One Man in His Time

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

"They thought I was married to him," she said slowly. "Julius thought, or pretended to think, that he could harm him by making me swear that I was married to him. They gave me drugs. I would have done anything for drugs—and I did that! But the old woman there knows better. She's got a paper. I made her keep it—about Patty—"

"Don't!" cried Corinna again in a sharper tone. "Oh, can't you see that you must not tell her!"

For the first time the woman turned her eyes away from the girl. "It is because of Gideon Vetch," she answered slowly. "I may get well again, and then I'll be sorry."

"But he would rather you wouldn't." Corinna's voice was full of pain. "You know—you must know, if you know him at all, that he would rather you spared her—"

"Know him?" repeated the woman, and she laughed with a dry, rattling sound. "I don't know him. I never saw him but once in my life."

"You never saw him but once." The words came so slowly from Patty's lips that she seemed to choke over them. "But you said that you knew my mother?"

Again the woman made that dry, rattling sound in her chest. "Your mother never saw him but once," she answered grimly. "She never saw him but once, and that was for a quarter of an hour on the night they were taking her to prison. I would never have told but for Julius," she added. "I would never have told if they hadn't tried to make out that I knew him, and that he was really your father. It would ruin him, they said, and that was what they wanted. But when they bring it out, with the paper they got me to sign, I want you to know that it is a lie—that I did it because I'd have died if I hadn't got hold of the drugs—"

"But he is my father," repeated Patty quite steadily—so steadily that her voice was without colour or feeling.

The only reply that came was a gasping sound, which grew louder and louder, with the woman's struggle for breath, until it seemed to fill the room and the night outside and even the desolate sky. As she lay back, with the arm of the old cripple under her head and her streaming hair, the spasm passed like a stain over her face, changing its waxen pallor to the colour of ashes, while a dull purplish shadow encircled her mouth. For a few minutes, so violent was the struggle for air, it appeared to Corinna that nothing except death could ever quiet that agonized gasping; but while she waited for the end, the sound became gradually fainter, and the woman spoke quite plainly, though with an effort that racked not only her strangled chest, but her entire body. Each syllable came so slowly, and now and then so faintly, that there were moments when it seemed that the breath in that tormented body would not last until the words had been spoken.

"You were going on three years old when he first saw you. They were taking me away to prison—that's over now, and it don't matter—but I hadn't any chance—" The panting began again; but by force of will, the woman controlled it after a minute, and went on, as if she were measuring her breath inch by inch, almost as if it were a material substance which she was holding in reserve for the end. "Your father died the first year I married him, and things went from bad to worse—there's no use going over that, no use—They were taking me to prison from the circus, and I had you in my arms, when Gideon Vetch came by and saw me—" Again there was a pause and a desperate battle for air; and again, after it was over, she went on in that strangled whisper, while her eyes, like the eyes of a drowning animal, clung neither to Patty nor Corinna, but to the austere face of the old hunchback. "'What am I to do with the child?' I asked, and he stepped right out of the circus crowd, and answered 'Give me the child. I like children'—" An inarticulate moan followed, and then she repeated clearly and slowly. "Just like that—nothing more—'Give me the child. I like children.' That was the first time I ever saw him. He had come to see some of the people in the circus, and I've never seen him since then except in the Square. The trial went against me, but that's all over. Oh, I'm tired now. It hurts me. I can't talk—"