A HUMBLE HOME.
Up town, where vacant lots can still be found, stood a small wooden
building, scarcely more than a shantie in dimensions, but perfectly
finished, so far as it went, and neat in all its appointments as any
palace. Two small rooms on the first floor, and a like number of
sleeping chambers, with their ceilings in the roof, took up the entire
length and breadth of the building. The little space of ground, not
occupied by the building, was given up to turf and brightened with
flowers, which climbed the fences and ran up the little portico, as
leaves cluster around a bird’s-nest in the spring. Indeed, that little
spot of earth was lovely. In the cool of the day, thousands of purple
and pink morning glories shook the dew from their delicate bells, and,
at all hours masses of scarlet beans, cypress-vines, and sweet scented
clematis, kept the little enclosure bright and beautiful, week in and
week out, so long as the season lasted.
The house itself contained little of value. Curtains of cheap muslin,
white as snow, through which you could see a thousand delicate shadows
from the flowers outside, shaded the windows.
In the front room was a pretty chintz couch, home-made, with dainty
cushions, and an easy-chair to match, the workmanship of some strong,
deft hand in the first construction, and finished up by the taste, still
more perfect, of a woman, to whom the aesthetic influence was second
nature.
Two or three really fine engravings were on the walls, and in one corner
stood a straight-legged, old piano, with an embroidered stool.
Two persons sat in this room, at nightfall, on the day Eva Laurence made
her little outburst of pride in that fashionable establishment down
town. One was a tall, spare woman, about fifty years of age, perhaps,
originally from New England, as you might detect from a certain
peculiarity of speech, and the constant occupation she found for her
hands, even while seated in that roomy easy-chair. The other was a young
girl, seemingly about fourteen at a first glance; but on a second look,
you saw traces of thought and of pain on that noble face, which took
your judgment in a few years. The girl was near the age of her sister
Eva; in fact, there was not a year between them, and if that had been
all, they might have passed for twins. But there the resemblance ended.
Nothing could be more unlike the rich coloring and perfect figure of Eva
than the pale delicacy and wonderful expression of this girl on the
couch.
“Mother!”
How sweet and low that voice was! This one incomparable word seemed
rippling off into music, full of tenderness and gentle pathos.
“Well, Ruth, what is it? Shall I move the cushions?”
“No, mother; but you seem thoughtful. Has anything gone wrong that I do
not know of?”
“Wrong? No! It is only the one old trouble!”
“The house?”
“Yes. I am afraid, Ruth, that we shall have to give it up. The mortgage
will be due this year——”
“But Eva thought——”
“Yes, dear, I know. If she had only got her situation a little earlier,
there might have been some chance; but the lot is growing more valuable
all the time, and Mr. Clapp is a grasping man.”
Ruth Laurence clasped her hands, and turned her eyes upon the wall.
“Oh! how helpless I am!” she said, with a thrill of pathetic pain in her
voice. “If we could both work now.”
“But that is impossible. Besides, what would the house be without you—a
cage without its bird?”
That moment, a brave, young voice came singing up to the front door of
that tiny house, and a bright face leaned through the open window, under
which Ruth was lying, and shook some ripe leaves from the vines upon
her.
“All right—both here,” cried as fine a school-boy as you ever sat eyes
on, swinging a package of books down from his shoulder, and coming
through the little hall. “I’ve got along famously, mother: not a
demerit. But what makes you look so sober?”
The lad seemed to lose something of his bright animation as he entered
that humble parlor and saw his mother’s anxious face, his large grey
eyes clouded over with anxiety and he stood a moment gazing mutely upon
her.
“Well, mother,” he said at last, “has Eva come home yet? She promised us
a famous supper when those people paid her, and I’m on hand for it, if
ever a little chap was. Not here yet, you say! Now that’s what I call
rough! Isn’t it, sister Ruth?”
“She will be home soon,” answered sister Ruth, returning the boy’s kiss
with a gentle sigh.
“How cold your lips are!” exclaimed the boy, and a look of tender
trouble came into his eyes. “Is it because you are hungry, sister Ruth?
If it is, I’ll—I’ll go and sell my school-books, and play hookey after
it, to get you something to eat. As for me, I was only in fun. A chap of
my age don’t want much, you know.”
“But the books are not yours, dear,” answered the sweet, sad voice from
the couch; “they belong to the city.”
The boy stood still a moment while the slow color mounted to his face.
“I know that,” he answered, almost crying; “but just then they seemed to
be mine, dear old friends, ready to go anywhere for my good. Anyway, if
I was a fairy now, every one of them should turn into something good to
eat; bread for me, and pound-cake for mother, and—and——”
“Beef-steak for us all!” said the mother, joining in the conversation.
The boy drew in his breath and smacked his lips, as if the very idea of
a warm beef-steak were a delicious morsel to be tasted and lingered
over.
“Oh, that! but then one must not be extravagant. Who knows! Eva may come
back with a whole pocket full of rocks!” the boy broke forth, after a
moment of dull despondency. “Come, mother, cheer up, something good is
going to happen. I feel it in my bones.”
Mrs. Laurence arose feebly from her chair, took the boy’s head between
her hands and kissed him, with a sort of slow restrained passion, half a
dozen times, as if she thought each kiss could be coined into food for
his hungry lips.
“Are you so very——”
“Not a bit of it,” cried the lad, shaking his head free, and making a
dive at his books, that the poor mother might not see his hard struggle
to keep from crying. “Hungry, oh, no! Didn’t one of the big boys give me
half his lunch? That’s a roundabout whopper, I know,” he muttered to
himself; “but them eyes, I couldn’t stand ’em, and she been sick so
long. Capital lunch it was, too: corned beef sandwiches and
pickles—famous! So just think of yourself, mother, not me. But here
comes Eva. Hurra!”
Sure enough, that moment Eva Laurence came through the little gate, sad,
weary, and despondent, moving through the dusky flowers like a spirit of
night. She entered the little sitting-room, and going directly up to her
mother, kissed her in silence. Then she sat down on an edge of the
couch, looked tenderly upon her invalid sister, and whispered to her,
“Have you had nothing? Has no raven or dove from Heaven come to feed
you, my poor darling?”
Ruth shook her head, and tried to smile.
“It is mother who needs it most,” she said. “She is not used to being
ill, poor darling, and did without so long herself before she would own
that we were getting short. Have you brought nothing for her?”
Eva shook her head, and whispered, “I did ask. Don’t think me a coward,
Ruth, but they will not break their rules, down there, for anyone.”
“What can we do?” cried the sick girl, clasping her hands. “I can wait,
but mother and poor Jim? Then you will break down.”
“No,” answered Eva, almost bitterly. “Mr. Harald has insisted on sharing
his lunch with me every day—that is the worst of it. I am kept strong
and rosy, while you and mother, who need wholesome food much more, are
left here to suffer. You don’t know, Ruthy, dear, how I have longed for
an opportunity to hide some of his nice things away, and bring them
home; but he always eats with me, and I have no courage to speak. So I
feast like a princess, and feel guilty as a thief.”
“But you need strength so much more than we do,” answered Ruth, clasping
her pale hands over Eva’s neck, and kissing her beautiful face. “It
would break my heart to see you growing pale and thin like the rest of
us.”
Eva sprang to her feet, stung with unreasonable contrition for having
tasted the food she could not share with those she loved.
“What can I do? Is there nothing left? If we could only bridge over the
next two days—but how?”
“Just you hold on,” said little Jim, pitching his pile of books into the
next room, and shutting the door upon them with a bang, as if nothing
less than a great effort could free him from temptation. “Just you hold
on. This is a free country, and every American has a right to have
something to eat; yes, and be President of the United States, if the
whole people want him to—not to speak of women who haven’t got their
inalienable rights to be men just yet, but are hungry and thirsty just
the same. Give me a chance, now.”
Out of the house James Laurence went, putting on his thread-bare cap as
he ran. The women he left looked at each other, and almost smiled, his
enthusiasm was so contagious.
“Where can he have gone, what is the boy thinking of,” said Eva, untying
her shabby little bonnet, and sitting down in helpless expectation. Ruth
looked up, smiling. She had great faith in little Jim, and, spite of all
the sweet patience which made her character so lovely, thought, with
keen physical longing, of the good which might possibly come out of his
sudden resolution.
“We never know what ideas our blessed Lord may give to a child,” she
said; “besides, it does seem impossible that, in a country like this,
God’s innocent creatures can be left to starve. I think Jim will come
back at least with a loaf of bread; the man who refused us may trust
him. Let us wait and see.”
This sweet prophecy fell so tranquilly on the soft, summer air that,
spite of themselves, these women began to hope.