Fashion and Famine Part 50

"To-morrow morning--perhaps before--I don't know exactly. She's in and out whenever there is good to be done. But come, go into my cell--they haven't given you one yet, I suppose--the whole gang of them are coming this way again."

Julia looked up and saw a crowd of women coming up from the grated door, where they had been drawn by some noise in the outer pa.s.sage. Terrified by the dread of meeting that horrible old negress again, she grasped the little hand that still held to her garments, and absolutely fled after the woman, who entered the cell where she had first seen the child.

The prisoners were amused by her evident terror, and gathered around the entrance; but as Julia sat down upon the bed, pale and panting with affright, her self-const.i.tuted guardian started forward and dashed the iron door in their faces, with a clang that sounded from one hollow corridor to another, like the sudden clang of a bell.

"There," she said, with a smile that for a moment swept away the fierce expression from her face, "I'd like to see one of them bold enough to come within arm's length of that. My home's my castle, if it is in a prison. I've been here often enough to know my rights. If the laws won't keep you free from that gang, I will!"

It was wonderful the influence that gentle girl had won over the depraved being who protected her thus. After she entered the cell, no rude or profane word pa.s.sed the woman's lips. She seemed to have shut out half that was wicked in her own nature when she dashed the iron door against her fellow-prisoners. Her large, black eyes brightened with a sort of rude pleasure as she saw her child creep into Julia's lap, and lay his head on her bosom.

"How naturally you take to one another," she said, letting down the black ma.s.ses of her hair, and beginning to disentangle the braids with her fingers, as if the pure eyes of her guest had reproached their untidy state. "When I was a little girl, we had plenty of wild roses in a swamp near the house. It is strange, I have not thought of them in ten years; but when I saw you and the child sitting there together, it seemed as if I could reach out my hands and fill them."

Julia did not answer; her eyes were bent on the child, who had ceased to cry, and lay quietly in her arms--so quietly that she could detect a drowsy mist stealing over his eyes. The woman went on threading out her long hair in silence. After awhile Julia, who had been watching the soft, brown eyes of the child as the white lids dropped over them gradually like the closing petals of a flower, looked up with a smile, so pure, so bright, that the woman unconsciously smiled also.

"He is sound asleep," said the young girl, putting back the moist curls from his forehead. "See what a smile, I have been watching it deepen on his face since his eyes began to close."

The woman put back her hair with both hands, and turned her eyes with a sort of stern mournfulness upon the sleeping boy.

"He never goes to sleep on my bosom like that," she said, at last, with a bitter smile, and more bitter tone. "How could he? My heart beats sometimes loud enough to scare myself; I wonder if wild flowers really do blossom over Mount Etna? If they do, why should not my own child rest over my own heart?"

"My grandfather has told me that flowers _do_ grow around volcanoes,"

said Julia, with a soft smile, "but it is because the fire never reaches them; if scorched once they would perish!"

"And my heart scorches everything near it. Is that what you mean?" said the woman, with a degree of mildness that was peculiarly impressive in a voice usually so stern and loud.

"When you were angry to-day, he trembled; when you wept he kissed you,"

answered the gentle girl, looking mildly into the dark face of her companion, whose fierce nature yielded both respect and attention to the moral courage that spoke from those young lips.

"Well, what if I do frighten him? We love that best which we fear most.

It is human nature; at any rate it was my nature, and should be my child's," said the woman, striving to cast off the influence of which she was becoming ashamed.

"And did you ever fear any one?"

"Did I ever _love_ any one?" was the answer, given in a voice so deep, so earnest, that it seemed to ring up from the very bottom of a heart where it had been buried for years.

"I hope so, I trust so--do you not love your child?"

The woman dashed back the entire weight of her hair with an impetuous sweep of one hand; then, with the whole Roman contour of her face exposed, she turned a keen look upon the young face lifted so innocently to hers. Long and searching was that look. The shadows of terrible thoughts swept over that face. Some words, it might be of pa.s.sion, it might be of prayer--for bitterness, grief and repentance, all were blended in that look--trembled unuttered on her lips. Then she suddenly flung up her arms and falling across the bed, cried out in bitter anguish--"Oh, my G.o.d!--my G.o.d! can I never again be like her?"

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE THREE OLD WOMEN.

Why have we three gathered here, With aching hearts and aching brain?

Death must fill another bier, Before we three shall meet again.

"How do you do, madam? Anything in my way? Capital beets these--the most delicious spinach. Celery, bright and crisp enough to suit an alderman--sold five bunches for the supper-room at the City Hall, not half an hour since. Everything on the stand fresh as spring water, sweet as a rose. Two bunches of the celery, yes ma'am: anything else? not a small measure of the potatoes? Luscious things, always come out of the saucepan bursting their jackets; only one measure? Very well--thank you!

Cranberries, certainly!"

Thus extolling her merchandise, busy as a bee, and radiant with good humor, stood our old huckster woman, by her vegetable stand in Fulton Market, on the morning after Julia Warren was cast into prison. No customer left her stand without adding something to the weight of his or her market-basket. There was something so hearty and cheerful in her appearance, that people paused spite of themselves, to examine her nicely arranged merchandise; and though all the adjoining stalls were deserted, Mrs. Gray was sure to have her hands full every morning of the week.

On this particular day she had been busy as a mother bird, serving customers, making change, and arranging her stall, now and then pausing to bandy a good-humored jest with her neighbors, or toss a handful of vegetables into some beggar's basket. The words with which our chapter opens, were addressed to a quiet old lady in deep mourning, who carried a small willow basket on her arm, and appeared to be selecting a few dainty trifles from various stalls as she pa.s.sed along.

"Cranberries! Oh, yes, the finest you have seen this year, plump as June cherries; see, madam, judge for yourself."

The good woman took up a quant.i.ty of the berries as she spoke, and began pouring them from one plump hand to the other, smiling blandly now at the fruit, now at her quiet customer.

"Yes, they are very fine," said the old lady; "do up a small measure neatly, they are for a sick person."

Mrs. Gray looked over her stand for some paper, but her supply was exhausted. Nothing presented itself but the Morning Express, with which she usually occupied any little time that might be hers, between the coming and departure of her customers. This morning she had been too busy even for a glance at its columns; but as her neighbor seemed to be out of wrapping paper also, she took up the journal, and was about to tear off the advertising half, when something in its columns arrested her eye. She held the paper up and read eagerly. The rich color faded from her cheeks, and you might have detected a faint motion disturbing the repose of her double chin, a sure sign of unusual agitation in her.

"You have forgotten the cranberries!" said the customer, at length, looking with some surprise at the paper, as it began to rustle violently in the huckster woman's hands.

Mrs. Gray did not seem to hear, but read on with increased agitation. At length she sat down heavily upon her stool, her hands that still grasped the paper, dropped into her lap, and she seemed completely bewildered.

"Are you ill?" inquired the old lady, moving softly around the stand.

"Something in the paper must have distressed you."

"Yes," answered the huckster woman, taking up the journal, and pointing with her unsteady finger to the paragraph she had been reading, "I am heart sick; see, I know all these people; I loved some of them. It has taken away my breath. Do you believe that it is true?"

The lady reached forth her hand, and taking the paper, read the account of Leicester's murder and Mr. Warren's arrest, to the end. Mrs. Gray was looking anxiously in her face, and, though it was white and still as the coldest marble, it seemed to the good woman as if it contracted about the mouth, and a look of subdued pain deepened around the eyes.

"Do you believe it?" questioned Mrs. Gray, forgetting that the person she addressed was an entire stranger.

"Yes," answered the lady, speaking with apparent effort--"yes, he is dead!"

"What! murdered by that old man? I don't believe it. It's against nature!"

"He died a violent death," answered the lady, shrinking as if with pain.

"Then he killed himself," answered Mrs. Gray, recovering something of her natural energy, "it was like him."

"Oh! G.o.d forbid!"

The lady uttered these words in a low, gasping tone, as if Mrs. Gray's speech had confirmed some unspoken dread in her own heart. The n.o.ble old huckster woman saw that she was giving pain, and did not press the subject.

"Then some other person must be guilty; it was not old Mr. Warren; I haven't seen much of him, true enough, but he's a good man, my life on it! He's sat at my table--a Thanksgiving dinner, ma'am! I remember the blessing he asked, so meek, so full of grat.i.tude, with as fine a turkey as ever came from a barn-yard tempting him to be short, and he with hunger stamped deep into every line of his face. I haven't heard such a blessing since I was a girl. This man charged with murder! I wouldn't believe it though every minister in New York swore against him."

The old lady opened her lips to speak again, but Mrs. Gray suddenly laid a hand upon her arm.

"Hush! you see that old woman coming up the market, it is his wife!--Mr.

Warren's wife!--see how broken-heartedly she looks about from stall to stall; maybe it is this one she wants. Yes! how her poor eyes brighten.

A friend in need is a friend indeed; she knows where to look, you see."

By this time the forlorn old woman, who came wandering like a ghost up the market, caught a glimpse of the portly figure and radiant countenance, that always made the huckster woman an object of attention.

Her pale face did indeed brighten up, and she forced her way through the people, putting them aside with her hands in reckless haste.