The next morning the postman brought a letter. Mary was not surprised
to get it. Casey had gone to look for the "gran' job," and the older
children were in school, so the letter could not be read, but she could
make out the signature, written in the large, unformed hand where-with
Angela had covered every available space in the days of her brief but
laborious apprenticeship to the art of writing.
With trembling hand Mary tucked the letter in her bosom, hastily got
ready herself and Dewey and the baby, and started for Maggie's. Maggie
was younger and had enjoyed more educational advantages. She could
"r'ade printin'" easily, and "writin"' fairly well if it hadn't too
many flourishes.
"She says," spelled out Mrs. O'Connor, "'Dear Ma, I'm at ---- West
Randolph Street I'm sick I'm afraid to go home count of Pa Your Loving
daughter Angela Ann Casey.' I'll go wid ye," finished Mrs. O'Connor in
the same breath.
Out of her small store of tawdry finery she lent several articles
to make Mary "look more drissy," and while they got ready for their
momentous journey, Mary related the events of the day before, and of
Saturday night.
"Me an' Tim," said Maggie, when the tale had reached the stage of the
"parlie" and Mary's earnings as a scrub-woman, "was figgerin' how we
could help out a bit, ag'in' she come home, an' Tim have promised t'
take me 'n' her to th' theayter quite frayquint of a Sat'day noight,
an' together we're goin' t' give her half a dollar ivry wake t' spind
on her clo'es."
The number they sought on West Randolph Street was not far from the
fateful Haymarket Square. There was a store on the ground floor, with
living rooms behind. And above, a long flight of oilcloth-covered
stairs led to a "hotel."
They inquired first in the store, but no one there had ever heard of
Angela Ann. Then, with fast-beating hearts, the women mounted to the
office of the hotel, an inside room facing the head of the first flight
of stairs. The door stood open, and they looked, before entering, into
a gas-lighted room furnished with yellow-painted wooden arm-chairs
ranged along the walls and flanked by a sparser row of cuspidors; a
big sheet-iron stove on a square zinc plateau filled the middle of
the room, and near the door, behind a small desk like a butcher-store
cashier's, sat the "clerk," chewing vigorously and expectorating
without accuracy.
"Yes, she has a room here," he answered to Mary's question, "hall room,
rear, third floor."
"In a minute!" called Angela Ann's voice when Mary had knocked.
"My God, 'tis hersilf," sobbed Mary, and fell a-weeping violently.
"Ma!" cried Angela Ann, and threw open the door. She had been in bed
when they knocked, and had not waited to put on her clothes when she
heard her mother's voice. At the touch of her, the clinging clasp of
her poor, thin, cold little arms, Mary grew hysterical.
"Don't, Ma, don't," begged Angela.
"She've grieved hersilf sick over ye," said Maggie, unable to forbear
this much of a reprimand now that the sinner was found. "Iver since ye
wint she've been loike wan crazy. Come, Mary; now ye've got her, brace
up!"
"Sure, Ma," echoed the girl, "now ye've got me, brace up, I ain't never
goin' t' lave ye no more, Ma--honest t' God, I ain't."
"Wheer ye been?" Mary raised her head, and drawing back from the girl
peered anxiously into her face. "In God's name, Ang'la Ann, wheer you
been? Tell me ye've kep' dacint, gyurl, tell me ye've kep' dacint!"
Angela sat down on the dingy, disordered bed and began to cry, hiding
her face in her hands. For a long moment the silence, save for her soft
sobbing, was profound. Then a low moan escaped Mary, a moan of anguish
inexpressible, showing how deeply, notwithstanding her resolution of
yesterday, she had cherished the hope of her daughter's safety.
[Illustration: IN GOD'S NAME, ANG'LA ANN, WHEER YOU BEEN?]
Angela raised her head. The pain in her mother's moan was beyond
her comprehension, and she could only understand it as horror and
condemnation.
"Are ye--are ye--goin' t' t'row me off?"' she asked.
"T'row ye off? Ah, me gyurl, if ye'll on'y stick t' me as long as
I'll stick t' you, 'tis all I'll ask o' Hiven! Tis fer yer sake I was
prayin' no harm had come t' ye--not fer mine. Whativer happen t' ye,
ye're me Ang'la Ann thot I nursed from yer first brith. An' ye don'
know all I'm fixin' t' do fer ye--me an' yer pa an' yer Aunt Maggie,
here, and yer Uncle Tim----"
And there followed a glowing account of the feast prepared for the
prodigal's return.
"Th' idare o' you bein' afraid o' yer pa," chided Mary, "an' him fixin'
t' git a stiddy job an' not have ye go downtown no more."
Far shrewder than her mother, Angela Ann did not overestimate
this excellent intention of her pa's, but she said nothing of the
bitterness that was in her heart on account of his past crimes. It was
a long-standing grievance with her that her mother could never, for
more than a fleeting, irritated moment at a time, be made to see Casey
as others saw him. Angela Ann had been working for him since she was
eleven (child-labor laws were lax, then) and giving up her every penny
to pay rent and buy insufficient mites of coal and food--just enough to
keep them alive and no more--and it was starvation of many sorts that
sent her at last into the clutches of them that prey. The girl was full
of self-pity, and impatient with her mother because the older woman had
forgotten how to rebel.
"Yer pa say, though," added Mary, "thot he won't promise not i' kill
the felly thot lid ye away; he've got tur'ble wingeance on him--yer pa
have."
Angela Ann smiled grimly. "I guess theer's quite a few pa's lookin' fer
him," she said, "but they don't ever seem t' find him."
"Did he prom'se t' marry ye?" asked Mary anxiously.
"I should say not! He promised to make me a primmy donny."
"What's that?" fearfully.
"'Tis a kind of actress that wear tights an' sings," explained Angela.
"I'm after r'adin' in books how gran' they be, an' in the papers
it tell how the swell fellies do be runnin' after thim with diming
necklusses, an' marryin' of 'em. 'Tis all a lie!" she cried shrilly.
"Ye see," Mary could not refrain from reminding her. "I tol' ye thim
theayters was all wrong. We kind o' t'ought it might be thim thot got
ye, an' yer pa wint t' see this here Halberg, whin we foun' the caard
out o' yer pocke'-book. But he said he niver hear tell o' ye."
"Did pa go there?" questioned Angela eagerly. She was all interest to
know how the search for her had been carried on, and "did th' p'lice
know?" and "how did ye kape it out o' th' papers?"
Yes, it had been Halberg "all the time," she admitted. She had answered
his advertisement, and after a week's drill he had sent her, true to
his published word, in a "road company" that mitigated the gloom of
coal miners' lives by singing and dancing--and carousing--in a circuit
of saloons in the soft coal regions of Illinois. When she fell sick,
the company abandoned her without the formality of paying her any
salary, and a foul-tongued, soft-hearted landlady, whose own young
daughter was God knew where, had let Angela stay in her wretched hotel
until she was able by dishwashing and lampfilling chores to earn the
few dollars to take her back to Chicago.
"But I couldn' get no stren'th back," the girl went on, "an' that woman
at th' hotel, Mis' Schlogel, she sez t' me, 'You better go home t' yer
ma, that's wheer you better go,' an' she bundled me off Friday mornin'.
But I was scairt t' go home right t' wunst till I seen how youse was
goin' t' be t' me, so I come here wheer I stayed whin I was studyin'
wid O. Halberg, an' Friday night I got awful sick an' laid here all
night awake an' burnin' up an' my head achin' t' beat th' band. An' all
day Sat'day an' Sunday I wasn't able to go out fer nothin' t' eat, an'
th' propri'ter wouldn't order me nothin' sent in fer fear I wouldn't be
able t' pay. A woman in the nex' room light-house-keeps, an' she made
me tea a couple o' times after she heard I was sick an' alone."
"Why in Hivin's name," Maggie broke in, "did ye niver drap yer ma a
line t' say ye were aloive? Ye needn't 'a' tol' wheer ye was, but ye
could 'a' said ye were in the land o' th' livin', surely?"
"I was 'shamed," whimpered Angela; "I fought ye wouldn't keer wheer I
was if I wasn't doin' dacint."
"Think o' that, now!" cried Mary. "That's all a gyurl do know about
her ma. Whin yer a ma yersilf ye'll know better, an' not till thin, I
suppose."
Thus was Angela Ann made sure of her welcome home.
"An' not wan but yer own kin know ye've been missin'" said Mary, as she
helped the girl to get ready for the return, "so ye kin hol' up yer hid
an' look th' world in th' faace. An' may God fergive yer mother the
loies she've tol' t' save yer name!"
[Illustration]