Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863

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He put his hand into the basket, and shyly took out a bunch of flowers
he had bought,--real flowers, tender, sweet-smelling little things.
Wouldn't Jinny wonder to find them on her bureau in the morning? Their
fragrance, so loving and innocent, filled the frosty air, like a breath
of the purity of this Day coming. Just as he was going to put them back
carefully, a hand out of the crowd caught hold of them, a dirty hand,
with sores on it, and a woman thrust her face from under her blowzy
bonnet into his: a young face, deadly pale, on which some awful passion
had cut the lines; lips dyed scarlet with rank blood, lips, you would
think, that in hell itself would utter a coarse jest.

"Give 'em to me, old cub!" she said, pulling at them. "I want 'em for a
better nor you."

"Go it, Lot!" shouted the boys.

He struck her. A woman? Yes; if it had been a slimy eel standing
upright, it would have been less foul a thing than this.

"Damn you!" she muttered, chafing the hurt arm. Whatever words this girl
spoke came from her teeth out,--seemed to have no meaning to her.

"Let's see, Lot."

She held out her arm, and the boy, a black one, plastered it with grime
from the gutter. The others yelled with delight. Adam hurried off. A
pure air? God help us! He threw the flowers into the gutter with a
bitter loathing. _Her_ fingers would be polluted, if they touched them
now. He would not tell her of this: he would cut off his hand rather
than talk to her of this,--let her know such things were in the world.
So pure and saintly she was, his little wife! a homely little body, but
with the cleanest, most loving heart, doing her Master's will humbly.
The cobbler's own veins were full of Scotch blood, as pure indignant as
any knight's of the Holy Greal. He wiped his hand, as though a leper had
tainted it.

Passing down Church Street, the old bell rang out the hour. All day he
had fancied its tone had gathered a lighter, more delicate sweetness
with every chime. The Christ-child was coming; the world held up its
hands adoring; all that was needed of men was to love Him, and rejoice.
Its tone was different now: there was a brutal cry of pain in the
ponderous voice that shook the air,--a voice saying something to God,
unintelligible to him. He thrust out the thought of that woman with a
curse: he had so wanted to have a good day, to feel how great and glad
the world was, and to come up close to Christ with Jinny and the baby!
He did soon forget the vileness there behind, going down the streets;
they were so cozy and friendly-hearted, the parlor-windows opening out
red and cheerfully, as is the custom in Southern and Western towns; they
said "Happy Christmas" to every passer-by. The owners, going into the
houses, had a hearty word for Adam. "Well, Craig, how goes it?" or,
"Fine, frosty weather, Sir." It quite heartened the cobbler. He made
shoes for most of these people, and whether men are free and equal or
not, any cobbler will have a reverence for the man he has shod.

So Adam trotted on, his face a little redder, and his stooped chest,
especially next the basket, in quite a glow. There she was, clear out in
the snow, waiting for him by the curb-stone. How she took hold of the
basket, and Adam made believe she was carrying the whole weight of it!
How the fire-light struck out furiously through the Turkey-red curtains,
so as to show her to him quicker!--to show him the snug coffee-colored
dress, and the bits of cherry ribbon at her throat,--to show him how the
fair curly hair was tucked back to leave the rosy ears bare he thought
so dainty,--to show him how young she was, how faded and worn and
tired-out she was, how hard the years had been,--to show him how his
great love for her was thickening the thin blood with life, making a
child out of the thwarted woman,--to show him--this more than all, this
that his soul watched for, breathless, day and night--that she loved
him, that she knew nothing better than the ignorant, loving heart, the
horny hands that had taken her hungry fate to hold, and made of it a
color and a fragrance. "Christmas is coming, little woman!" Of course it
was. If it had not taken the whole world into its embrace yet, there it
was compacted into a very glow of love and warmth and coziness in
that snuggest of rooms, and in that very Jinny and Baby,--Christmas
itself,--especially when he kissed her, and she blushed and laughed,
the tears in her eyes, and went fussing for that queer roll of white
flannel.

Adam took off his coat: he always went at the job of nursing the baby
in his shirt-sleeves. The anxious sweat used to break on his forehead
before he was through. He got its feet to the fire. "I'm dead sure that
much is right," he used to say. Jinny put away the bundles, wishing to
herself Mrs. Perkins would happen in to see them: one didn't like to be
telling what they had for dinner, but if it was known accidentally--You
poets, whose brains have quite snubbed and sent to Coventry your
stomachs, never could perceive how the pudding was a poem to the cobbler
and his wife,--how a very actual sense of the live goodness of Jesus was
in it,--how its spicy steam contained all the cordial cheer and jollity
they had missed in meaningless days of the year. Then she brought her
sewing-chair, and sat down, quite idle.

"No work for to-night! I'll teach you how to keep Christmas, Janet,
woman!"

It was her first, one might say. Orphan girls that go about from house
to house sewing, as Jinny had done, don't learn Christmas by heart year
by year. It was a new experience: she was taking it in, one would think,
to look at her, with all her might, with the earnest blue eyes, the
shut-up brain behind the narrow forehead, the loving heart: a contracted
tenement, that heart, by-the-by, adapted for single lodgers. She wasn't
quite sure that Christmas was not, after all, a relic of Papistry,--for
Jinny was a thorough Protestant: a Christian, as far as she understood
Him, with a keen interest in the Indian missions. "Let us begin in our
own country," she said, and always prayed for the Sioux just after Adam
and Baby. In fact, if we are all parts of God's temple, Jinny was a
very essential, cohesive bit of mortar. Adam had a wider door for his
charity: it took all the world in, he thought,--though the preachers did
enter with a shove, as we know. However, this was Christmas: the word
took up all common things, the fierce wind without, the clean hearth,
the modest color on her cheek, the very baby, and made of them one
grand, sweet poem, that sang to the man the same story the angels told
eighteen centuries ago: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth
peace, good-will toward men."

Sitting there in the evenings, Adam was the talker: such a fund of
anecdote he had! Jinny never could hear the same story too often.
To-night there was a bit of a sigh in them: his heart was tender: about
the Christmases at home, when he and Nelly were little chubs together,
and hung up their stockings regularly every Christmas eve.

"Twins, Nelly an' me was, oldest of all. When I was bound to old Lowe,
it went hard, ef I couldn't scratch together enough for a bit of
ribbon-bow or a ring for Nell, come Christmas. She used to sell the old
flour-barrels an' rags, an' have her gift all ready by my plate that
mornin': never missed. I never hed a sweetheart then."

Jinny laid her hand on his knee.

"Ye 'r' glad o' that, little woman? Well, well! I didn't care for women,
only Ellen. She was the only livin' thing as come near me. I gripped on
to her like death, havin' only her. But she--hed more nor me."

Jinny knew the story well.

"She went away with him?" softly.

"Yes, she did. I don't blame her. She was young, unlarned. No man cared
for our souls. So, when she loved him well, she thort God spoke to her.
So she was tuk from me. She went away."

He patted the baby, his skinny hand all shaking. Jinny took it in hers,
and, leaning over, stroked his hair.

"You've hed hard trouble, to turn it gray like this."

"No trouble like that, woman, when he left her."

"Left her! An' then she was tired of God, an' of livin', or dyin'. So
as she loved him! You know, my husband. As I love you. An' he left her!
What wonder _what_ she did? All alone! So as she loved him still! God
shut His eyes to what she did."

The yellow, shaggy face was suddenly turned from her. The voice choked.

"Did He, little woman? _You_ know."

"So, when she was a-tryin' to forget, the only way she knew, God sent an
angel to bring her up, an' have her soul washed clean."

Adam laughed bitterly.

"That's not the way men told the story, child. I got there six months
after: to New York, you know. I found in an old paper jes' these words:
'The woman, Ellen Myers, found dead yesterday on one of the docks, was
identified. Died of starvation and whiskey.' That was Nelly, as used to
hang up her stockin' with me. Christian people read that. But nobody
cried but me."

"They're tryin' to help them now at the Five Points there."

"God help them as helps others this Christmas night! But it's not for
such as you to talk of the Five Points, Janet," rousing himself. "What
frabbit me to talk of Nelly the night? Someways she's been beside me all
day, as if she was grippin' me by the sleeve, beggin', dumb-like."

The moody frown deepened.

"The baby! See, Adam, it'll waken! Quick, man!"

And Adam, with a start, began hushing it after the fashion of a
chimpanzee. The old bell rang out another hour: how genial and loving it
was!

"Nine o'clock! Let me up, boys!"--and Lot Tyndal hustled them aside from
the steps of the concert-hall. They made way for her: her thin, white
arms could deal furious blows, they knew from experience. Besides, they
had seen her, when provoked, fall in some cellar-door in a livid dead
spasm. They were afraid of her. Her filthy, wet skirt flapped against
her feet, as she went up; she pulled her flaunting bonnet closer over
her head. There was a small room at the top of the stairs, a sort of
greenroom for the performers. Lot shoved the door open and went in.
Madame ---- was there, the prima-donna, if you chose to call her so:
the rankest bloom of fifty summers, in white satin and pearls: a faded
dahlia. Women hinted that the fragrance of the dahlia had not been
healthful in the world; but they crowded to hear her: such a wonderful
contralto! The manager, a thin old man, with a hook-nose, and kindly,
uncertain smile, stood by the stove, with a group of gentlemen about
him. The wretch from the street went up to him, unsteadily.

"Lot's drunk," one door-keeper whispered to another.

"No; the Devil's in her, though, like a tiger, to-night."

Yet there was a certain grace and beauty in her face, as she looked at
the manager, and spoke low and sudden.

"I'm not a beggar. I want money,--honest money. It's Christmas eve. They
say you want a voice for the chorus, in the carols. Put me where I'll be
hid, and I'll sing for you."

The manager's hand fell from his watch-chain. Storrs, a young lawyer of
the place, touched his shoulder.

"Don't look so aghast, Pumphrey. Let her sing a ballad to show you. Her
voice is a real curiosity."

Madame ---- looked dubiously across the room: her black maid had
whispered to her. Lot belonged to an order she had never met face to
face before: one that lives in the suburbs of hell.

"Let her sing, Pumphrey."

"If"----looking anxiously to the lady.

"Certainly," drawled that type of purity. "If it is so curious, her
voice."

"Sing, then," nodding to the girl.

There was a strange fierceness under her dead, gray eye.

"Do you mean to employ me to-night?"

Her tones were low, soft, from her teeth out, as I told you. Her soul
was chained, below: a young girl's soul, hardly older than your little
daughter's there, who sings Sunday-school hymns for you in the evenings.
Yet one fancied, if this girl's soul were let loose, it would utter a
madder cry than any fiend in hell.

"Do you mean to employ me?" biting her finger-ends until they bled.

"Don't be foolish, Charlotte," whispered Storrs. "You may be thankful
you're not sent to jail instead. But sing for him. He'll give you
something, may-be."

She did not damn him, as he expected, stood quiet a moment, her eyelids
fallen, relaxed with an inexpressible weariness. A black porter came to
throw coals into the stove: he knew "dat debbil, Lot," well: had helped
drag her drunk to the lock-up a day or two before. Now, before the white
folks, he drew his coat aside, loathing to touch her. She followed him
with a glazed look.

"Do you see what I am?" she said to the manager.

Nothing pitiful in her voice. It was too late for that.

"He wouldn't touch me: I'm not fit. I want help. Give me some honest
work."

She stopped and put her hand on his coat-sleeve. The child she might
have been, and never was, looked from her face that moment.

"God made me, I think," she said, humbly.

The manager's thin face reddened.

"God bless my soul! what shall I do, Mr. Storrs?"

The young man's thick lip and thicker eyelid drooped. He laughed, and
whispered a word or two.

"Yes," gruffly, being reassured. "There's a policeman outside. Joe, take
her out, give her in charge to him."

The negro motioned her before him with a billet of wood he held. She
laughed. Her laugh had gained her the name of "Devil Lot."

"Why,"--fires that God never lighted blazing in her eyes,--"I thought
you wanted me to sing! I'll sing. We'll have a hymn. It's Christmas, you
know."

She staggered. Liquor, or some subtler poison, was in her veins. Then,
catching by the lintel, she broke into that most deep of all adoring
cries,--

"I know that my Redeemer liveth."

A strange voice. The men about her were musical critics: they listened
intently. Low, uncultured, yet full, with childish grace and sparkle;
but now and then a wailing breath of an unutterable pathos.

"Git out wid you," muttered the negro, who had his own religious
notions, "pollutin' de name ob de Lord in _yer_ lips!"

Lot laughed.

"Just for a joke, Joe. _My_ Redeemer!"

He drove her down the stairs.

"Do you want to go to jail, Lot?" he said, more kindly. "It's orful cold
out to-night."

"No. Let me go."

She went through the crowd out into the vacant street, down to the
wharf, humming some street-song,--from habit, it seemed; sat down on a
pile of lumber, picking the clay out of the holes in her shoes. It
was dark: she did not see that a man had followed her, until his
white-gloved hand touched her. The manager, his uncertain face growing
red.

"Young woman"--

Lot got up, pushed off her bonnet. He looked at her.

"My God! No older than Susy," he said.

By a gas-lamp she saw his face, the trouble in it.

"Well?" biting her finger-ends again.

"I'm sorry for you, I"--

"Why?" sharply. "There's more like me. Fifteen thousand in the city of
New York. I came from there."

"Not like you, child."

"Yes, like me," with a gulping noise in her throat. "I'm no better than
the rest."

She sat down and began digging in the snow, holding the sullen look
desperately on her face. The kind word had reached the tortured soul
beneath, and it struggled madly to be free.

"Can I help you?"

No answer.

"There's something in your face makes me heart-sick. I've a little girl
of your age."

She looked up quickly.

"Who are you, girl?"

She stood up again, her child's face white, the dark river rolling close
by her feet.

"I'm Lot. I always was what you see. My mother drank herself to death in
the Bowery dens. I learned my trade there, slow and sure."

She stretched out her hands into the night, with a wild cry,--

"My God! I had to live!"

What was to be done? Whose place was it to help her? he thought. He
loathed to touch her. But her soul might be as pure and groping as
little Susy's.

"I wish I could help you, girl," he said. "But I'm a moral man. I have
to be careful of my reputation. Besides, I couldn't bring you under the
same roof with my child."

She was quiet now.

"I know. There's not one of those Christian women up in the town yonder
'ud take Lot into their kitchens to give her a chance to save herself
from hell. Do you think I care? It's not for myself I'm sorry. It's too
late."

Yet as this child, hardly a woman, gave her soul over forever, she could
not keep her lips from turning white.

"There's thousands more of us. Who cares? Do preachers and them as sits
in the grand churches come into our dens to teach us better?"

Pumphrey grew uneasy.

"Who taught you to sing?" he said.

The girl started. She did not answer for a minute.

"What did you say?" she said.

"Who taught you?"

Her face flushed warm and dewy; her eyes wandered away, moistened and
dreamy; she curled her hair-softly on her finger.

"I'd--I'd rather not speak of that," she said, low. "He's dead now. _He_
called me--Lottie," looking up with a sudden, childish smile. "I was
only fifteen then."

"How old are you now?"

"Four years more. But I tell you I've seen the world in that time."

It was Devil Lot looked over at the dark river now.

He turned away to go up the wharf. No help for so foul a thing as this.
He dared not give it, if there were. She had sunk down with her old,
sullen glare, but she rose and crept after him. Why, this was her only
chance of help from all the creatures God had made!

"Let me tell you," she said, holding by a fire-plug. "It's not for
myself I care. It's for Benny. That's my little brother. I've raised
him. He loves me; _he don't know_. I've kept him alone allays. I don't
pray, you know; but when Ben puts his white little arms about me 't
nights and kisses me, somethin' says to me, 'God loves you, Lot.' So
help me God, that boy shall never know what his sister was! He's gettin'
older now. I want work, before he can know. Now, will you help me?"

"How can I?"

The whole world of society spoke in the poor manager.

"I'll give you money."

Her face hardened.

"Lot, I'll be honest. There's no place for such as you. Those that have
made you what you are hold good stations among us; but when a woman's
once down, there's no raising her up."

"_Never_?"

"Never."

She stood, her fair hair pushed back from her face, her eye deadening
every moment, quite quiet.

"Good bye, Lot."

The figure touched him somehow, standing alone in the night there.

"It wasn't my fault at the first," she wandered. "Nobody teached me
better."

"I'm not a church-member, thank God!" said Pumphrey to himself, and so
washed his hands in innocency.

"Well, good bye, girl," kindly. "Try and lead a better life. I wish I
could have given you work."

"It was only for Benny that I cared, Sir."

"You're sick? Or"--

"It'll not last long, now. I only keep myself alive eating opium now and
then. D' ye know? I fell by your hall to-day; had a fit, they said. It
wasn't a fit; it was death, Sir."

He smiled.

"Why didn't you die, then?"

"I wouldn't. Benny would have known then, I said,--'I will not. I must
take care o' him first.' Good bye. You'd best not be seen here."

And so she left him.

One moment she stood uncertain, being alone, looking down into the
seething black water covered with ice.

"There's one chance yet," she muttered. "It's hard; but I'll try,"--with
a shivering sigh; and went dragging herself along the wharf, muttering
still something about Benny.

As she went through the lighted streets, her step grew lighter. She
lifted her head. Why, she was only a child yet, in some ways, you know;
and this was Christmas-time; and it wasn't easy to believe, that, with
the whole world strong and glad, and the True Love coming into it, there
was no chance for her. Was it? She hurried on, keeping in the shadow
of the houses to escape notice, until she came to the more open
streets,--the old "commons." She stopped at the entrance of an alley,
going to a pump, washing her face and hands, then combing her fair,
silky hair.

"I'll try it," she said again.

Some sudden hope had brought a pink flush to her cheek and a moist
brilliance to her eye. You could not help thinking, had society not made
her what she was, how fresh and fair and debonair a little maiden she
would have been.

"He's my mother's brother. He'd a kind face, though he struck me. I'll
kill him, if he strikes me agin," the dark trade-mark coming into her
eyes. "But mebbe," patting her hair, "he'll not. Just call me Charley,
as Ben does: help me to be like his wife: I'll hev a chance for heaven
at last."

She turned to a big brick building and ran lightly up the stairs on the
outside. It had been a cotton-factory, but was rented in tenement-rooms
now. On the highest porch was one of Lot's rooms: she had two. The
muslin curtain was undrawn, a red fire-light shone out. She looked in
through the window, smiling. A clean, pure room: the walls she had
whitewashed herself; a white cot-bed in one corner; a glowing fire,
before which a little child sat on a low cricket, building a house out
of blocks. A brave, honest-faced little fellow, with clear, reserved
eyes, and curling golden hair. The girl, Lot, might have looked like
that at his age.

"Benny!" she called, tapping on the pane.

"Yes, Charley!" instantly, coming quickly to the door.

She caught him up in her arms.

"Is my baby tired waiting for sister? I'm finding Christmas for him, you
know."

He put his arms about her neck, kissing her again and again, and laying
his head down on her shoulder.

"I'm so glad you've come, Charley! so glad! so glad!"

"Has my boy his stocking up? Such a big boy to have his stocking up!"

He put his chubby hands over her eyes quickly, laughing.

"Don't look, Charley! don't! Benny's played you a trick now, I tell
you!" pulling her towards the fire. "Now look! Not Benny's stocking:
Charley's, _I_ guess."

The girl sat down on the cricket, holding him on her lap, playing with
the blocks, as much of a child as he.

"Why, Bud! Such an awful lot of candies that stocking'll hold!" laughing
with him. "It'll take all Kriss Kringle's sack."

"_Kriss Kringle_! Oh, Charley! I'm too big; I'm five years now. You
can't cheat me."

The girl's very lips went white. She got up at his childish words, and
put him down.

"No, I'll not cheat you, Benny,--never, any more."

"Where are you going, Charley?"

"Just out a bit," wrapping a plain shawl about her. "To find Christmas,
you know. For you--and me."

He pattered after her to the door.

"You'll come put me to bed, Charley dear? I'm so lonesome!"

"Yes, Bud. Kiss me. One,--two,--three times,--for God's good-luck."

He kissed her. And Lot went out into the wide, dark world,--into
Christmas night, to find a friend.

She came a few minutes later to a low frame-building, painted brown:
Adam Craig's house and shop. The little sitting-room had a light in it:
his wife would be there with the baby. Lot knew them well, though they
never had seen her. She had watched them through the window for hours in
winter nights. Some damned soul might have thus looked wistfully into
heaven: pitying herself, feeling more like God than the blessed within,
because she knew the pain in her heart, the struggle to do right, and
pitied it. She had a reason for the hungry pain in her blood when the
kind-faced old cobbler passed her. She was Nelly's child. She had come
West to find him.

"Never, that he should know _me_! never that! but for Benny's sake."

If Benny could have brought her to him, saying, "See, this is Charley,
my Charley!" But Adam knew her by another name,--Devil Lot.

While she stood there, looking in at the window, the snow drifting on
her head in the night, two passers-by halted an instant.

"Oh, father, look!" It was a young girl spoke. "Let me speak to that
woman."

"What does thee mean, Maria?"

She tried to draw her hand from his arm.

"Let me go,--she's dying, I think. Such a young, fair face! She thinks
God has forgotten her. Look!"

The old Quaker hesitated.

"Not thee, Maria. Thy mother shall find her to-morrow. Thee must never
speak to her. Accursed! 'Her house is the way to hell, going down to the
chambers of death.'"

They passed on. Lot heard it all. God had offered the pure young girl a
chance to save a soul from death; but she threw it aside. Lot did not
laugh: looked after them with tearless eyes, until they were out of
sight. She went to the door then. "It's for Benny," she whispered,
swallowing down the choking that made her dumb. She knocked and went in.

Jinny was alone: sitting by the fire, rocking the baby to sleep, singing
some child's hymn: a simple little thing, beginning,--

"Come, let us sing of Jesus,
Who wept our path along:
Come, let us sing of Jesus,
The tempted, and the strong."

Such a warm, happy flush lightened in Charley's heart at that! She did
not know why; but her fear was gone. The baby, too, a white, pure
little thing, was lying in the cradle, cooing softly to itself. The
mother--instinct is nearest the surface in a loving woman; the girl went
up quickly to it, and touched its cheek, with a smile: she could not
help it.

"It's so pretty!" she said.

Jinny's eyes glowed.

"_I_ think so," she said, simply. "It's my baby. Did you want me?"

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