University of Virginia Library

12. Chapter XII.
Margery and the Miser.

THE stillness of the night was unbroken, save when
some fiercer blast than usual swept through the passages
of the old house, rattling its shattered windows, and
slamming unfastened doors. The light of stars stole dimly
into the room where lay, in a plain pine coffin, the corpse
of Fanny's mother. Otherwise, the apartment, squalid
and desolate, presented the same aspects as it might have
exhibited the night previous; only the red-stained coffin
showed that death had been there, and that now one the
less of humanity suffered in mortal life. The door had
been locked, and the dead left until the morrow should
arrive, and a burial consign dust to dust. Meantime, the
orphan, under protection of the seamstress, had been tenderly
cared for, and soothed to sleep, with little Harry,
while Margery herself remained at her work-stand, repairing,
with kindly thought, the tattered habiliments of her
new charge. She had heard the two children say their
simple prayers at her knee, kissed them, as she disposed the
bed-clothes snugly about their forms, and then, as usual,
hurried to her evening toil. And now, as the midnight
came again, and the fire burned low upon the hearth, she

still plied the needle, fashioning a mourning frock for the
stranger child, out of a portion of her own scanty wardrobe.

Margery's eyes were heavy, and it was with difficulty
that she pursued the task; for her overwrought frame
required repose; indeed, at length, a stupor, for it could
not be called sleep, overcame her faculties completely, and
she bowed her forehead upon the table, while unquiet
fancies crowded on her mind. When her eyes again
unclosed, the candle had burned into its socket, and thick
darkness shrouded the room, while her breath was stifled
with smoke that seemed to encompass her densely. Starting
to her feet, Margery tottered to the door, and,
opening it, became sensible that the passage-way without,
like her own apartment, was filled with smoke, and a
smell as of burning wood, which almost choked her. The
unclosing of the door of her chamber caused a current
of air to flow through the entry, and, as the seamstress
paused tremblingly upon her threshold, a low groan, and
then a stifled cry, as for assistance, reached her ears,
apparently proceeding from the floor above. It was the
impulse and act of a moment for Margery to reach for and
light a fragment of tallow candle, and, shielding it from
the draught, to advance to the flight of stairs near her
door, and listen for other sounds. At the same time, the
dreadful thought crossed her mind, that if the tenant-house
should be on fire, the lives of all its inmates were
in danger.

There is courage, we may believe, in the soldier, mounting
to the deadly breach amid a thousand flying deaths;

courage in the mariner, stemming in shattered boat the
stormy waters; but there was more than courage in the
devotion of that poor girl, as, murmuring a prayer to her
Heavenly Father, she passed through the thickening atmosphere,
and, with unfaltering steps, began to ascend
the narrow staircase to the next story. Compressing
her lips, and retaining her breath, she struggled upward,
the flickering candle-light scarce penetrating the gloom
before her.

Arrived at the top of the broken steps, Margery paused
once more, endeavored to listen, and the next instant
heard the stifled groaning close at hand. Then it suddenly
occurred to her mind, that an old man was in the
daily habit of passing her own apartment, and ascending
to this floor, and that perhaps it was his feeble voice
which now essayed to make itself heard. By the candle-rays,
she saw a closed door before her, and at once knocked
upon its panel. A smell of smouldering cloth and pine-wood
rising, at the same time, from the crevice under this
door, satisfied the seamstress that the fire, from whatever
proceeding, was within the apartment.

There was indeed, something strange in the quiet coolness
of this girl, thus seeking, at the dead of night, to
discover the presence of that dread element, before the
mere suspicion of which hundreds would have fled in
terror. But Margery trusted in God, and was not afraid.
She felt intuitively—at the moment when, starting from
feverish dreaming, a cloud of smoke enveloped her—that
upon her discretion and coolness, perhaps, depended the
lives of a hundred fellow beings. She knew that her

darling brother, and the orphan child, Fanny, were slumbering,
unconscious of danger, in the little bed-room. She
was aware that most of the inmates of Kolephat College
were at this hour asleep, wearied, the greater part of
them, by the day's struggle against want and cold. If
fire had broken out in that crowded dwelling-place, and if
it could not be checked, a terrible sacrifice of life would
inevitably result; and so, likewise, if a sudden alarm
should be given, the panic-stricken inmates, seeking flight
in darkness, through the narrow passages and steep stairways,
must run a fearful risk of being crushed or trampled
upon, or cast headlong to the floors beneath. To weigh
these consequences in her mind, and to act at once for
their prevention, by seeking to discover, by herself, the
cause of the smoke which enveloped her, were Margery's
prompt impulses, and she now felt, with thankful heart,
that but a single door interposed between herself and the
burning material.

But that door was fast, and to Margery's repeated
knocks and calls, no response was returned, save the low,
moaning sound she had heard before. The smoke, meanwhile,
continued to emerge, in denser wreaths, from the
opening at the threshold, and the seamstress feared now
that all within would speedily burst forth in flames. She
knocked and called more vehemently, and shook the worm-eaten
panels, till suddenly a bolt appeared to give way,
and the next moment a draught of air revealed an open
passage. The wooden bar, used by the miser Mallory as
a stanchion, had again slipped from its place, and allowed
the door to swing back upon its hinges. Margery, extending

the fragment of candle before her, entered the
apartment, and saw, lying across the floor, the prostrate
figure of the old man whom she had often encountered,
climbing, with feeble steps, the stairs of Kolephat College.
He lay insensible, or rather impotent, stretched beside the
hearth, his lips emitting the moans that had guided the
seamstress to his room, in season to save not only him,
perhaps, but all the wretched inmates of the tenant-house,
from cruel injury, if not from death.

Mallory was nearly dead, from asphyxia, caused by
inhaling the poisonous atmosphere that pervaded the apartment.
Beside him was the broken stove, which had been
overturned, and the coals, escaping from it, had ignited
a bundle of filthy rags and shreds of leather, collected by
the wretched old man from the gutters which it was his
custom to rake, when not covered by snow. These rags,
in a vile accumulation, had sogged and burned, with
smothered fire, during hours past, since the miser, in
attempting to rise from his pallet, had overthrown the
stove, and fallen with it, dangerously burned, to the floor.
A cloud of poisonous gas, rising around him, pervaded the
room, and escaped in smoke through the outer passages;
and, in a few more minutes, the miser's breath would, perhaps,
have been stifled for ever, and the wood-work of his
wretched hovel, reached by the fire, might, in all likelihood,
have been a funeral pyre for both him and his
beloved gold beneath the hearth-stone.

But the fire still smouldered, and Margery, with calm
presence of mind, averted all impending danger. Closing
her nostrils and mouth against the noxious effluvia, she

caught up a fragment of the broken stove, and with it
swept the charred mass of rags into the fire-place. Then,
rushing to the single window of the apartment, she dashed
it open, and, leaning over the sill, inhaled a deep, refreshing
draught of the reviving breeze.

The chill air rushed in, scattering the poisonous vapors,
and Mallory's eyes opened, his dim senses half-returning.
Groaning still, he essayed to rise, but his aged limbs had
been bruised and burned by the stove in falling, and blood
still flowed from a broad wound on the forehead, received
that day in his struggle with the drunken ruffian,
Keeley. Margery, somewhat invigorated by the pure air
she had breathed at the window, now approached the
wretched dotard, with the light, and saw that his thin
hairs were all stained with a clotted stream, that had
effused from the wounded brow. Mallory looked up at
her face, and his red eyes gleamed with suspicion, from
beneath the bony forehead, over which his yellow skin
was drawn tightly, like parchment.

The seamstress stooped beside him, taking his shrivelled
hand in her own, while she softly asked him concerning his
hurt. The forlorn miser seemed to shrink, apprehensively,
unused to words of sympathy from human lips, and his
own moved, as though he would speak, though emitting no
sound. Then he half-raised one trembling hand to his
bleeding head, and nodded slowly.

“Poor old man! I will come again, in a moment,”
said Margery; and, placing the candle near him, she
lightly retraced her steps to her own room, whence she
presently returned, with water and some linen cloth,

wherewith to bathe the miser's wounds. Old Mallory, as
his wandering senses began again to inform him, marvelled
much, in his sordid mind, concerning the soft hand that
washed the bloody clots from his grey hair. To his desolate
selfishness, it appeared strange—even as if an angel
of mercy were near—though he saw that a very homely
garb clothed the fragile form which knelt beside him.

In a few moments, Mallory's forehead was freed from
dirt and gore, and swathed with a linen bandage; and
then, by the feeble rays of her candle, Margery endeavored
to arrange the wretched litter of straw, that served the
miser for his pallet. The dotard's furtive glances followed
her every motion, and, ever, as she moved near the fire-place,
a gleam of suspicion shot from under his shaggy
brows. At length the seamstress contrived to dispose
the miserable rags which served for covering, in such a
manner as to present the semblance, at least, of a bed,
and then, exerting all her strength, assisted the helpless
old man to reach his resting-place. He mumbled unintelligibly,
as his head sank upon the pillow she had made,
and Margery, fancying that he asked for water, again
descended to her room, and brought back a glass of
sweetened milk, which the miser drank greedily.

“Can I get anything else?” Margery inquired, softly;
and the old man, somewhat revived by his draught, muttered:
“What do you want? I have nothing to give!
I'm very poor!”

Margery looked as if she thought there need be no
assurance given of this fact, and Mallory seemed to interpret
her reflection, for he said:

“Ay, ay!—you're a nice girl!—good to the old man!
—the poor old man!”

“You will sleep now—don't you think?” asked Margery.

“Ugh!” returned the miser. “He will come in the
night, perhaps!”

“Who will come?” asked the seamstress.

“Nobody—nobody! Go away!” replied Mallory, his
suspicious mind becoming again troubled. “Good-night
to you.”

“I'm just underneath,” said the girl: “if you should
be sick, you might knock on the floor.”

“Ay, ay!—I'm not sick. Good-night to you.”

“Good-night! You'll not forget to knock?” said Margery,
turning towards the door. Mallory did not answer,
but turned his head to the wall.

“I must not annoy him! he is wearied and in pain!”
thought the seamstress. “Hard that he should be left
alone!”

Saying this, and sighing as she spoke, Margery looked
about, to discover, if possible, some lamp or candle to
light; for it seemed to her wrong to leave the sick old
man in the darkness of his wretched den. She recollected,
too, the open window, and stepped back to close it. As
she did so, Mallory turned his head, and muttered:

“Will ye leave the bit o' candle?”

“Surely,” replied Margery, at once setting down the
tin candlestick, in which a couple of inches of the candle
were yet unconsumed. “But I fear it will not last till
morning.”

“Put it out, plaze!”

“But it will be so dark for you!”

“I'd rather save it, avick! An' I've matches!”

The miser again turned his face to the wall, and Margery,
bidding him again good-night, left the apartment;
but, as she was descending the stairs, a renewed noise recalled
her, in fear that the helpless dotard had fallen from
his truckle-bed. But, on reaching the door, which she
had closed behind her, she found it again fastened, and
heard, from within, what sounded like a chuckling laugh.
The wretched Mallory had risen, tottering from his pallet,
and once more secured his wooden bar against the panel.