The Alchemist's Secret

by Isabel Cecilia Williams

THREE EVENINGS IN A LIFE.

I.

One by one the city clocks chimed the hour of midnight. One by one Jane counted the strokes and sighed despairingly as she glanced at the window in which the light still burned so brightly. The air was bitter cold, a fine snow was falling, and she had been trudging up and down, up and down, for ages it seemed to her. Richard was growing so heavy and her arms ached so she could scarcely hold him. Still, there was nothing for it but to tramp up and down, up and down the narrow street, the baby in her arms, until mother should give the welcome signal. When that lamp in the window opposite was put out and the house in darkness, she would know that it was safe for her to creep up the stairs and into the bed in the kitchen which she shared with the baby brother now sleeping in her arms.

Seating herself upon a doorstep she was passing, Jane shifted the baby to a more comfortable position and leaned her head against the rough woodwork of the tenement house. How tired, she was, how very tired! Her head ached, her back ached, she ached all over. Day after day, she worked in the factory from early morning until nightfall. Night after night, she walked the street with Richard in her arms, not daring to enter the house until father was safely sleeping. Of course it did not happen every night. Just once in a while father would come home sober and then there was no fear of harm to the baby or herself. Many a night, too, he did not come home at all, but on those occasions she and mother scarce dared to close an eye. They knew not at what moment he might return, possibly in even an uglier mood than usual. Mother was never afraid for herself. She could usually manage him, although there had been times when bad cuts and bruises bore testimony to the treatment to which she had been subjected. For Jane and little Richard, their only chance lay in keeping out of the way, so Jane would tramp the street, Richard in her arms, despite aches and pains and weariness.

The child on the doorstep anxiously watched the window across the way. Would the light never go out? Father must be unusually bad to-night, and she was so tired. The day had been a hard one at the factory and every bone in her body ached. Well, there was one comfort; to-morrow would be Sunday and she could stay at home all day. To-morrow? To-day, rather, for midnight had already passed. She would have one long day to rest and help mother. She felt now as if she could sleep the whole day through. She would like to sleep for a week at least, and even then she would not be rested quite enough. There were moments of unusual fatigue and depression in which she could almost wish that she might fall asleep and sleep forever as the other little ones had done. Three of them there were, delicate, sickly little creatures, who had struggled for a time against the ills of human existence and then given up the unequal conflict. At times, she could almost find it in her heart to envy them were it not for mother and Richard, especially Richard.

There, at last! The light was gone, the window in darkness, and it was safe for her to return to the tenement across the way.

II.

The same street, the same tenement house, but grown even uglier and dingier with the passing of the years. In a small room on the second floor, Jane sits beside the bed on which her mother tosses in the delirium of fever. Her heart is slowly breaking as she listens to the moaning, insistent cry which issues from those parched lips. All through the days and nights of anxious watching, that cry has been ringing in her ears, the call for "Richard, Richard, Richard."

That her mother is dying she knows full well, and how she longs for one loving glance, for one word of affection, to carry with her in the lonely years to come. But no look of recognition comes to the sightless eyes and no word escapes the lips save that never ceasing cry of "Richard, Richard, Richard." A white-capped nurse flits softly about, but Jane pays no heed to her. The doctor enters and hold whispered consultation with the nurse. Jane does not even glance at him. She is tired of hearing him say the same old thing time after time: "While there is life, there is hope." She knows there is no hope, though everything possible has been done to save the precious life now ebbing so swiftly. Thank God, they are no longer poor as when she was a child. Her salary is a splendid one and she has been able to have the best advice, the best care possible, for her dying mother. No, they are no longer poor, but of what avail is money now? It cannot bring back the days that are gone, the happy days before Richard went away. And they were happy, then, so happy.

After her father's death, which had occurred while she was still a mere child, she and mother had devoted themselves to the task of caring for little Richard. They toiled; they starved, they saved—all for Richard. They prayed and planned and hoped—for Richard. He must go to school, he must go to college, he must become a power in the world. For themselves, poor food, poor clothes, the old tenement were good enough, for every cent they saved meant so much the more for Richard when he should have come to man's estate. And Richard? Oh! he had been well content to take all they offered him. He went to school, he went to college; only, somehow, the reports of his doings there were anything but encouraging. They seemed to be merely a series of pranks and mischief, but the devoted mother was very ready to make allowances. The boy was young, he would grow steadier as he grew older. They must have patience with him for a few years yet. At times Jane doubted the wisdom of their course, and when the demands, not only upon their patience but upon their purse, became greater and greater, Jane had counseled removing him from college and setting him to work. Not so the mother. Her cry was ever: "Patience, patience, and all will yet be well." So they bore with him a while longer to their never ceasing sorrow.