THE TRIAL BY FIRE
The moment Lucile heard the lock click behind her she knew that she was
trapped. But her fighting blood was up. Even had the door been wide open
she would not have retreated.
"You release that child," she said through cold, set lips.
"Yes, you tell me 'release the child,'" said the woman, with an attempt
at sarcasm; "you who are so brave, who have a companion who is like an
ox, who likes to beat up poor women on the street. You say, 'release the
child.' You say that. And the child, she is my own stepdaughter."
"I--I don't believe it," said Lucile stoutly.
"It is true."
"If it is true, you have no right to abuse her--you are not fit to be any
child's mother."
"Not fit," the woman's face became purple with rage. "I am no good, she
says; not fit!" She advanced threateningly toward Lucile.
"Now, now," she stormed, "we have you where we want you. Now we shall
show you whether or not we can do as we please with the child that was so
very kindly given to us." She made a move toward the stove, from which
the handle to the heavy poker protruded. By this time the end must be red
hot.
"It's no use to threaten me," said Lucile calmly. "I wouldn't leave the
room if I might. If I did it would be to bring an officer. I mean to see
that the child is treated as a human being and not as a dog."
The woman's face once more became purple. She seemed petrified, quite
unable to move, from sheer rage.
But the man, a sallow-complexioned person with a perpetual leer in one
corner of his mouth, started for the stove.
With a quick spring Lucile reached the handle of the poker first. Seizing
it, she drew it, white hot, from the fire. The man sprang back in fear.
The woman gripped the rounds of a heavy chair and made as if to lift it
for a blow.
Scarcely realizing that she was imitating her hero of fiction, she
brought the glowing iron close to the white and tender flesh of her
forearm.
"You think you can frighten me," she smiled. "You think you can do
something to me which will cause me to cease to attempt to protect that
child. Perhaps you would torture me. I will prove to you that you cannot
frighten me. What I have been doing is right. The world was made for
people to live in who do right. If one may not always do right, then life
is not worth living."
The fiery weapon came closer to her arm. The woman stared at her as if
fascinated. The child, who had been silently struggling at her bands,
paused in open-mouthed astonishment. For once the leer on the man's lips
vanished.
Then, of a sudden, as she appeared to catch the meaning of it all, the
child gave forth a piercing scream.
The next instant there came a loud pounding at the door as a gruff voice
thundered:
"Here, you in there! Open up!"
The woman dropped upon the ill-kept bed in a real or pretended swoon.
Lucile allowed the poker to drop to her side. With trembling fingers the
man unloosed the door and the next instant they were looking into the
faces of a police sergeant and two other officers of the law.
"What's going on here?" demanded the sergeant.
Suddenly recovering from her swoon, the woman sprang to her feet.
"That young lady," she pointed an accusing finger at Lucile, "is
attempting to break up our home."
The officer looked them over one by one.
"What's the girl tied up for?" he demanded.
"It's the only way we can keep her home," said the woman. "That young
lady's been enticing her away; her and an old wretch of a man."
"Your daughter?"
"My adopted daughter."
"What about it, little one?" the officer stepped over, and cutting the
girl's bands, placed a hand on the child's head. "Is what she says true?"
"I--I don't know," she faltered. Her knees trembled so she could scarcely
stand. "I never saw the young lady until now but I--I think she is
wonderful."
"Is this woman your stepmother."
The girl hung her head.
"Do you wish to stay with her?"
"Oh! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! No! No! No! Oh, Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!"
The child in her agony of fright and grief threw herself face down upon
the bed.
The officer, seating himself beside her, smoothed her hair with his huge
right hand until she was quiet, then bit by bit got from her the story of
her experiences in this great American city. Lucile listened eagerly as
the little girl talked falteringly.
A Belgian refugee, she had been brought to the United States during the
war, and because this unprincipled pair spoke French, which she too
understood, the good-hearted but misguided people who had her in charge
had given her over to them without fully looking up their record.
Because she was small and had an appealing face, and because she was a
refugee, they had set her to begging on the street and had more than once
asked her to steal.
Having been brought up by conscientious parents, all this was repulsive
to her. So one day she had run away. She had wandered the streets of the
great, unfriendly city until, almost at the point of starvation, she had
been taken home by a very old man, a Frenchman.
"French," she said, "but not like these," she pointed a finger of scorn
at the man and woman. "A French gentleman. A very, very wonderful man."
She had lived with him and had helped him all she could. Then, one night,
as she was on an errand for him, the woman, her stepmother, had found
her. She had been seized and dragged along the street. But by some
strange chance she did not at all understand, she had been rescued.
That night she had been carrying a book. The book belonged to her aged
benefactor and was much prized by him. Thinking that her foster mother
had the book, she had dared return to ask for it.
She proceeded to relate what had happened in that room and ended with a
plea that she might be allowed to return to the cottage on Tyler street.
"Are you interested in this child?" the officer asked Lucile.
"I surely am."
"Want to see that she gets safely home?"
"I--I will."
"And see here," the officer turned a stern face on the others, "if you
interfere with this child in the future, we've got enough on you to put
you away. You ain't fit to be no child's parents. Far as I can tell, this
here old man is. This case, for the present, is settled out of court.
See!"
He motioned to his subordinates. They stood at attention until Lucile and
the child passed out, then followed.
The sergeant saw the girl and the child safely on the elevated platform,
then, tipping his hat, mumbled:
"Good luck and thank y' miss. I've got two of 'em myself. An' if anything
ever happened to me, I'd like nothin' better'n to have you take an
interest in 'em."
Something rose up in Lucile's throat and choked her. She could only nod
her thanks. The next instant they went rattling away, bound for the
mystery cottage on Tyler street.
For once Lucile felt richly repaid for all the doubt, perplexity and
sleepless hours she had gone through.
"It's all very strange and mysterious," she told herself, "but somehow,
sometime, it will all come out right."
As she sat there absorbed in her own thoughts, she suddenly became
conscious of the fact that the child at her side was silently weeping.
"Why!" she exclaimed, "what are you crying for? You are going back to
your cottage and to your kind old man."
"The book," whispered the child; "it is gone. I can never return it."
A sudden impulse seized Lucile, an impulse she could scarcely resist. She
wanted to take the child in her arms and say:
"Dear little girl, I have the book in my room. I will bring it to you
to-morrow."
She did not say it. She could not. As far as she knew, the old man had no
right to the book; it belonged to Frank Morrow.
What she did say was, "I shouldn't worry any more about it if I were you.
I am sure it will come out all right in the end."
Then, before they knew it, they were off the elevated train and walking
toward Tyler street and Lucile was saying to herself, "I wonder what
next." Hand-in-hand the two made their way to the door of the dingy old
cottage.