University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.
AS IT WAS.

THICKET STREET, at the time of my
story, boasted the foot-path, the foulness,
the twisted children, the wharves and whale-oil,
the staggering houses and shops for grog,
the impure winds and dainty sunlight, the old
women turned children, and children old women,
as well as about the same generous allowance
of inhabitants to the street and to the
tenement.

No. 19 offered very nearly its present attractions
in respect to room, air, light, privacy,
and quiet. The second front seaward corner
sustained its reputation for being “jammed, you
bet!” retained its dingy windows and muddy
view; held, with more tenacity than at the present
time, its stained wall and stained legend.

As nearly as I can judge, the only material
changes in the vicinity have been the addition

of one concert-saloon, and the substitution of
the crinoline-mender for a little guitar-maker,
who sang over his work in his window.

That there should be a crowd about the door-ways
of No. 19 was nothing uncommon, but
the crowd collected, chiefly upon the stairs
and steps, on a September afternoon somewhat
less than thirty years ago, was not altogether
of a common kind.

It was composed principally of women, and
of old women; a few young girls hung on its
edges, and children — very young children —
stood here and there leaning against the walls,
listening intently and intelligently.

A woman with rather a clean cap, and her
skirts tucked about her bony knees, sat above
the rest upon the stairway, her chin in her
hands, and her face somewhat grave. It was
as rugged as a face could be without being positively
bad, but it was not bad. She had a
sharp mouth (all the women in Thicket Street
had sharp mouths), but it was slightly softened;
and keen eyes, but they were slightly
dim. She had evidently a story to tell, and
had told it, and was not loath to tell it again.

Conversation was brisk, and ran like this: —

“She said so?”

“Yes.”

“She 's always sayin' oncommon things, —
Nix.”

“What did you tell her, Lize?”

“I told her if she wanted to be let alon', let
alon' she should be.”

The woman in the clean cap said this decidedly.

“It 's a poor time to be givin' of herself airs,
in my opinion; 't ain't more 'n common politeness
to the neighbors to give 'em a sight of the
baby.”

“I tell you what it is, Moll Manners!” — Lize
shook her head sternly, and jerked her sharp
knees against the wall, as if to bar the stairway,
— “I 'll be obleeged to you if you 'll keep away
from Nixy Trent. Hear, do ye?”

Moll Manners laughed a little, with a certain
change of color, which, years ago, might have
been a blush. She had bright eyes, and they
snapped. Lize punched her other knee into the
wall, breaking away the cracked plaster by the
emphasis of her touch, and rambled on: —

“She 's too good a gal to be spoiled in a hurry,
poor creetur! sobbin' night an' day this three
months gone, and never a mother in the world to
do for her this day. She 's out of her head off
and on; talks of prison and p'lice-folks; keeps a
pleadin' and a beggin' of Jeb Smith to take her
back into the saloon. Every time the young un
cries, — it 's an ugly, squealy little thing as ever
drew breath in this world, — down goes she with
her head under the clothes — all in a heap — to
shut out the noise, likes I make it. She takes it
oncommon hard. In the course of my experience,”
— Lize attempted to lower her voice sententiously;
the effect of the effort was a bass
grumble, — “in the course of my experience, I
never see a gal take it so oncommon hard.
There 's gals an' gals, but then you know there 's
a mother or suthin', leastways an aunt, or less.
There was Ann Peters, now! I was nigh ready
to forgive old Mis' Peters beatin' of Boss to
death, for the way she up an' stood by Ann, an'
she nothin' but a fust cousin! It spoke well
for the family. Nix here hain't so much as a
cat 'at belongs to her name, — an' not turned
sixteen!”

Lize spoke loudly, — she was never known to
speak otherwise, do the best she might, — and
apparently the little guitar-maker across the way
heard what she was saying, — in part, at least, —
for his song stopped abruptly, — he had been
singing something in French about “L'amour,
l'amour,” — and he turned his back to No. 19
with an angry jerk. He wished that the women
would let the girl alone. He was rather fond
of Nixy. It vexed him to hear her chattered
about. He twanged a cracked string discordantly,
while they whispered and nodded about
Lize and Moll. Moll, being rather quick, noticed
this, and took the trouble to laugh at him.

“What 'll become of the baby, Lize?”

“The Lord knows!”

“There 's ways of gettin' rid o't, — Nix is no
fool.”

“Nix is no brute!” retorted Lize, crossly. She
pulled her knees out from the hole they had
worked in the wall, and stretched herself powerfully,
gathering up her skirts meanwhile, to
mount the dirty stairs. Lize used to get laughed
at in No. 19 for being “fine.”

“There 's the young un again! That child

will cry itself to death yet, and good riddance!
It worrits her into them fever spells I was tellin'
of. There 'll be the mischief to pay if we can't
keep her more peaceful-like — and a doctor too!”
(“Yes, yes!” calling up the stairs. “Never mind,
Nix! I 'll be back.”) “Well, well! It 's a sorry
piece of business, make the best ye will o't.
Good lack be praised, I never brought a woman-child
into the world!”

A little wailing cry from the second front seaward
corner floated down after Lize, and Lize,
with powerful steps, tramped up after it.

Moll Manners shrugged her shoulders. The
women, with whispers, scattered slowly. The little
guitar-maker struck up a tune, and sang: —

I presume Nix, in her corner bed, close under
the stained wall, had caught the tune (she knew
most of the guitar-maker's tunes), if not the
words, for she was sobbing when Lize came up.

She was a young thing, as Lize had said, “not

turned sixteen,” with the expression even of a
much younger child; in fact, there were children
in the group gossiping about her down stairs with
faces older than hers. She might, in an innocent,
happy time, have been pretty, very pretty.
Now, worn with suffering and shame, she was
ghastly.

She was comparatively alone; that is to say,
there were but three people in the room besides
herself and her child, — a child sick with measles,
a woman drunk, and a woman washing;
the room was filled with unclean steam.

Her bed — I apply the term out of courtesy
to the mass of rags and straw upon which she
lay with her two-days baby — being, as I said,
in the corner, Lize had contrived to shield it a
little by a ragged calico curtain; it was one of
her own dresses which had been waiting for
patching, — that curtain; Nixy had been too
sick to find this out, which was as well, for Lize
had not many dresses, and she knew it. There
was brown paper pinned across the lower half of
the window too, — Lize's work; it was old, soiled,
and cracked in the folds; strips of pale sunlight,
narrow as a knitting-needle, pierced it, and Nixy,

lying quite still now for some time past, had been
watching it with confused interest. There were
clothes flapping and drying out on a neighbor's
roof, and the strips of light quivered and shot
about in consequence.

Sometimes they struck Nixy in the eyes, and
hurt her. Sometimes they struck the baby, and
she wished that they would hurt him; he cried
as if they did, and she was glad of it. The baby
was so dreadful to her! Sometimes she took the
golden needles into her hands, and knit with
them — fast; socks for the child, shawls for him,
shrouds for him, — always for him, and always
fast. Sometimes the needles turned into sharp
fingers, and pointed at the red stain upon the
wall, when the spider appeared to move — the
spot seemed more like a spider to Nixy than it
did to me — and crawl over the baby, and crawl
over her.

“Hm—m—m.” Lize, coming in, kneeled,
with her finger on the girl's pulse, and her chin
set in thought.

“This won't do; this won't do! There 'll
have to be somebody that knows more nor me
to take you in hand, Nix. Hush! Ye 've cried

enough. Doctor won't harm ye u'less it was for
his interest and adwantage, — which 't ain't likely.
There! Stop your noise!”

For Lize was rough sometimes, and was, to
tell the truth, at the end of her professional wits
with the girl.

“I 'd rather not! I 'd rather not have a doctor!”
said Nixy, weakly. “When I get well I 'll
earn enough to pay you, Lize, if you 'll be
bothered to take care of me alone, you know.
I 'll be able to walk before you know it. I could
almost walk to-day, if I tried. He 'd send me to
jail, ef you get him!”

“I don't want yer money!” growled Lize,
“and 't would n't be jails; 't would n't be worse
nor 'sylums, where the Lord knows ye mought be
best off. It 's a way he has, — yes; but it mought
be a worse way. He 's not a bad man, — Burtis.
Little pay and many patients he 's got out of
Thicket Street in my time. Hush now! or ye 'll
set the young un off again. Take yer drops and
yer naps afore dark and the men-folks comin'.”

Nixy hushed, but, much as she dreaded the
time and the noise of the “men-folks comin',”
she could not sleep. She shut her eyes to please

the old nurse, and, in coherent and incoherent
snatches, thought.

Nixy had never done much thinking in the
course of her life.

I knew once a brave, busy, generous girl, who,
years after the bitterest affliction of her life,
used to say, “Some time, I think, I shall feel
better if I can make time to cry. I 've never
had room to cry.”

Nixy, I believe, had never had room to think.

She did not remember her childhood distinctly,
the very poor are not apt to, perhaps; present
necessities are too stern to admit of past fancies,
— and childhood resolves itself into a fancy.

Nixy was nobody's child; she could remember
as much as that.

Fragments of things came to her as she lay
there with her baby on her arm that night;
snatches of songs she used to sing in the streets,
rapping out the tune with her cold little knuckles
on a cracked tambourine for a man with an
American face and Italian name, — her uncle,
I believe, she was taught to call him; a dim
memory of the woman to whom he sold her, —
she kept boarders; of another woman who

“adopted” her, — that was the one who got
drunk every Tuesday, and beat her with the
bottle Wednesday mornings; of the city missionary
in a green veil, who picked her up selling
matches at a corner one winter day, and lodged
her in an orphan-asylum; of ten months of little
blue-checked orphans and dog's-eared spelling-books
(the best ten months of Nixy's life, to be
sure, if she had only been “educated” enough to
know it); of her running away one dark night
because she could not do a sum in fractions; of
how sorry she had been for it in spots; of the
days after that when she wandered about with
the Thicket Street babies, hunting for apple-cores
in the mud, — the hungriest days of her life those
were; of persuading Jeb Smith to try her in his
dining-saloon at the corner at last, — of the life
in No. 19, — of the cold horror of the last few
months.

So now it was either all over or all begun; she
wondered confusedly which. At any rate, here
everything had stopped.

What next?

“Your hand, if you please; that 's right. I
want the pulse.”

Nixy turned with a start that woke and frightened
the child. The doctor sat on the floor beside
her, with his watch in his hand.

“I don't want you,” said Nixy.

“I am sorry to intrude upon you against your
wish; but you need me, as I think you will
find.”

The physician spoke with careful courtesy. A
close observer might have thought him to be addressing
an up-town matron. It was a “way”
Dr. Dyke Burtis had; people had often remarked
it of him.

Nixy felt it, but it failed to put her at her
ease; something in it reminded her of the missionary
in the green veil; gave her visions of
blue checks and school-bells and “hours” for
things; startled her slumbering dread of “jails
and 'sylums”; indeed, she had an indistinct impression
that it was this very man who took
Ann Peters to a Magdalens' Home after old Mis'
Peters hung herself. And if ever anybody had
been a scarecrow to Nixy, it was Ann Peters.
So, because she was frightened, she was sullen.

But the physician said nothing of jails, and
did not so much as hint at 'sylums. He dealt

with her gently, and left her soon, — for which
Nixy, in spite of her wretched, terrified self, approved
of him.

She had seen more than she appeared to
through her half-closed, heavy eyelids; had
watched the gentleman's face; had felt it — for
even people like Nixy feel such things — to be a
gentleman's face; and had concluded that she
should know it if she were to see it again.

It was a face of perhaps thirty-five years'
moulding, with nothing noticeable about it except
a very irregular, full forehead, and a streak
of gray in the middle of a black beard.