Read Ebook: Les Contes; ou Les nouvelles récréations et joyeux devis by Des P Riers Bonaventure Nodier Charles Contributor Jacob P L Editor

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Ebook has 374 lines and 30837 words, and 8 pages

Presently there floated out upon the evening the familiar strains of "Old Black Joe" played by the hand of a master. It rose above the noise of the street; through the rattle and roar of a train passing overhead, through the calls of cabmen and hucksters, it made its way, and where it went a silence fell. It was as if every ear was bent to listen. The crossing was clear, but not a foot stirred at the sound of the policeman's whistle. As the last strain of the tune died away, and was succeeded by the appealing notes of "'Way Down upon the Suwanee River," every eye was turned upon the young player. She stood erect, with heightened color, and nodded brightly toward the old man. Silver coins began to drop in his cup. Twice she played the tune to the end. At the repetition of the refrain,

"Oh, darkies, how my heart grows weary, Far from the old folks at home,"

a man in a wide-brimmed hat who had been listening intently emptied his pockets into the old man's lap and disappeared in the crowd.

Traffic on street and avenue had ceased; not a wheel turned. From street cars and cabs heads were poked to find out the cause of the strange hold-up. The policeman stood spellbound, the whistle in his half-raised hand. In the hush that had fallen upon the world rose clear and sweet the hymn, "It came upon a midnight clear," and here and there hats came off in the crowd. Once more the young woman inclined her head toward the old fiddler, and coins and banknotes were poured into his cup and into his lap until they could hold no more. Her eyes were wet with laughing tears as she saw it. When she had played the verse out, she put the violin back into its owner's hands and with a low "Merry Christmas, friend!" was gone.

The policeman awoke and blew his whistle with a sudden blast, street cars and cabs started up, business resumed its sway, the throng passed on, leaving the old man with his hoard as he gazed with unbelieving eyes upon it. The world moved once more, roused from its brief dream. But the dream had left it something that was wanting before, something better than the old man had found. Its heart had been touched.

THE WARS OF THE RILEYS

It was the night before Washington's Birthday that Mr. Riley broke loose. They will speak of it long in the Windy City as "the night of the big storm," and with good right--it was "that suddint and fierce," just like Mr. Riley himself in his berserker moods. Mr. Riley was one of the enlivening problems of "the Bureau" in the region back of the stock-yards that kept it from being dulled by the routine of looking after the poor. He was more: he rose to the dignity of a "cause" at uncertain intervals when the cost of living, underpay and overtime, sickness and death, overpopulation, and all the other well-worn props of poverty retired to the wings and left the stage to Mr. Riley rampant, sufficient for the time and as informing as a whole course at the School of Philanthropy. In between, Mr. Riley was a capable meat-cutter earning good wages, who wouldn't have done a neighbor out of a cent that was his due, a robust citizen with more than his share of good looks, a devoted husband and a doting father, inseparable when at home from little Mike, whose baby trick of squaring off and offering to "bust his father's face" was the pride of the block.

"Will yez look at de kid? Ain't he a foine one?" shouted Mr. Riley, with peals of laughter; and the men smoking their pipes at the fence set the youngster on with admiring taunts. Mike was just turned three. His great stunt, when his father was not at hand, was to fall off everything in sight. Daily alarms brought from the relief party of hurrying mothers the unvarying cry, "Who's got hurted? Is it Mike?" But only Mike's feelings were hurt. Doleful howls, as he hove in sight, convoyed and comforted by Kate, aged seven, gave abundant proof that in wind and limb he was all that could be desired.

This was Mr. Riley in his hours of ease and domesticity. Mr. Riley rampant was a very different person. His arrival was invariably heralded by the smashing of the top of the kitchen stove, followed by the summary ejection of the once beloved family, helter-skelter, from the tenement. Three times the Bureau had been at the expense of having the stove top mended to keep the little Rileys from starving and freezing at once, and it was looking forward with concern to the meat-cutter's next encounter with his grievance. For there was a psychological reason for the manner of his outbreaks. The Rileys had once had a boarder, when Kate was a baby. He happened to be Mrs. Riley's brother, and he left, presuming on the kinship, without paying his board. As long as the meat-cutter was sober he remembered only the pleasant comradeship with his brother-in-law, and extended the hospitality of a neighborly fireside to his wife's relations. But no sooner had he taken a drink or two than the old grievance loomed large, and grew, as he went on, into a capital injury, to be avenged upon all and everything that in any way recalled the monstrous wrong of his life. That the cooking-stove should come first was natural, from his point of view. Upon it had been prepared the felonious meals, by it he had smoked the pipe of peace with the false friend. The crash in the kitchen had become the unvarying signal for the hasty exit of the rest of the family and the organizing of Kate into a scouting party to keep Mrs. Riley and the Bureau informed about the progress of events in the house where the meat-cutter raged alone.

Mrs. Riley was a loyal, if not always a patient, woman--who can blame her?--and accepted the situation as part of the marital compact, clearly comprehended, perhaps foreshadowed, in her vow to cling to her husband "for better for worse," and therefore not to be questioned. In times of peace she remembered not the days of storm and stress. Once indeed, when her best gingham had been sacrificed to the furies of war, she had considered whether the indefinite multiplication of the tribe of Riley were in the long run desirable, and had put it to the young woman from the Bureau, who was superintending the repair of the stove top, this way: "I am thinking, Miss Kane, if I will live with Mr. Riley any longer; would you?"--to the blushing confusion of that representative of the social order. However, that crisis passed. Mr. Riley took the pledge for the fourth or fifth time, and the next day appeared at the office, volunteering to assign himself and his earnings to the Bureau for the benefit of his wife and his creditors, reserving only enough for luncheons and tobacco, but nothing for drinks. The Bureau took an hour off to recover from the shock. If it had misgivings, it refused to listen to them. The world had turned a corner in the city by the lake and was on the home-stretch: Mr. Riley had reformed.

And, in truth, so it seemed. For once he was as good as his word. Christmas passed, and the manifold temptations of New Year, with Mike and his father still chums. Kate was improving the chance to profit by the school-learning so fatally interrupted in other days. Seventeen weeks went by with Mr. Riley's wages paid in at the Bureau every Saturday; the grocer smiled a fat welcome to the Riley children, the clock man and the spring man and the other installment collectors had ceased to be importunate. Mrs. Riley was having blissful visions of a new spring hat. Life back of the stock-yards was in a way of becoming ordinary and slow, when the fatal twenty-second of February hove in sight.

The night before, Mr. Riley, quitting work, met a friend at the gate, who, pitying his penniless state, informed him that "there was the price of a drink at the corner" for him, meaning at Quinlan's saloon. Now this was prodding the meat-cutter in a tender spot. He hated waste as much as his employers, who proverbially exploited all of the pig but the squeal. He didn't want the drink, but to have it waiting there with no one to come for it was wicked waste. It was his clear duty to save it, and he did. Among those drinking at the bar were some of his fellow-workmen, who stood treat. That called for a return, and Riley's credit was good. It was late before the party broke up; it was 3 A.M. when the meat-cutter burst into the tenement, roaring drunk, clamoring for the lives of brothers-in-law in general and that of his own in particular, and smashed the stove lids with crash after crash that aroused the slumbering household with a jerk.

For once it was caught napping. The long peace had bred a fatal sense of security. Kate was off scouting duty and Mrs. Riley had her hands full with Pat, Bridget, and the baby all having measles at once--too full to take warning from her husband's suspicious absence at bedtime. Roused in the middle of the night to the defense of her brood, she fought gallantly, but without hope. The battle was bloody and brief. Beaten and bruised, she gathered up her young and fled into the blinding storm to the house of a pitying neighbor, who took them in, measles and all, to snuggle up with his own while he mounted guard on the doorstep against any pursuing enemy. But the meat-cutter merely slammed the door upon his evicted family. He spent the rest of the night smashing the reminders of his brother-in-law's hated kin. Kate, reconnoitering at daybreak, brought back word that he was raging around the house with three other drunken men. The opening of the Bureau found her encamped on the doorstep with a demand that help come quickly--the worst had happened. "Has little Mike broken his neck?" they asked in breathless chorus. "Worse nor that," she panted; "do be comin', Miss Kane!"

"Oh, what is it? Are any of the children dead?"

"Who is he?" he asked, aside.

She tried evasion. "A friend of mine I met." She was sorry immediately.

"Is he that? Then he is no friend of mine. Oh, Miss Kane," he grieved, "why did you go for to get him? You know I'd have protected you!" This with an indignant scowl at his fellow-marauders, who were furtively edging toward the door. An inquest of the house showed the devastation of war. The kitchen was a wreck; the bedroom furniture smashed; the Morris chair in which the family of young Rileys had reveled in the measles lay in splinters. "It was so hot here last night," suggested the meat-cutter, gravely, "it must have fell to pieces." In the course of the inspection Mrs. Riley appeared, keeping close to the policeman, wrathful and fearful at once, with a wondrous black eye. Her husband regarded it with expert interest and ventured the reflection that it was a shame, and she the fine-looking woman that she was! At that Mrs. Riley edged away toward her husband and eyed the bluecoat with hostile looks.

Between crying and laughing, "the Bureau lady" dismissed the policeman and officiated at the reunion of the family on condition that the meat-cutter appear at the office and get the dressing down which he so richly deserved, which he did. But his dignity had been offended by the brass buttons, and he insisted upon its being administered by one of his own sex.

"I like her," he explained, indicating Miss Kane with reproving forefinger, "but she's gone back on me." Another grievance had been added to that of the unpaid board.

The peace that was made lasted just ten days, when Mr. Riley broke loose once more, and this time he was brought into court. The whole Bureau went along to tell the story of the compact and the manner of its breaking. Mr. Riley listened attentively to the recital of the black record.

"What have you to say to this?" scowled the Judge. The prisoner nodded.

"It is all true what the lady says, your Honor; she put it fair."

"I have a good mind to send you to Bridewell to break stone."

"Don't do that, Judge, and lose me job. I want to be wid me family." Mrs. Riley looked imploringly at the bench. His Honor's glance took in her face with the family group.

"Looks like it," he mused; but in the end he agreed to hand him over to the Bureau for one more trial, first administering the pledge in open court. Mr. Riley took the oath with great solemnity and entire good faith, kissed the Bible with a smack, reached up a large red fist for the Judge to shake, and the clerk. Then he pledged lasting friendship to the whole Bureau, including Miss Kane, whom he generously forgave the wrong she had done him, presented little Mike to the Court as "de foinest kid in de ward," took the gurgling baby from Mrs. Riley and gallantly gave her his arm. Leaning fondly upon it, a little lame and sore yet from the fight and with one eye in deep mourning, she turned a proudly hopeful look upon her husband, like a rainbow spanning a black departing cloud. And thus, with fleet-footed Kate in the van proclaiming the peace, and three prattling children clinging to their hands and clothes, they passed out into life to begin it anew. And bench and Bureau, with sudden emotion, hopelessly irrational and altogether hopeful and good, cheered them on their way.

LIFE'S BEST GIFT

Margaret Kelly is dead, and I need not scruple to call her by her own name. For it is certain that she left no kin to mourn her. She did all the mourning herself in her lifetime, and better than that when there was need. She nursed her impetuous Irish father and her gentle English mother in their old age--like the loving daughter she was--and, last of all, her only sister. When she had laid them away, side by side, she turned to face the world alone, undaunted, with all the fighting grit of her people from both sides of the Channel. If troubles came upon her for which she was no match, it can be truly said that she went down fighting. And who of her blood would ask for more?

What I have set down here is almost as much as any one ever heard about her people. She was an old woman when she came in a way of figuring in these pages, and all that lay behind her.

Of her own past this much was known: that she had once been an exceedingly prosperous designer of dresses, with a brown-stone house on Lexington Avenue, and some of the city's wealthiest women for her customers. Carriages with liveried footmen were not rarely seen at her door, and a small army of seamstresses worked out her plans. Her sister was her bookkeeper and the business head of the house. Fair as it seemed, it proved a house of cards, and with the sister's death it fell. One loss followed another. Margaret Kelly knew nothing of money or the ways of business. She lost the house, and with it her fine clients. For a while she made her stand in a flat with the most faithful of her sewing-women to help her. But that also had to go when more money went out than came in and nothing was left for the landlord. Younger rivals crowded her out. She was stamped "old-fashioned," and that was the end of it. Her last friend left her. Worry and perplexity made her ill, and while she was helpless in Bellevue Hospital, being in a ward with no "next friend" on the books, they sent her over to the Island with the paupers. Against this indignity her proud spirit arose and made the body forget its ills. She dragged herself down to the boat that took her back to the city, only to find that her last few belongings were gone, the little hall room she had occupied in a house in Twenty-ninth Street locked against her, and she, at seventy-five, on the street, penniless, and without one who cared for her in all the world.

Yes, there was one. A dressmaker who had known her in happier days saw from her window opposite Father McGlynn's church a white-haired woman seek shelter within the big storm-doors night after night in the bitter cold of midwinter, and recognized in her the once proud and prosperous Miss Kelly. Shocked and grieved, she went to the district office of the Charities with money to pay for shelter and begged them to take the old lady in charge and save her from want.

And what a splendid old lady she was! Famished with the hunger of weeks and months, but with pride undaunted, straight as an arrow under the burden of heavy years, she met the visitor with all the dignity of a queen. The deep lines of suffering in her face grew deeper as she heard her message. She drew the poor black alpaca about her with a gesture as if she were warding off a blow: "Why," she asked, "should any one intrude upon her to offer aid? She had not asked for anything, and was not--" she faltered a bit, but went on resolutely--"did not want anything."

"Not work?" asked her caller, gently. "Would you not like me to find some work for you?"

A sudden light came into the old eyes. "Work--yes, if she could get that--" And then the reserve of the long, lonely years broke down. She buried her face in her hands and wept.

They found her a place to sew in a house where she was made welcome as one of the family. For all that, she went reluctantly. All her stubborn pride went down before the kindness of these strangers. She was afraid that her hand had lost its cunning, that she could not do justice to what was asked of her, and she stipulated that she should receive only a dollar for her day's work, if she could earn that. When her employer gave her the dollar at the end of the day, the look that came into her face made that woman turn quickly to hide her tears.

The worst of Margaret Kelly's hardships were over. She had a roof over her head, and an "address." If she starved, that was her affair. And slowly she opened her heart to her new friends and gave them room there. I have a letter of that day from one of them that tells how they were getting on: "She has a little box of a room where she almost froze all winter. A window right over her bed and no heat. But she is a great old soldier and never whines. Occasionally she comes to see me, and I give her something to eat, but what she does between times God alone knows. When I give her a little change, she goes to the bake-shop, but I think otherwise goes without and pretends she is not hungry. A business man who knows her told her if she needed nourishment to let him know; she said she did not need anything. Her face looks starvation. When she was ill in the winter, I tried to get her into a hospital; but she would not go, and no wonder. If she had only a couple of dollars a week she could get along, as I could get her clothing. She wears black for her sister."

The couple of dollars were found and the hunger was banished with the homelessness. Margaret Kelly had two days' work every week, and in the feeling that she could support herself once more new life came to her. She was content.

So two years passed. In the second summer the old woman, now nearing eighty, was sent out in the country for a vacation of five or six weeks. She came back strong and happy; the rest and the peace had sunk into her soul. "Some of the tragedy has gone out of her face," her friend wrote to me. She was looking forward with courage to taking up her work again when what seemed an unusual opportunity came her way. A woman who knew her story was going abroad, leaving her home up near Riverside Drive in charge of a caretaker. She desired a companion for her, and offered the place to Miss Kelly. It was so much better a prospect than the cold and cheerless hall room that her friends advised her to accept, and Margaret Kelly moved into the luxurious stone house uptown, and once more was warmly and snugly housed for the winter with congenial company.

Man proposes and God disposes. Along in February came a deadly cold spell. The thermometer fell below zero. In the worst of it Miss Kelly's friend from the "office," happening that way, rang the bell to inquire how she was getting on. No one answered. She knocked at the basement door, but received no reply. Concluding that the two women were in an upper story out of hearing of the bell, she went away, and on her return later in the day tried again, with no better success. It was too cold for the people in the house to be out, and her suspicions were aroused. She went to the police station and returned with help. The door was forced and the house searched. In the kitchen they found the two old women sitting dead by the stove, one with her head upon the other's shoulder. The fire had long been out and their bodies were frozen. There was plenty of fuel in the house. Apparently they had shut off the draught to save coal and raised the lid of the stove, perhaps to enjoy the glow of the fire in the gloaming. The escaping gas had put them both to sleep before they knew their peril.

So the police and the coroner concluded. "Two friends," said the official report. Margaret Kelly had found more than food and shelter. Life at the last had given her its best gift, and her hungry old heart was filled.

DRIVEN FROM HOME

"Doctor, what shall I do? My father wants me to tend bar on Sunday. I am doing it nights, but Sunday--I don't want to. What shall I do?"

The pastor of Olivet Church looked kindly at the lad who stood before him, cap in hand. The last of the Sunday-school had trailed out; the boy had waited for this opportunity. Dr. Schauffler knew and liked him as one of his bright boys. He knew, too, his home--the sordid, hard-fisted German father and his patient, long-suffering mother.

"What do you think yourself, Karl?"

"I don't want to, Doctor. I know it is wrong."

"All right then, don't."

"But he will kick me out and never take me back. He told me so, and he'll do it."

"Well--"

The boy's face flushed. At fourteen, to decide between home and duty is not easy. And there was his mother. Knowing him, the Doctor let him fight it out alone. Presently he squared his shoulders as one who has made his choice.

"I can't help it if he does," he said; "it isn't right to ask me."

"If he does, come straight here. Good-by!"

Sunday night the door-bell of the pastor's study rang sharply. The Doctor laid down his book and answered it himself. On the threshold stood Karl with a small bundle done up in a bandana handkerchief.

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