 | Chapter VI.
Mallory the Miser. The tenant-house, or,, Embers from poverty's hearthstone |  |
6. Chapter VI.
Mallory the Miser.
ASCENDING to the highest dwelling-floor of Kolephat
College, through narrow pine-walled passages,
the visitor would find a score of small apartments separated
from the cockloft by a sort of ceiling, constructed of
hemlock boards, with insterstices between each, through
which not only the wind found access, but rain and snow-water,
from the rickety shingle-roof above. In one of these
wretched rooms, lying upon a coarse bed of straw in the
corner, on the morning that succeeded the great snowstorm,
was stretched the form of a woman, covered by a
patched quilt and some ragged under-garments, her head
supported by an old shirt-sleeve stuffed with the damp
straw of the pallet. This woman's hair was long and
quite grey, her features were haggard and flushed with
fever, her arms and hands were bony, like a skeleton.
She seemed to suffer greatly: her eyes were closed, and
low moans proceeded incessantly from her compressed lips.
Drops of water, oozing from the roof above, fell, with
measured plash, upon the boards near the bed's foot,
around which a wet space appeared, discoloring the dirty
flooring. The ceiling and partitions of this upper story
that they momently shook and rattled, as the wind rushed
gibbering through each forlorn passage.
There was another living being in this desolate tenant-room—a
shivering, puny child, with scarce a shred of
clothing on her limbs, whose face was marked by scrofulous
blotches. This child's yellow hair was so tangled and
matted, that it stood out in every direction from her face,
begrimed with dirt and tears. More, indeed, like an elfish
spectre than like a human child, did this little creature
appear, as her sharp features and attenuated figure were
disclosed in the morning light that struggled dimly through
a side window, the principal glass of which had long
since given place to boards, nailed over broken panes, or
crushed hats stuffed between their fragments. Crouching
on her knees at the fire-place, down which water mixed
with soot was coustantly dripping, this squalid child
endeavored to ignite, with her feeble breath, a few shavings
collected upon the hearth.
As the blaze flashed up, the little one started, hearing
a staggering footstep without; and the next moment, the
door was burst rudely open, and a drunken man reeled
over the threshold, and fell heavily on the straw at the
foot of the sick woman's bed.
“O! it's father!” cried the child, allowing the fire
just kindled to die away, while she lifted her shrivelled
arms, as if expecting a sudden blow. But the man
appeared powerless to inflict injury, or even to help himself;
his bloated face lay prone upon the floor, and his
blood-shot eyes stared vacantly forward. Brutalized by
and the child went on to kindle the few chips and
shavings dispersed upon the damp hearthstone. Then,
trembling all the while, with the chill wind that swept
the room, as well as from terror, lest her besotted
parent might awake, the spectral figure proceeded to
boil some water in a lidless saucepan, placed upon the
fire.
No inventory was needed to describe the furniture of
this wretched attic room in Kolephat College. Besides
the straw bed and its tattered covering, there were a
broken table, or rather high stool, standing upon three
legs, near the wall, a chair destitute of back, on which
about an inch of tallow dip was stuck in its own grease,
for lack of a candlestick; a broken basket, containing a
few chips of wood, two or three earthen cups, and a black
teapot, upon a shelf, and the saucepan, before-mentioned,
upon the fire. These were the visible effects pertaining to
that apartment, wherein a woman lay helpless with fever,
and a man intoxicated to stupefaction.
The weird child, after watching the water till it boiled,
now dragged the shattered chair to the wall, and, climbing
upon it, reached her little hand upward for the teapot
and cups. From one of the latter, she extracted a few
pinches of a compound which had been purchased from
Peleg Ferret's store, under the illusive impression that it
was “tea,” and, dropping it into the pot, proceeded to
prepare her mother's, breakfast.
It might have furnished a subject—if not for a painter,
at least for a moralist—to observe the look of anxious
the allowance of tea, to scan the busy expression of her
sharp features, as she watched the process of steeping the
beverage, and, finally, to mark her furtive glances, now
at her moaning mother, now at the prostrate drunkard,
while she took a fragment of bread off the shelf, cut some
thin slices from it with a broken knife, and browned them
at the scanty fire. So old her childish face, so strangely
slow and measured were her motions, she seemed to be
rather a dwarf woman than an infant of scarce six miserable
winters—for summer, in the sense of life's enjoyments,
she had never known.
When the dirty liquid, which the poor child fancied to
be tea, had been duly prepared, and poured into one of
the earthen cups, she softly approached her mother, and
whispered that it was ready; and the sick woman, stirring
painfully, received it from her hands. Here was another
scene for preacher or painter to sketch: the sufferer upon
the straw, raising with difficulty her trembling head from
its wretched pillow—the weird-like child, striving with
feeble arms to assist, and the strong man, who should have
been helper and protector of both, lying dumb and senseless
at their feet.
“Is he asleep?” murmured the woman, glancing uneasily
at the prostrate drunkard.
“Yes, mother! he fell down, when he came in,”
answered the child, with a fearful look. “O, I do hope
he won't wake up now.”
The woman sighed, and put away the tea from her lips,
with a nauseated look. “It's slops,” she said.
“Dear me! the fire wouldn't burn, and there's no
milk,” replied the child, mournfully.
“And no money,” rejoined the mother, bitterly.
“There's seven cents, mother, and I can go for milk,
please. I'd gone before, but I was afeard you'd miss me.”
“It's very dark, Moll,” said the woman, looking towards
the window.
“It's the snow—there was a big snow come in the
night.”
“Go for some milk—and see if you can pick up a few
chips in the street, Moll.”
“There's snow all over, mother.”
“No matter, Moll—try!”
The woman turned away her head, and the wretched
child took up an old hood from the floor, and placed it
over her matted hair. The hood was her mother's, and
Moll's poor face looked still more witch-like, peering out
from it. Then, throwing a tattered and filthy shawl
about her half-naked shoulders, she sat down to fasten
her shoe, slipshod and broken at every side.
“'Deed, I might as well be barefoot,” she muttered, in
her odd manner, ruefully surveying the torn leather; but
there was no help for the matter; and so Moll rose, and
climbed to the shelf, where a sixpence and a copper were
hidden under one of the cups. The silver she at once
placed in her mouth, and, jumping from the chair, was
about to depart, when her foot was grasped by the outstretched
hand of her father, who had recovered from his
stupor, or feigned sleep, and was eyeing her, with an
ill-omened expression.
“I seen ye, Moll,” muttered the man, with a drunken
chuckle, as he detained the frightened child. “You was
sly, but I seen ye.”
“Let her go, Phil,” cried the sick wife, half-rising from
her bed.
“Stop up, ould woman! nobody's interferin' with you!
Jes' you stop, ould woman!” replied the husband, speaking
thickly, as he endeavored to raise himself on one hand,
while with the other he held the now weeping child.
“Lie down, brute!” muttered the woman, angrily.
“Yes—you—sham sick, will ye?” cried the husband.
“No go, ould woman—'tis no use! Moll! go for rum!
It's a sixpence ye got—I seen it.”
“Please, father! let me go for the milk, and some
chips,” pleaded the child, striving to get away.
“Rum—go for rum, I tell ye.”
“There's no bottle, father.”
“Old Fer—Ferret 'll lend—a bottle!” replied the
drunkard. “Go—and ask him.”
“O, dear father! mother is so sick, and I was goin' for
milk!”
“Your mother!—shammin'—shammin sick, I tell you.
Here, now!—gi' me the sixpence!”
“O, please, father, don't take it!”
“Gi' me it,” cried the drunkard, twisting the child's
ankle, as he dragged her back, till she fell, with pain, upon
the floor. “Open yer mouth—I seen it.”
The wretched child's mouth was forced open by her
brutal parent, and the silver taken out. Then the
ruffian, with a chuckle, released his grasp, and she fled,
recalled her:
“Moll! never you mind the drunken vagabone. Go
for the chips, girl, and ask Ferret to trust you for a
penn'orth o' milk.”
“He'll not, mother. He said, last night, he was comin'
for the rent.”
“Rent! ha, ha!” laughed the woman, bitterly. “Wish
he may get it, the ould skin-flint!”
It was horrible to hear that laugh, from those lips
twitching with feverish pain; and to hear it echoed by
the wretched husband, as he staggered to his feet, and
leered vacantly at his partner.
“Vagabone—am I? vagabone—ould woman?” He
swayed backward and forward, as he spoke, endeavoring
to sustain his balance, and shaking his fist the while, by
turns, at mother and daughter. Then, examining the
sixpence, which he clutched between his fingers, he staggered
to the door, and out upon the passage.
“He's gone!” cried the wife, striking her forehead, as
if relieved. “Don't go yet, Moll!—maybe he'll fall and
break his neck! God forgive me for the wish!”
The sick woman and her weird child listened to the
plunges and steps of the drunken man, as he descended
the stairs, flight by flight, intent on satisfying his thirst
for rum. What a “home” for human beings was this
attic chamber of Kolephat College!
Hardly had the last vibrations of the drunkard's downward
steps reached the listener's ears, than a new footfall
sounded in the passage, and a knock was heard outside.
who glanced around the room, eyeing its squalid appearance,
and the half-famished features of its tenants, with a
professional scrutiny. Obviously, the inspection was not
productive of satisfaction for he scowled at the frightened
child, and asked, “Where's your father?”
“He went down stairs,” answered the child.
“Ay! to pay his good friend Ferret a visit,” added the
woman; “to change his last sixpence for Ferret's poison,
that has turned a hard-working, sober man into a drunken
loafer.”
“He'd better pay his rent,” snarled Peleg.
“And what matters it to you, whether the penny comes
first for rent or rum?” muttered the woman. “He and
his are yours and the devil's, body and soul.”
“Come, come, woman! none o' your abuse, or you'll
pack off, sick or well! I don't keep a harbor for beggars.
Your rent has been due now a fortnight, and I'm
losing money every day.”
“And Phil has been drunk in your shop every day, for
the last month, Ferret! How many times did I beg and
pray that you'd not sell him the liquor! It's the rent
you want, is it?”
“Yes, and I'll have it, or you'll all march,” said the
agent, vindictively.
“Maybe, you'll sell my bed,” muttered the woman, with
a hollow laugh, as she kicked the loose straw that had
broken through its dirty sack.
“We'll see, we'll see!” was the reply, as Peleg Ferret,
frowning blackly, shook his head at his tenant, and left
sunk back, with closed eyes, in a deep swoon. Excitement
and suffering had exhausted her to the last point, and
she lay as one dead. Moll looked, and, with a sharp cry,
ran to the bed, and threw herself upon her wretched
mother's breast.
Meantime, the miserable inebriate, holding the sixpence
in his clutch, had descended to the lower passages of
Kolephat College, and thence, betaking himself to the
street, reeled towards the Dutch grocery which divided
neighboring custom with that of Peleg Ferret. It might
be that the cold air, or the snow-heaps through which he
staggered, somewhat sobered his senses, and brought
some feeling of shame over his besotted mind; for he
paused at the street-corner, and appeared to hesitate as
to proceeding further. As he did so, a most singularly-shabby
and forlorn object shuffled past him, in the direction
of the tenant-house. It was an old man, withered
and bent almost double with age or infirmities. His palsied
head shook like that of a toy-mandarin upon some
parlor mantel-shelf; and, as he tottered along, a dry,
hacking cough shook his leau frame. The drunkard
regarded him for a moment, with vacant look, and then
more earnestly, as if some thought were forming in his
muddled brain. “Ho, ho!” he chuckled to himself. “It's
Mallory, the miser!”
The object of his remark kept on, with shuffling gait,
to the entrance of Kolephat College; and, after gazing
for a moment longer, the man Phil followed him, with
somewhat steadier motion, till they both entered the
guide than vision, to determine the direction of footsteps,
and so Phil listened a moment, after he crossed the
threshold, to hear the old man ascend the dingy stairs.
Slowly, pausing at each step; to take breath, and
groaning at the difficulties of progress, the tottering
miser groped upward, stretching out his shaking hands to
feel the way, while Phil stepped closely behind, till the
pair reached a landing on the fourth story, and the old
man crawled towards the rear of the passage, reaching, at
last, the door of his dark and narrow chamber. The
drunkard, Phil, knew the locality, for he had seen its
tenant enter it before; but he still kept close to the
miser's heels, and arrived at the threshold as the latter
crossed it, closing carefully the door behind him.
Phil appeared now to be recovered, in a great measure,
from his drunken stupidity, and possessed with some
crafty purpose suddenly conceived, for he crouched down
in the murky entry, beside the old man's apartment, and
essayed to catch a glimpse of the inmate through a crevice
in the rotten panel.
It was a miserable apartment—more so, even, than that
which the drunkard himself occupied above; for it was
narrow and dingy, with hardly room to turn between the
truckle-bed that formed the old man's resting-place, and
the small hearth, with a broken stove between the jambs.
There was no fire in this stove; but the miser had
brought home coals and cinders, scraped from some ash-heap,
and now emptied them on the floor, out of a filthy
handkerchief. Stooping then, groaning unceasingly, he
them by the aid of a match which he took from the fire-place.
Presently, the sticks took fire, and flashing up,
cast their light upon the withered features of this wretched
dotard. They were very forbidding to look at: lips shrivelled
and drawn in at the corners; gums yellow and
almost toothless; nose hooked and chin protruding; eyes,
furtive and restless in their glance, roving about the
apartment, scanning every shadow, and twinkling like
fire-flies under the bony forehead—a portrait of distrust,
fretfulness, and fear.
The outer garb of this old man consisted of a shabby
brown coat, full of patches of other colors, and fringed
with rags upon skirt and sleeves. Instead of buttons, a
strand of rope confined it about his withered figure, and
held up, at the same time, the waistbands of thin trowsers,
likewise patched and tattered. A pair of rusty
boots, rent in divers places, shod his feet, and were bound
about by pieces of bagging that served as leggings to
cover the broken leather. An old blue cotton shirt,
that had probably covered his body during months, was
partially visible on his breast, and his grey hair was
covered by a fur hat, once white, but long ago blackened
with street mud, from which the dotard had picked it,
when his last head-gear fell to pieces from rottenness.
Such was Mallory the Miser, who now, after causing his
rickety stove to emit puffs of smoke till the miserable
apartment was filled with it, rose to his feet, and shuffled
slowly towards the door, still watched by Phil the
drunkard from without. Pausing, as he reached it, he
bar that stood in the corner, and, fixing this like a stanchion
against a panel (for the rust-eaten lock had long
been useless), listened a moment attentively, as though
hearing a voice, and then tottered to his single window,
letting down a smoke-stained newspaper that served for
its curtain. This done, he crept, still slowly and stealthily,
to the fire-place, and sat down, with his back towards the
door at which Phil was watching his movements. Now
came the drunkard's moment of interest; for he beheld
the old man remove a brick from the side of the hearth,
disclosing a dark recess, from which he drew out a broken
flower-pot, his palsied hands shaking the vessel, and causing
its contents to strike together, with the peculiar chink
of metal. It was gold—bright, yellow gold—the god of
the old man, whose eyes glistened with snaky light, as he
glanced nervously around him, clasping his two hands over
the flower-pot, and crouching upon it, like some unclean
fowl brooding over its young.
One by one! chink, chink! while smoke puffed up,
unheeded, from his broken stove, there the dotard squatted
in the hollow of his wretched hearth, counting his hidden
treasure — one! two! three! — chink! chink! chink!
Tottering, drivelling old miser! hour after hour, day and
night, his only solace has been to gloat, with rheumy
eyes, over the hoarded accumulations of a life unblest by
affection, barren of sympathy, desolate and destitute to
the last degree; his only solace to caress, and embrace,
and sleep with his darling gold; yes, sleep with his idolized,
his adored; for a bundle of straw, at the fire-place
the only bed of Mallory the Miser, during half a score of
years. There had he stretched so long his withered
bosom, close to his well-beloved.
And now, bowing down, he hugged the clay vessel that
contained the joy of his existence. Starving in body and
soul, with the grave yawning under his dim vision, the
ancient miser clasped to his dry heart the bride of his
dotage, his shining fiend-wife, born from yellow earth.
Phil, as he beheld the scene before him, started back,
surprised, and comparatively sobered, at the unexpected
sight. He had known that Mallory was penurious, and
was aware of the reputation he had acquired, among fellow-tenants,
of having scraped together some wretched
savings, thereby gaining the soubriquet of “miser;” but
the sight of a pot of bright gold pieces was something
totally unexpected by the drunkard, and had the effect
of a cold shower-bath upon his faculties. True, the
impulse that had prompted him to follow the old man up
stairs, was one which looked for the discovery of some
mystery like this, but the extent of Mallory's amassings
confounded the spy completely, so that some time elapsed,
after his first glimpse at the flower-pot, before he ventured
to apply his eye once more to the narrow crevice in the
panel. As he did so, he saw, much to his dismay, that
the miser had arisen suddenly, after concealing his treasure,
and was now close to the door. In another instant,
his withered hands had removed the bar, and Phil, ere he
could balance himself, fell forward over the threshold.
“Thieves! help! murder!” screamed the old man, as
and struggled to his feet. A fancied noise startling the
wretched dotard, as he counted his money, he had hastened
to the door, after hastily concealing the pot, and
Phil's body, pressing against the panel, caused it to give
way at the moment Mallory's hand was shifting to a securer
angle the bar that served for fastening. The abrupt
intrusion, overthrowing his feeble frame, did not, however,
deprive him of his voice, which continued to cry for help.
“Curse ye!” muttered Phil, as he grasped the miser's
arm, lifting him to his feet. “What are ye screechin'
for? Who's harmed ye, Mallory?”
“O—it's you, Philip—Mr. Keeley,” said the miser,
somewhat relieved, as he recognized the countenance of a
neighbor, whom he had often encountered in the passageway
of the tenant-house; but he still trembled with
alarm, for he had regarded Keeley as a suspicious character,
and the latter's looks and position, at this moment,
were not at all in his favor.
“I was comin' to pay ye a visit,” said the drunkard,
with a grim smile; and the miser fancied he beheld him
glance curiously towards the fire-place.
“It's a poor place you've come to, Mr. Keeley,” responded
the old man, uneasily.
“Beggars mustn't be choosers,” replied Phil, with a
twinkle of his eye; for his cunning had already pointed
him a course of proceeding. “I'd be askin' a favor, if ye
plaze, Mallory.”
“Of me?” cried the miser, twitching his head to one
side, and affecting to laugh.
“An' who else, Mallory? Sure, it's the poor that
knows how to help the poor; and the likes of us is poor
enough, Mallory.”
“That's true! it's a hard world!” said the miser, in a
whining tone.
“An' so I'll make bowld wid ye, Mallory. Lind me a
goold piece, to pay Ferret the rint that's doo.” Phil said
this with a leer that was unmistakable in its meaning, and
the old man grew ghastly pale.
“What do you mean?” he gasped, as the drunkard's
crafty eye fell upon him. “I've no money, avick! I'm a
poor man, like” —
“It's a lie, Mallory! Give me a goold piece, I say!
an' be neighborly, for onst in yer life.” As he uttered
this, Phil placed his back against the door, and carelessly
stooped, picking up the heavy wooden bar that had
secured it. There was a strange expression settling over
the man's features that boded no good to the miser; and
the latter retreated as he encountered it.
“What do you mean to do, Mr. Keeley?” he asked, in
a terrified whisper.
“Hark to me, Mallory. There's a sixpence—divil a
coin have I but that—an' I know ye have plinty. Up
stairs, now, is my wife, maybe dyin', and the child Moll,
without a bit or sup. I'm a drunkard, they say, and spind
all I make at the dram-shop; an' it's thrne; but, Mallory,
I'm no miser.”
The old man cowered under the singular gaze that was
fixed upon him, shrinking back towards the fire-place, like
one of those grotesque gnomes that are fabled to guard
that his long-concealed secret was known to Keeley, and
that the latter was resolved upon some means, desperate
or otherwise, to obtain the whole or a portion; but he
could not bear the thought of relinquishing a single coin.
“I'm a poor man,” he whimpered.
“You lie, Mallory! you've goold in the pot; and by
all the saints, I'll have it,” cried Phil. “Now, fair means
or foul, ould man! It's not the gallus Phil Keeley the
outlaw's afraid of! Stan' by, Mallory!” With these
words, he fixed the bar against the door, and advanced
towards the fire-place.
But the imminence of the danger, to which his treasure
was exposed, served to inspire the miser with new resolution.
No sooner had Keeley left the door, than the old
man darted to possess himself of the wooden bar, and, as
the robber stooped and displaced the brick which concealed
the gold, he flung himself forward with all his
feeble force, and dealt a blow at his head. Phil had
grasped the prize, and was rising, when the weapon
descended, grazing his forehead, and striking the flowerpot,
which it dashed to fragments, scattering the golden
contents over hearth and floor, and the dirty straw of the
bed. Then, like a wild beast robbed of its young, the
miser flung himself on Keeley, clutching his arms and
endeavoring to reach his throat; following, at the same
time, with straining glance, the coins that rolled beneath
their feet. The robber defended himself a moment, and
then became the assailant, dealing a blow upon the old
man's forehead, which dashed his feeble frame to the floor,
wildly about, striving to collect his scattered golden
pieces. Phil, too, who now began to feel his brain again
whirling with excitement, gathered up those which lay
nearest to his feet, and sprang for the door—the miser in
vain attempting to stop him.
“Bad cess to you, Mallory!” cried the drunkard. “I'll
have what I got, an' no thanks to you, murtherin' ould
miser that ye are!” And the next moment, his retreating
steps shook the stairs, as he unsteadily descended.
Mallory did not halloo, or call for help, for he dreaded
too much the exposure of his hoardings to the eyes of
other tenants, or the avaricious Peleg Ferret; and the consideration
of this fear on the miser's part had emboldened
Phil Keeley to the theft—though, indeed, it is doubtful
whether, in his half-drunken state, the latter thought at
all of the consequences of his assault. As it was, however,
Mallory was now intent only on securing what was
left of his treasure; and, though his head was bleeding
from a severe contusion received in falling, he managed to
crawl to the door and fasten it, once more, with the stanchion
that had served him for a weapon. Then, dragging
himself on hands and knees over the floor of the room, he
peered into every crevice, raked the straw with his talon
fingers, and counted and recounted, piece by piece, the
gold which he gathered up. When all this was done, he
raised from the middle of the hearth one of its flat bricks,
and revealed a rusted tin measure, filled to the brim with
coins of various hues, to which he added those preserved
from Keeley; first wrapping them in a piece of dirty flannel.
litter over it, quite behind the stove, and sat down, moaning
bitterly, and rocking himself to and fro.
Was it a problem that he revolved in the brain confined
by that yellow, bony forehead? Did he ask himself
if justice had been done upon him by the thief who pilfered
his useless gold? Did he arraign Eternal Wisdom, because
he had lost so much of his golden comfort in the
terrible desert of his life? And might not human judgment
reprove him, saying that himself was cruel and
inhuman to hoard such treasure, while hundreds starved
and died in the tenant-house, above and beneath him?
Ah! not the miser of Kolephat College, but the great
city, and the mighty world without, must answer that.
| Chapter VI.
Mallory the Miser. The tenant-house, or,, Embers from poverty's hearthstone | |