Chapter XXI (5)

Night fell as the last wagon, loaded with the last casks of grapes, rolled slowly with heavy grinding wheels toward the cellars of Sant' Aloisa. With the wagon there were a few men enfeebled with fever, a few women shivering with ague. I walked behind the wagon, pushing it to aid the weary oxen. There was no moon: here and there a torch flickered in a copper sconce filled with oil. The courtyard and the cellar were of enormous size: in the old times Sant' Aloisa had sheltered fifteen hundred men. In the darkness, where a torch flared when he passed, I saw now and then Taddeo Marchioni coming and going, giving orders in his high, thin voice, screaming always, swearing sometimes, always suspecting some theft. He did not see me. He was entirely absorbed in his vintage and in the rebukes he hurled at his peasants. I drew back into the shadow, leaning against the column of the gateway, a huge wall blackened with time and damp. The bell of the old clock-tower sounded the nineteenth hour of the night. All at once the servant Marietta muttered in my ear, "Go in: she wants to speak with you. Go in to the tapestry-room on the other side of the house: you remember."

My blood bounded in my veins. I asked nothing better of Fate. I glided along the old walls, leaving the central court and the master there absorbed in his work, and I found with some difficulty the little side-door by which I had entered the house before. I trembled from head to foot, as in that hour. I felt myself all at once to be ugly, heavy, stupid, a brute to frighten any woman--sweating from the labors of the day, covered with dust, poor and frightful in my rough hempen shirt, with my naked legs and my bare knees impregnated with the juice of the grapes. And I dared to love this woman--I! Loved her, though she had slain Phoebus.

My mind was all in confusion: I was no longer master of myself. I scarcely drew breath; my head was giddy; I staggered as I went along those endless galleries and passages, as I had done that day when Phoebus had fallen on the sand of my arena. At last I reached--how I knew not--the room of the _arazzi_, scarcely lighted by a lamp of bronze that hung from the ceiling by a chain. In the twilight I saw the woman with the fatal gaze, with the lips of rose, with the features of Lucrezia, of Venus, the woman who in all ages has destroyed man.

Then I forgot that I was a laborer, a peasant, a juggler, a wrestler, a vagabond--that I was clad in coarse linen of hemp--that I was dirty and filthy and ignorant and coarse. I forgot myself: I only remembered my love--my love immense as the sky, omnipotent as Deity. I fell on my knees before her. I only cried with stifled voice, "I am yours! I am yours!" I did not even ask her to be mine. I was her slave, her tool, her servitor, her thing, to be cherished or rejected as she would. I shivered, I sobbed. I had never known before, it seemed to me, what love could be; and it made a madman of me.

All the while she said nothing: she let me kiss her gown, her feet, the stone floor on which she stood. Suddenly and abruptly she said only, "You are a droll creature: you love me, really--you?"

Then I spoke, beside myself the while. I remember nothing that I said: she heard me in silence, standing erect above me where I kneeled. The light was very faint; the lamp swung to and fro on its bronze chain; I saw only the eyes of the woman burning their will into mine. She bent her head slightly: her voice was very low. She said only, "I have known it a long time. Yes, you love me, but how? How?"

How? I knew no words that could tell her. Human tongues never have language enough for that: a look can tell it. I looked at her.

She trembled for a moment as though I had hurt her. Soon she regained her empire over herself. "But how?" she muttered very low, bending over me her beautiful head, nearly touching mine. "But how? Enough to--?"

She paused. Enough? Enough for what? Enough to deny heaven, to defy hell, to brave death and torment, to do all that a man could do: who could do more?

"And I love you--I." She murmured the words very low: the evening wind which touches the roses was never softer than her voice. She brushed my hair with her lips. "I love you," she repeated. "For you are strong, you are strong."

Kneeling before her there, I took her in my arms. I drew her close to me: I drank the wine of Paradise--the wine that makes men mad.

But she stopped me, drew herself away from me, yet gently, without wrath. "No," she said, "not yet, not yet." Then she added, lower still, "You must deserve me."

Deserve her? I did not comprehend. I knew well that I did not deserve my joy, poor fool that I was, mere man of the people, with the trestles of the village fair for all my royal throne. But, since she loved me, a crowd of ideas confused and giddy thronged on my brain and whirled madly together. Up above in the belfries and the towers in my infancy, with the clear blue air about me and the peopled world at my feet, I had dreamed so many foolish gracious things--things heroical, fantastical, woven from the legends of saints and the poems of wandering minstrels. When she spoke to me thus these old beautiful fancies came back to my memory. If she wished me to become a soldier for her sake, I thought--

She looked at me, burning my soul with her eyes, that grew sombre yet brilliant, like the Tiber water lighted by a golden moon. "You must deserve me," she repeated: "you must deliver me. You are strong."

"I am ready," I answered. I was still kneeling before her. I had at my throat a rude cross that my mother had hung there in my childish years. I touched the cross with my right hand in sign of oath and steadfastness. "I am ready," I said to her. "What do you wish?"

She answered, "You must free me. You are strong."

Even then I did not understand. "Free?" I repeated. "You would fly with me?"

She gave a gesture, superb, impatient, contemptuous. She drew herself backward and more erect. Her eyes had a terrible brilliancy in them. She was so beautiful, but as fierce in that hour as the wild beast that I saw once at a fair break from its cage and descend amidst the people, and which I strangled in my arms unaided.

She murmured through her closed teeth, "You must kill him. You are strong."

With a bound I rose to my feet. In the burning night an icy cold chilled my blood, my limbs, my heart.

Kill him? Whom? The old man? I, young and strong as I was, and his wife's lover?

I looked at her. What will be the scaffold to-morrow to me, since I have lived through that moment?

She looked at me, always with her sorceress's eyes. "You must kill him," she said briefly. "It will be so easy to you. If you love me it will be done. If not--farewell."

A horrible terror seized on me. I said nothing. I was stupefied. The gloomy shadows of the chamber surrounded us like a mystic vapor; the pale figures of the tapestries seemed like the ghosts arisen from the grave to witness against us; the oppressive heat of the night hour lay on our heads like an iron hand.

A phantom parted us: the spectre of a cowardly crime had come between us.

"You do not love me," she said slowly. She grew impatient, angered, feverish: a dumb rage began to work in her. She had no fear.

I drew my breath with effort. It seemed as if some one were strangling me. Kill him! Kill him! These ghastly words re-echoed in my ears. Kill an old and feeble man? It was worse than a crime: it was a cowardice.

"You do not love me," she repeated with utter scorn. "Go--go!"

A cry to her sprang from my very soul: "Anything else, anything but that! Ask my own life, and you shall have it."

"I ask what I wish."

As she answered me thus she drew herself in all her full height upward under the faint radiance from the lamp. Her magnificent beauty shone in it like a grand white flower of the datura under the suns of autumn. A disdain without bounds, without limit, without mercy, gleamed from her eyes. She despised me--a man of the people, a public wrestler, a bravo, only made to kill at his mistress's order, only of use to draw the stiletto in secrecy at the whim and will of a woman.

I was Italian, yet I dared not slay a feeble old man in the soft dark of a summer night, to find my reward on the breast of his wife.

Silence fell between us. Her eyes of scorn glanced over me, and all her beauty tempted me and cried to me, "Kill, kill, kill! and all this is thine!"

Then her eyes filled with tears, her proud loveliness grew humble, and, a supplicant, she stretched out her arms to me: she cried, "Ah, you love me not: you have no pity. I may live and die here: you will not save me. You are strong as the lions are--you are so strong, and yet you are afraid."

I shook in all my limbs. Yes, I was afraid--I was afraid of her, afraid of myself. I shivered: she looked at me always, her burning eyes now humid and soft with tears.

"In open war, in combat, all you wish," I said to her slowly. "But an old man--in secret--to be his assassin--"

My voice failed me. I saw the light in the lamp that swung above, oscillating between us: it seemed to me like the frail life of Taddeo Marchioni that swung on a thread at our will.

She drew herself upward once more. Her tears were burned up in the fires of a terrible dumb rage. She cried aloud, "You are a coward. Go!"

I fell once more at her feet; I seized her by her gown; I kissed her feet. "Any other thing!" I cried to her in my anguish--"any other thing! But the life of a weak old man! It would be horrible. I am not a coward: I am brave. It is for cowards to kill the feeble: I cannot. And you would not wish it? No, no, you would not wish it? It is a dream, a nightmare! It is not possible. I adore you! I adore you! I am a madman. I am yours; I give you my life; I give you my body and my soul. But to kill a feeble old man that I could crush in my arms as a fly is stifled in wine! No, no, no! Any other thing, any other thing! But not that."

She thrust me from her with her foot. "That or nothing," she said coldly.

The sweat fell from my brow in the agony of this horrible hour. I was ready to give my life for her, but an old man, a murder done in secret! All my soul revolted.

"But you love me!" I cried to her; and a great sob rose in my throat.

"You refuse to do this thing?" she answered.

"Yes."

Then she threw me away from her with the strength of a tigress: "Imbecile! You thought I loved you? I should have used you: that is all."

The lamp went out: the darkness was complete. I stretched my hands out, to meet but empty air. If I were alone I could not tell: I touched nothing, I heard nothing, I saw nothing. A strange giddiness came upon me; my limbs trembled under the weight of my body and gave way; I lost consciousness. It is what we call in this country a stroke of the blood.

When my senses revived I opened my eyes. It was still night about me, but a pallid light shone into the chamber, for the moon had risen, and its rays penetrated through the iron bars of the high windows. I remembered all.

I rose with pain and effort: the heavy fall on the stone floor had bruised and strained me. A great stupor, the stupor of horror, had fallen upon me. I felt all at once old, quite old. The thought of my mother passed through my mind for the first time for many days. My poor mother!

By the light of the moon I tried to find my way out of this chamber--a chamber accursed. I gained the entrance of the gallery. Silence reigned everywhere. I could not tell what hour it was. The lustre from the skies sufficed to illumine fitfully the vast and sombre passages. I found the door by which I had entered the house, and I felt the hot air of the night blow upon my forehead, as hot now as it had been at noonday.

I passed into the great open court. Above it hung the moon, late risen, round, yellow, luminous. I looked upward at it: this familiar object seemed to me a strange and unknown thing. I walked slowly across the pavement of the courtyard on a sheer instinct, as you may see a wounded dog walk, bearing death in him. My heart seemed like a stone in my breast: my blood seemed like ice in my veins. All around me were the walls of Sant' Aloisa, silent, gray, austere.

My foot touched something on the ground. I looked at it. It was a thing without form--a block of oak wood or a slab of marble?--yet I looked at it, and my eyes were rooted there and could not look elsewhere. The moon shed a sinister white light upon this thing. I looked long, standing there motionless and without power to move. Then I saw what it was, this shapeless thing: it was the body of Taddeo Marchioni--dead, horribly dead, fallen face downward, stretched out upon the stones, a knife plunged into the back of the throat, and left there. He had been stabbed from behind.

I looked, I saw, I understood: it was her act.

I stooped; I touched the corpse; I turned the face to the light; I searched for a pulse of life, a breath. There was none: he was dead. A single blow had been given, and the blow had been sure. A ghastly grimace distended the thin lips of the toothless mouth; the eyes were starting from their orbits; the hands were clenched: it had been a death swift, silent, violent, terrible.

I drew out the knife, deep buried in the bone of the throat below the skull. It was my knife, the same with which I had slashed asunder the boughs of the vines in the day just gone in the vintage-fields. She had taken it, no doubt, from my girdle when I had fallen at her feet.

"I understand," I said to the dead man: "it is her work."

The dead mouth seemed to laugh.

A casement opened on the court. A voice cried aloud. The voice was hers: it cried for help. From the silent dwelling came a sound of hurrying feet: the flame of a torch borne in a peasant's hand fell red on the livid moonlight.

She came with naked feet, with unloosed hair, as though roused from her bed, beautiful in her disarray, and crying aloud, "An assassin! an assassin!"

I understood all. She meant to send me to the scaffold in her place. It was my knife: that would be testimony enough for a tribunal. Justice is blind.

She cried aloud: they seized me, and the dead man lay between us, stretched on the stones and bathed in blood. I looked at her: she did not tremble.

But she had forgotten that I was strong--strong with the strength of the lion, of the bull, of the eagle. She had forgotten. With a gesture I flung far away from me, against the walls, the men who had seized me: with a bound I sprang upon her. I took her in my arms in her naked loveliness, scarcely veiled by the disordered linen, by the loosened hair, and shining like marble in the glisten of the moon. I seized her in my arms; I kissed her on her lips; I pressed against my heart her beautiful white bosom. Then between her two breasts I plunged my knife, red with the blood of her dead lord. "I avenge Phoebus," I said to her.

Now you know why to-morrow they will kill me, why my mother is mad.

Hush! I am tired. Let me sleep in peace.

* * * * *

And on the morrow he slept.

OUIDA.

STUDIES IN THE SLUMS.

III.--NAN; OR, A GIRL'S LIFE.

"An' this one? Lord have mercy on her, an' forgive me for saying it the way I do every time I look at her! It comes out of itself, an' there's times when I could think for a minute that He will; an' then it comes over me like a blackness on everything that her chance is gone. Look at that one by her. Ain't he a rough? Ain't he just fit for the Rogues' Gallery, an' nowhere else? And yet--Well, it's a long story, an' you won't want to hear it all."

"Every word," I said. "For once, we are all alone, and the rain pours down so nobody is likely to interrupt. Such a face as that could hardly help having a story, and a strange one."

"The most of it happens often enough, but I'll tell you. You think it's pretty, but that black an' white thing doesn't tell much. If you could once have looked at her, you'd have wanted to do something, same as 'most everybody did when the time for doin' was over. Let me get my bit of work, an' then I'll tell you."

It was in the "McAuley Mission-parlor." The street below, cleared by the pouring rain, was comparatively silent, though now and then a sailor swung by unmindful of wet, or the sound of a banjo came from the tenement-houses opposite. Below us, in the chapel, the janitor scrubbed vigorously to the tune which seems for some unknown reason to be always a powerful motive-power,

"I'm goin' home, no more to roam,"

the brush coming down with a whack at each measure. In my hands was the mission album, a motley collection of faces, as devoid of Nature or any clew to the real characteristics of the owners as the average photograph usually is, but here and there one with a suggestion of interest and, in this special case, of beauty--a delicate, pensive face, with a mass of floating hair, deep, dark eyes, and exquisite curves in cheek and lip and chin--the face of some gently born and nurtured maiden, looking dreamily out upon a world which thus far, at least, could have shown her only its tender, never its cruel or unfriendly, side, and not, as its place would indicate, that of one who had somehow and at some strange time found a home in these slums. Beauty of a vulgar, striking sort is common enough there--vivid coloring, even a sparkle and light poverty has had no power to kill--but this face had no share in such dower, and the dark, soft eyes had a compelling power which made mine search them for their secret,--not theirs, after all, it might prove, but only a gift from some remote ancestor, who could transmit outline, and even expression, but not the soul that had made them.

Mrs. McAuley slipped the picture from its place as she sat down by me again. "I ought to have done that long ago," she said. "Jerry is always telling me I've no business to keep it where everybody can look at it an' ask about her; an' I hadn't, indeed, for it brings up a time I'd hardly think or talk about unless I had to for some good. I'll put it away with two or three more I keep for myself; an' Jerry'll be glad of it, for he hates to think of her, 'most as much as I do.

"Her father and mother? Ah, that's it: if she'd had _them_! But, you see, her mother was a young thing that wasn't used to roughing it, an' this Nan only a baby then. They were decent English folks, an' he looked like a gentleman; but all we know was that she died of ship-fever on the passage over, an' was buried at sea; an' he had it too, an' came 'most as nigh dyin', an' just had strength to crawl ashore with Nan in his arms. He'd a cousin in the Bowery, a woman that kept a little store for notions, but didn't make any headway on account of two drinkin' sons; an' he went to her, an' just fell on the floor before he'd half finished his story. She put him to bed, and, though the sons swore he shouldn't stay, an' said they'd chuck him out on the sidewalk, she had her way. It didn't take him long to die, an' he'd a good bit of money that reconciled them; but when he was gone there was the baby, just walkin' an' toddlin' into everything, an' would scream if Pete came near her. He was the oldest, an' he hated her worse than poison, an' about once in so often he'd swear he'd send her to the orphan asylum or anywhere that she'd be out of his sight. Jack didn't care one way or another, but the mother was just bound up in the little thing; an' she was, they said, just that wonderful-lookin' that people stopped an' stared at her. Her eyes weren't black, as they look there, but gray, with those long curly lashes that looked innocent an' baby-like to the very last minute; and her hair--oh, you never saw such hair! Not bleached out, as they do it now, to a dead yellow, but a pure gold-color, an' every thread of it alive. I've taken hold of it many a time to see it curl round my finger, an' the little rings of it lying round her forehead; an' her face to the last as pure-lookin' as a pearl--clear an' soft, you know--an', when I saw her first, with a little color in her cheeks no deeper than the pink in a pink rose.

"Now, it'll seem to you like a bit out of the _Police Gazette_ or those horrid story-papers, but, do you know, when she wasn't three Pete came home one night just drunk enough to be cunnin', an' he said, after he'd had his supper, he wanted to take the child a little way, only round the corner, to show her to some friends of his. Mrs. Simpson said No--whoever wanted to see her could come there, but she shouldn't let her be taken round. The shop-bell rang that minute, an' she went out. It wasn't ten minutes, but when she came back Pete an' the child weren't there. She ran to the door an' looked up an' down the street, but it was twelve years before she ever saw that child again. Pete was gone a week, an' when he come home not a word would he say but that the child was safe enough, an' he'd had enough of her round under foot. They had high words. She told him he should never have another cent till Nan was brought back, an' he went out swearin' an' cursin', to be brought home in half an hour past any tellin' in this world. He'd been knocked down an' run over by a fire-engine, an', though there was life enough left to look at his mother an' try to speak, speak he couldn't.

"Well, there was nothin' that woman didn't do, far as her money would go. She'd a nephew was a policeman, an' he hunted, an' plenty more, but never a sign or a word. She couldn't get out much on account of the shop, but whenever she did there wasn't a beggar with a child that she wouldn't stop an' look with all her eyes to see if it might be Nan. You wouldn't think anybody would take a child that way to be tormented with, when there's hundreds runnin' round loose that nobody claims; but, for all that, it's done. Not as often as people think. There's more kidnappin' in the story-papers than ever gets done really, but it _does_ happen now and then. An' New York's a better place to hide in than anywheres out of it. I know plenty of places this minute where the police couldn't find a man if they hunted a month.

"Pete Simpson took this child to a hole in the Five Points, rag-pickers an' beggars an' worse, an' gave her to a woman that took children that was wanted out o' the way. He paid her a dollar, an' said she could make enough out of her to pay for the trouble, she was so fair-lookin'. She was one of the women that sit round with a baby an' one or two children close to her, mostly with laudanum enough to make 'em stupid.

"Nan was spirited, an' she screamed an' fought, but blows soon hushed her. She remembered, she's told me. She didn't know where she'd come from, but she knew it was clean an' decent, an' she wouldn't eat till hunger made her. Then there was a long time she came up with three or four that made a kind of a livin' pickin' pockets an' a turn now an' then as newsboys, or beggin' cold victuals an' pickin' up any light thing they could see if they were let in. Nan changed hands a dozen times, an' she never would have known where she come from if Charley Calkins hadn't kept half an eye to her. He was six years older, an' nobody knew who he belonged to; an' he an' Nan picked rags together, an' whatever trick he knew he taught her. They cropped her hair, an' dirt hid all the prettiness there was, but by ten she'd learned enough to get any bit of finery she could, an' to fight 'em off when they wanted to cut her hair still. She'd dance an' sing to any hand-organ that come along; an' that was where I saw her first--when she was twelve, I should think--with a lot o' men an' boys standin' round, an' she dancin' an' singin' till the very monkey on the organ danced too. I was in a house on Cherry street then, with some girls that played at a variety theatre on the Bowery, an' Nan by this time was so tall they'd made her a waiter-girl in one of the beer-shops. It was there the theatre-man saw her one day goin' down to the ferry. He thought she was older, for she never let on, an' she was tall as she ever was, an' her hair floatin' back the way she would always have it. She could read. She'd been to school one term, because she would, an' she had a way with her that you'd think she was twenty. So it didn't take long. The variety-man said he'd make her fortune, an' she thought he would; an' next day she come an' told me she had agreed for three years.

"She didn't know there was work in it, but she soon found there was just as much drudgery as in the rag-pickin' or a beer-shop. But she had an ambition. She said she'd started here, an' she would stay an' learn everything there was, but she believed she should be an actress in the Old Bowery yet. That seemed a great thing to me in those days, an' I looked at her an' wondered if she knew enough, an' if she'd speak to us when she got there. She was so silent sometimes that it daunted us, an' then she'd have spells of bein' wilder than the wildest; but she said straight enough, 'I'm not goin' to stay down in this hole: I'm goin' to be rich an' a lady; an' you'll see it.'

"The time came when she did get to the Old Bowery, an' the manager glad to have her too. The variety-man swore he'd kill her for leavin', for she drew at the last bigger houses than he ever had again. How she learned it all you couldn't tell, but the night we all turned out to see her in _The Rover's Bride_ you'd have said yourself she was wonderful--painted of course, and fixed off, but a voice that made you cry, an' a way just as natural as if she believed every word she said. An' when she came out the third time, after such a stampin' an' callin' as you never heard, with her eyes shinin' an' _such_ a smile, I cried with all my might.

"It was the very next day. Charley Calkins was bar-tender in a saloon, but getting off whenever he could to see Nan act. That was another thing. She wouldn't take any fancy name, but was Nan Evans straight through--on the bills an' everywhere--an' every one she'd grown up with went to see her, an' felt sort of proud to think she belonged to the Fourth Ward. An' a strange thing was, that, though so many were after her, she never seemed to care for anybody but this Charley, that had knocked her round himself, though he wouldn't let anybody else.

"Well, the old woman that had taken her first was dyin'. She was Charley's aunt, an' so she sent for him, for want of any other relation, an' told him she'd a little money for him, an' was a mind to give a little to Nan. Charley said, 'All right!' He knew she most likely had a good bit, for they often do, but then he said, 'You've always kept to yourself where you got Nan, an' I'm a mind to know.'--'Simpson's, up the Bowery,' she said; an' that was the very last word she ever spoke. She left thirteen hundred dollars in the Bowery Bank, an' it seemed as if there were odd sums in every bunch of rags in the room, so that Charley had enough to set him up pretty well. An' it didn't take him long after he started his own saloon near the theatre to find out, among all the Simpsons, the woman that had had Nan. She had her store still, an' a young woman to help her, an' she cried a little when Charley told her. But she was a member of the Mott Street Church, an' when she said, 'Where is she now? and why don't she come herself?' an' Charley said, 'She couldn't, because rehearsal's going on,' she looked at him.

"'Re-what?' says she.

"'Re-hearsal: she's an actress,' says he; an' she shut her eyes up as if the sight of him after such words was poison.

"'I want nothing to do with her,' says she. 'I've had my fill of sorrow an' trouble from wickedness. You can go, an' say no more.'

"This didn't suit Charley, for he knew how Nan kept herself sort of respectable even when she was with the worst, an' he was bound to find out all he could.

"Well, he hung on an' asked questions till he'd found out all there was, an' that was little, as you know. But Nan had wondered many a time where she came from, an' if she'd ever belonged to anybody, an' he wanted to be the first one to tell her. He scared the old lady, for he wasn't long from the Island, where he'd been sent up for assault an' battery, an', do what you would to him, clothes nor nothin' could ever make him look like anything but a rough. But he was bound to know, for he thought there might be money belonging to her or folks that would do for her. There wasn't a soul, though, that he could find out, an' the next thing was to go to Nan an' tell her about it. They'd have been wiser to have waited a day, till the old lady'd a chance to quiet down and think it all over; but he went straight to Nan an' told her he'd found some of her folks; an' she, without a word, put on her hat an' went with him. If she'd been alone it might have been better, for Charley seemed worse than he was. The old lady was in the room back of the shop, neat as a pin, an' Nan looked as if she was looking through everything to see if she could remember.

"An' when the old lady saw her there was a minute she cried again an' took hold of Nan. 'It's her very look,' she said, 'an' her hair an' all;' but then she stiffened. 'I've no call to feel sure,' she said, 'but if you are Nan, an' want to be decent, an' will give up all your wickedness, an' come here an' repent, I'll keep you.'

"'Wickedness?' Nan says, sort of bewildered--'repent?'

"'I don't know as it would do, either,' the old lady said, beginning to be doubtful again. 'A lost creature, that's only a disgrace, so that I couldn't hold my head up, any more'n I can when I think how Pete went: I couldn't well stand it.'

"'You won't have to,' said Nan, with her head high. 'I did think I'd found some folks, but it seems not;' an' out she went.

"Charley shook his fist an' swore. 'Nice folks, Christians are!' he said. 'I like 'em,----'em! I'd like to burn her shop over her head!'

"'Nonsense!' Nan said, as if she didn't mind a bit. 'I thought it would feel good to have somebody I belonged to, but it wouldn't. I never could stand anything like her shaking her head over me; but it's strange how I've always been hoping, an' now how I don't care.'

"Then Charley told her she'd better go home with him: he'd got a comfortable, nice place, an' he'd never bother her. They'd talked it over many a time, but she'd held off, always thinking she might find her folks.

"Marriage didn't mean anything to either of them. How could it, coming up the way they had? though she'd never been like the other girls. You can't think how they could be the heathen they were? Remember what you've seen an' heard in this very place, an' then remember that ten years ago, even, a decent man or woman didn't dare go up these alleys even by daylight, an' the two or three missionaries were in danger of their lives; an' you'll see how much chance they'd had of learning.

"Nan wasn't sixteen then, an' she didn't think ahead, though if she had likely she would have done the same. She had her choice, but she'd always known Charley, an' so it ended that way.

"Then came a long time when my own troubles were thick, an' I went off to the country an' lost sight of her. It was two years before I came back, an' then everything was changed. All that set I'd known seemed to have gone to the bad together--some in prison and some dead. Jerry was out then, an' we were married an' began together in the little room down the street; an' now I thought often of Nan. They told me Charley was drinkin' himself to death, an' that she was at the theatre still, an' kept things goin' with her money, an' that he knocked her round, when he was out of his head, the worst way. It wasn't long before I went to her. She looked so beautiful you wouldn't think a fiend could want to hurt her, an' her eyes had just the look of that picture. I told her how I had turned about, an' how happy we both were, in spite of hard times an' little work; but she listened like one in a dream, an' I knew enough to see that I should have to tell her many times before she would understand or care. But she seemed so frail I couldn't bear to leave her so. An' the worst of it was, that she'd begun to wish Charley would marry her, an' he thought it was all nonsense, an' swore at her if she said a word about it. She'd been gettin' more and more sensible, an' he'd just been goin' the other way, but she kept her old fondness for him. I said nothing then, but one day I found her cryin', an' her arm so she could hardly move it; an' it came out he'd knocked her down, an' told her she could clear out when she liked, for he was sick of her pale face an' her big eyes an' her airs, an' meant to bring a woman there with some life in her."

"'Things don't come out as we plan,' she said. 'I was going to be a lady, but I forgot that anybody had anything to do with it but myself. An' now I can't go to any decent place, an' Charley doesn't want me any longer. See how nice it all looks here, Maria. I've fixed it myself, an' I've always been so glad that after the play was over I could come _home_--not to somebody else's room, but my own place--an' I never thought there was any reason why it wouldn't always be my place. Men aren't like women. I was true to Charley, and I'll never think of anybody else; but he says I must get out of this.'

"Well, I wanted her to understand that I knew plenty would help her, an' I tried to tell her she could begin a different life; but she just opened her eyes, astonished at me.

"'You think I'd go to one of those Homes?' she said. 'You're crazy. I can make my livin' easy enough at the theatre, even if I'm not so strong as I was. What have I done more than anybody, after all? Do you think I'd be pointed at an' talked over the way those women are? I'd throw myself in the river first! I've learned enough these years. I go to church sometimes, an' hear men in the pulpit talk about things I know better than they do. I've found out what the good people, the respectable people, are like. I've found out, too, what I might have been, an' that if I live a thousand years I never can be it in this world; an' that's one reason I thought Charley might be willing to marry me. But I shall never say anything more now, for, you see, it isn't goin' to make so very much matter. I had a bad cold in the spring, an' the doctor said then I must be very careful or I should go with consumption. See my arm? They said the other day I'd have to do something to plump up, but I never shall: I'm goin', an' I'm glad of it.'

"'Then, if that's got to be, let it be goin' home,' I said. 'Nan, there's everything waitin' for you if you'll only take it. Come down to one of the meetin's an' you'll hear. Won't you?'

"'I don't understand it,' she said. 'Everything's in a twist. Years an' years and never hear of God, an' not a soul come near you to tell about Him, an' all at once they say He loves you, and always has. Bah! If He loved, an' people think about it as they pretend, how dare they let there be such places for us to come up in? If God is what they say, He ought to strike the people dead that keep Him to themselves till it is too late for us ever to be helped. There! I won't talk about it. I don't care: all I want is quiet, an' I'll have it soon.'

"I saw there was no use then, an' I made up my mind. I'd seen this Mrs. Simpson, for Nan had told me when it all happened, an' I'd gone to the store on purpose; an' I went straight there. 'I've come from Nan,' I said, 'but she doesn't know it. She's a dyin' girl, an' as you helped the father I want you to help the daughter. You're a Christian woman, an' the only soul belongin' to her, an' the time's come to do something.'

"'The father was decent,' she said: 'I've nothing to do with street-women.'

"'It's through your own son that she grew up to know no better,' I said, for I knew the whole story then, though nobody did when she was down there. 'It's for you to give her your hand now, an' not throw it up to her, any more'n the Lord when he said, "Go, and sin no more." She's in trouble an' sick, and doesn't know what way to turn, an' sore-hearted; an' if you would go to her in the right way you might save a soul, for then she'd believe people meant what they said.'

"'She's the same to me as dead,' she said. 'I mourned her sharp enough, but it ain't in nature to take one again after they've been thought dead; an' you know they're straight from corruption itself. There's places for her to go if she's tired of wickedness, but I don't want to see her bold face, an' her head high, as if she was respectable. An' I don't want to be plagued no more. I don't deny I lotted on her before she was took away, but I never want to think about her again; so you needn't come nor send. I've said my say, an' I hope the Lord will save her.'

"'It's good He's more merciful than His creatures,' I said; an' I went away more angry than I ever want to get. I couldn't quite make it out--I can't to this day--how she could mourn so over the child, an' yet never have a thought for all the years she'd had to suffer.

"There came a month that everything crowded. I thought of Nan, but couldn't go up, till one day Tom Owens came in--you know him--an' he said, 'It's all up with Charley Calkins.'

"'How?' I said.

"'Smallpox,' he said, 'an' Nan's dropped everything to nurse him. She'd left there, they said, an' the woman he brought in to take her place cut the minute she found he had the smallpox. He won't live, they say.'

"This was before they were so particular about carrying them off to hospital. The house was cleared an' the saloon shut up, but Nan was allowed to stay because she'd been exposed anyway, an' it was no use to send her off. He had it the worst way, an' he'd scream an' swear he wouldn't die, an' strike out at her, though he couldn't see, his face and eyes bein' all closed up. It didn't last but a week, and then he died, but Nan hadn't taken off her clothes or hardly slept one instant. He was stupid at the last, an' when she saw he was gone she fell on the floor in a faint; an' when she come to the blood poured from her mouth, an' all they could do was to take her off to the hospital. She didn't take the smallpox, but it was a good while before she could be let to see anybody. When they thought it was safe she sent for me, but it was hard to think it could be the same Nan I'd known. Every breath come with pain, and she was wasted to a shadow, but she smiled at me an' drew me down to kiss her. 'You see, I sha'n't be troubled or make trouble much longer,' she said, 'but oh, if I only could rest!'

"Poor soul! She couldn't breathe lyin' down, nor sleep but a bit at a time, an' it was awful to have her goin' so, an' she not twenty.

"I knelt down by her. She had a little room to herself, for she had some money yet, and I prayed till I couldn't speak for crying. 'Nan, Nan!' I said, 'you're goin' straight to the next world, an' you've got to be judged. What will you do without a Saviour? Try to think about it.'

"She patted my hand as if I were the one to be quieted. 'Don't bother,' she said: 'I don't mind, an' you mustn't. If He's as good as you say He'll see that it's all right. I'm too tired to care: I only want to get through. There's nothing to live for, an' I'm glad it's 'most over. I want you to come every day, for it won't be long.'

"'Let me bring Jerry,' I said, but she only laughed. She'd known him at his hardest, an' couldn't realize he might be different; but after a week or two she let him come, an' she'd lie an' listen with a sort of wonder as she watched him. But nothing seemed to take hold of her. She looked like a flower lyin' there, an' you'd think her only a child, for they'd cut her hair, and it lay in little rings all over her head; an' Jerry just cried over her, to think that unless she hearkened she was lost. She liked to be read to, but you couldn't make her believe, somehow, that any of it was real. 'I'd believe it if I could,' she said, 'but why should I? I don't see why you do. It sounds good, but it doesn't seem to mean anything. Why hasn't anybody ever told me before?'

"'Try to believe, only try!' I'd say. 'Ask God to make you. He can, and He will if you only ask;' but all she'd say was, 'I don't seem to care enough. How can I? If it is true He will see about it.'

"That was only a day or two before the end. The opium, maybe, hindered her thinkin', but she looked quiet an' no sign of trouble between the coughing-times. The last night of all I stayed with her. They said she would go at daybreak, an' I sat an' watched an' prayed, beggin' for one word or sign that the Lord heard us. It never came, though. She opened her eyes suddenly from a half sleep, and threw out her hands. I took one, but she did not know me. She looked toward the east and smiled. 'Why! are you coming for me?' she said, and then fell back, but that look stayed--a smile as sweet as was ever on a mortal face. An' that's why I never can help sayin', 'Lord have mercy on her!' and do you wonder even when I know better? But--"

HELEN CAMPBELL.

MY TREASURE.

Under the sea my treasure lies--
Only a pair of starry eyes,
That looked out from their azure skies
With innocent wonder, sweet surprise,
That they should have strayed from Paradise.

Under the sea lies my treasure low--
Little white hands like flakes of snow,
Once soft and warm; and I loved them so!
Ah! the tide will come and the tide will go,
But their tender touch I shall never know.

Under the sea--oh, wealth most rare!--
Are silken tresses of golden hair,
Each amber thread, each lock so fair,
Gleaming out from the darkness there,
With the same soft light they used to wear.

Under the sea--oh, treasure sweet!--
Lies a curl-crowned head and tiny feet
That in days gone by, when the shadows fleet
Were growing long in the darkening street,
Came bounding forth their love to meet.

And I sometimes think, as down by the sea
I sit and dream, that there comes to me
From my darling a message that none may see,
Save those who can read love's mystery
By Nature written on leaf and tree.

Strange things to my spirit-eyes lie bare
In the azure depths of the summer air:
Through the snowy leaves of the lily fair
Gleams her pure white soul, and I compare
Its golden heart to her sunny hair.

The perfume nestling among the leaves,
Or blown on the wind from the autumn sheaves,
Is her spirit of love, my soul believes;
And while my stricken heart still grieves
That gentle presence its pang relieves.

A shell is cast by the waves at my feet,
With its wondrous music low and sweet;
And in its murmuring tones I greet
The voice of my love, while its crimson flush
From her fair young cheek has stolen the blush.

Mid white foam, tossed on the pebbly strand,
I catch a glimpse of a waving hand:
'Tis a greeting that well _I_ understand;
But to those who see not the soul of things
'Tis only the spray which the wild wave flings.

The pearl's rare whiteness, the coral's red,
From the brow and the lip of my beautiful dead
Their soft tints stole when her spirit fled;
And it seems to me that sweet words, unsaid
By my darling, gleam through the light they shed.

Thus down by the sea, in the white sunshine,
While the winds and the waves their sighs combine,
I sit, and wait from my love a sign;
And a message comes to my waiting eyes
From under the sea where my treasure lies.

H. L. LEONARD.

ON SPELLING REFORM.

The agitation for "reform" in English spelling continues, but, so far, without involving anything that can be properly called discussion. Discussion implies argument on both sides--a striking by twos. Most of the appeals to the public on this subject, whether through the newspapers and magazines or on the platform, have been made by the advocates of the movement. The other side, if another side there be, has been comparatively silent, uttering occasionally only words of dissent. I presume this follows a law of Nature: those who favor movement move, and those who desire peace keep it and are still. But it ought not to be inferred that the noise made by the "spelling reformers" is representative of the scholarship of the country, or that the silence of the conservatives indicates acquiescence in all the propositions suggested and urged by the radicals. There is much that can be said that has not been said. Some late announcements on the part of those who advocate the evisceration of the English language and literature are of a kind to call for some reply. I have no desire, at present, to enter into an elaborate discussion of the merits or demerits of the new departure in literature. The present agitation is only a skirmish, and ought not to be dignified by the title of a battle: whether we shall have a battle on this skirmish-line remains to be seen.

In the January number of the _Princeton Review_ there appeared a paper from the pen of Professor Francis A. March in commendation of the "reform." The professor is one of the most active as well as able of those who have spoken on that side, and, while he incidentally and modestly crowns Mr. George P. Marsh as chief of the movement, his fellow-soldiers, if they are wise, will bestow the crown upon him. In the article referred to the professor emphasizes his earnestness by securing the printing of his admirable paper in the peculiar orthography he advocates. This orthography is practically the same as that advocated and contended for by the American Philological Association and the Spelling-Reform Association. Any criticism, therefore, of the peculiar orthography of the professor's paper is a criticism of the adopted orthography of the whole body of "reformers," so far as they are agreed, for in some details they still disagree.

The readers of the professor's paper will notice that in a large number of words the usual terminal _ed_ is changed to _t_. This is in accordance with one of the rules recommended by the Spelling-Reform Association and laid down authoritatively by the American Philological Association. The phraseology of the rule is to make the substitution where-ever the final _ed_ "has the sound of _t_." It is to the professor's application of this rule that I now desire to call the attention of the reader. The "reformers" write _broacht, ceast, distinguisht, establisht, introduct, past, prejudict, pronounct, rankt, pluckt, learnt, reduct, spelt, trickt, uneartht_, and assert that they write the words as they pronounce them. In the rule given by the A.P.A. for the substitution of _ed_ for _t_, _lasht_ and _imprest_ are given as examples.