The Alchemist's Secret

by Isabel Cecilia Williams

"You can see for yourself how it is with us now, but we are not always like this. If you care to listen and will sit down, I tell you all about it.

"No, indeed, we are not always like this. I can remember when father is alive how happy we all are. He is a mason, good and steady, and he work for us all the time. We live in a pretty little flat, it is bright and clean and mother keep it so and make everything look nice for us. She sing and she laugh and she look so pretty in those days. I go to school and Marie also, dear Marie who died one year ago. Antoine, too, he go to school with Marie and me. Lorraine there, she too little; she stay at home with mother and with grandmother.

"Well, we are all so happy until one day father is brought home to us. He is dead, killed at his work by a falling derrick. That same day poor little Baptiste, him there on grandmother's lap, he come into this cruel world. Mother is sick, so very sick for a long time after. It is weeks and weeks before she can walk around again. By the time she does, the little money she had saved is all gone; there is not a cent in the house and the landlord puts us out into the street.

"I am only twelve at the time but I go to work in a factory—not your factory, but one away off the other side of the river. I have to walk long, long distance in the cold, dark morning, and walk back again at night, but I am happy for I earn money to help at home. Mother she go to work too, in a great steam laundry where she stand all day at a big machine. She very thin and pale, and so tired at night she can hardly walk home. But she, too, is content; for she have work to do and work means money to buy food for the little ones and for the blind grandmother.

"We get along pretty well for almost three years. Then, just a year ago, the factory I work for shuts down. Times are hard, there is no more work for us, we must go. We do go. We try first one place, then another, to find work. It is the same story everywhere, times are hard and there is no work for us.

"Then mother gets that dreadful cold. The laundry where she works is always so very hot. She come out at night into the cold air; her coat is thin for she cannot buy a warm one and she get a dreadful chill one night as she comes home. She cough all the time after that. It shake her nearly all to pieces; but she still go to her work till one day she fall beside her machine. They bring her home and we put her into bed and she never leave it again.

"What to do then we know not. One, two, three days pass; at last there is a day when grandmother and I eat nothing. We give the last scraps of bread to the children and spend the last two pennies on milk for mother. There is nothing left for us. We not sleep that night; we sit by the empty stove and we think all night. Grandmother is praying all the time; she is, oh so good, that grandmother. She pray and she pray, and she tell me God is kind and good, He will show us a way. Me, I am not good like that. I say to her God cannot be kind and merciful, or he would not treat us so. What have we done that He punish us like that? She say to me:

"'Hush, child, hush; you very bad, very wicked. God is good and kind and loving. He not try us any more than we can bear; He send us help soon if we trust in Him.'

"Next morning is cold, very cold; we have no fire and no food. I have been everywhere to look for work and find nothing. But I put on my hat to go out and try once more. Grandmother ask me what I do. I tell her I go again to look for work. She say: 'No, child, you stay here with your mother to-day; it is my turn now.'

"She is old; she is blind and I fear to have her go out alone, but she is firm and will go. She take her stick and she go out. She come back later with bread for the children and a little money to buy coal. I not ask her where she get it; I know. She beg it on the street. Every day she go out like that, and when she bring back food and money she not say one word and I not ask her where she get it; I know.