Part 6

She knelt. No. 3 said, in his strange, whistling sort of voice, “You have been good to me, but do this thing and I will curse you here and from the Hell I’m going to.”

The doctor commanded, “Put one hand here, the other there, and hold firmly with all your strength!” Then as five held him the sewing was accomplished, and I turned to fly from the hurt I thought the needle might give him, and stumbled to my mother’s bed. She was not there; all thought I was safe by little Charley, and I fell upon my knees and went right on muttering “Oh, our Father!” until I began to feel very light, and then to float, float, and the next I knew it was morning and I was very sick, but a maid told me that “the gentleman who was going to die” was not dead yet.

The attempted suicide caused the greatest confusion and excitement both inside and outside the jail. People were coming and going at all hours, and the grown-ups were more than ever anxious to get us away to the country. Mrs. B---- would not leave her husband at such a time, so my mother was to take us both the next day.

Little Goldy-locks never gave up his intention of seeing and saying good-bye to the gentleman who was trying so hard to die (in his own way). So through tears and kisses, and by bringing to bear all his graces of body and manner, the little fellow won his way, and just before leaving mother led us (dressed for our journey) to the cell, and the uncle-turnkey let us in. A nurse crossly admonished us all not to talk too much, and then we were standing by the bed. At the first sight of the ghastly face--the grimly bandaged throat and jaws and brow--the little lad gave a cry of terror. But when Mr. No. 3 said softly, “Charley!” he ran and swarmed up the bed with legs and arms, crying, “Oh, dear, dear Mr. No. 3! I fought it wasn’t you! Who hurted you? My papa will find out and he will put the man in a cell, and we won’t never go and see ’im, never!”

Then being told he must not talk so loud and that he must hurry, he said very earnestly, as he brought from his pocket a small, red wad, “Here, Mr. No. 3, here’s my wed stocking; I got it my ownse’f for you. If your froat should get sore, like you said, you dess put it on at night and you’ll come all well in the morning--dess like I did.”

A smile parted the man’s white lips as he said, “Thank you, my boy--I may try it--though I suppose--hemp would suit--my case--better than wool.”

All this time his eyes had gone past Charley and were on me. My mother noticed it, and now he hurriedly whispered “Good-bye,” and as Charley was taken down he motioned to have me lifted up into his place. Then in a whispering voice he said to my mother, “You think--it strange--eh, well!--it’s because she is--so wonderfully like--my child--my only one--my Annie. It’s marvelous--the likeness. It’s not that they both--have that same--surprising length of hair--the same wide, gray-blue eyes--the same tricks--of manner and movement--even to that habit of standing--with hands behind the back--gently pulling at the two great braids. But it’s the voice. I’ve been ready--to swear at times--that my wife--had broken her vow--and had brought--Annie to see me. And though I starve--for the sight of her--until at times I’m almost mad--I’d kill my wife--if she brought--the child here--to know my shame. And this little one--is so like her--so like and yet so different--for Annie loves me--while this child----”

I felt my face flame with hot blood, for my mother did not know I had been told of the murder, and I was frightened, but he went on gently, “Ah, well, there is no reason why this one should--love me--a stranger.”

The nurse exclaimed, “Too much talk.”

Mother moved toward the door, but Charley broke from her and once more climbed up on the bed. “I have dess one ’ticular thing to say, dess one!” he pleaded, and he stooped to whisper to the sick man, “Dear, dear Mr. No. 3--try to get well--and--and--I know you don’t like the preacher man, but I know my own night ‘prays’ my ownse’f, and when I say ‘my soul to keep’ I’ll say ‘your soul to keep,’ too, every time!”

And Clarks groaned, “For God’s sake take him away!” and Goldy-locks put his clean, sweet, little pink lips lovingly to those sin-stained, fever-parched ones and said “Good-bye, good-bye!” and slid down and ran and hid his tears in the folds of my mother’s dress.

I moved to leave the bed, but he laid a detaining hand lightly upon me. I shivered, and looking up I met his gaze and was held by it. It was pleading--commanding, almost compelling. I understood him perfectly, and I tried hard to break away from that controlling glance, but all in vain, until a dimness came across his eyes and slow tears gathered there. Then I wrenched my eyes from his and hung my head and whispered, “Good-bye.” As my mother called me I slid off the bed to go to her, but the hoarse whisper came, “Little torment!” and I stopped. Again, “Dear, little torment!” and foolishly I looked at him, and for the last time our struggle was renewed, and now I had to resist not only his pleading, but that of something within me that said, “Think of his little daughter who cannot tell him good-bye, and kiss him for her sake.” Almost I yielded--and then--the homesick friend, the bridge, the knife, and I threw back my head violently and exclaimed, “No! No! I can’t! but----” and I laid my little hand against his lips. He took it gently, gently, and sighing heavily he kissed it, palm and back, and every dimple, including the tiny one in my wrist, and every finger-tip, and then said under his breath, as it were, “Good-bye, little maid who knows her own mind,” and as the key was turning in the lock after we had gone from the cell we heard him give a husky laugh and say, “She’s got a will--it’s stronger than mine--for, mind you, she never kissed me!”

And that was our last sight of “the gentleman who was going to die,” because that bright day, when Charley and I were out making the acquaintance of a very remarkable calf--remarkable because its forequarters were mild and gentle, while its hindquarters stung like an adder--and we were about to play marketing, and we both had a desire to purchase the forequarters of the calf, and as we never quarreled we drew lots for choice, while the calf slowly chewed up our market basket--and at that very moment, in the city, Goldy-locks’ beloved “Mr. No. 3” was heading a procession to the scaffold with many a jest about the “blue funk” he said the men were in about him. He remarked their pale faces and trembling hands, and actually encouraged and advised them, himself directing the proper placing of the fatal knot. Then with alert, springy step, bright eye and cheerful voice he mounted the scaffold, stepped with quick obedience upon the trap, and was hurled out of this world into--what?

White and cold and silent his wife removed her coffined dead, and when we returned “the gentleman who was going to die” had died. He was gone, and his cell and corridor knew him no more.

Old Myra’s Waiting

Old Myra’s Waiting

Was she mad? I do not know. I only know that she was old, oh! very old, and had known such sorrows as break the heart and blast the intellect of many of her sex. So old, so fragile--so poor--with a wit like polished steel and a tongue like an adder. I was her one friend in the world and was as helpless as herself. We each earned our own living--that was the one experience we had in common. Save for that, there was a whole world between us. She stood wavering and unstrung at one end of life--I stood quivering and tense at the other end. She had known it all, all, and only wished to sleep, to forget--I knew nothing, and only longed to learn, to feel, to know.

The first time I saw her she stood on the bank of the lake, a little, swaying, black-robed figure, facing a blinding gale. The wild wind tore her pitifully thin shawl from her shoulders and sent it whirling down the lonely street. I set my long, young legs in motion and ran it down, and returning, put it about her sharp, old shoulders.

She gave me one piercing glance from the blackest eyes I ever saw. Her dry, pale lips drew back across her rather long, narrow teeth in a sort of smile, and she said: “My dear, you are a wonder; few young people condescend to run like that, particularly for the old. I thank you!”

She turned her face again to the lake. Though I found it hard to keep my position, she somehow managed to maintain hers, frail as she was. I was puzzled--why was she standing there, so thinly clad? I hesitated a moment, then I said as respectfully as I could:

“Madame--could you not go into one of those houses, or home, perhaps, and let me wait here for your message or--or friend, and then come and tell you?”

She turned her sharp eyes upon my face, and exclaimed: “God bless my soul! the girl means a kindness to me!” and she laughed a shrill, thin peal of mocking laughter that made me hot with shame and anger too, and I turned away with a brief “I beg your pardon;” but she could be quick if she was old, and her claw-like hand was on my wrist in a moment, and her sharp voice reached me through the wind: “I can’t, my dear, I can’t leave now! You see my treasures are out there, and if they should be given up, I want to be at hand. Go home! my dear--go home, where people are not old and mad, and do not wait for the sea to give up their dead,” and turned again to face the gale, while I flew like the wind from her strange presence.

Some weeks passed before I saw her again, and then, as it happened, was able to do her a second small service. The day was wet and windy, the streets muddy. I was hurrying down Bank street and was about to cross an alley-way, which opens on that street, when I heard a little cry behind me, and there rolled past my feet a very neatly done up, small package, with a large seal on it in red wax. It stopped in the middle of the alley directly in front of an advancing dray-horse. I snatched it up and sprang across to the sidewalk, where I waited for the owner, who came hurrying across with anxious face and outstretched hands; and behold! there was my strange, old lady again.

She seized the package, and examining it carefully, she muttered, more to herself than to me: “I hope it’s safe, a fortune blowing about the muddy streets like that!”

My face must have been an expressive one; at all events she read it like a book, and went on rather sneeringly:

“Oh, I’m not mad; at least, not _now_! This does not belong to me; it would not be a fortune if it did; it’s lace--old, rare and very valuable! Had it been ruined? Oh, it makes me quite faint to think of such a chance! I am really very grateful to you, my child!”

She spoke her thanks so gracefully that I felt myself grow pink with pleasure.

We walked side by side a little way, when she said: “My dear, I’m not a stupid woman, but I can’t quite make you out. Your speech and bearing says one thing, but your being out so much, quite unattended, says another. Oh! I’ve seen you many times since that day at the lake. Then, your clothes--they are too good for poverty; but you wear the same things too often to have generous and well-to-do parents. No, I don’t quite understand.”

We were right at the door of the old “Academy” then, and I stopped, saying: “I go in here; there is a rehearsal; I am a member of the company.”

I never saw such fire as could leap into those fierce, old eyes of hers--at that moment they fairly blazed.

“Here, you!--you with that clean, honest, young face! For fifty years I’ve had a curse, hot and burning in my heart, for theatres and all connected with them!”

Then angrily shaking her forefinger at me, she cried:

“You run up your flag, girl!--your flag of red and black, of paint and dye!--that honest craft may know there’s a pirate in these waters!” and, dragging her veil across her face, she left me standing there, divided between the desire to laugh and the desire to cry. A pirate? I was such a harmless, well-meaning, little pirate that even had I shown the flag, and blackened my lashes and rouged my cheeks, I doubt if I should have created a very great panic in the Cleveland shipping--and so, at last, the laugh won; and between laughs I said aloud: “I am a pirate! I am a pirate!” And so a member of the company found me, and paused and looked me gravely over, and, wagging his head desperately, said: “It seems incredible, such meanness in one so young, but you will bear in mind I _saw_ this myself--a girl of sixteen, who knows a good story, takes herself out into a cold, damp hall, and tells this story to herself, and laughs and laughs all to herself, and then wipes her mouth and goes in seriously and sadly to join her defrauded brother and sister artistes. Clara, I wouldn’t have believed it of you!”

I had to tell him what I was really laughing at.

“Good Lord!” he said, “that was old Mrs. Worden. Do you mean to tell me you don’t know her? She’s a terror, is old Myra! She used to carry this town in her pocket. She was young then, and rich, and they do say Myra was a beauty. Hard to believe that, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “Her features are really perfect. Her eyes must have been very fine; her hair black, and her figure very graceful.”

“Perhaps,” he yawned, “but she has the sharpest tongue and the longest memory in Cleveland. How she does lash some of our public men! You know the rector of Christ Church, the party who abuses theatres so often? Well, one day there was a race between the ancient Myra and the long-winded Reverend. She was overhauling him fast, and he knew it. These doors stood open--theatre doors. He was between the devil and the deep sea, and--well, quite properly, he chose the deep sea, and slid in here, and behind that billboard. Had he only known it, he need not have gone behind that board for shelter, for nothing on earth could induce the ancient dame to enter the door of a theatre; so he would have been safe had he merely stepped inside. As soon as she had passed, he tried to slip out unnoticed, but _I_ was on the spot, I am proud to say, when I was least wanted, and, lifting my hat, I informed him that if he wanted seats he would find the box-office at the head of the stairs. He _glared_ at me, and then I offered to run up and get him a programme of the evening’s performance, but he snorted something about ‘mistaking the entrance,’ and got away. Well,” my companion added, with a self-satisfied look, “if there is anyone in town who has _not_ heard of that chase and escape, it’s not my fault.”

“But why,” I asked, “does Mrs. Worden dislike theatres so greatly?”

“My dear girl,” replied my friend Lewis, “I just love to instill knowledge into your hungry, young mind, but fifty cents are always full fifty cents to me, and if I stand here stuffing you with valuable information, I shall be late to rehearsal, and fifty cents forfeit will be torn from my unwilling pocket-book. So _en avant_,” and we both turned our faces stageward.

The next day was very stormy and bitter cold. My mother insisted upon my wrapping her shawl about me as an extra protection, but I had not gone more than a block or two before I was in trouble. The wind tore at me, the small pins could not stand the strain, they gave way, open went the shawl. The wind caught it, and slapped my face with it, and flung it flapping noisily through the air. I grabbed for it, jumped up at it, waltzed around and tried to catch it; but truth to tell that shawl could be found most any place in the street except on my shoulders. While I was laboring like a ship in a high sea, I heard some one knocking on a window-pane, and just as I began thinking I should have to scud under bare poles for home, the knocking was repeated so very loudly that I looked up, and, to my astonishment, there stood Mrs. Worden! I was amazed, because I had supposed the house to be unoccupied. The lower part was so, but at the upper window she was standing and making signs for me to cross over to her. Still wrestling madly with the shawl, I plunged over. The old lady opened the front door, showing an empty and bare hall, and holding tightly to the door itself, to keep from being blown backward, she motioned with her head for me to come in. I obeyed, and stood leaning against the unfriendly-looking wall, trying to regain my breath. Mrs. Worden smiled sardonically at me, and remarked:

“I don’t think you will get to your precious rehearsal to-day at that rate of speed. I’ve been watching you prancing about with that shawl, and I’ve brought you down this.”

She held out to me a shawl-pin. As I took it, I found it was yet warm from the hand of its maker since it was formed of a stout darning needle with a ball of red sealing wax for a head. She had seen my trouble and had hastily made this shawl-pin especially for me. I was surprised beyond speech for a moment, and she mistook my silence, for she began to jeer.

“Oh, use it, use it! If you can keep that shawl about you it may save you from a sickness. Then you can hide the pin from the sight of those lords and ladies at your great, fine theatre. They are so artistic, I fear its roughness and lack of finish might jar upon them.”

But I shook my head, and, smiling broadly at her, I said:

“It’s no use, Mrs. Worden, you can never frighten me again. I know you now, and you are good and kind.”

A sort of wonder came upon her: “Good God!” she cried. “You must be madder than I am!” then she turned her eyes to the rough, gray lake spreading far before us, and on her face there grew the look it wore the first time I saw her. She spoke out quite distinctly, but apparently not to me:

“I wonder if you hear?” she said. “I wonder? You used to call me good and kind, aye, and dear, but that’s five and forty years ago, a weary time my prettys! Perhaps the sign is coming soon--”

I stood a moment, then I laid my hand gently on her arm and said: “See, now, how safe the shawl is; I thank you very much, and I shall get to the rehearsal in time, after all.” She looked a bit bewildered for a moment, then she asked: “Shall you be long to-day?”

“Oh, no,” I answered, “I shall be through very early.”

“Then suppose you stop in here a bit and have a cup of coffee?”

I accepted the invitation eagerly, and, as I ran down the steps, she called to me: “You, girl, who won’t be frightened any more, I may be out when you come; see, here’s where you’ll find the key, and just go right up to the front room and wait for me.”

I nodded, and started again, but once more through the wind came her shrill call: “You, girl, don’t you touch the fire, if you have to wait; mind now, don’t touch it; I attend to that myself.”

The door slammed shut, and I was slammed down the windy street, but in considerable comfort, now that the thick shawl was fastened securely about me. I have seen--owned very handsome shawl pins since then--some double, with connecting chains of silver or of gold, and cunningly decorated by the goldsmith’s skill, but none ever gave me better service than did that darning needle with its head of wax, made beautiful in my eyes by the kindly thought that prompted its creation. I was really quite excited at the prospect of seeing her at home. She was an acquired taste. I had found her bitter at first, but now there was a faint hint of sweetness rising above the bitterness, and I liked it. I hurried to keep my appointment, and as I approached I was struck by the resemblance the house bore to the woman who lived in it. Both were so old, so gaunt, so lonely, and, above all, so frail. Surely, I thought, that trembling, old, frame shell of a house cannot be safe in any great off-lake gale. And when I first entered it and mounted its sagging, old stairs I was really frightened when it jarred at every quick movement and shook in each blast of wind.

Mrs. Worden was out when I arrived, and so I entered gladly the front room she had indicated, for, silly as it sounds, I must admit I am, and always have been, afraid of an empty house. I went in and closed the door.

Now, the French say, when colors do not agree ‘that they swear at each other,’ but never, surely, did inanimate things swell to such a storm of profanity as did the furnishings of this room. The floor was bare, the boards were narrow and warped and hungry-looking. Guiltless of stain or paint, they had been scrubbed to a creamy whiteness, which somehow gave the whole floor a peculiarly frigid, unfriendly look. It had a Pharisaical air, as though it were thanking its maker “that it was not as other floors.” Then, exactly opposite the door, there hung upon the glaring, whitewashed wall, in a magnificent frame, a life-sized, full-length portrait in oil, of a charming girl of about ten years. The “swearing” here was almost audible. The windows, ill-fitting and rattling in their cases, looked out directly upon the lake. The bedstead had been a grand affair in its long-passed day, but now, stripped of all its luxurious hangings, it stretched its thin, old posts up, only to meet the skeleton of its former canopy, while the silken spread of patch-work, of a brain-destroying intricacy of pattern, was worn clear through in places, so that the cotton wadding showed plainly. As I turned slowly around, I found another great portrait. This time it was a boy who smiled happily at me from the canvas; such a handsome, manly little chap, for all his absurd dress. One only smiled with him, not at him. I was very much impressed, for I had only been in two houses where there were family portraits, and I knew they meant a great expenditure. And then, ignorant as I was of such matters, I felt sure these portraits were the work of some great artist, and I was right, for later on I learned they had been painted by the most famous artist of his time.

Two small tables, a bureau, a few chairs, all of the commonest, and a small corner cupboard, completed the furniture of this odd room. Oh, yes; I must not omit the screen, then a very unusual object, a tall, narrow, three-panelled screen, which played an important part in its owner’s daily life. And the fire! Thank Heaven, I thought, for one thing, that did not look cold. I think there was about one scant quart of fire, and, as I threw off my shawl, I started to put on some coal, when suddenly I remembered that injunction, ‘You girl! don’t touch the fire!’ and I stayed my hand, but when I looked into the box and saw there just four pieces of coal, and so suspiciously exact in size one to the other, and leaning at the end of the box a hammer, my heart melted with pity; I began to understand. With a sigh I left the fire, precious but inadequate, and turned to study the painted pair. The boy, swarthy, smiling, happy, won your love at once; but the girl’s blonde, young arrogance slightly repelled. The portrait, considered as a picture, was quite lovely. The dainty figure, in the soft, yellowish-pink gown, stood out well from the olives and dull greens of the brocaded curtain behind her. On the table lay her great hat, while just slipping from her shoulder was the black velvet pelisse which, by contrast, brought out so beautifully the milky whiteness of her childish neck. The features, the lift of the head, the thin, slightly shrewish, delicate lips were all wonderfully like Mrs. Worden. But the color scheme was wrong. This handsome, overbearing child was blonde as she could be, while the boy, with but one feature of her face, her piercing eyes, was surely darker than she had ever been. So while I stood before the girl and thought how clever had been the artist, who had painted the boy with his hand upon his dog’s head--while in the girl’s hand he had placed a broken necklace--in these bits of detail, I thought he has given his idea of their character, and just then I heard Mrs. Worden approaching.