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THE ANGEL OF THE TENEMENT
by
GEORGE MADDEN MARTIN
[Illustration]
New York
Bonnell, Silver & Co.
1897
Copyright by
Bonnell, Silver & Co.,
1897.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Advent of the Angel 1
II. The Entertainers of the Angel 16
III. Introduces the Little Major 26
IV. The Angel Becomes a Fairy 37
V. The Angel Rescues Mr. Tomlin 55
VI. The Major Superintends the Angel's Education 72
VII. Miss Ruth makes the Acquaintance of Old G. A. R. 90
VIII. The Angel meets an old Friend 99
IX. Mary Carew is Tempted 111
X. The Major Obeys Orders 122
XI. Tells of the Tenement's Christmas 125
THE ANGEL OF THE TENEMENT.
CHAPTER I.
THE ADVENT OF THE ANGEL.
The ladies of the Tenement felt that it was a matter concerning the
reputation of the house. Therefore on this particular hot July morning
they were gathered in the apartment of Miss Mary Carew and Miss Norma
Bonkowski, if one small and dingy room may be so designated, and were
putting the matter under discussion.
Miss Carew, tall, bony, and more commonly known to the Tenement as Miss
C'rew, of somewhat tart and acrid temper, being pressed for her version
of the story, paused in her awkward and intent efforts at soothing the
beautiful, fair-haired child upon her lap and explained that she was
stepping out her door that morning with her water-bucket, thinking to
get breakfast ready before Miss Bonkowski awoke, when a child's
frightened crying startled her, coming from a room across the hall which
for some weeks had been for rent.
"At that," continued Miss Carew, moved to unwonted loquacity, and
patting the child industriously while she addressed the circle of
listening ladies, "at that, 'sure as life!' says I, and stepped across
and opened the door, an' there, settin' on this shawl, its eyes big like
it had jus' waked up, an' cryin' like to break its heart, was this here
baby. I picked her right up an' come an' woke Norma, but it's nothin' we
can make out, 'ceptin' she's been in that there room all night."
Many were the murmurs and ejaculations from the circle of wondering
ladies, while Miss Bonkowski, a frowzy-headed lady in soiled shirt waist
and shabby skirt, with a small waist and shoulders disproportionately
broad; and with, moreover, a dab of paint upon each high-boned
cheek,--nothing daunted by previous failures, leaned forward and putting
a somewhat soiled finger beneath the child's pretty chin, inquired
persuasively, "And isn't the darling going to tell its Norma its name?"
Miss Bonkowski spoke airily and as if delivering a part. But this the
good ladies forgave, for was not this same Miss Norma the flower that
shed an odor of distinction over the social blossoming of the whole
Tenement? Was not Miss Bonkowski a chorus lady at The Garden Opera
House?
So her audience looked on approvingly while Miss Norma snapped her
fingers and chirruped to the baby encouragingly. "And what is the
darling's name?" she repeated.
The little one, her pitiful sobbing momentarily arrested, regarded Miss
Bonkowski with grave wonder. "Didn't a know I are Angel?" she returned
in egotistical surprise.
"Sure an' it's the truth she's spakin', fer it's the picter of an angel
she is," cried Mrs. O'Malligan, she of the first-floor front, who added
a tidy sum to her husband's earnings by taking in washing, and in
consequence of the size of these united incomes, no less than that of
her big heart, was regarded with much respect by the Tenement, "just
look at the swate face of her, would ye, an' the loikes of her illegant
gown!"
"Won't it tell its Norma where it came from? Who brought the dearie here
and left it in the naughty room? Tell its Norma," continued Miss
Bonkowski, on her knees upon the bare and dirty floor, and eyeing the
dainty embroidery and examining the quality of the fine white dress
while she coaxed.
"Yosie brought Angel--" the child began, then as if the full realization
of the strangeness of it all returned at mention of that familiar name,
the baby turned her back on Norma and pulling at Mary Carew's dress
imperatively, gazed up into that lady's thin, sharp face, "Angel wants
her mamma,--take Angel to her mamma," she commanded, even while her baby
chin was quivering and the big eyes winking to keep back the tears.
"Sure an' it shall go to its mammy," returned Mrs O'Malligan soothingly,
"an' whir was it ye left her, me Angel?"
"Yes, tell its Norma where it left its mamma," murmured Miss Bonkowski
coaxingly.
"Yosie bring Angel way a way," explained the baby obediently. "Yosie say
Angel be a good girl and her come yite back. Where Yosie,--Angel wants
Yosie to come now," and the plaintive little voice broke into a sob, as
the child looked from one to the other of the circle beseechingly.
The ladies exchanged pitying glances while the persevering Miss Norma
rattled an empty spool in a tin cup violently to distract the baby's
thoughts. "And how old is Angel?" she continued.
Again the tears were checked, while the grave, disapproving surprise
which Miss Bonkowski's ignorance seemed to call forth, once more
overspread the small face, "Didn't a know her are three?" she returned
reprovingly, reaching for the improvised and alluring plaything.
"Yes, yes," murmured Miss Bonkowski apologetically, "Angel is three
years old, of course, a great, big girl."
"A gwate, big girl," repeated the baby, nodding her pretty head
approvingly, "that what Yosie say," then with abrupt change of tone,
"where her breakfast, her wants her milk!"
"An' she shall have it, sure," cried Mrs. O'Malligan promptly, and
retired out the door with heavy haste, while Miss Bonkowski hospitably
turned to bring forth what the apartment could boast in the way of
breakfast.
Meanwhile the other ladies withdrew to the one window of the small room
to discuss the situation.
"That's it, I'm sure," one was saying, while she twisted up her back
hair afresh, "for my man, he says he saw a woman pass our door yesterday
afternoon, kinder late, an' go on up steps with a young 'un in her arms.
He never seen her come back, he says, but Mis' Tomlin here, she says,
she seen a woman dressed nice, come down afterwards seemin' in a hurry,
but she didn't have no child, didn't you say, Mis' Tomlin?"
Thus appealed to, timid little Mrs. Tomlin shifted her wan-faced,
fretting baby from one arm to the other and asserted the statement to be
quite true.
"An'ther case of desartion," pronounced Mrs. O'Malligan, having
returned meanwhile with a cup filled with a thin blue liquid known to
the Tenement as _milk_, "a plain case of desartion, an' whut's to be
done about it, I niver can say!"
"Done!" cried Miss Bonkowski, on her knees before Mary and the child,
crumbling some bread into the milk, "and what are the police for but
just such cases?"
The other ladies glanced apprehensively at Mrs. O'Malligan, that lady's
bitter hatred of these guardians of the public welfare being well known,
since that day when three small O'Malligans were taken in the act of
relieving a passing Italian gentleman of a part of his stock of bananas.
Mrs. O'Malligan had paid their fines in the City Court, had thrashed
them around as many times as her hot Irish temper had rekindled at the
memory, but had never forgiven the police for the disgrace to the family
of O'Malligan. And being the well-to-do personage of The Tenement, it
should be remarked that Mrs. O'Malligan's sentiments were generally
deferred to, if not always echoed by her neighbors.
"An' is it the polace ye'd be a-callin' in?" she burst forth volubly,
reproach and indignation written upon the round red face she turned upon
Miss Norma, "the polace? An' would ye be turnin' over the darlin' to the
loikes of thim, to be locked up along with thaves an' murtherers afore
night?" And, as a chorus of assenting murmurs greeted her, with her
broad, flat foot thrust forward and hands upon her ample hips, Mrs.
O'Malligan hurried on.
"The polace is it ye say? An' who but these same polace, I ask ye, was
it, gettin' this Tiniment,--as has always held it's head up
respectable,--a-gettin' this Tiniment in the noospapers last winter
along of that case of small-pox, an' puttin' a yellow flag out, an
afther that nobody a-willin' to give me their washin', an Miss C'rew
here as could get no pants to make, an' yerself, Miss Norma, darlint,
an' no disrespect to you a-spakin' out so bold, a-layin' idle because of
no thayater a-willin' to have ye. An' wasn't it thim same polace
crathurs, too, I'm askin' ye, as took our rainwather cistern away along
of the fevers breakin' out, they made bold to say, the desaivin'
crathers,--an' me a-niver havin' me washin' white a-since, for ye'll
aisy see why, usin' the muddy wather as comes from that hydranth
yirselves!"
Mrs. O'Malligan glanced around triumphantly, shook her head and hurried
on. "An' agin, there's little Joey. Who was it but the polace as come
arristin' the feyther of the boy for batin' of his own wife, and him
sint up for a year, an' she a-dyin' along of bein' weakly an' nobody to
support her, an' Joey left in this very Tiniment an orphan child! Don't
ye be a-callin' in no polace for the loikes of this swate angel choild,
Miss Norma darlint, don't ye be doin' it! An' the most of thim once
foine Irish gintlemen, bad luck to the loikes of thim!"
Mrs. O'Malligan paused,--she was obliged to,--for breath, whereupon Miss
Bonkowski very amiably hastened to declare she meant no harm, having
absolutely no knowledge of the class whatever, "except," with arch
humor, "as presented on the stage, where, as everybody who had seen them
there knew, they were harmless enough, goodness knows!" And the airy
chorus lady shrugged her shoulders and smiled at her own bit of
pleasantry. "But for the matter of that, I still think something ought
to be done, and what other means can we find for restoring the lost
innocent?" and Miss Norma tossed her frizzled blonde head, quite
enjoying, if the truth be told, the touch of romance about the affair.
For once she seemed to be meeting, in real life, a situation worthy of
the boards of The Garden Opera House, in whose stage vernacular a
missing child was always a "lost innocent." "If we do not call on the
police, Mrs. O'Malligan, how are we to ever find the child's mother?"
Here Mary Carew looked up, and there was something like a metallic click
about Mary's hard, dry tones as she spoke, for the years she had spent
in making jeans pantaloons at one dollar and a half a dozen had not been
calculated to sweeten her tones to mellowness, nor to induce her to
regard human nature with charity.
"Don't you understand?" she said bluntly, "all the huntin' in the world
ain't goin' to find a mother what don't mean to be found?"
"But what makes you so sure she don't?" persisted Miss Bonkowski,
letting the child take possession of spoon and cup, and quite revelling
in the further touch of the dramatic developing in the situation.
Unconsciously Mary pressed the child to her as she spoke. "It's as plain
as everything else that's wrong and hard in this world," she said, and
each word clicked itself off with metallic sharpness and decision, "the
mother brought the child here late yesterday, waited until it was asleep
in the room over there, then went off and left it. Why she chose this
here particular Tenement we don't know and likely never will, though I
ain't no doubt myself there's a reason. It ain't a pretty story or easy
to understand but it's common enough, and you'll find that mother never
means to be found, an' in as big a city as this 'n', tain't no use to
try."
"I will not--cannot--believe it," murmured Norma--in her best stage
tones. Then she turned again to the child. "And how did it come here,
dearie? Has baby a papa--where is baby's papa?"
The little one rattled the tin spoon around the sides of the cup. "Papa
bye," she returned chasing a solitary crumb intently. "Yosie sick,
mamma sick, Tante sick, but Angel, her ain't sick when she come way a
way on--on--" a worried look flitted over the flushed little face, and
she looked up at Norma expectantly as if expecting her to supply the
missing word, "on,--Angel come way a way on--_vaisseau_--" at last with
baby glee she brought the word forth triumphantly, "Papa bye and Angel
and mamma and Tante and Yosie come way a way on _vaisseau_!"
"You see," said Mary Carew, looking at Norma, and the others shook their
heads sadly.
Miss Bonkowski accepted the situation. "Though what a vasso is, or a
tante either, is beyond me to say," she murmured.
"But what is goin' to be done with her, then?" ventured little Mrs.
Tomlin, holding her own baby closer as she spoke.
There was a pause which nobody seemed to care to break, during which
more than one of the women saw the child on Mary's knee through dim eyes
which turned the golden hair into a halo of dazzling brightness. Then
Norma got up and began to clear away the remains of breakfast and to
clatter the crockery from stove and table together for washing, while
Mary Carew, avoiding the others' glances, busied herself by awkwardly
wiping the child's mouth and chin with a corner of her own faded cotton
dress.
Submitting as if the process was a matter of course, the baby gazed
meanwhile into Mary's colorless, bony and unlovely face. Perhaps the
childish eyes found something behind its hardness not visible to older
and less divining insight, for one soft hand forthwith stole up to the
hollow cheek, while the other pulled at the worn sleeve for attention.
"What a name?" the clear little voice lisped inquiringly.
Poor Mary looked embarrassed, but awkwardly lent herself to the caress
as if, in spite of her shamefacedness, she found it not unpleasant.
The baby's eyes regarded her with sad surprise. "A got no name,
poor--poor--a got no name," then she broke forth, and as if quite
overcome with the mournfulness of Mary's condition, the little head
burrowed back into the hollow of the supporting arm, that she might the
better gaze up and study the face of this object for pity and wonder.
Poor Mary Carew--would that some one of the hundreds of un-mothered and
unloved little ones in the great city had but found it out sooner--her
starved heart had been hungering all her life, and now her arms closed
about the child.
"I reckon I'll keep her till somebody comes for her," she said with a
kind of defiance, as if ashamed of her own weakness, "it'll only mean,"
with a grim touch of humor in her voice, "it'll only mean a few more
jean pantaloons a week to make any how."
"We'll share her keep between us alike, Mary Carew," declared Norma,
haughtily, with a real, not an affected toss, of the frizzed head now,
"what is your charge, is mine too, I'd have you know!"
"Sure, an' we'll all do a part for the name of the house," said Mrs.
O'Malligan, "an' be proud." And the other ladies agreeing to this more
or less warmly, the matter was considered as settled.
"An' as them as left her know where she is," said Mary Carew, the click
quite decided again in her tones, "if they want her, they know where to
come and get her--but--you hear to what I say, Norma, they'll never
come!"