"WHAT FOR."
Had Jean Thorn been less interested in the family of Damon Crowley she
might have thought it impossible to keep track of them as they moved
about. Mr. Crowley reformed every time he got drunk, and got drunk every
time he reformed. At such times he made the living place he called home,
whether in the filthy garret or rickety shanty, a bedlam. At the present
period of their existence the Crowleys were living in a forlorn hovel on
the outskirts of the city.
Mr. Crowley thought himself lucky if he chanced to be about when one of
Miss Thorn's visits took place, for she paid well for the plain work
Mrs. Crowley did, and he always came in for a share. The time had been
when this man would have blushed at the thought of asking his wife, or,
indeed, any one, for help, but that time had gradually gone by as his
manhood dissolved itself in drink. Now he could whine and beg and, not
being successful that way, curse and beat to gain his end. He wanted
money for whisky worse than ever now, and had less, but the burning in
his stomach grew no less to suit the impoverished condition of his
purse.
The disease caused by the legalized drink traffic was eating his life
away little by little, and as the fire burned it called for more fuel.
One night when every little gland and fibre in his whole being and all
the great ulcers in his diseased stomach seemed like fierce flames
cutting and licking and torturing him, half-drunk, he staggered from one
grog shop to another, begging for something to drink.
He had hung around the shanty home until he was almost sure that Miss
Thorn would not come, then had started out to try his chances. He had
begged a little, had pawned a garment belonging to another for a little
more, and yet the maddening thirst was not quenched.
It was growing late. He made a circuit of his old haunts, but it was
useless--no money, no drink. For his pleading he was mocked. For his
curses he was struck and put out. He staggered toward home, the stinging
fire within him quickening his pace. One hope remained. Perhaps Miss
Thorn had been there after he had gone. Perhaps, hidden away in the
little box, he might find a few pennies--enough for this time.
The houses that he passed were for the most part dark, except where some
low place cast its straggling light into the night. He hurried on,
stumbling now and then. No time could be more suitable for him. He would
find the family, what there was left of it, asleep. He would sneak in
like a cat and find the box--perhaps the pennies. He rubbed his hot
hands nervously together in anticipation.
It was not difficult to get into the house, and he found it still and
dark. Cautiously he tiptoed to the window and ran his fingers over the
casing above it. Nothing but dust. Next he tried the hole in the
chimney. Here his unsteady fingers grasped something he thought to be
the box, but it proved to be only a loose brick. Growing impatient, he
went to the cupboard and fumbled in the corner. No box. He was getting
reckless now. Taking a match from his pocket he drew it across the wall.
It sputtered and cast a ray long enough for him to find the lamp, which
he lit.
The little boy Johnnie, in a bed close by, stirred slightly, rolled over
a couple of times, and sat up in bed and opened his eyes. Mr. Crowley,
having lost all control of himself, was noisily peering into every nook
and cranny. As the father moved nearer, the boy crept closer to his
mother, and, huddling by her side, began to cry. It was when he heard
the boy's cry that the fire within him licked up the last of his manhood
and the Devil had full sway. He set the lamp down with a bang and sprang
toward the bed. The boy threw his arms around his mother and gave a cry
of terror.
"Mamma! O mamma! Hold me tight! Don't let him get me! O mamma! mamma!
mamma!" The mother held the child close, but the man had seized him.
They struggled for a minute--a madman's strength and a devil's cunning
against a mother's love--unequal struggle!
The man--a demon now--had the child.
He cast his eye around the room and picked up a knotty piece of wood.
The boy pulled frantically back toward his mother, trembling and
screaming, but the die was cast.
A volley of oaths burst from the drunken fiend's lips.
"Not much this time! No help now, till I'm done with you. Damn you!
Stand up," and he gave the boy a blow that caused him to twist with
pain, but he steadied his voice to ask:
"What for, papa? What for?" But the words were lost in screams, for the
blows kept falling.
Mrs. Crowley rushed up and caught his uplifted arm.
"You will kill the child! You are mad. Help! Somebody help!" she cried;
but no help came. Drunken rows are a part of our civilization.
The boy had succeeded in getting away, but the unequal struggle was soon
at an end, and Mrs. Crowley was struck to the floor by a heavy blow.
The father dragged the terror-stricken little fellow from behind the
bed.
"Come! Damn you! I'm not done yet! I'll teach you to be scared of your
dad and to yell like an idiot when I come into my own house," and the
blows fell rapidly.
On the little hands when they were raised to protect the head, on the
head when the hands dropped down in pain, on the legs when the body
twisted in agony, on the back when the body bent to shield the legs, and
the childish voice broke through the screams at intervals:
"What for? Oh, what for?"
Mrs. Crowley looked around the room for something with which to fight
the man. She seized an iron frying-pan and struck him with all the force
she could summon, but the blow was insufficient.
He loosed the child only long enough to push his wife violently to the
wall and choke her until she gasped and grew dizzy, adding a couple of
blows as a finishing touch, and after tossing her weapon from the window
again turned his attention to the child.
"Not done yet! No! Not done! Take this--and this--and this," and heavy
blows sounded.
"Oh, papa! tell me what for, and I'll never, never do it any more.
Please, papa, what for?" and the child raised his terror-stricken face
to his father's, but the brute struck the little upturned face.
"No--you won't do it again when I get done. I'm not done yet. Not done."
Mrs. Crowley again sprang upon the madman, and, drawing her fingers
tightly around his neck, threw her whole force into the grasp, but he
loosened it. Then he kicked her out the door and bolted it fast.
The child had fallen to the floor, but partly arose as the father
returned.
"Not done yet--no--not done," and he struck the poor, bleeding body many
blows.
The boy sank back on the floor. His screams were ended; but as he lay
there he still moaned, "What for?"
Then the moaning ceased, the eyelids quivered and the breath grew faint.
But even then his father had not exercised enough of his "personal
liberty." The imps of hell hissed him on. The torturing fire within him
leaped higher and higher, searing his soul. He bent low over the body
and beat it still, till the tender bones crushed under the blows. Then
throwing the knotty stick, quivering with his own child's blood, into a
corner, with a fearful scream the murderer dashed out into the night.
Then the mother crept back, but it was too late. The little life had
gone. From somewhere out of the mysterious, breezy night, perhaps, the
spirit of Maggie had come, and had taken the soul of her poor brother to
a city where pain and tears are unknown.
But another voice had been added to the chorus of suffering children as
by the million they cry out in their pain till the appeal of outraged
childhood goes thundering and reverberating into the ear of the Almighty
Father, while he writes the "What for" of their wailing protest in the
book of his remembrance as the record unto the day of Christian
America's reckoning, in letters that burn brighter as the curse waxes
worse and worse.
Against the name of the church, too, as she wraps her righteous robes
around herself and will not, in her dignity and purity, set her mighty
foot on the neck of the curse, while drunkards by unnumbered thousands
stagger under her colored glass windows to Hell, he writes WHAT FOR? and
the letters burn on.
Against the name of the Christian whose vote makes strong the party that
legalizes the saloon and the drunkard he writes "WHAT FOR?"
What man shall stand in the presence of the Holy One, when the books are
opened, and tell WHAT FOR?