Without a Home Part 20

"Vun's honly ter come to Hameriker ter be a lady," chuckled Mrs.

Wheaton under her breath.

"We won't wake your sister," said one of the girls. "She's tired, and no wonder. We haven't treated her right at the store, but we wasn't to blame, for we didn't know her at all. Please tell her that we'll give her a different reception to-morrow," and after another season of whispering in the hall they departed, leaving the simple offerings gleaned from their poverty.

Mr. Jocelyn and the physician soon appeared, and after a brief examination the latter called Mr. Jocelyn aside and said, "Her pulse indicates that she may die at any hour. There is no use in trying to do anything, for the end has come. It has probably been hastened by lack of proper food, but it's too late now to give much, for there is no power of a.s.similation."

"You had better tell the poor girl the truth, then," said Mr.

Jocelyn.

Clara was called, and heard the verdict with a short, convulsive sob, then was her weary, quiet self again, "I feared it was so,"

was all she said. She now became aware that Mildred stood beside her with an encircling and sustaining arm. "Don't," she whispered; "don't be too kind or I'll break down utterly, and I don't want to before mother. She don't know--she never will believe she can die, and I don't want her to know. I'll have time enough to cry after she's gone."

"I feel I must stay vith yer to-night," warm-hearted Mrs. Wheaton began; "and if Miss Jocelyn vill look hafter my children I vill."

"No, Mrs. Wheaton," said Mildred decidedly, "I'm going to stay.

You ought to be with your children. Don't tell Belle, papa, and take the poor child home. Clara and I can now do all that can be done. Please don't say anything against it, for I know I'm right,"

she pleaded earnestly in answer to her father's look of remonstrance.

"Very well, then, I'll return and stay with you," he said.

The physician's eyes dwelt on Mildred's pale face in strong admiration as he gave her a few directions. "That's right, Millie, make her well for mercy's sake or I'll have the horrors," Belle whispered as she kissed her sister good-night.

Soon Clara and Mildred were alone watching the gasping, fitful sleeper. "After all that's been done--for me--to-night I'll--surely get well," she had murmured, and she closed her eyes without an apparent doubt of recovery.

Mildred furtively expiorea the now dimly lighted room. "Merciful Heaven," she sighed, "shall we ever come to this?" Clara's eyes were fixed on her mother's face with pathetic intensity, watching the glimmer of that mysterious thing we call life, that flickered more and more faintly. The difference between the wasted form, with its feeble animation, and what it must soon become would seem slight, but to the daughter it would be wide indeed. Love could still answer love, even though it was by a sign, a glance, a whisper only; but when to the poor girl it would be said of her mother, "She's gone," dim and fading as the presence had been, manifested chiefly by the burdens it imposed, its absence would bring the depths of desolation and sorrow.

Going the poor creature evidently was, and whither? The child she was leaving knew little of what was bright and pleasant in this world, and nothing of the next. "Miss Jocelyn," she began hesitatingly.

"Don't call me Miss Jocelyn; I'm a working-girl like yourself."

"Millie, then, as Belle said?"

"Yes."

"Millie, do you believe in a heaven?"

"Yes."

"What is it like?"

"I don't know very well. It's described to us under every grand and beautiful image the world affords. I think we'll find it what we best need to make us happy."

"Oh, then it would be rest for mother and me," the girl sighed wearily.

"It's surely rest," Mildred replied quickly, "for I remember a place in the Bible where it says, 'There remaineth a rest for the people of G.o.d.'"

"That's it," said Clara with some bitterness; "it's always the people of G.o.d. What remains for such as we, who have always been so busy fighting the wolf that we've thought little of G.o.d or church?"

"You've been no poorer, Clara, than Christ was all His life, and were He on earth now as He was once, I'd bring Him here to your room. He'd come, too, for He lived among just such people as we are, and never once refused to help them in their troubles or their sins."

"Once--once," cried Clara, with a gush of tears. "Where is He now?"

"Here with us. I know it, for we need Him. Our need is our strongest claim--one that He never refused. I have entreated Him in your behalf and your mother's, and do you ask Him also to put heaven at the end of this dark and often th.o.r.n.y path which most of us must tread in this world."

"Oh, Millie, Millie, I'm ignorant as a heathen. I did have a Bible, but I sold even that to buy wine to save mother's life. I might better have been thinking of saving her soul. She's too sick to be talked to now, but surely she ought to find at least a heaven of rest. You could never understand the life she's led. She hasn't lived--she's just been dragged through the world. She was born in a tenement-house. The little play she ever had was on sidewalks and in the gutters; she's scarcely ever seen the country. Almost before she knew how to play she began to work. When she was only seventeen a coa.r.s.e, bad man married her. How it ever came about I never could understand. I don't believe he knew anything more of love than a pig; for he lived like one and died like one, only he didn't die soon enough. It seems horrible that I should speak in this way of my father, and yet why should I not, when he was a horror to me ever since I can remember? Instead of taking care of mother, she had to take care of him. He'd take the pittance she had wrung from the washtub for drink, and then come back to repay her for it with blows and curses. I guess we must have lived in fifty tenements, for we were always behind with the rent and so had to move here and there, wherever we could get a place to put our heads in. Queer places some of them were, I can tell you--mere rat-holes. They served one purpose, though--they finished off the children. To all mother's miseries and endless work was added the anguish of child-bearing. They were miserable, puny, fretful little imps, that were poisoned off by the bad air in which we lived, and our bad food--that is, when we had any--after they had made all the trouble they could. I had the care of most of them, and my life became a burden before I was seven years old. I used to get so tired and faint that I was half glad when they died. At last, when mother became so used up that she really couldn't work any more, father did for us the one good act that I know anything about--he went off on a big spree that finished him. Mother and I have clung together ever since. We've often been hungry, but we've never been separated a night. What a long night is coming now, in which the doctor says we shall be parted!" and the poor girl crouched on the floor where her mother could not see her should she open her eyes, and sobbed convulsively.

Mildred did not try to comfort her with words, but only with caresses.

Christ proved centuries ago that the sympathetic touch is healing.

"Oh, Millie, I seem to feel the gentle stroke of your hand on my heart as well as on my brow, and it makes the pain easier to bear.

It makes me feel as if the coa.r.s.e, brutal life through which I've come did not separate me from one so good and different as you are; for though you may be poor, you are as much of a lady as any I've ever waited on at the store. And then to look at your father and to think of mine. I learned to hate men even when a child, for nearly all I ever knew either abused me or tempted me; but, Millie, you need not fear to touch me. I never sold myself, though I've been faint with hunger. I'm ignorant, and my heart's been full of bitterness, but I'm an honest girl."

"Poor, poor Clara!" said Mildred brokenly, "my heart aches for you as I think of all you've suffered."

The girl sprang up, seized the candle, and held it to Mildred's face. "My G.o.d," she whispered, "you are crying over my troubles."

Then she looked steadfastly into the tearful blue eyes and beautiful face of her new friend for a moment, and said, "Millie, I'll believe any faith YOU'LL teach me, for _I_ BELIEVE IN YOU."

CHAPTER XIX

BELLE JARS THE "SYSTEM"

Some orthodox divines would have given Clara a version of the story of life quite different from that which she received from Mildred.

Many divines, not orthodox, would have made the divergence much wider. The poor girl, so bruised in spirit and broken in heart, was not ready for a system of theology or for the doctrine of evolution; and if any one had begun to teach the inherent n.o.bleness and self-correcting power of humanity, she would have shown him the door, feeble as she was. But when Mildred a.s.sured her that if Christ were in the city, as He had been in Capernaum, He would climb the steep, dark stairs to her attic room and say to her, "Daughter, be of good comfort"--when she was told that Holy Writ declared that He was the "same yesterday, to-day, and forever"--her heart became tender and contrite, and therefore ready for a Presence that is still "seeking that which was lost."

Men may create philosophies, they may turn the Gospel itself into a cold abstraction, but the practical truth remains that the Christ who saves, comforts, and lifts the intolerable burden of sorrow or of sin, comes now as of old--comes as a living, loving, personal presence, human in sympathy, divine in power. As Mildred had said, our need and our consciousness of it form our strongest claim upon Him and the best preparation for Him.

Clara was proving the truth of her words. Life could never be to her again merely a bitter, sullen struggle for bread. A great hope was dawning, and though but a few rays yet quivered through the darkness, they were the earnest of a fuller light.

Before midnight Mr. Jocelyn joined the watchers, and seated himself un.o.btrusively in a dusky corner of the room. Clara crouched on the floor beside her mother, her head resting on the bed, and her hand clasping the thin fingers of the dying woman. She insisted on doing everything the poor creature required, which was but little, for it seemed that life would waver out almost imperceptibly. Mildred sat at the foot of the bed, where her father could see her pure profile in the gloom. To his opium-kindled imagination it seemed to have a radiance of its own, and to grow more and more luminous until, in its beauty and light, it became like the countenance of an accusing angel; then it began to recede until it appeared infinitely far away. "Millie," he called, in deep apprehension.

"What is it, papa?" she asked, springing to his side and putting her hand on his shoulder.

"Oh!" he said, shudderingly. "I had such a bad dream! You seemed fading away from me, till I could no longer see your face. It was so horribly real!"

She came and sat beside him, and held his hand in both of hers.

"That's right," he remarked; "now my dreams will be pleasant."

"You didn't seem to be asleep, papa," said the girl, in some surprise; "indeed, you seemed looking at me fixedly."

"Then I must have been asleep with my eyes open," he answered with a trace of embarra.s.sment.

"Poor papa, you are tired, and it's very, very kind of you to come and stay with me, but I wasn't afraid. Clara says it's a respectable house, and the people, though very poor, are quiet and well behaved.

Now that you have seen that we are safe, please go home and rest,"

and she coaxed until he complied, more from fear that he would betray himself than from any other motive.