BYCLARA E. LAUGHLIN
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALICE BARBER STEPHENS
Henry Street, drowned in November murk, was black as Tartarus and a shade more dreadful, as a heavily built man stumbled along its unfamiliar bumps and intermittent stretches of sidewalk, stopping now and then to peer vainly at doors for a number. Presently he encountered a wisp of a girl with a jacket thrown about her head and shoulders.
"Where's twenty-one?" he asked.
She pointed. "Who d'ye want?"
"Casey."
"In the rear—I'll show ye," and she led the way to a precipitous flight of steps. "Ye go down, an' 'long 's far 's ye kin, thin turn t' th' right an' knock," she said, and disappeared in the mist.
Groping his way, the man reached the end of a long passage between two tenements and knocked at a rear door. A woman opened it.
"Th' ditictive," she murmured, and let him in.
The kitchen was stifling close; a fire raged to the brim of the big, heavily nickeled stove which had cost the Caseys so dear in instalments and in worry. Casey had been working for two weeks, and the bin outside the kitchen door had a ton of soft coal in it. In a bracket above the sink was a lamp whose tin reflector, instead of diffusing the light rays, seemed to concentrate them, like a feeble searchlight, so that the corners of the kitchen were all in gloom, and half-lost in gloom were the forms of the Caseys, whose pallid faces showed sharply against the dusk.
"Had any word?" said the detective, addressing Mrs. Casey. To the relief of the parents and the bitter disappointment of the children, he was a plain-clothes man.
"Niver a worrd."
The detective consulted a memorandum.
"You say she left home Monday morning, just as usual, to go to work?"
"Yissir; she wint down th' alley here hummin' a chune an' as gay as a burrd."
"And you don't think she intended to stay away?"
Mary Casey's eyes flashed. "If I t'ought a gyurl o' mine could walk out an' l'ave me, intintional, wid a chune on her lyin' lips, I'd not ask ye t' be findin' her," she said.
"Did she have a beau?"
"None thot I iver see. She used t' be after talkin', sometoimes, 'bout gran' fellies she'd see downtown, an' I always sez to her, 'You mark me worrds an' l'ave gran' fellies be. They don't mane no good t' th' loikes o' you,' I sez. 'Thim fellies spinds ivry cint they git on their gold watches an' swallie-tails, an' whin they marry they got t' marry a gyurl wid money t' support thim. Whin yer old enough t' take up wid anny wan,' I sez, 'yer pa or yer Uncle Tim'll introjuce ye t' some nice young lab'rin' man wid a good trade an' ambition t' git on, an' you work fer him whoile he works fer you.' 'Ah, ye don' know nothin' 'bout it,' she'd say t' me, an' 'Don't you belave thot,' I'd say t' her, 'I'm nothin' t' look at, an' I ain't got mooch style about me, but I got some knowlidge o' min,' I sez, 'an' they're a bad lot, aven th' bist o' thim. An' you git it out o' yer hid,' I sez, 'thot anny gran' felly's goin' t' marry you, or th' loikes o' you. Ye may rade such foolishness in yer story paapers er see it at yer theayters, but ye kin mark me worrds thot love is fer tony folks thot kin afford it, an' not fer th' loikes o' you an' me.'"
Up to this time Casey had been conspicuously quiet. He had had his own experiences with the Chicago police, who more than once had ordered him to keep away from his abused family or go to the Bridewell. This was buried deep in the voluminous records of the desk sergeant; but Casey had not the comfort of knowing that there were a thousand kindred casespiled a-top of his, so he kept discreetly in the shadow until the detective asked, "Was she gay at all?" and Mrs. Casey replied:
"She be a little granehorn, wid no sinse yet. I'm after taalkin' t' her th' whole, blissed toime 'bout kapin' straight, an' not l'avin' her go by dances er stay out nights, but I dunno—ye can't kape thim in yer pocket, an' whin a gyurl have her livin' t' earn anny place she kin foind it, 't ain't her mother thot know fer sure wheer she is or what she be."
At this Casey sat suddenly forward in his chair, and the streak of light fell full across his face, swollen with tears and streaked with the grime of three awful days. Despite the grime, however, despite the stubble of reddish beard, the unkempt hair and untidy clothes, there was something singularly pathetic about him, with his great, Irish-blue eyes and youthful, innocent-looking face. He had not been drinking for some weeks, and he wore no air of sottishness, nor of vagrancy, nor of any of his other crimes against self and family and society.
"I dunno what I ever done," he had moaned for three days, rocking back and forth in his misery, the tears raining down his unwashed cheeks and splashing from his stubbly chin, "I dunno what I ever done that this thing should 'a' happened t' me! My gyurl! My Ang'la Ann!"
"She were a good gyurl," he said to the detective, sitting suddenly forward.
"So far 's we know, she were," his wife amended, "but she had no sinse yet, bein' so young, an' th' young niver belaves th' old. I don' see how a gyurl o' mine could go wrong, an' me hatin' it th' way I do. But she have more o' him in her nor o' me, down t' thim same shifty blue eyes thot kin look so swate, an' God knows what divilment's behint thim!"
Casey smiled in wan coquetry at this charge against his fascinations, but reiterated in defense of his daughter:
"She were a good gyurl. I seen a piece o' this world, of'cer, an' I kin till—min like us, we kin till gyurls that's merely flightsome from thim that's gon' t' th' bad. If she's bad, I don' want ye t' find her. Jes' show me th' felly thot lied t' her, an' I'll kill him—but I don' want ye t' find her; I don' niver want t' set eyes on her ag'in, if she've brought disgrace on me."
"Ye won't lit it git in th' paapers, will ye?" Mary Casey pleaded for the twentieth time in her brief communications with the police. "Yell kape thim aff av her, won't ye—fer th' love o' Hiven? I'm after tellin' th' childern I'll kill th' first wan o' thim thot breathes t' a soul we don' know wheer Ang'la Ann is. Ag'in' she be all right an' come home some day, it'd go hard wid her if these Sheenies 'round here knew she was gon'—people do belave th' worst of a gyurl, always. I dunno what t' think o' my Ang'la Ann, but I don' want it to go haard wid her if she don' desarve it."
The detective promised about the papers and went his way. A missing girl, with no probable complications of a horrible murder, excited only the feeblest interest at Maxwell Street, and this visit would comprehend the whole of the police activity expended in the case unless Angela Ann should happen to turn up under their incurious noses.
The facts of the case were these: Angela Ann Casey, a slim, under-sized, pretty young thing just under eighteen, had left home on Monday morning, November 7th, apparently to go to work, and had not been seen since by her family or any one they knew. She was an unskilled worker, a bit of flotsam in the industrial whirlpool so cruel to her kind. In the summer she had worked for a few weeks in a cannery, pasting labels on fruit cans. When the cannery shut down, she answered an "ad" for extra help in the rush season of a cap factory, which laid her off when work slackened. And after a fortnight's idleness she was taken on as a bundle-wrapper in a cheap department store, where she met a girl who told her of a place needing more girls for the manufacture of cheap finery for the "levee" trade. Angela Ann applied, and was given work at a knife-pleating machine, at four dollars and a half a week. She was in this job, to the best of her mother's belief, when she disappeared; but a visit to the place on Tuesday laid bare the startling fact that she had "give notice" on Saturday night.
Angela Ann had few intimates; her associates changed with her changes of occupation, and these were so many that she took root nowhere. A girl on Blue Island Avenue, to whose house Angela Ann sometimes went, called at Henry Street Tuesday evening and was told that Angela was out.
"She's tellin' me she have a gran' fella," said the girl questioningly.
"She have," lied Mary promptly, "did she iver tell ye his name?"
No, she hadn't; so Mary said maybe Angela Ann wouldn't want her to tell it either.
Mary's sister, Maggie O'Connor, who was married to a "will-t'-do" blacksmith and lived but a few blocks away, had also heard of a stylish young man who could not be asked to the back cellar on Henry Street, or even allowed to suspect it. In family council Mrs. O'Connor testified that she had offered her own "parlie" for the courting.
"'Bring him here an' l'ave us have a look at him,' I sez to her. 'Ye kin have th' parlie anny toime ye want it,' I sez, 'an' if yer 'shamed o' yer Uncle Tim's brogue, he kin stay in th' shop, an' I'll talk t' him mesilf,' I sez."
But Angela Ann had not accepted this handsome offer, nor had she confided the name of the young man to Mrs. O'Connor, who only knew that Angela Ann had assured her he was a gentleman beyond a doubt, for he had a gold watch and chain.
Fired by this information, which he considered an important clue, Casey was for carrying it at once to the police so that they might investigate all young men wearing gold watches and thereby in due process find the one who knew Angela Ann. But before he could get away to furnish the detectives with this important information, Mrs. O'Connor had made some further suggestions. The chief of these was touching the advisability of consulting a fortune-teller.
"Thim coppers," she opined, "is no good. Tim's after radin' a lot about thim in th' paapers, an' he sez they niver ketch nothin' 't all. He sint ye a dollar wid me and sez he, 'You till thim t' stop foolin' wid coppers an' go t' th' forchune-teller,' sez he."
"I belave it have more t' do wid what th' forchune-teller know than wid what thim coppers kin foind out," reflected Mary Casey. It was the morning after the detective's visit, and Mrs. O'Connor had come over to ask the news. "Theer's somet'ing I didn't till th' ditictive," Mary confessed, "not knowin' how he'd take it—but the day befoore Ang'la Ann wint, a quare, wan-eyed cat kem here. Ivrywheer I wint thot day she traipsed at me heels, an' all Monday noight whin I was up watchin' fer Ang'la, th' cat was on th' windie-sill, howlin' what sounded joost like Aan-gla, Aan-gla, Aan-gla. Now what d'ye make o' thot?"
Mrs. O'Connor had been fumbling in her plush wrist-bag during this recital. "Say," she said presently, holding out a very dirty card, "th' las' noight Ang'la Ann was t' our house she was after l'avin' th' baby play wid her purse, an' th' baby spilt all th' t'ings out av it. We picked thim up, an' I t'ought we got thim all, but whin I was clanein' yiste'day, I foun' this card. It mus' be hers, fer Tim say he niver see it, an' no more did I."
The card read:
"That's him, I bet ye!" cried Casey excitedly, "that's th' felly wid th' gol' watch an' chain!"
"Wait a minute!" commanded Mrs. O'Connor impatiently, "Tim sez thot have somet'ing t' do wid a theayter."
"Sure," said Mary Casey, "Ang'la Ann wouldn't be so grane as t' ixpict no theayter guy t' marry her! She'd ought t' know thim niver marries; or if they do, they have a woife in ivery town, loike soldiers an' travelin'-min! I niver bin to no theayter in my loife, but I know that mooch!"
Casey, who had lost his job by default, and had sat apathetically by the stove ever since gray morning dawned after the frantic vigil of Monday night, was struggling with the lacings of his shoes preparatory to setting forth to demolish O. Halberg if he proved his guilt by wearing a gold watch and chain.
"Ye kin spend yer dollar on yer wan-eyed cat," he said indulgently, "but as fer me, I got t' foind thot felly thot lied t' me gyurl."
So the inaction of the past three days was over, temporarily at least. Casey was bound for O. Halberg's and Mrs. Casey and Mrs. O'Connor were going to approach some fortune-teller with the dollar and the tale of the cat. But first of all Mary must go to the school and take Johnny out to mind Dewey and the baby in her absence.
"Now you be keerful," she adjured Casey as he made ready to go, "an' don' kill nobody be mistaake. Th' bist way is t' kill nobody at all," she continued cautiously.
In spite of this caution, however, there would have been danger in prospect if Casey had owned a gun or if he had taken a few drinks. As it was, he was not a formidable figure when he presented himself at the number on West Madison Street, a few doors from Halsted.
There was a pawnshop on the first floor, and beside it a narrow door, which opened upon a long flight of wooden stairs rising steeply to a dark hall, where, by the light of a two-foot gas burner, Casey could make out the name "O. Halberg" on one of the dozen doors. The name was painted on a black tin plate tacked to a rear door. Casey knocked.
"Come in," said a guttural voice.
Entering, Casey saw a man sitting with his feet on a battered desk; he was reading the morning paper and smoking a vile cigar. The walls, calcimined a kind of ultramarine blue, but grimed and fouled unspeakably, were hung with theatrical lithographs depicting thrilling scenes from plays on the blood-and-thunder circuit. For the rest, the furnishings were two wooden chairs, a giant cuspidor, and the desk, which looked as if it had never been new.
"Have I," said Casey in his grandest manner, "th' honor t' addriss Mr. O. Halberg?"
O. Halberg grunted that he had. Then Casey advanced a step further into the room and looked about for a sight or trace of Angela Ann. Nothing could have been more damning than O. Halberg's gold chain, but in no likelihood would Angela Ann, by any stretch of courtesy, have called him young; he was probably fifty, and not prepossessing from any possible point of view.
"Me name is Casey," ventured the visitor, "me gyurl is lost, an' I'm lookin' fer her. We found this," proffering the dirty card, "an' we t'ought mebbe you'd know wheer she is."
Casey was proud of the neatness and despatch of his "ditictive" methods, but more than a little disappointed to find so soon that he was on the wrong trail entirely. Mr. Halberg was truly surprised to be approached with any such query. A great many little silly, stage-struck girls flocked to see him, of course, and no doubt some of them got hold of his cards "in the hope of using them to impress managers," but he had no recollection of any girl named Casey—none whatever. And he resumed the reading of his paper.
"I got th' coppers after her," murmured Casey apologetically, as he took his leave, "but thim coppers is no good. Ag'in' ye want ditictive work done, ye better do it yersilf."
O. Halberg did not deign to reply, but when Casey was safely outside he stepped to the door and locked it. In case the "coppers" came around, it would be just as well to be "out"—it would save the coppers some troublesome pretense.
In his descent of the steep stairs Casey met two girls coming up. They were about Angela Ann's age and were giggling nervously. One of them held between thumb and finger a quarter-inch "ad" from a morning paper, offering:
"High-salaried positions in good road companies to young ladies of pleasing appearance. O. Halberg, Dramatic Agent—West Madison Street."
"Ask him if this is the place," said the girl who appeared to be following the other's lead. Casey directed them to O. Halberg's door, then went on his way. A moment later, while he stood on the corner of Halsted Street waiting for a south-bound car, he saw the girls emerge from the door by the pawnshop. They passed him as they went to take an east-bound Madison Street car on the opposite corner.
"Did ye foind him?" Casey asked.
"No, he wasn't in."
"That's quare," he said, startled, "he was there wan minute before."
On his way home Casey dropped in at the Maxwell Street Station in a free-and-easy manner he would not have dreamed possible two days ago. He was so full of his "ditictive" experience that he felt he must have some one, if only a copper, to talk it over with. The detective who had called the night before wasn't in, so Casey related his recent daring exploit to no less a personage than the desk sergeant himself.
It was well poor Casey could not hear the desk sergeant's account of the call after the self-appointed sleuth had gone on his way.
Mrs. Casey was at home when her husband got there. Relating her adventures, after she had listened to his, she said that the fortune-teller, after accepting the dollar, had asked several searching questions about the one-eyed cat.
"'Ag'in' th' cat come back, yer gyurl 'll come home,' she sez t' me."
The days dragged by. There seemed to be a complete lapse of the stone-cutting industry, so Casey had nothing to take his mind from his "ditictive" operations, which were interesting and unexhausting, though expensive in car-fare and unproductive of results. Angela Ann's weekly wage, for many years the main dependence of the family, being lost to them, they were closer even than was their wont to starvation and eviction; and winter was beginning to snarl around their warped, ill-fitting doors.
As time wore on, the poignant horror of Angela Ann's absence grew mercifully less for all but Mary Casey. Night after night she wept the long hours through, until Casey complained of the depressing effect of her grief, and she felt constrained to hide it.
"If I could on'y know she were dacintly dead," was her heart's cry, as better hopes died in her, "Ag'in' a bye l'ave home, he kin knock around an' pick up a bite here an' a lodgin' theer, an' be none th' worse fer it. But a gyurl bees diff'runt! Theer's always thim watchin' 'round thot's riddy t' do her harm."
Meanwhile she lied bravely to the neighbors. "Angela Ann bees livin' out an' have th' graandes' plaace," she told them impressively; "th' lady she live wid 's after takin' her to Floridy fer to mind her little bye."
Mary's hope was strong that Christmas would see the wanderer's return, but the holidays passed in unrewarded waiting. Casey had perforce abandoned his search, and worked a day or two now and then. Though the traces of really terrible suffering were still in his weak, winsome face, he had long since forsaken all hope of Angela Ann's "safety with honor," and, when ithad come to seem unlikely that she ever would do so, took comfort in vowing that she should never again darken the door of his outraged home.
Mary gave over pleading for her girl, in the interests of family peace, but, more and more like a specter as the weeks wore away, she haunted localities where Angela Ann had been or might be. Sometimes she had the baby in her arms, but oftener she left it with Dewey at their Aunt Maggie's, and roamed the streets unhampered in her never-ending quest.
Evenings she would say, "I'll be goin' t' yer aunt's a bit," and slip away into the engulfing dark, to reappear in the glare of light marking the entrance to some cheap West Side theater or dance hall. Gradually her excursions extended downtown, where she would take up her station at the door of some place of amusement and stand watching the pleasure-seekers pour in, then turn away and wander aimlessly up and down the streets for an hour or so before facing homeward. In some way she heard about stage doors, and took to haunting them. She saw many girls of Angela's type, and wondered sadly if their mothers knew where they were, but her own girl was not among them. In those nights on the flaming streets she learned more about vice than she had ever dreamed of in all her life, and the world came to seem to her a vast trap set by the bestial for the unwary.
Not hunger, nor cold, nor abuse, nor sickness, nor death, as it came to five of her children, had driven Mary Casey to anything like the poignancy of feeling that was hers now. Heretofore she had been patiently dumb under affliction; now her spirit cried out in a passion of pain that called straight upon Almighty God for an answer to its anguished questionings.
With the aid of Casey, who was a "scollard," and could "r'ade 'n' write joost as aisy," she pored over the sensational papers in search of stories about girls in trouble, and never a horror happened to an unidentified girl anywhere but Mary was sure it was Angela Ann.
Once there was an account of an unknown young woman found dead on the prairies near Dunning, the county institution. It was Johnnie who laboriously spelled out this story for her—Casey having gone to that club of congenial spirits, O'Shaughannessy's saloon—and at ten o'clock, when the children were all abed, her anxieties could brook no more delay. Throwing a shawl about her head and shoulders, she stole along the pitchy passageway, up the long flight of steps to the sidewalk, clutching the torn fragment of newspaper in the hand that held the shawl together beneath her chin.
It was Saturday night, and the avenue was still brightly lighted. One or two acquaintances greeted her, but she hurried by with only a nod and a word. At Harrison and Halsted and Blue Island Avenue, where three streams of ceaseless activity converge, there is always a whirlpool rapids of traffic and humanity, and here, in a brilliant drug store, Mary felt far enough from her own haunts and all who knew her and Angela Ann to venture on her errand.
"I want t' tillyphome," she whispered to the clerk, who pointed impatiently to the booth.
"I dunno how," said Mary imploringly. "I want ye t' do it fer me. R'ade that." She thrust the dirty, crumpled fragment of the evening's yellow journal into his hand.
The young man glanced at it, and then curiously at her. "I've read it," he said.
"Down here, somewheers," said Mary, pointing vaguely towards the last paragraph, "it till wheer she be, an' I want ye t' tillyphome that place an' ask thim have she a laarge brown mole on her lift side. If she have, I'm goin' out theer this night, fer 'tis my gyurl I t'ink she be."
This was not as startling an episode to the young man addressed as it might have been to one in a quieter locality. Nevertheless, it smacked of the dramatic sufficiently to interest him, and when Mary proffered her nickel he called up the Dunning morgue.
After what seemed an interminable wait, while the sleepy morgue attendant at the county poor-house was being summoned by repeated rings, and the brief colloquy was in progress, the clerk emerged from the booth.
"The girl has been identified this evening," he said.
Disappointment mingled with relief in Mary's countenance: she had reached that stage where it would have been not altogether unendurable to look at Angela Ann's dead face, even in a morgue.
As she retraced her way home, the chill of the sharp February night struck into her mercilessly. When she set forth, she had scarcely noticed in it her preoccupation; but now that another expectation, however tragic, had proved false, and the situation stretched ahead of her indefinitely dull and despairing again, the abrupt relaxation left her physically as well as mentally "let down," and she shivered violently as she hurried along.
"Mother o' God," she cried, the tears rolling swiftly down her shrunken cheeks, "wheer is my gyurl this noight? If I could on'y know she had a roof over her head an' a fire t' kape her warrm!"
Casey was still out when she got back, and she was thankful, for the sight of her tears made him ugly these days. "She've disgraaced us,"he said of Angela Ann, "an' she be dead t' me, an' ought t' be t' you, if ye had proper shame."
Mary could give herself up to the luxury of grief, therefore, and she did, until she fell asleep. The next morning she was up betimes, meaning to go to early mass in the basement of the church before "drissy folks" were abroad in their Sunday finery. For more than one reason Mary avoided the later masses; her rags were small shame to her compared with the more than half-suspicious inquiries of acquaintances as to the whereabouts of Angela Ann.
"'Tis more lies I'm after tellin'," thought poor Mary, "than th' praste kin iver take aft o' me. 'N' ag'in' I do pinance enough t' kape me busy half me time, an' go t' git me holy c'munion, I'm not out o' th' prisence o' th' blissed Sacrament befoore I'm havin' t' lie ag'in t' save that poor, silly gyurl's name!"
This morning, however, in spite of her early rising and her efforts to get to seven o'clock mass, events conspired to thwart her intentions. Mollie woke up with a headache, and Johnnie had to be despatched on a vinegar-borrowing expedition, so that the time-honored application of brown paper soaked in vinegar might be made to the poor little head. The baby cried lustily, with a colicky cry, and Mary had to hasten the boiling of tea, that wee Annie might have a good, hot cup to soothe her. Casey, complaining profanely of broken slumbers, was in no mood to be left home with fretting children while Mary went to mass.
It was nine o'clock before she could get away; the last mass in the basement was at nine o'clock. But the Elevation of the Host had been celebrated before she got there, and she turned disappointedly to the stairs; she would have to wait for half-past nine mass in the main church. It seemed as if Providence were balking her, but on the stairway she learned the reason why.
"Ye mus' be sure t' say a spicial prayer on this mass," said one woman who passed her to another, "'tis the first mass this young praste have iver said, an' a blissin' go wid it t' thim thot prays wid him."
Saul on the Damascus road had no more overwhelming sense of arrest and redirection than Mary Casey had, as, trembling with excitement, she reached the top of the stairway.
"Think o' that now," she told herself, "an' if I had come t' th' airly mass I'd niver 'a' known it!"
Hardly would her knees uphold her until she could sink into an obscure pew, far back under the gallery. And there, at the tense moment when the silver-toned bell proclaimed commemoration of the great lifting-up in suffering, Mary raised her faith-full prayer: "A'mighty God, sind me gyurl back t' me! But if it don' be in yer heart t' do thot mooch, maake her a good gyurl wheeriver she be. Fer th' love av Christ, Amin."
Not often in any lifetime, perhaps, does it come to pass that one prays with such sublime assurance of crying straight into the listening ear of Omnipotence that will inevitably keep faith with poor flesh. For nigh on to forty years Mary Casey had listened to reiterations of the old and new Covenants, but they had fallen on sterile ground in her soul. It was the little chance remark about the new priest's first mass, dropping into harrowed and watered soil, that flowered in immediate faith.
The mass ended and the throngs of worshipers passed out, but Mary sat unheeded and unheeding in her dim corner, her simple mind grappling with the stupendous idea of its Covenant with Heaven.
Before she had any realizing sense of time, the church had filled again for high mass. Then the lighting of the great white altar fascinated her, and she felt an intense desire to live again through such a moment of assurance as she had lately experienced—to hear that bell ring again, to smell the incense, and to believe that in some wonderful, wonderful way it was all a part of that prayer of hers that Heaven was bound to answer.
So she stayed on, in her far-away pew, to the remotest corner of which she was crowded as the enormous church filled to its capacity. With the entrance of the preacher into the pulpit, though, she was conscious of a distinct "let-down." She had never liked sermons; they dealt with things so formally. Even when the priests made their greatest efforts to be plain-spoken and understandable, she seldom got any personal help from their discourse. They were prone to denunciations of adultery and drunkenness and other sins of which she was innocent, and to vague exhortations looking toward a hereafter on which her imagination had never taken any but the feeblest hold. But what was this priest saying? Something about a little household that the Lord had loved, and one of its two sisters had gone astray!
The woman sitting next to Mary nudged her other neighbor and glanced in the direction of Mary's face, thrust forward as if so as not to lose a syllable, the tears chasing each other unheeded down its furrows. In her lap Mary's gnarled hands were clasped in painful intensity.
Over and over, since she was a tiny child in Ireland, she had heard this Catholic rendering, of Mary of Bethany's story, but it had nevermeant anything to her. To-day it meant everything.
"MARY SAT UNHEEDED AND UNHEEDING IN HER DIM CORNER, HER MIND GRAPPLING WITH THE STUPENDOUS IDEA"
"MARY SAT UNHEEDED AND UNHEEDING IN HER DIM CORNER, HER MIND GRAPPLING WITH THE STUPENDOUS IDEA"
"MARY SAT UNHEEDED AND UNHEEDING IN HER DIM CORNER, HER MIND GRAPPLING WITH THE STUPENDOUS IDEA"
"An' I said I niver wanted t' see her ag'in if she'd disgraaced me," she told herself, and was appalled at the remembrance.
That afternoon, toward the early dusk, she sat in the dark kitchen holding Annie in her lap; all the other children were out. Casey, who had not left the house all day, was huddled up to the stove, smoking his rank pipe; he was unshaven and unwashed, and wore a coarse undershirt of a peculiar mustard color which lent his pallid, grime-streaked face a ghastly hue. He had been talking about a "gran' job" of which a man had told him, and building large castles about moving to a better street and a better house and buying a "parlie suit be aisy paymints."
Mary listened believingly; twenty years of listening to these dreams which never came true had not killed her hopefulness. As she listened, though, her hopes outran Casey's, for she could conceive no possible felicity without Angela Ann. How to introduce the now-forbidden subject of Angela was a problem, but clearly the only way was to plunge in.
"Yis," she assented, "I t'ink we should have a parlie. It have always been my belafe thot if we'd had a parlie Ang'la wouldn't niver 'a' wint away. Ag'in' she come home, I'm goin' t' kape th' parlie noice fer her an' lave her have her beau ivry noight, an' no wan t' bother thim. An' I ain't goin' t' lave her go downtown t' work no more—theer's too manny bad min. She kin stay home an' moind th' house, an' I'll git scrubbin' t' do t' th' Imporium. Wid what you earn an' what I earn, we kin give her mebbe a dollar a wake fer spindin' money."
Mary waxed excited as her dream unfolded, but Casey was ironical.
"Whin d'yeixpicther?" he inquired, with pride in the sarcasm.
"I dunno," said Mary, undaunted, "but I know she'll come. An' whin she do, I'll not ask her anny quistions. I don' keer how she come t' me, so she come. No matter what she've done, theer mus' be dipths she haven't r'ached yit, an' all I ask now is t' saveher from gittin' anny worse than she be. D'ye know what I prayed t' th' Mother o God befoore I lift th' church this mornin'? I prayed that our Ang'la Ann'd git in trouble—in tur'ble trouble 'n' disgraace so thot thim thot's lid her away'd t'row her out, 'n' no wan but God 'n' her mother'd take her in!"
In speechless astonishment Casey gazed at the vehement woman before him. Some instinct made him hold his peace while she told about the priest's first mass, about the sermon, about the answer she confidently expected to her prayer. While he listened, his easy Irish emotionalism caught the contagion of her belief, and his tears flowed unchecked as he alternately cursed the man that had led Angela away, and prophesied glowingly of the "parlie" that was to be.
It was pitchy dark in the kitchen now, and Mary got up to light the lamp. As she did so, a sound at the door caused her nearly to drop the lamp. Hurrying to the door, she threw it open, and with the light in one hand peered out into the black yard.
"Here, pussy, pussy," she called. Then, as her call was answered, "My God! what did I tell ye? Tis the wan-eyed cat!"
The next morning the postman brought a letter. Mary was not surprised to get it. Casey had gone to look for the "gran' job," and the older children were in school, so the letter could not be read, but she could make out the signature, written in the large, unformed hand where-with Angela had covered every available space in the days of her brief but laborious apprenticeship to the art of writing.
With trembling hand Mary tucked the letter in her bosom, hastily got ready herself and Dewey and the baby, and started for Maggie's. Maggie was younger and had enjoyed more educational advantages. She could "r'ade printin'" easily, and "writin"' fairly well if it hadn't too many flourishes.
"She says," spelled out Mrs. O'Connor, "'Dear Ma, I'm at —— West Randolph Street I'm sick I'm afraid to go home count of Pa Your Loving daughter Angela Ann Casey.' I'll go wid ye," finished Mrs. O'Connor in the same breath.
Out of her small store of tawdry finery she lent several articles to make Mary "look more drissy," and while they got ready for their momentous journey, Mary related the events of the day before, and of Saturday night.
"Me an' Tim," said Maggie, when the tale had reached the stage of the "parlie" and Mary's earnings as a scrub-woman, "was figgerin' how we could help out a bit, ag'in' she come home, an' Tim have promised t' take me 'n' her to th' theayter quite frayquint of a Sat'day noight, an' together we're goin' t' give her half a dollar ivry wake t' spind on her clo'es."
The number they sought on West Randolph Street was not far from the fateful Haymarket Square. There was a store on the ground floor, with living rooms behind. And above, a long flight of oilcloth-covered stairs led to a "hotel."
They inquired first in the store, but no one there had ever heard of Angela Ann. Then, with fast-beating hearts, the women mounted to the office of the hotel, an inside room facing the head of the first flight of stairs. The door stood open, and they looked, before entering, into a gas-lighted room furnished with yellow-painted wooden arm-chairs ranged along the walls and flanked by a sparser row of cuspidors; a big sheet-iron stove on a square zinc plateau filled the middle of the room, and near the door, behind a small desk like a butcher-store cashier's, sat the "clerk," chewing vigorously and expectorating without accuracy.
"Yes, she has a room here," he answered to Mary's question, "hall room, rear, third floor."
"In a minute!" called Angela Ann's voice when Mary had knocked.
"My God, 'tis hersilf," sobbed Mary, and fell a-weeping violently.
"Ma!" cried Angela Ann, and threw open the door. She had been in bed when they knocked, and had not waited to put on her clothes when she heard her mother's voice. At the touch of her, the clinging clasp of her poor, thin, cold little arms, Mary grew hysterical.
"Don't, Ma, don't," begged Angela.
"She've grieved hersilf sick over ye," said Maggie, unable to forbear this much of a reprimand now that the sinner was found. "Iver since ye wint she've been loike wan crazy. Come, Mary; now ye've got her, brace up!"
"Sure, Ma," echoed the girl, "now ye've got me, brace up, I ain't never goin' t' lave ye no more, Ma—honest t' God, I ain't."
"Wheer ye been?" Mary raised her head, and drawing back from the girl peered anxiously into her face. "In God's name, Ang'la Ann, wheer you been? Tell me ye've kep' dacint, gyurl, tell me ye've kep' dacint!"
Angela sat down on the dingy, disordered bed and began to cry, hiding her face in her hands. For a long moment the silence, save for her soft sobbing, was profound. Then a low moan escaped Mary, a moan of anguish inexpressible, showing how deeply, notwithstanding her resolution of yesterday, she had cherished the hope of her daughter's safety.
IN GOD'S NAME, ANG'LA ANN, WHEER YOU BEEN?
IN GOD'S NAME, ANG'LA ANN, WHEER YOU BEEN?
IN GOD'S NAME, ANG'LA ANN, WHEER YOU BEEN?
Angela raised her head. The pain in her mother's moan was beyond her comprehension, and she could only understand it as horror and condemnation.
"Are ye—are ye—goin' t' t'row me off?"' she asked.
"T'row ye off? Ah, me gyurl, if ye'll on'y stick t' me as long as I'll stick t' you, 'tis all I'll ask o' Hiven! Tis fer yer sake I was prayin' no harm had come t' ye—not fer mine. Whativer happen t' ye, ye're me Ang'la Ann thot I nursed from yer first brith. An' ye don' know all I'm fixin' t' do fer ye—me an' yer pa an' yer Aunt Maggie, here, and yer Uncle Tim——"
And there followed a glowing account of the feast prepared for the prodigal's return.
"Th' idare o' you bein' afraid o' yer pa," chided Mary, "an' him fixin' t' git a stiddy job an' not have ye go downtown no more."
Far shrewder than her mother, Angela Ann did not overestimate this excellent intention of her pa's, but she said nothing of the bitterness that was in her heart on account of his past crimes. It was a long-standing grievance with her that her mother could never, for more than a fleeting, irritated moment at a time, be made to see Casey as others saw him. Angela Ann had been working for him since she was eleven (child-labor laws were lax, then) and giving up her every penny to pay rent and buy insufficient mites of coal and food—just enough to keep them alive and no more—and it was starvation of many sorts that sent her at last into the clutches of them that prey. The girl was full of self-pity, and impatient with her mother because the older woman had forgotten how to rebel.
"Yer pa say, though," added Mary, "thot he won't promise not i' kill the felly thot lid ye away; he've got tur'ble wingeance on him—yer pa have."
Angela Ann smiled grimly. "I guess theer's quite a few pa's lookin' fer him," she said, "but they don't ever seem t' find him."
"Did he prom'se t' marry ye?" asked Mary anxiously.
"I should say not! He promised to make me a primmy donny."
"What's that?" fearfully.
"'Tis a kind of actress that wear tights an' sings," explained Angela. "I'm after r'adin' in books how gran' they be, an' in the papers it tell how the swell fellies do be runnin' after thim with diming necklusses, an' marryin' of 'em. 'Tis all a lie!" she cried shrilly.
"Ye see," Mary could not refrain from reminding her. "I tol' ye thim theayters was all wrong. We kind o' t'ought it might be thim thot got ye, an' yer pa wint t' see this here Halberg, whin we foun' the caard out o' yer pocke'-book. But he said he niver hear tell o' ye."
"Did pa go there?" questioned Angela eagerly. She was all interest to know how the search for her had been carried on, and "did th' p'lice know?" and "how did ye kape it out o' th' papers?"
Yes, it had been Halberg "all the time," she admitted. She had answered his advertisement, and after a week's drill he had sent her, true to his published word, in a "road company" that mitigated the gloom of coal miners' lives by singing and dancing—and carousing—in a circuit of saloons in the soft coal regions of Illinois. When she fell sick, the company abandoned her without the formality of paying her any salary, and a foul-tongued, soft-hearted landlady, whose own young daughter was God knew where, had let Angela stay in her wretched hotel until she was able by dishwashing and lampfilling chores to earn the few dollars to take her back to Chicago.
"But I couldn' get no stren'th back," the girl went on, "an' that woman at th' hotel, Mis' Schlogel, she sez t' me, 'You better go home t' yer ma, that's wheer you better go,' an' she bundled me off Friday mornin'. But I was scairt t' go home right t' wunst till I seen how youse was goin' t' be t' me, so I come here wheer I stayed whin I was studyin' wid O. Halberg, an' Friday night I got awful sick an' laid here all night awake an' burnin' up an' my head achin' t' beat th' band. An' all day Sat'day an' Sunday I wasn't able to go out fer nothin' t' eat, an' th' propri'ter wouldn't order me nothin' sent in fer fear I wouldn't be able t' pay. A woman in the nex' room light-house-keeps, an' she made me tea a couple o' times after she heard I was sick an' alone."
"Why in Hivin's name," Maggie broke in, "did ye niver drap yer ma a line t' say ye were aloive? Ye needn't 'a' tol' wheer ye was, but ye could 'a' said ye were in the land o' th' livin', surely?"
"I was 'shamed," whimpered Angela; "I fought ye wouldn't keer wheer I was if I wasn't doin' dacint."
"Think o' that, now!" cried Mary. "That's all a gyurl do know about her ma. Whin yer a ma yersilf ye'll know better, an' not till thin, I suppose."
Thus was Angela Ann made sure of her welcome home.
"An' not wan but yer own kin know ye've been missin'" said Mary, as she helped the girl to get ready for the return, "so ye kin hol' up yer hid an' look th' world in th' faace. An' may God fergive yer mother the loies she've tol' t' save yer name!"
Man riding on horse
BYGEORGE C. SHEDD
ILLUSTRATIONS BY WALTER BIGGS
Onerainy afternoon I was sitting with my friend Carter, in his log house. Through the open door we could see the road, all cut up by wagon-tracks, running with water; lumps of mud thrust their black heads up in it everywhere; the bordering grass was wet and heavy. And down by the creek the fringe of trees made only a gray blur.
We had talked ourselves pretty near out when a rider splashed up to the door. His ragged beard stuck out stiff, full of rain-drops, and his slouch hat had an unpleasant tilt forward. To Carter's invitation to enter he shook his head, asked if such-and-such a person had passed within the hour, and, receiving an affirmative reply, pulled his hat down tighter and galloped away west. "Who is that?" I inquired.
"That! Why, that's Borden. It's easy to see you're new out here. His hand holds the river from Saint Joe to Omaha, and men think twice before trying to break his grip." He drew out his pipe and tobacco, stuffed the bowl thoughtfully, and struck a match. "If you want to hear about the first time I saw him at work, I'll tell you."
I nodded.
"Eh? Well, this was the way of it":
At the end of the war I settled here—that was five years ago. Borden lived a mile up the creek, and so, as times went, we were neighbors. By the people yonder in Kinton he was not liked, being grim, rough, savage, altogether unsociable and short of word. Besides, they remembered '57. In that year he appeared from no one knew where, took his claim, and proceeded tolive after his own fashion. Then the high-handed Claim Club of the village went about it to drive him "in or over the river"—a bad night for them. They rode back to Kinton with three dead men laid across saddles. That was in the rough days of the Territory, the days when men in the Nebraska hills along the Missouri were a law unto themselves.