Lo, Michael! Part 21

"Then there's the sky, so much of it," went on Michael, "and so wide and blue, and sometimes soft white clouds. They make you feel rested when you look at them floating lazily through the blue, and never seeming to be tired; not even when there's a storm and they have to hurry. And there's the sunset. Sam, I don't believe you ever saw the sunset, not right anyway.

You don't have sunsets here in the city, it just gets dark. You ought to see one I saw not long ago. I mean to take you there some day and we'll watch it together. I want to see if it will do the same thing to you that it did to me."

Sam looked at him in awe, for he wore his exalted look, and when he spoke like that Sam had a superst.i.tious fear that perhaps after all he was as old Sal said, more of angel than of man.

"And then, there's the earth, all covered with green, plenty of it to lie in if you want to, and it smells so good; and there's so much air,--enough to breathe your lungs full, and with nothing disagreeable in it, no ugly smells nor sounds. And there are growing things everywhere. Oh, Sam!

Wouldn't you like to make things like this grow?"

Sam nodded and put forth his rough forefinger shamedly to touch the velvet of a green leaf, as one unaccustomed might touch a baby's cheek.

"You'll go with me, Sam, to the country sometime, won't you? I've got a plan and I'll need you to help me carry it out. Will you go?"

"Sure!" said Sam in quite a different voice from any reluctant a.s.sent he had ever given before. "Sure, I'll go!"

"Thank you, Sam," said Michael more moved than he dared show, "And now that's settled I want to talk about this room. I'm going to have five little kids here to-morrow early in the evening. I told them I'd show them how to whittle boats and we're going to sail them in the scrub bucket.

They're about the age you and I were when I went away to college. Perhaps I'll teach them a letter or two of the alphabet if they seem interested.

They ought to know how to read, Sam."

"I never learned to read--" muttered Sam half belligerently. "That so?"

said Michael as if it were a matter of small moment. "Well, what if you were to come in and help me with the boats. Then you could pick it up when I teach them. You might want to use it some day. It's well to know how, and a man learns things quickly you know."

Sam nodded.

"I don't know's I care 'bout it," he said indifferently, but Michael saw that he intended to come.

"Well, after the kids have gone, I won't keep them late you know, I wonder if you'd like to bring some of the fellows in to see this?"

Michael glanced around the room.

"I've some pictures of alligators I have a fancy they might like to see.

I'll bring them down if you say so."

"Sure!" said Sam trying to hide his pleasure.

"Then to-morrow morning I'm going to let that little woman that lives in the cellar under Aunt Sally's room, bring her sewing here and work all day.

She makes b.u.t.tonholes in vests. It's so dark in her room she can't see and she's almost ruined her eyes working by candle light."

"She'll mess it all up!" grumbled Sam; "an' she might let other folks in an' they'd pinch the picters an' the posy."

"No, she won't do that. I've talked to her about it. The room is to be hers for the day, and she's to keep it looking just as nice as it did when she found it. She'll only bring her work over, and go home for her dinner.

She's to keep the fire going so it will be warm at night, and she's to try it for a day and see how it goes. I think she'll keep her promise. We'll try her anyway."

Sam nodded as to a superior officer who nevertheless was awfully foolish.

"Mebbe!" he said.

"Sam, do you think it would be nice to bring Aunt Sally over now a few minutes?"

"No," said Sam shortly, "she's too dirty. She'd put her fingers on de wall first thing--"

"But Sam, I think she ought to come. And she ought to come first. She's the one that helped me find you--"

Sam looked sharply at Michael and wondered if he suspected how long that same Aunt Sally had frustrated his efforts to find his friends.

"We could tell her not to touch things, perhaps--"

"Wal, you lemme tell her. Here! I'll go fix her up an' bring her now." And Sam hurried out of the room.

Michael waited, and in a few minutes Sam returned with Aunt Sally. But it was a transformed Aunt Sally. Her face had been painfully scrubbed in a circle out as far as her ears, and her scraggy gray hair was twisted in a tight knot at the back of her neck. Her hands were several shades cleaner than Michael had ever seen them before, and her shoes were tied. She wore a small three-cornered plaid shawl over her shoulders and entered cautiously as if half afraid to come. Her hands were clasped high across her breast.

She had evidently been severely threatened against touching anything.

"The saints be praised!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed warmly after she had looked around in silence for a moment "To think I should ivver see the loikes uv this in de alley. It lukes loike a palace. Mikky, ye're a Nangel, me b'y! An'

a rale kurtin, to be shure! I ain't seen a kurtin in the alley since I c.u.mmed. An' will ye luke at the purty posy a blowin' as foine as ye plaze!

Me mither had the loike in her cottage window when I was a leetle gal! Aw, me pure auld mither!"

And suddenly to Michael's amazement, and the disgust of Sam, old Sal sat down on the one chair and wept aloud, with the tears streaming down her seamed and sin-scarred face.

Sam was for putting her out at once, but Michael soothed her with his cheery voice, making her tell of her old home in Ireland, and the kind mother whom she had loved, though it was long years since she had thought of her now.

With rare skill he drew from her the picture of the little Irish cottage with its thatched roof, its peat fire, and well-swept hearth; the table with the white cloth, the cat in the rocking chair, the curtain starched stiffly at the window, the bright posy on the deep window ledge; and, lastly, the little girl with clean pinafore and curly hair who kissed her mother every morning and trotted off to school. But that was before the father died, and the potatoes failed. The school days were soon over, and the little girl with her mother came to America. The mother died on the way over, and the child fell into evil hands. That was the story, and as it was told Michael's face grew tender and wistful. Would that he knew even so much of his own history as that!

But Sam stood by struck dumb and trying to fancy that this old woman had ever been the bright rosy child she told about. Sam was pa.s.sing through a sort of mental and moral earthquake.

"Perhaps some day we'll find another little house in the country where you can go and live," said Michael, "but meantime, suppose you go and see if you can't make your room look like this one. You scrub it all up and perhaps Sam and I will come over and put some pretty paper on the walls for you. Would you like that? How about it, Sam?"

"Sure!" said Sam rather grudgingly. He hadn't much faith in Aunt Sally and didn't see what Michael wanted with her anyway, but he was loyal to Michael.

Irish blessings mingled with tears and garnished with curses in the most extraordinary way were showered upon Michael and at last when he could stand no more, Sam said:

"Aw, cut it out, Sal. You go home an' scrub. Come on, now!" and he bundled her off in a hurry.

Late as it was, old Sal lit a fire, and by the light of a tallow candle got down on her stiff old knees and began to scrub. It seemed nothing short of a miracle that her room could ever look like that one she had just seen, but if scrubbing could do anything toward it, scrub she would. It was ten years since she had thought of scrubbing her room. She hadn't seemed to care; but to-night as she worked with her trembling old drink-shaken hands the memory of her childhood's home was before her vision, and she worked with all her might.

So the leaven of the little white room in the dark alley began to work.

"The Angel's quarters" it was named, and to be called to go within its charmed walls was an honor that all coveted as time went on. And that was how Michael began the salvation of his native alley.

CHAPTER XIV

Michael had been three months with the new law firm and was beginning to get accustomed to the violent contrast between the day spent in the atmosphere of low-voiced, quiet-stepping, earnest men who moved about in their environment of polished floors, oriental rugs, leather chairs and walls lined with leather-covered law books; and the evening down in the alley where his bare, little, white and gold room made the only tolerable spot in the neighborhood.

He was still occupying the fourth floor back at his original boarding house, and had seen Mr. Endicott briefly three or four times, but nothing had been said about his lodgings.

One morning he came to the desk set apart for him in the law office, and found a letter lying there for him.

"Son:" it said, "your board is paid at the address given below, up to the day you are twenty-one. If you don't get the benefit it will go to waste.

Mrs. Semple will make you quite comfortable and I desire you to move to her house at once. If you feel any obligation toward me this is the way to discharge it. Hope you are well, Tours, Delevan Endicott.'"