“Took them in his arms.” That was what John Travis had said. She was so tired to-night—not the fatigue of hard work altogether, but a great aching that had no name. If she could be taken in some one’s arms! Dilsey Quinn could not remember being held, though her mother had been proud of her first-born, and fond too, in those days.
If Mrs. Quinn’s life had been a little more prosperous, if she had lived in a cottage with a patch of ground, a cow and some chickens, and the wholesome surroundings of the little village where she had reigned a sort of rural queen, her children might have known love and tenderness. But the babies had come fast. Her man had taken to drink. They were crowded in among the poor and ignorant, where brawls and oaths, drinking and cruelty, were daily food. Ah, what wonder one lapses into barbarism! For the last half-dozen years she had slaved, and sometimes gone hungry. She could have strangled little Dan when he came, for adding to her burthens. How much of the peril of the soul depends upon the surroundings!
And now Dil longed for the strong arms to be about her. Do you wonder she had so little idea of a heavenly Father? The teaching of the Mission School had been measured by the hard, bare materialism of poverty, quite as upas-like as the materialism of philosophy. It had a rather dainty aspect when John Travis dallied with it among his college compeers; but it seems shocking when these hundreds of little children cannot even formulate the idea of a God. And though Dil stretched out her hands with an imploring moan, it was for some present and personal comfort.
Owny came creeping in softly, and just saved his skin, for to-night his mother returned earlier than usual. She was growing stout, and walked solidly. She seemed to be puttering about. Then she pushed Dil’s door wide open, and there was barely room for her. The lamp stood on the floor outside. Dil’s “chest of drawers” was covered with a curtain of various pieces, and she had ornamented the top with treasures found amid the cast-off Christmas and Easter cards that had fallen to her when more favored children had tired of them. A cigar-box was covered with some bits of silk, and held a few paltry “treasures.” Some fancy beads, a tarnished bangle, a bit of ribbon, and so on, she found as she dumped them in her apron and then thrust them back. Next she dragged the articles out of the improvised “drawers,” and shook them one by one. Nothing contraband fell out. There was nothing to reward her search, and she glared at the child in the faded, shabby wagon.
Dil hardly breathed. She remembered in that half-frozen, fascinated sort of way that horrible events will rise up, ghost-like, in times of terror—that one night last winter, a woman farther up the court had murdered her two little children, and then killed herself. She was cold with an awful apprehension of evil. Even though she kept her eyes closed, she could seem to see with that awesome, inward sight.
Mrs. Quinn thrust her hand under Bess’s pillow, under her bed, and the poor child gave a broken, disturbed half-cry. Her efforts were fruitless; but before Dil could give a sound to her horrible fear, she had turned and was facing her. Then Dil sprang partly up, but the scream curdled in her throat.
“Oh, ye naydent disturb yersilf this time o’ night. I was jist lookin’ in upon me two gals that the man was so distrissed about. Dil Quinn, av’ ye iver go to the bad like some gals, I’ll not lave a square inch of skin on yer body, ner a whole bone inside. I’ll have no men singin’ round whiles I’m not here. You shut the door on ’em, jist. You’re a humbly little runt, God knows, but thim kind is purty hard whin they once set out. Ye mind, now! An’ that un—”
She shook her fist, and backed out of the room, for she could hardly have turned around. Bess moaned, but she was not awake. Dil used all her strength to suppress a scream, while a cold perspiration oozed from every pore.
When she dared, after the lamp was out, she rose and changed Bess to a more comfortable position. Ah, if the book had been there! The child shuddered with vague apprehension.
All the rest of the night she lay fearfully awake, and the next morning she looked ghastly. Even her mother was moved.