Chapter 9

"I must acknowledge that I am disappointed," remarked Mrs. Davis to her husband that evening. "To-day I ordered the material for Lillie's First Communion dress,--an exquisite tulle. But she came home from school with a story about furnishing an outfit for a poor child, and she assures me that her companions are to wear plain dresses for the occasion." Thereupon the lady proceeded to give the details of the plan as she had understood it.

"A very creditable determination," said Lillie's papa, approvingly. "I endorse it heartily. If attired simply, the children will not be distracted by the thought of their gowns, while at the same time some deserving little girl will be provided with an appropriate costume. I advise you to send back the tulle by all means, my dear, and apply the difference in price between it and the fabric agreed upon to the fund the children are trying to make up."

"Well, I suppose it will be best to do so," decided his wife. "Anyhow, tulle is so delicate a tissue, and Lillie is such a heedless little creature, that it would probably be badly torn before the end of the ceremonies."

"I am sorry," soliloquized Connie's mother when she heard of the project. "Connie's First Communion will be so important an event for her that I feel as if I could not do enough in preparation for it. I should like to dress her more beautifully than on any day in her life. If she were grown and about to enter society, or if I were buying her wedding-dress, I would select the handsomest material procurable,--why not now, for an occasion so great that I ought hardly mention it in comparison? But, after all," mused she, later, "the children's arrangement is the best. I am happy that Constance is so free from frivolity, and has shown so edifying a spirit."

For Eugenia Dillon, the giving up of the white silk was, as the girls generously agreed, "the biggest act of all." At first Mrs. Dillon would not hear of it; "though," said she, "I am quite willing to buy the dress for the poor child myself, if you wish, Eugenia." But Eugenia explained that this would not do, unless she carried out the plan like the others. In fact, she found that one of the hardest things in the world is to argue against what we want very much ourselves. At last, however, her mother good-naturedly yielded the point, saying, with a laugh, "Oh, very well, child! But I never before knew you to object to having a pretty dress." And Eugenia was very sure she never had.

The great day finally arrived. To picture it, or to describe the joy which filled the soul of each of our first communicants, is not the purpose of this story. But as the white-robed band entered the convent chapel, to the incongruous throng of fashionable people there assembled their appearance was the strongest possible sermon against vanity. Their soft white gowns were as simple as the most refined taste could make them, and as beautiful; their fleecy veils enfolded them as with holy thoughts; their wreaths of spotless blossoms signified a fairer crown. They numbered seven originally, but now among them walked another. Which little girl was the stranger, however, only one mother knew,--a humble woman, who, as she knelt amid the congregation, silently invoked a blessing upon the children who by their thoughtfulness had made possible her pious desire that her child might be appropriately and respectfully attired to welcome the coming of Our Lord.

The first communicants remained at the convent till dusk. During the afternoon somebody noticed, indeed, that Eugenia's dress, though of mull like the rest, was more fanciful, and her satin sash twice as wide as that of any one else. But the discovery only caused a smile of good-humored amusement; for it was hardly to be expected that Eugenia would conform absolutely to the rule they had laid down for themselves.

After Benediction, as they prepared to go home, they said to one another: "What a truly happy day this has been! How often we shall think of it during our lives!"

A MISER'S GOLD.

I.

"Never mind, mother! Don't fret. We'll get on all right. This little house is much more comfortable than the miserable flat we have been living in. The air is good, and the health of the children will be better. It is quite like having a home of our own again. Now that Crosswell & Wright have raised my wages, we shall be able to make both ends meet this winter,--you'll see!"

"Yes, dear, I'm sure we shall," Mrs. Farrell forced herself to respond, though her tone did not express the absolute conviction which the words implied. But Bernard was in great spirits, and for his sake she assumed a cheerfulness which she was far from feeling, as she bade him good-bye, and from the window watched him hasten away to his work.

"God bless his brave heart!" she murmured. "He is a good boy and deserves to succeed. It worries me that he has such a burden upon his young shoulders; but Father Hamill says this will only keep him steady, and will do him no harm if he does not overtax his strength. What a shabby, contracted house this is! Well, I must try to make it as bright and pleasant as possible. I wish the girls were older and able to earn a trifle; every penny helps nowadays. Mary, indeed, might find a place to run errands for a dressmaker, or something of the kind; but I can not bear to think of her going around alone down town, becoming pert and forward. Besides, she is so bright and smart that it seems a pity to interfere with her studies. She will need all the advantages she can get, poor child!"

With a sigh the mother returned to her duties, prepared breakfast for the other children and in the course of an hour hurried them off to school. There were three: Mary, just twelve years old; Lizzie, ten; and Jack, who had attained the precocious and mischief-loving age of seven. Bernard was eighteen, and the head of the family,--a fact which Mrs. Farrell strove to impress upon the minds of the younger members, as entitling him to special respect and affection. He was also the principal bread-winner, and had ten dollars a week, which was considered a fine beginning for one so young. Still, it was not a great deal for them all to rely on, and his mother endeavored to eke out their scanty livelihood by taking sewing, and in various other ways.

Life had not always been such a struggle for the Farrells. Before the death of the husband and father they had been in good circumstances. Mr. Farrell held for years a responsible position as book-keeper and accountant in one of the largest mercantile establishments of the city. He had a fair salary, which enabled him to support his family comfortably. But, alas! how much often depends upon the life and efforts of one person! An attack of pneumonia, the result of a neglected cold, carried him out of the world in three days. There had been only time to attend to his religious duties, and no opportunity to provide for the dear ones he was about to leave, even if any provision had been possible. When the income derived from the father's daily labor ceased, they found themselves suddenly plunged into comparative poverty. His life-insurance policy had not been kept up; the mortgage on the pretty home had never been paid off, and was now foreclosed. The best of the furniture was sold to pay current expenses, and the widow removed with her children to the third floor of a cheap apartment house,--one of those showy, aggressively genteel structures so often seen in our Eastern cities, with walls of questionable safety and defective drainage and ventilation.

Mrs. Farrell was now obliged to dismiss her maid-of-all-work, and attend to the household duties herself. This was a hardship, for she was not a strong woman; but she did not complain. Bernard, fortunately, had taken two years of the commercial course at St. Stanislaus' College, and was therefore in a measure fitted for practical affairs. He obtained a place as clerk in the law office of Crosswell & Wright. As he tried to keep his mind on his duties, and was willing and industrious, his employers were well pleased with him, and he had been several times advanced. But the means of the family grew more and more straitened. The following year the rent of the flat was found to be higher than they could afford. They sought other quarters, and settled at last, just as winter was approaching, in the little house where we have discovered them, in a humble neighborhood and unpaved streets, with no pretensions whatever,--in fact, it did not appear to have even the ambition to be regarded as a street at all.

The young people took possession of the new dwelling in high glee. They did not see the drawbacks to comfort which their mother could have pointed out; did not notice how much the house needed painting and papering, how decidedly out of repair it was. Only too glad of their satisfaction, she refrained from comment, tried to make the best of everything, and succeeded in having a cosey home for them, despite all difficulties. For there was not a room of the small house into which at least a ray of sunlight did not find its way sometime during the day. It shone upon threadbare carpets and painted floors; upon sofas the upholstering of which had an unmistakable air of having been experimented with; and chairs which Mrs. Farrell had recaned, having learned the art from a blind boy who lived opposite. Yet the sunlight revealed as well an air of thrift and cheeriness; for the widow, despite her days of discouragement, aimed to train her children to look upon the bright side of life, and to trust in Providence.

"Bernard," said she one evening, "I have been thinking that if I could hire a sewing-machine I might get piecework from the shops, and earn more than by looking to chance patronage. I have a mind to inquire about one."

The boy was silent. She began to doubt if he had heard, and was about to repeat the remark when he answered:

"No, mother, don't. There are too many women doing that kind of sewing at starvation prices. But I'll tell you what would be a fine thing if you really had the time for it, though I do not see how you could,--it seems to me we keep you busy."

"What is your idea?" inquired Mrs. Farrell eagerly, paying no heed to the latter part of his speech.

"Well, if we could manage to pay the rent of a type-writing machine, I could probably get you copying from the firm as well as from some of the other lawyers in the building. I was wondering the other day if I could do anything at it myself, and thus pick up an additional dollar or two in the week. Of course, you would accomplish more than I could, and it would be a hundred times better than stitch! stitch! How I hate the whir of the thing!" And Bernard, with his juggler gift of mimicry, proceeded forthwith to turn himself into a sewing-machine, jerking his feet up and down in imitation of the motion of the treadle, and making an odd noise in his throat.

Mrs. Farrell laughed, as she replied: "I do not know that there is much choice between this and the click of the type-writer. But, anyhow, your plan, though it sounds plausible, would not do, because I should not be able to work the type-writer."

"There would be no difficulty about that," argued Bernard. "You know how to play the piano, and the fingering is very much easier. It will come naturally."

His mother laughed again, yet she sighed as well. Her father had given her a piano as a wedding present, but this had been the first article of value to be dispensed with when the hard times came. Bernard was so sanguine, however, that she consented to his project. He spoke to Mr. Crosswell on the subject; that gentleman became interested, succeeded in obtaining a type-writer for Mrs. Farrell on easy terms, and promised to send her any extra copying he might have. The manipulation of the machine did not, indeed, come quite as naturally as Bernard predicted, but after a few weeks of patient practice she mastered it sufficiently to produce a neat-looking page. Bernard brought her all the work she could do; it was well paid for, and a more prosperous season seemed to have dawned upon the little home.

Just at this time the children took scarlet fever at school. They had the disease lightly, but what anxiety the mother endured! Thank God, they got through it safely; but there was the doctor's bill to be settled, and funds were at a low ebb once more. To cap the climax, when the house had been thoroughly fumigated by the board of health, and Mrs. Farrell was prepared to take up her occupation again, an attack of rheumatism crippled her fingers and rendered them almost powerless. Then it was that, worn out and disheartened, she broke down and cried:

"Oh! why does not God help us?"

Her son's usually happy face wore an expression of discouragement also as she turned to him with the appeal. His lips twitched nervously; but in a moment the trustfulness which she had taught him was at hand to comfort her.

"Indeed, mother, He will--He _does_," said Bernard tenderly, though in the matter-of-fact manner which he knew would best arouse her. "You are all tired out, or you would not speak in that way. You must have a good rest. Keep the rooms warm, so that you will not take any more cold, and before long you will be able to rattle the type-writer at a greater speed than ever. That reminds me, mother," he continued--seeing that she was beginning to recover herself, and wishing to divert her thoughts,--"one of the things we have to be thankful for is that this house is easily heated. It beats all the way coal does last here! The ton we got two months ago isn't gone yet,"

"That is the way coal lasts when there is not any one to steal it, as there was in the flat, where the cellars were not properly divided off," answered Mrs. Farrell, brightening up.

"No, there's nobody living immediately around here whom I'd suspect of being mean enough to steal coal," returned Bernard, carelessly,--"except, perhaps, Stingy Willis, I don't think I'd wager that old codger wouldn't, though."

"I am afraid I should not have entire confidence in him, either," agreed Mrs. Farrell.

But the intelligence that there was still coal in the bin had cheered her wonderfully. Repenting of her rash conclusion, she hastened to qualify it by adding, "That is, if half of what the neighbors say is true. But, then, we have no right to listen to gossip, or to judge people."

Stingy Willis, the individual who apparently bore an unenviable reputation, was a small, dried-up looking old man, who lived next door to the Farrells,--in fact, under the same roof; for the structure consisted of two houses built together. Here he dwelt alone, and attended to his household arrangements himself, except when, occasionally, a woman was employed for a few hours to put the place in order. He was accustomed to prepare his own breakfast and supper; his dinner he took at a cheap restaurant. He dressed shabbily, and was engaged in some mysterious business down town, to and from which he invariably walked; not even a heavy rain-storm could make him spend five cents for a ride in a horse-car. And yet he was said to be very wealthy. Persons declared they knew "upon good authority" that he held the mortgage which covered the two connecting houses; that, as the expression is, he "had more money than he knew what to do with." Others, who did not profess to be so scrupulously exact in their determination to tell only a plain, unvarnished tale, delighted in fabulous stories concerning his riches. They said that though the floor of his sitting-room was carpetless, and the bay-window curtainless but for the cobwebs, he could cover the one with gold pieces and the other with bank-notes, if he pleased. Many were convinced he had a bag of treasure hidden up the chimney or buried in the cellar; this they asserted was the reason he would not consent to having the upper rooms of the house rented, and so they remained untenanted season after season. Thus, according to the general verdict (and assuredly the circumstantial evidence was strong), he was a miser of the most pronounced type,--"as stingy as could be," everybody agreed; and is not what everybody says usually accepted as the truth?

Certain it is that Stingy Willis acted upon the principle, "a penny saved is a penny gained,"--denied himself every luxury, and lived with extreme frugality, as the man who kept the meat-market and grocery at the corner frequently testified. Even in the coldest weather, a fire was never kindled in the house till evening; for over its dying embers the solitary man made his coffee the following morning. A basket of coal lasted him a week, and he sifted the cinders as carefully as if he did not know where to find a silver quarter to buy more fuel. He had nothing to do with his neighbors, who really knew very little about him beyond what they could see of his daily life. They were almost all working people, blessed with steady employment; though they had not more than enough of this world's goods, there was no actual poverty among them. They were respectable, honest, and industrious; as Bernard said, not one of the dwellers in the street would ever be suspected of being "mean enough to steal coal," unless indeed Stingy Willis.

II.

Gloomy days continued for the Farrells; yet the outside world never dreamed of the straits to which they were reduced, for a spirit of worthy independence and pardonable pride led them to keep their trouble to themselves. Mrs. Farrell would have died, almost, rather than reveal their need to any one; nothing save the cry of her children asking in vain for bread would bring her to it. Well, they still had bread and oatmeal porridge, but that was all.

Who would have imagined it! The little house was still distinguished from the others of the row by an appearance of comfort. Although Mrs. Farrell could not do any type-writing, the children were neat and trim going to school; Bernard's clothes were as carefully brushed, his boots as shining, linen as fresh, his mien as gentlemanly as ever. And they found great satisfaction in the reflection that no one was aware of the true state of affairs. The mother and Bernard agreed, when they began housekeeping under their changed circumstances, to contract no bills; what they could not afford to pay for at the time they would do without. So now no butcher nor baker came clamoring for settlement of his account. The doctor was willing to wait for his money; all they owed besides was the rent. Only the landlord knew this, and he was disposed to be lenient. Mrs. Farrell still tried to hope for the best, but sometimes she grew dejected, was sorely tempted to repine.

"Mother," little Jack once asked, "aren't people who, as you say, 'have seen better days' and become poor, much poorer than people who have always been poor?"

"It seems to me they are, my child," answered the widow, dispiritedly. "But why do you think so?"

"Because," replied the young philosopher, "we are much poorer than the woman who used to wash for us. She appeared to have everything she wanted, but we have hardly anything."

It was unreasonable, to be sure, but sometimes Mrs. Farrell used to wonder how her neighbors could be so hard-hearted as to go past unconcernedly, and not notice the necessities which, all the while, she was doing her best to keep from their knowledge. Often, too, as Stingy Willis went in and out of the door so close to her own, she thought: "How hard it is that this man should have riches hidden away, while I have scarcely the wherewith to buy food for my children! Walls are said to have ears,--why have they not also tongues to cry out to him, to tell him of the misery so near? Is there nothing which could strike a spark of human feeling from his flinty heart?" Then, reproaching herself for the rebellious feeling, she would murmur a prayer for strength and patience.

The partition between the two houses was thin. She and Bernard could frequently hear the old man moving about his dreary apartments, or going up or down the stairs leading to the cellar. "Old Willis is counting his money-bags again, I guess!" Bernard would say lightly, as the familiar shuffling to and fro caught his ear; while his mother, to banish the shadow of envious discontent, quietly told a decade of her Rosary.

The conversation anent the subject of the coal kept recurring to her mind with odd persistency. Repeatedly of late she had awakened in the night and heard the miser stumbling around; several times she was almost certain he was in her cellar, and--yes, surely, _at the coal_,--purloining it piece by piece, probably. Then just as, fully aroused, she awaited further proof, the noise would cease, and she would conclude she must have been mistaken. At last, however, it would seem that her suspicions were confirmed.

On this occasion Mrs. Farrell had not retired at the usual hour. It was after midnight, yet she was still occupied in a rather hopeless effort to patch Jack's only pair of trousers; for he evinced as remarkable an ability to wear out clothes as any son of a millionaire. The work was tedious and progressed slowly, for her fingers were stiff and the effort of sewing painful. Finally it was finished. With a sigh of relief she rested a moment in her chair. Just then the silence was broken by a peculiar sound, like the cautious shifting of a board. That it proceeded from the cellar was beyond question. A singular rattling followed. She rose, went into the hall and listened. Yes, there was no delusion about it: somebody was at the coal,--that coal which, she remembered bitterly, was now but a small heap in the bin. That the culprit was Stingy Willis there could be little doubt.

Bernard had fallen asleep on the sofa an hour or more before. His mother stole to his side, and in a low voice called him. He stirred uneasily. She called again, whereupon he opened his eyes and stared at her in bewilderment.

"Hark!" she whispered, signalling to him not to speak.

Once more came the noise, now more distinct and definable. The heartless intruder had become daring; the click of a shovel was discernible; he was evidently helping himself liberally.

Bernard looked at his mother in perplexity and surprise.

"Stingy Willis?" he interrogated.

She nodded.

"And at the coal, by Jove!" he exclaimed, suddenly realizing the situation, and now wide awake.

He started up, and presently was creeping down the stairs to the kitchen. Mrs. Farrell heard him open the cellar door with the least possible creak. She knew he was on the steps which led below, but he made no further sound. She had no other clue to his movements, and could only distinguish the rumble of the coal. She waited, expecting momentarily that it would cease, dreading the altercation which would follow, and regretting she had aroused her son.

"He is quick-tempered," she soliloquized. "What if words should lead to blows,--if he should strike the old man! How foolish I was to let him go alone!"

The suspense was ominous. What was the boy going to do? Why all this delay? Why did he not promptly confront the fellow and order him to be gone? In reality, only a few minutes had elapsed since she first heard the noise, but it seemed a quarter of an hour even since he left her. Should she go down herself, or call out to him? While she hesitated Bernard suddenly reappeared. She leaned over the banisters to question him; but, with a gesture imploring her to be silent, the astonished boy said, hardly above his breath: "Mother, come here!"

Cautiously she descended to the entry. He led her through the kitchen to the cellar steps. All the time the shovelling continued. Whispering "Don't be afraid," Bernard blew out the candle he carried, and, taking her hand, added: "Look!"