 | Chapter XXIX.
The Catholic Child. The tenant-house, or,, Embers from poverty's hearthstone |  |
29. Chapter XXIX.
The Catholic Child.
THE experiment of a ragged school in Kolephat
College had been modestly inaugurated, but it was
not long before its influence became manifest; its presence
eliciting various comments, according to the light
in which the tenants regarded it; and Margaret Winston
found herself suddenly brought out from the seclusion of
her late toil at the needle to the position of a much-talked-about
and sufficiently-abused personage. Every
morning, when the urchins who regularly attended her
class, under the incentive of kind words and the daily
allowance of food, appeared with faces more or less clean,
and dispositions in a greater or less degree docile, there
came likewise to the door of the school-room a crowd of
slatteruly women and not a few coarse men, with a dull
expression of curiosity upon their countenances, striving
to obtain a look at the “missus;” and many were the
remarks upon her personal appearance, her motives and
objects, that Margaret constantly heard from those self-constituted
inspectors of her labors. But as she progressed,
from day to day, the task became easier and the
to her simple instructions, she began to discover sensibilities,
and aptitudes, and yearnings of the spirit, which were
as grapnels upon her sympathies, uniting the poor children
with her purest hopes and aspirations. Some twenty
boys and girls, their ages varying from the infant of four
to the child of twelve, soon attended pretty punctually at
every session. Among these were Bob the Weasel and
Fanny, who learned everything surprisingly fast, her own
young brother Harry, and the orphan child of Keeley,
who himself had wandered nobody could tell whither, after
his dead wife had been buried by the charitable aid of
Mr. Granby. Margaret was much interested in this last
unhappy orphan of poverty and dissipation, who soon
became reconciled to a more peaceful shelter than she
had ever known before.
Meantime, in view of her new duties, Margaret remained
in her old apartments of Kolephat College, and Emily
Marvin, dreading a repetition of Mr. Jobson's proffers of
friendship, removed from Foley's Barracks, and engaged a
room contiguous to that tenanted by her friend. This, it
is true, she seldom occupied, her week-days being passed
at the residence of kind Mrs. Richmond, who still gave
employment to her, and with the sympathy of a good
heart made each day's industry attractive to the orphan's
nature. Emily loved to talk to Margaret of her new
patroness—of the sad grace which entered into all her
movements—of her thoughtfulness and care for dependants
and the poor. She had promised, Emily said, to
come, when the spring opened, and see the school at
and she dared not venture out, even in her carriage.
Something, the apprentice said, concerning Mr. Richmond
who had been sick, and confined to his room on one occasion
a whole day, during which time his lady was very
dejected, and continually going to her husband's chamber,
to return to her bondoir, almost immediately, sadder than
ever. But Emily had never seen Mr. Richmond, she said,
in answer to a question of Margaret's—only his portrait
that hung upon the wall. But it was ever a theme of
wonder to the young girl, how a lady like Mrs. Richmond,
so amiable, with such a fine-looking husband, and surrounded
by every luxury, could yet seem so unhappy;
and then Emily would talk of the elegant velvet carpets,
the rosewood covered with blue and gold, and green and
gold brocades, the curiously carved lables and étagerès
and eseritoires, and medallion chairs; the mahogany and
oak furniture, the pictures and chandeliers—all the accumulations
of wealth, and art, and taste—ah! was it not
pardonable if the poor child dwelt with a sigh upon the
enumeration of these? and was it not sad, at last, to
hear from her lips the expression of her pity for one who
possessed them—“Poor Mrs. Richmond! she's not happy
after all!”
This passed away three months of winter, and the
early spring days began to come, slowly, one by one,
loosening the grasp of frost upon town and country. The
school progressed, and was blessed daily in the influences
that it sent forth upon the neighborhood; Mr. Granby
and Samson came regularly to visit it, bringing food for
to take home to their parents. Rob Morrison's sharp
intelligence began to develop itself in close application
and quick reception of knowledge, and Fanny's bright
intuition became the means not only of pleasure to herself
and Margaret Winston, but to the old man, her grandfather,
who began to dote upon the child, listening for
hours to the music of her voice, as she read to him the
books mastered by her daily lessons in the school below.
Mallory was able, as the spring approached, to go out
again upon the street—not any more to rake for broken
coals in the gutters, and totter homewards with them, to his
dismal straw and hidden treasure; but to procure, bit by
bit, articles of comfort for his room, and, oftener, to purchase
little dainties wherewith to surprise Fanny, when
she should come to read to him on his return. Truly,
God had worked a great change in the ancient miser's
heart.
Peleg Ferret did not trouble himself about the new use
to which one of his tenant-rooms was appropriated, satisfied
that he received his rent promptly from Samson. He
was, moreover, occupied by his yet unsuccessful search
after Kolephat's lost child; having, most unaccountably,
lost sight of Monna Maria and her interesting family,
who had suddenly changed their quarters, leaving no
trace of their whereabouts. Ferret knew that, as spring
approached, it was customary for many of the organ-grinding
fraternity to disperse on expeditions to other
cities and the interior towns, and, consequently, he feared
that the Italian woman, with her flitting friends, was now
up such clues as he could gather from those who had
known Old Pris, contriving, in so doing, to learn much
more than he chose to make his employer acquainted
with. He had carried his inquiries back to the period
when Kolephat's babe was missed, ascertaining that,
about the same time, a whole family, save an infant, had
perished by cholera in a cellar of Foley's Barracks, the
child being found clinging to its dead mother's breast,
taken care of by some poor neighbor, and growing up
one of the neglected children abounding in the streets.
This, of course, did not interest the agent—nor would it
have interested him even had he beheld in Rob Morrison,
of the tenant-house school at Kolephat College, that same
poor foundling, no longer abandoned, but, thanks to
Christian charity! cherished and protected, and trained
to become useful in the future—a blessing and a reward
to his kind benefactor, Mr. Granby.
But Ferret discovered that Old Pris the rag-picker
had wandered away from the city about the time of the
child's disappearance, and that, a year or more afterwards,
Monna Maria, the Italian, was first known among other
denizens of Foley's Barracks, whence she afterwards removed,
and that, in her motley family, there was a very
handsome little girl, who had, within a year or two past,
been seldom seen. This child the agent rightly conjectured
to be the dancing-girl he had seen in Monna Maria's
room, and the more closely he followed the few threads
of the past, of which he could take hold, the more he
became convinced that the reputed Italian girl was no
But of Monna Maria he had lost sight. She had changed
her dwelling-place, as it seemed, on the day following
that unceremonious visit received from the collector of
rents; but in what direction she had vanished, Ferret
could not, as yet discover. Indeed, Monna Maria had her
own reasons for evading the agent's search.
“Bambina!” she said to Ninetta, when, at her new
quarters, in a tenant house quite as squalid as that she
had left, she saw the beautiful dancing-child again by
her side—“Bambina! that man—the heretic—would steal
thee away—kidnap thee, if he could, little one.”
“Sweet Virgin!” exclaimed Ninetta. “Is it true,
Monna Maria?”
“Ay, child! the vile heretic would steal thee for the
Jews, who desire to turn thee from our Holy Church, and
make thee like themselves—the devil's children!”
Ninetta clasped her small hands together, gazing at the
old woman's forbidding features, in mute terror.
“Hast thy rosary with thee, bambina? and thy Agnus
Dei? and thy scapula? And the box of holy water—is
it always near thy bed?”
“Yes, dear Monna.”
“And thou goest to confession twice a week?”
“Surely, dear Monna.”
“Then, thou art safe, I trust, from the heretic wolves.
Where is thy rosary, bambina?”
“Here it is, Monna Maria,” answered the child, drawing
from her pocket a string of black and white beads,
with a small gilt crucifix depending.
“Now, Ninetta!” continued the Italian woman, “kiss
the cross, and promise that you will never leave Monna
Maria, to go with the wicked heretics!”
She pressed the beads, as she spoke, to Ninetta's lips,
and the dancing-girl said solemnly—“I promise.” Then
Monna Maria laid her hand upon the child's head, and
muttered—
“My blessing, if thou keep'st thy word—and my curse,
if thou dost deceive me.”
When Ninetta had left her, the old woman clasped her
hands, and bowed down on the floor, while tears streamed
from her black eyes, and she beat her breast with heavy
strokes. “God have mercy!” she said; “Christ have
mercy! Save the little one from heretics! Thou dost
know that the Jew is her father, and that, if she be
restored to him, he will make her a Jewess, and thus she
will be doomed eternally! O Saviour of the world! let
her not be lost from thy holy Catholic Church.”
Thus prayed this woman—a bigot and fanatic in the
cause of what she believed to be religion. More intelligent
than the class by which she was surrounded, Monna
Maria was yet a slave to the tenets and dogmas of her
Church; and, though she well knew that the child whom,
ten years before, she had received naked from the hands
of Old Pris, was none other than the lost daughter of
Kolephat the broker—though she could not but know
that Ninetta, in being restored to her natural protector,
would be placed in comfort and luxury, while her own
poor condition would, doubtless, be materially improved,
through the child's affection—still, one idea mastered all
would be forced to change her belief for that of the
detested heretics, whom, in her bitter prayers, she consigned
to eternal perdition. Bigotry controlled the woman's
heart, and she was willing rather to see Ninetta
dead at her feet, with the rosary clasped in her hands,
than to behold her living in opulence, but estranged from
the altar and confessional. Alas! Monna Maria, in her
sectarianism, was not more blamable than many who,
calling themselves Evangelical Christians, have yet no
charity for Christians of other denominations, but consign
them, even as did the poor Italian woman, to “ever-during
shame and ceaseless woe.”
Ninetta was glad to be away from the woman of gloomy
faith, whom yet she regarded as a mother, having never
known other care than hers, till she became the pupil of a
ballet-woman and her husband, the posturer Freidrich.
The poor child's situation with these people was not a pleasant
one; for they obliged her to stand, during long hours,
upon her toes, extend her limbs at painful angles, and
stretch her tender muscles to the verge of distortion.
Sometimes Alsace, the wife of Freidrich, would compel
Ninetta to practise during many hours, in which time she
would become so weary as to faint away, whereupon they
would lay her upon her little bed, in a dark room, to sleep
off fatigue and insensibility. On week-day nights, the
little one appeared in tableaux with the posturist, at a
model-artist exhibition, and on the Sabbath evenings
danced in a casino; and these were the pleasantest portions
of Ninetta's life; for she then received presents of
thrown to her upon the stage, as a compliment to her
grace and beauty. Very proud and happy was the child,
on these gala occasions, and especially on the Sunday
nights when she danced in a German garden, before many
hundreds of people, who set up loud shouts of welcome
when she appeared, and cried “brava! bravissima!” at
every fine pas that she executed. Poor infant! she cared
not that Maestro Freidrich (as he called himself) and his
French wife were the shrewd ones who profited by the
money accruing from her dancing—except small douceurs
which she was permitted to receive, and hoarded faithfully
for Monna Maria!—she thought not of the cruel avarice
that exposed her young loveliness to the rude gaze of
beer-drinking guests in a casino! She only enjoyed, in
her simplicity, the intoxicating incense of applause, which,
whether rising in the gilded opera-house, or the low bagnio,
is always sweet to the poor slaves of the footlights.
Ninetta, after leaving the Italian woman, on the morning
at which the brief conversation above related took
place, tripped lightly away towards the obscure theatre in
which she was to rehearse her nightly part; but as she
did so, a pair of sharp eyes suddenly observed her figure,
and presently a man walked slowly behind her, watching
the route she took, and following at a distance, till the
street was reached in which the play-house was situated.
This man was Peleg Ferret, who, after losing sight of the
Italian woman during several months, now, with great
satisfaction, encountered the child in whom he was still
more interested.
The agent rubbed his hands, in self-gratulation, as he
traced Ninetta to the door of the theatre; and he was
not long in making up his mind as to the further course
he should pursue. He lingered in the neighborhood,
closely scrutinizing the door at which the child had
entered, until, in an hour's time, he beheld her re-emerge,
accompanied by a man and woman, who were no other
than the posturer Freidrich and his wife; then, keeping
constantly in their rear, he tracked their steps to Foley's
Barracks—a place well known to the collector as a tenant-house
owned by a capitalist who dwelt abroad, confiding
its management to the broker Jobson. Mr. Ferret was
overjoyed in beholding the object of his search so familiarly
located, and he did not check his curiosity until,
ascending the dark and narrow stairs of the Barracks,
just behind the unsuspecting maestro, he ascertained the
very room in which the dancing-girl and her protector
dwelt. It was a white day for Peleg Ferret, and he
resolved to make the most of it, by calling at once upon
his acquaintance, Mr. Jobson, in order to inquire concerning
his model-artist tenants.
Mr. Jobson was in his cubby-hole, and received his
brother agent with due dignity, but in an affable manner,
inasmuch as Ferret represented, in a degree, the wealth
of Mordecai Kolephat. To his inquiries, however, concerning
the dancing-girl, Mr. Jobson could, as he averred,
give no information. Mr. Jobson said he did not trouble
himself about that sort of tenants, you know, so long as
they paid their rent punctually, you know; he did recollect
a child—yes, a little girl in tights—balancing on a
the man's name was on his books—Freidrich Kamph.
But, what in the world could Mr. Ferret want with such
people?—had they left Kolephat College without paying?
of course, that could not be, you know.
Mr. Ferret answered, “No, indeed!” and protested he
had no particular motive—except curiosity, and all that;
after which, chuckling at his own shrewdness, the agent
took his leave. Mr. Jobson rubbed his hands and began
to ruminate, when he was called upon by another visitor,
Mr. Richmond.
“Ah! Mr. Richmond! glad to see you! By the way,
just had a call from Mordecai Kolephat's agent—Ferret,
you know.”
Richmond started, as if Mordecai Kolephat occupied
his own thoughts.
“Yes! called to ask about some vagabond tenants of
mine—model-artists, you know, and a little dancing-girl.”
“Hoh!” cried Mr. Richmond. “What is that, Jobson? a
dancing-girl—Ferret inquired about her? And, pray, who
is the dancing-girl?” he asked, in a more subdued tone.
“'Pon my word, I havn't an idea! but there's something
queer about it. Ferret is a crafty dog—some motive, you
know.”
“Where is the child?—this dancing girl?” demanded
Richmond, quickly. “Could I not see her?”
“Why, 'pon my word, Mr. Richmond. Are you curious
about these people? Well, really” —
“Did you understand me? I should like to see this
child!” said Richmond.
“Oh, certainly, you know! They're at the Barracks,
—it's only a step, you know.”
Mr. Richmond said he would go, and together they
went to the tenant-house, where the gamester's refined
sensibilities were somewhat shocked by the sights, sounds,
and smells of a neighborhood wherein the winter's filth had
been suffered to accumulate, and which the spring weather
was now converting into a laboratory of poisonous gases,
distilling disease and death. Mr. Richmond held a lavendered
handkerchief to his nostrils, until he had hurriedly
traversed the alleys and entries, and, under pretence of
examining the building, obtained a glance at Ninetta, in
the room of Freidrich Kamph and his partner Alsace.
What Mr. Richmond's reflections were, as he looked upon
the young girl's face, tracing, with a quick eye, the
softened Asiatic lineaments, and dreamy expression, and
satisfying himself at once that the dancing-girl was of the
same blood as that which ran the veins of Kolephat's
niece, Rebecca, were not, of course, divined by Mr. Jobson;
but as he emerged from the tenant-house to the
light of day, it was manifest that some new and deep
emotions were agitating his mind. Had Rebecca been
present, indeed, and able to read her lover's thoughts,
the heiress might have shrunk into wretchedness and despair;
for they pictured dark alternations of crime, in
which she, wretched one! was to be an instrument or a
victim.
Richmond parted from Mr. Jobson, at the adjoining
street, saying that he would again see him, on important
business; and the broker was thus left to his own reveries,
once more.
| Chapter XXIX.
The Catholic Child. The tenant-house, or,, Embers from poverty's hearthstone | |