Hedged in

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I. Thicket Street: as it is . . . . i

II. As IT WAS ....... 7

CHAPTER I. THICKET street: AS IT IS

" T T OUSES in streets are the places to live -I A in " ? Would Lamb ever have said it if he had spent, as I did, half a day in, and in the region of, No. 19 Thicket Street, South Atlas ?

My visit was a recent one, and my story is not ; probably, however, the later aspect of the place is a photograph of the earher. Streets have their moods, habits, laws of character. Once at the bottom of the social stair, they are apt, like men, to stay there. We make over our streets to degradation, like old jackets to the last boy. The big brother always has the new clothes.

The little one, overgrown and under-dressed, remains. " the eternal child," — more simply, (and perhaps to the Father of the ends of the earth none the less tenderly for the economy,) the "baby of the family/'

Thicket Street, at the time of my visit, had about the proportions, to say nothing of other qualities, of a drain-spout. The inelegance of the figure may be pardoned if the reader will bear in mind that I am not writing "a novel of high life."

The alley, long and narrow, sloped over a slimy hill to the water. The sidewalk being a single foot-path only, there was generally a child under a wheel or a hoof; this may have accounted for the number of dwarfs, and gashed, twisted, "unpleasant bodies" which struck the stranger^s eye.

The alley, I noticed, was imperfectly guttered, if at all, and, in a storm, became the bed of a miniature torrent ; in the best of weather the drainage from the high thoroughfares swept it. Certain old wharves at its mouth, from which the soft, green wood was constantly falling, were laden with — I think it was codfish and whaleoil. One well at the foot of the slope supplied the street. There were two dead trees boxed

Thicket Street: as it is. 3

in by rails, and a little ruined stucco-work about a few door-ways. The houses were of wood, with heavily projecting eaves, and had most of them sunk with the descending grade. This gave them a shame-faced, tipsy air, like that of a man with his hat over his eyes. They had been built by a jerky process of landscape gardening, — in each other's shadow, in each other's light, jutting here, retreating there ; having the appearance of being about to chassez croisd in a ghastly dance of ruin and filth. The wind blew generally from the wharves. The sun seldom drabbled his golden skirts in the place ^ even at direct midday, when from very shining weight they fell into the foulness, .he submitted to the situation with a sullen pallor like that of faintness. In the sickly light, heaps of babies and garbage became distinct. In the damp, triangular shadows, formed by the irregular house - fronts, a little cold chickweed crept.

The business spirit of the community expressed itself in a tobacconist's, three concert-saloons, two grog-shops, and a crinoline-mender, — who looked in at the windows of No. 19.

The alley, at the last census, reported between eighteen and nineteen hundred souls. The accommodations varied from four persons to four families in a room.

No. 19 was a very old house, shabby even amid the shabbiness ; it was near the water, and much discolored, I observed, either by the saltness or the impurity of the harbor mists ; the wood was crumbling about the sills of doors and windows, and rank moss notched the roof. Children swarmed on the steps and stairs ; an old woman, with a childish leer, sat in a window picking rags ; and a young woman, haggard and old, crouched on the pavement, sunning herself like an animal. I asked from the rag-picker the privilege of visiting the sec-, ond front seaward corner room, and the girl piloted me up the crooked stair.

"Many occupants?"

" Fourteen."

" That 's a pity ! "

She laughed stupidly.

"Alwers so. It's the biggest tenement in the house ; jammed, you bet ! Alwers was."

" It must be a very hard thing or a very bad thing."

Thicket Street : as it is. 5

"I mean to say that I am sorry for them."

She nodded sullenly, flinging open the door without knock or warning, according to what I took to be the received form of morning calls in No. 19.

The room was full and foul. Babies were numerous and noisy ; seyeral women were drunk. The tenement, low and dark, commanded, through dingy and broken windows, a muddy line of harbor, wharves, and a muddy sky. I could see, without, the crinoline-mender at his window, a couple of dance-house signs, aoid the tobaccoshop. I could see, within, nothing characteristic or familiar. I should except, perhaps, a certain dull stain, which bore a rude resemblance to a spider, ov^r in the eastern corner of the tenement, low upon the wall. A hospitable lady in a red frock, anxious to d6 the honors of the place, pointed it out.

" There 's where a gal murdered her baby ; years agone. If 't had n't been so long afore our day, I might have accommodated ye with partikkelars."

This was said with that tender regret with which Mr. White might force himself to drop a broken legend of Shakespeare, or Baring-Gould cement a shattered myth of the Golden ^Years.

I closed the sunken door with suddenly blinded eyes. I think that I must have offered money to the haggard girl, which she refused. I suspect that something which I said to the rag-picker left her sobbing. I know that I nearly broke my neck over a couple of babies in the door, and that I plodded my way, lame and thoughtful, back through the filth into pure air and sunshine.

As it was.

Chapter II. As It Was

npHICKET STREET, at the time of my -■- story, boasted the foot-path, the foulness, the twisted children, the wharves and whaleoil, the staggering houses and shops for grog, the impure winds and dainty sunlight, the old women turned children, and children old women, as well as about the same generous allowance of inhabitants to the street and to the tenement.

No. 19 offered very nearly its present attractions in respect to room, air, light, privacy, and quiet. The second front seaward corner sustained its reputation for being '* jammed, you bet!" retained its dingy windows and muddy view ; held, with more tenacity than at the present tir&e, its stained wall and stained legend.

As nearly as I can judge, the only material changes in the vicinity have been the addition of one concert-saloon, and the substitution of the crinohne-mender for a little guitar-maker, who sang over his work in his window.

That there should be a crowd about the door-ways of No. 19 was nothing uncommon, but the crowd collected, chiefly upon the stairs and steps, on a September afternoon somewhat less than thirty years ago, was not altogether of a common kind.

It was composed principally of women, and of old women ; a few young girls hung on its edges, and children — very young children — stood here and there leaning against the walls, listening intently and intelligently.

A woman with rather a clean cap, and her skirts tucked about her bony knees, sat above the rest upon the stairway, her chin in her hands, and her face somewhat grave. * It was as rugged as a face could be without being positively bad, but it was not bad. She had a sharp mouth (all the women in Thicket Street had sharp mouths), but it was slightly softened ; and keen eyes, but they were slightly dim. She had evidently a story to tell, and had told it, and- was not loath to tell it again.

Conversation was brisk^ and ran like this : —

'' She said so ? "

"Yes."

" She 's always sayin' oncommon things, — Nix."

"What did you tell her, Lize .? "

"I told her if she wanted to be let alon', let alon' she should be."

The woman in the clean cap said this decidedly.

" It 's a poor time to be givin' of herself airs, in my opinion ; 't ain't more 'n common politeness to the neighbors to give 'em a sight of the baby."

" I tell you what it is, Moll Manners ! '* — Lize shook her head sternly, and jerked her sharp knees against the wall, as if to bar the stairway, — "I 'II be obleeged to you if you '11 keep away from Nixy Trent. Hear, do ye } "

Moll Manners laughed a httle, with a certain change of color, which, years ago, might have been a blush. She had bright eyes, and they snapped. Lize punched her other knee into the wall, breaking away the cracked plaster by the emphasis of her touch, and rambled on : — lo Hedged In.

" She 's too good a gal to be spoiled in a hurry, poor creetur ! sobbin' night an' day this three months gone, and never a mother in the world to do for her this day. She 's out of her head off and on ; talks of prison and p'lice-folks ; keeps a pleadin* and a beggin' of Jeb Smith to take her back into the saloon. Every time the young un cries, — it 's an ugly, squealy little thing as ever drew breath in this world, — down goes she with her head under the clothes ^- all in a heap — to shut out the noise, likes I make it. She takes it oncommon hard. In the course of my experience," — Lize attempted to lower her voice sententiously; the effect of the effort was a bass grumble, — ^' in the course of my experience, I never see a gal take it so d?;/common hard. There 's gals an' gals, but then you know there 's a mother or suthin', leastways an aunt, or less. There was Ann Peters, now ! I was nigh ready to forgive old Mis' Peters beatin' of Boss to death, for the way she up an' stood by Ann, an' she nothin' but a fust cousin! It spoke well for the family. Nix here hain't so much as a cat 'at belongs to her name, — an' not turned sixteen ! "

As it was. ir

Lize spoke loudly, — she was never known to speak otherwise, do the best she might, — and apparently the little guitar-maker across the way heard what she was saying, — in part, at least, — for his song stopped abruptly, — he had been singing something in French about " L'amour, I'amour," — and he turned his back to No. 19 with an angry jerk. He wished that the women would let the girl alone. He was rather fond of Nixy. It vexed him to hear her chattered about. He twanged a cracked string discordantly, while they whispered and nodded about Lize and Moll. Moll, being rather quick, noticed this, and took the trouble to laugh at him.

"What '11 become of the baby, Lize.?*'

" The Lord knows ! "

" There 's ways of gettin' rid o't, — Nix is no fool."

" Nix is no brute ! " retorted Lize, crossly. She pulled her knees out from the hole they had worked in the wall, and stretched herself powerfully, gathering up her skirts meanwhile, to mount the dirty stairs. Lize used to get laughed at in No. 19 for being "fine."

" There 's the young un again ! That child

Hedged In.

will cry itself to death yet, and good riddance ! It worrits her into them fever spells I was tellin' of. There '11 be the mischief to pay if we ' can't keep her more peaceful-like — and a doctor too !" (" Yes, yes ! " calling up the stairs. " Never mind, Nix ! I '11 be back.") " Well, well ! It 's a sorry piece "of business, make the best ye will o't. Good lack be praised, / never brought a womanchild into the. world! "

A little wailing cry from the second front seaward corner floated down after Lize, and Lize, with powerful steps, tramped up after it.

Moll Manners shrugged her shoulders. The women, with whispers, scattered slowly. The little guitar-maker struck up a tune, and sang : —

" Down at the bottom of the hill, It 's lonely — lonely !

O, the wmd is sharp and chill At the bottom of the hill,

And it 's lonely — lonely ! "

I presume Nix, in her corner bed, close under the stained wall, had caught the tune (she knew most of the guitar-maker's tunes), if not the words, for she was sobbing when Lize came up.

She was a young thing, as Lize had said, " not turned sixteen/' with the expression even of a much younger child ; in fact, there were children in the group gossiping about her'down stairs with faces older than hers. She might, in an innocent, happy time, have been pretty, very pretty. Now, worn with suffering and shame, she was ghastly.

She was comparatively alone ; that is to say, there were but three people in the -room besides herself and her child, — a child sick with measles, a woman drunk, and a woman washing; the room was filled with unclean steam.

Her bed — I apply the term out of courtesy to the mass of rags and straw upon which she lay with her two-days baby — being, as I said, in the corner, Lize had contrived to shield it a little by a ragged calico curtain ; it was one of her own dresses which had been waiting for patching, — that curtain ; Nixy had been too sick to find this out, which was< as well, for Lize had not many dresses, and she knew it. There was brown paper pinned across the lower half of the window too, — Lize's work ; it was old, soiled, and cracked in the folds ; strips of pal6 sunlight, narrow as a knitting-needle, pierced it, and Nixy, lying quite still now for some time pa?t, had been watching it with confused interest. There were clothes flapping and drying out on a neighbor's roof, and the strips of light quivered and shot about in consequence.

Sometimes they struck Nixy in the eyes, and hurt her. Sometimes they struck the baby, and she wished that they would hurt him ; he cried as if they did, and she was glad of it. The baby was so dreadful to her ! Sometimes she took the golden needles into her hands, and knit with them — fast ; socks for the child, shawls for him, shrouds for him, — always for him, and always fast. Sometimes the needles turned into sharp fingers, and pointed at the red stain upon the wall, when the spider appeared to move — -the spot seemed more like a spider to Nixy than it did to me — and crawl over the baby, and crawl over her.

"Hm— -m — m." Lize, coming in, kneeled, with her finger on the girl's pulse, and her chin set in thought.

" This won't do ; this won't do ! There '11 have to be somebody that knows more nor me to take you in hand. Nix. Hush ! Ye 've cried enough. Doctor won't harm ye u'less it was for his interest and adwantage, — which 't ain't likely. There ! Stop your noise ! "

For Lize was rough sometimes, and was, to tell the truth, at the end of her professional wits with the girl.

'* I 'd rather not ! I 'd rather not have a doctor ! " said Nixy, weakly. " When I get well I 11 earn enough to pay you^ Lize, if you 11 be bothered to take care of me alone, you know. 1 11 be able to walk before you know it. I could almost walk to-day, if I tried. He 'd send me to jail, ef you get him I "

"I don't want yer money!" growled Lize, " and 't would n't be jails ; 't would n't be worse nor 'sylums, where the Lord knows ye mought be best off. It 's a way he has, — yes ; but it mought be a worse way. He 's not a bad man, — Burtis. Little pay and many patients he 's got out of Thicket Street in my time. Hush now ! or ye 11 set the young un off again. Take yer drops and yer naps afore dark and the men-folks comin'."

Nixy hushed, but, much as she dreaded the time and the noise of the "men-folks comin'," she could not sleep. She shut her eyes to please the old nurse, and, in coherent and incoherent snatches, thought.

Nixy had never done much thinking in the course of her life.

I knew once a brave, busy, generous girl, who, years after the bitterest affliction of her life, used to say, " Some time, I think, I shall feel better if I can make time to cry. I Ve never had room to cry."

Nixy, I believe, had never had room to think.

She did not remember her childhood distinctly, the very poor are not apt to, perhaps ; present necessities are too stern to admit of past fancies, — and childhood resolves itself into a fancy.

Nixy was nobody's child ; she could remember as much as that.

Fragments of things came to her as she lay there with her baby on her arm that night ; snatches of songs she used to sing in the streets, rapping out the tune with her cold little knuckles on a cracked tambourine for a man with an American face and Italian name, — her uncle, I believe, she was taught to call him ; a dim memory of the woman to whom he sold her, — she kept boarders ; of another woman who

''adopted" her, :^ — that was the one who got drunk every Tuesday, and beat her with the bottle Wednesday mornings ; of the city missionary in a green veil, who picked her up selling matches at a corner one winter day, and lodged her in an orphan-asylum ; of ten months of Httle blue -checked orphans and dog's-eared spellingbooks (the best ten months of Nixy's life, to be sure, if she had only been "educated" enough to know it); of her running away one dark night because she could not do a sum in fractions ; .of how sorry she had been for it in spots ; of the days after that when she wandered about with the Thicket Street babies, hunting for apple-cores in the mud, — the hungriest days of her life those were ; of persuading Jeb Smith to try her in his dining-saloon at the corner at last, — of the life in No. 19, — of the cold horror of the last few months.

So now it was either all over or all begun ; she wondered confusedly which. At any rate, here everything had stopped.

What next ?

" Your hand, if you please ; that 's right. I want the pulse."

B

Nixy turned with a start that woke and frightened the child. The doctor sat on the floor beside her, with his Watch in his hand.

" I don't want you/' said Nixy.

" I am sorry to intrude upon you against your wish ; but you need me, as I think you will find."

The physician spoke with careful courtesy. A close observer might have thought him to be addressing an up-town matron. It was a "way" Dr. Dyke Burtis had ; people had often remarked it of him.

Nixy felt it, but it failed to put her at h^r ease ; something in it reminded her of the missionary in the green veil ; gave her visions of blue checks and school-bells and " hours " for things; startled her slumbering dread of "jails and* 'sylums " ; indeed, she had an indistinct impression that it was this very man who took Ann Peters to a Magdalens' Home after old Mis' Peters hung herself. And if ever anybody had been a scarecrow to Nixy, it was Ann Peters. So, because she was frightened, she was sullen.

But the physician said nothing of jails, and did not so much as hint at 'sylums. He dealt with her gently, and left her soon, — for which Nixy, in spite of her wretched, terrified self, approved of him.

She had seen more than she appeared to through her half- closed, heavy eyelids ; had watched the gentleman's face ; had felt it — for even people like -Nixy feel such things -^ to ^^ a gentleman's face ; and had concluded that she should know it if she were to see it again.

It was a face of perhaps thirty-five years* moulding, with noticing noticeable about it except a very irregular, full forehead, and a streak of gray in the middle of a black beard.

Chapter III. The Second Front Seaward Corner

" A CIVIL-SPOKE man," said Lize, cuddling -^~^ the baby that night, ** and no fool. I take it ye 're better for his stuff a' ready. Hey, Nix } " " Very like," said Nix, absently ; she had forgotten Lize and the doctor ; she was dropping miserable tears on the pillow, glad of a chance to. cry without wetting the baby. The room was full now, and very noisy. She and Lize were alone behind the'cahco curtain. The window was raised beyond the brown-paper shades, to give the girl a breath of something a tone fresher than the double allowance of gin and tobacco consequent on the return of "the men-folks." The guitar-maker in his window was twanging a hymn ; on practice, not on principle ; it meant nothing to him, — he was French ; he had picked it up by the way from a street-preacher. It began like thi^, as Nixy made it out : — " Depths of mercy ! — "

Then she lost it in a little tuning and a little swearing ; in the interval she stopped crying to listen, glad enough of a change of ideas ; for she was young and easily diverted.

" Depths of mercy ! — "

Something was the matter with the upper E ; the next time he had it. M. Jacques was critical of himself always : —

" Depths of mercy ! can there be Mercy still in store for me ? "

" I wonder/* said Nix, suddenly, trying to sit up in bed.

" Wonder ef it '11 take after you } " Lize was holding the baby up in a streak of light that fell through the caHco curtain. " Yes. Got them big eyes o* yourn all over agin, — worse for ye, mebbe ! "

" I wonder what Jacques 's about, — what it means, you know. O, you don't know. Well ! "

She fell back wearily upon the straw. " . . . . can there be ? — can there be ? "

sang Monsieur Jacques.

Nixy, thinking it over, presently opened her eyes.

"I know. It means, if there *s any way out — with thatr

She pointed at the baby with that expression, partly of loathing, partly of fear, which always came upon her face at the sight of it.

" Bless my soul ! she 's crazed yet. Out of what ? "

Lize was losing patience.

"I don't know," said Nixy, sadly. "Never mind!"

She did know ; she had a jumble of ideas about " depths," and the " bottom of the hill," and its being "lonely — lonely," and that Jeb Smith might not want the child in the saloon ; but they were not distinct enough to make Lize understand.

" I s'pose you could n*t tell me what — to do — when I get out ? " she asked of her by and by, very slowly.

" Hold your tongue ! " said Lize. " Time 's in no hurry."

If time was in no hurry, Nixy was. It was so hard lying there in that room ! People were in and out, and stared at her ; the doctor with the streaked beard came and went, and prescribed for her. Lize, off and on, took care of her. Moll

Manners, down stairs, gossiped about her. The guitar-maker, in his window, sang at her ; generally about the " hill," or the " depths " ; sometimes of " Uamour, I'amour " ; in dull weather, and there was much dull weather during poor Nixy's convalescence, he practised dirges.

If Nixy had been an up-street wife, she might have been allowed the privilege of being "depressed" under the circumstances, I suppose. So Dr. Burtis thought, i:emembering certain of his happier patients ; one in particular, an out-oftown lady, — Myrtle was the name, by the way, though that is little to the point, — from whose pink and perfumed and dolorous chamber he used to come direct to No. 19.

Nixy, being in Thicket Street, and being only Nixy, " had the dumps," — so Moll said.

"She 's cried long enough," observed Moll. (Poor Moll !) " A week would have answered. The world won't stop for her."

" The child ain't to blame, Nixy Trent I " said Lize, sternly, once when, after six hours of rain and the Dead March from Saul, Nixy desperately flung the wailing infant off her arm, and buried her set face in the straw. "The child ain't at fault, I tell ye. Don't ye care nothin' for yer own flesh and blood ? helpless — innocent — "

" No," interrupted Nix ; she thought that Lize was growing sentimental, which perhaps she was. Lize had never expended much of her affection on her own honest-born babies at the advanced age of two weeks.

" The Lord love it, if its mother won't I "

She spoke heartily that time, and Nixy's head — it was such a child's head ! — came out of the straw.

" Mother .? I wish / had a mother. To go to now, you know, Lize. To take me in, mebbe, and help bear what folks say, and all that. S'pose'she 'd be ready and willin' .? I wonder if she 'd kiss me ! " Lize subsided.

" S'pose your boy come now, Lize, — not the dead one, but t' other one as shot the fellar and ran away, you know,_ — would you take him in, and help him bear what folks said } "

" Tim 's no fool either," said Lize, gruffly, after a silence ; " he knows."

She gathered Nixy's baby up into her brown warm neck, and kissed it. Nixy watched her thoughtfully, but Nixy did not want to kiss it.

The poor child would have hated the baby if she had known exactly how.

She used to dream, in her feverish nights, of being at the bottom of Jacques's "hill," and all the foot-paths up were narrow — very ; and in every path upon which she set her foot that baby lay. This dream pursued her till her child was over two weeks old.

" What is to become of that poor girl .? '* The gray-bearded doctor asked this of Lize one dark night, in a whisper ; and Lize, in a whisper, answered : —

" Heaven knows ! For she don't. I Ve come to the end of my rope^ Folks must live if they are sorry for folks. I 'm promised up to Jeb's day after to-morrow."

When they came to Nixy, they found her sitting up straight in bed, her mouth set and sulky.

The physician saw that he had been overheard.

" It 's no use, I tell you ! " began Nixy, promptly.

" What is of no use ? '*

" I won't go, I won't go ! "

" Go where 1 "

"You know you'd send me to the 'sylum if you could ! " said Nixy, defiantly. " You know it as well as I do ! I tell you it 's no use ! "

" What will you do, Nixy ? "

" I — don't know."

Nixy's eyes turned black and frightened, wandered from the doctor to the window, to the stained wall, to Lize, like the eyes of a caged creature.

" I will make everything easy and pleasant for you," said Dr. Burtis, gently. He hated to terrify the girl ; he wished he knew of a woman who could do this business for him ; he felt very much as if he were pinching butterflies. "They will help you to be good at the Home. They are very kind. After a while they will find the best way for you to — " he hesitated, gravely ending — " to begin life over again." (" She 's almost as much of a child as her baby ! " — under his breath to Lize or himself, — or the Lord perhaps ; for the Lord, generally heard something of Dyke Burtis's patients.)

He might as well have talked to the tides, — I do not mean the Lord now, but Nixy.