A woman in armor :: :: University of Virginia Library

Helen rocked George before the
grate, and sung to him in a low undertone. He
was robed in one of the old nightgowns his
mother made for him, and which Rikka brought
down from the stores up-stairs. He was a taller
and thinner child, with older eyes and tongue.
He could scarcely go to sleep for watching Helen.
She pushed the hair from his forehead giving
him in bunches all that year's kisses which he
had missed.

She had new things to teach him along with
his forgotten prayers; the dear new names of
Launt and Mr. Chancery—the names of her
lover and her friend. Her eyes filled while she
thought of the quiet friendship of Mr. Chancery.
Tears never came easily to her in trouble; they

156

were her tribute to some graciousness or virtue
in another.

Money he commanded abundantly from a
hundred sources. He should have more than
money at Launt's hands and hers. His eyes
followed her only to bless; and he should have
—this busy, wifeless man—some breath of home,
from Launt's and her abounding home.

Ah, how much she had to give everywhere
now! This new power of wealth felt like an
added heart to her who had always given freely
of what she had.

She never had expected to do otherwise in
life than to walk the flat, hard road of labor, and
to wear always the harness of to-day's workingwoman.

Having declined slinking in the shade of gentility
to find her bread with shame-facedness,
but having walked proudly abroad and earned it
alongside of them that SWEAT, she had found
out glorious uses for that money of which the
sensualist for a time robbed her.

It meant lifts for tired backs, school-terms for
struggling girls, roofs for leaky houses, treats
for them used to “going without,” pictures on
dull, hard walls, plenty of Christmas gifts for
Santa Claus' step-children, summer rest and
change for them dying at the wheel—all, and a
thousand new things she should discover every
day, as well as the best of life for Launt and the
boy and her.

157

She thanked that unknown kinsman for his
largesse; but, strangely, she thanked most
her own father, who had left her to learn
labor and the heart-beat of the world, and
Launt's mother, who had pointed to something
above money for his endeavor.

And then she fell to thanking the Lord for her
child—the child secure at last among the hundred
thousand darlings of the land.

But what of those wretched children?

Not the young animals tormented by too long
daily confinement in schools, though these are
to be commiserated: nor the orphans homed in
asylums where mother-women can always find
them; nor the Arabs of the street—the very
breeze and liberty of whose lives sometimes blow
them toward good.

But those most accursed of all young human-kind:
the children orphaned while their parents
live. The children whose fathers and mothers
give them nothing but life. There is a society
for protecting animals, but what society is there
for protecting children? Men are so averse to
interfering in the domestic concerns of men that
they sit politely by and see their neighbor kill
his child by inches, and never dream of withholding
his hand! They even make a joke of
his brutality, or niggardliness, or indolence, or
any other instrument which he in blindness or
wickedness uses against his own; perhaps they
even look at the abused, distorted child as a

158

walking joke. A man can do what he wants to
with his own child, can't he?

The actual orphan is his country's nursling.
The law dandles and cherishes him quite into
his majority. But the orphan whose parents
are alive walks in the long, dark shadow which
they, standing between the law's warm sun and
him, throw over all his little life.

The domestic existence of some children is
tragedy.

Perhaps legislation might not help them. But
when there is so much legislation nowadays in
everybody's favor, why not allow them a little?
Why not give them a chance of being protected
from men and women who oppress them?
Many are the highways cast up for escape from
wedlock. What single road of escape is there
for children from parental abuse?

Yea, if family life were always clean and what
it ought to be; if might were always right; if
children themselves were ministering angels
instead of just what their parents make them,
they would never need protection. As it is,
they do need it. And the country which will
not take them up when their fathers and mothers
forsake them, may be obliged to take them up by
and by, when reckless, or hardened, or, despising
government, which has always been another
name to them for oppression, they forsake themselves.
If they have no natural importance,
why not give them more legal importance?

159

On these children Helen thought while she
rocked George to sleep; and she decided to
talk them over with Launt. He would set the
public thinking on some of the RIGHTS which
it now utterly disregarded.