Vagabond and Victor. The story of David Sheldon

Front matter

I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

Shelf

V

Chapter I. The Shadowed Home

The rainy autumn afternoon was darkening into twilight; sombre shadows had already gathered in the corners of the room ; and even at the window, where the mother sat, there was but a dim gray light. It revealed only too plainly, however, the smallness of the sum she held — a two- dollar bill, a silver quarter of a dollar and two dimes. Count it forward or backward as she would, bill or coins first, it did not increase by a single penny, and with a sigh she dropped it slowly back into her purse — a lean, hungrylooking purse that seemed always asking for more. Two dollars and forty-five cents ! A meagre allotment for the week’s provisions,

VAGABOND AND VICTOE.

and Nat so needed new boots, and Billyhs old jacket was entirely too thin for these cold days. The thought of a single need opened the door for a troop, and they filed before her mental vision in seemingly endless procession.

The mother leaned back wearily. Her head was aching — that was nothing uncommon— ^but her yielding to it so far as to be sitting there was, and told that the pain was worse than usual. Her occupation had not soothed the throbbing ; and, realizing this, she tried to turn from it and forget all her inner world in the world without. But the narrow street did not present a very cheering prospect with its wet walks, dripping eaves and fences, and little pools forming in the hollows of the doorstones. The leafiess trees bent and swayed in the wind like mourners in a passion of grief, and tossed their long arms pleadingly — their empty arms that seemed reaching after the vanished beauty and treasures of their summer-time. There were but few people abroad, at least in that part of the city, and they passed by with bent heads and hurried steps to escape the

THE SHADOWED HOME.

storm. To what sort of homes were they going? and would they carry joy or sorrow with them ? the watcher at the window vaguely wondered. And did they really belong anywhere, and feel that there was a place for them ? The world of late seemed so crowded, as if there were scarcely room in it for her and hers !

The twilight faded rapidly, and presently the lamplighter made his round, the street-lamps twinkling out through the grayness and mist where he passed. Then a light appeared in the window of the little store opposite, where a bell tinkled whenever the door opened or closed. The sound of some one entering there suddenly recalled the but half-absent thoughts of the watcher to life’s pressing needs. She turned as a step sounded in the adjoining room :

‘‘ Louise !”

A young girl came to the door ; that movement, with the questioning glance of her black eyes, was her answer.

“We have no bread for supper. Will you run over to the store for a loaf?”

Louise nodded ; her silent moods were

VAGABOND AND VICTOR.

many, her talkative ones rare. She was not more than fourteen, yet nothing in face or manner told of lingering childhood while she stood there waiting for her mother to draw out again the worn purse. When the money was placed in her hand she only glanced at it and did not move.

Some tea for you too, mother,” she said quietly, not interrogatively.

“Well — ” the mother hesitated. “No, I think I can do without it to-night.”

“ Some tea for you,” repeated Louise. “This is not quite money enough.”

The mother yielded to the persistent tone and the outstretched hand, but said half regretfully as she added the extra change,

“ It may help my head, yet I don’t really feel as if I ought to send for it ; I could do without.”

“ It’s not worth while scrimping ourselves to death to save a living,” replied Louise sententiously.

Poor Louise ! there was not much of sentiment or poetry about her. Life and herself had been matter-of-fact realities so far, and both were sometimes rather bitter.

THE SHADOWED HOME.

She threw a shawl over her head and picked her way across the muddy street to the lighted window. As the jingling bell announced her entrance, gentle, lame Miss E-uey, sitting back by the stove, looked up from her knitting with a smile, while brisk, erect, angular Miss Hannah hastened behind the counter to attend to her customer. Sisters these two women were — Twins, born so,’^ Miss Hannah was wont gravely to answer to any inquiries — but they were strangely unlike. Miss Hannah took care of the small house and store, and Miss Euey took care of Hannah, though the latter never dreamed it.

“ How is the mother to-day ?” asked the little lame woman’s kindly voice.

“ Headache,” replied Louise briefly.

“ What a pity !” said Miss Euey sympathizingly.

‘‘Well now, I don’t know what you think,” began Miss Hannah grimly, “but I’ll tell you what I think — that she has it dreadful often for common headache ; and if ’twas me I should expect it meant trouble— softening of the brain or something.”

VAGABOND AND VICTOR.

Not very likely ; soft things never come to our house. It might be hardening of the brain, if there is any such thing,” replied Louise.

‘‘Well, you don’t know,” pursued Miss Hannah. “We can’t ever tell what’s just afore us ; and if ’twas me I’d consider it my duty to keep thinking about it and get resigned.”

“ I don’t,” retorted Louise promptly. “There are plenty of things already here that I’m not the least bit resigned to yet, and I don’t mean to take any work of that sort ahead ; I’ve got enough to last me a lifetime now and she picked up her package and departed.

“ Queer child !” said Miss Hannah shortly.

“ Poor child !” said Miss Puey pityingly.

“ ’Tain’t every one,” remarked Miss Hannah reflectively, “ that feels as I do about the duty of resignation. Why, the other night, when the fire-bells waked me, I just began to think what if our little place and store and everything should catch fire and burn, and we not be able to save a thing, and lose all our savings, and be turned out at our

THE SHADOWED HOME.

time of life, and maybe have to bring up at the poorliouse ; and I tell you what, it looked hard : I didn’t know how I’d stand it. And then says I, ‘ You’d have to ;’ and I set my teeth and wrastled with myself, and wrastled till I really got sort of resigned ’fore I went to sleep.”

Into the house across the street another step soon followed Louise’s — a light, girlish step — but it paused uncertainly on the threshold.

Why, how dark it is here !” exclaimed the newcomer.

Not very. It seems so because you have just come from the street and the lamps,” answered the mother.

I can’t see anything,” replied the girl, but, guided by the voice, she made her way to her mother’s side : How is the headache now ?” Then, comprehending intuitively the gloomy thoughts that had gathered in the gloomy twilight, she went on, without waiting for reply : ‘‘ I do believe it is working so hard that makes your head trouble you so. You shall have a chance to rest, mother dear, if once I get that clerkship. I shall

VAGABOND AND VICTOR.

just drop you down in an easy-chair somewhere, and not let you do anything until you are rested and strong.”

‘‘ Ah ! if, Susie ! There’s such an if in the way !” said the mother wearily.

Not such a very big one, after all,” laughed the girl. At least, it doesn’t look so now,” she continued, while Louise, bringing a light into the room, paused to listen. “ I saw Miss May to-day, and she says she overheard Mr. Lester telling some one that they expected to give me a place in the store, and thought there would be room for me soon. So it seems almost settled — doesn’t it ? — even though they haven’t sent us word yet. You must cheer up, motherling, in honor of your successful daughter.” Then suddenly dropping her playful tone, she exclaimed, ‘‘ Oh, what a help it will be to all of us! won’t it?”

If it comes,” answered the mother again, but she said it more cheerfully.

Cheering the others was Susie’s vocation — not so much by conscious effort as by herself. Sunny, brave and hopeful, ready to do and quick to plan, not easily cast down, and

THE SHADOWED HOME.

the first to see land in any sea of troubles, was she ; so she clung joyously to this fragment of good tidings.

‘‘I'm so glad I went out this afternoon, else I shouldn't have heard that !" she said as with a quick glance at the old clock she coaxed the smouldering fire of the grate into a blaze and began to spread the table for supper. “ I scarcely knew whether to go or not, it was so stormy, and I had to hurry to finish my sewing."

“ Should think it had been done in a hurry," observed Louise, lifting the garment on which her sister had been working.

“ Why, what is wrong with it ?" questioned Susie, pausing midway in her sentence.

“Sleeve wrong side out," replied Louise briefiy.

“ No ! Is it ? Why, how could I have made such a blunder?" cried Susie in dismay, putting down the cups and saucers she held and going to her sister's side. “ I have, really. Well, it was so dark here to-day that I could scarcely see what I was doing. I hope the work I carried home was all right. I shall have to rip this out — not tOr

VAGABOND AND VICTOR.

night, though, for our lights are so poor lately that it’s hard to do anything by them.”

“I don’t know what they’d be doing in this house if they were not poor,” said Louise.

Very different the two girls were standing there together. Susie was the elder by four years, but her lighter hair and eyes and the changing color in her face made her look younger for her age than did her sister. She only laughed at the speech, so like Louise.

‘‘Wait until I secure my position and we revel in gas and such luxuries. How glad Nat will be !” she added, returning to her hopeful thought again.

Nat came while the words were still on her lips — a boy freckled-faced, large-handed, coarsely clothed, somewhere between the two girls in age, but with a stoop in his shoulders, as if burdens had fallen too early upon them. This was all that ordinary observers would have seen in Nat, but then they would not have known, as Susie, Louise and the mother did, how hard he worked for his family, and how kind and patient he

THE SHADOWED HOME.

was ; how ready to bring the coal and water to save them labor ; how much of their slender income he earned ; how he insisted that he could do without anything new a little longer, and that the money had better be spent for some one else ; how he went away whistling to his work in the woolen mills in the early morning, and would never acknowledge that he was more than middling tired” when he came home at night.

He was pleased at Susie’s story, and almost as sanguine as she.

‘‘ I should think they’d take you if they want any one,” he said with boyish admiration of his pretty sister. ‘‘ You’re so quick at handling ribbons and such things, I’m sure you’d make a good clerk.”

“And catch the true clerkly indifferent air perhaps, wear my hair frizzled and my dress ruffled to a wonderful extent, and look at customers in a patronizing way — so,” laughed Susie, dropping her hands languidly and lifting her eyebrows in imitation of a specimen of young-ladyhood-behind-thecounter that she had met a few days before.

Her brightness was infectious. Even the

VAGABOND AND VICTOR.

mother smiled as they gathered around the table, and sipping her tea said it had done her good. She was rich in her children, she whispered comfortingly to her heart that had been so sore that day.

Suddenly the cheery talk hushed as a hand fumbled at the door. There was another member of the family — one so uncertain in his coming that they never waited for him now. Every one looked up uneasily as he entered, a quick, anxious questioning in all their glances, and something of alarm in little Billy’s blue eyes ; but it passed, and all drew an inaudible breath of relief as the man threw aside his slouched hat and came with sullen, averted look, but quietly, to the table.

He was served in nervous haste with all the board afforded. The mother passed him a cup of the tea, which had evidently lost its relish for her, for she did not taste it again ; but, except for a remark or two of hers, unanswered, no one attempted to drive the gloom from his brow by conversation ; no one even mentioned Susie’s golden hopes to him ; and a troubled silence fell upon the

THE SHADOWED HOME.

circle. He did not linger long, however ; he arose first, and taking up his hat went immediately out again.

It was like the slow lifting of a cloud. Billy’s childish talk began once more — began with a stab that reached the mother’s heart : ‘‘ Jim Sykes says if he had a father like mine he’d run off and never live with him no more, so he would ! and lock the door too !” But a moment later he touched a safer topic, and gradually they all resumed, in part at least, the tone of the earlier evening. Such interruptions were, alas ! so common !

Susie, gathering up the tea-things, stumbled over a footstool standing in the broad glow of the firelight, and when Louise wondered at her awkwardness Nat playfully declared that she was so uplifted with her grand prospects that she could see nothing at her feet. And when, a little later, she attempted to aid Billy in mastering an arithmetic lesson, and gravely held the book upside down while she stared in perplexity at the page, they all laughed at her abstraction, despite her protest that the light was dim.

VAGABOND AND VICTOR.

Two pairs of worn little boots settled themselves upon the battered old fender as Susie and Louise lingered for their customary talk over the dying fire after the others had bidden good-night. To be sure, the talk was chiefly Susie’s, but Louise was more communicative in these firelit half hours with her sister than at any other time. This night she began the conversation, striking through all glittering ‘‘ perh apses ” and possibilities to see what solid ground might be under them.

You really think you will get that place. Sue?”

“ Yes, I do,” answered Susie slowly. ‘‘You see, Mr. Lester spoke encouragingly at first — said they might need some one this fall, and afterward promised tliat if they did he would send for me. And now Miss May overheard him mention me by name and say they should send for me soon. Yes, I can’t help feeling pretty sure about it now ; and oh, I am so glad !”

“ And if you get it,” pursued Louise the practical, “ what will you do for clothes ? The girls in stores dress nicely — I suppose

THE SHADOWED HOME.

they have to ; they wouldn’t want anybody that didn’t — and you have scarcely anything.”

“ Well,” began Susie, facing this problem, this dress — ” touching the one she wore.

Is a calico, and you can’t wear it much longer ; it’s out of season now — if we had any seasons to our dresses,” interrupted Louise.

“ There’s my brown one — ”

‘‘ The only one you have, and a good deal worn at that,” said Louise, concluding the sentence again. I suppose the other clerks will think it a dreadfully poor affair.”

Susie’s face clouded for a moment. She had her share of girlish pride and sensitiveness, though she had found little opportunity to gratify one or shield the other.

“ Well,” she said with a faint laugh that had a touch of pain in it, “ if I have but the one dress, there will be no question of what I shall wear; and after all, Louise, it will not look so badly brightened up with fresh collars and pretty white aprons — ”

‘‘ Apron,” corrected Louise gravely. ‘‘ You know we have but one decent one

VAGABOND AND VICTOR.

between us, and we shouldn't have had that if we hadn’t saved instead of wearing it.”

It shall take the place of aprons anyway, if I do have to wash and iron it nearly every night to have it fresh for morning,” said Susie determinedly. ‘‘ And I don’t care what the others think of my dress. Yes I do, too ; but I’ll look as well as I can, and try not to mind any more than I can help until I can get something new. Oh, Louise ! this will be worth so much to us ! Mother can do part of the sewing that comes in, and she will not need to work so hard, and we shall not. have to pinch so dreadfully or do without so many things. It rests me only to think of it.”

Even in their planning they were different. Susie drifted into some bright dreaming for the far future, while Louise, with her dark eyes fixed on the dull red coals, soberly considered how much the clerkship would be worth per month, and what they could best and first do with the money earned.

‘'Hark! Father is coming,” said Louise, suddenly starting up.

The door was pushed noiselessly open, and

THE SHADOWED HOME.

there entered — the same in dress and stature, but utterly unlike in face and manner — the one who had appeared at the table. He came forward unsteadily, hut smiling broadly and rubbing his hands together as in an exuberance of complacency and good-feeling.

« My girls sitting up for me, hey ? — ’fectionate and lovely, like salubrious summer,’’ he ejaculated admiringly.

Louise turned sharply away to fasten the shutters for the night, but he stooped and kissed Susie, stumbling against her as he did so. She did not repulse him, for he was her father ; she did not answer him by word or smile, for he was not himself, and his demonstration not love, but maudlin sentimentality. She had known a father’s kisses in her early childhood, and they were not like this.

“Where is — yer mother?” questioned Mr. Sheldon, steadying himself against the mantelpiece.

“ Gone to bed,” replied Louise briefly.

“ ’Posing after the toils of the day — sleep of innocence ’n’ virtue,” commented Mr. Sheldon poetically. “ Prize yer mother,

VAGABOND AND VICTOR.

girls, prize her ! Es’mable woman ! She’s been the very dog-star of my prosperity.” Then he announced with an air of satisfaction, ‘‘ I’ve planned great relief for her arduous duties. Saw a first-class well to-day, ’n’ can buy it cheap. She’ll have no more trouble ’bout water. I’ll have it moved in back yard ’mediately — provide perennial fountain for my wife.”

“She is provided with a perennial fountain of wretchedness,” muttered Louise as her father staggered away to his room and she and her sister passed up the uncarpeted stairs to their chamber.

There were those who considered “ Dad Sheldon’s” grandiloquent speeches exceedingly amusing — those even who would furnish him the means of intoxication for the sake of the entertainment he afforded when liquor had so loosened his tongue that they could prevail upon him to “ deliver an oration.” But at home they failed to appreciate this diversion or to discover in it cause for laughter.

“ Little danger of my being too much elated with any good that can come to me

THE SHADOWED HOME.

while I must bear this burden,” thought Susie sadly.

Louise deposited her lamp upon a table and walking to a window stood there silently. Across back yards and alleys she could look to where lights shone from the windows of a large house opposite — a handsome house fronting on another and quite different street from the one on which the Sheldons lived. The name blazoned on its silver door-plate was the same that decorated the signs of two liquor-saloons down town, and there was for Louise a strange fascination in watching the lights from these windows.

I suppose they do not shine from just such apartments as this ; carpets and furniture may be of different style,” she mused, turning away from the outlook to the bare room around her.

Susie had whispered ‘‘ Our Father which art in heaven ” before she nestled her head upon her pillow ; it was a sort of matter-ofcourse prayer kept up from her childhood. But Louise, being practical as well as honest, always stopped midway in these later years at ‘‘ Forgive us our debts as we forgive our

VAGABOND AND VICTOR.

debtors/' That petition gave her a verycurious sensation in connection with the flashing lights of the great house opposite, and she could not separate the two. So she dropped the concluding sentence, and substituted— more as a form, alas ! than a prayer — some words from an old prayer-book : ‘‘ In all time of our tribulation, good Lord, deliver us !"

Chapter II. Gathering Clouds

T^EEKS passed, and the longed-for offer » » came to Susie — the place she had so dreamed of and coveted ; but she did not accept it. In the intervening days something else had come to her — unsought, unthought of at first, struggled against to the last Slowly but surely it came, precluding the possibility of accepting the other.

There were so many mistakes in the sewing, growing more and more frequent. She marveled that she, who was wont to be so careful and deft a seamstress, had suddenly grown so careless. Usually, too, some one else discovered the blunder first. She began to wonder too why they had so many dark days; the sunlight seemed never to come brightly into the little sitting-room any more, and at night the lamps burned so dimly that

VAGABOND AND VICTOR.

she could not see to work by them, though the others did not complain.

Then she began to notice, standing at door or window, how indistinct all objects on the opposite side of the street appeared ; and one day, studying Miss Hannah’s modest sign, she called in a startled tone to her sister,

‘‘ Louise, is the street smoky or foggy, or anything of that sort, to-day ?”

“ Why, no,” answered Louise wonderingly, “ Don’t you see it isn’t ?”

“ Not the least bit foggy ?” questioned Susie anxiously.

No.”

“ And can you read the sign over the store ?”

‘‘Of course.”

“ If you didn’t know what it was ? if you had never seen it before ?”

“Yes; every letter is plain enough. Why, Sue, what is the matter ?” for a sudden pallor swept over her sister’s face.

“ Oh, Louise, something is wrong with my eyes ! The letters are all a confused mass to me. Oh, what shall I do?”

GATHERING CLOUDS.

The cry was one of terror as she recalled the experience of the weeks past and understood at last its meaning. But in a few moments she grew hopeful again.

Her mother came to her, solicitous, troubled, but comforting.

“ You have been trying your eyes so much of late,” she said after some anxious questioning. “ You have worked so much on dark goods and by lamplight that you have weakened them until everything looks blurred and dim. You must let them rest now until they grow stronger.”

Susie was reassured. Her eyes were tired, only tired — that must be all. It was hard to spare time for idleness now, but a few days might be all that would be needed. And how fortunate that this had happened now, if it must come at all, instead of later, when she might be wanted at the store ! So she laid aside her work with a smile and a sigh, shaded her eyes carefully from the light, indulged in long restful naps, and used the washes Miss Hannah and Miss Huey recommended. She suffered no pain, and the tired orbs must surely be growing stronger.

VAGABOND AND VICTOB.

she thought, as she waited with what patience she could to resume her work.

But when, after more than a week of this treatment, she threw aside the shade and stood once more at the window, the street was more misty than before, the sign dimmer, and she could no longer distinguish the persons passing in and out at the shopdoor. The mother sent for a physician then — a grave, reticent man — who questioned with slow minuteness into every symptom, betraying by no look whether the answer boded good or ill ; examining the eyes carefully in the fullest possible light, and occupying a time that seemed interminable to the trembling Susie and the apprehensive mother and sister. When, at last, his examination was concluded, they could not wholly understand his learned explanation of the trouble — of cause and effect — but slowly through it all the bitter truth revealed itself ; the sight was fading out of those young eyes; gradually but surely it would decrease, and he had no power to arrest the disease.

“ Oh, doctor, you do not mean that ? Is

GATHERING CLOUDS.

there nothing that can be done — nothing ?” questioned the mother despairingly,

“ Nothing that I can do, madam — nothing here. If she could go to New York and be under the care of Dr. S , she might de-

rive great benefit — might, indeed, recover entirely. I should judge it quite probable. In an institution like that, devoted to a single class of cases, there are of course many resources at command which are impossible

to use in ordinary practice ; and Dr. S

has been remarkably successful.”

He bowed himself out, and Susie’s dim eyes watched him hopelessly as he passed up the street. It was so sudden, so awful, this black veil dropping down over all her future ! She sat stunned and silent, trying to realize her own identity — that it was out of her world so much was going — all the glory of earth and sky, the books and occupations she cared for, the faces she loved, — all slipping away to leave her in loneliness and darkness.

The mother came to her side and passed her hand caressingly over the bright hair :

‘‘ My Susie ! my poor lamb !”

VAGABOND AND VICTOR.

How tender the touch was ! how toilworn and hardened the hands ! Dear mother -hands that had done so much through all the years! and now she could never lighten their work any more — never spare them or rest them, as she had so hoped to do — never again be any help to these who so needed her, but only a care and burden always. That was the bitterest thought of all.

Oh, I cannot bear it I” she cried in anguish.

The mother only drew her arms closer around the girl. She attempted no word of consolation ; she could think of none for herself.

Louise hurried out of the room, and avoided Susie’s presence as far as possible all that day, attacking furiously, as if it were an enemy, whatever work was to be done, but scarcely uttering a syllable. But at evening, at the little store over the way, she was obliged to tell the story, for they had observed the physician’s call and were full of neighborly interest.

“ Anybody sick at your house, or did the

GATHERING CLOURS.

doctor come to see Susie’s eyes? Better, ain’t they ? And what did he say to what she’d been using, eh ? I know cold tea and quince-seed is good, any way,” questioned and affirmed Miss Hannah.

‘‘ He said washes were of no use — nothing is ; and he can’t help her any ; her eyes will get worse.” Louise choked over the last word.

“Worse? You don’t mean she’ll lose them ?” asked Miss Buey.

Louise nodded silently.

“ Going blind ! Oh dear !” exclaimed Miss Hannah, shocked and startled. “Why I never thought of such a thing ! I’d ought to, too, ’cause it’s something that might happen to any of us, and we ought to be prepared. But it would take a tussle, I do say, to get resigned to that.” She closed her eyes with a sudden snap, as if to discover how it would seem to be deprived of those organs, and drew a long breath as she opened them again. “WYll, I suppose a body could if they wrastled long enough, but ’twould be tough. How does Susan seem to bear it?”

“ I don't know/’ said Louise briefly ; she could not bear to talk of it yet — the way folks do bear what they have to — some way.”