Winter Evening Tales Part 6

Now, wherein did these two women differ? One sinned through an intense and self-sacrificing love, and in obedience to the strongest calls of want. Her sin, though it was beyond the pale of the world's toleration, was yet one _according to Nature_. The other, in a cold spirit of barter, voluntarily and deliberately exchanged her youth and beauty, the hopes of her own and another's life, for carriages, jewels, fine clothing and a luxurious table. She loathed the price she had to pay, and her sin was an unnatural one. For this kind of prost.i.tution, which religion blesses and society praises, there seems to be no redress; but for that which results as the almost inevitable sequence of one lapse of chast.i.ty _we_, the pious, the virtuous, the irreproachable, are all to blame. Who or what make it impossible for them to retrace their steps?

Do they ever have reason to hope that the family hearth will be open to them if they go back? Prodigal sons may return, and are welcomed with tears of joy and clasped by helping hands; but alas! how few parents would go to meet a sinning daughter. Forgetting our Master's precepts, forgetting our human frailty, forgetting our own weakness, we turn scornfully from the weeping Magdalen, and leave her "alone with the irreparable." Marriage is a holy and a necessary rite. We would deprecate _any_ loosening of this great house-band of society; but we do say that where it is the _only distinction_ between two women, one of whom is an honored matron, and the other a Pariah and an outcast, there is "something in the world amiss"--something beyond the cure of law or legislation, and that they can only be reached by the authority of a Christian press and the influence of Christian example.

THE STORY OF DAVID MORRISON.

I think it is very likely that many New Yorkers were familiar with the face of David Morrison. It was a peculiarly guileless, kind face for a man of sixty years of age; a face that looked into the world's face with something of the confidence of a child. It had round it a little fringe of soft, light hair, and above that a big blue Scotch bonnet of the Rob Roryson fas.h.i.+on.

The bonnet had come with him from the little Highland clachan, where he and his brother Sandy had scrambled through a hard, happy boyhood together. It had sometimes been laid aside for a more pretentious headgear, but it had never been lost; and in his old age and poverty had been cheerfully--almost affectionately--resumed.

"Sandy had one just like it," he would say. "We bought them thegither in Aberdeen. Twa braw lads were we then. I'm wonderin' where poor Sandy is the day!"

So, if anybody remembers the little spare man, with the child-like, candid face and the big blue bonnet, let them recall him kindly. It is his true history I am telling to-day.

Davie had, as I said before, a hard boyhood. He knew what cold, hunger and long hours meant as soon as he knew anything; but it was glorified in his memory by the two central figures in it--a good mother, for whom he toiled and suffered cheerfully, and a big brother who helped him bravely over all the bits of life that were too hard for his young feet.

When the mother died, the lads sailed together for America. They had a "far-awa'" cousin in New York, who, report said, had done well in the plastering business, and Sandy never doubted but that one Morrison would help another Morrison the wide world over. With this faith in their hearts and a few s.h.i.+llings in their pockets, the two lads landed. The American Morrison had not degenerated. He took kindly to his kith and kin, and offered to teach them his own craft.

For some time the brothers were well content; but Sandy was of an ambitious, adventurous temper, and was really only waiting until he felt sure that wee Davie could take care of himself. Nothing but the Great West could satisfy Sandy's hopes; but he never dreamt of exposing his brother to its dangers and privations.

"You're nothing stronger than a bit la.s.sie, Davie," he said, "and you're no to fret if I don't take you wi' me. I'm going to make a big fortune, and when I have gotten the gold safe, I'se come back to you, and we'll spend it thegither dollar for dollar, my wee lad."

"Sure as death! You'll come back to me?"

"Sure as death, I'll come back to you, Davie!" and Sandy thought it no shame to cry on his little brother's neck, and to look back, with a loving, hopeful smile at Davie's sad, wistful face, just as long as he could see it.

It was Davie's nature to believe and to trust. With a pitiful confidence and constancy he looked for the redemption of his brother's promise.

After twenty years of absolute silence, he used to sit in the evenings after his work was over, and wonder "how Sandy and he had lost each other." For the possibility of Sandy forgetting him never once entered his loyal heart.

He could find plenty of excuses for Sandy's silence. In the long years of their separation many changes had occurred even in a life so humble as Davie's. First, his cousin Morrison died, and the old business was scattered and forgotten. Then Davie had to move his residence very frequently; had even to follow lengthy jobs into various country places, so that his old address soon became a very blind clew to him.

Then seven years after Sandy's departure the very house in which they had dwelt was pulled down; an iron factory was built on its site, and probably a few months afterward no one in the neighborhood could have told anything at all about Davie Morrison. Thus, unless Sandy should come himself to find his brother, every year made the probability of a letter reaching him less and less likely.

Perhaps, as the years went by, the prospect of a reunion became more of a dream than an expectation. Davie had married very happily, a simple little body, not unlike himself, both in person and disposition. They had one son, who, of course, had been called Alexander, and in whom Davie fondly insisted, the lost Sandy's beauty and merits were faithfully reproduced.

It is needless to say the boy was extravagantly loved and spoiled.

Whatever Davie's youth had missed, he strove to procure for "Little Sandy." Many an extra hour he worked for this unselfish end. Life itself became to him only an implement with which to toil for his boy's pleasure and advantage. It was a common-place existence enough, and yet through it ran one golden thread of romance.

In the summer evenings, when they walked together on the Battery, and in winter nights, when they sat together by the stove, Davie talked to his wife and child of that wonderful brother, who had gone to look for fortune in the great West. The simplicity of the elder two and the enthusiasm of the youth equally accepted the tale.

Somehow, through many a year, a belief in his return invested life with a glorious possibility. Any night they might come home and find Uncle Sandy sitting by the fire, with his pockets full of gold eagles, and no end of them in some safe bank, besides.

But when the youth had finished his schooldays, had learned a trade and began to go sweethearting, more tangible hopes and dreams agitated all their hearts; for young Sandy Morrison opened a carpenter's shop in his own name, and began to talk of taking a wife and furnis.h.i.+ng a home.

He did not take just the wife that pleased his father and mother. There was nothing, indeed, about Sallie Barker of which they could complain.

She was bright and capable, but they _felt_ a want they were not able to a.n.a.lyze; the want was that pure unselfishness which was the ruling spirit of their own lives.

This want never could be supplied in Sallie's nature. She did right because it was her duty to do right, not because it gave her pleasure to do it. When they had been married three years the war broke out, and soon afterward Alexander Morrison was drafted for the army. Sallie, who was daily expecting her second child, refused all consolation; and, indeed, their case looked hard enough.

At first the possibility of a subst.i.tute had suggested itself; but a family consultation soon showed that this was impossible without hopelessly straitening both houses. Everyone knows that dreary silence which follows a long discussion, that has only confirmed the fear of an irremediable misfortune. Davie broke it in this case in a very unexpected manner.

"Let me go in your place, Sandy. I'd like to do it, my lad. Maybe I'd find your uncle. Who knows? What do you say, old wife? We've had more than twenty years together. It is pretty hard for Sandy and Sallie, now, isn't it?"

He spoke with a bright face and in a cheerful voice, as if he really was asking a favor for himself; and, though he did not try to put his offer into fine, heroic words, nothing could have been finer or more heroic than the perfect self-abnegation of his manner.

The poor old wife shed a few bitter tears; but she also had been practicing self-denial for a lifetime, and the end of it was that Davie went to weary marches and lonely watches, and Sandy staid at home.

This was the break-up of Davie's life. His wife went to live with Sandy and Sallie, and the furniture was mostly sold.

Few people could have taken these events as Davie did. He even affected to be rather smitten with the military fever, and, when the parting came, left wife and son and home with a cheerful bravery that was sad enough to the one old heart who had counted its cost.

In Davie's loving, simple nature there was doubtless a strong vein of romance. He was really in hopes that he might come across his long-lost brother. He had no very clear idea as to localities and distances, and he had read so many marvelous war stories that all things seemed possible in its atmosphere. But reality and romance are wide enough apart.

Davie's military experience was a very dull and weary one. He grew poorer and poorer, lost heart and hope, and could only find comfort for all his sacrifices in the thought that "at least he had spared poor Sandy."

Neither was his home-coming what he had pictured it in many a reverie.

There was no wife to meet him--she had been three months in the grave when he got back to New York--and going to his daughter-in-law's home was not--well, it was not like going to his own house.

Sallie was not cross or cruel, and she was grateful to Davie, but she did not _love_ the old man.

He soon found that the attempt to take up again his trade was hopeless.

He had grown very old with three years' exposure and hard duty. Other men could do twice the work he could, and do it better. He must step out from the ranks of skilled mechanics and take such humble positions as his failing strength permitted him to fill.

Sandy objected strongly to this at first. "He could work for both," he said, "and he thought father had deserved his rest."

But Davie shook his head--"he must earn his own loaf, and he must earn it now, just as he could. Any honest way was honorable enough." He was still cheerful and hopeful, but it was noticeable that he never spoke of his brother Sandy now; he had buried that golden expectation with many others. Then began for Davie Morrison the darkest period of his life. I am not going to write its history.

It is not pleasant to tell of a family sinking lower and lower in spite of its brave and almost desperate efforts to keep its place--not pleasant to tell of the steps that gradually brought it to that pa.s.s, when the struggle was despairingly abandoned, and the conflict narrowed down to a fight with actual cold and hunger.

It is not pleasant, mainly, because in such a struggle many a lonely claim is pitilessly set aside. In the daily s.h.i.+fts of bare life, the tender words that bring tender acts are forgotten. Gaunt looks, threadbare clothes, hard day-labor, sharp endurance of their children's wants, made Sandy and Sallie Morrison often very hard to those to whom they once were very tender.

David had noticed it for many months. He could see that Sallie counted grudgingly the few pennies he occasionally required. His little newspaper business had been declining for some years; people took fewer papers, and some did not pay for those they did take. He made little losses that were great ones to him, and Sallie had long been saying it would "be far better for father to give up the business to Jamie; he is now sixteen and bright enough to look after his own."

This alternative David could not bear to think of; and yet all through the summer the fear had constantly been before him. He knew how Sallie's plans always ended; Sandy was sure to give into them sooner or later, and he wondered if into their minds had ever come the terrible thought which haunted his own--_would they commit him, then, to the care of public charities?_

"We have no time to love each other," he muttered, sadly, "and my bite and sup is hard to spare when there is not enough to go round. I'll speak to Sandy myself about it--poor lad! It will come hard on him to say the first word."

The thought once realized began to take shape in his mind, and that night, contrary to his usual custom, he could not go to sleep. Sandy came in early, and the children went wearily off to bed. Then Sallie began to talk on the very subject which lay so heavy on his own heart, and he could tell from the tone of the conversation that it was one that had been discussed many times before.

"He only made bare expenses last week and there's a loss of seventy cents this week already. Oh, Sandy, Sandy! there is no use putting off what is sure to come. Little Davie had to do without a drink of coffee to-night, and _his_ bread, you know, comes off theirs at every meal. It is very hard on us all!"

"I don't think the children mind it, Sallie. Every one of them loves the old man--G.o.d bless him! He was a good father to me."

"I would love him, too, Sandy, if I did not see him eating my children's bread. And neither he nor they get enough. Sandy, do take him down to-morrow, and tell him as you go the strait we are in. He will be better off; he will get better food and every other comfort. You must do it, Sandy; I can bear this no longer."

"It's getting near Christmas, Sallie. Maybe he'll get New Year's presents enough to put things straight. Last year they were nearly eighteen dollars, you know."