LILITH’S FIDELITY
Lilith sat in one corner of the Pullman car, with her chair wheeled
around, her shoulders to all her fellow-passengers, and her face
fronting the large mirror on the wall. She sat quite still, and wept
silently.
Now there happened to be in the same car a lady who, in this year of
grace 1882, might be called a Benevolent Crank; but the term had not
been invented in her time. She was a large, rosy-cheeked, handsome
matron, of perhaps fifty years, of the class called “motherly;” with
such an exuberance of life, health, vitality and happiness as rendered
her kindly affectioned, sympathetic and confiding towards every
fellow-being.
She had got on the train at Baltimore and had ever since been sitting in
the opposite corner to Lilith; not with her chair wheeled away from her
fellow-passengers, but fronting them all as fellow-beings in whom she
took a friendly interest, and looking with her kindly, smiling face,
half shaded by the black plush bonnet, and her portly form wrapped in
her fur-lined cloak, the very picture of comfort, contentment and
benevolence.
She did not find much, however, in the seven men who shared the car to
interest her—every one of them the incarnation of “business” or
“politics,” as far as she could judge from physiognomies half hidden by
the large, open newspapers they were reading.
Next she turned her social attention on the only woman beside herself in
the car, and who sat in the opposite corner.
What she saw there was the red back of the chair, and a pair of pretty,
sloping shoulders, in a gray coat and a little, graceful, bowed head in
a gray hat and vail, and—the reflection from the mirror.
It was this last that attracted and fixed the attention of the lady. She
could not withdraw her eyes from the picture reflected there—a pale,
lovely child face, with soft brown eyes, suffused with tears, and
budding red lips, quivering with grief.
The lady watched this picture with growing interest and sympathy. Then
she turned her head around to look at the passengers to see if by any
sign she could judge whether any one of them could perhaps be the
father, or grandfather, or uncle, or other male protector of this lonely
and grieving child.
But no; she felt sure that they were all strangers to the little one.
Besides, two chairs behind hers were vacant.
Still she watched the weeping girl, but hesitated to address her; it was
such an unusual, such an unwarrantable thing to do, and the little lady
might not like to have a stranger intrude on her distress when to hide
it she had turned her back on the world—of the Pullman car—reasoned the
good woman, as she watched the woful picture, and sighed, and sighed and
watched, until she could scarcely sit still in her seat.
“Suppose it were my own dear Edith or Clara left alone in the world,
with no one to care for her, traveling alone, with no one to speak to
her? Oh, dear!”
She looked and saw pretty shoulders rising and falling with
half-suppressed sobs, and she could stand it no longer.
“I must go to her! I must, indeed! I can’t be like the swimmer who would
not rescue the drowning boy because he had never been introduced to his
father. I must go to that child even if she should take me for no better
than I ought to be and repulse me!”
So saying to herself, the good woman arose and left her chair and went
and took the chair next behind Lilith.
Laying her hand gently on the girl’s arm and speaking very tenderly and
deprecatingly, she said:
“My dear, you seem to be traveling alone, and——”
Lilith lifted her head with a startled look, and raised her soft brown
eyes inquiringly to the face of the speaker, thereby embarrassing the
good woman, who began all over again:
“You seem to be traveling all alone, my poor darling, and—and—and—you
don’t seem very well. Can I do anything for you, my dear?”
“Nothing, I thank you, ma’am. I thank you very much. You are very kind
to notice me,” said poor, solitary Lilith, in an unmistakably grateful
tone.
“My poor darling, I should have been a brute—and worse than a brute, for
brutes do have feelings—I should have been a stock or a stone, not to
have noticed you and not to have felt for you, and me the mother of
children of my own, too,” said the kind creature, ungrammatically, but
very affectionately.
“You are very good, ma’am, and I thank you very much.”
“I wish you would let me do something for you.”
“There is nothing to do, thank you—nothing,” sighed Lilith.
“Oh, yes, there is, plenty, plenty! Now I see you so pale and weak that
you are scarcely able to sit up, and if you are going to New York—— Are
you going so far?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, New York is a long way off yet, and you are not able to sit up
all the way. Now in the next compartment—a little compartment right
behind us—there is a sofa and two chairs, all unoccupied. Let me take
you in there, and you can lie on the sofa and I will sit in one of the
chairs and keep you company. Will you come? I will carry your bag.”
Lilith hesitated.
“Well, I declare,” said her new friend, “you look like the girl in the
song—
‘Half willing!—half afraid.’
But you have no cause to be afraid of me, my dear. I only wish to be a
help to you. I would not hurt a hair of your head,” said the good woman,
earnestly.
“Oh, indeed I am sure you would not. You are very, very kind. And I am
very thankful to you. I am not afraid of you, but of the conductor,”
said Lilith.
“Of the conductor!” exclaimed the lady, with surprise and then with a
laugh. “Why, on the face of the earth, should you be afraid of the
conductor, my child?”
“He might accuse us of trespassing, if we should go into that vacant
apartment, for which we have no tickets, and I don’t know what the law
for trespassing may be on the cars,” said Lilith.
“Well,” laughed the lady, “it is nothing very dreadful—it is not
hanging, nor penal servitude for life, nor even fine or imprisonment. It
is simply to be politely requested to vacate a position to which you
have no right in favor of some one who has a right—supposing such a one
should turn up. Otherwise you may keep the place to the end of the
journey. But if it would make you feel any better, I will speak to the
conductor next time he passes through the cars. I have traveled this
road so many times—how many you may know when I tell you that for the
last seven years I have had one daughter married in Brooklyn, one in
Jersey City, one in New York and one in Boston, and I spend nearly all
my time in going backwards and forwards between my home in Baltimore and
their homes. Think of it, my dear! There are four of them, and every one
of them has a baby every year. And I have to go on every time a baby is
expected, and then have to be there a month before the baby comes, and
stay a month afterwards. But, as I was saying, I have traveled this road
so frequently that I know all the conductors, and I like the one on this
train better than any of them; for there is nothing in the line of his
duty that he would not do for me, or for any woman.”
“Are you going on now to meet an expected little grandchild?” inquired
Lilith, who, child-like, had ceased to weep when she became interested
in something else besides her sorrows.
“Oh, no, not exactly now; though there will be such a harvest of them
between this and Christmas that it will be hardly worth while for me to
go back home this year. Eh, me! Ponsonby might as well be a full
widower, for he has been a grass-widower most of the time since our
girls have been married. True, the two youngest girls—Edith and
Clara—are at home, and they keep house for their father while I am away.
But you were asking me about the cause of my journey. It isn’t a baby
this time; it is a wedding. My Boston son-in-law’s sister, who lives
with him, is going to be married on Thursday, and all the family
connections are to meet at his house. I and my three other married
daughters are to go on to-morrow morning. I shall stay at my son-in-law
Saxony’s house to-night. Here comes the conductor. Mr. P——,” she said,
turning to that officer, “this young lady is not well. Is there any
objection to my taking her into that vacant compartment where she can
lie on the sofa?”
“No objection at all, Mrs. Ponsonby; the compartment is not engaged,”
replied the polite conductor.
The lady arose and gave her arm to Lilith and took her to the sofa,
where the exhausted girl was glad to lie down. Then she returned for her
own and Lilith’s light luggage, which she transferred to the new seats.
As the conductor passed through the drawing-room car on his return, a
stout passenger with iron-gray hair, who had sat three seats off from
Lilith and her friend, on the opposite side of the car, and had watched
the interview between the woman and the girl, and had heard as much or
as little of their conversation as their low tones would permit, and had
formed his own opinions on the subject—beckoned the officer to approach,
and looking solemnly over the top of his spectacles said, impressively:
“Conductor, I want you to keep an eye on that pair who have just gone
into the next compartment. That young girl is traveling alone. That
stout woman first accosted her. She has some evil designs on that girl,
I am sure of it! Robbery or worse! She has every opportunity to
chloroform and rob the girl, or to drug her and take her away for
something worse!”
“All right, sir! I know the old party! She is Mrs. Ponsonby, of
Baltimore. And she will be met at the depot by her son-in-law, Mr.
Saxony, of Number —— Street,” replied the amused officer.
“Oh, very well, if that is so! But her extraordinary proceedings of
accosting a strange young lady in the cars very reasonably aroused my
suspicions. I am glad it is no worse,” said the Detective Crank, in a
tone of disappointment that illy accorded with his words.
In the meantime, Lilith reposed on the sofa and her new friend sat by
her side and chatted to cheer her up.
With a rare delicacy she refrained from asking Lilith any questions as
to the cause of that distress which had drawn the good woman to the
girl’s side, until they were drawing near to New York. Then she
inquired:
“Is there any one to meet you at Jersey City, my dear?”
“No, no one,” answered Lilith.
“Nor any one the other side?”
“No, no one is to meet me anywhere,” said the desolate girl.
“My dear child! Some one ought to meet you! It is not right or safe for
a young girl traveling alone to enter a city at nightfall, with no one
to meet her! But I suppose you know exactly the number and street of the
people you are going to see,” said the good and sorely troubled woman.
“I am going to no house. I have no friends or even acquaintances in the
city,” said Lilith.
“Then why on the face of the earth have you come here, my poor child?”
inquired Mrs. Ponsonby, in surprise and distress.
Lilith, like the baby into whose state she sometimes relapsed, burst
into tears, covered her face with her hands and wept bitterly.
“Now what have I done? Now what is the matter? Oh! what is the matter?
Tell me, my dear. I am very sorry for you. I will help you all I can.
Indeed I will, for Edith and Clara’s sake,” said Mrs. Ponsonby, bending
over and caressing the girl, who, between her sobs and tears, tried to
answer.
“I came,” she gasped, “because I have lost everything in the world. I
have suffered cruel, cruel reverses, and could not bear to stay in the
place where I had seen such happy and prosperous days so suddenly turned
to misery and destitution.”
“Poor, poor, poor dear! Was it through the war, my dear?” inquired the
woman, in tender, compassionate tones, while the tears stood in her
kindly eyes.
“No, it was not through the war. It was since the war.”
“Oh, yes! My dear child, tell me all you wish, but no more than you
wish. I will help you in any case. Indeed I will. Are you an orphan, my
dear?”
“Oh, ma’am, I am much worse than orphaned,” said Lilith.
“Dear me! Poor child! How worse than orphaned, my dear?”
“Oh, ma’am, I cannot tell you now. Indeed I cannot. Do not blame me, and
do not be angry. It is not my fault that I am so desolate and that I
must be so reserved about my past life,” pleaded Lilith.
The lady fell to musing.
“I wonder what has happened to the child? That she is good I can see for
myself. Nobody could make a mistake about her. I wonder what she means
by worse than orphaned, now. I wonder if her father was hanged or sent
to prison for life, or anything like that. There are so many men who
ought to be gentlemen, but who come to that sort of end now, that I
should not be surprised that it was so. Why, there is always something
of that sort going on in some city or other, some bank defaulter, or
some forger, or manslaughterer, or something. And so it seems more than
likely that her father may have disgraced his family in that way, and be
in prison, or in a felon’s grave, and that’s what she means by being
worse than orphaned. But her mother—— Is your mother living, my poor
child?” she inquired, suddenly breaking the long silence and addressing
Lilith.
“No, ma’am. My mother left this world a few hours after I came into it,”
said Lilith.
“Poor, dear darling!” said the good woman, who then relapsed into silent
thought, drawing her own conclusions.
“Yes, that is it!” she said to herself. “The mother gone, the father
worse than dead! That must be it, or she would not talk of being worse
than orphaned.”
Lilith, perhaps mistaking her continued silence for mistrust, said at
length:
“You have been very kind to me, a perfect stranger to you, ma’am, and I
thank you from my heart; but do not trouble your kind soul about me,
ma’am. It is not worth your while, indeed.”
“Oh, it is easy to say that, my dear; but I can’t help troubling myself
about you! Suppose you were my own Edith or Clara? But don’t be afraid,
my dear; I won’t ask anything about your past; what I want to know is
your future. You said when you started for New York that you wished to
get away from painful associations; now what I wish to ask is, where do
you intend to go in New York, and what do you intend to do?”
“I shall go first to some hotel, the only place a stranger can go to, I
suppose, and then I mean to look out for some employment.”
“Then, my dear, you are all wrong. In the first place, you must not go
to a hotel,” said Mrs. Ponsonby.
“But why?” inquired Lilith.
“Because you would go as a lamb among wolves. That is why.”
“Then I suppose I must try to find a private boarding-house.”
“Worse and worse! A respectable boarding-house would want references,
and if you happened to apply to any but a respectable one——”
“That is the reason why I wished to go to one of the first-class hotels.
They are always very respectable. No one can make a mistake about them,
and they take strangers without references.”
“Yes, my dear, at ruinous prices. Unless you have got a great deal of
money, you would be quite penniless before you could get any employment.
And, by the way, what sort of employment do you expect to find?”
“I hardly know. I might be an amanuensis for some lady or gentleman——”
“For no gentleman. I put my foot right down on that. Let the men alone,
my dear—unless they happen to be your very nearest male relations. And
to enter a lady’s employment you would have to have good references. I
do hope you have references, my dear?”
“No,” said Lilith, “I have none; not one; and circumstances are all so
adverse that I cannot hope to get one.”
“Dear me!” said Mrs. Ponsonby, taking a long look into Lilith’s face.
“But you are all right. I am sure you are all right. You are not the
sort of child to run away from your father or mother to seek your
fortune. I tell you what I will do; I will be your referee. That is—do
you write a fair hand, spell words correctly, and compose sentences
grammatically, as an amanuensis should do? For, you know, you may have
to answer letters as well as to write from dictation.”
“Yes, ma’am, I can indeed. I have been accustomed to do all that for my
dear lost foster-father. The next time the train stops I will write a
specimen and prove it,” said Lilith.
“Very well, then,” said the Benevolent “Crank,” “I will be your referee.
And as to your lodging in New York, I will take you to a cheap but very
respectable house kept by the widow of a Methodist minister. She has no
fashionable boarders, my dear, for she lives on —— Street, near ——
Avenue, and fashion has left that part of the city these fifty years or
more. She boards some of the public school teachers. I will take you to
her house to-night before I go to my daughter’s, mind you. If Saxony
comes to meet me, and is in a hurry, he may go home in the street cars,
and I will take the carriage and carry you to Mrs. Downie’s,” said the
new friend, who had worked herself up into a benevolent fever on the
subject of the desolate young creature.
“Oh, how good you are to me! How wonderfully good! How do you know that
I am deserving of your goodness? How do you know that I am not an
impostor?” said Lilith, catching her friend’s hand and covering it with
grateful kisses. “Yes! how should you know but that I am a very foolish,
wicked girl?”
“Good Lord, child! how do I know anything, for that matter—how do I know
light from darkness, except through my eyes and my understanding? That
is the way I know you from an impostor. How I thank the Lord that I met
you before you fell into the Lion’s Den of this great city!”
“And do I not thank the Divine Providence—oh, do I not? And thank you,
oh, so much!” exclaimed Lilith, clasping her hands in the fervency of
her utterance.
“Now, here we are at Jersey City! Gather your traps, my dear, and be
ready to get off. Don’t be afraid. The dragon’s mouth is always wide
open, but you shall not fall into it!” said Mrs. Ponsonby, as the train
ran into the depot.
“And there’s Saxony’s carriage, but I don’t see him,” she said, when
they had crossed the ferry and passed out on Desbrosses Street.
“Where’s your master, Patrick?” she demanded, when she had dragged
Lilith through the crowd to the door of the carriage.
“If you plaze, ma’am, Misther Saxony is dining out this evening, and
Misthress Saxony requisted me to mate you in the carriage meself,
ma’am,” said the Irish coachman, who resented the term “master” as
applied to his employer.
“Very well. I am glad of it. Get in, my dear. And, Patrick, do you drive
first to Number 10 —— Street, near —— Avenue. It will not be much out of
your way,” said Mrs. Ponsonby, as she put Lilith into the carriage and
followed her.
The short winter twilight was fading into night, and the streets were
beginning to be lighted with gas.
“Suppose,” said Lilith, “suppose that your friend should not have a
vacant room for me?”
“Then you must put up with a bed for this one night.”
“But if she has not an unoccupied bed?”
“Then she must find one for this night, anyway,” persisted Mrs.
Ponsonby.
It seemed a long ride through the crowded city streets before the
carriage at last drew up before the door of a plain, dull-looking,
three-story brick house.
Mrs. Ponsonby—without waiting for the coachman to get off his box, for,
indeed, Patrick was so indolent that he always made an excuse that he
“darn’t” leave his horses to open the door—alighted, and assisted Lilith
to alight, and led her up to the house and rang the door bell.
A female servant answered it.
“Is Mrs. Downie at home?” inquired the elder lady.
“Yes, ma’am,” replied the waitress, opening a door on the right, and
showing the two ladies into the long but plainly furnished parlor, where
they sat down.
“Will you tell Mrs. Downie that I would like to see her on business for
a moment?”
“Yes, ma’am. What name?”
The lady handed the waitress a card.
“Mrs. Downie is at tea now, but I dare say she will not be long,” said
the girl, as she left the parlor and ran down the basement stairs.
In a very few minutes the mistress of the boarding-house came up, with a
warm, exuberant welcome for an old friend. She was a short, fat,
good-natured looking woman, of about Mrs. Ponsonby’s own age, and she
was dressed in a clean but rather dowdy black gown, all in keeping with
her general aspect of careless good humor; and her pretty, soft, silvery
gray hair was gathered into a knot behind, and as much disheveled all
over her head by nature as it could have been done by the most
fashionable hairdresser.
“Why, goodness me, Em’ly Ponsonby! This ain’t you? I never was so
surprised in all my life as when Mary gave me your card! And we have
just this minute sat down to tea; and you will come down and have some?”
said the landlady, in the softest and most caressing voice, that seemed
to be perfectly natural to her.
“No, thank you, Sophie Downie,” replied Mrs. Ponsonby, as she arose and
embraced her fat little friend. “I am in the greatest hurry that ever
was, and only called here on my way from the depot to Sam Saxony’s to
bring you a new boarder, a very dear young friend of mine, who came with
me from Baltimore to get something to do in New York here. Miss—— Good
Lord of mercy! I don’t know the child’s name!” said the good woman to
herself, as she arose and went to Lilith, and whispered:
“What name, dear—what name?”
“Wyvil,” answered Lilith, in the same low tone.
“My young friend, Miss Wildell, wants a quiet, respectable home just
such as you could furnish her,” resumed Mrs. Ponsonby, rejoining the
landlady.
“Oh! Another Southern orphan, ruined by the war!” said kindly Mrs.
Downie.
“Ah! poor thing!” replied the Baltimore lady, in a non-committal way. “I
hope you can take her. She has some little money left, I think.”
“And she wants to get in one of the public schools? Poor girl! there
ain’t the least chance.”
“No, I don’t think she wants to teach—but the question is, can you
accommodate her?”
“I must ’commodate her somehow or other. I haven’t got a room; but if
she could put up with a cot in my room——”
“Of course she could, until you can do better for her. And now I must
go, for I am keeping you from your tea, while they are waiting for me on
—— Street. Miss Wilde, my dear, I leave you in good hands, and if you
ever want a friend, call on me. Sophie Downie, you see I am due in
Boston, at my daughter’s, to-morrow. That’s why I am in such a hurry
now. Good-bye!”
And so saying, the dear woman kissed her old friend, and then kissed
Lilith and left a card with her address in the girl’s hand.
The next instant she was gone, and Lilith was alone with the landlady.
“Come, my dear, come upstairs to my room and take off your things and
wash your face and hands, if you wish; and then we will go down and get
some supper. My dear, I hope you will feel at home here. Most of my
boarders are young people. Two young ladies who are public school
teachers, and one who is a colorer of photographs, and then I have a
young Methodist minister who has a parish near this. He is going to be
married soon, though, as ministers must, you know, and then we shall
lose him. And then, my dear, if you are still with us, you shall have
his room and be comfortable.”
So talking, the landlady led Lilith upstairs and so installed her in the
home that was to be hers for many months to come.