Margaret Kelly is dead, and I need not scruple to call her by her own
name. For it is certain that she left no kin to mourn her. She did all the
mourning herself in her lifetime, and better than that when there was
need. She nursed her impetuous Irish father and her gentle English mother
in their old age--like the loving daughter she was--and, last of all, her
only sister. When she had laid them away, side by side, she turned to face
the world alone, undaunted, with all the fighting grit of her people from
both sides of the Channel. If troubles came upon her for which she was no
match, it can be truly said that she went down fighting. And who of her
blood would ask for more?
What I have set down here is almost as much as any one ever heard about
her people. She was an old woman when she came in a way of figuring in
these pages, and all that lay behind her.
Of her own past this much was known: that she had once been an exceedingly
prosperous designer of dresses, with a brown-stone house on Lexington
Avenue, and some of the city's wealthiest women for her customers.
Carriages with liveried footmen were not rarely seen at her door, and a
small army of seamstresses worked out her plans. Her sister was her
bookkeeper and the business head of the house. Fair as it seemed, it
proved a house of cards, and with the sister's death it fell. One loss
followed another. Margaret Kelly knew nothing of money or the ways of
business. She lost the house, and with it her fine clients. For a while
she made her stand in a flat with the most faithful of her sewing-women to
help her. But that also had to go when more money went out than came in
and nothing was left for the landlord. Younger rivals crowded her out. She
was stamped "old-fashioned," and that was the end of it. Her last friend
left her. Worry and perplexity made her ill, and while she was helpless in
Bellevue Hospital, being in a ward with no "next friend" on the books,
they sent her over to the Island with the paupers. Against this indignity
her proud spirit arose and made the body forget its ills. She dragged
herself down to the boat that took her back to the city, only to find
that her last few belongings were gone, the little hall room she had
occupied in a house in Twenty-ninth Street locked against her, and she, at
seventy-five, on the street, penniless, and without one who cared for her
in all the world.
Yes, there was one. A dressmaker who had known her in happier days saw
from her window opposite Father McGlynn's church a white-haired woman seek
shelter within the big storm-doors night after night in the bitter cold of
midwinter, and recognized in her the once proud and prosperous Miss Kelly.
Shocked and grieved, she went to the district office of the Charities with
money to pay for shelter and begged them to take the old lady in charge
and save her from want.
And what a splendid old lady she was! Famished with the hunger of weeks
and months, but with pride undaunted, straight as an arrow under the
burden of heavy years, she met the visitor with all the dignity of a
queen. The deep lines of suffering in her face grew deeper as she heard
her message. She drew the poor black alpaca about her with a gesture as if
she were warding off a blow: "Why," she asked, "should any one intrude
upon her to offer aid? She had not asked for anything, and was not--" she
faltered a bit, but went on resolutely--"did not want anything."
"Not work?" asked her caller, gently. "Would you not like me to find some
work for you?"
A sudden light came into the old eyes. "Work--yes, if she could get
that--" And then the reserve of the long, lonely years broke down. She
buried her face in her hands and wept.
They found her a place to sew in a house where she was made welcome as one
of the family. For all that, she went reluctantly. All her stubborn pride
went down before the kindness of these strangers. She was afraid that her
hand had lost its cunning, that she could not do justice to what was asked
of her, and she stipulated that she should receive only a dollar for her
day's work, if she could earn that. When her employer gave her the dollar
at the end of the day, the look that came into her face made that woman
turn quickly to hide her tears.
The worst of Margaret Kelly's hardships were over. She had a roof over her
head, and an "address." If she starved, that was her affair. And slowly
she opened her heart to her new friends and gave them room there. I have a
letter of that day from one of them that tells how they were getting on:
"She has a little box of a room where she almost froze all winter. A
window right over her bed and no heat. But she is a great old soldier and
never whines. Occasionally she comes to see me, and I give her something
to eat, but what she does between times God alone knows. When I give her a
little change, she goes to the bake-shop, but I think otherwise goes
without and pretends she is not hungry. A business man who knows her told
her if she needed nourishment to let him know; she said she did not need
anything. Her face looks starvation. When she was ill in the winter, I
tried to get her into a hospital; but she would not go, and no wonder. If
she had only a couple of dollars a week she could get along, as I could
get her clothing. She wears black for her sister."
The couple of dollars were found and the hunger was banished with the
homelessness. Margaret Kelly had two days' work every week, and in the
feeling that she could support herself once more new life came to her. She
was content.
So two years passed. In the second summer the old woman, now nearing
eighty, was sent out in the country for a vacation of five or six weeks.
She came back strong and happy; the rest and the peace had sunk into her
soul. "Some of the tragedy has gone out of her face," her friend wrote to
me. She was looking forward with courage to taking up her work again when
what seemed an unusual opportunity came her way. A woman who knew her
story was going abroad, leaving her home up near Riverside Drive in charge
of a caretaker. She desired a companion for her, and offered the place to
Miss Kelly. It was so much better a prospect than the cold and cheerless
hall room that her friends advised her to accept, and Margaret Kelly moved
into the luxurious stone house uptown, and once more was warmly and snugly
housed for the winter with congenial company.
Man proposes and God disposes. Along in February came a deadly cold spell.
The thermometer fell below zero. In the worst of it Miss Kelly's friend
from the "office," happening that way, rang the bell to inquire how she
was getting on. No one answered. She knocked at the basement door, but
received no reply. Concluding that the two women were in an upper story
out of hearing of the bell, she went away, and on her return later in the
day tried again, with no better success. It was too cold for the people in
the house to be out, and her suspicions were aroused. She went to the
police station and returned with help. The door was forced and the house
searched. In the kitchen they found the two old women sitting dead by the
stove, one with her head upon the other's shoulder. The fire had long been
out and their bodies were frozen. There was plenty of fuel in the house.
Apparently they had shut off the draught to save coal and raised the lid
of the stove, perhaps to enjoy the glow of the fire in the gloaming. The
escaping gas had put them both to sleep before they knew their peril.
So the police and the coroner concluded. "Two friends," said the official
report. Margaret Kelly had found more than food and shelter. Life at the
last had given her its best gift, and her hungry old heart was filled.