JOHN BIRGE'S OPPORTUNITY.
NE day it rained—oh, terribly. Albany is not a pleasant city when it rains, and Rensselaer Street is not a pleasant street. That was what John Birge thought as he held his umbrella low to avoid the slanting drops, and hurried himself down the muddy road, hurried until he came to a cellar stairs, and then he stopped short in the midst of rain and wind, such a pitiable sight met his eye, the figure of a human being, fallen down on that lowest stair in all the abandonment of drunkenness.
"This is awful!" muttered John Birge to himself. "I wonder if the poor wretch lives here, and if I can't get him in."
Wondering which, he hurried down the stairs, made his way carefully past the "poor wretch" and knocked at the door. No answer. He knocked louder, and this time a low "come in" rewarded him, and he promptly obeyed it. A woman was bending over a pile of straw and rags, and an object lying on top of them; and a squalid child, curled in one corner, with a wild, frightened look in his eyes. The woman turned as the door opened, and John Birge recognized her as his mother's washerwoman.
"Oh, Mr. Birge," she said, eagerly, "I'm too thankful for anything at seeing you. This woman is going so fast, she is; and what to do I don't know."
Mr. Birge set down his umbrella and shook himself free of what drops he could before he approached the straw and rags; then he saw that a woman lay on them, and on her face the purple shadows of death were gathering.
"What is it?" he asked, awe-struck. "What is the matter?"
"Clear case of murder, I call it. Her man is a drunkard, and a fiend, too, leastways when he's drunk he is—and he's pitched her down them there stairs once too often, I reckon. I was goin' to my work early this morning, and I heard her groaning, so I come in, and I just staid on ever since. Feelings is feelings, if a body does have to lose a day's work to pay for 'em. She lies like that for a spell, and then she rouses up and has an awful turn."
"Turn of what? Is she in pain?"
"No, I reckon not; it's her mind. She knows she's going, and it makes her wild, like. Maybe you can talk to her some, and do her good—there, she sees you!"
A pair of stony, rather than wild, eyes were suddenly fixed on Mr. Birge's face. He bent over her and spoke gently.
"My poor woman, what can I do for you?"
"Nothing at all," she said, stolidly. "My heart's broke, and that's the end of it. It don't make no difference what comes next, I'm done with it."
"But, my poor friend, are you ready for what is coming to you?"
"You mean I'm dying, I s'pose. Yes, I know that, and it makes no kind of difference. I've had enough of living, the land knows. Things can't be worse with me than they are here."
And now John spoke eagerly.
"But don't you know that they can be better, that there is a home and rest and peace waiting for you, and that the Lord Jesus Christ wants you?"
"I don't know anything about them things. I might, I s'pose, if I'd been a mind to. It's too late now, and I don't care about that, either. Things can't be worse, I tell you."
"It's not too late; don't ruin yourself with that folly. The Lord is all powerful. He can do anything. He doesn't need time as men do. He can save you now just as well as he could last year. All you have to do is to ask him; he will in no wise cast out; he 'is able to save to the uttermost.' Believe on him, and the work is all done."
It is impossible to tell the eager energy with which these words were poured forth by the man who saw that the purple shadows were creeping and the time was short; but the same stony look still settled on the listener's face, and she repeated with the indifference of despair—
"It's no use—my time is gone—it don't matter. My heart's broke, I tell you, and I don't care."
"He will save you if you will let him; he wants to. I can't tell you how much he has promised to hear the very faintest, latest call. Say 'Lord Jesus forgive me' with all your heart, and the work is done."
A sudden change swept over the sick stolid face, a gleam of interest in the dreary eyes, and she spoke with eagerness.
"Do you say he can do everything?"
"Everything. 'Whatever ye ask in my name, believing, ye shall receive.' These are his own words."
"Does he believe in rum?"
"No!" promptly replied the startled, but strongly temperate John Birge.
"Then I'll pray," was the quick response. "I never prayed in my life, but I will now; like enough I can save him yet. You folks think he can hear everything that's said, don't you?"
Strangely moved as well as startled, her visitor answered her only by a bow. The shaking hands were clasped, and in a clear firm voice the sick woman spoke:
"O Lord, don't let Tode ever drink a drop of rum!"
Then the little boy crouching in the corner, rose up and came quickly over to his mother.
"Keep away, Tode," said the woman at the foot of the bed, speaking in an awe-stricken voice. "Keep away, don't touch her; she ain't talking to you."
Not so much as a glance did the mother bestow upon her boy, but repeated over and over again the sentence, "O Lord, don't let Tode ever touch a drop of rum."
"Is that the way?" she asked, suddenly turning her sharp bright eyes full on Mr. Birge.
"Is that the way they pray? are them the right kind of words to use?"
"My poor friend," began he, but she interrupted him impatiently.
"Just tell me if that's the name you call him by when you pray?"
"Yes," he said. "Only won't you add to them, 'And forgive and save me for Jesus' sake.'"
"Never mind me," she answered, promptly. "'Tain't of no consequence about me, never has been; and I haven't no time to waste on myself. I want to save him. 'O Lord, don't let Tode ever touch a drop of rum.'"
"He doesn't need time," pleaded her visitor. "He can hear both prayers at once. He can save both you and Tode in a second of time; and he loves you and is waiting."
This was her answer:
"O Lord, don't let Tode ever touch a drop of rum."
All that woman's soul was swallowed up in the one great longing. Unable longer to endure the scene in silence, John Birge dropped on his knees and said:
"Lord Jesus, hear this prayer for her boy, and save this poor woman who will not pray for herself."
The words seemed to arrest her attention.
"What do you care?" she added, at length.
"The Lord Jesus cares. He died to save you."
Then John Birge repeated his prayer, adding a few simple words.
The little silence that followed was broken by the repetition of the poor woman's one solemn sentence:
"O Lord, don't let Tode ever touch a drop of rum."
"And save me," added John Birge.
"And save me"—her lips took up the sentence—"for Jesus' sake."
"For Jesus' sake."
The next time she added these words of her own accord; and again and again was the solemn cry repeated, until there came a sudden changing of the purple shadows into solemn ashy gray, and with one half-murmured effort, "not a drop of rum" and "for Jesus' sake," the voice was forever hushed.
The neighbor watcher was the first to break the stillness.
"Well, I never in all my life!" she ejaculated, speaking solemnly. "For the land's sake! I wish every rum-seller in the world could a heard her. Well, her troubles is over, Mr. Birge. Now, what's to be done next?"
"Is she anything to you, Mary, except an acquaintance?"
"I'm thankful to say she ain't. If she had been I'd expect to die of shame for letting her die in this hole. She's a neighbor of mine, at least I live around the corner; but I don't know much about her, only that her man comes home drunk about every night, and tears around like a wild beast."
Which last recalled to John's remembrance the reason of his being in that room.
"Is that her husband lying out there?" he asked, nodding toward the door.
"Yes, it is. Been there long enough to know something by this time, I should think, too."
"It seems to me the first thing to be done is to get him in here; it isn't decent to leave him in this storm."
"It's decenter than he deserves, in my opinion, enough sight," Mary muttered.
Nevertheless they went toward the door, and with infinite pains and much fearful swearing from the partially roused man, they succeeded in pushing and pulling and dragging him inside the cellar on the floor, when he immediately sank back into heavy sleep.
"Isn't he a picture of a man, now?" said the sturdy Mary, with a face and gesture of intense disgust.
"I would rather be he than the man who sold him the rum," her companion answered, solemnly. "Well, Mary, have you time to stay here awhile, or must you go at once?"
"I'll take time, sir. Feelings is feelings, if I be poor; and I can't leave the boy and all, like this."
"Very well. You shall not suffer for your kind act. I'll go at once to notify the Coroner and the proper authorities, and meantime my mother will probably step around. Shall I have this fellow taken to the station?"
"No," said Mary, with another disgusted look at the drunken man. "Let the beast sleep it out; he's beyond hurting anybody, and she wouldn't want him sent to the station."
"It was the most solemnly awful sight I ever saw," said John Birge, telling it all over to his friend McElroy. "I never shall forget that woman's prayer. It was the most tremendous temperance lecture I ever heard."
"Is the woman buried?"
"Yes, this afternoon. They hurry such matters abominably, McElroy. Mother saw, though, that things were decent, and did what she could. We mean to keep an eye on the boy. He has great wild eyes, and a head that suggests great possibilities of good or evil, as the case may be. We would like to get him into one of the Children's Homes, and look after him. I meant to go around there this very evening and see what I could do. What do you say to going with me now?"
"Easy enough thing to accomplish, I should think. I presume his father will be glad to get rid of him; but it's storming tremendously, is it not?"
"Pretty hard. It does four-fifths of the time in Albany, you know. Wouldn't you venture?"
"Why, it strikes me not, unless it were a case of life and death, or something of that sort. I should like to assist in rescuing the waif, but won't it do to-morrow?"
"I presume so. We'll go to-morrow after class, then. Well, take the rocking chair and an apple, and make yourself comfortable. I say, McElroy, when I get into my profession I'll preach temperance, shall not you?"
Rain and wind and storm were over by the next afternoon; the sun shone out brilliantly, trying to glorify even the upper end of Rensselaer Street through which the two young men were sauntering, in search of the waif on whom John Birge meant to keep an eye.
"I'm strangely interested in the boy," Birge was saying. "That prayer was something so strange, so fearfully solemn, and the circumstances connected with my stumbling upon them at all were so sad. I was sorry after I left that I had not tried to impress upon the little fellow's mind the solemn meaning of his mother's last words. I half went back to have a little talk with him, but then I thought there would be sufficient opportunity for that in the future. Here, this is the cellar. Be careful how you tread, these steps are abominable. Hallo! Why, what on earth!"
They descended the stairs; they knocked at the door, but they received no answer; they tried the door, it was locked; they looked in at the rickety window, the miserable stove, the rags, even the straw, were gone—no trace of human residence was to be seen.
It does not take long to move away from Rensselaer Street. Tode and his father were gone; and neither then nor afterward for many a day, though John Birge and his companion made earnest search, were they to be found. The "sufficient opportunity" was gone, too, and young Birge kept no eye on the boy; but there was an All-seeing eye looking down on poor Tode all the while.
