,” said Stargarde, nodding gayly,
and mentioning all of the boys in the room by name. “What about the act
respecting the use of tobacco by minors?” and she began to quote in a
lugubrious tone of voice, “‘Any person who either directly or indirectly
sells or gives or furnishes to a minor under eighteen years of age,
cigarettes, cigars, or tobacco in any form, shall in summary conviction
thereof be subject to a penalty of not less than ten dollars.’” She
broke off there, for the boys were all smiling at her.
“Aren’t you glad I’m not a policeman?” she said. “Come now, boys, let us
make a bargain. Pipes in the fire, and I’ll furnish the room. I was just
speaking to Mike about it.”
The president, a lad rather more respectably dressed than the others,
stepped forward. “Will you give us your terms in writing?” he said.
Stargarde smiled. “Too much red-tapeism,” laying her hand on his
shoulder. “You all hear, boys; I’ll make this the nicest boys’ club in
Halifax if you’ll throw away your tobacco, pipes, cigars, etc.”
“For how long?” asked the president cautiously.
“Say for a year. Then if you’re not healthier, happier boys, I’ll be
greatly mistaken. Try it for a year, and if you are worse off without
tobacco than with it, go back to it by all means.”
“A year isn’t long,” he replied, turning to his associates. “What is the
opinion of the club?”
“Hurrah for Miss Turner!” said a lad, pressing forward enthusiastically.
“Make me an honorary member, Mike,” said Stargarde so quickly in the ear
of the boy who let her in that he thought it was his own suggestion, and
immediately proposed her. There was a show of hands, and the thing was
done.
Stargarde thanked them, promised a supply of books and papers, then said
earnestly: “There’s a little matter I wish to mention, boys. In the hall
out here lies a man with some bruises that want attending to. Can some
of you look after him for a few days? Keep him here and come to me for
whatever you want, and take good care of him, for he’s a friend of
mine.”
She had scarcely finished when two lads were detailed for duty and were
stealing up the steps. Her friends were pretty well known, and when she
had one in trouble, others of her friends were always willing to assist
her.
When the boys found that the man was a foreigner and unknown to them,
they were filled with an important sense of mystery. A course of
blood-and-thunder novel reading had prepared them for just such an event
as this, and for some days they took turns in guarding the unfortunate
man, who had received even a worse pounding than Stargarde had imagined,
nursing him secretly, and feasting him on the daintiest morsels that the
Pavilion restaurant afforded.
“Oh, how good the poor are to each other; how good they are!” murmured
Stargarde, as she languidly descended from the club room and rejoined
her patient lover. “Yes, I am tired, Brian,” she said wearily, as she
slipped her hand through his arm; “tired, but not with bodily fatigue. I
am tired of the temptations to sin. It seems as if the Evil One is
perpetually casting a net about our feet. No one is exempt. But the
poor! oh, the poor! it is hardest for them. How can they be good when
they are ground down by the perpetual struggle for bread in miserable
surroundings, and worse than that, worse than that,” and her voice sank
to a low wail, “the temptation that is always before them—nay, forced
upon them—to drink deep and forget their misery.”
They were passing the old Clock Tower, situated on the Citadel Hill.
Camperdown looked up at its impenetrable face. “Sin and misery have been
in the world ever since it began,” he said hopelessly; “always will be
till it ends.”
“Ah, but what a grand thing to put a stop to a little of the sin and
iniquity!” exclaimed the woman, turning up to the stars her bright and
eager face. “That is one’s only consolation.”
“I wish you would not walk along the street with your face turned up in
that way,” was Camperdown’s unexpected and jealous reply. They had just
passed two soldiers who stared curiously at the beautiful woman on his
arm, and just as he spoke a girl standing in a near doorway with an
apron flung over her head made a saucy remark with regard to Stargarde
to a broad-shouldered workman standing by her.
“Hist,” said the man angrily; “you’re new here, or you’d know who that
is,” and he took off his cap as Stargarde passed by. “There’s hands
as’ll be raised to slap your mouth, woman as you be,” he continued half
apologetically to the girl as the two people went by, “if you dares to
pass a word agin her. She’s the poor man’s friend. She’s always with
’em, sick an’ dyin’ and dead. She put my old mother in a handsome
coffin——” and he broke off abruptly.
Camperdown and Stargarde were walking slowly so that they heard every
word that had been said. “Brian,” she said passionately, “do you hear
that? and can you still want me to live only for pleasure and society?
Oh, how dare you? how can you? Shame to you, Brian!” and the very stars
seemed to have got tangled in the glitter and radiance and unearthly
beauty of the eyes that she turned upon him.
He looked at her, growled something in a low, happy voice that she could
not hear, then said dryly, “Hadn’t you better give me my pocketbook?”
She stopped short. “How stupid I am; pray forgive me. Here it is,” and
she handed it to him. “How did you know that I had it?”
“By your face,” he said shortly.
“I wonder who Zeb’s mother is?” said Stargarde, as they walked slowly
on. “She talks like a lady at times. I must find out. There’s a mystery
about them that I can’t fathom. They’ve been dwellers in big cities.
They’re not like our poor people, Brian. I wonder; I wonder——” and still
wondering she arrived at her own doorway.
“You’re crying!” exclaimed Camperdown, when he put out his hand to say
good-bye to her. “What’s the matter?”
“I am thinking about my mother,” she replied in a low, distressed voice.
“Is it not strange, Brian, that I hear nothing of her? From the day that
I heard I had a mother till now, I have searched for her. Yet I can hear
nothing from her; neither can any one that I employ.”
Her voice failed, and with a heavy sob she dropped her head on her
breast.
Camperdown looked at her in obvious distress. She so seldom gave way; he
could see that she was suffering extremely. “Don’t cry, Stargarde; don’t
cry,” he said uneasily. “It will all come out right. We may find her
yet.”
“I am a coward,” said the woman, suddenly lifting her moist, beautiful
eyes to his face; “but sometimes I can’t help it, Brian; it overcomes
me. I never sit by a sick-bed, I never kneel by a dying person without
thinking of her. Where is she? Is there some one to care for her?
Perhaps she is cold and hungry and ill. Her body may be suffering, and
her soul too, her immortal soul. Oh, that is what distresses me. She was
not doing right—we know that.”
“There is one thing I know,” he said decidedly, “and that is that you’ll
do no work to-morrow if you spend the night in fretting over what can’t
be helped. Come, take some of your own medicine. The Lord knows what is
best for you; go on with what you have to do and wait his time.”
She brightened perceptibly. “Thank you, Brian, for reminding me.
Good-night, my dear brother, always kind and good to me,” and pressing
gently the hand that still held her own, she gave him a farewell smile
and went slowly into her rooms.