THIN ICE
THIN ICE.—Page 100.
It was, therefore, as much of an event as if Queen Victoria herself were to come and spend the winter in Boston, when it became generally known that a rich widow lady and her son were to come, the last of September, and very probably stay on through the winter under Dr. Simms's roof. A famous city physician, with whom Dr. Simms had studied once, had recommended him and Westbrook to Mrs. Rosenburgh, when it became necessary for her to take her puny boy into some still, country retreat.
They came during the last golden days of September, and all Westbrook was alive with interest about them. The lady looked delicate, but she was as pretty as she was pale, and her boy was curiously like her,—as pale, as pretty, almost as feminine.
There was plenty of opportunity to see them, for the city doctor had given orders that the young gentleman should keep out of doors all the time; so, mornings, he and his mother were always to be seen in their low, luxurious carriage, drawn by high-stepping bay horses, anddriven by a faithful, careful, middle-aged man, with iron-gray hair and an impenetrable face.
Sometimes, in the afternoons, they would all be out again, but oftener Mrs. Rosenburgh remained at home, and her son drove, for himself, a pair of pretty black ponies, while the impenetrable, iron-gray man sat behind, ready to seize the reins in case of accident.
At first the boy's face seemed often drawn by pain, or white with weariness, and he would look round him listlessly, as he drove, with eyes that saw nothing, or at least failed to find any object of interest. But the clear autumn air proved invigorating, and when the glorious, prismatic days of late October came he looked as if, indeed, he had been re-created.
And now one could see that he began to take a natural, human interest in what went on around him. He would drive up his little pony carriage to the wall, and look over it to watch the apple-pickers and the harvesters. No one spoke to him, and he spoke to no one. The lads of his own age, who watched his ponies with boyishenvy, never dreamed that the owner of these fairy coursers could be as shy as one of themselves, and, indeed, as much more shy as delicate weakness naturally is than rosy strength. They thought his silence was pride, and felt a half-defiant hatred of him accordingly.
Yet many and many a day he went home to his mother, and sitting beside her with his head upon her knee, cried out, in very bitterness,—
"Oh if I only could be like one of those healthy boys! How gladly I'd give up Pease-blossom and Mustard-seed, to be able to run about as they do! Shall I never, never be strong, mamma?"
And she would comfort him with the happy truth that every day he was growing stronger, and that she expected him to be her great, brave boy, by and by, who would take care of her all the days of her life.
Meantime, other boys, in other homes, talked to other mothers. For the very first time the evil spirit of envy had crept into quiet Westbrook.
Why should Ralph Rosenburgh have every thing he wanted, and they nothing? What clothes he wore,—and a watch, a real gold watch they had seen him take out of his pocket,—and those ponies; for wherever they began they always ended with those ponies. And, as not all the mothers in Westbrook were wise, any more than elsewhere in the world, while the wise ones would say that strong boy-legs were worth more than horses' legs, the weak ones would foster the evil spirit, and answer,—
"He ain't a bit better than you are, with all his watches and ponies. Pride will have a fall some day, see if it don't, and he may be glad enough to stand in your shoes yet, before he dies."
Jack Smalley was the son of one of these injudicious mothers, and so his envy grew, unchecked; till he nourished a vigorous hatred for Ralph Rosenburgh in his heart, without ever having exchanged a single word with him.
It was a hatred, however, of which its object never could have dreamed. He had been so accustomed to be petted and pitied, and he wasso very sorry for himself, that he could not be a wide-awake, vigorous, ball-playing, leaping, running boy, it would never have occurred to him that any one else could fail to see his condition in the same light.
So he went steadily on the even tenor of his way, gaining something day by day and week by week, and hoping—how earnestly no one knew—for the happy time when Pease-blossom and Mustard-seed might stand idle in their stalls, and he go about on his own feet with the rest.
The cold weather came on early that year. Before the middle of December Westbrook pond was frozen over, and then began the winter's fun. Every afternoon Ralph Rosenburgh drove his ponies down to the very edge of the pond, and sat there for awhile, a patient looker-on at the frolics he could not share.
With Christmas, however, there came to him from the fond, maternal Santa Claus, a chair constructed on purpose for pushing over the ice, and then he became a daily partaker in the festivities upon the pond. The chair was modelledafter a certain kind of invalid, garden chair, which is arranged to be either propelled by some one else from behind, or by the occupant turning a kind of crank at the sides.
Ralph soon learned to manage it for himself, and finding himself strong enough to do so, he used to make the iron-gray man stay with the ponies, while he himself moved round among the skaters.
And, now that he seemed really one of themselves, the young people, all except Jack Smalley, began to feel a kindly interest in him. Jack alone went on hating him more and more, finding daily fresh causes of offence in this boy who wore velvet and fur in place of his own coarse gray cloth, and woollen, hand-knit comforter. What was he, this puny wretch, without pluck enough to stand on his own legs, that he should wear the garments of a young prince? You see that Master Smalley had the primitive idea of young princes, and supposed them clad in everlasting velvet and ermine. But there were no princes in America, thank Heaven, and nobodyin Westbrook wanted fools round who tried to look like king's sons. Very innocent of trying to look like any one was poor Ralph, if the truth had been known,—this mother's darling of a boy, who took no more thought of his attire than a weed, but whom Mrs. Rosenburgh wrapped assiduously in all that was softest and warmest, as she had, all his life, surrounded him with warmth and softness.
After a while there came a January afternoon, over which a gray, moist sky brooded. Already the ice had shown some symptoms of breaking up, and everybody was out, making the most of it while it lasted.
Among the rest Ralph Rosenburgh came down to the pond,—left Pease-blossom and Mustard seed in the iron-gray man's charge, as usual, and began to propel himself over the ice, with arms whose increasing vigor was a daily and happy astonishment to himself.
At last he wandered away a little from most of the skaters. He felt himself and his chair rather in their way, they were wheeling andzigzagging so swiftly, and he moved along the pond quite rapidly toward the eastern end.
It chanced that no one noticed his course except Jack Smalley, and Jack knew that he was going directly toward a place where the ice had been recently cut, and where it was thin and treacherous now. Slowly Jack followed him.
"I'd like to see him and that fine chair of his get a good ducking," Jack muttered. "It would serve him right. I guess all them prince's feathers and fineries would look a little more like common folks', after they'd been soused."
I do not think another and darker possibility crossed Jack's mind. Hating Ralph Rosenburgh though he did, I do not think one wish for his death had ever entered his heart. He himself had been in the water, time and again, and got no other harm from it than perhaps a hard cold. He did not realize what a different thing it would be for this delicate invalid, seated in his heavy chair. And so Ralph propelled himself along toward destruction, and Jack, with an evil sneer on his face, skated slowly after him.
Suddenly a third figure shot from the group of skaters,—the fastest skater of them all, and the one boy in the world whom Jack Smalley loved,—his own cousin, Nelson Smalley.
He, too, had turned his eyes and seen in what fatal direction the chair with the delicate, golden-haired invalid in it was tending. He did not speak a word: he had but one thought,—to reach Ralph Rosenburgh in time to save him. He skated on, with the swiftness of light. And Jack Smalley saw him coming, nearing him, passing him, on toward the thin ice. Now, indeed, he shrieked at the top of his voice,—
"Nell, Nell, come back. The ice out there is thin. Come back—come back. Don't you hear?"
"I hear," floated backward on the wind from the flying figure; "I hear, but don't you see Rosenburgh? I must save him."
Then Jack himself skated after, making what speed he might. But he seemed to himself slow as a snail; and already Rosenburgh was very near the treacherous ice, and Nelson was almostup with him, flying like the wind. He heard Nelson's voice:
"Stop, Rosenburgh, stop. The ice beyond you is just a crust. Stop, you will be drowned."
And then he heard a plash, and looked. It was Nelson, who had gone on, and gone under, unable to arrest, in time, his own headlong speed. And then, while he himself was shrieking madly for help, he saw Rosenburgh, prince's feathers and all, just throw himself out of his chair, and down into the cold, seething water where Nelson Smalley had gone under.
The ice grew thin suddenly, just where the saw had cut it squarely away, so the chair stood still upon the solid ice, and by that Rosenburgh held with one hand, while with the other he grasped the long hair of Nelson Smalley, who was rising for the first time. Excitement was giving him unnatural strength, but for how long could he hold on?
Now, at last, the skaters had perceived the real state of the case, and such a wail as one might hear afterwards through his dreams forever, went up to the bending sky. Hurry, all who can. Run, iron-gray man, as you never ran before, or how shall you drive home to that boy's waiting mother?
How was it done? How is it ever done? Who can ever tell in such a crisis? I do not know how long they were in reaching the thin ice, for at such times moments seem hours, and seconds are bits of eternity. But Rosenburgh held on, and the iron-gray man threw himself flat upon the cracking ice, with the boys holding fast to him, and drew them both out, and then Rosenburgh turned limp and white on his hands, and whether he was dead or not he could not tell.
There were enough others to care for Smalley, and already the older ones had begun trying to restore him, and some of the younger were running in various directions for wiser aid. So the iron-gray man just lifted his own young master in his arms, and got him straight into the pony wagon, and drove Pease-blossom and Mustard-seed home as they had never been driven before.
At the gate he met Dr. Simms coming out, and told his story in a few words. It was almost an hour before the blue eyes opened again, and the mother felt sure that her boy was still hers to have and to hold, to love and to cherish. Indeed, it was many days before she felt altogether safe and sure about him. She was constantly expecting some after consequences from his exposure,—some fever, or cough, or terrible nervous prostration. But, strangely enough, he seemed to be none the worse; and one day, after a careful examination of him, Dr. Simms said to her,—
"I venture to tell you, now, what I have thought all along. This has been the very best thing for him that could possibly have happened. The severe shock was exactly what he needed, though certainly it was what I should not have dared to take the responsibility of subjecting him to. He is going to be the better and stronger for it."
"And the brave, splendid fellow who was risking his own life to save him?"
"Is all right too. Duckings are good for boys, not a doubt of it. Trust me, this cold bath will go far to make a man of yours."
And the doctor was right. The languid pulses which that awful peril had quickened never throbbed so languidly again. It was Ralph Rosenburgh's awakening to a new life. Somehow the shyness in him passed away with the weakness, and he became a general favorite.
The boys no longer envied him his ponies, when one or other of them was always asked to share his drives; and their cure was completed when he grew strong enough to take part in all their sports, when Pease-blossom and Mustard-seed were left to "eat their heads off" in their stall, and Ralph Rosenburgh and his chosen and dearest friend, Nelson Smalley, scaled rocks and climbed hills with the best of them.
This strong friendship would have cost Jack Smalley some envious pangs, perhaps, if the awful terror of that January afternoon had not made him afraid of the evil in his own soul.
I have a confession to make. When I went home from my grandmother's,—being set down at the home-door by the stage-driver, in whose care I had been placed,—and found my little sister in my mother's arms, a quick growing hate of her struck its black roots in my heart. I know that this seems unnatural. In most houses the baby is the very light and joy of them,—the little idol to whom, from the least to the greatest, the whole family do willing homage.
But remember that I had grown to be ten years old, with no rival near the throne, accustomed to be the first object with my father and mother, petted, indulged, as much "the baby" as if I had worn white long clothes. It was not strange that it should come hard to be deposed from my throne of babyhood in one moment.
When I went into the house, Nurse Sikes met me with a smile which struck me like a blow.
"Somebody's got her nose broke, I guess," she said, with a tantalizing laugh.
Before this, no one had spoken to me about the new-comer, and there, I think, was where the wrong began; but the woman's meaning flashed into my mind in a moment, and I tossed my head scornfully, without speaking. Nurse Sikes was probably not an ill-natured woman,—she could not have been, since no face was so welcome as hers in the sick rooms of all the neighborhood,—but she was a very injudicious one. I suppose my idle, vain contempt and indignation amused her, and so she went on provoking me.
"Ho, ho, Miss Fine Airs! doesn't want to see her baby sister, don't she? Well, to tell the truth, I don't think you'll be much missed. Papa and Mamma are pretty well wrapped up in Miss Baby.She'sa novelty, you know, and I guess she'll be taken care of, even if you don't trouble yourself."
I would not for worlds have let her see the passion of grief and rage which shook me. I went out of her sight, and fled, not to my own room, which opened from my mother's, but to a remote spare chamber, and there I bore my pain alone.
To cry would have infinitely relieved me, but my evil pride restrained me from that. They should not see my eyes red, and know how I felt; I would die first, I said, bitterly, to myself, I, who had cried out every sorrow of my life, hitherto, on my mother's tender bosom. After a while I heard them calling me,—
"Annie! Annie! Annie! Why, the child came in half an hour ago. Where is she?"
Then I knew I must go down. So I looked at myself in the glass, and saw a face which, indeed, no tears stained, but which was disfigured by pride and passion; and thinking to myself,—'No one will notice howIlook, now,' I went to my mother's room.
"Come here, my darling," her gentle voice said, "come and look at baby."
Baby! Could she not say a fond word to me, after I had been away from home two weeks, without bringing in baby! I moved reluctantly toward her.
"Baby is twelve days old," she went on, wistfully, seeing my sullen mien. "I wouldn't let any one tell you, for I thought it would be such a surprise."
"A surprise, indeed!" I echoed her word with a scorn in my voice, which must have pained that gentle heart sorely.
"Isn't she sweet?" and, still trying to win my love for her new treasure, mamma uncovered the little, dimpled, rosy face, and held it toward me.
"I suppose so; I don't think I care for babies," I said, ungraciously.
"But you do care for mamma, and you haven't so much as kissedmeyet, my darling."
Perhaps if, even then, she could have put her arms around me, and held me fast against her loving heart, as she used to when I was grieved or naughty, it might have driven away the evil spirit, and made me her own child again; butshe could not, for there, in her lap, was baby. So I took her kiss passively, returned it coldly, and then went away.
It seems so incredible to my grown-up self, looking back upon it, that I could have gone on hating my baby sister more and more, that I can scarcely expect you to believe it; and I think I would hardly write out this, my confession, did I not hope it might lead some other, tempted as I was, to examine her heart in time, and root out from it the evil weed of jealousy, which bears always such bitter fruit.
From the first, little Lilias, or Lily, as they all called her, was a singularly lovely child. As a baby, she cried very little, and never in anger. Nothing but real pain ever made the red lips quiver, or filled the violet eyes with tears. She never could see any face more grave than usual without trying, in her baby fashion, to brighten it. I can remember, oh, how distinctly, times when my father would come home, worn and tired, and she would, quite untold, go through her littlerôleof accomplishments till she won asmile from him, clapping her fairy hands, nodding her gleaming, golden head, showing her two small teeth,—all the little winning wiles she had.
She was a very frail, delicate child, always, and she did not walk nearly as early as other children. But she talked very soon indeed. She was scarcely ten months old, when she learned to call us all by our names; and, strangely enough, mine was the first name she spoke. "Nan! Nan! Nan!" she would call me, half the day, like a little silver-voiced parrot.
She was very fond of me, in a certain way. I never tended her unless I was obliged, and my mother, noticing with deep grief my spirit toward my little sister, waited for the evil feeling to wear itself out, and seldom called on me to amuse the child, or to give up for her sake any whim or fancy of my own. Lily was not used, therefore, to have me hold or play with her.
Perhaps she thought Icouldnot, but it seemed to afford her infinite satisfaction just to have me in her sight. It may be she felt, in some vagueway, that I was nearer babyhood than the rest, and so more of her kind. At any rate, she always seemed perfectly happy and content when she could watch me, at any of my pursuits; and when I left the room, the little silvery voice would call after me,—
"Nan! Nan! Nan!"
She was a full year and a half old before she began to walk, and then she was so small and delicate that she looked as you might fancy a baby out of fairy land would look, flitting round on her tiniest of feet, her yellow hair glinting goldenly in every chance sunbeam, and her wistful eyes blue as a blue flower.
How could I help loving her? Ay, how could I?
I fancy I must have loved her a little, even then, only I had grown so in the habit of regarding her as an interloper, a rival, an alien, who was taking from me all which had formerly been mine, that I never owned, even in the silence of my own heart, to any softening toward her.
Father and mother were good to me beyondmy deserts, and beyond my poor words to describe. I have known, since, with what infinite love and grief they sorrowed over me, while waiting for this evil growth in my heart to be uprooted, as they felt sure it would be, some time. They had the wisdom to know that reproof would be vain, and simply to love me and be silent.
But if they lovedme, and were to me most patient and kind, they were devoted to little Lily, as was natural. She was so frail and so fair, so needed their constant watchfulness, that it is not strange she had it.
One day, when she was two years old and I was twelve, I sat in a corner of the sitting-room, putting a dissected map together, while a lady was calling upon my mother. She looked earnestly and long at Lily; but that was not uncommon; the child's dainty beauty was a pleasant thing to watch. At last, after she had risen to go, she said, as if she couldn't help saying it,—
"Take good care of that little one, Mrs. Allen. She looks to me like one of the children the angels love."
I saw the quick dew suffuse my mother's eyes, as she made some answer which I failed to hear, and then went to the door with her guest.
Am I to tell all the sad and bitter truth? I understood, as well as they did, that they thought our Lily so frail we should have hard work to make her flourish in the cold soil of the earth; and for one moment a feeling of evil triumph swelled my heart. When she was gone, I should beallto my father and mother, as I used to be before she came. They would love me, when they had no one else to love.
I felt a guilty flush mounting to my cheeks, and I swept my map into its box hastily, and got up to leave the room. As I went out of the door Lily's voice followed me, sweetly shrill,—"Nan! Nan! Nan!" and, for the very first time in my life, a conviction smote me that there would be a sense of loss when that voice could never follow me again, with its soft calling, through all the years.
The next summer was a strange, warm, oppressive summer,—the summer of '56. With its Julyheats our Lily began to droop. Such care as she had, such nursing, such love! But she had been always like a blossom from heaven, sprung up by mistake in the rough soil of this world, and she needed for her healing the wind which blows for ever through the leaves of the tree of life.
She soon grew so weak that she could not run about any more, but would lie all day, except when, for a change, my mother held her in her arms, in a little rose-curtained crib, out from which the blue, wistful eyes followed all our movements, with a sweet, loving, lingering look, which I cannot describe. On me, in especial, that long gaze used to rest; and never could I leave the room without that sweet, small voice calling after me plaintively.
There came a day, at last, when the doctor sat half an hour by Lily's side, watching her with grave, silent face, and then went into another room alone with my mother. He came out first, and went away, and when she followed him, her eyes were very red. I knew afterwards, what I suspected the moment I saw her face, that he had been telling her that she must make up her mind to part with her little darling.
My heart was not quite stone, after all, for it grew strangely soft and strangely afraid then. She was going home to God, this little Lily of heaven; and would she tell Him that I had hated, all through, the baby sister He had given me? I went away by myself and prayed. I had said my prayers night and morning, all my life, but this was quite another thing, this cry of the child's heart becoming conscious of its guilt and woe, to the pitying Father.
At last, I went to my mother. Lily was asleep, and mamma sat by her side, pale as death, but with face that made no complaint. I knelt down beside her.
"O mother!" I cried, "I have been so wicked,—and now I cannot undo it! Oh, if I could! Oh, if I could only die,—I who am not fit to live,—and let you keep Lily!"
She bent over me, and drew me into her arms, against her bosom.
"If you are not fit to live, my darling, you are not fit to die," she said gently. "I can better part with Lily, for she is pure yet as when God gaveher to me. I have seen your sin and your suffering, and I have known your repentance would come."
"Oh, it has, it has! Mother, how can I bear it?Willshe go home to God, and tell Him I have hated her?"
"Do you think she could tellHimany thing which He does not know? But Lily has never found out what hate means. She has always loved you, and she does not know but that all the world loves her. The pain which your sin has caused has not rested on Lily,—thank God for that."
"But I might have made her happier,—I might have been good to her,—and now, perhaps I shall never have any little sister any more in all the world."
Just then the child awoke, and put out her frail little hands, with a low, sweet call I was destined to listen for in vain through all the empty, after years. I ran to her, and took her in my arms. She saw the tears upon my face, and touched them with her mites of fingers.
"Naughty Nan," she said, in fond reproach, "naughty Nan, to cry,—make Lily cry too."
And then I wiped away my tears, and tried to be cheerful; but, oh, how heavy my heart was! and, mourn as I would, I could not bring back the dead months and days wherein I might have loved my little sister, and had hated her instead.
What else?
Nothing, but that, with the fading summer flowers, she, too, faded and died. In her case was wrought no miracle of healing. "We all do fade as the leaf;" but she had never been a strong, green leaf, tossed by summer winds, freshened by summer rains, gay in summer sunshine. Just a pale, sweet day-lily, that lived her little life, and died with the sunset. And the first words she ever spoke, were the last words, also. She opened her tender eyes after a long silence, during which she had scarcely seemed to breathe, and they rested on me.
"Nan! Nan! Nan!" she cried, as if it were a call to follow her into the strange, new life, the strange, new world, whither, a moment after, she was gone.
If there has been any good in my life since then,if I have striven at all to be tender and gentle and unselfish, let me offer such struggles as a tribute to her memory, as one lays flowers upon an altar or a grave. Whither she has gone, I pray God to guide my feet also, in His own good time and way; and I shall know that I have reached the place whither my longings tend, when I hear, soft falling through the eternal air, her low, sweet call,—
"Nan! Nan! Nan! Welcome, Nan!"
A CHRISTMAS STORY.
It was the afternoon of the 24th of December, a dull, gray afternoon, with a sky frowning over it which was all one cloud, but from which neither rain nor snow fell. A certain insinuating breath of cold was in the air, more penetrating than the crisp, keen wind of the sharpest January day.
Olive Haygarth shivered as she walked along the bleakest side of Harrison Avenue, down town. She was making her way to Dock Square, to carry home to a clothing store some vests which she and her mother had just completed.
After a while she turned and walked across into Washington Street, for an impulse came over her to see all the bright Christmas things in the shopwindows, and the gay, glad people, getting ready to keep holiday.
She had meant, when she set out on her walk, to avoid them, for she knew that her mood was bitter enough already. She had left no brightness behind her at home. There were but two of them, herself and her mother, and they were poor people, with only their needles between them and want.
They had never known actual suffering, however, for Mrs. Haygarth had worked in a tailor's shop in her youth, and had taught Olive so much of the intricacies of the business as sufficed to make her a good workwoman.
Accordingly they did their sewing so well as to command constant employment and fair prices. But after all it was ceaseless drudging, just to keep body and soul together. What was the use of it all? Not enjoyment enough in any one day to pay for living,—why not as well lie down and die at once?
She walked on sullenly, thinking of these things. An elegant carriage stopped just in frontof her, and a girl no older than herself got out, trailing her rich silk across the sidewalk, and went into a fashionable jeweller's.
Olive stopped, and looking in at the window, ostensibly at the vases and bronzes, watched the girl with her dainty, high-bred air. She noted every separate item of her loveliness,—the delicate coloring, the hair so tastefully arranged, the pure, regular features. Then she looked at the lustrous silk, the soft furs, the bonnet, which was a pink and white miracle of blonde and rosebuds. How much of the beauty was the girl's very self, and how much did she owe to this splendid setting? Olive had seen cheeks and lips as bright and hair as shining when she tied on her own unbecoming dark straw bonnet before her own dingy looking-glass.
She went on with renewed bitterness, asking herself, over and over again, Why? Why? Why? Did not the Bible say that God was no respecter of persons? But why did He make some, like that girl in there, to feed on the roses and lie in the lilies of life,—to wear silks, andfurs, and jewels, and laces, and then makeherto work buttonholes in Butler & Co.'s vests? Was there any God at all? or, if there was, did He not make some people and forget them altogether, while He was heaping good things on others whom He liked better? She could not understand it. And then to be told toloveGod after all; and that He pitied her as a father pitied his children! Why! that girl in the silk dress could love God, easily,—that command must have been meant for her.
Going on she caught a glimpse of an illumination in the window of a print shop.
"Peace on Earth and Good-Will toward Men" was the legend set forth by the brilliantly colored letters.
What a mockery those words seemed to be! There had never been peace or good-will in their house, even in the old days when they were tolerably prosperous, before her father went away.
She walked very slowly now, for she was thinking of that old time. She had loved her father more than she had ever loved any one else.To her he had always been kind; he had never found fault with her, and had smoothed all the rough places out of her life. Her mother had been neat and smart andcapable, as the New England phrase is. Higher praise than this Mrs. Haygarth did not covet. But like many capable women, she had acquired a habit of small faultfinding, a perpetual dropping, which would have worn even a stone, and George Haygarth was no stone.
The woman loved her husband, doubtless, in some fashion of her own, but to save her life she could not have kept from "nagging" him. She fretted if he brought mud upon his shoes over her clean floor, if he spent money on any pleasure for himself, any extra indulgence for Olive; above all, if he ever took a fancy to keep holiday.
Just five years ago things had come to a climax. Olive was thirteen years old then, and he had brought her home for Christmas some ornaments,—a pin and earrings, not very expensive, but in Mrs. Haygarth's eyes useless and unnecessary. She assailed him bitterly, and for amarvel he heard her out in dumb silence. When she was all through, he only said,—
"I think I can spare the eight dollars they cost me, since I am not likely to give the girl any thing again for some time. It will be too far to send Christmas gifts from Colorado."
Mrs. Haygarth's temper was up, and she answered him with an evil sneer,—
"Colorado, indeed! Colorado is peopled with wide-awake men. It's no place for you out there."
He made no reply, only got up and went out; and, going by Olive, he stooped and kissed her. How well she remembered that kiss!
Through the week afterward he went to his work as usual, but he spent scarcely any time at home, and when there made little talk. All his wife's accustomed flings and innuendoes fell on his ears apparently unheeded. The night before New Year's he was busy a long time in his own room. When he came out he handed Mrs. Haygarth a folded paper.
"There," he said, "is the receipt for the nextyear's house rent, and before that time is out I shall send you the money, if I am prospered, to pay for another year. I have taken from the savings-bank enough to carry me to Colorado and keep me a little while after I get there; and the bank book, with the rest of the five hundred dollars, I have transferred to you. If I have any luck you shall never want,—you and Olive. You'll be better off without me. I think I've always been an aggravation to you, Martha,—only an aggravation."
He went back again into his room, and came out with a valise packed full.
"I think I'll go away now," he said. "The train starts in an hour, and there is no need of my troubling you any longer."
Then he had taken Olive into his arms, and she had felt some sudden kisses on her cheek, some hot tears on her face; but he had said nothing to her, only the one sentence, gasped out like a groan,— "Father's little one! father's little one!"
Olive shivered and then grew hot again, as she remembered it; and remembered how wistfully hehad looked afterwards at his wife, reading no encouragement in her sharp, contemptuous face.
"I guess you'll see Colorado about as much as I shall," said Martha Haygarth, sneeringly. "Your courage may last fifty miles."
He did not answer. He just shut the door behind him and went out into the night,—and she had never seen him since, never heard his voice since that last cry,—"Father's little one!"
She felt the thick-coming tears blinding her eyes, but she brushed them resolutely away, and looked up at the Old South clock just before her.
Almost five. The sun had set nearly half an hour ago, and the night was falling fast. How long a time she had spent in walking the short distance since she came into Washington Street! How late home she should be! She quickened her steps almost to a run, went to the clothing store, where she had to wait a little while for her work to be looked over and paid for, and heard the clocks strike six just as she reached the corner of Essex Street, on her homeward way. The dense, hurrying crowd jostled and pressed her, and she turnedthe corner. She would find more room on the Avenue, she thought.
She had not noticed that two young men were following her closely. They would have been gentlemen if they had obeyed the laws of God and man. As it was, there was about them the look which nothing expresses so well as the word "fast." Their very features had become coarse and lowered in tone by the lives they led; and yet they were the descendants of men whose names were honored in the State, and made glorious by traditions of true Christian knighthood.
On the other side of the way, alike unnoticed by Olive and her pursuers, a man walked on steadily, never losing sight of them for a moment. At last, as she came into a quiet portion of the street, the two young men drew near her. They were simply what I have said, "fast." They perhaps meant no real harm, and thought it would be good fun to frighten her.
"'Where are you going, my pretty maid?'" said one, the bolder and handsomer of the two.
"'My face is my fortune, sir, she said,'"responded the other, in a voice which the wine he had taken for dinner made a little thick and unsteady.
"You ought not to be out alone," the first began again. "You are quite too young and too pretty."
"That she is," a loud, stern voice answered, "when there are such vile hounds as you ready to insult an unprotected girl."
Surely it was a voice Olive knew, only stronger and more resolute than she had ever heard it before.
She turned suddenly, and the gas light struck full on her flushed, frightened, pretty face, which the drooping hair shaded. The man, who had crossed the street to come to her rescue, looked at her a moment, and then, as if involuntarily, came to his lips the old, fond words, the last she had ever heard him speak,—
"Father's little one!"
He opened his arms, and she, poor tired girl crept into their shelter. The two young men stood by waiting, enough of the nobility of the old blood in them to keep them from running away, thoughtheir nerves tingled with shame. George Haygarth spoke to them with quiet, manly dignity.
"When I saw you following this girl I had no idea she wasmygirl, whom I had not seen for five years. It was enough for me that she was a woman. To my thinking it's a poor manhood that insults women instead of protecting them. I meant to look out for her, and, be she who she might, you should not have harmed her."
"We never meant her any real harm," the elder of the two said humbly; "but we have learned our lesson, and I think we shall neither of us forget it. Young lady, we beg your pardon."
Then they lifted their hats and went away; and George Haygarth drew his daughter's hand through his arm and walked on, telling his story as he walked.
He had been unsuccessful at first. For more than eighteen months he had scarcely been able to keep himself alive. Fever had wasted him, plans had failed him, hope had deserted him. The very first money he could possibly spare he had sent home, with a long loving letter to the absent, overwhom his heart yearned. But money and letter had both come back to him after a while, from the dead-letter office.
"Yes," Olive said, "we were too poor to keep on there after the year for which you paid was out, and we have moved two or three times since then. The postman did not know where to find us, and after the first year we gave up asking for letters at the office."
Her father's hand clasped hers tighter, in sympathy, and then he told the rest of his story.
He had never been very prosperous, never seen any such golden chances as the mining legends picture, but he had come home better off than he ever should have been if he had stayed in the East.
For a whole week he had been in Boston searching for them everywhere, and no knowing how much longer he might have had to wait but for this accident.
"Don't say accident, father," Olive answered, softly. "It was God's way of bringing us together. I begin to see now what it means when the Bible says, 'He is touched by our infirmities, and pitiesour necessities.' And yet, only this afternoon I was losing all my faith, and thinking that if He cared for all the rest of the world. He had forgotten me. Here we are,—the next house is home."
"Your mother—how will she receive me, Olive?"
Olive's heart seemed to stand still. Her mother had been so bitter through all these years; had said such cruel things about this man, whom she accused of deserting his family and leaving them to starve, of caring only for himself. She did not speak,—she did not know what to say.
"You must go in and break it to her," George Haygarth said, as they climbed the stairs of the humble tenement house, the third story of which the mother and daughter occupied. "I will stay outside and wait. It won't be coming home at all if Martha doesn't bid me welcome."
Olive went in, trembling.
"Here is the money, mother."
Mrs. Haygarth reached out her hand for it and looked at it.
"Yes, it's all right; but I thought you were never coming home. What kept you?"
"I looked into the windows a good deal as I went down, and then I had to wait at the store, and I've been thinking, mother. It will be five years next week since father went away. What if we could see him again?"
She paused, expecting to hear some of the old bitter words about her father; but, instead, her mother's voice fell softly upon her ear.
"I'vebeen thinking too, Olive, and I believe he is dead. I don't think I used to be patient enough with him, and perhaps I wore his love out. But hedidcare foryou, and seems to me nothing short of death could have kept him away so long."
"But if youcouldsee him, mother?" Olive persisted, with trembling voice.
Some new thought pierced Martha Haygarth's brain. A strange thrill shook her. She looked an instant into Olive's eyes. Then, without a word, she sprang to the door and threw it open. Olive heard a low, passionate cry.
"George! George! if I was cross Ididlove you!" and Olive saw a figure come out of the shadow and take her mother close in its arms. Andthen she hid her eyes, and said a little prayer, she never knew what.
So, after all, God had not forgotten them. Just when their want was sorest their help had come. And they needed all they had suffered, perhaps, to teach her mother what love was worth, and what forbearance signified.
"Peace on Earth and Good-Will toward Men!"
From the very sky the words seemed to drop down to her, like an angelic blessing; and now to their home the reign of peace had come, and she understood what the benediction meant.