University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
THE SECOND FRONT SEAWARD CORNER.

“A CIVIL-SPOKE man,” said Lize, cuddling
the baby that night, “and no fool. I take
it ye 're better for his stuff a'ready. Hey, Nix?”

“Very like,” said Nix, absently; she had forgotten
Lize and the doctor; she was dropping
miserable tears on the pillow, glad of a chance to
cry without wetting the baby. The room was
full now, and very noisy. She and Lize were
alone behind the calico curtain. The window
was raised beyond the brown-paper shades, to
give the girl a breath of something a tone fresher
than the double allowance of gin and tobacco
consequent on the return of “the men-folks.”
The guitar-maker in his window was twanging
a hymn; on practice, not on principle; it meant
nothing to him, — he was French; he had picked
it up by the way from a street-preacher. It began
like this, as Nixy made it out: —

Then she lost it in a little tuning and a little
swearing; in the interval she stopped crying to
listen, glad enough of a change of ideas; for she
was young and easily diverted.

Something was the matter with the upper E;
the next time he had it. M. Jacques was critical
of himself always: —

“I wonder,” said Nix, suddenly, trying to sit
up in bed.

“Wonder ef it 'll take after you?” Lize was
holding the baby up in a streak of light that fell
through the calico curtain. “Yes. Got them
big eyes o' yourn all over again, — worse for ye,
mebbe!”

“I wonder what Jacques 's about, — what it
means, you know. O, you don't know. Well!”

She fell back wearily upon the straw.

sang Monsieur Jacques.

Nixy, thinking it over, presently opened her
eyes.

“I know. It means, if there 's any way out —
with that.”

She pointed at the baby with that expression,
partly of loathing, partly of fear, which always
came upon her face at the sight of it.

“Bless my soul! she 's crazed yet. Out of
what?”

Lize was losing patience.

“I don't know,” said Nixy, sadly. “Never
mind!”

She did know; she had a jumble of ideas about
“depths,” and the “bottom of the hill,” and its
being “lonely — lonely,” and that Jeb Smith might
not want the child in the saloon; but they were
not distinct enough to make Lize understand.

“I s'pose you could n't tell me what — to do —
when I get out?” she asked of her by and by,
very slowly.

“Hold your tongue!” said Lize. “Time 's in
no hurry.”

If time was in no hurry, Nixy was. It was so
hard lying there in that room! People were in
and out, and stared at her; the doctor with the
streaked beard came and went, and prescribed for
her. Lize, off and on, took care of her. Moll

Manners, down stairs, gossiped about her. The
guitar-maker, in his window, sang at her; generally
about the “hill,” or the “depths”; sometimes
of “L'amour, l'amour”; in dull weather,
and there was much dull weather during poor
Nixy's convalescence, he practised dirges.

If Nixy had been an up-street wife, she might
have been allowed the privilege of being “depressed”
under the circumstances, I suppose.
So Dr. Burtis thought, remembering certain of
his happier patinets; one in particular, an out-of-town
lady, — Myrtle was the name, by the way,
though that is little to the point, — from whose
pink and perfumed and dolorous chamber he used
to come direct to No. 19.

Nixy, being in Thicket Street, and being only
Nixy, “had the dumps,” — so Moll said.

“She 's cried long enough,” observed Moll.
(Poor Moll!) “A week would have answered.
The world won't stop for her.”

“The child ain't to blame, Nixy Trent!” said
Lize, sternly, once when, after six hours of rain
and the Dead March from Saul, Nixy desperately
flung the wailing infant off her arm, and buried
her set face in the straw. “The child ain't at

fault, I tell ye. Don't ye care nothin' for yer
own flesh and blood? helpless — innocent —”

“No,” interrupted Nix; she thought that Lize
was growing sentimental, which perhaps she was.
Lize had never expended much of her affection
on her own honest-born babies at the advanced
age of two weeks.

“The Lord love it, if its mother won't!”

She spoke heartily that time, and Nixy's
head — it was such a child's head! — came out
of the straw.

“Mother? I wish I had a mother. To go to
now, you know, Lize. To take me in, mebbe,
and help bear what folks say, and all that.
S'pose she 'd be ready and willin'? I wonder
if she 'd kiss me!” Lize subsided.

“S'pose your boy come now, Lize, — not the
dead one, but t' other one as shot the fellar and
ran away, you know, — would you take him in,
and help him bear what folks said?”

“Tim 's no fool either,” said Lize, gruffly, after
a silence; “he knows.”

She gathered Nixy's baby up into her brown
warm neck, and kissed it. Nixy watched her
thoughtfully, but Nixy did not want to kiss it.

The poor child would have hated the baby if she
had known exactly how.

She used to dream, in her feverish nights, of
being at the bottom of Jacques's “hill,” and all
the foot-paths up were narrow — very; and in
every path upon which she set her foot that
baby lay. This dream pursued her till her child
was over two weeks old.

“What is to become of that poor girl?” The
gray-bearded doctor asked this of Lize one dark
night, in a whisper; and Lize, in a whisper, answered:
—

“Heaven knows! For she don't. I 've come
to the end of my rope. Folks must live if they
are sorry for folks. I 'm promised up to Jeb's
day after to-morrow.”

When they came to Nixy, they found her sitting
up straight in bed, her mouth set and sulky.

The physician saw that he had been overheard.

“It 's no use, I tell you!” began Nixy,
promptly.

“What is of no use?”

“I won't go, I won't go!”

“Go where?”

“You know you 'd send me to the 'sylum if

you could!” said Nixy, defiantly. “You know it
as well as I do! I tell you it's no use!”

“What will you do, Nixy?”

“I — don't know.”

Nixy's eyes turned black and frightened, wandered
from the doctor to the window, to the
stained wall, to Lize, like the eyes of a caged
creature.

“I will make everything easy and pleasant for
you,” said Dr. Burtis, gently. He hated to terrify
the girl; he wished he knew of a woman who
could do this business for him; he felt very much
as if he were pinching butterflies. “They will
help you to be good at the Home. They are
very kind. After a while they will find the best
way for you to —” he hesitated, gravely ending —
“to begin life over again.” (“She 's almost as
much of a child as her baby!” — under his breath
to Lize or himself, — or the Lord perhaps; for
the Lord generally heard something of Dyke
Burtis's patients.)

He might as well have talked to the tides, —
I do not mean the Lord now, but Nixy.

“I know all about your 'sylums,” persisted the
girl. “I 've been there; afore I went to Jeb's. I

ain't going from one prison to another so easy.
Folks was well enough, — but you don't catch me
agin!” In spite of herself, Nixy sobbed. Dr.
Dyke Burtis coughed uneasily, and took up his
hat; he could eradicate tumors with more composure
than he could command against a crying
girl, — and such a helpless, miserable girl!

“Think of it till to-morrow,” he begged her,
with gentle deference, — “think of it till to-morrow,
and I will see you again.”

“Will you, though?” thought poor Nixy. “It
takes two to make that bargain.” She turned her
face to the wall to think. Lize came up soon to
go to bed; but Nixy, still with her face to the wall,
lay thinking, and Lize rolled heavily upon the
straw beside her without speaking. The thing of
which Nixy was thinking was that stain upon the
wall. She was wondering who the girl was that
lay just here, where she was lying, years ago;
what she was like; if she had a mother to help
her bear what folks said, and all that; if she did,
why she knocked out the baby's brains; if it was
easy to do, — knocking out a baby's brains; she
felt sorry for the girl; it did not occur to her for
some minutes to be sorry for the baby.

Then she thought how much more likely Jeb
would be to take her back if she went alone. She
meant to go to Jeb's to-night, which suggested
the idea.

Then she fell to speculating a little, idly, on the
ease with which she could squeeze the baby up
against the wall; it would not be difficult to
squeeze the breath out of it altogether.

This did not strike her as a thoroughly pleasant
thing to do; but the longer she looked at the
stained wall, the more familiar the idea seemed
to grow to her, as a thing which might be done,
— as one would take a pill, for instance, to cure
a headache. She could have sworn to it, as she
looked, that the red spider was weaving a red
web all about her and about the child. She
wanted to waken Lize and ask her. Because,
as the web tightened, it drew her away from
Lize, and nearer the child, and nearer the reddened
wall. And as the web narrowed, it seemed
to her rather imperative than otherwise to squeeze
the baby, just to see how it would feel.

If she was dreaming, she must have roused
suddenly, for Lize, half awake, put her rough
hand over on the girl's hair, in a motherly and
protecting though very sleepy way.

“Lie still, Nix, and let alon' lookin' after the
murder-stain; it 'll give ye dreams.”

The murder-stain? That struck Nixy as a
new idea.

“I 'm not that,” she said aloud. “I was only
thinking — well!” She drew nearer to Lize,
and took the child upon her arm. She felt herself
grow suddenly cold all over, but her head
was hot and clear.

“Lize!”

Lize turned sleepily.

“You 've been good to me. I sha' n't forget
yer noways.”

“Go to sleep, — go to sleep!” said Lize, unromantically
enough.

“And, Lize, look here! I 'll try to like it;
I 'll try to like the baby, because you took it all
up in your neck and kissed it, just like — just
like I wished I had a mother to take me up and
kiss me.”

The last words were spoken to herself, for Lize
was sound asleep.

So were half the men and women in the room.
It was early; but they were all hard workers or
hard drinkers in No. 19, and they slept both soon
and soundly.

Nixy lay still for a little time, and then, with
great care and little stir, crawled with the baby
over Lize's feet, and sat down to rest upon the
floor. She was faint, at first, with the effort, but
after a while found herself able to hunt for and
crawl into her clothes, that lay in a heap at
the foot of the miserable bed.

Some of the doctor's medicine was left in a
mug upon the floor; she drained it eagerly.
Her shawl and straw hat were on a nail within
reach. These she put on, sitting still for a while
to rest. She had a dull feeling of relief that
Lize slept so soundly. This was drowned, however,
by an acute consciousness that the baby was
heavy, and that it was not as easy as it used to be
to walk across the room.