With my woman’s intuition I knew all just from the hint John gave. My
father a week before had gone to Montreal, saying he would be back
Wednesday. It was now Friday and he had not returned. I remember the
two men who had come to “take an inventory for the ‘Tax Office,’” one
said, and he winked at the other. How they walked through the house
with their hats on and joked each other as they tried the piano! I saw
it all! My father had lost money and had given a chattel mortgage on
the furniture, having first raised all the money he could on the real
estate.
I asked my mother if she remembered giving the mortgage, and she looked
at me, grieved and surprised, saying:
“Why, of course not, dear. I always signed the papers he brought me. Do
you think it a woman’s place to ask questions about business?”
Well, if I were writing my own history, I would tell you how the two
men from the “Tax Office” came back with Robert McCann the auctioneer;
how they hung a big red flag over the sidewalk and took up the carpets
so that when they walked across the bare floor of the big parlors the
echo of the footsteps rang through the whole house; how greasy men with
hook noses came and examined the furniture; of how one such insisted
on seeing my mother on very private business, when he asked, “If dot
bainting was a real Millais or only a schnide; and if it was a schnide,
to gif a zerdificate dat it vas a Millais and I will bid it off at a
hundred, so hellup me gracious!”; of how kind neighbors came and bought
in all the dishes and silverware and gave them back to us; of how a
certain widowed gentleman offered to bid in the piano if I would accept
a position as governess for his daughter and live at his house.
Well, the furniture went and so did we. The Fitch ambulance came and
took mother down to our new quarters, which I had rented on South
Division street, near Cedar, and right pretty did the little house look
too. Mrs. Grimes, the laundress, came with us--in fact, came in spite
of us.
“I have no money to pay you, and you cannot come. That is all there is
about it,” I protested.
“Well, I don’t want no money,” said this gray-haired old woman. “I have
’leven hundred dollars in the Erie County, and it is all yours if you
want it. Haven’t I worked for the Hobbses three weeks lacking two days
before you was left on the steps? I was the only girl they had then,
and I am the only girl you got now. I have sent my hair trunk down to
South Division street, and I’m going myself on the next load with Bill
Smith, who drives the van for Charlie Miller. I knowed Bill before I
did you, and Bill says he will stand by Aspasia Hobbs too, he does.”
What could I do but kiss the grizzled kindly face of this old “girl” on
both cheeks and let her come?
It was a full month before we got track of my father. I went to
Montreal and brought back an old man, with tottering mind, crushed
in spirit. He had fixed his heart on things of earth--he became a
part of them, they of him--and when they went down there was only one
result. He lingered along for three months, constantly reproaching
himself; seeing also reproach in the face of every passer-by, imagining
upbraidings in each look of those who sought to comfort and care for
him, and the light of his life went out in darkness.
“Judge not that ye be not judged.”