“You have said you owe me something,” said the dying man; “if so, pay it to my child, my girl-babe, in fatherly advice and guidance.”
That man had been a felon and would have met a felon’s doom but for the friend whose child had been confided to his guidance. He had saved him by silence and by loans which had beggared him in lending. He was a strong man, and left his daughter something of his strength for heritage, and that was all. But from her mother, her great-souled mother, the child received enough of courage, and of hope, and faith, and energy, to make her life a sure thing at all events.
I lost her ’twixt the years of girl and womanhood, for both of us were poor, and I took such scanty living here and there as offered. But one day she found me out, and begged me to go with her to her old home under the locust trees. All were dead but her; she was alone; needed me for protection, and I, she argued, needed part of the old roof, too large for one small head.
“There’s a mortgage on it, dear,” she told me, “but I am young and strong, and have some education and some little energy; and,—” she laughed, “the note is held by that old boy-friend of my father who promised to look out for me, you know. So I have no fears of being turned out homeless, Gertie.”
So I went, and tried to be to her a friend. Instead, I was her lover—her worshipper. Her soul, as it opened to me day after day, expanding under the visé of poverty, took on such strength, such grandeur, that I almost stood in awe of her. She was so young, too, yet strong—strong as God, I used to think—and full of hope, and courage, and ambition. Ambition! that isn’t a word often applied to women; yet I say Claudia was ambitious. I upbraided her one day for this. She winced, and came and knelt down at my feet, her face upon her hands, her arms upon my knees, her sweet soul seeking mine through her eyes.
“Gertie,” said she, “I wonder why God made me a woman and fixed no place for me in all the many niches of creation. There is no room for such women as I am; women with bodies moulded for womanhood, and souls measured for man’s burdens.”
The words had a solemn sound—a solemn meaning likewise. I had no answer for such awesome words, and so the child talked on.
“I had a mother once,” she said, “who loved me, and who unfitted me—God rest her sainted memory—for my battle with adversity. Nay, dear, don’t look so shocked. I say that she unfitted me by instilling into my heart her own great grandeur, and her own grand courage. There is no room for such, I tell you. As a frail female weakling the slums would have cradled me; as a wife the world would have respected me; as a toiler for honest bread there is no place for me. My mother was to me a creature next to God, and I have sometimes dared to put her first when I have felt most deeply all her nobleness. My father died, then came our struggle, hers and mine. I was her idol, she my God. We clung as only child and parent can. I could have made good money in the shops or factories. The neighbors said so, and advised that I be ‘put to work.’
“‘What need had paupers of such training as she was giving me? Poverty was no disgrace, so it be honest poverty.’
“Aye, that’s it. How long will poverty be honest in children’s untrained keeping? My mother understood, and knew my needs, as well.