The House in Town

So she was in a class with a street-sweeper! Matilda reflected as she went on down Broadway. Well, what of it? They would think it very odd at home! And somehow it seemed odd to Matilda herself. Had she got a little out of her place in going to Mr. Rush's Sunday school? Could it be best that such elegant robes, made by Mme. Fournissons, should sit in the same seat with a little street girl's brown rags? "She was not ragged on Sunday, though," thought Matilda; "poor enough; and some of those boys were street boys, I dare say. However, Mr. Wharncliffe is a gentleman; there is no doubt of that; and he likes his class; some of them are good, I think. And if they are, Jesus loves them. He loves them whether or no. How odd it is that we don't!" —

Matilda went on trying to remember all that Sarah had said in the school; but the different speakers and words were all jumbled up in her mind, and she could not quite separate them. She forgot Sarah then in the delightful business of choosing a dress for Letitia; a business so difficult withal that it was like to last a long time, if Matilda had not remembered one o'clock. She feared she would be late; yet a single minute more of talk with the street girl she must have; she walked up to Fourteenth street. Sarah was there yet, busy at her post. She had a smile again for Matilda.

"Are you not tired?" the rich child asked of the poor one.

"I don't think of being tired," was the answer.

"What time do you go home to dinner?"

"Dinner?" said Sarah; and she shook her head. "I don't go home till night. I can't."

"But how do you take your dinner?" Matilda asked.

The girl flushed a little, and hesitated. "I can take it here," she said.

"Standing? and in this crowd?"

"No. – I go and sit down somewheres. 'Tain't such a dinner as you have. It's easy took."

"Sarah," said Matilda suddenly, "you love Jesus, don't you?"

"Who?" she said, for the noise and rush of horses and carriages in the streets was tremendous, and the children both sprang back to the sidewalk just then out of the way of something. "Jesus? Was it that you asked?"

She stood leaning on her broom and looking at her questioner. Matilda could see better now how thin the face was, how marked with care; but at the same time a light came into it like a sunbeam on a winter landscape; the grey changed to golden somehow; and the set of the girl's lips, gentle and glad, was very sweet.

"Do I love him?" she repeated. "He is with me here all the day when I am sweeping the snow. Yes, I love him! and he loves me. That is how I live."

"That's how I want to live too," said Matilda; "but sometimes I forget."

"I shouldn't think you'd forget," said Sarah. "It must be easy for you."

"What must be easy?"

"I should think it would be easy to be good," said the poor girl, her eye going unconsciously up and down over the tokens of Matilda's comfortable condition.

"I don't think having things helps one to be good," said Matilda. "It makes it hard, sometimes."

"I sometimes think not having things makes it hard," said the other, a little wistfully. "But Jesus is good, anyhow!" she added with a content of face which was unshadowed.

"Good bye," said Matilda. "I shall see you again." And she ran off to get into a horse car. The little street-sweeper stood and looked after her. There was not a thing that the one had but the other had it not. She looked, and turned to her sweeping again.

Matilda on her part hurried along, with a heart quite full, but remembering at the same time that she would be late at lunch. At the corner where she stopped to wait for a car there was a fruit stall, stocked with oranges, apples, candies and gingerbread. It brought back a thought which had filled her head a few minutes ago; but she was afraid she would be late. She glanced down the line of rails to the car seen coming in the distance, balanced probabilities a moment, then turned to the fruit woman. She bought a cake of gingerbread and an orange and an apple; had to wait what seemed a long time to receive her change; then rushed across the block to where she had left Sarah, stopped only to put the things in her hands, and rushed back again; not in time to catch her car, which was going on merrily out of her hail. But the next one was not far behind; and Matilda enjoyed Sarah's lunch all the way to her own.

"But this is only for one day. And there are so many days, and so many people that want things. I must save every bit of money I can."

She was late; but she was so happy and hungry, that her elders looked on her very indulgently, it being, as in truth she was, a pleasant sight.

That evening Judith proposed another practising of the proverb she and Matilda were to act together; and this time she dressed up for it. A robe of her mother's, which trailed ridiculously over the floor; jewels of value in her ears and on her hands and neck; and finally a lace scarf of Mrs. Lloyd's, which was very rich and extremely costly. Norton was absent on some business of his own; David was the only critic on hand. He objected.

"You can act just as well without all that trumpery, Judith."

"Trumpery! That's what it is to you. My shawl is worth five hundred dollars if it is worth a dollar. It is worth a great deal more than that, I believe; but I declare I get confused among the prices of things. That is one of the cares of riches, that try me most."

"You can act just as well without all that, Judy."

"I can't!"

"You can just as well, if you would only think so."

"Very likely; but I don't think so; that just makes it, you see. I want to feel that I am rich; how am I going to get the idea in my head, boy? – I declare, Satinalia, I think this satin dress is getting frayed already."

"How ought I to be dressed?" inquired Matilda.

"O just as you are. You haven't to make believe, you know; you have got only to act yourself. Come, begin. – I declare, Satinalia, I think this satin dress is getting frayed already."

Matilda hesitated, then put by the displeasure which rose at Judy's rudeness, and entered into the play.

"And how shouldn't it, ma'am, when it's dragging and streaming all over the floor for yards behind you. Satin won't bear every thing."

"No, the satin one gets now-a-days won't. I could buy satin once, that would wear out two of this; and this cost five dollars a yard. Dear me! I shall be a poor woman yet."

"If you were to cut off the train, ma'am, the dress wouldn't drag so."

"Wouldn't it! you Irish stupid. O I hear something breaking downstairs! Robert has smashed a tray-ful, I'll be bound. I heard the breaking of glass. Run, Satinalia, run down as hard as you can and find out what it is. Run before he gets the pieces picked up; for then I shall never know what has happened."

"You'd miss the broken things," said Matilda; not exactly as Satinalia.

"You're an impudent hussy, to answer me so. Run and see what it is, I tell you, or I shall never know."

"What must I say it is?" said Matilda, out of character.

"Haven't you wit enough for that?" said Judith, also speaking in her own proper. "Say any thing you have a mind; but don't stand poking there. La! you haven't seen any thing in all your life, except a liqueur stand. Say any thing! and be quick."

Matilda ran down a few stairs, and paused, not quite certain whether she would go back. She was angry. But she wanted to be friends with Judy and her brother; and the thought of her motto came to her help. "Do all in the name of the Lord Jesus;" – then certainly with courtesy and patience and kindness, as his servant should. She prayed for a kind spirit, and went back again.

"You've been five ages," cried the rich woman. "Well, what's broke?"

"Ma'am, Robert has let fall a tray full of claret glasses, and the salad dish with a pointed edge."

"That salad dish!" exclaimed Judy. "It was the richest in New York. The Queen of England had one like it; and nobody else but me in this country. I told Robert to keep it carefully done up in cotton; and never to wash it. That is what it is to have things."

"Don't it have to be washed?" inquired Matilda.

"I wish I could get into your head," said Judy impatiently and speaking quite as Judy, "that you are a maid servant and have no business to ask questions. I suppose you never knew anything about maid-servants till you came here; but you have been here long enough to learn that, if you were not perfectly bourgeoise!"

"Hush, Judy; you forget yourself," said David.

"She don't understand!" said the polite young lady.

"You do not get on with your proverb at this rate," he went on, glancing at Matilda, whose cheek gave token of some understanding.

"Stupid!" said Judy, returning to her charge and play, – "don't you understand that when that dish is used I wash it myself? And what claret glasses were they? I'll be bound they are the yellow set with my crest?"

"Those are the ones," Satinalia assented.

"That is what it is to have things! My life is one trouble. Satinalia!" —

"Ma'am."

"I haven't got my diamond bracelet on."

"No, ma'am; I do not see it."

"Well, go and see it. Find it and bring it to me. I want it on with this dress."

Matilda being instructed in this part of her duties, reported that she could not find the bracelet. The jewel box was ordered in, and examined, with a great many lamentations and conjectures as to the missing article. Finally the supposed owner declared she must write immediately to her jewellers to know if they had the bracelet, either for repair or safe keeping. Satinalia was despatched for a writing desk; and then for a candle.

"There are no tapers in this concern," Judy remarked; "and the note must be sealed. Somebody might find out that the bracelet is missing, and so it would be missing for ever, from me. Satinalia, what do you stand there for? Do you not hear me say I want a candle?"

"Can't you make believe as well?" asked Matilda, not Satinalia.

"You are too tiresome!" exclaimed Judy. "What do you know about it, at all, I should like to know. I think, when I give you the favour of playing with me, that is enough. You do as I tell you."

Matilda went for the candle, inwardly resolving that she would not enjoy the privilege of practising with Judy another time unless Norton were by. In his presence she was protected. A tear or two came from the little girl's eyes, before she got back to the lobby with the lighted candle. Judy perhaps wanted to make a tableau of herself at the letter sealing; for she took an elegant attitude, that threw her satin drapery imposingly about her and displayed her bare arm somewhat theatrically, gleaming with jewels and softened by the delicate lace of the scarf. But thereby came trouble. In a careless sweep of her arm, sealing-wax in hand, no doubt intended to be very graceful, the lace came in contact with the flame of the candle; and a hole was burnt in the precious fabric before anybody could do any thing to prevent it. Then there was dismay. Judy shrieked and flung herself down with her head on her arms. David and Matilda looked at the lace damage, and looked at each other. Even he looked grave.

"It's a pretty bad business," he concluded.

"O what shall I do! O what shall I do!" Judith cried. "O what will grandmamma say! O I wish Christmas never came!" —

"What sort of lace is this?" Matilda asked, still examining the scarf which David had let fall from his fingers. He thought it an odd question and did not answer. Judy was crying and did not hear.

"The best thing is to own up now, Judy," said her brother. "It is no use to cry."

"Yes, it is!" said Judy vehemently. "That's all a boy knows about it; but they don't know everything."

"I don't see the use of it, at all events," said David. "If tears were spiders, they might mend it."

"Spiders mend it!" repeated Judy. "David, you are enough to provoke a saint."

"But you are not a saint," said her brother. "It need not provoke you. What are you going to do?"

"Judy," said Matilda suddenly, "look here. Does your grandmother often wear this?"

"She'll be sure to want it now," said Judy, "if she never did before."

"It doesn't help the matter either," said David. "Putting off discovery is no comfort. I always think it is best to be out with a thing and have done with it."

"No," said Matilda. "Yes; – that isn't what I mean; but I mean, will Mrs. Lloyd want to wear this now for a few days – four or five?"

"She won't wear it before our party," said Judy. "There's nothing going on or coming off before that. O I wish our party was in Egypt."

"Then don't," said Matilda. "Look here, – listen. I think perhaps, – I don't promise, you know, for I am not sure, but I think perhaps I can mend this."

"You can't, my girl," said David, "unless you are a witch."

"You might as well mend the house!" said Judy impatiently. "It isn't like darning stockings, I can tell you."

"I know how to darn stockings," said Matilda; "and I do not mean to mend this that way. But I can mend some lace; and I think – perhaps – I can this. If you will let me, I'll try."

"How come you to think you can?" David asked. "I should say it was impossible, to anything but a fairy."

"I have been taught," said Matilda. "I did not like to learn, but I am very glad now I did. Do you like to have me try?"

"It is very kind of you," said David; "but I can't think you can manage it."

"Of course she can't!" said Judy contemptuously.

"If I only had the right thread," said Matilda, re-examining the material she had to deal with.

"What must it be?" David inquired.

"Look," said Matilda. "Very, very, very fine, to match this."

"Where can it be had? You are sure you will not make matters worse by doing any thing with it? Though I don't see how they could be worse, that's a fact. I'll get the thread."

So it was arranged between them, without reference to Judy. Matilda carried the scarf to her room; and Judy ungraciously and ungracefully let her go without a word.

"You are not very civil, Judy," said her brother.

"Civil, to that creature!"

"Civil to anybody," said David; "and she is a very well-behaved creature, as you call her."

"She was well-behaved at Candello's the other day, wasn't she?"

"Perhaps she was, after her fashion. Come, Judy, you have tried her to-night, and she has borne it as you wouldn't have borne it; or I either."

"She knew better than not to bear it," said Judy insolently.

"I wish you had known better than to give it her to bear. She was not obliged to bear it, either. Aunt Zara would not take it very well, if she was to hear it."

Judy only pouted, and then went on with a little more crying for the matter of the shawl. David gave up his part of the business.

Except looking for the thread. That he did faithfully; but he did not know where to go to find the article and of course did not find it. What he brought to Matilda might as well have been a cable, for all the use she could make of it in the premises. There was no more to do but to tell Mrs. Laval and get her help; and this was the course finally agreed upon between Matilda and David; Judy was not consulted.

Mrs. Laval heard the story very calmly; and immediately promised to get the thread, which she did. Matilda could not also obtain from her an absolute promise of secrecy. Mrs. Laval reserved that; only assuring Matilda that she would do no harm, and that she would say nothing at least until it should be seen whether or no Matilda had succeeded in the repair of the scarf.

And now for days thereafter Matilda was most of the time shut up in her room, with the door locked. It was necessary to keep out Judy; the work called for Matilda's whole and best attention. It was not an easy or a small undertaking. If anybody could have looked in through the closed door those days, he would have seen a little figure seated on a low foot-cushion, with a magnificent lace drapery lying over her lap and falling to the floor. On a chair at her side were her thread and needles and scissors; and very delicately and slowly Matilda's fingers were busy trying to weave again the lost meshes of the exquisite lace. They worked and worked, hour after hour, before she could be certain whether she was going to succeed; and the blood flushed into Matilda's cheeks with the excitement and the intense application. At last, Saturday afternoon, enough progress was made to let the little girl see that, as she said to herself, "it would do;" and she put the scarf away that afternoon feeling that she was all ready for Sunday to come now, and could enjoy it without a drawback of any sort.

And so she did – even Dr. Broadman and his parti-coloured church. Matilda's whole heart had turned back to its old course; that course which looks to Jesus all the way. Sunlight lies all along that way, as surely as one's face is turned to the sun; so Matilda felt very happy. She hoped, too, that she was gaining in the goodwill of her adopted cousins; David certainly had spoken and looked civilly and pleasantly again; and Matilda's heart to-day was without a cloud.

Norton declined to go with her to Sunday school, however, and she went alone. No stranger now, she took her place in the class as one at home; and all the business and talk of the hour was delightful to her. Sarah was there of course; after the school services were ended Matilda seized her opportunity.

"Whereabouts do you live, Sarah?"

Matilda had been turning over various vague thoughts in her mind, compounded from experiences of Lilac lane and the snowy corner of Fourteenth street; her question was not without a purpose. But Sarah answered generally, that it was not very far off.

"Where is it?" said Matilda. "I should like, if I can, and maybe I can, I should like to come and see you."

"It is a poor place," said Sarah. "I don't think you would like to come into it."

"But you live there," said the other child.

"Yes" – said Sarah uneasily; "I live there when I ain't somewheres else; and I'm that mostly."

"Where is that 'somewhere else'? I'll come to see you there, if I can."

"You have seen me there," said the street-sweeper. "'Most days I'm there."

"I have been past that corner a good many times, Sarah, when I couldn't see you anywhere."

"'Cos the streets was clean. There warn't no use for my broom then. Nobody'd ha' wanted it, or me. I'd ha' been took up, maybe."

"What do you do then, Sarah?"

"Some days I does nothing; some days I gets something to sell, and then I does that."

"But I would like to know where you live."

"You wouldn't like it, I guess, if you saw it. Best not," said Sarah. "They wouldn't let you come to such a place, and they hadn't ought to. I'd like to see you at my crossing," she added with a smile as she moved off. Matilda, quite lost in wonderment, stood looking after her as she went slowly down the aisle. Her clothes were scarcely whole, yet put on with an evident attempt at tidiness; her bonnet was not a bonnet, but the unshapely and discoloured remains of what had once had the distinction. Her dress was scarcely clean; yet as evidently there was an effort to be as neat as circumstances permitted. What sort of a home could it be, where so nice a girl as Matilda believed this one was, could reach no more actual and outward nicety in her appearance?

"You have made Sarah Staples' acquaintance, I see;" Mr. Wharncliffe's voice broke her meditations.

"I saw her at her crossing one day. Isn't she a good girl?"

"She is a good girl, I think. What do you think?"

"O I think so," said Matilda; "I thought so before; but – Mr. Wharncliffe – I am afraid she is very poor."

"I am not afraid so; I know it."

"She will not tell me where she lives," said Matilda rather wistfully.

"Do you want to know?"

"Yes, I wanted to know; but I think she did not want I should."

"Did you think of going to see her, that you tried to find out?"

"I would have liked to go, if I could," said Matilda, looking perplexed. "But she seemed to think I wouldn't like it, or that I ought not, or something."

"She is right," said Mr. Wharncliffe. "You would not take any pleasure in seeing Sarah's home; and you cannot go there alone. But with me you may go. I will take you there, if you choose."

"Now?"

"Yes."

"Thank you, sir. I would like it."

Truth to tell, Matilda would have liked a walk in any direction and for any purpose, in company with that quiet, pleasant, kind, strong face. She had taken a great fancy and given a great trust already to her new teacher. That walk did not lessen either. Hand in hand they went along, through poor streets and in a neighbourhood that grew more wretched as they went further; yet though Matilda was in a measure conscious of this, she seemed all the while to be walking in a sort of spotless companionship; which perhaps she was. The purity made more impression upon her than the impurity. And, withal that the part of the city they were coming to was very miserable, and more wicked than miserable, Matilda saw it through an atmosphere of very pure and sweet talk.

She drew a little closer to her guide, however, as one after another sight and sound of misery struck her senses. A knot of drunken men wrestling; single specimens, very ugly to see; voices loud and brutal coming out of drinking shops; haggard-looking, dirty women, in dismal rags or finery worse yet; crying children; scolding mothers; a population of boys and girls of all ages, who evidently knew no Sabbath, and to judge by appearances had no home; and streets and houses and doorways so squalid, so encumbered with garbage and filth, so morally distant from peace and purity, that Matilda felt as if she were walking with an angel through regions where angels never stay. Perhaps Mr. Wharncliffe noticed the tightening clasp of her fingers upon his. He paused at length; it was before a large, lofty brick building at the corner of a block. No better in its moral indications than other houses around; this was merely one of mammoth proportions. At the corner a flight of stone steps went down to a cellar floor. Standing just at the top of these steps, Matilda could look down and partly look in; though there seemed little light below but what came from this same entrance way. The stone steps were swept. But at the bottom there was nothing but a mud floor; doubtless dry in some weathers, but at this time of encumbering snow it was stamped into mud. Also down there, in the doubtful light, Matilda discerned an overturned broken chair and a brown jug; and even caught a glimpse of the corner of a small cooking stove. People lived there! or at least cooked and eat, or perhaps sold liquor. Matilda looked up, partly in wonder, partly in dismay, to Mr. Wharncliffe's face.

"This is the place," he said; and his face was grave enough then. "Would you like to go in?"

"This?" said Matilda bewildered. "This isn't the place? She don't live here? Does anybody live here?"

"Come down and let us see. You need not be afraid," he said. "There is no danger."

Very unwillingly Matilda let the hand that held her draw her on to descend the steps. If this was Sarah's home, she did not wonder at the girl's hesitation about making it known. Sarah was quite right; it was no place fit for Matilda to come to. How could she help letting Sarah see by her face how dreadful she thought it?

Meanwhile she was going down the stone steps. They landed her in a cellar room; it was nothing but a cellar; and without the clean dry paving of brick or stone which we have in the cellars of our houses. The little old cooking stove was nearly all the furniture; two or three chairs or stools were around, but not one of them whole; and in two corners were heaps, of what? Matilda could not make out anything but rags, except a token of straw in one place. There was a forlorn table besides with a few specimens of broken crockery upon it. A woman was there; very poor though not bad-looking; two bits of ragged boys; and lastly Sarah herself, decent and grave, as she had just come from Sunday school, sitting on a box with her lesson book in her hand. She got up quickly and came forward with a surprised face, in which there shone also that wintry gleam of pleasure that Matilda had seen in it before. The pleasure was for the sight of Mr. Wharncliffe; perhaps Sarah was shy of her other visiter. However, Mr. Wharncliffe took the conversation upon himself, and left it to nobody to feel or shew awkwardness; which both Matilda and Sarah were ready to do. He had none; Matilda thought he never could have any, anywhere; so gracious, so free, his words and manner were in this wretched place; so pleasant and kind, without a trace of consciousness that he had ever been in a better room than this. And yet his boot heels made prints in the damp earth floor. The poor slatternly woman roused up a little to meet his words of cheer and look of sympathy; and Sarah came and stood by his shoulder. It was an angel's visit. Matilda saw it, as well as she knew that she had been walking with one; he brought some warmth and light even into that drear region; some brightness even into those faces; though he staid but a few minutes. Giving then a hearty hand grasp, not to his scholar only but to the poor woman her mother, whom Matilda thought it must be very disagreeable to touch, he with his new scholar came away.