Quite true that Mrs. Monahan had agreed to abandon her child almost
completely. She loved Rosaleen, but she didn’t feel it necessary to have
her with her; and anyway, hadn’t she plenty of others? To know that
Rosaleen was living in comfort somewhere in God’s world was quite
enough. _She_ hadn’t a trace of sentimentality. An excess, even very
slight, of whiskey or even of strong boiled tea, could cause Mrs.
Monahan to shed tears and to shake her head with delicious melancholy
over life and its pains, and she professed to look upon death as a
blessed release. But all this in no way affected her actions. She
resigned her lovely child to this erratic and sentimental spinster
because she saw very clearly the benefits which might be obtained. But
she would not even pretend to be grateful.
Later in the evening she returned as she had promised, bringing with her
a bundle of Rosaleen’s effects, and she found her child sitting on a
sofa in the sitting room, holding before her face a big geography book
which Miss Julie had said contained interesting pictures, while behind
it the tears were trickling slowly down her cheeks. She rushed at her
mother like a whirlwind, and kissed her and embraced her, clinging to
her desperately. Mrs. Monahan also wept, but nevertheless went away.
Miss Julie’s heart ached for the deserted little creature.
“There! There!” she said. “You mustn’t cry, dear! Come! We’ll go into
your own nice, comfy little room and put your things away, and then
you’ll feel more at home.”
She led her into a decent enough little cell, clean and orderly, and
opened the little bundle. It did not contain what, according to all
proper stories of poor little girls, it should have contained, the
traditional clothes, few in number, but neatly patched and darned, and
spotlessly clean. Mrs. Monahan had taken it for granted that a new
outfit would be bought for Rosaleen, and she hadn’t wasted her time
mending things that would certainly be discarded. She had, on the
contrary, kept all Rosaleen’s better things at home, for the other
children, so that what Miss Julie unwrapped was poor enough.
“A bundle of rags!” she reflected, shocked.
She didn’t quite know what to do with the child that evening. She was
very anxious to make her happy, to console and comfort her. She sat down
at the piano and played all her small repertory--marches, polkas,
mazurkas, and waltzes, all of the brilliant style. But Rosaleen was
thoroughly accustomed to piano playing; every family she knew had one
piano-playing daughter. Her mother had once had a piano, on “time
payments”; it had had to go back whence it came after three months, but
she had enjoyed experimenting on it while it lasted.
Then Miss Julie gave her picture books to look at, things insultingly
beneath her intelligence. This good lady didn’t realise that Rosaleen
had for a long time been treated as an adult; that she sat with her
mother and her mother’s friends, listening with profound interest to
long tales of illnesses, births, deaths, of bad husbands and good ones,
of tragedies beyond the knowledge of this household. Babies scalded in
wash tubs, women maltreated by their men, girls who disappeared,
lingering illnesses in bleak poverty. So blank and desolate for her was
this first evening at the Humberts, that she was glad enough to go to
bed at nine o’clock, although her usual time was at least two hours
later.
Miss Julie tucked her comfortably into her clean little bed, opened the
window, put out the light and kissed her good-night.
“If you want anything, call me!” she said. “Are you quite comfortable,
and all right, pet?”
The child answered, “Yes, ma’am!” But almost before the door had closed
upon her benefactress, she was weeping bitterly.
Miss Julie let her sleep late the next morning, and when she finally
awakened, she was greeted by a new face, beyond words welcome to her, a
good wrinkled old Irish face. It was Mrs. Cronin, who came in to wash by
the day.
“They’re all out!” she announced to the little girl. “You and me will be
keeping house together all the day. How will that suit ye?”
Rosaleen said it would suit her grand; she dressed in great haste and
hurried into the kitchen, where Mrs. Cronin gave her some nice bitter
black tea which had been sitting on the stove this long while to get the
strength out of it. She likewise pilfered a little bacon fat from Miss
Amy’s carefully preserved jar, and fried an egg in it.
And in the process muttered of Miss Amy, in uncomplimentary vein.
“Her, with the long nose of her poking into every bit and bite a poor
old woman would be eating.... Never a drop of milk does she leave for
me, nor meat to taste on the tip of your tongue.... Well, now, then, how
do you like all of this, and the fine new home, and all?”
“I do not like it,” said Rosaleen. “I wish....” She choked back a sob.
“I wish I was home again.”
“Whist! Ye have no sinse at all!” cried Mrs. Cronin, secretly delighted.
“Did ye not sleep in a fine bed last night?”
“The wind did be blowing on me!” she said. “For the window was left
open.”
“’Tis one of their notions,” said Mrs. Cronin, scornfully. “They pay for
coal to keep up a fire the night long and then lave the windows wide.”
Rosaleen then told her that she wasn’t used to sleeping in a room alone
or in the dark.
“There’s a street light shines in our window the night through,” she
said, “and there’s the lot of us, my mother and my sister and the baby
and myself. ’Tis more sociable like.”
They talked with gusto for hours. They were equals, in spite of the fact
that Mrs. Cronin was sixty and Rosaleen eleven. Mrs. Cronin told a
deeply interesting story of her sister’s boy who had been sent to a
Protectory, for no proper reason at all; a case of flagrant injustice
which Rosaleen understood perfectly, one of her own brothers having been
threatened. Rosaleen was not downcast now, or tongue tied; she, too, had
stories to tell. Modest and gentle she was, as ever, but a citizen of
the world, with experience, albeit vicarious.