III
The next morning the postman brought a letter. Mary was not surprised to get it. Casey had gone to look for the "gran' job," and the older children were in school, so the letter could not be read, but she could make out the signature, written in the large, unformed hand where-with Angela had covered every available space in the days of her brief but laborious apprenticeship to the art of writing.
With trembling hand Mary tucked the letter in her bosom, hastily got ready herself and Dewey and the baby, and started for Maggie's. Maggie was younger and had enjoyed more educational advantages. She could "r'ade printin'" easily, and "writin"' fairly well if it hadn't too many flourishes.
"She says," spelled out Mrs. O'Connor, "'Dear Ma, I'm at —— West Randolph Street I'm sick I'm afraid to go home count of Pa Your Loving daughter Angela Ann Casey.' I'll go wid ye," finished Mrs. O'Connor in the same breath.
Out of her small store of tawdry finery she lent several articles to make Mary "look more drissy," and while they got ready for their momentous journey, Mary related the events of the day before, and of Saturday night.
"Me an' Tim," said Maggie, when the tale had reached the stage of the "parlie" and Mary's earnings as a scrub-woman, "was figgerin' how we could help out a bit, ag'in' she come home, an' Tim have promised t' take me 'n' her to th' theayter quite frayquint of a Sat'day noight, an' together we're goin' t' give her half a dollar ivry wake t' spind on her clo'es."
The number they sought on West Randolph Street was not far from the fateful Haymarket Square. There was a store on the ground floor, with living rooms behind. And above, a long flight of oilcloth-covered stairs led to a "hotel."
They inquired first in the store, but no one there had ever heard of Angela Ann. Then, with fast-beating hearts, the women mounted to the office of the hotel, an inside room facing the head of the first flight of stairs. The door stood open, and they looked, before entering, into a gas-lighted room furnished with yellow-painted wooden arm-chairs ranged along the walls and flanked by a sparser row of cuspidors; a big sheet-iron stove on a square zinc plateau filled the middle of the room, and near the door, behind a small desk like a butcher-store cashier's, sat the "clerk," chewing vigorously and expectorating without accuracy.
"Yes, she has a room here," he answered to Mary's question, "hall room, rear, third floor."
"In a minute!" called Angela Ann's voice when Mary had knocked.
"My God, 'tis hersilf," sobbed Mary, and fell a-weeping violently.
"Ma!" cried Angela Ann, and threw open the door. She had been in bed when they knocked, and had not waited to put on her clothes when she heard her mother's voice. At the touch of her, the clinging clasp of her poor, thin, cold little arms, Mary grew hysterical.
"Don't, Ma, don't," begged Angela.
"She've grieved hersilf sick over ye," said Maggie, unable to forbear this much of a reprimand now that the sinner was found. "Iver since ye wint she've been loike wan crazy. Come, Mary; now ye've got her, brace up!"
"Sure, Ma," echoed the girl, "now ye've got me, brace up, I ain't never goin' t' lave ye no more, Ma—honest t' God, I ain't."
"Wheer ye been?" Mary raised her head, and drawing back from the girl peered anxiously into her face. "In God's name, Ang'la Ann, wheer you been? Tell me ye've kep' dacint, gyurl, tell me ye've kep' dacint!"
Angela sat down on the dingy, disordered bed and began to cry, hiding her face in her hands. For a long moment the silence, save for her soft sobbing, was profound. Then a low moan escaped Mary, a moan of anguish inexpressible, showing how deeply, notwithstanding her resolution of yesterday, she had cherished the hope of her daughter's safety.
IN GOD'S NAME, ANG'LA ANN, WHEER YOU BEEN?
Angela raised her head. The pain in her mother's moan was beyond her comprehension, and she could only understand it as horror and condemnation.
"Are ye—are ye—goin' t' t'row me off?"' she asked.
"T'row ye off? Ah, me gyurl, if ye'll on'y stick t' me as long as I'll stick t' you, 'tis all I'll ask o' Hiven! Tis fer yer sake I was prayin' no harm had come t' ye—not fer mine. Whativer happen t' ye, ye're me Ang'la Ann thot I nursed from yer first brith. An' ye don' know all I'm fixin' t' do fer ye—me an' yer pa an' yer Aunt Maggie, here, and yer Uncle Tim——"
And there followed a glowing account of the feast prepared for the prodigal's return.
"Th' idare o' you bein' afraid o' yer pa," chided Mary, "an' him fixin' t' git a stiddy job an' not have ye go downtown no more."
Far shrewder than her mother, Angela Ann did not overestimate this excellent intention of her pa's, but she said nothing of the bitterness that was in her heart on account of his past crimes. It was a long-standing grievance with her that her mother could never, for more than a fleeting, irritated moment at a time, be made to see Casey as others saw him. Angela Ann had been working for him since she was eleven (child-labor laws were lax, then) and giving up her every penny to pay rent and buy insufficient mites of coal and food—just enough to keep them alive and no more—and it was starvation of many sorts that sent her at last into the clutches of them that prey. The girl was full of self-pity, and impatient with her mother because the older woman had forgotten how to rebel.
"Yer pa say, though," added Mary, "thot he won't promise not i' kill the felly thot lid ye away; he've got tur'ble wingeance on him—yer pa have."
Angela Ann smiled grimly. "I guess theer's quite a few pa's lookin' fer him," she said, "but they don't ever seem t' find him."
"Did he prom'se t' marry ye?" asked Mary anxiously.
"I should say not! He promised to make me a primmy donny."
"What's that?" fearfully.
"'Tis a kind of actress that wear tights an' sings," explained Angela. "I'm after r'adin' in books how gran' they be, an' in the papers it tell how the swell fellies do be runnin' after thim with diming necklusses, an' marryin' of 'em. 'Tis all a lie!" she cried shrilly.
"Ye see," Mary could not refrain from reminding her. "I tol' ye thim theayters was all wrong. We kind o' t'ought it might be thim thot got ye, an' yer pa wint t' see this here Halberg, whin we foun' the caard out o' yer pocke'-book. But he said he niver hear tell o' ye."
"Did pa go there?" questioned Angela eagerly. She was all interest to know how the search for her had been carried on, and "did th' p'lice know?" and "how did ye kape it out o' th' papers?"
Yes, it had been Halberg "all the time," she admitted. She had answered his advertisement, and after a week's drill he had sent her, true to his published word, in a "road company" that mitigated the gloom of coal miners' lives by singing and dancing—and carousing—in a circuit of saloons in the soft coal regions of Illinois. When she fell sick, the company abandoned her without the formality of paying her any salary, and a foul-tongued, soft-hearted landlady, whose own young daughter was God knew where, had let Angela stay in her wretched hotel until she was able by dishwashing and lampfilling chores to earn the few dollars to take her back to Chicago.
"But I couldn' get no stren'th back," the girl went on, "an' that woman at th' hotel, Mis' Schlogel, she sez t' me, 'You better go home t' yer ma, that's wheer you better go,' an' she bundled me off Friday mornin'. But I was scairt t' go home right t' wunst till I seen how youse was goin' t' be t' me, so I come here wheer I stayed whin I was studyin' wid O. Halberg, an' Friday night I got awful sick an' laid here all night awake an' burnin' up an' my head achin' t' beat th' band. An' all day Sat'day an' Sunday I wasn't able to go out fer nothin' t' eat, an' th' propri'ter wouldn't order me nothin' sent in fer fear I wouldn't be able t' pay. A woman in the nex' room light-house-keeps, an' she made me tea a couple o' times after she heard I was sick an' alone."
"Why in Hivin's name," Maggie broke in, "did ye niver drap yer ma a line t' say ye were aloive? Ye needn't 'a' tol' wheer ye was, but ye could 'a' said ye were in the land o' th' livin', surely?"
"I was 'shamed," whimpered Angela; "I fought ye wouldn't keer wheer I was if I wasn't doin' dacint."
"Think o' that, now!" cried Mary. "That's all a gyurl do know about her ma. Whin yer a ma yersilf ye'll know better, an' not till thin, I suppose."
Thus was Angela Ann made sure of her welcome home.
"An' not wan but yer own kin know ye've been missin'" said Mary, as she helped the girl to get ready for the return, "so ye kin hol' up yer hid an' look th' world in th' faace. An' may God fergive yer mother the loies she've tol' t' save yer name!"
