worked in a tailor's shop in her youth, and had taught Olive so much
of the intricacies of the business as sufficed to make her a good
workwoman.
Accordingly they did their sewing so well as to command constant
employment and fair prices. But after all it was ceaseless drudging,
just to keep body and soul together. What was the use of it all? Not
enjoyment enough in any one day to pay for living,--why not as well lie
down and die at once?
She walked on sullenly, thinking of these things. An elegant carriage
stopped just in front of her, and a girl no older than herself got
out, trailing her rich silk across the sidewalk, and went into a
fashionable jeweller's.
Olive stopped, and looking in at the window, ostensibly at the vases
and bronzes, watched the girl with her dainty, high-bred air. She noted
every separate item of her loveliness,--the delicate coloring, the hair
so tastefully arranged, the pure, regular features. Then she looked
at the lustrous silk, the soft furs, the bonnet, which was a pink and
white miracle of blonde and rosebuds. How much of the beauty was the
girl's very self, and how much did she owe to this splendid setting?
Olive had seen cheeks and lips as bright and hair as shining when she
tied on her own unbecoming dark straw bonnet before her own dingy
looking-glass.
She went on with renewed bitterness, asking herself, over and over
again, Why? Why? Why? Did not the Bible say that God was no respecter
of persons? But why did He make some, like that girl in there, to
feed on the roses and lie in the lilies of life,--to wear silks, and
furs, and jewels, and laces, and then make _her_ to work buttonholes
in Butler & Co.'s vests? Was there any God at all? or, if there was,
did He not make some people and forget them altogether, while He was
heaping good things on others whom He liked better? She could not
understand it. And then to be told to _love_ God after all; and that He
pitied her as a father pitied his children! Why! that girl in the silk
dress could love God, easily,--that command must have been meant for
her.
Going on she caught a glimpse of an illumination in the window of a
print shop.
"PEACE ON EARTH AND GOOD-WILL TOWARD MEN" was the legend set
forth by the brilliantly colored letters.
What a mockery those words seemed to be! There had never been peace or
good-will in their house, even in the old days when they were tolerably
prosperous, before her father went away.
She walked very slowly now, for she was thinking of that old time. She
had loved her father more than she had ever loved any one else. To her
he had always been kind; he had never found fault with her, and had
smoothed all the rough places out of her life. Her mother had been neat
and smart and _capable_, as the New England phrase is. Higher praise
than this Mrs. Haygarth did not covet. But like many capable women, she
had acquired a habit of small faultfinding, a perpetual dropping, which
would have worn even a stone, and George Haygarth was no stone.
The woman loved her husband, doubtless, in some fashion of her own,
but to save her life she could not have kept from "nagging" him. She
fretted if he brought mud upon his shoes over her clean floor, if he
spent money on any pleasure for himself, any extra indulgence for
Olive; above all, if he ever took a fancy to keep holiday.
Just five years ago things had come to a climax. Olive was thirteen
years old then, and he had brought her home for Christmas some
ornaments,--a pin and earrings, not very expensive, but in Mrs.
Haygarth's eyes useless and unnecessary. She assailed him bitterly,
and for a marvel he heard her out in dumb silence. When she was all
through, he only said,--
"I think I can spare the eight dollars they cost me, since I am not
likely to give the girl any thing again for some time. It will be too
far to send Christmas gifts from Colorado."
Mrs. Haygarth's temper was up, and she answered him with an evil
sneer,--
"Colorado, indeed! Colorado is peopled with wide-awake men. It's no
place for you out there."
He made no reply, only got up and went out; and, going by Olive, he
stooped and kissed her. How well she remembered that kiss!
Through the week afterward he went to his work as usual, but he spent
scarcely any time at home, and when there made little talk. All his
wife's accustomed flings and innuendoes fell on his ears apparently
unheeded. The night before New Year's he was busy a long time in his
own room. When he came out he handed Mrs. Haygarth a folded paper.
"There," he said, "is the receipt for the next year's house rent, and
before that time is out I shall send you the money, if I am prospered,
to pay for another year. I have taken from the savings-bank enough to
carry me to Colorado and keep me a little while after I get there;
and the bank book, with the rest of the five hundred dollars, I have
transferred to you. If I have any luck you shall never want,--you and
Olive. You'll be better off without me. I think I've always been an
aggravation to you, Martha,--only an aggravation."
He went back again into his room, and came out with a valise packed
full.
"I think I'll go away now," he said. "The train starts in an hour, and
there is no need of my troubling you any longer."
Then he had taken Olive into his arms, and she had felt some sudden
kisses on her cheek, some hot tears on her face; but he had said
nothing to her, only the one sentence, gasped out like a groan,--
"Father's little one! father's little one!"
Olive shivered and then grew hot again, as she remembered it; and
remembered how wistfully he had looked afterwards at his wife, reading
no encouragement in her sharp, contemptuous face.
"I guess you'll see Colorado about as much as I shall," said Martha
Haygarth, sneeringly. "Your courage may last fifty miles."
He did not answer. He just shut the door behind him and went out into
the night,--and she had never seen him since, never heard his voice
since that last cry,--"Father's little one!"
She felt the thick-coming tears blinding her eyes, but she brushed them
resolutely away, and looked up at the Old South clock just before her.
Almost five. The sun had set nearly half an hour ago, and the night
was falling fast. How long a time she had spent in walking the short
distance since she came into Washington Street! How late home she
should be! She quickened her steps almost to a run, went to the
clothing store, where she had to wait a little while for her work to
be looked over and paid for, and heard the clocks strike six just as
she reached the corner of Essex Street, on her homeward way. The dense,
hurrying crowd jostled and pressed her, and she turned the corner. She
would find more room on the Avenue, she thought.
She had not noticed that two young men were following her closely.
They would have been gentlemen if they had obeyed the laws of God and
man. As it was, there was about them the look which nothing expresses
so well as the word "fast." Their very features had become coarse
and lowered in tone by the lives they led; and yet they were the
descendants of men whose names were honored in the State, and made
glorious by traditions of true Christian knighthood.
On the other side of the way, alike unnoticed by Olive and her
pursuers, a man walked on steadily, never losing sight of them for a
moment. At last, as she came into a quiet portion of the street, the
two young men drew near her. They were simply what I have said, "fast."
They perhaps meant no real harm, and thought it would be good fun to
frighten her.
"'Where are you going, my pretty maid?'" said one, the bolder and
handsomer of the two.
"'My face is my fortune, sir, she said,'" responded the other, in a
voice which the wine he had taken for dinner made a little thick and
unsteady.
"You ought not to be out alone," the first began again. "You are quite
too young and too pretty."
"That she is," a loud, stern voice answered, "when there are such vile
hounds as you ready to insult an unprotected girl."
Surely it was a voice Olive knew, only stronger and more resolute than
she had ever heard it before.
She turned suddenly, and the gas light struck full on her flushed,
frightened, pretty face, which the drooping hair shaded. The man, who
had crossed the street to come to her rescue, looked at her a moment,
and then, as if involuntarily, came to his lips the old, fond words,
the last she had ever heard him speak,--
"Father's little one!"
He opened his arms, and she, poor tired girl crept into their shelter.
The two young men stood by waiting, enough of the nobility of the old
blood in them to keep them from running away, though their nerves
tingled with shame. George Haygarth spoke to them with quiet, manly
dignity.
"When I saw you following this girl I had no idea she was _my_ girl,
whom I had not seen for five years. It was enough for me that she was
a woman. To my thinking it's a poor manhood that insults women instead
of protecting them. I meant to look out for her, and, be she who she
might, you should not have harmed her."
"We never meant her any real harm," the elder of the two said humbly;
"but we have learned our lesson, and I think we shall neither of us
forget it. Young lady, we beg your pardon."
Then they lifted their hats and went away; and George Haygarth drew his
daughter's hand through his arm and walked on, telling his story as he
walked.
He had been unsuccessful at first. For more than eighteen months he
had scarcely been able to keep himself alive. Fever had wasted him,
plans had failed him, hope had deserted him. The very first money he
could possibly spare he had sent home, with a long loving letter to the
absent, over whom his heart yearned. But money and letter had both
come back to him after a while, from the dead-letter office.
"Yes," Olive said, "we were too poor to keep on there after the year
for which you paid was out, and we have moved two or three times since
then. The postman did not know where to find us, and after the first
year we gave up asking for letters at the office."
Her father's hand clasped hers tighter, in sympathy, and then he told
the rest of his story.
He had never been very prosperous, never seen any such golden chances
as the mining legends picture, but he had come home better off than he
ever should have been if he had stayed in the East.
For a whole week he had been in Boston searching for them everywhere,
and no knowing how much longer he might have had to wait but for this
accident.
"Don't say accident, father," Olive answered, softly. "It was God's
way of bringing us together. I begin to see now what it means when
the Bible says, 'He is touched by our infirmities, and pities our
necessities.' And yet, only this afternoon I was losing all my faith,
and thinking that if He cared for all the rest of the world. He had
forgotten me. Here we are,--the next house is home."
"Your mother--how will she receive me, Olive?"
Olive's heart seemed to stand still. Her mother had been so bitter
through all these years; had said such cruel things about this man,
whom she accused of deserting his family and leaving them to starve, of
caring only for himself. She did not speak,--she did not know what to
say.
"You must go in and break it to her," George Haygarth said, as they
climbed the stairs of the humble tenement house, the third story of
which the mother and daughter occupied. "I will stay outside and wait.
It won't be coming home at all if Martha doesn't bid me welcome."
Olive went in, trembling.
"Here is the money, mother."
Mrs. Haygarth reached out her hand for it and looked at it.
"Yes, it's all right; but I thought you were never coming home. What
kept you?"
"I looked into the windows a good deal as I went down, and then I had
to wait at the store, and I've been thinking, mother. It will be five
years next week since father went away. What if we could see him again?"
She paused, expecting to hear some of the old bitter words about her
father; but, instead, her mother's voice fell softly upon her ear.
"_I've_ been thinking too, Olive, and I believe he is dead. I don't
think I used to be patient enough with him, and perhaps I wore his love
out. But he _did_ care for _you_, and seems to me nothing short of
death could have kept him away so long."
"But if you _could_ see him, mother?" Olive persisted, with trembling
voice.
Some new thought pierced Martha Haygarth's brain. A strange thrill
shook her. She looked an instant into Olive's eyes. Then, without a
word, she sprang to the door and threw it open. Olive heard a low,
passionate cry.
"George! George! if I was cross I _did_ love you!" and Olive saw a
figure come out of the shadow and take her mother close in its arms.
And then she hid her eyes, and said a little prayer, she never knew
what.
So, after all, God had not forgotten them. Just when their want was
sorest their help had come. And they needed all they had suffered,
perhaps, to teach her mother what love was worth, and what forbearance
signified.
"PEACE ON EARTH AND GOOD-WILL TOWARD MEN!"
From the very sky the words seemed to drop down to her, like an angelic
blessing; and now to their home the reign of peace had come, and she
understood what the benediction meant.
[Illustration: UNCLE JACK.--PAGE 143.]
UNCLE JACK.
"What young bears most boys are!" said my Uncle Jack, watching his
oldest hope pushing his sister in the swing so vigorously that she
almost fell out, and then pulling one side of the rope at a time,
making her fairly dizzy with swaying from side to side while she
alternately screamed and entreated.
"Just about the same, all of them," Uncle Jack went on. "Talk about
boyish chivalry, I never found it, especially toward a boy's own kith
and kin. There may be some Highland Marys with juvenile adorers, but
nine times out of ten a boy would rather frighten a girl than kiss her.
My John here's just a specimen. Come here, sir," raising his voice. "Do
you want to hear a story about the days when I was just such another
cub as yourself?"
This suggestion brought John and his sister both in from the swing.
When Uncle Jack began to "spin a yarn," as he often called it, all the
family were sure to want to be present at its unravelling.
"You see," he began, "my sister Nelly wasn't my sister at all; but it
was all the same, as far as my feeling for her went. When I was only
three years old my mother's best friend died, and left Nelly, a little,
wailing, two-months-old baby, to my mother's care. Her father had been
killed before she was born, in a railroad accident, so there was no
one but my mother to see to her; and she brought the little thing home
and adopted her, thankfully enough, for though she had four good stout
boys, of whom I was the youngest, there was never a girl in the family
till Nelly came.
"We all loved her, as she grew older. She was a pretty little blossom
as you would want to see, with her black eyes, and the crisp, black
hair falling about her rosy cheeks. She had a funny little rose-bud of
a mouth, too, and the daintiest little figure,--well-made all through,
and no mistake about it.
"I think I loved her, if any thing, better than the rest did,
considering that she was nearer my age, and so we were more continually
together, but, bless you, there wasn't any chivalry in it. It didn't
keep me from painting her doll's face black, or hiding its shoes, or
from listening when she was talking with her girl cronies, and then
bursting out among them, and yelling their choicest secret to the four
winds.
"I would have knocked any boy down, from the time I was big enough to
use my fists, who had said a saucy word to Nelly; but I said plenty of
them myself. I believe I liked to tease her for the sake of hearing her
beg me not to; just as I've seen you tease your sister a hundred times,
Master John.
"You would think she would have hated me: but that's one curious thing
about girls and women; they don't always hate where you would naturally
expect them to; and Nelly cared a good deal more about me than I
deserved. She seemed to be proud of me, because I was a great, strong,
roystering fellow, and she never bore malice for any of the tricks I
served her.
"I have wondered many a time since how I could have had the heart to
torment her, for she never once tried to revenge herself on me, nor
can I recollect her ever being angry with me. When I got myself into
disgrace with parents or teachers, it was always her gentle voice
which pleaded for me, and hard enough folks found it to say no to her,
whether it was the dark eyes and bright cheeks, or a little winning,
coaxing way she had.
"When I was fourteen and Nelly was eleven we went one day to a
huckleberry picnic. We had great fun all the afternoon, and stayed a
good deal later than we meant to, so that it was almost dark when we
started to go home. We had two miles to walk, and the first half of
the distance our way lay with the rest of the company. I had got well
stirred up by the general merriment, and wasn't half satisfied with the
frolic ending there.
"Nelly, I remembered afterwards, was very quiet, and seemed tired. She
was a delicate little thing, any way, and got worn out with fatigue or
excitement a good deal sooner than most of her mates. Finally our road
turned off away from the rest, and led through a long pine wood. As
we went on under the thick trees it grew darker and darker, and Nelly
cuddled up closer to my side.
"You'd have thought that at fourteen I was old enough for chivalry, and
that sort of thing, if I was ever going to be; but not a bit of it,--I
was just a great, strong, rollicking boy, with some heart, to be sure,
but liking fun better than any thing, and headstrong and inconsiderate
to an extent which I am ashamed to remember. Full still of unexhausted
animal spirits, and, as I said, not half satisfied with the frolic I
had had, I began, in default of other amusement, to tease Nelly.
"I told her a ghastly story or two, and then I would rush away from her
among the thick trees, as if in pursuit of something, and come back
again to her side, in a few minutes. I wanted her to scream after me,
but she didn't. She was so still that I actually thought she didn't
care; and after a while I grew vexed because I couldn't vex her, and
make her implore me to stay with her, and confess her dependence upon
me.
"At last, when we were about a third of a mile from home, a path led
through the woods, branching off from the main path on which we were,
to the farm where my greatest crony lived. I thought of something I
wanted to say to him. Here was a chance, to tease Nelly well,--let her
see whether she was just as comfortable without me as with me.
"You look at me as if you didn't believe I could have been such a
brute; but I was, and what is more, I did not at all realize at the
time that I was doing any harm. That Nelly would have a little scare,
and hurry home somewhat faster than usual, was the most I apprehended;
so I said, with a sort of boyish swagger,--
"'It just occurs to me that there is something I want to say to Hal
Somers, and we are so near home now that you won't be afraid, so I'll
just branch off there. Tell mother I had supper enough at the picnic,
and she needn't wait for me.'
"It was too dark to look at Nelly, or perhaps her white face, sad and
frightened as I know it must have been, would have turned me from my
purpose. She did not speak one word, and I struck off at a tearing pace
through the woods.
"By the time I had reached Hal Somers's place, I began to get sobered
down a little, and to feel somewhat uncomfortable about what I had
done. I had to wait a few minutes before I could see him, but I did my
errand briefly, and it was not more than an hour after I had left Nelly
before I myself was at home. I found mother in the porch, looking out
anxiously.
"'I'm so glad you've come, children,' she cried, when she heard my
footsteps, and then, as I drew nearer, 'Why, Jack, where is Nelly?'"
"'Here, I suppose,' I answered, trying to face the music boldly. 'I
left her about an hour ago in the woods, where the path branches off
to go to Hal Somers's, and she had nothing to do but to come straight
home.'
"'You left Nelly in the woods, an hour ago!' my mother cried, in a tone
which made my heart stand still, and then turn over with a great leap.
And then she sprang by me like some wild creature, and called through
the darkness to my father to come with his lantern, quick, quick, for
Nelly had been alone in the dark woods for an hour.
"Instantly, as it seemed to me, my father and my oldest brother were
following mother along the woodland path, and I stole after them,
feeling like a second Cain. It was but a very few minutes before we
came up to Nelly, for there she was, just where I left her. She had
sunk to the ground, and was half sitting there, her back leaning
against a tree beside the path. The light from the lantern flashed on
her face, a face white and set as death, but with the wide-open eyes
glaring fearfully into the dark beyond.
"It was my mother who touched her first; and felt to see whether her
heart had stopped beating.
"'Is she dead?' my father asked huskily.
"'I don't know. It seems to me I can feel the very faintest throb, but
I cannot tell until we get her home. If she isn't dead, I am afraid she
is worse,--frightened out of her senses, for ever.'
"Then father and William made preparations to carry her. I asked,
timidly, if I could help. I think none of them had noticed before that
I was there.
"'You!' my father said, with such concentrated scorn and wrath in his
voice as I cannot describe; and then mother said, more mildly, but so
sadly it was worse than any anger,--
"'No, I trusted her to you once. I supposed you loved her.'
"So I saw them move off, carrying her between them, and I followed
after like an outcast, until it occurred to me that, at least, I could
call a physician. So I flew by them like the wind, and off on the road
to town. By some singular good fortune, if we ought not always to say
Providence and never fortune, before I had gone forty rods I met Dr.
Greene, who was coming in our direction to visit a patient. So I had
him with me on the door-stone when they brought Nelly in.
"I did not dare to go into the room where they carried her; but I
waited outside in an agony which punished me already for my sin. At
last my mother had pity on me and looked out.
"'She is not dead, Jack,' she said, 'but she is still insensible, and
until she is restored to consciousness there is no telling what the
result will be.'
"Then an awful terror came over me, which I cannot put into words. What
if she died, or what if she never had her reason again? Who in that
house would ever bear to look at me? When Cain had murdered his brother
he had to go forth alone,--what was left for me, another Cain, but to
go also alone into the world?
"We lived nine miles away from a seaport town from which whaling
vessels were continually starting, and it came into my mind that I
might ship on board one for a three years' cruise; and, by the time it
was over, the folks at home might have learned to forgive me for being
in the world. So off through the night I hurried.
"How strangely our ways seem made ready for us, often, in the great
moments, big with fate, of our lives! I found a whaler which was to
sail in the early morning, a captain disappointed in one of his green
hands, whose place I could have, and before I had been half an hour in
the town my bargain was made, I had been fitted out with necessaries,
and I went into a tavern to write a note to my mother.
"A strange, incoherent note it was; but it told her where I was gone
and why, and begged her, whatever came, to forgive her boy, who loved
her, and who might never see her again.
"Never mind about the long, long days, and weeks, and months which
followed,--the empty hours of solemn nights and gusty days, during
which I was face to face with my own soul.
"Of course before a week had gone by I was sorry enough for the rash
step I had taken. It seemed to me I could not live for three years
and not know what had become of Nelly. I would have gone barefoot to
the ends of the earth to find out about her, but I could not walk the
sea. I was growing so wild with grief and anxiety that I sometimes
think I should have walked overboard some night, and so ended all my
pain for this world, if Providence had not raised me up a friend in my
need--only a common sailor, and a man whose strange history I never
knew, but a gentleman and a scholar, in whose locker were Milton, and
Shakespeare, and Don Quixote.