Cast Adrift

CHAPTER XVI

IT was past midday when Mr. Dinneford returned home after his fruitless search. Edith, who had been waiting for hours in restless suspense, heard his step in the hall, and ran down to meet him.

“Did you see the baby?”’ she asked, trying to keep her agitation down.

Mr. Dinneford only shook his head,

“Why, not, father?” Her voice choked.

“It could not be found.”

“You saw Mr. Paulding?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t he find the baby?”

“Oh yes. But when I went to Grubb’s court this morning, it was not there, and no one could or would give any information about it. As the missionary feared, those having possession of the baby had taken alarm and removed it to another place. But I have seen the mayor and some of the police, and got them interested. It will not be possible to hide the child for any length of time.”

“You said that Mr. Paulding saw it?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?” Edith’s voice trembled as she asked the question.

“He thinks there is something wrong.”

“Did he tell you how the baby looked?”

“He said that it had large, beautiful brown eyes.”

Edith clasped her hands, and drew them tightly against her bosom.

“Oh, father! if it should be my baby!”

“My dear, dear child,” said Mr. Dinneford, putting his arms about Edith and holding her tightly, “you torture yourself with a wild dream. The thing is impossible.”

“It is somebody’s baby,” sobbed Edith, her face on her father’s breast, “and it may be mine. Who knows?”

“We will do our best to find it,” returned Mr. Dinneford, “and then do what Christian charity demands. I am in earnest so far, and will leave nothing undone, you may rest assured. The police have the mayor’s instructions to find the baby and give it into my care, and I do not think we shall have long to wait.”

An ear they thought not of, heard all this. Mrs. Dinneford’s suspicions had been aroused by many things in Edith’s manner and conduct of late, and she had watched her every look and word and movement with a keenness of observation that let nothing escape. Careful as her husband and daughter were in their interviews, it was impossible to conceal anything from eyes that never failed in watchfulness. An unguarded word here, a look of mutual intelligence there, a sudden silence when she appeared, an unusual soberness of demeanor and evident absorbed interest in something they were careful to conceal, had the effect to quicken all Mrs. Dinneford’s alarms and suspicions.

She had seen from the top of the stairs a brief but excited interview pass between Edith and her father as the latter stood in the vestibule that morning, and she had noticed the almost wild look on her daughter’s face as she hastened back along the hall and ran up to her room. Here she stayed alone for over an hour, and then came down to the parlor, where she remained restless, moving about or standing by the window for a greater part of the morning.

There was something more than usual on hand. Guilt in its guesses came near the truth. What could all this mean, if it had not something to do with the cast-off baby? Certainty at last came. She was in the dining-room when Edith ran down to meet her father in the hall, and slipped noiselessly and unobserved into one of the parlors, where, concealed by a curtain, she heard everything that passed between her husband and daughter.

Still as death she stood, holding down the strong pulses of her heart. From the hall Edith and her father turned into one of the parlors—the same in which Mrs. Dinneford was concealed behind the curtain—and sat down.

“It had large brown eyes?” said Edith, a yearning tenderness in her voice.

“Yes, and a finely-formed bead, showing good parentage,” returned the father.

“Didn’t you find out who the women were—the two bad women the little girl told me about? If we had their names, the police could find them. The little girl’s mother must know who they are.”

“We have the name of one of them,” said Mr. Dinneford. “She is called Pinky Swett, and it can’t be long before the police are on her track. She is said to be a desperate character. Nothing more can be done now; we must wait until the police work up the affair. I will call at the mayor’s office in the morning and find out what has been done.”

Mrs. Dinneford heard no more. The bell rang, and her husband and daughter left the parlor and went up stairs. The moment they were beyond observation she glided noiselessly through the hall, and reached her chamber without being noticed. Soon afterward she came down dressed for visiting, and went out hastily, her veil closely drawn. Her manner was hurried. Descending the steps, she stood for a single moment, as if hesitating which way to go, and then moved off rapidly. Soon she had passed out of the fashionable neighborhood in which she lived. After this she walked more slowly, and with the air of one whose mind was in doubt or hesitation. Once she stopped, and turning about, slowly retraced her steps for the distance of a square. Then she wheeled around, as if from some new and strong resolve, and went on again. At last she paused before a respectable-looking house of moderate size in a neighborhood remote from the busier and more thronged parts of the city. The shutters were all bowed down to the parlor, and the house had a quiet, unobtrusive look. Mrs. Dinneford gave a quick, anxious glance up and down the street, and then hurriedly ascended the steps and rang the bell.

“Is Mrs. Hoyt in?” she asked of a stupid-looking girl who came to the door.

“Yes, ma’am,” was answered.

“Tell her a lady wants to see her;” and she passed into the plainly-furnished parlor. There were no pictures on the walls nor ornaments on the mantel-piece, nor any evidence of taste—nothing home-like—in the shadowed room, the atmosphere of which was close and heavy. She waited here for a few moments, when there was a rustle of garments and the sound of light, quick feet on the stairs. A small, dark-eyed, sallow-faced woman entered the parlor.

“Mrs. Bray—no, Mrs. Hoyt.”

“Mrs. Dinneford;” and the two women stood face to face for a few moments, each regarding the other keenly.

“Mrs. Hoyt—don’t forget,” said the former, with a warning emphasis in her voice. “Mrs. Bray is dead.”

In her heart Mrs. Dinneford wished that it were indeed so.

“Anything wrong?” asked the black-eyed little woman.

“Do you know a Pinky Swett?” asked Mrs. Dinneford, abruptly.

Mrs. Hoyt—so we must now call her—betrayed surprise at this question, and was about answering “No,” but checked herself and gave a half-hesitating “Yes,” adding the question, “What about her?”

Before Mrs. Dinneford could reply, however, Mrs. Hoyt took hold of her arm and said, “Come up to my room. Walls have ears sometimes, and I will not answer for these.”

Mrs. Dinneford went with her up stairs to a chamber in the rear part of the building.

“We shall be out of earshot here,” said Mrs. Hoyt as she closed the door, locking it at the same time. “And now tell me what’s up, and what about Pinky Swett.”

“You know her?”

“Yes, slightly.”

“More than slightly, I guess.”

Mrs. Hoyt’s eyes flashed impatiently. Mrs. Dinneford saw it, and took warning.

“She’s got that cursed baby.”

“How do you know?”

“No matter how I know. It’s enough that I know. Who is she?”

“That question may be hard to answer. About all I know of her is that she came from the country a few years ago, and has been drifting about here ever since.”

“What is she doing with that baby? and how did she get hold of it?”

“Questions more easily asked than answered.”

“Pshaw! I don’t want any beating about the bush, Mrs. Bray.”

“Mrs. Hoyt,” said the person addressed.

“Oh, well, Mrs. Hoyt, then. We ought to understand each other by this time.”

“I guess we do;” and the little woman arched her brows.

“I don’t want any beating about the bush,” resumed Mrs. Dinneford. “I am here on business.”

“Very well; let’s to business, then;” and Mrs. Hoyt leaned back in her chair.

“Edith knows that this woman has the baby,” said Mrs. Dinneford.

“What!” and Mrs. Hoyt started to her feet.

“The mayor has been seen, and the police are after her.”

“How do you know?”

“Enough that I know. And now, Mrs. Hoyt, this thing must come to an end, and there is not an instant to be lost. Has Pinky Swett, as she is called, been told where the baby came from?”

“Not by me.”

“By anybody?”

“That is more than I can say.”

“What has become of the woman I gave it to?”

“She’s about somewhere.”

“When did you see her?”

Mrs. Hoyt pretended to think for some moments, and then replied:

“Not for a month or two.”

“Had she the baby then?”

“No; she was rid of it long before that.”

“Did she know this Pinky Swett?”

“Yes.”

“Curse the brat! If I’d thought all this trouble was to come, I’d have smothered it before it was half an hour old.”

“Risky business,” remarked Mrs. Hoyt.

“Safer than to have let it live,” said Mrs. Dinneford, a hard, evil expression settling around her mouth. “And now I want the thing done. You understand. Find this Pinky Swett. The police are after her, and may be ahead of you. I am desperate, you see. Anything but the discovery and possession of this child by Edith. It must be got out of the way. If it will not starve, it must drown.”

Mrs. Dinneford’s face was distorted by the strength of her evil passions. Her eyes were full of fire, flashing now, and now glaring like those of a wild animal.

“It might fall out of a window,” said Mrs. Hoyt, in a low, even voice, and with a faint smile on her lips. “Children fall out of windows sometimes.”

“But don’t always get killed,” answered Mrs. Dinneford, coldly.

“Or, it might drop from somebody’s arms into the river—off the deck of a ferryboat, I mean,” added Mrs. Hoyt.

“That’s better. But I don’t care how it’s done, so it’s done.”

“Accidents are safer,” said Mrs. Hoyt.

“I guess you’re right about that. Let it be an accident, then.”

It was half an hour from the time Mrs. Dinneford entered this house before she came away. As she passed from the door, closely veiled, a gentleman whom she knew very well was going by on the opposite side of the street. From something in his manner she felt sure that he had recognized her, and that the recognition had caused him no little surprise. Looking back two or three times as she hurried homeward, she saw, to her consternation, that he was following her, evidently with the purpose of making sure of her identity.

To throw this man off of her track was Mrs. Dinneford’s next concern. This she did by taking a street-car that was going in a direction opposite to the part of the town in which she lived, and riding for a distance of over a mile. An hour afterward she came back to her own neighborhood, but not without a feeling of uneasiness. Just as she was passing up to the door of her residence a gentleman came hurriedly around the nearest corner. She recognized him at a glance. It seemed as if the servant would never answer her ring. On he came, until the sound of his steps was in her ears. He was scarcely ten paces distant when the door opened and she passed in. When she gained her room, she sat down faint and trembling. Here was a new element in the danger and disgrace that were digging her steps so closely.

As we have seen, Edith did not make her appearance at the mission sewing-school on the following Thursday, nor did she go there for many weeks afterward. The wild hope that had taken her to Briar street, the nervous strain and agitation attendant on that visit, and the reaction occasioned by her father’s failure to get possession of the baby, were too much for her strength, and an utter prostration of mind and body was the consequence. There was no fever nor sign of any active disease—only weakness, Nature’s enforced quietude, that life and reason might be saved.

CHAPTER XVII

THE police were at fault. They found Pinky Swett, but were not able to find the baby. Careful as they were in their surveillance, she managed to keep them on the wrong track and to baffle every effort to discover what had been done with the child.

In this uncertainty months went by. Edith came up slowly from her prostrate condition, paler, sadder and quieter, living in a kind of waking dream. Her father tried to hold her back from her mission work among the poor, but she said, “I must go, father; I will die if I do not.”

And so her life lost itself in charities. Now and then her mother made an effort to draw her into society. She had not yet given up her ambition, nor her hope of one day seeing her daughter take social rank among the highest, or what she esteemed the highest. But her power over Edith was entirely gone. She might as well have set herself to turn the wind from its course as to influence her in anything. It was all in vain. Edith had dropped out of society, and did not mean to go back. She had no heart for anything outside of her home, except the Christian work to which she had laid her hands.

The restless, watchful, suspicious manner exhibited for a long time by Mrs. Dinneford, and particularly noticed by Edith, gradually wore off. She grew externally more like her old self, but with something new in the expression of her face when in repose, that gave a chill to the heart of Edith whenever she saw its mysterious record, that seemed in her eyes only an imperfect effort to conceal some guilty secret.

Thus the mother and daughter, though in daily personal contact, stood far apart—were internally as distant from each other as the antipodes.

As for Mr. Dinneford, what he had seen and heard on his first visit to Briar street had aroused him to a new and deeper sense of his duty as a citizen. Against all the reluctance and protests of his natural feelings, he had compelled himself to stand face to face with the appalling degradation and crime that festered and rioted in that almost Heaven-deserted region. He had heard and read much about its evil condition; but when, under the protection of a policeman, he went from house to house, from den to den, through cellar and garret and hovel, comfortless and filthy as dog-kennels and pig-styes, and saw the sick and suffering, the utterly vile and debauched, starving babes and children with faces marred by crime, and the legion of harpies who were among them as birds of prey, he went back to his home sick at heart, and with a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness out of which he found it almost impossible to rise.

We cannot stain our pages with a description of what he saw. It is so vile and terrible, alas, so horrible, that few would credit it. The few imperfect glimpses of life in that region which we have already given are sad enough and painful enough, but they only hint at the real truth.

“What can be done?” asked Mr. Dinneford of the missionary, at their next meeting, in a voice that revealed his utter despair of a remedy. “To me it seems as if nothing but fire could purify this region.”

“The causes that have produced this would soon create another as bad,” was answered.

“What are the causes?”

“The primary cause,” said Mr. Paulding, “is the effort of hell to establish itself on the earth for the destruction of human souls; the secondary cause lies in the indifference and supineness of the people. ‘While the husband-men slept the enemy sowed tares.’ Thus it was of old, and thus it is to-day. The people are sleeping or indifferent, the churches are sleeping or indifferent, while the enemy goes on sowing tares for the harvest of death.”

“Well may you say the harvest of death,” returned Mr. Dinneford, gloomily.

“And hell,” added the missionary, with a stern emphasis. “Yes, sir, it is the harvest of death and hell that is gathered here, and such a full harvest! There is little joy in heaven over the sheaves that are garnered in this accursed region. What hope is there in fire, or any other purifying process, if the enemy be permitted to go on sowing his evil seed at will?”

“How will you prevent it?” asked Mr. Dinneford.

“Not by standing afar off and leaving the enemy in undisputed possession—not by sleeping while he sows and reaps and binds into bundles for the fires, his harvests of human souls! We must be as alert and wise and ready of hand as he; and God being our helper, we can drive him from the field!”

“You have thought over this sad problem a great deal,” said Mr. Dinneford. “You have stood face to face with the enemy for years, and know his strength and his resources. Have you any well-grounded hope of ever dislodging him from this stronghold?”

“I have just said it, Mr. Dinneford. But until the churches and the people come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty, he cannot be dislodged. I am standing here, sustained in my work by a small band of earnest Christian men and women, like an almost barren rock in the midst of a down-rushing river on whose turbulent surface thousands are being swept to destruction. The few we are able to rescue are as a drop in the bucket to the number who are lost. In weakness and sorrow, almost in despair sometimes, we stand on our rock, with the cry of lost souls mingling with the cry of fiends in our ears, and wonder at the churches and the people, that they stand aloof—nay, worse, turn from us coldly often—when we press the claims of this worse than heathen people who are perishing at their very doors.

“Sir,” continued the missionary, warming on his theme, “I was in a church last Sunday that cost its congregation over two hundred thousand dollars. It was an anniversary occasion, and the collections for the day were to be given to some foreign mission. How eloquently the preacher pleaded for the heathen! What vivid pictures of their moral and spiritual destitution he drew! How full of pathos he was, even to tears! And the congregation responded in a contribution of over three thousand dollars, to be sent somewhere, and to be disbursed by somebody of whom not one in a hundred of the contributors knew anything or took the trouble to inform themselves. I felt sick and oppressed at such a waste of money and Christian sympathy, when heathen more destitute and degraded than could be found in any foreign land were dying at home in thousands every year, unthought of and uncared for. I gave no amens to his prayers—I could not. They would have stuck in my throat. I said to myself, in bitterness and anger, ‘How dare a watchman on the walls of Zion point to an enemy afar off, of whose movements and power and organization he knows but little, while the very gates of the city are being stormed and its walls broken down?’ But you must excuse me, Mr. Dinneford. I lose my calmness sometimes when these things crowd my thoughts too strongly. I am human like the rest, and weak, and cannot stand in the midst of this terrible wickedness and suffering year after year without being stirred by it to the very inmost of my being. In my intense absorption I can see nothing else sometimes.”

He paused for a little while, and then said, in a quiet, business way,

“In seeking a remedy for the condition of society found here, we must let common sense and a knowledge of human nature go hand in hand with Christian charity. To ignore any of these is to make failure certain. If the whisky-and policy-shops were all closed, the task would be easy. In a single month the transformation would be marvelous. But we cannot hope for this, at least not for a long time to come—not until politics and whisky are divorced, and not until associations of bad men cease to be strong enough in our courts to set law and justice at defiance. Our work, then, must be in the face of these baleful influences.”

“Is the evil of lottery-policies so great that you class it with the curse of rum?” asked Mr. Dinneford.

“It is more concealed, but as all-pervading and almost as disastrous in its effects. The policy-shops draw from the people, especially the poor and ignorant, hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. There is no more chance of thrift for one who indulges in this sort of gambling than there is for one who indulges in drink. The vice in either case drags its subject down to want, and in most cases to crime. I could point you to women virtuous a year ago, but who now live abandoned lives; and they would tell you, if you would question them, that their way downward was through the policy-shops. To get the means of securing a hoped-for prize—of getting a hundred or two hundred dollars for every single one risked, and so rising above want or meeting some desperate exigency—virtue was sacrificed in an evil moment.”

“The whisky-shops brutalize, benumb and debase or madden with cruel and murderous passions; the policy-shops, more seductive and fascinating in their allurements, lead on to as deep a gulf of moral ruin and hopeless depravity. I have seen the poor garments of a dying child sold at a pawn-shop for a mere trifle by its infatuated mother, and the money thrown away in this kind of gambling. Women sell or pawn their clothing, often sending their little children to dispose of these articles, while they remain half clad at home to await the daily drawings and receive the prize they fondly hope to obtain, but which rarely, if ever, comes.