 | THE TENTH OF JANUARY. Men, women, and ghosts |  |
2. THE TENTH OF JANUARY.
The city of Lawrence is unique in its way.
For simooms that scorch you and tempests that
freeze; for sand-heaps and sand-hillocks and sandroads;
for men digging sand, for women shaking off
sand, for minute boys crawling in sand; for sand in
the church-slips and the gingerbread-windows, for sand
in your eyes, your nose, your mouth, down your neck,
up your sleeves, under your chignon, down your
throat; for unexpected corners where tornadoes lie in
wait; for “bleak, uncomforted” sidewalks, where
they chase you, dog you, confront you, strangle you,
twist you, blind you, turn your umbrella wrong side
out; for “dimmykhrats” and bad ice-cream; for unutterable
circus-bills and religious tea-parties; for uncleared
ruins, and mills that spring up in a night; for
jaded faces and busy feet; for an air of youth and
incompleteness at which you laugh, and a consciousness
of growth and greatness which you respect, —
it —
I believe, when I commenced that sentence, I intended
to say that it would be difficult to find Lawrence's
equal.
Of the twenty-five thousand souls who inhabit that
city, ten thousand are operatives in the factories. Of
these ten thousand two thirds are girls.
These pages are written as one sets a bit of marble
to mark a mound. I linger over them as we linger
beside the grave of one who sleeps well; half sadly,
half gladly, — more gladly than sadly, — but hushed.
The time to see Lawrence is when the mills open
or close. So languidly the dull-colored, inexpectant
crowd wind in! So briskly they come bounding out!
Factory faces have a look of their own, — not only
their common dinginess, and a general air of being in
a hurry to find the wash-bowl, but an appearance of
restlessness, — often of envious restlessness, not habitual
in most departments of “healthy labor.” Watch
them closely: you can read their histories at a venture.
A widow this, in the dusty black, with she can scarcely
remember how many mouths to feed at home.
Worse than widowed that one: she has put her baby
out to board, — and humane people know what that
means, — to keep the little thing beyond its besotted
father's reach. There is a group who have “just
come over.” A child's face here, old before its time.
That girl — she climbs five flights of stairs twice a
day — will climb no more stairs for herself or another
by the time the clover-leaves are green. “The best
thing about one's grave is that it will be level,” she
was heard once to say. Somebody muses a little
here, — she is to be married this winter. There is a
you; there may be more love than guilt in them,
more despair than either.
Had you stood in some unobserved corner of Essex
Street, at four o'clock one Saturday afternoon towards
the last of November, 1859, watching the impatient
stream pour out of the Pemberton Mill, eager with a
saddening eagerness for its few holiday hours, you
would have observed one girl who did not bound.
She was slightly built, and undersized; her neck
and shoulders were closely muffled, though the day
was mild; she wore a faded scarlet hood which
heightened the pallor of what must at best have been
a pallid face. It was a sickly face, shaded off with
purple shadows, but with a certain wiry nervous
strength about the muscles of the mouth and chin: it
would have been a womanly, pleasant mouth, had it
not been crossed by a white scar, which attracted more
of one's attention than either the womanliness or
pleasantness. Her eyes had light long lashes, and
shone through them steadily.
You would have noticed as well, had you been used
to analyzing crowds, another face, — the two were
side by side, — dimpled with pink and white flushes,
and framed with bright black hair. One would laugh
at this girl and love her, scold her and pity her, caress
her and pray for her, — then forget her perhaps.
The girls from behind called after her: “Del! Del
Ivory! look over there!”
Pretty Del turned her head. She had just flung a
smile at a young clerk who was petting his mustache
in a shop-window, and the smile lingered.
One of the factory boys was walking alone across
the Common in his factory clothes.
“Why, there 's Dick! Sene, do you see?”
Sene's scarred mouth moved slightly, but she made
no reply. She had seen him five minutes ago.
One never knows exactly whether to laugh or cry
over them, catching their chatter as they file past the
show-windows of the long, showy street.
“Look a' that pink silk with the figures on it!”
“I 've seen them as is betther nor that in the
ould counthree. — Patsy Malorrn, let alon' hangin'
onto the shawl of me!”
“That 's Mary Foster getting out of that carriage
with the two white horses, — she that lives in the
brown house with the cupilo.”
“Look at her dress trailin' after her. I 'd like my
dresses trailin' after me.”
“Well, may they be good, — these rich folks!”
“That 's so. I 'd be good if I was rich; would n't
you, Moll?”
“You 'd keep growing wilder than ever, if you
went to hell, Meg Match: yes you would, because
my teacher said so.”
“So, then, he would n't marry her, after all; and
she —”
“Going to the circus to-night, Bess?”
“I can't help crying, Jenny. You don't know how
my head aches! It aches, and it aches, and it seems
as if it would never stop aching. I wish — I wish I
was dead, Jenny!”
They separated at last, going each her own way, —
pretty Del Ivory to her boarding-place by the canal,
her companion walking home alone.
This girl, Asenath Martyn, when left to herself, fell
into a contented dream not common to girls who have
reached her age, — especially girls who have seen the
phases of life which she had seen. Yet few of the
faces in the streets that led her home were more
gravely lined. She puzzled one at the first glance,
and at the second. An artist, meeting her musing on
a canal-bridge one day, went home and painted a May-flower
budding in February.
It was a damp, unwholesome place, the street in
which she lived, cut short by a broken fence, a sudden
steep, and the water; filled with children, — they ran
from the gutters after her, as she passed, — and filled
to the brim; it tipped now and then, like an over-full
soup-plate, and spilled out two or three through the
break in the fence.
Down in the corner, sharp upon the water, the eastwinds
broke about a little yellow house, where no
children played; an old man's face watched at a
window, and a nasturtium-vine crawled in the garden.
The broken panes of glass about the place were well
mended, and a clever little gate, extemporized from a
an old man's work.
Asenath went in with expectant eyes; they took in
the room at a glance, and fell.
“Dick has n't come, father?”
“Come and gone child; did n't want any supper,
he said. Your 're an hour before time, Senath.”
“Yes. Did n't want any supper, you say? I don't
see why not.”
“No more do I, but it 's none of our concern as I
knows on; very like the pickles hurt him for dinner;
Dick never had an o'er-strong stomach, as you might
say. But you don't tell me how it m' happen you 're
let out at four o'clock, Senath,” half complaining.
“O, something broke in the machinery, father;
you know you would n't understand if I told you
what.”
He looked up from his bench, — he cobbled shoes
there in the corner on his strongest days, — and after
her as she turned quickly away and up stairs to change
her dress. She was never exactly cross with her
father; but her words rang impatiently sometimes.
She came down presently, transformed, as only
factory-girls are transformed, by the simple little toilet
she had been making; her thin, soft hair knotted
smoothly, the tips of her fingers rosy from the water,
her pale neck well toned by her gray stuff dress and
cape; — Asenath always wore a cape: there was one
of crimson flannel, with a hood, that she had meant
home from the mill; she was apt to wear it on Saturdays
and Sundays; Dick had more time at home.
Going up stairs to-night, she had thrown it away into
a drawer, and shut the drawer with a snap; then
opened it softly, and cried a little; but she had not
taken it out.
As she moved silently about the room, setting the
supper-table for two, crossing and recrossing the broad
belt of sunlight that fell upon the floor, it was easy to
read the sad story of the little hooded capes.
They might have been graceful shoulders. The
hand which had scarred her face had rounded and
bent them, — her own mother's hand.
Of a bottle always on the shelf; of brutal scowls
where smiles should be; of days when she wandered
dinnerless and supperless in the streets through loathing
of her home; of nights when she sat out in the
snow-drifts through terror of her home; of a broken
jug one day, a blow, a fall, then numbness, and the
silence of the grave, — she had her distant memories;
of waking on a sunny afternoon, in bed, with a little
cracked glass upon the opposite wall; of creeping out
and up to it in her night-dress; of the ghastly twisted
thing that looked back at her. Through the open
window she heard the children laughing and leaping
in the sweet summer air. She crawled into bed and
shut her eyes. She remembered stealing out at last,
after many days, to the grocery round the corner for
the children, — the very children who could leap and
laugh.
One day she and little Del Ivory made mud-houses
after school.
“I 'm going to have a house of my own, when I 'm
grown up,” said pretty Del; “I shall have a red
carpet and some curtains; my husband will buy me a
piano.”
“So will mine, I guess,” said Sene, simply.
“Yours!” Del shook back her curls; “who do
you suppose would ever marry you?”
One night there was a knocking at the door, and a
hideous, sodden thing borne in upon a plank. The
crowded street, tired of tipping out little children, had
tipped her mother staggering through the broken
fence. At the funeral she heard some one say, “How
glad Sene must be!”
Since that, life had meant three things, — her father,
the mills, and Richard Cross.
“You 're a bit put out that the young fellow did n't
stay to supper, — eh, Senath?” the old man said,
laying down his boot.
“Put out! Why should I be? His time is his
own. It 's likely to be the Union that took him out,
— such a fine day for the Union! I 'm sure I never
expected him to go to walk with me every Saturday
afternoon. I 'm not a fool to tie him up to the notions
of a crippled girl. Supper is ready, father.”
But her voice rasped bitterly. Life's pleasures were
so new and late and important to her, poor thing! It
went hard to miss the least of them. Very happy
people will not understand exactly how hard.
Old Martyn took off his leather apron with a
troubled face, and, as he passed his daughter, gently
laid his tremulous, stained hand upon her head. He
felt her least uneasiness, it would seem, as a chameleon
feels a cloud upon the sun.
She turned her face softly and kissed him. But she
did not smile.
She had planned a little for this holiday supper;
saving three mellow-cheeked Louise Bonnes — expensive
pears just then — to add to their bread and molasses.
She brought them out from the closet, and
watched her father eat them.
“Going out again Senath?” he asked, seeing that
she went for her hat and shawl, “and not a mouthful
have you eaten! Find your old father dull company
hey? Well, well!”
She said something about needing the air; the mill
was hot; she should soon be back; she spoke tenderly
and she spoke truly, but she went out into the windy
sunset with her little trouble, and forgot him. The
old man, left alone, sat for a while with his head sunk
upon his breast. She was all he had in the world, —
this one little crippled girl that the world had dealt
hardly with. She loved him; but he was not, probably
would never be, to her exactly what she was to
understood it, as to-night.
Asenath, with the purpose only of avoiding Dick,
and of finding a still spot where she might think her
thoughts undisturbed, wandered away over the eastern
bridge, and down to the river's brink. It was a moody
place; such a one as only apathetic or healthy natures
(I wonder if that is tautology!) can healthfully yield
to. The bank sloped steeply; a fringe of stunted
aspens and willows sprang from the frozen sand: it
was a sickening, airless place in summer, — it was
damp and desolate now. There was a sluggish wash
of water under foot, and a stretch of dreary flats behind.
Belated locomotives shrieked to each other
across the river, and the wind bore down the current
the roar and rage of the dam. Shadows were beginning
to skulk under the huge brown bridge. The
silent mills stared up and down and over the streams
with a blank, unvarying stare. An oriflamme of scarlet
burned in the west, flickered dully in the dirty, curdling
water, flared against the windows of the Pemberton,
which quivered and dripped, Asenath thought, as
if with blood.
She sat down on a gray stone, wrapped in her gray
shawl, curtained about by the aspens from the eye of
passers on the bridge. She had a fancy for this place
when things went ill with her. She had always
borne her troubles alone, but she must be alone to
bear them.
She knew very well that she was tired and nervous
that afternoon, and that, if she could reason quietly
about this little neglect of Dick's, it would cease to
annoy her. Indeed, why should she be annoyed?
Had he not done everything for her, been everything
to her, for two long, sweet years? She dropped her
head with a shy smile. She was never tired of living
over these two years. She took positive pleasure in
recalling the wretchedness in which they found her,
for the sake of their dear relief. Many a time, sitting
with her happy face hidden in his arms, she had
laughed softly, to remember the day on which he came
to her. It was at twilight, and she was tired. Her
reels had troubled her all the afternoon; the overseer
was cross; the day was hot and long. Somebody on
the way home had said in passing her: “Look at
that girl! I 'd kill myself if I looked like that”: it
was in a whisper, but she heard it. All life looked
hot and long; the reels would always be out of order;
the overseer would never be kind. Her temples
would always throb, and her back would ache. People
would always say, “Look at that girl!”
“Can you direct me to —” She looked up; she
had been sitting on the door-step with her face in her
hands. Dick stood there with his cap off. He forgot
that he was to inquire the way to Newbury Street,
when he saw the tears on her shrunken cheeks. Dick
could never bear to see a woman suffer.
“I would n't cry,” he said simply, sitting down
recipe for keeping her at it. What could the child
do, but sob as if her heart would break? Of course
he had the whole story in ten minutes, she his in another
ten. It was common and short enough: — a
“Down-East” boy, fresh from his father's farm,
hunting for work and board, — a bit homesick here in
the strange, unhomelike city, it might be, and glad of
some one to say so to.
What more natural than that, when her father came
out and was pleased with the lad, there should be no
more talk of Newbury Street; that the little yellow
house should become his home; that he should swing
the fantastic gate, and plant the nasturtiums; that his
life should grow to be one with hers and the old man's,
his future and theirs unite unconsciously?
She remembered — it was not exactly pleasant,
somehow, to remember it to-night — just the look of
his face when they came into the house that summer
evening, and he for the first time saw what she was,
her cape having fallen off, in the full lamplight. His
kindly blue eyes widened with shocked surprise, and
fell; when he raised them, a pity like a mother's had
crept into them; it broadened and brightened as time
slid by, but it never left them.
So you see, after that, life unfolded in a burst of
little surprises for Asenath. If she came home very
tired, some one said, “I am sorry.” If she wore a
pink ribbon, she heard a whisper, “It suits you.” If
“I did not know the world was like this!” cried
the girl.
After a time there came a night that he chanced to
be out late, — they had planned an arithmetic lesson
together, which he had forgotten, — and she sat grieving
by the kitchen fire.
“You missed me so much then?” he said regretfully,
standing with his hand upon her chair. She
was trying to shell some corn; she dropped the pan,
and the yellow kernels rolled away on the floor.
“What should I have if I did n't have you?” she
said, and caught her breath.
The young man paced to the window and back
again. The firelight touched her shoulders, and the
sad, white scar.
“You shall have me always, Asenath,” he made
answer. He took her face within his hands and kissed
it; and so they shelled the corn together, and nothing
more was said about it.
He had spoken this last spring of their marriage;
but the girl, like all girls, was shyly silent, and he had
not urged it.
Asenath started from her pleasant dreaming just as
the oriflamme was furling into gray, suddenly conscious
that she was not alone. Below her, quite on
the brink of the water, a girl was sitting, — a girl
with a bright plaid shawl, and a nodding red feather in
a profile cut in pink-and-white.
“Del is too pretty to be here alone so late,” thought
Asenath, smiling tenderly. Good-natured Del was
kind to her in a certain way, and she rather loved the
girl. She rose to speak to her, but concluded, on a
second glance through the aspens, that Miss Ivory was
quite able to take care of herself.
Del was sitting on an old log that jutted into the
stream, dabbling in the water with the tips of her
feet. (Had she lived on The Avenue she could not
have been more particular about her shoemaker.)
Some one — it was too dark to see distinctly — stood
beside her, his eyes upon her face. Asenath could
hear nothing, but she needed to hear nothing to
know how the young fellow's eyes drank in the coquettish
picture. Besides, it was an old story. Del
counted her rejected lovers by the score.
“It 's no wonder,” she thought in her honest way,
standing still to watch them with a sense of puzzled
pleasure much like that with which she watched the
print-windows, — “it 's no wonder they love her. I 'd
love her if I was a man: so pretty! so pretty! She 's
just good for nothing, Del is; — would let the kitchen
fire go out, and would n't mend the baby's aprons;
but I 'd love her all the same; marry her, probably,
and be sorry all my life.”
Pretty Del! Poor Del! Asenath wondered whether
she wished that she were like her; she could not quite
like that; it would be more pleasant to be watched as
Del was watched just now: it struck her suddenly
that Dick had never looked like this at her.
The hum of their voices ceased while she stood
there with her eyes upon them; Del turned her head
away with a sudden movement, and the young man
left her, apparently without bow or farewell, sprang
up the bank at a bound, and crushed the undergrowth
with quick, uneasy strides.
Asenath, with some vague idea that it would not
be honorable to see his face, — poor fellow! — shrank
back into the aspens and the shadow.
He towered tall in the twilight as he passed her,
and a dull, umber gleam, the last of the sunset, struck
him from the west.
Struck it out into her sight, — the haggard struggling
face, — Richard Cross's face.
Of course you knew it from the beginning, but remember
that the girl did not. She might have known
it, perhaps, but she had not.
Asenath stood up, sat down again.
She had a distinct consciousness, for the moment, of
seeing herself crouched down there under the aspens
and the shadow, a humpbacked white creature, with distorted
face and wide eyes. She remembered a picture
she had somewhere seen of a little chattering goblin
in a graveyard, and was struck with the resemblance.
Distinctly, too, she heard herself saying, with a laugh,
known.”
Then the blood came through her heart with a hot
rush, and she saw Del on the log, smoothing the red
feather of her hat. She heard a man's step, too, that
rang over the bridge, passed the toll-house, grew faint,
grew fainter, died in the sand by the Everett Mill.
Richard's face! Richard's face, looking — God help
her! — as it had never looked at her; struggling —
God pity him! — as it had never struggled for her.
She shut her hands into each other, and sat still a
little while. A faint hope came to her then perhaps,
after all; her face lightened grayly, and she crept
down the bank to Del.
“I won't be a fool,” she said, “I 'll make sure, —
I 'll make as sure as death.”
“Well, where did you drop down from, Sene?”
said Del, with a guilty start.
“From over the bridge, to be sure. Did you think
I swam, or flew, or blew?”
“You came on me so sudden!” said Del, petulantly;
“you nearly frightened the wits out of me. You
did n't meet anybody on the bridge?” with a quick
look.
“Let me see.” Asenath considered gravely.
“There was one small boy making faces, and two
— no, three — dogs, I believe; that was all.”
“Oh!”
Del looked relieved, but fell silent.
“You 're sober, Del. Been sending off a lover, as
usual?”
“I don't know anything about its being usual,”
answered Del, in an aggrieved, coquettish way, “but
there 's been somebody here that liked me well
enough.”
“You like him, maybe? It 's time you liked somebody,
Del.”
Del curled the red feather about her fingers, and
put her hat on over her eyes, then a little cry broke
from her, half sob, half anger.
“I might, perhaps, — I don't know. He 's good.
I think he 'd let me have a parlor and a door-bell.
But he 's going to marry somebody else, you see. I
sha' n't tell you his name, so you need n't ask.”
Asenath looked out straight upon the water. A
dead leaf that had been caught in an eddy attracted
her attention; it tossed about for a minute, then a
tiny whirlpool sucked it down.
“I was n't going to ask; it 's nothing to me, of
course. He does n't care for her then, — this other
girl?”
“Not so much as he does for me. He did n't mean
to tell me, but he said that I — that I looked so —
pretty, it came right out. But there! I must n't tell
you any more.”
Del began to be frightened; she looked up sideways
at Asenath's quiet face. “I won't say another word,”
and so chattered on, growing a little cross; Asenath
humpbacked fright!
“He 'll never break his engagement, not even for
me; he 's sorry for her, and all that. I think it 's too
bad. He 's handsome. He makes me feel like saying
my prayers, too, he 's so good! Besides, I want to be
married. I hate the mill. I hate to work. I 'd
rather be taken care of, — a sight rather. I feel bad
enough about it to cry.”
Two tears rolled over her cheeks, and fell on the
soft plaid shawl. Del wiped them away carefully
with her rounded fingers.
Asenath turned and looked at this Del Ivory long
and steadily through the dusk. The pretty, shallow
thing! The worthless, bewildering thing!
A fierce contempt for her pink-and-white, and tears
and eyelashes and attitudes, came upon her; then a
sudden sickening jealousy that turned her faint where
she sat.
What did God mean, — Asenath believed in God,
having so little else to believe in, — what did he mean,
when he had blessed the girl all her happy life with
such wealth of beauty, by filling her careless hands
with this one best, last gift? Why, the child could
not hold such golden love! She would throw it away
by and by. What a waste it was!
Not that she had these words for her thought, but
she had the thought distinctly through her dizzy pain.
“So there 's nothing to do about it,” said Del, pinning
each other, — unless anybody should die, or anything;
and of course I 'm not wicked enough to think of that.
— Sene! Sene! what are you doing?”
Sene had risen slowly, stood upon the log, caught
at an aspen-top, and swung out with it its whole length
above the water. The slight tree writhed and quivered
about the roots. Sene looked down and moved
her marred lips without sound.
Del screamed and wrung her hands. It was an
ugly sight!
“O don't, Sene, don't! You 'll drown yourself!
you will be drowned! you will be — O, what a
start you gave me! What were you doing, Senath
Martyn?”
Sene swung slowly back, and sat down.
“Amusing myself a little; — well, unless somebody
died, you said? But I believe I won't talk any more
to-night. My head aches. Go home, Del.”
Del muttered a weak protest at leaving her there
alone; but, with her bright face clouded and uncomfortable,
went.
Asenath turned her head to listen for the last rustle
of her dress, then folded her arms, and, with her eyes
upon the sluggish current, sat still.
An hour and a half later, an Andover farmer, driving
home across the bridge, observed on the river's
edge — a shadow cut within a shadow — the outline
of a woman's figure, sitting perfectly still with folded
quite still.
“Hallo there!” he called; “you 'll fall in if you
don't look out!” for the wind was strong, and it blew
against the figure; but it did not move nor make reply.
The Andover farmer looked over his shoulder
with the sudden recollection of a ghost-story which he
had charged his grandchildren not to believe last week,
cracked his whip, and rumbled on.
Asenath began to understand by and by that she
was cold, so climbed the bank, made her way over the
windy flats, the railroad, and the western bridge confusedly
with an idea of going home. She turned aside
by the toll-gate. The keeper came out to see what
she was doing, but she kept out of his sight behind
the great willow and his little blue house, — the blue
house with the green blinds and red moulding. The
dam thundered that night, the wind and the water
being high. She made her way up above it, and
looked in. She had never seen it so black and smooth
there. As she listened to the roar, she remembered
something that she had read — was it in the Bible or
the Ledger? — about seven thunders uttering their
voices.
“He 's sorry for her, and all that,” they said.
A dead bough shot down the current while she
stood there, went over and down, and out of sight,
throwing up its little branches like helpless hands.
It fell in with a thought of Asenath's, perhaps; at
home.
Over the bridge, and the canal, and the lighted
streets, the falls called after her: “He 's sorry for
her, and all that.” The curtain was drawn aside
when she came home, and she saw her father through
the window, sitting alone, with his gray head bent.
It occurred to her that she had often left him alone,
— poor old father! It occurred to her, also, that she
understood now what it was to be alone. Had she
forgotten him in these two comforted, companioned
years?
She came in weakly, and looked about.
“Dick 's in, and gone to bed,” said the old man,
answering her look. “You 're tired, Senath.”
“I am tired, father.”
She sunk upon the floor, — the heat of the room
made her a little faint, — and laid her head upon his
knee; oddly enough, she noticed that the patch on it
had given way, — wondered how many days it had
been so, — whether he had felt ragged and neglected
while she was busy about that blue neck-tie for Dick.
She put her hand up and smoothed the corners of the
rent.
“You shall be mended up to-morrow, poor father!”
He smiled, pleased like a child to be remembered.
She looked up at him, — at his gray hair and shrivelled
face, at his blackened hands and bent shoulders,
and dusty, ill-kept coat. What would it be like, if the
days brought her nothing but him?
“Something 's the matter with my little gal? Tell
father, can't ye?”
Her face flushed hot, as if she had done him wrong.
She crept up into his arms, and put her hands behind
his rough old neck.
“Would you kiss me, father? You don't think
I 'm too ugly to kiss, maybe, — you?”
She felt better after that. She had not gone to
sleep now for many a night unkissed; it had seemed
hard at first.
When she had gone half-way up stairs, Dick came
to the door of his room on the first floor, and called
her. He held the little kerosene lamp over his head;
his face was grave and pale.
“I have n't said good night, Sene.”
She made no reply.
“Asenath, good night.”
She stayed her steps upon the stairs without turning
her head. Her father had kissed her to-night.
Was not that enough?
“Why, Sene, what 's the matter with you?”
Dick mounted the stairs, and touched his lips to her
forehead with a gently compassionate smile.
She fled from him with a cry like the cry of a suffocated
creature, shut her door, and locked it with a
ringing clang.
“She 's walked too far, and got a little nervous,”
said Dick, screwing up his lamp; “poor thing!”
Then he went into his room to look at Del's photograph
burn it up.
Asenath, when she had locked her door, put her
lamp before the looking-glass and tore off her gray
cape; tore it off so savagely that the button snapped
and rolled away, — two little crystal semicircles like
tears upon the floor.
There was no collar about the neck of her dress,
and this heightened the plainness and the pallor of her
face. She shrank instinctively at the first sight of
herself, and opened the drawer where the crimson
cape was folded, but shut it resolutely.
“I 'll see the worst of it,” she said with pinched
lips. She turned herself about and about before the
glass, letting the cruel light gloat over her shoulders,
letting the sickly shadows grow purple on her face.
Then she put her elbows on the table and her chin
into her hands, and so, for a motionless half-hour,
studied the unrounded, uncolored, unlightened face
that stared back at her; her eyes darkening at its eyes,
her hair touching its hair, her breath dimming the outline
of its repulsive mouth.
By and by she dropped her head into her hands.
The poor, mistaken face! She felt as if she would
like to blot it out of the world, as her tears used to
blot out the wrong sums upon her slate. It had been
so happy! But he was sorry for it, and all that. Why
did a good God make such faces?
She slipped upon her knees, bewildered.
“He can't mean any harm nohow,” she said, speaking
fast, and knelt there and said it over till she felt
sure of it.
Then she thought of Del once more, — of her colors
and sinuous springs, and little cries and chatter.
After a time she found that she was growing faint,
and so stole down into the kitchen for some food.
She stayed a minute to warm her feet. The fire was
red and the clock was ticking. It seemed to her
home-like and comfortable, and she seemed to herself
very homeless and lonely; so she sat down on the
floor, with her head in a chair, and cried as hard as
she ought to have done four hours ago.
She climbed into bed about one o'clock, having
decided, in a dull way, to give Dick up to-morrow.
But when to-morrow came he was up with a bright
face, and built the kitchen fire for her, and brought in
all the water, and helped her fry the potatoes, and
whistled a little about the house, and worried at her
paleness, and so she said nothing about it.
“I 'll wait till night,” she planned, making ready
for the mill.
“O, I can't!” she cried at night. So other mornings
came, and other nights.
I am quite aware that, according to all romantic
precedents, this conduct was preposterous in Asenath.
Floracita, in the novel, never so far forgets the whole
duty of a heroine as to struggle, waver, doubt, delay.
It is proud and proper to free the young fellow;
silence” — till she marries another man; and (having
had a convenient opportunity to refuse the original
lover) overwhelms the reflective reader with a sense
of poetic justice and the eternal fitness of things.
But I am not writing a novel, and, as the biographer
of this simple factory girl, am offered few advantages.
Asenath was no heroine, you see. Such heroic elements
as were in her — none could tell exactly what
they were, or whether there were any: she was one
of those people in whom it is easy to be quite mistaken;
— her life had not been one to develop. She
might have a certain pride of her own, under given
circumstances; but plants grown in a cellar will turn
to the sun at any cost; how could she go back into
her dark?
As for the other man to marry, he was out of the
question. Then, none love with the tenacity of the
unhappy; no life is so lavish of itself as the denied
life: to him that hath not shall be given, — and Asenath
loved this Richard Cross.
It might be altogether the grand and suitable thing
to say to him, “I will not be your wife.” It might be
that she would thus regain a strong shade of lost self-respect.
It might be that she would make him happy,
and give pleasure to Del. It might be that the two
young people would be her “friends,” and love her in
a way.
But all this meant that Dick must go out of her life.
fires, and pump the water, and mend the windows
alone. In dreary fact, he would not listen when she
sung; would not say, “You are tired, Sene”; would
never kiss away an undried tear. There would be
nobody to notice the crimson cape, nobody to make
blue neck-ties for; none for whom to save the Bonnes
de Jersey, or to take sweet, tired steps, or make dear,
dreamy plans. To be sure, there was her father; but
fathers do not count for much in a time like this on
which Sene had fallen.
That Del Ivy was — Del Ivory, added intricacies
to the question. It was a very unpoetic but undoubted
fact that Asenath could in no way so insure Dick's
unhappiness as to pave the way to his marriage with
the woman whom he loved. There would be a few
merry months, then slow worry and disappointment;
pretty Del accepted at last, not as the crown of his
young life, but as its silent burden and misery. Poor
Dick! good Dick! Who deserved more wealth of
wifely sacrifice? Asenath, thinking this, crimsoned
with pain and shame. A streak of good common
sense in the girl told her — though she half scorned
herself for the conviction — that even a crippled woman
who should bear all things and hope all things for
his sake might blot out the memory of this rounded
Del; that, no matter what the motive with which he
married her, he would end by loving his wife like
other people.
She watched him sometimes in the evenings, as he
turned his kind eyes after her over the library book
which he was reading.
“I know I could make him happy! I know I
could!” she muttered fiercely to herself.
November blew into December, December congealed
into January, while she kept her silence. Dick,
in his honorable heart, seeing that she suffered, wearied
himself with plans to make her eyes shine;
brought her two pails of water instead of one, never
forgot the fire, helped her home from the mill. She
saw him meet Del Ivory once upon Essex Street with
a grave and silent bow; he never spoke with her now.
He meant to pay the debt he owed her down to
the uttermost farthing; that grew plain. Did she try
to speak her wretched secret, he suffocated her with
kindness, struck her dumb with tender words.
She used to analyze her life in those days, considering
what it would be without him. To be up by half
past five o'clock in the chill of all the winter mornings,
to build the fire and cook the breakfast and sweep the
floor, to hurry away, faint and weak, over the raw, slippery
streets, to climb at half past six the endless stairs
and stand at the endless loom, and hear the endless
wheels go buzzing round, to sicken in the oily smells,
and deafen at the remorseless noise, and weary of the
rough girl swearing at the other end of the pass; to
eat her cold dinner from a little cold tin pail out on
the stairs in the three-quarters-of-an-hour recess; to
the supper, and brush up about the shoemaker's bench,
and be too weak to eat; to sit with aching shoulders
and make the button-holes of her best dress, or darn
her father's stockings, till nine o'clock; to hear no
bounding step or cheery whistle about the house; to
creep into bed and lie there trying not to think, and
wishing that so she might creep into her grave, — this
not for one winter, but for all the winters, — how
should you like it, you young girls, with whom time
runs like a story?
The very fact that her employers dealt honorably
by her; that she was fairly paid, and promptly, for
her wearing toil; that the limit of endurance was consulted
in the temperature of the room, and her need
of rest in an occasional holiday, — perhaps, after all,
in the mood she was in, did not make this factory life
more easy. She would have found it rather a relief
to have somebody to complain of, — wherein she was
like the rest of us, I fancy.
But at last there came a day — it chanced to be the
ninth of January — when Asenath went away alone
at noon, and sat where Merrimack sung his songs to
her. She hid her face upon her knees, and listened
and thought her own thoughts, till they and the slow
torment of the winter seemed greater than she could
bear. So, passing her hands confusedly over her forehead,
she said at last aloud, “That 's what God means,
Asenath Martyn!” and went back to work with a
purpose in her eyes.
She “asked out” a little earlier than usual, and
went slowly home. Dick was there before her; he
had been taking a half-holiday. He had made the tea
and toasted the bread for a little surprise. He came
up and said, “Why, Sene, your hands are cold!”
and warmed them for her in his own.
After tea she asked him, would he walk out with
her for a little while? and he in wonder went.
The streets were brightly lighted, and the moon
was up. The ice cracked crisp under their feet.
Sleighs, with two riders in each, shot merrily by.
People were laughing in groups before the shop-windows.
In the glare of a jeweller's counter somebody
was buying a wedding-ring, and a girl with red cheeks
was looking hard the other way.
“Let 's get away,” said Asenath, — “get away
from here!”
They chose by tacit consent that favorite road of
hers over the eastern bridge. Their steps had a hollow,
lonely ring on the frosted wood; she was glad
when the softness of the snow in the road received
them. She looked back once at the water, wrinkled
into thin ice on the edge for a foot or two, then open
and black and still.
“What are you doing?” asked Dick. She said
that she was wondering how cold it was, and Dick
laughed at her.
They strolled on in silence for perhaps a mile of the
desolate road.
“Well, this is social!” said Dick at length; “how
much farther do you want to go? I believe you 'd
walk to Reading if nobody stopped you!”
She was taking slow, regular steps like an automaton,
and looking straight before her.
“How much farther? Oh!” She stopped and
looked about her.
A wide young forest spread away at their feet, to
the right and to the left. There was ice on the tiny
oaks and miniature pines; it glittered sharply under
the moon; the light upon the snow was blue; cold
roads wound away through it, deserted; little piles of
dead leaves shivered; a fine keen spray ran along the
tops of the drifts; inky shadows lurked and dodged
about the undergrowth; in the broad spaces the snow
glared; the lighted mills, a zone of fire, blazed from
east to west; the skies were bare, and the wind was
up, and Merrimack in the distance chanted solemnly.
“Dick,” said Asenath, “this is a dreadful place!
Take me home.”
But when he would have turned, she held him back
with a sudden cry, and stood still.
“I meant to tell you — I meant to say — Dick! I
was going to say —”
But she did not say it. She opened her lips to speak
once and again, but no sound came from them.
“Sene! why, Sene, what ails you?”
He turned, and took her in his arms.
“Poor Sene!”
He kissed her, feeling sorry for her unknown trouble.
He wondered why she sobbed. He kissed her again.
She broke from him, and away with a great bound
upon the snow.
“You make it so hard! You 've no right to make
it so hard! It ain't as if you loved me, Dick! I
know I 'm not like other girls! Go home and let
me be!”
But Dick drew her arm through his, and led her
gravely away. “I like you well enough, Asenath,”
he said, with that motherly pity in his eyes; “I 've
always liked you. So don't let us have any more
of this.”
So Asenath said nothing more.
The sleek black river beckoned to ner across the
snow as they went home. A thought came to her as
she passed the bridge, — it is a curious study what
wicked thoughts will come to good people! — she
found herself considering the advisability of leaping
the low brown parapet; and if it would not be like
Dick to go over after her; if there would be a chance
for them, even should he swim from the banks; how
soon the icy current would paralyze him; how sweet
it would be to chill to death there in his arms; how
all this wavering and pain would be over; how Del
would look when they dragged them out down below
the machine-shop!
“Sene, are you cold?” asked puzzled Dick. She
was warmly wrapped in her little squirrel furs; but he
all the way home.
About eleven o'clock that night her father waked
from an exciting dream concerning the best method of
blacking patent-leather; Sene stood beside his bed
with her gray shawl thrown over her night-dress.
“Father, suppose some time there should be only
you and me —”
“Well, well, Sene,” said the old man sleepily, —
“very well.”
“I 'd try to be a good girl! Could you love me
enough to make up?”
He told her indistinctly that she always was a good
girl; she never had a whipping from the day her
mother died. She turned away impatiently; then
cried out and fell upon her knees.
“Father, father! I 'm in a great trouble. I have n't
got any mother, any friend, anybody. Nobody helps
me! Nobody knows. I 've been thinking such
things — O, such wicked things — up in my room!
Then I got afraid of myself. You 're good. You love
me. I want you to put your hand on my head and
say, `God bless you, child, and show you how.' ”
Bewildered, he put his hand upon her unbound
hair, and said: “God bless you, child, and show you
how!”
Asenath looked at the old withered hand a moment,
as it lay beside her on the bed, kissed it, and went
away.
There was a scarlet sunrise the next morning. A
pale pink flush stole through a hole in the curtain,
and fell across Asenath's sleeping face, and lay there
like a crown. It woke her, and she threw on her
dress, and sat down for a while on the window-sill, to
watch the coming-on of the day.
The silent city steeped and bathed itself in rosetints;
the river ran red, and the snow crimsoned on
the distant New Hampshire hills; Pemberton, mute
and cold, frowned across the disk of the climbing sun,
and dripped, as she had seen it drip before, with
blood.
The day broke softly, the snow melted, the wind
blew warm from the river. The factory-bell chimed
cheerily, and a few sleepers, in safe, luxurious beds,
were wakened by hearing the girls sing on their way
to work.
Asenath came down with a quiet face. In her communing
with the sunrise helpful things had been spoken
to her. Somehow, she knew not how, the peace of the
day was creeping into her heart. For some reason, she
knew not why, the torment and unrest of the night
were gone. There was a future to be settled, but she
would not trouble herself about that just now. There
was breakfast to get; and the sun shone, and a snowbird
was chirping outside of the door. She noticed
how the tea-kettle hummed, and how well the new
curtain, with the castle and waterfall on it, fitted the
window. She thought that she would scour the closet
slippers. She kissed him when she had tied on the red
hood, and said good-by to Dick, and told them just
where to find the squash-pie for dinner.
When she had closed the twisted gate, and taken a
step or two upon the snow, she came thoughtfully
back. Her father was on his bench, mending one of
Meg Match's shoes. She pushed it gently out of his
hands, sat down upon his lap, and stroked the shaggy
hair away from his forehead.
“Father!”
“Well, what now, Sene? — what now?”
“Sometimes I believe I 've forgotten you a bit, you
know. I think we 're going to be happier after this.
That 's all.”
She went out singing, and he heard the gate shut
again with a click.
Sene was a little dizzy that morning, — the constant
palpitation of the floors always made her dizzy after a
wakeful night, — and so her colored cotton threads
danced out of place, and troubled her.
Del Ivory, working beside her, said, “How the mill
shakes! What 's going on?”
“It 's the new machinery they 're h'isting in,”
observed the overseer, carelessly. “Great improvement,
but heavy, very heavy; they calc'late on getting
it all into place to-day; you 'd better be tending
to your frame, Miss Ivory.”
As the day wore on, the quiet of Asenath's morning
head she wound her thoughts of Dick. In and out
with her black and dun-colored threads she spun her
future. Pretty Del, just behind her, was twisting a
pattern like a rainbow. She noticed this, and smiled.
“Never mind!” she thought, “I guess God
knows.”
Was He ready “to bless her, and show her how”?
She wondered. If, indeed, it were best that she should
never be Dick's wife, it seemed to her that He would
help her about it. She had been a coward last night;
her blood leaped in her veins with shame at the memory
of it. Did He understand? Did He not know how
she loved Dick, and how hard it was to lose him?
However that might be, she began to feel at rest
about herself. A curious apathy about means and
ways and decisions took possession of her. A bounding
sense that a way of escape was provided from all
her troubles, such as she had when her mother died,
came upon her.
Years before, an unknown workman in South Boston,
casting an iron pillar upon its core, had suffered it
to “float” a little, a very little more, till the thin, unequal
side cooled to the measure of an eighth of an
inch. That man had provided Asenath's way of
escape.
She went out at noon with her luncheon, and found
a place upon the stairs, away from the rest, and sat
there awhile, with her eyes upon the river, thinking.
God need to have made her so unlike the rest of his
fair handiwork. Del came bounding by, and nodded
at her carelessly. Two young Irish girls, sisters, —
the beauties of the mill, — magnificently colored creatures,
— were singing a little love-song together, while
they tied on their hats to go home.
“There are such pretty things in the world!”
thought poor Sene.
Did anybody speak to her after the girls were gone?
Into her heart these words fell suddenly, “He hath no
form nor comeliness. His visage was so marred more
than any man.”
They clung to her fancy all the afternoon. She
liked the sound of them. She wove them in with her
black and dun colored threads.
The wind began at last to blow chilly up the staircases,
and in at the cracks; the melted drifts out under
the walls to harden; the sun dipped above the dam;
the mill dimmed slowly; shadows crept down between
the frames.
“It 's time for lights,” said Meg Match, and swore
a little at her spools.
Sene, in the pauses of her thinking, heard snatches
of the girls' talk.
“Going to ask out to-morrow, Meg?”
“Guess so, yes; me and Bob Smith we thought
we 'd go to Boston, and come up in the theatre
train.”
“Del Ivory, I want the pattern of your zouave.”
“Did I go to church? No, you don't catch me!
If I slave all the week, I 'll do what I please on Sunday.”
“Hush-sh! There 's the boss looking over here!”
“Kathleen Donnavon, be still with your ghoststories.
There 's one thing in the world I never will
hear about, and that 's dead people.”
“Del,” said Sene, “I think to-morrow —”
She stopped. Something strange had happened to
her frame; it jarred, buzzed, snapped; the threads
untwisted and flew out of place.
“Curious!” she said, and looked up.
Looked up to see her oyerseer turn wildly, clap his
hands to his head, and fall; to hear a shriek from Del
that froze her blood; to see the solid ceiling gape
above her; to see the walls and windows stagger; to
see iron pillars reel, and vast machinery throw up its
helpless, giant arms, and a tangle of human faces
blanch and writhe!
She sprang as the floor sunk. As pillar after pillar
gave way, she bounded up an inclined plane, with the
gulf yawning after her. It gained upon her, leaped
at her, caught her; beyond were the stairs and an
open door; she threw out her arms, and struggled on
with hands and knees, tripped in the gearing, and saw,
as she fell, a square, oaken beam above her yield and
crash; it was of a fresh red color; she dimly wondered
why, — as she felt her hands slip, her knees
out.
“At ten minutes before five, on Tuesday, the tenth of
January, the Pemberton Mill, all hands being at the
time on duty, fell to the ground.”
So the record flashed over the telegraph wires,
sprang into large type in the newspapers, passed from
lip to lip, a nine days' wonder, gave place to the successful
candidate, and the muttering South, and was
forgotten.
Who shall say what it was to the seven hundred
and fifty souls who were buried in the ruins? What
to the eighty-eight who died that death of exquisite
agony? What to the wrecks of men and women who
endure unto this day a life that is worse than death?
What to that architect and engineer who, when the
fatal pillars were first delivered to them for inspection,
had found one broken under their eyes, yet accepted
the contract, and built with them a mill whose thin
walls and wide, unsupported stretches might have tottered
over massive columns and on flawless ore?
One that we love may go upon battle-ground, and
we are ready for the worst: we have said our goodbys;
our hearts wait and pray: it is his life, not his
death, which is the surprise. But that he should go
out to his safe, daily, commonplace occupations, unnoticed
and uncaressed, — scolded a little, perhaps,
because he leaves the door open, and tells us how cross
by and by, a mangled mass of death and horror, —
that is hard.
Old Martyn, working at Meg Match's shoes, — she
was never to wear those shoes, poor Meg! — heard, at
ten minutes before five, what he thought to be the
rumble of an earthquake under his very feet, and
stood with bated breath, waiting for the crash. As
nothing further appeared to happen, he took his stick
and limped out into the street.
A vast crowd surged through it from end to end.
Women with white lips were counting the mills, —
Pacific, Atlantic, Washington, — Pemberton? Where
was Pemberton?
Where Pemberton had winked its many eyes last
night, and hummed with its iron lips this noon, a
cloud of dust, black, silent, horrible, puffed a hundred
feet into the air.
Asenath opened her eyes after a time. Beautiful
green and purple lights had been dancing about her,
but she had had no thoughts. It occurred to her now
that she must have been struck upon the head. The
church-clocks were striking eight. A bonfire which
had been built at a distance, to light the citizens in
the work of rescue, cast a little gleam in through the
débris across her two hands, which lay clasped together
at her side. One of her fingers, she saw, was
gone; it was the finger which held Dick's little engagement
ring. The red beam lay across her forehead,
feet, still tangled in the gearing which had tripped her,
were buried beneath a pile of bricks.
A broad piece of flooring, that had fallen slantwise,
roofed her in, and saved her from the mass of ironwork
overhead, which would have crushed the breath
out of Titans. Fragments of looms, shafts, and pillars
were in heaps about. Some one whom she could not
see was dying just behind her. A little girl who
worked in her room — a mere child — was crying, between
her groans, for her mother. Del Ivory sat in a
little open space, cushioned about with reels of cotton;
she had a shallow gash upon her cheek; she was
wringing her hands. They were at work from the
outside, sawing entrances through the labyrinth of
planks. A dead woman lay close by, and Sene saw
them draw her out. It was Meg Match. One of the
pretty Irish girls was crushed quite out of sight; only
one hand was free; she moved it feebly. They could
hear her calling for Jimmy Mahoney, Jimmy Mahoney!
and would they be sure and give him back the
handkerchief? Poor Jimmy Mahoney! By and by
she called no more; and in a little while the hand was
still. On the other side of the slanted flooring some
one prayed aloud. She had a little baby at home. She
was asking God to take care of it for her. “For
Christ's sake,” she said. Sene listened long for the
Amen, but it was never spoken. Beyond, they dug
a man out from under a dead body, unhurt. He
As consciousness came fully, agony grew. Sene
shut her lips and folded her bleeding hands together,
and uttered no cry. Del did screaming enough for
two, she thought. She pondered things calmly as the
night deepened, and the words that the workers outside
were saying came brokenly to her. Her hurt,
she knew, was not unto death; but it must be cared
for before very long; how far could she support this
slow bleeding away? And what were the chances
that they could hew their way to her without crushing
her?
She thought of her father, of Dick; of the bright
little kitchen and supper-table set for three; of the song
that she had sung in the flush of the morning. Life
— even her life — grew sweet, now that it was slipping
from her.
Del cried presently, that they were cutting them
out. The glare of the bonfires struck through an
opening; saws and axes flashed; voices grew distinct.
“They never can get at me,” said Sene. “I must
be able to crawl. If you could get some of those
bricks off of my feet, Del!”
Del took off two or three in a frightened way; then,
seeing the blood on them, sat down and cried.
A Scotch girl, with one arm shattered, crept up and
removed the pile, then fainted.
The opening broadened, brightened; the sweet
Sene's heart leaped within her. Out in the wind and
under the sky she should stand again, after all! Back
in the little kitchen, where the sun shone, and she
could sing a song, there would yet be a place for her.
She worked her head from under the beam, and raised
herself upon her elbow.
At that moment she heard a cry:
“Fire! fire! God Almighty help them, — the
ruins are on fire!”
A man working over the débris from the outside
had taken the notion — it being rather dark just there
— to carry a lantern with him.
“For God's sake,” a voice cried from the crowd,
“don't stay there with that light!”
But before the words had died upon the air, it was
the dreadful fate of the man with the lantern to let it
fall, — and it broke upon the ruined mass.
That was at nine o'clock. What there was to see
from then till morning could never be told or forgotten.
A network twenty feet high, of rods and girders,
of beams, pillars, stairways, gearing, roofing, ceiling,
walling; wrecks of looms, shafts, twisters, pulleys,
bobbins, mules, locked and interwoven; wrecks of
human creatures wedged in; a face that you know
turned up at you from some pit which twenty-four
hours' hewing could not open; a voice that you know
long, fair hair visible here, a foot there, three fingers
of a hand over there; the snow bright-red under
foot; charred limbs and headless trunks tossed about;
strong men carrying covered things by you, at sight
of which other strong men have fainted; the little
yellow jet that flared up, and died in smoke, and
flared again, leaped out, licked the cotton-bales, tasted
the oiled machinery, crunched the netted wood, danced
on the heaped-up stone, threw its cruel arms high into
the night, roared for joy at helpless firemen, and
swallowed wreck, death, and life together out of your
sight, — the lurid thing stands alone in the gallery of
tragedy.
“Del,” said Sene, presently, “I smell the smoke.”
And in a little while, “How red it is growing away
over there at the left!”
To lie here and watch the hideous redness crawling
after her, springing at her! — it had seemed greater
than reason could bear, at first.
Now it did not trouble her. She grew a little faint,
and her thoughts wandered. She put her head down
upon her arm, and shut her eyes. Dreamily she heard
them saying a dreadful thing outside, about one of the
overseers; at the alarm of fire he had cut his throat,
and before the flames touched him he was taken out.
Dreamily she heard Del cry that the shaft behind the
heap of reels was growing hot. Dreamily she saw a
tiny puff of smoke struggle through the cracks of a
broken fly-frame.
They were working to save her, with rigid, stern
faces. A plank snapped, a rod yielded; they drew
out the Scotch girl; her hair was singed; then a man
with blood upon his face and wrists held down his
arms.
“There 's time for one more! God save the rest
of ye, — I can't!”
Del sprang; then stopped, — even Del, — stopped
ashamed, and looked back at the cripple.
Asenath at this sat up erect. The latent heroism
in her awoke. All her thoughts grew clear and bright.
The tangled skein of her perplexed and troubled winter
unwound suddenly. This, then, was the way.
It was better so. God had provided himself a lamb
for the burnt-offering.
So she said, “Go, Del, and tell him I sent you with
my dear love, and that it 's all right.”
And Del at the first word went.
Sene sat and watched them draw her out; it was
a slow process; the loose sleeve of her factory sack
was scorched.
Somebody at work outside turned suddenly and
caught her. It was Dick. The love which he had
fought so long broke free of barrier in that hour. He
kissed her pink arm where the burnt sleeve fell off.
He uttered a cry at the blood upon her face. She
turned faint with the sense of safety; and, with a face
as white as her own, he bore her away in his arms to
the hospital, over the crimson snow.
Asenath looked out through the glare and smoke
with parched lips. For a scratch upon the girl's smooth
cheek, he had quite forgotten her. They had left her,
tombed alive here in this furnace, and gone their happy
way. Yet it gave her a curious sense of relief and
triumph. If this were all that she could be to him,
the thing which she had done was right, quite right.
God must have known. She turned away, and shut
her eyes again.
When she opened them, neither Dick, nor Del, nor
crimsoned snow, nor sky, were there; only the smoke
writhing up a pillar of blood-red flame.
The child who had called for her mother began to
sob out that she was afraid to die alone.
“Come here, Molly,” said Sene. “Can you crawl
around?”
Molly crawled around.
“Put your head in my lap, and your arms about
my waist, and I will put my hands in yours, — so.
There! I guess that 's better.”
But they had not given them up yet. In the still
unburnt rubbish at the right, some one had wrenched
an opening within a foot of Sene's face. They clawed
at the solid iron pintles like savage things. A fireman
fainted in the glow.
“Give it up!” cried the crowd from behind. “It
can't be done! Fall back!” — then hushed, awestruck.
An old man was crawling along upon his hands and
man. His gray hair blew about in the wind.
“I want my little gal!” he said. “Can't anybody
tell me where to find my little gal?”
A rough-looking young fellow pointed in perfect
silence through the smoke.
“I 'll have her out yet. I 'm an old man, but I
can help. She 's my little gal, ye see. Hand me
that there dipper of water; it 'll keep her from choking,
may be. Now! Keep cheery, Sene! Your old
father 'll get ye out. Keep up good heart, child!
That 's it!”
“It 's no use, father. Don't feel bad, father. I
don't mind it very much.”
He hacked at the timber; he tried to laugh; he
bewildered himself with cheerful words.
“No more ye need n't, Senath, for it 'll be over in
a minute. Don't be downcast yet! We'll have ye
safe at home before ye know it. Drink a little more
water, — do now! They 'll get at ye now, sure!”
But above the crackle and the roar a woman's voice
rang out like a bell: —
“We 're going home, to die no more.”
and unseen graves, white young lips swelled the glad
refrain, —
“We 're going, going home.”
The crawling smoke turned yellow, turned red.
sang on like silver. It flung defiance down at death.
It chimed into the lurid sky without a tremor. For
one stood beside her in the furnace, and his form was
like unto the form of the Son of God. Their eyes
met. Why should not Asenath sing?
“Senath!” cried the old man out upon the burning
bricks; he was scorched now, from his gray hair to
his patched boots.
The answer came triumphantly, —
“To die no more, no more, no more!”
“Sene! little Sene!”
But some one pulled him back.
| THE TENTH OF JANUARY. Men, women, and ghosts | |