University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER NINTEENTH.
JOHN CATTERMILL.

They left the room together, as the light
flared up for the last time. And as he closed
the door, Lemuel Gardiner, looked over his
shoulder — looked once and for a moment, but
with a shudder — at the bed, whereon was
stretched the lifeless and distorted form of Ann,
the friend of Alice Bayne.

Then the door closed, and they descended
the stairs, in one darkness. At every step Lemuel
whispered the name of Goodleigh, and
gave Stewel a hurried description of the Iron
Room in Goodleigh's House.

Presently they reached the first floor. The
Quaker woman and the Millerite's Daughter
were waiting there, but a third person had entered
upon the scene.

It was the wife of John Cattermill, who
with haggard face and dishevelled hair, poured
forth a broken train of ejaculations, as she
pressed her babe against her breast.

“O, John, John, how could he go to do it!
Jist think of it Ma'am! To turn a thief at
his years! I think I shall go crazy.”

“What does thee mean?” asked Martha
Lott, who gazed upon that troubled face with
a look of deep compassion: “Thee has been
out in the cold, with but scanty covering. Be

calm — and tell me the cause of all this suffering
—”

“Yes, Nancy, tell her the story, and she
will do her best to relieve you,” interrupted a
mild voice, and the face of Hannah Marvin,
confronted the weeping woman: “What has
become of your husband? He left the house,
an hour ago — did he not!”

At this moment, the form of Stewel, emerged
from the stairway door, the visage of Lemuel,
scowling from the shadows, behind his broad
shoulders.

“Lay low, `Monk!”' whispered the Police
Officer: “Lay low, and hear something rich.”

And standing in the doorway of the staircase,
these respectable worthies, listened to the
story of Nancy Cattermill:

“Why you see Ma'am, a couple of hours
ago, when John had got over his fit o' delerious
tremens, and was sittin' by the fire, talkin'
of Isr'el Bonus, there comes in, a fat man with
with a green patch over his eye, and a red face,
a very red face — that is as much of it as
could be seen.”

“That's me,” whispered Stewel to his companion
— “Don't she take a pictur' with a rale
daguerreotype touch?”

“An' this fat man begins to talk with John,
and to tell him, what a shame it was that he
was so poor. An' then they talked in whispers
— I couldn't hear much — but I see'd
John's eyes light up, and after a long while
heard him say — `I'm your man. For anything
I'm your man.' An' then Ma'am they
goes out together, John and the fat man with
a green patch over one eye. I asks John
where he was goin', but he pushed me away,
and — O! Is'nt it too bad? Don't you
think it is?”

She burst into a violent fit of sobbing.

“Don't know she's a detainin' the audience,”
whispered Stewel, still waiting in the stairway
door: “I'd like to know what became o' John
arter this.”

Martha Lott and Hannah Marvin in vain
endeavored to assuage the grief of the wretched
woman. Gathering her babe in the tattered
shawl, she sank into the only chair — turning
her face toward the light, she continued:

“An' I waited for John and waited, and
waited, O! ever so long, but John did not
come back. At last, a while ago, I went out
o' the court, and went down the street, and
stood at the next corner. It was bitter cold,
but I tried to keep my baby warm as well as
I could, an' you don't know how bad I felt, as
I stood there all alone, thinkin' o' things as
they are now, an' o' things as they were last
year. O! sich a change!”

“A lick of pathos!” whispered Stewel.

“Well, thee waited?” said Martha Lott.

“Waited there, Ma'am, at the corner of the
street, with my baby in my arms, and at last I
hear'd a step, and know'd it was John's, and
I saw him comin' across the street. `John,
where have you been?' says I, springin'
toward him, when —” she dropped her babe
upon her lap, and wrung her hands — “when
two strange men, who had follered John across
the street, jumped upon him, and tied him,
and took him off in a wagon. They did —
and what's worse than all, they said he was a
thief — yes, that he'd been robbin' a house in
— street. I think they told me the name
of the man who owned the house — Goodleigh,
I think it was. And they took him off,
and he's in Moyamensin' this blessed night.
Don't you think it's hard, Ma'am?”

Before Martha could reply, the police officer
stepped from the doorway, and followed by
the converted Monk, approached the light with
a measured stride. Stewel's hands were in
his pockets, and Stewel's cap was drawn over
his eyes, but beneath the leathern frontlet of
that cap, his cheeks appeared in all the plenitude
of bulk and color.

“Folks, I jist thought I'd mention to you,
that the lady up stairs has gone out o' this
subulnary vale o' tears,” said Stewel, “In
other words, she's dead. Did you see anythin'
o' that scapegrace boy, Ma'am?” he
added, turning to Martha Lott.

At the sound of his voice, Nancy Cattermill
raised her face, and looked about her with a
vague stare.

“Did you hear that?” she exclaimed,
taking Martha Lott by the hand. “That
voice, I mean. It's his voice. The fat man,
with the green patch over his eye, who came
here, and turned my husband into a thief.”

She raised her eyes, and beheld the benevolent
face of Stewel Pydgeon.

“It's him — I know'd it!” cried Nancy,
starting from the chair, with her babe in her

arms: “Now, Mister, jist tell us — what
did you do with my husband?”

“This is a serious charge, friend,” said
Martha Lott — “Especially serious when we
reflect, that thou art a police officer.”

Stewel smiled blandly, smiled throughout
his lips and cheeks, even to his eyes, half
hidden in bulging lids.

“Lord bless you, Ma'am,” he waved his
hand with a gesture of great dignity: “It's a
way they all have. Every one o' these creturs
asks me for her husband. Just as if I carried
a pocket-full o' husbands, wherever I go.”

“You are a villian!” shrieked Nancy,
clenching her hand: “Worse than Isr'el
Bonus — that you are”

“Da-da-a, folks!” smiled Stewel, as he
moved to the door. “Come along my Reverend
friend. This society, no doubt, don't agree
with your moral wholesome.”

He took the arm of the Converted Monk,
and hurried him through the front door.

“I will see about this, to-morrow,” whispered
the Quaker woman, as she laid her hand
upon Nancy's shoulder: “Thou shalt have
justice. Thy husband shall be cared for.
To-morrow, my friend.”

Nancy heard the low musical voice. She
raised her eyes, and caught the impassioned benevolence
of the Quaker woman's countenance.

“God bless you!” cried Nancy with a burst
of tears. “If there was more Quakers like
you, there would not be many sich places as
Bonus Court.”

A few whispered words passed between
Martha Lott and the Carpenter's wife, and then
the Quaker woman took Hannah by the hand,
and led her silently up the stairs, into the
third story.

Nancy remained by the decaying fire, hushing
her babe as it moaned in its slumber, and
fixing her vacant gaze upon the walls of her
desolate home.

Meanwhile in the third story, the Quaker
woman, aided by the Millerite's daughter, performed
the last sad offices for the dead. Together
they straightened those cramped limbs.
They were not afraid of contagion even in its
most hideous shape. They smoothed the hair
aside from the brow, and closed the eyes, and
arranged the body of Ann Clarke, in an attitude
of calm repose.

It was not without its meaning — that sight
which the lamp revealed, as the last hours of
the night were fading into day.

The daughter of the Millerite, kneeling beside
the bed, her hands joined, her eyes uplifted
in voiceless prayer. The Quaker woman,
gazing upon the face of the dead, her
eyes moistened with tears.

“O, if men and women, would only leave
creeds and forms alone, and attend with all
their souls, to those simple words of the
Saviour, `Love thy neighbor as thyself.”'

This was the muttered ejaculation of the
Infidel Quakeress, who derided by all the
synagogues of the Orthodox, found peace and
religion, in visiting the homes of the desolate
— the haunts of the poorest of the poor.

Hannah Marvin the daughter of the despised
Millerite, said nothing for a long while, but as
she remembered the good deeds of the Quaker
woman — as she saw that noble face, lighted
up by the warmth of a divine humanity — she
could not repress an ejaculation, which bubbled
from her heart to her lips:

“I, also, am an Infidel,” she said, “That is.
I had much rather possess your Infidelity, than
the Christianity of many Churches.”

Martha Lott you will remember, was a
Rich Woman. That a Rich Woman should
have the heart to feel for the poor, a hand to
relieve their manifold miseries, a courage to
enter the veriest dens of their wretchedness —
all this excited much wonder, in the mind of
the Millerite's Daughter.

But we must leave the place of death and
follow the other persons of our history.

The poor woman lies stiff and cold in Bonus
Court. Where are the children, whom
she has loved with all a mother's love, for seventeen
years?