POOR JOSÉ!
“But these men have no feeling.”
The stormiest day of this stormy winter. Hail, rain, and snow seem to have formed a precious triumvirate to take possession of the day, “vi et armis,” and claim it for their own. I know not whether it is a certain perverseness of nature, or a desire to overcome difficulties, which leads me to prefer such blustering, battling days, to more serene ones; whatever may be the cause, the fact will account for my finding myself, on this particular morning, seated on the kitchen table, before the hospital fire, carrying on a warm discussion with one of the men, on the merits of Ruskin, as I dried my dripping garments. A chance word led to a quotation by him from one of Ruskin’s works, and we immediately “opened fire” in more senses than one.
I found him a man of keen intelligence, self-made, of course, but a great reader, and quite familiar with a higher style of literature than we usually look for here. Doubtless, in his far-away home, grander halls have echoed to the praises of the great Art-teacher of the nineteenth century, made by more appreciative critics; but I very much question whether he has ever had more earnest, zealous, enthusiastic admirers than the two that day met, before that kitchen fire, on the shores of another continent.
As I walked through one of the wards, a little later, I said, in passing, “You are better to-day,” to a man who had been suffering from such a severe attack of erysipelas in his head, that his eyes had been closed for many days. The enormous swelling of his head, added to his long, matted beard and thick, tangled black hair, had given him a fierce, brigand sort of air, which was far from being dissipated by the appearance of a pair of large black eyes, opened to-day for the first time since I had seen him in the hospital.
“Better,” said he; “but oh, lady!—”
He turned his head away, shaking it sadly.
“What is your grief?” said I, sitting down beside him.
“My little ones, my little ones! Where are they? Five weeks, dear lady, have I lain here, and no word have I had from them.”
A long, and most sorrowful story followed, of which the main points are these: a Spaniard by birth, he had come to this country in search of employment, settled in Philadelphia, married, and for several years was prosperous and happy, till his wife fell into bad habits, wasted his earnings, and brought them to utter poverty and wretchedness. On one occasion he had gone to a neighboring town on business, and on his return found their comfortable home broken up, the house and furniture sold, and his wife and their three little ones in a poor hovel, in one of the worst parts of the city.
No one who did not hear him, can imagine the pathos with which he described his little girl’s illness, with all the fervor of his warm Spanish nature; his care of her; his walking the floor with her night after night, her little arm around his neck and her head upon his breast; “for you see, lady, it was worse than if she had had no mother.” His love for her seemed to amount to a passion; his boys, he said, were “nice little fellows,” Juan and Henriquez; but evidently his feeling for them was nothing in comparison with the idolatry lavished upon his little Rosita, as he called her, a child of four years old.
“I lie here at night,” said he, the large tears rolling down his cheeks, “and think if I could just once have that little hand in mine, that little head upon my breast, it would cure me faster than all this doctor’s stuff, far away faster.”
From what he told me, I gathered that he had enlisted in the war in despair; and during his absence his wife, for her outrageous conduct, had been considered insane, and taken to the insane department of the almshouse, where she then was, the children having been taken to board by a woman in the neighborhood of their house. He had been unable, as he had said, to hear anything about them, and feared they were ill, especially his darling Rosita.
“Lady, dear lady, could you, would you see about them for me?”
“Certainly,” said I; “if it is possible, I will go at once; but I must first know where they are.”
“You will?” he said, “You really will?” with an expression of wondering delight; and then, as though the very thought brought peace, remained perfectly still, apparently musing upon the idea.
“But,” said I, “you do not tell me where to find them.”
“No —, —— Street.”
I started, and shook my head. “That is impossible; I could not go there.”
“Impossible!” he said, his voice amounting almost to a shriek. “Don’t say it! Go, dearest lady, go! Nothing could hurt you; God will protect you; oh! go. I would kneel to you if I could rise.”
“I do not want you to kneel to me; I would go at once, but it would not be right.”
“Not right! not right!” he said, with utter despair in his tone. “Oh! then what on earth can be right?” and covering his head in the bed-clothes, he groaned as though from the depths of his soul.
As this is no autobiography, it matters little by what train, either of reasoning or of cars, I reached the spot where I stood, an hour later; nor, for the same reason, shall I be more particular in my description of what followed, than is necessary for my narrative. Suffice it to say, a certain account of “St. Margaret’s court,” in the matchless poem of Aurora Leigh, was before me, stereoscoped into life, never again to be mere word-painting.
A little, low, blue frame building; the outer room, into which you step from the street, is apparently a small green grocer’s shop. Strings of suggestive-looking sausages hang in ropes from the top of the door and window; pieces of black-looking material, yclept bacon, by courtesy, are piled up among barrels of gnarly green apples, evidently not gathered from the gardens of the Hesperides; baskets of eggs—which I am very sure no tidy hen would ever confess to having laid—crowd the little, low, dirty counter, behind which stands the live stock of this interesting apartment. And certainly the object upon which my eyes first rested did not belie her “entourage.” It has been well said, that the soul makes a harmony for itself in its surroundings, and thus character is developed and declared. If so, how beautifully the unities were here preserved; for why should we not have the unities of dirt, as well as those of elegance? Doubtless that Celtic soul found as much enjoyment in seeing all around her in such perfect keeping with her own appearance, as Beau Brummel ever did in the appointments of his famed boudoir. I should almost have hesitated to ask a question of this curious production of nature,—something between a crone and a hag, with coarse Irish features, loose dress, hair hanging down, and apparently guiltless of any tending of either comb or brush since she had attained maturity, which was certainly not yesterday,—had she not herself opened the way.
“Get out of this, will you, Jewann, don’t you see the lady?” addressed to a dirty, commonplace-looking little urchin, of about nine years old, who sat tilting himself forward and back upon the edge of one of the aforesaid barrels, with infinite peril to life and limb. This rather remarkable name, with her felicitous rendering of it, seemed to me circumstantial evidence, and I gathered courage to ask, “Are you the person who takes care of José’s children? I have come to see them for him.”
“Yes, miss, walk in; we’ve but a poor place, as you see. Rosy, come speak to the lady.”
But it needed not the name; as soon as my eyes rested on the child in the corner, I was satisfied that this was her father’s darling; and who could wonder at his love! Rarely have I seen a more perfect specimen of “beauty unadorned”—the rarity of the jewel enhanced and thrown out by the coarseness of its setting. She lifted her eyes from the floor, on which she was playing, to stare at the unwonted visitor—large, liquid, Spanish eyes—with that expression of love and confidence in them which seldom outlives childhood. Those tangled black curls, her father’s pride, were almost hidden beneath a common, coarse, little worsted hood, in which she had stuck four or five chicken feathers, which gave her a sort of picturesque air; a large stain of the dirt in which she was living, rested on one cheek; but it seemed merely a shadow bringing out the bright tints beneath.
“Come here, Rosy, I say, and speak to the lady; she’s just seen your pappy.”
At that word she sprang up, and came wonderingly to my side, never taking those eyes from my face.
“Yes,” said I; “I have just come from him, and he wants so badly to see his little Rosita; what will she send him?”
In a moment her little arms were tightly clasped round my neck, as I bent down to speak to her, and those rosy lips were pressed to mine, in a warm, loving kiss.
Quite aware that this mute message, eloquent as it was, could scarcely be delivered with satisfaction to any of the parties concerned, I drew one of the feathers from her cap, and said, “Shall I tell him his little girl sent him this?”
A bright, beaming smile, was the only answer I could extract. The woman now began a piteous story of having to provide for them—no money, etc., etc.,—backed by her husband, who appeared, pipe in his mouth, from some back den, evidently hoping to extort funds; but when they discovered that I was in possession of all the facts, with regard to the support of the children, they seemed to find it useless to proceed; and finally agreeing to my request that one of them would take the children to see their father, I left the direction, visiting days, etc., with them.
Once more I stood by that bedside, which I had so lately left, with that deep groan ringing in my ears.
“Do you know what that is?” said I, holding up the feather.
No answer from the lips, but the eyes said, plainly, “I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
I varied the question. “Do you know where that came from?”
He started, pierced me through with those keen black eyes, then said, seizing the hand in which I held it with a grasp which secured my remembering him for many days, “You didn’t?—you couldn’t?—it isn’t?”
“Yes,” said I; “I drew it from your little girl’s cap; she sent it to you with her love.”
His grasp relaxed; and, burying his face in the pillow, he sobbed aloud. I waited, thinking he would recover himself, but no word came; hard, heavy sobs, only increasing in violence, shook the bed, and I was frightened at the terrible emotion I had called forth. Deeming it best not to notice it, I began quietly to give him an account of my trip, dwelling on the least exciting parts of it, but all of no avail; apparently he did not even hear me, and I saw that he was getting entirely beyond his own control.
What was to be done? Here was indeed a dilemma. He was exciting the attention of the whole ward; it was within half an hour of inspection when the surgeon in charge goes his rounds through the wards,—what would he say? Was this the way that the ladies excited their patients? But beyond and above all, he was injuring himself; and with the tendency to inflammation in his head, I dreaded the effect of such strong excitement, and yet all I said seemed but to increase it. Suddenly it occurred to me that (something on the principle of “similia similibus curantur,” little as I usually admire the practice) perhaps by evoking another feeling equally powerful, I might calm him; and knowing that no one, be it man or woman, will ever submit quietly to blame without an attempt at self-justification, I changed my tactics at once, and said:
“How it is possible, that a father, who has one grain of love for his children, can permit them to remain one day, or hour, in such a den as that, is to me a marvel that I cannot comprehend.”
The rûse was a perfect success. Starting up in his bed, with flashing eyes, he said, with a vehemence which at another time would have frightened me:
“How cruel! I couldn’t help it, and you know I couldn’t; haven’t I told you how it breaks my heart, night and day, to think of them there, and I tied here and can’t get them away?”
This was all I wanted; he poured forth a volley of eager self-defence, and ere it was half over, my mind was quite relieved about him, and I had the satisfaction of seeing him in a short time quite composed, and anxiously seeking to know every particular of my visit. He would not be content without hearing over and over the most minute details, all the time stroking and patting the feather, as though it were indeed the little one it symbolized.
The following Sunday, as I passed through the ward to attend service, I saw the three children on the bed; the two boys seated at the foot, and the little Rosita lying on his breast, with that dimpled arm round his neck, as he had wished. He smiled as he saw me, and held up the feather. I never saw him again. I heard, the next time that I came to the hospital, that news had been brought him of his wife’s death at the almshouse; he had been allowed to go out on a pass, but had failed to return, and nothing further had been heard from him.
Poor José! We shall, in all probability, never meet again on earth; but I can never think of him without finding, in his history, the most powerful proof that “these men have feeling.”