STUDIES IN THE SLUMS.
III.—NAN; OR, A GIRL'S LIFE.
"An' this one? Lord have mercy on her, an' forgive me for saying it the way I do every time I look at her! It comes out of itself, an' there's times when I could think for a minute that He will; an' then it comes over me like a blackness on everything that her chance is gone. Look at that one by her. Ain't he a rough? Ain't he just fit for the Rogues' Gallery, an' nowhere else? And yet—Well, it's a long story, an' you won't want to hear it all."
"Every word," I said. "For once, we are all alone, and the rain pours down so nobody is likely to interrupt. Such a face as that could hardly help having a story, and a strange one."
"The most of it happens often enough, but I'll tell you. You think it's pretty, but that black an' white thing doesn't tell much. If you could once have looked at her, you'd have wanted to do something, same as 'most everybody did when the time for doin' was over. Let me get my bit of work, an' then I'll tell you."
It was in the "McAuley Mission-parlor." The street below, cleared by the pouring rain, was comparatively silent, though now and then a sailor swung by unmindful of wet, or the sound of a banjo came from the tenement-houses opposite. Below us, in the chapel, the janitor scrubbed vigorously to the tune which seems for some unknown reason to be always a powerful motive-power,
"I'm goin' home, no more to roam,"
the brush coming down with a whack at each measure. In my hands was the mission album, a motley collection of faces, as devoid of Nature or any clew to the real characteristics of the owners as the average photograph usually is, but here and there one with a suggestion of interest and, in this special case, of beauty—a delicate, pensive face, with a mass of floating hair, deep, dark eyes, and exquisite curves in cheek and lip and chin—the face of some gently born and nurtured maiden, looking dreamily out upon a world which thus far, at least, could have shown her only its tender, never its cruel or unfriendly, side, and not, as its place would indicate, that of one who had somehow and at some strange time found a home in these slums. Beauty of a vulgar, striking sort is common enough there—vivid coloring, even a sparkle and light poverty has had no power to kill—but this face had no share in such dower, and the dark, soft eyes had a compelling power which made mine search them for their secret,—not theirs, after all, it might prove, but only a gift from some remote ancestor, who could transmit outline, and even expression, but not the soul that had made them.
Mrs. McAuley slipped the picture from its place as she sat down by me again. "I ought to have done that long ago," she said. "Jerry is always telling me I've no business to keep it where everybody can look at it an' ask about her; an' I hadn't, indeed, for it brings up a time I'd hardly think or talk about unless I had to for some good. I'll put it away with two or three more I keep for myself; an' Jerry'll be glad of it, for he hates to think of her, 'most as much as I do.
"Her father and mother? Ah, that's it: if she'd had them! But, you see, her mother was a young thing that wasn't used to roughing it, an' this Nan only a baby then. They were decent English folks, an' he looked like a gentleman; but all we know was that she died of ship-fever on the passage over, an' was buried at sea; an' he had it too, an' came 'most as nigh dyin', an' just had strength to crawl ashore with Nan in his arms. He'd a cousin in the Bowery, a woman that kept a little store for notions, but didn't make any headway on account of two drinkin' sons; an' he went to her, an' just fell on the floor before he'd half finished his story. She put him to bed, and, though the sons swore he shouldn't stay, an' said they'd chuck him out on the sidewalk, she had her way. It didn't take him long to die, an' he'd a good bit of money that reconciled them; but when he was gone there was the baby, just walkin' an' toddlin' into everything, an' would scream if Pete came near her. He was the oldest, an' he hated her worse than poison, an' about once in so often he'd swear he'd send her to the orphan asylum or anywhere that she'd be out of his sight. Jack didn't care one way or another, but the mother was just bound up in the little thing; an' she was, they said, just that wonderful-lookin' that people stopped an' stared at her. Her eyes weren't black, as they look there, but gray, with those long curly lashes that looked innocent an' baby-like to the very last minute; and her hair—oh, you never saw such hair! Not bleached out, as they do it now, to a dead yellow, but a pure gold-color, an' every thread of it alive. I've taken hold of it many a time to see it curl round my finger, an' the little rings of it lying round her forehead; an' her face to the last as pure-lookin' as a pearl—clear an' soft, you know—an', when I saw her first, with a little color in her cheeks no deeper than the pink in a pink rose.
"Now, it'll seem to you like a bit out of the Police Gazette or those horrid story-papers, but, do you know, when she wasn't three Pete came home one night just drunk enough to be cunnin', an' he said, after he'd had his supper, he wanted to take the child a little way, only round the corner, to show her to some friends of his. Mrs. Simpson said No—whoever wanted to see her could come there, but she shouldn't let her be taken round. The shop-bell rang that minute, an' she went out. It wasn't ten minutes, but when she came back Pete an' the child weren't there. She ran to the door an' looked up an' down the street, but it was twelve years before she ever saw that child again. Pete was gone a week, an' when he come home not a word would he say but that the child was safe enough, an' he'd had enough of her round under foot. They had high words. She told him he should never have another cent till Nan was brought back, an' he went out swearin' an' cursin', to be brought home in half an hour past any tellin' in this world. He'd been knocked down an' run over by a fire-engine, an', though there was life enough left to look at his mother an' try to speak, speak he couldn't.
"Well, there was nothin' that woman didn't do, far as her money would go. She'd a nephew was a policeman, an' he hunted, an' plenty more, but never a sign or a word. She couldn't get out much on account of the shop, but whenever she did there wasn't a beggar with a child that she wouldn't stop an' look with all her eyes to see if it might be Nan. You wouldn't think anybody would take a child that way to be tormented with, when there's hundreds runnin' round loose that nobody claims; but, for all that, it's done. Not as often as people think. There's more kidnappin' in the story-papers than ever gets done really, but it does happen now and then. An' New York's a better place to hide in than anywheres out of it. I know plenty of places this minute where the police couldn't find a man if they hunted a month.
"Pete Simpson took this child to a hole in the Five Points, rag-pickers an' beggars an' worse, an' gave her to a woman that took children that was wanted out o' the way. He paid her a dollar, an' said she could make enough out of her to pay for the trouble, she was so fair-lookin'. She was one of the women that sit round with a baby an' one or two children close to her, mostly with laudanum enough to make 'em stupid.
"Nan was spirited, an' she screamed an' fought, but blows soon hushed her. She remembered, she's told me. She didn't know where she'd come from, but she knew it was clean an' decent, an' she wouldn't eat till hunger made her. Then there was a long time she came up with three or four that made a kind of a livin' pickin' pockets an' a turn now an' then as newsboys, or beggin' cold victuals an' pickin' up any light thing they could see if they were let in. Nan changed hands a dozen times, an' she never would have known where she come from if Charley Calkins hadn't kept half an eye to her. He was six years older, an' nobody knew who he belonged to; an' he an' Nan picked rags together, an' whatever trick he knew he taught her. They cropped her hair, an' dirt hid all the prettiness there was, but by ten she'd learned enough to get any bit of finery she could, an' to fight 'em off when they wanted to cut her hair still. She'd dance an' sing to any hand-organ that come along; an' that was where I saw her first—when she was twelve, I should think—with a lot o' men an' boys standin' round, an' she dancin' an' singin' till the very monkey on the organ danced too. I was in a house on Cherry street then, with some girls that played at a variety theatre on the Bowery, an' Nan by this time was so tall they'd made her a waiter-girl in one of the beer-shops. It was there the theatre-man saw her one day goin' down to the ferry. He thought she was older, for she never let on, an' she was tall as she ever was, an' her hair floatin' back the way she would always have it. She could read. She'd been to school one term, because she would, an' she had a way with her that you'd think she was twenty. So it didn't take long. The variety-man said he'd make her fortune, an' she thought he would; an' next day she come an' told me she had agreed for three years.
"She didn't know there was work in it, but she soon found there was just as much drudgery as in the rag-pickin' or a beer-shop. But she had an ambition. She said she'd started here, an' she would stay an' learn everything there was, but she believed she should be an actress in the Old Bowery yet. That seemed a great thing to me in those days, an' I looked at her an' wondered if she knew enough, an' if she'd speak to us when she got there. She was so silent sometimes that it daunted us, an' then she'd have spells of bein' wilder than the wildest; but she said straight enough, 'I'm not goin' to stay down in this hole: I'm goin' to be rich an' a lady; an' you'll see it.'
"The time came when she did get to the Old Bowery, an' the manager glad to have her too. The variety-man swore he'd kill her for leavin', for she drew at the last bigger houses than he ever had again. How she learned it all you couldn't tell, but the night we all turned out to see her in The Rover's Bride you'd have said yourself she was wonderful—painted of course, and fixed off, but a voice that made you cry, an' a way just as natural as if she believed every word she said. An' when she came out the third time, after such a stampin' an' callin' as you never heard, with her eyes shinin' an' such a smile, I cried with all my might.
"It was the very next day. Charley Calkins was bar-tender in a saloon, but getting off whenever he could to see Nan act. That was another thing. She wouldn't take any fancy name, but was Nan Evans straight through—on the bills an' everywhere—an' every one she'd grown up with went to see her, an' felt sort of proud to think she belonged to the Fourth Ward. An' a strange thing was, that, though so many were after her, she never seemed to care for anybody but this Charley, that had knocked her round himself, though he wouldn't let anybody else.
"Well, the old woman that had taken her first was dyin'. She was Charley's aunt, an' so she sent for him, for want of any other relation, an' told him she'd a little money for him, an' was a mind to give a little to Nan. Charley said, 'All right!' He knew she most likely had a good bit, for they often do, but then he said, 'You've always kept to yourself where you got Nan, an' I'm a mind to know.'—'Simpson's, up the Bowery,' she said; an' that was the very last word she ever spoke. She left thirteen hundred dollars in the Bowery Bank, an' it seemed as if there were odd sums in every bunch of rags in the room, so that Charley had enough to set him up pretty well. An' it didn't take him long after he started his own saloon near the theatre to find out, among all the Simpsons, the woman that had had Nan. She had her store still, an' a young woman to help her, an' she cried a little when Charley told her. But she was a member of the Mott Street Church, an' when she said, 'Where is she now? and why don't she come herself?' an' Charley said, 'She couldn't, because rehearsal's going on,' she looked at him.
"'Re-what?' says she.
"'Re-hearsal: she's an actress,' says he; an' she shut her eyes up as if the sight of him after such words was poison.
"'I want nothing to do with her,' says she. 'I've had my fill of sorrow an' trouble from wickedness. You can go, an' say no more.'
"This didn't suit Charley, for he knew how Nan kept herself sort of respectable even when she was with the worst, an' he was bound to find out all he could.
"Well, he hung on an' asked questions till he'd found out all there was, an' that was little, as you know. But Nan had wondered many a time where she came from, an' if she'd ever belonged to anybody, an' he wanted to be the first one to tell her. He scared the old lady, for he wasn't long from the Island, where he'd been sent up for assault an' battery, an', do what you would to him, clothes nor nothin' could ever make him look like anything but a rough. But he was bound to know, for he thought there might be money belonging to her or folks that would do for her. There wasn't a soul, though, that he could find out, an' the next thing was to go to Nan an' tell her about it. They'd have been wiser to have waited a day, till the old lady'd a chance to quiet down and think it all over; but he went straight to Nan an' told her he'd found some of her folks; an' she, without a word, put on her hat an' went with him. If she'd been alone it might have been better, for Charley seemed worse than he was. The old lady was in the room back of the shop, neat as a pin, an' Nan looked as if she was looking through everything to see if she could remember.
"An' when the old lady saw her there was a minute she cried again an' took hold of Nan. 'It's her very look,' she said, 'an' her hair an' all;' but then she stiffened. 'I've no call to feel sure,' she said, 'but if you are Nan, an' want to be decent, an' will give up all your wickedness, an' come here an' repent, I'll keep you.'
"'Wickedness?' Nan says, sort of bewildered—'repent?'
"'I don't know as it would do, either,' the old lady said, beginning to be doubtful again. 'A lost creature, that's only a disgrace, so that I couldn't hold my head up, any more'n I can when I think how Pete went: I couldn't well stand it.'
"'You won't have to,' said Nan, with her head high. 'I did think I'd found some folks, but it seems not;' an' out she went.
"Charley shook his fist an' swore. 'Nice folks, Christians are!' he said. 'I like 'em,——'em! I'd like to burn her shop over her head!'
"'Nonsense!' Nan said, as if she didn't mind a bit. 'I thought it would feel good to have somebody I belonged to, but it wouldn't. I never could stand anything like her shaking her head over me; but it's strange how I've always been hoping, an' now how I don't care.'
"Then Charley told her she'd better go home with him: he'd got a comfortable, nice place, an' he'd never bother her. They'd talked it over many a time, but she'd held off, always thinking she might find her folks.
"Marriage didn't mean anything to either of them. How could it, coming up the way they had? though she'd never been like the other girls. You can't think how they could be the heathen they were? Remember what you've seen an' heard in this very place, an' then remember that ten years ago, even, a decent man or woman didn't dare go up these alleys even by daylight, an' the two or three missionaries were in danger of their lives; an' you'll see how much chance they'd had of learning.
"Nan wasn't sixteen then, an' she didn't think ahead, though if she had likely she would have done the same. She had her choice, but she'd always known Charley, an' so it ended that way.
"Then came a long time when my own troubles were thick, an' I went off to the country an' lost sight of her. It was two years before I came back, an' then everything was changed. All that set I'd known seemed to have gone to the bad together—some in prison and some dead. Jerry was out then, an' we were married an' began together in the little room down the street; an' now I thought often of Nan. They told me Charley was drinkin' himself to death, an' that she was at the theatre still, an' kept things goin' with her money, an' that he knocked her round, when he was out of his head, the worst way. It wasn't long before I went to her. She looked so beautiful you wouldn't think a fiend could want to hurt her, an' her eyes had just the look of that picture. I told her how I had turned about, an' how happy we both were, in spite of hard times an' little work; but she listened like one in a dream, an' I knew enough to see that I should have to tell her many times before she would understand or care. But she seemed so frail I couldn't bear to leave her so. An' the worst of it was, that she'd begun to wish Charley would marry her, an' he thought it was all nonsense, an' swore at her if she said a word about it. She'd been gettin' more and more sensible, an' he'd just been goin' the other way, but she kept her old fondness for him. I said nothing then, but one day I found her cryin', an' her arm so she could hardly move it; an' it came out he'd knocked her down, an' told her she could clear out when she liked, for he was sick of her pale face an' her big eyes an' her airs, an' meant to bring a woman there with some life in her."
"'Things don't come out as we plan,' she said. 'I was going to be a lady, but I forgot that anybody had anything to do with it but myself. An' now I can't go to any decent place, an' Charley doesn't want me any longer. See how nice it all looks here, Maria. I've fixed it myself, an' I've always been so glad that after the play was over I could come home—not to somebody else's room, but my own place—an' I never thought there was any reason why it wouldn't always be my place. Men aren't like women. I was true to Charley, and I'll never think of anybody else; but he says I must get out of this.'
"Well, I wanted her to understand that I knew plenty would help her, an' I tried to tell her she could begin a different life; but she just opened her eyes, astonished at me.
"'You think I'd go to one of those Homes?' she said. 'You're crazy. I can make my livin' easy enough at the theatre, even if I'm not so strong as I was. What have I done more than anybody, after all? Do you think I'd be pointed at an' talked over the way those women are? I'd throw myself in the river first! I've learned enough these years. I go to church sometimes, an' hear men in the pulpit talk about things I know better than they do. I've found out what the good people, the respectable people, are like. I've found out, too, what I might have been, an' that if I live a thousand years I never can be it in this world; an' that's one reason I thought Charley might be willing to marry me. But I shall never say anything more now, for, you see, it isn't goin' to make so very much matter. I had a bad cold in the spring, an' the doctor said then I must be very careful or I should go with consumption. See my arm? They said the other day I'd have to do something to plump up, but I never shall: I'm goin', an' I'm glad of it.'
"'Then, if that's got to be, let it be goin' home,' I said. 'Nan, there's everything waitin' for you if you'll only take it. Come down to one of the meetin's an' you'll hear. Won't you?'
"'I don't understand it,' she said. 'Everything's in a twist. Years an' years and never hear of God, an' not a soul come near you to tell about Him, an' all at once they say He loves you, and always has. Bah! If He loved, an' people think about it as they pretend, how dare they let there be such places for us to come up in? If God is what they say, He ought to strike the people dead that keep Him to themselves till it is too late for us ever to be helped. There! I won't talk about it. I don't care: all I want is quiet, an' I'll have it soon.'
"I saw there was no use then, an' I made up my mind. I'd seen this Mrs. Simpson, for Nan had told me when it all happened, an' I'd gone to the store on purpose; an' I went straight there. 'I've come from Nan,' I said, 'but she doesn't know it. She's a dyin' girl, an' as you helped the father I want you to help the daughter. You're a Christian woman, an' the only soul belongin' to her, an' the time's come to do something.'
"'The father was decent,' she said: 'I've nothing to do with street-women.'
"'It's through your own son that she grew up to know no better,' I said, for I knew the whole story then, though nobody did when she was down there. 'It's for you to give her your hand now, an' not throw it up to her, any more'n the Lord when he said, "Go, and sin no more." She's in trouble an' sick, and doesn't know what way to turn, an' sore-hearted; an' if you would go to her in the right way you might save a soul, for then she'd believe people meant what they said.'
"'She's the same to me as dead,' she said. 'I mourned her sharp enough, but it ain't in nature to take one again after they've been thought dead; an' you know they're straight from corruption itself. There's places for her to go if she's tired of wickedness, but I don't want to see her bold face, an' her head high, as if she was respectable. An' I don't want to be plagued no more. I don't deny I lotted on her before she was took away, but I never want to think about her again; so you needn't come nor send. I've said my say, an' I hope the Lord will save her.'
"'It's good He's more merciful than His creatures,' I said; an' I went away more angry than I ever want to get. I couldn't quite make it out—I can't to this day—how she could mourn so over the child, an' yet never have a thought for all the years she'd had to suffer.
"There came a month that everything crowded. I thought of Nan, but couldn't go up, till one day Tom Owens came in—you know him—an' he said, 'It's all up with Charley Calkins.'
"'How?' I said.
"'Smallpox,' he said, 'an' Nan's dropped everything to nurse him. She'd left there, they said, an' the woman he brought in to take her place cut the minute she found he had the smallpox. He won't live, they say.'
"This was before they were so particular about carrying them off to hospital. The house was cleared an' the saloon shut up, but Nan was allowed to stay because she'd been exposed anyway, an' it was no use to send her off. He had it the worst way, an' he'd scream an' swear he wouldn't die, an' strike out at her, though he couldn't see, his face and eyes bein' all closed up. It didn't last but a week, and then he died, but Nan hadn't taken off her clothes or hardly slept one instant. He was stupid at the last, an' when she saw he was gone she fell on the floor in a faint; an' when she come to the blood poured from her mouth, an' all they could do was to take her off to the hospital. She didn't take the smallpox, but it was a good while before she could be let to see anybody. When they thought it was safe she sent for me, but it was hard to think it could be the same Nan I'd known. Every breath come with pain, and she was wasted to a shadow, but she smiled at me an' drew me down to kiss her. 'You see, I sha'n't be troubled or make trouble much longer,' she said, 'but oh, if I only could rest!'
"Poor soul! She couldn't breathe lyin' down, nor sleep but a bit at a time, an' it was awful to have her goin' so, an' she not twenty.
"I knelt down by her. She had a little room to herself, for she had some money yet, and I prayed till I couldn't speak for crying. 'Nan, Nan!' I said, 'you're goin' straight to the next world, an' you've got to be judged. What will you do without a Saviour? Try to think about it.'
"She patted my hand as if I were the one to be quieted. 'Don't bother,' she said: 'I don't mind, an' you mustn't. If He's as good as you say He'll see that it's all right. I'm too tired to care: I only want to get through. There's nothing to live for, an' I'm glad it's 'most over. I want you to come every day, for it won't be long.'
"'Let me bring Jerry,' I said, but she only laughed. She'd known him at his hardest, an' couldn't realize he might be different; but after a week or two she let him come, an' she'd lie an' listen with a sort of wonder as she watched him. But nothing seemed to take hold of her. She looked like a flower lyin' there, an' you'd think her only a child, for they'd cut her hair, and it lay in little rings all over her head; an' Jerry just cried over her, to think that unless she hearkened she was lost. She liked to be read to, but you couldn't make her believe, somehow, that any of it was real. 'I'd believe it if I could,' she said, 'but why should I? I don't see why you do. It sounds good, but it doesn't seem to mean anything. Why hasn't anybody ever told me before?'
"'Try to believe, only try!' I'd say. 'Ask God to make you. He can, and He will if you only ask;' but all she'd say was, 'I don't seem to care enough. How can I? If it is true He will see about it.'
"That was only a day or two before the end. The opium, maybe, hindered her thinkin', but she looked quiet an' no sign of trouble between the coughing-times. The last night of all I stayed with her. They said she would go at daybreak, an' I sat an' watched an' prayed, beggin' for one word or sign that the Lord heard us. It never came, though. She opened her eyes suddenly from a half sleep, and threw out her hands. I took one, but she did not know me. She looked toward the east and smiled. 'Why! are you coming for me?' she said, and then fell back, but that look stayed—a smile as sweet as was ever on a mortal face. An' that's why I never can help sayin', 'Lord have mercy on her!' and do you wonder even when I know better? But—"
Helen Campbell.