Chapter IX: Phosy’s Work

“——and by it he being dead yet speaketh.”

“Fire! Fire! Fire!”

One voice, then a dozen, the cry taken up and swelled into a deafening clamor by half a hundred boys just let loose from school; then the clang of bells, quick, imperative, not startling people from their midnight dreams, but checking them mid-way in the daily rush of toil and pleasure.

Uncle Thed, taking an early dinner to catch the train, left his fork sticking straight up in a mouthful of meat, and dashed away to his shop. Farmer Vance clapped his hat on his head, and then flew round and round the house to find it. Old Mrs. Pratt threw her silver spoons into the sink, and locked up her dish-pan in the china-closet.

Ding! ding! ding!

“It’s the factory,” cried somebody.

“The factory where Phosy Harte works,” echoed a group of girls huddled, with white faces, into Say Ellis’s yard.

“Lucky it’s just noon; all the hands will be out. The old thing will go like tinder,” said the crowd surging past.

But they were not all out. In the upper story Phosy was busily at work, making up the odd minutes taken for her walk. Half a dozen of the other girls had gathered round her, hats in hand, laughing, talking, not catching the faintest sound from below, not even noticing the smell of smoke which had emptied the other rooms in half the usual time. Nobody thought to warn them in the selfish scramble for safety. When at last they opened the door to go down, a dense, black column of smoke met them, and through it, enticed by the little draught from the door, came a sharp, pointed tongue of fire, up, up, wrapping the old stairway in a sheet of flame, and cutting off all chance of escape in that direction. They ran to the windows.

“Ladders!” shouted the crowd. But alas! not one was long enough to reach them.

“Splice it!” “Bring ropes!” “No, mattresses!” “Carpets!” “They must jump!”

Men jostled each other in mad haste for they knew not what.

“Jump! It’s your only chance!”

One after another the frightened girls flung themselves down, one to be caught safely in the strong arms of a stalwart fireman, another reaching the ground with simply a sprained ankle, still another with a broken arm; while a fourth, falling beyond the mattress, was taken up bruised and bleeding, but alive, and life is dear at any cost.

Only Phosy Harte and Judy Ryan were left,—Judy a poor, deformed girl, half crippled, who would not, dared not jump, and Phosy, waiting, coaxing, beseeching.

“It will be too late.”

There are soft mattresses and strong carpets below. Phosy begs, almost pushes the poor girl out, and she reaches the ground safely; but flame and smoke have driven Phosy back.

“The other window!” shouts the crowd, and half-blinded she springs over the low sill just as a fireman, who has succeeded in finding a long ladder, is raising it in place; she strikes it heavily, and drops limp and lifeless.

They lift her tenderly. One faint moan, a gasp,—that is all.

Back to the old house they carry her, past the little garden she had risen so early that very morning to weed, into the low room, with its close, sudsy, smoky atmosphere, which she will never brighten more.

“And nobody’ll never know the comfort an’ help she’s ben to me these last few months,” said the poor, over-worked mother, wringing her hands helplessly. “I ain’t been to none of yer meetin’s for years, but if it’s them what made her so handy an’ happy-like I’d be glad to try it meself. She’s asked me enough, the Lord knows, an’ I allers meant to go sometime, jest to please her. Oh! I’ll never forgit how she’s prayed nights with them childern—”

There four little voices took up the wail of grief, and more than one rough fireman drew his sleeve hurriedly across his eyes.

“She is through with all suffering,” said good old Dr. Helps, who had been working busily over the poor, crushed body.

“It’s a blessed thing for the child,” said Deacon Carter, as they walked away, “but it’s a strange Providence that took the one bit of leaven out of that miserable batch of humanity.”

Upon the pine coffin, the girls in Miss Cox’s class laid a wreath of beautiful hot-house flowers; but all over the lid, and inside, around the pale face and over the white robe, were fresh, fragrant pond-lilies, their subtile perfume filling the room. No one knew who scattered them there, only as Miss Marvin laid one tenderly between the waxen fingers, Bill Finnegan said huskily, “Thank’ee, ma’am; she liked ’em best of anything.”

The next Sabbath and the next, in the empty seat where Phosy had always sat, lay a bunch of the same pure, lovely lilies. Nobody knew how they came there, but their sweet breath seemed like pleasant memories of her who had gone. The fourth Sabbath an awkward, ungainly figure, in coarse homespun, shuffled down the aisle and stopped beside the row of neatly-dressed boys. Dick moved a little nearer to Varley, and motioned the new-comer to sit down.

“I—it’s Bill Finnegan, ma’am, an’ he’ll not be gettin’ in the way,” he stammered, as Miss Marvin left her seat to speak with him. “You see, _she_ was allus askin’ me to come, but I didn’t think so much about it, then. I’d like, bein’ as this was her class, if you don’t mind. I’ll do the best I can; she was forever talkin’ about the things she heard tell of here, an’ ef I could learn, I’m thinkin’ it won’t harm a feller.”

Up-stairs, in the pew nearest the door, sat Mrs. Harte in the faded black bonnet which had done her service when her husband’s mother died years before, when “Daniel” was sober and industrious,—sat, with the tears running down her cheeks, getting, as she phrased it, “a fill of the good things Phosy talked so much about, to stand her through the long, lonesome week.”

And not many days afterwards there came to Dr. Helps’ door—for the doctor’s genial, sympathizing heart was known far and wide—a great, rough man, with blood-shotten eyes and haggard face.

“I want to sign the pledge, if so be you think it’s any use,” he said. “I’m only old Dan Harte, that ev’rybody gin up long ago, except _her_,—Tryphosy. _She_ kep’ talkin’ an’ talkin’ in sech a lovin’ way, an’ only the Sunday afore, when she went away to meetin’ she kissed me. I was sober for a wonder, an’ sez she, ‘Father, if the Bible is true, what will you do when you come to die?’ I can’t git them words out of my ears, an’ you see I know there must be a something, to so kind of change Tryphosy from the fiery, hifalutin thing she was, to the purty-spoken, quiet, happy little cretur she got to be. And I thought mabbee, seein’ I’d quit drinkin’ ag’in an’ ag’in, an’ couldn’t never hold out, if there was anything in this ere religion Phosy got hold of, to help a feller, it’s Dan Harte what wants it.”

Good old Dr. Helps! not content to send away this weak fellow-mortal with a chapter of good advice, and some harmless tonic from his medicine-case, but who could and did kneel down beside him then and there, with a faith strong enough to hold up even this wreck of humanity for the Divine healing. Surely of him shall it be true, “Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear.”

And down in a dirty alley-way, between two tenement houses, Judy Ryan was teaching half a dozen ragged urchins a hymn Phosy used always to be singing about the mill. She had caught it at the prayer-meeting; and somehow plain, homely Boylston had suited her even better than the livelier Sabbath-School melodies. In her quaint fashion she had explained the words to Judy, and now, through her, was she not yet speaking to the poor, neglected souls in Pinch Alley? Wasn’t the “little leaven” working still?

X.

PHOSY’S HYMN.

“If thou seek Him, He will be found of thee; but if thou
forsake Him, He will cast thee off forever.”

“My son, know thou the Lord,
Thy father’s God obey;
Seek his protecting care by night,
His guardian hand by day.

Call while he may be found,
Seek him while he is near;
Serve him with all thy heart and mind,
And worship him with fear.

If thou wilt seek his face,
His ear will hear thy cry;
Then shalt thou find his mercy sure,
His grace forever nigh.

But if thou leave thy God,
Nor choose the path to heaven,
Then shalt thou perish in thy sins,
And never be forgiven.”