- -
- 100%
- +
“There’s a machine back of that arm,” said a red-haired man, gloomily, “and, anyway, there ain’t a law standing to cover our case.”
“Then make one,” said Berty, irritably. “You men all have votes, haven’t you?”
“Yes, miss,” said a man in a blue shirt, “all except this lad. He’s just out from Ireland. He’s only been ashore two weeks.”
“That’s the way to settle things,” said Berty, warmly. “I’ve found out that votes are the only things that make anybody afraid of you—you all know how I came to this street. I found living conditions unbearable. In my feeble way I have tried to rectify them. Nobody cares anything for me. The only good I have accomplished is to get a park for the children.”
“And that was a great thing,” said the man in the blue shirt, “and I guess we all think of it when we look at you.”
“I just wanted common necessities,” said Berty, eloquently, “air, light, water, and space—wanted them for myself and my neighbours on the street. I have badgered the city council till I have got to be a joke and a reproach. Nobody cares anything about you down here, because you haven’t any influence. I’ve found out that if I could say to the city council, ‘Gentlemen, I have five hundred votes to control,’ they would listen to me fast enough.”
The men smiled, and one said, kindly, “I’m sure, miss, you’d get our votes in a bunch, if we could give them.”
“I don’t want them,” said Berty, quickly. “It isn’t a woman’s business to go into reforming city politics. It’s the men’s place. You men fight for your homes if a foreign enemy menaces us. Why don’t you organize, and fight against the city council? Drive it out, and put in a good one. Those few men aren’t there to make the laws. They are to administer them. You are the people. Make what laws you please. If they are not workable, make new ones. I’m disgusted with those aldermen. The very idea of their arrogating to themselves so much authority. You would think they were emperors.”
The men smiled again. From him in the blue shirt came the emphatic remark, “We couldn’t turn out the present lot, miss. They’re too strong for us.”
“Oh, you could,” replied Berty, impatiently. “I’ve been going over our voting-list, and I find that the city of Riverport consists of ‘poor people,’ as we call them, to the extent of two-thirds of the population. You poor men have the votes. Now don’t tell me you can’t get what you want.”
“But there’s party politics, miss,” suggested a quiet man in the background.
“Shame on you, Malone,” and Berty pointed a finger at him, “shame on you, to put party politics before family politics. Vote for the man who will do the best for your wife and children. If you haven’t got such a man, organize and put one in. Let him give you equal privileges with the rich—or, rather, not equal privileges—I am no socialist. I believe that some men have more brains than others, and are entitled by virtue of their brains to more enjoyments and more power, but I mean that the city owes to every citizen, however poor, a comfortable house and a decently kept street.”
“That’s sound, miss,” said Malone, slipping still further forward, “but we’d never get it from the city.”
“Put in some of your number as aldermen. Why shouldn’t you in democratic America, when even in conservative England there can exist a city council made up of men who work by the day—masons, painters, bricklayers, and so on. Do that, and you will have a chance to carry out all sorts of municipal reforms. I think it is disgraceful that this ward is represented by that oiled and perfumed old gentleman Demarley, who never comes to this street unless he wants a vote.”
Malone stared intently at Berty, while a man beside him murmured something about the board of aldermen having promised certain reforms.
“Don’t speak to me of reforms from those men that we have now,” returned Berty, with flashing eyes. “When I came to River Street, I used to blame the policemen that they didn’t enforce the law. Now I see that each policeman is a chained dog for some alderman. He can only go the length of his chain. A strapping great creature in uniform comes along to your house, Mr. Malone, and says, in a lordly way, ‘Mrs. Malone, you are obstructing the sidewalk with those boxes; you must remove them.’
“‘And you are obstructing my peace of mind,’ she says, ‘with that old drug-store over there open all hours, and with our young lads slipping in and out the back door, when they ought to be in bed. Haven’t you eyes or a nose for anything but boxes?’
“And the policeman says, meekly, ‘I see nothing, I hear nothing; there must be something wrong with your own eyes and hearing, Mrs. Malone. It’s getting old you are.’ Then he moves on to look for more boxes and small boys. That’s the length of his chain.”
They were silent, and Berty, with increasing heat and irritation, went on. “This city is entirely corrupt. I say it again and again, and you know it better than I do—but I am going to stop talking about it. I had a lovely scheme for setting up a shop to sell pure milk to try to keep the breath of life in your babies a little longer, and I was going to get out plans for model dwellings, but I am going to stop short right here, and mind my own business.”
The men stood looking sheepishly at her, and at themselves, and, while they stood, Tom Everest, in a short walking-coat, and with his hat on the back of his head, came hurrying down the street.
He put his hat on straight when he saw Berty, and stopped to glance at her. He had got into the way of dodging down to River Street if he had any business that brought him in the neighbourhood, or if he could spare an hour from his office.
CHAPTER XXII.
DISCOURAGED
When Berty’s eyes rested on Tom, he came forward hat in hand.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he inquired, calmly, but with inward anxiety as he noticed her flushed face.
“No, thank you,” she said, wearily, “I was just talking to some of my friends here.”
Tom nodded to the men in a civil manner, then said, “Are you going home?”
“Yes, presently,” she returned. “I will just finish what I was saying. I was telling these men, Mr. Everest, that when I came to River Street, and saw how many things needed to be done in order to make the place comfortable, my brain was on fire. I wished to do everything to enable my neighbours to have decent homes and a pure atmosphere in which to bring up their children. But now I have got discouraged with them. They don’t second me. All the rich people say that poor people are shiftless and ungrateful, and I am beginning to think they are right. Here are these men standing before us. They are just as sensible as you are, or as any man in the city, but again and again they will vote for aldermen who care no more for their interests than they do for the interests of the sparrows flying about the city. They can pick up a living the best way they can. The city council has not one bit of care of its children, except the rich ones, and I say to these men here that there is no use for me or anybody to try to help them. They have got to help themselves.”
Tom looked concerned, but made no endeavour to reply, and Berty went on:
“It is all very fine to talk of helping the poor, and uplifting the poor. It just makes them more pauper-like for you to settle down among them, and bear all the burden of lifting them up. They have got to help you, and because they won’t help me, I am going to leave River Street just as soon as I get money enough. I’m disgusted with these people.”
Tom, to Berty’s surprise, gave no expression of relief—and yet how many times he had begged her to turn her back on this neighbourhood.
The wharf-men sank into a state of greater sheepishness than before. One of them, who carried a whip under his arm, shifted it, and, reaching forward, pushed Malone with it.
Other of the men were nudging him, and at last he remarked, regretfully, “I’m sorry to hear you say that you want to quit the street, miss. I hope you’ll change your mind.”
“Well, now, do you think it is a nice thing for me to be constantly running about interviewing aldermen who hate the sight of me, on the subject of the rights of great strong men like you and these others? Come, now, is it work for a girl?”
“Well, no, miss, it isn’t,” said Malone, uneasily.
“Then why don’t you do it yourselves? The ideal thing is to trust people, to believe that your neighbour loves you as well as he does himself, but he doesn’t. He pretends he does, but you’ve got to watch him to make a pretence a reality. For the good of your alderman neighbour make him love you. You don’t want plush sofas and lace window curtains. Bah, I’m getting so I don’t care a fig for the ‘rags’ of life—but you want well-made furniture, and a clean pane of glass to look out at God’s sky.”
“That’s so,” muttered Malone.
“Then for goodness’ sake get to work. Municipal reform can start right here on River Street as well as on Grand Avenue. I have all sorts of lovely papers telling just how model municipal government should be, and is conducted. It’s a living, acting plan in several cities, but I sha’n’t tell any of you one thing about it, unless you come and ask me. I’m tired of cramming information down your throats. Go on and strike, and do anything foolish you can. Let your wives freeze, and your poor children cry for food this winter. In the spring there will be a fine lot of funerals.”
“Oh, I say, Berty,” remarked Tom, in an undertone.
Her eyes were full of tears, but she went plunging on. “And I’ll tell you one thing that may be published to the city any day. I was not told not to tell it. Mr. Jimson wrote me a letter while he was away, and I think he is going to resign the mayoralty. He won’t tell why, of course, but I know it is because the city council is so corrupt. Now if you men had stood by him, and put in a decent set of councillors, he might have stayed in. I haven’t said a word of this before, because I felt so badly about it.”
The men scarcely heard her last sentences. The “River Streeters,” as they were called, took to a man an extraordinary interest in civic affairs, and they fell to discussing this bit of news among themselves.
“Come home, Berty,” said Tom.
“Yes, I will,” she said, meekly. “I’ve said all I want to. Just steady me over that crossing. I’ve got dust in my eyes.”
Poor Berty—she was crying, and good, honest Tom choked back a sudden sympathetic lump in his throat.
“Don’t worry, little girl,” he said, huskily. “You’ve done a lot of good already, and we’re all proud of you.”
“I have done nothing,” said Berty, passionately, “nothing but get the park for the children. I just love the children on this street. I want their fathers to do something for them. It’s awful, Tom, to bring up boys and girls in such an atmosphere. What will their parents say when they stand before the judgment seat—I can’t stand it, Tom—the lost souls of the little ones just haunt me.”
“There, there,” murmured Tom, consolingly, “we’re most home. Try to think of something else, Berty—you’ll live to do lots of work for the children yet.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
GRANDMA’S REQUEST
For three weeks the weather had been chilly and disagreeable. “The winter will set in early,” the oldest inhabitants were prophesying, when suddenly the full glory of the Indian summer burst upon the city.
Berty was delighted. “Dear Grandma will get better now,” she kept saying, hopefully. “This is what she wants—just a little warm sunshine before the winter comes.”
Grandma’s health had for some time been a cause of anxiety to her many friends. All through the autumn she had been ailing, and strangely quiet, even for her. And she had complained of feeling cold, a thing she had never done before in her life. Nothing seemed to warm her, not even the blazing fires that Berty kept in some of the many open fireplaces with which the old house was well supplied.
To-day there was a change. When the warm, lovely sunshine came streaming into her room, Grandma had got out of bed. She had come down-stairs, and, very quietly, but with a gentle smile that sent Berty into an ecstasy of delight, she had visited every room in the house.
The guinea-pigs and pigeons in the wood-shed, the two women working in the kitchen, had been made glad by a call from her, and now she was resting on a sofa in the parlour.
“I feel twenty years younger to see you going about!” exclaimed Berty, delightedly, as she tucked a blanket round her.
“Twenty years!” murmured Grandma.
“Of course that’s exaggeration,” explained Berty, apologetically. “I know that you know I’m not twenty yet. I just wanted you to understand how glad I feel.”
“Go out on the veranda,” said Grandma, “and breathe the fresh air. You have been in the house too much with me lately.”
Berty’s upper lip was covered with a dew of perspiration. She was hot all the time, partly from excitement and anxiety about Grandma, and partly from her incessant activity in waiting on her in the heated atmosphere of the house.
Berty reluctantly made her way to the veranda, where she promptly dislodged from a rocking-chair the mongrel pup, who, after long hesitation, had finally chosen to take up his abode with her.
The pup, however, crawled up beside her after she sat down, and she gently swayed to and fro in the rocking-chair, absently stroking his head and gazing out at the stripped grain-fields across the river.
“The ripened sheaves are garnered in,Garnered in, garnered in,”she was singing softly to herself, when some one remarked in an undertone, “Well, how goes it?”
“Oh,” she said, looking up, “it is you, is it, the omnipresent Tom?”
“Yes, I just slipped up for a minute to see how Grandma is. Won’t this sunshine set her up?”
“You saw her as you came through the room?”
“Yes, but she was asleep, so I did not speak. How is she?”
“Better, much better, and I am so glad.”
“So am I,” responded Tom, heartily; “it makes us all feel bad to have her ill, but, I say, Berty, you must not take it so to heart. You’re looking thin.”
“I can’t help worrying about Grandma, Tom.”
“How long since you’ve been out?”
“Two weeks.”
“That’s too long for one of your active disposition to stay in the house. Come, take your dog and walk back to town with me. See, he is all ready to come.”
Mugwump, indeed, was fawning round Tom in a servile manner.
“He’s liked me ever since he had a taste of my coat,” observed the young man.
“If you won’t take a walk with me, let me row you over to Bobbetty’s Island this afternoon,” pursued Tom.
Berty shook her head, but said, eagerly, “Do tell me how Mafferty is getting on.”
“Finely—he says that’s a first-class shanty we put up for him—the stove is a beauty, and, Berty, another consignment of cats has arrived.”
“Oh, Tom, what are they like?”
The young man launched into a description of the new arrivals. “There are four white kittens—one pair yellow eyes, three pairs blue, for which you should charge twenty dollars to intending purchasers; three black Persian kings, worth thirty dollars, and a few assorted kittens from five dollars up.”
Berty listened in rapt attention. When he had finished, she said, “You’ve been tremendously good about my tramp, Tom.”
“I like partnerships,” he said, modestly; “in fact, I—”
“That reminds me,” interrupted Berty, unceremoniously; “has he had another letter from his wife?”
“Yes, she is coming in ten days.”
The girl clasped her dog so energetically round the neck that he squealed in protest. “Isn’t it just lovely, that we have been able to do something for that man? Oh, do you suppose he will be happy there with his wife and the cats?”
“No, certainly not,” said Tom, coolly. “He’s going to have his bursts, of course.”
“And what are we to do?” asked Berty, sorrowfully.
“Forgive him, and row him back to the island,” said Tom, hopefully. “It’s as much our business to look after him as anybody’s.”
Berty turned in her chair, and stared at him long and intently. “Tom Everest, you are changing.”
“Pray Heaven, I am,” he said earnestly, and something in the bright, steady gaze bent on her made her eyes fill with tears.
“I have learned a lot from you,” he continued, in a low voice. “When I heard you talking to those men the other day, it stirred my heart. It seemed pitiful Berty, that a girl like you, who might think only of amusing herself, should be so touched by her neighbours’ woes that she should give up her own peace of mind in order to try to help them. Then I heard that though you could not move the men, the women of the street were much put out at the thought of your leaving, and so exasperated with the men, that they told them they had got to do something to help their families. I said to myself, ‘I’ve only been giving Berty a half assistance up to this. She shall have my whole assistance now.’”
Berty’s face was glowing. “Tom,” she said, gently, “if we live, we shall see great reforms on River Street.”
“I hope so,” he replied, heartily.
“We shall see,” and she upraised one slim brown hand, “perhaps, oh, perhaps and possibly, but still, I trust, truly, we shall see this our city one of the best governed in America.”
“Oh, I hope so,” returned Tom, with a kind of groan.
“Don’t doubt it,” continued the girl. “Who lives will see. I tell you, Tom, the women are desperate. The River Street houses are growing older and older. What woman can endure seeing her children die, and know that they are poisoned out of existence? I tell you, Tom, the men have got to do something or emigrate.”
“They’ll not emigrate,” said Tom, shortly, “and upon my word,” and he looked round about him, “I don’t know but what I’d be willing to live on River Street myself, to help reform it.”
Berty was silent for a long time, then she said, in a low voice, “You will not regret that speech, Tom Everest.”
“All right, little girl,” he replied, cheerfully, and jumping up from his low seat. “Now I must get back to work. Come, Mugwump, I guess your missis will let you have a walk, even if she won’t go herself.”
The lawless dog, without glancing at Berty for permission, bounded to his side and licked his hand.
“You haven’t very good manners, dog,” said Tom, lightly, “but I guess your mistress likes you.”
“I always did like the bad ones best,” said Berty, wistfully. “It seems as if they had more need of friends—good-bye, Tom.”
“Good-bye, little girl,” he returned, throwing her a kiss from the tips of his fingers. “Maybe I’ll run up this afternoon.”
CHAPTER XXIV.
DOWN THE RIVER
Tom did not get up in the afternoon. However, he came in the evening, and the next morning, and the next.
Margaretta and Roger, Bonny, Selina, and Mr. Jimson also came. Grandma was decidedly better, and in their joy they came even oftener than they had in their sorrow at her illness.
Berty could hardly contain herself for very lightness and extravagance of spirit. It had seemed to her that she could not endure the mere thought of a further and long-continued illness on the part of her beloved grandmother. To think of that other contingency—her possible death—sent her into fits of shuddering and despondency in which it seemed as if she, too, would die if her grandmother did.
Now all was changed. Day by day the exquisite sunshine continued, the air was balmy, there was a yellow haze about the sun. It seemed to Berty that she was living in an enchanted world. Grandma was going about the house with a firm step—a bright eye. She had gone over all her trunks and closets. She had sorted letters, tidied her boxes of clothes, and arranged all her belongings with a neatness and expedition that seemed to betoken the energy of returned youthfulness.
She was also knitting again. Nothing had pleased Berty as much as this. Tears of delight fell on the silk stocking as she handed it to Grandma the first time she asked her for it.
“Dear Grandma,” said Berty, on this afternoon, abruptly dropping on a foot-stool beside her, and putting her head on her knee, “dear Grandma.”
Mrs. Travers, still steadily knitting, glanced at her as if to say, “Why this sudden access of affection?”
“It doesn’t mean anything in particular,” said Berty, pressing still closer, “only that you are so dear.”
Grandma smiled, and went on with her work.
“You are just toeing that stocking off,” said Berty.
“Yes, dear,” replied her grandmother. “This is the last of the six pairs for Mrs. Darley-James. You will remember, Berty, they are all for her.”
“Why should I remember?” asked the girl, anxiously. “You always remember for yourself.”
“True,” said Mrs. Travers, composedly, and, getting up, she went to her writing-desk. Taking out a roll of exquisitely made stockings, she wrapped them in a piece of paper, and with a firm hand wrote, “Mrs. Darley-James, from her old friend, Margaret Travers.”
Having directed the parcel, she left her desk and went to the veranda.
Berty followed her. Grandma was looking strangely up and down the river—strangely and restlessly. At last she said, “It’s a glorious afternoon. I should like to go out in a boat.”
“But, Grandma,” said Berty, uneasily, “do you feel able for it?”
Her grandmother looked at her, and the brightness of her face silenced the girl’s scruples.
“I will take you in my boat, dear,” she said, gently, “if you wish to go.”
“I should like to have Margaretta come,” said Mrs. Travers.
“Very well, we will send for her.”
“And Roger,” said Grandma.
“Roger is at an important business meeting this afternoon, I happen to know,” said Berty, hesitatingly.
“He would leave it for me,” said Grandma.
“Do you wish me to ask him?” inquired Berty, in some anxiety.
“Yes,” said Grandma, softly.
Berty got up and was about to leave the veranda, when Mrs. Travers went on. “Will you send for Bonny, too?”
“Oh, Grandma, don’t you feel well?” asked Berty, in increasing anxiety.
“Just at present I do, dear,” and her voice was so clear, her manner so calm, that Berty was reassured until her next remark.
“Berty, where is Tom this afternoon?”
“Oh, Grandma, he was going to Bangor on business. He is just about getting to the station now.”
“Will you send for him, too?”
“Send for him?” faltered Berty. “Oh, Grandma, you are ill. You must be ill.”
“Do I look ill?”
“Oh, no, no,” said Berty, in despair. “You don’t look ill, your face is like an angel’s, but you frighten me.”
“My child,” said Grandma, “I never felt better in my life; but despatch your messengers.”
Berty left the room. She had a strange sensation as if walking on air. “Bring your boat, Roger,” she wrote, “your family boat. Mine isn’t large enough.”
Her messengers were faithful, and in an hour Margaretta, Bonny, Roger, and Tom were hastening to the house.
Berty met them in the hall. “No, Grandma isn’t ill,” she said, with a half-sob. “Don’t stare at her, and don’t frighten her. She just took a fancy to go out boating, and to have you all with her.”
“But it is so unlike Grandma to interfere or to disarrange plans,” murmured Margaretta; “there is something wrong.” However, she said nothing aloud, and went quietly into the parlour with the others and spoke to Grandma, who looked at them all with a strange brightness in her eyes, but said little.
Tom could not get the fright from his manner. Old Mrs. Travers would not interrupt a railway journey for a trifle. They might say what they liked.
In somewhat breathless and foreboding silence they got into Roger’s big boat moored at the landing, and he and Tom took the oars.
Once out upon the bosom of the calmly flowing river, their faces brightened. Sky and water were resplendent, and they were softly enveloped in the golden haze of approaching sunset.
Here where the river was broadest the shores seemed dim in the yellow light. With the dying glory of the sun behind them, they went down the stream in the direction of Grandma’s pointing hand.
How well she looked, propped up on her cushions in the stern. Her eyes were shining with a new light, her very skin seemed transparent and luminous. Was it possible that, instead of failing and entering upon a weary old age, this new-found energy betokened a renewed lease of life? Their faces brightened still further. Tom at last lost the fright from his eyes, and Berty’s vanished colour began to come fitfully back.