A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill
“Most ever since ours come. The Juvenile Court was looking round fer
some one to nurse him till his maw got out of the jail hospital. I sez
to Maria, 'Here's a chanct to do a good Christian act an' earn a honest
penny. We'll take it in an' treat it like our own, sez I, an' the Lord
will not fergit us, sez I!”
The Boarder, taking advantage of this assurance of hospitality, set up
such a peremptory demand for food, that Miss Lady was compelled to walk
the floor with him.
“Where is Mrs. Flathers?” she asked in despair. “Can't we give him a
bottle or something?”
Maria, more limp, and inanimate than usual, came out of the dim interior
of the adjoining room, carrying a yet more limp and inanimate bundle
which she exchanged with Miss Lady for hers, and silently retired into
the inner room where she was followed by Mrs. Ivy.
“An' this here is ours!” exclaimed Phineas, bending with sudden
enthusiasm over the child in Miss Lady's arms, and tenderly lifting the
shawl from the weazened face and tiny claw-like hands. “This here is
Loreny. There ain't nary one of the rest of 'em lived over two weeks,
an' this here one is goin' on four. Kinder looks like we're goin' to
keep her with us, don't it?”
Miss Lady could find no answer. The white lips and the blue circles
about the small, sunken eyes, bespoke the same disinclination to risk
life under such circumstances as had been shown by all the other little
Flatherses.
“Course she ain't like that other baby,” Phineas went on with genuine
earnestness, “but then he's a boy, an' eats more. She's goin' to git fat
an' pretty, ain't you, Loreny?”
He put his coarse brown thumb into the little hand which closed about it
and clung to it, and sat watching her, unmindful of his visitor.
“She don't look what you'd call strong,” he went on, anxiously, “but you
wouldn't say she was sick, would you?”
“I am afraid I should,” Miss Lady said gravely; “she looks very sick to
me.”
“She does? Then I'd better git the doctor,” Phineas rose hurriedly,
then sat down again. “But he never done the others no good. Maria always
contended it was him that killed 'em. Ain't there somethin' we kin do?
Don't you know somethin'?”
“Yes, I think I do, only you may not be willing to do it.”
“You try me. I'll do anything you say, Miss. If the Lord will only spare
her--”
“It's not the Lord that's taking her,” Miss Lady cried impatiently,
“it's you that are sending her, Mr. Flathers. Can't you see that you are
killing your baby?”
He looked at her in amazed horror.
“Yes, you are!” went on Miss Lady fiercely, “you are selling her food
to another baby; you are letting her mother work so hard that she can
scarcely nourish herself. Just look at Mrs. Flathers! Anybody can see
that if she had better food and less to do she'd be a different person.”
“Oh, Maria was real pretty onct,” Phineas said somewhat resentfully,
“but when a man marries one of them slim little blondes he never knows
what he's gittin'. They sort of shrink up on yer an' git faded an'
stringy.”
“Yes, but think what she got,” said Miss Lady determined to press the
matter home. “Myrtella says you were a strong, handsome young man, who
could have turned your hand to almost anything, and look at you now! A
broken-down loafer, sitting around the saloons, talking religion while
your baby starves. I don't wonder Myrtella is ashamed of you, I am
ashamed of you, and if this poor little girl ever lives to grow up, she
will be ashamed of you, too!”
“No, no,” cried Phineas brokenly, his head in his hands, “she won't
be that--if the Lord,--I mean if she lives, I'll be a better man, Mis'
Squeerington, indeed I will. Nobody ever will know in the world how much
I want children of my own. That's why I 'dopted Chick--that's one reason
I took in this new one. Seemed like as if my baby went--”
“We'll try to keep her,” Miss Lady said with a rush of sympathy. “I'll
do everything I can but you must help, Mr. Flathers. You are willing to
do your part, aren't you?”
His emotions, used to responding to false stimulants, being now appealed
to by the one genuine feeling in him, threatened to become uncontrolled.
“There, there!” Miss Lady said, “if you really want to save her, I think
there's a way.”
“Not a Orphan's Home?” asked Phineas, lifting one eye from the baby's
petticoat where his head had been buried.
“No, a clean home of her own. There's no reason why you shouldn't go to
work, Mr. Flathers, and support your family decently. I'll take Chick
home with me. Myrtella will be glad to have him for a little visit. Mrs.
Ivy is going to send the other baby to the Foundling's Home. Then you'll
only have to look after Mrs. Flathers and the baby; you surely can do
that, can't you?”
“Yes 'm, I kin do that. 'Course any man kin do that. But I been out of a
regular job so long, you'd sorter help me find something to start on?”
“I'll get you something to do, if you will only stick to it. Perhaps
Mrs. Sequin can give you work at her new house. She gave our old colored
man, Uncle Jimpson, a place.”
“Jes' so it ain't garden work, nor gittin' up coal, nor nothin' that
brings on rheumatism.”
“Have you rheumatism?”
“No, mam, Praise God! I have escaped this far by bein' kereful. You know
what it means, Mis' Squeerington, when a man with a family gits down
with the rheumatism. There's Jires, now--”
“Yes, and Mr. Jires does more for his family lying flat on his back than
you do for yours, up and walking around! You're not fooling me one bit,
Mr. Flathers, and there's no use trying to fool yourself. You either
mean seriously to go to work or you don't. Which is it?”
Phineas Flathers' strong impulse was to flee the scene. He saw his
liberty vanishing before the awful prospect held out by this pretty
young lady who could be so sympathetic one moment and so stern the next.
But the tiny claw-like fingers of Loreny held him fast. He looked at his
imprisoned thumb and smiled tenderly. Then he faced Miss Lady squarely
for the first time.
“You help me git a job, Miss, an' I'll promise to take keer of this here
baby.”
“What you need,” came the murmur of Mrs. Ivy's voice from the next room,
where she was taking leave of Maria Flathers, “is more beauty in your
home, something to uplift you and inspire you. I am going to send you
one of our traveling art galleries, you may keep the pictures a whole
week, long enough to learn the titles and the names of the painters.
Just think what it will mean to lift your tired eyes to a beautiful,
serene Madonna! And couldn't you have more color in your home? We find
color so stimulating. Scarlet geraniums for instance. Wouldn't you like
some scarlet geraniums?”
“I dunno where we'd put 'em at,” Maria said wearily, shifting the weight
of the Boarder to her other arm. Then her face hardened suddenly, and
she wheeled into the kitchen.
“Flathers,” she said, “it's him coming round the house now. He said he'd
be back before six, an' wouldn't stand no foolin'. What you goin' to do,
Flathers?”
Before Miss Lady and Mrs. Ivy could make their exit, the way was blocked
by a heavy-set, muscular, one-eyed man who placed a hand on either side
of the door jamb and unnecessarily announced that there he was. Frantic
efforts on the part of Phineas to signify to the newcomer by winks
and gestures, that the presence of guests would prevent his talking
business, were without effect.
“You ladies'll have to excuse me,” said the intruder cheerfully, “but
I can't fool with this bunch no longer. It's pay, or git out, this time
and no mistake.”
Maria began to cry, and forgot to jolt the Boarder, and the Boarder who
insisted upon being jolted every instant he was not sleeping or eating,
began to cry also. Whereupon Loreny, who had been laid upon the kitchen
table, heard the noise and felt called upon to add her voice to the
chorus.
By this time Chick and his colleagues, scenting excitement from afar,
had followed its trail and now presented themselves breathless and
interested to await developments. “Puttin' out” was not a particular
novelty in Bean Alley, but the presence of guests added a picturesque
feature.
“If you can wait a week longer,” said Phineas with some attempt at
dignity, “I'll be in a position to settle up to date. I'm expectin' to
git a job--”
At this the rent man threw back his head and laughed, and the youngsters
back of him laughed, and even the Boarder stopped crying a moment to see
what had happened.
“But he really is,” insisted Miss Lady, coming to Phineas' assistance.
“He's going to work the first of the week. Surely you can wait a week
longer.”
“I can, Miss!” said the man in the door, gallantly. “I been waiting a
week longer on Flathers for more'n two months. There ain't absolutely no
use in arguing the matter further. It's pay up, or git out, _to-day_.”
“Well, if this ain't the limit!” said Phineas, with the air of one who
had reached it many times before, but never such a limitless limit as
this.
“But if we pay this month's rent for him, can't you let him make up
the back rent later?” argued Miss Lady, trying to comfort Maria who
threatened to become hysterical.
“When you've known Flathers as long as I have, you won't talk about him
paying up.”
“But you can't put them out like this, with that little baby and no
place to go!”
“There's the Charity Organization, and the Alms House,” suggested Mrs.
Ivy, wiping her eyes through sympathy.
“I'd hate to drive 'em to that,” said the man doggedly, “but I got my
own family to consider, and I ain't what I once was, since I lost my
eye.”
“Poor man,” sighed Mrs. Ivy; “how fortunate It was the left one! How did
it happen?”
“Shot out,” said the man, nothing loath to enter into particulars. “In
a scrap between a pair of young swells that was hangin' round my place.
Shot out in cold blood when I wasn't lookin'.”
“But, my good man, didn't you prosecute?” asked Mrs. Ivy. “You know we
have a Legal Aid Society for just such cases as yours.”
“Yes'm, but one of the young gentlemen skipped the country, lit out fer
foreign parts, took to the tall timber, as you might say.”
“But he was not the one who did the shooting, was he?” asked Miss Lady,
a sudden bright spot on either cheek, and the steady determination in
her eye that had been Flathers' undoing.
“I ain't never been able to say which one done it,” said the man,
faltering under her steady gaze.
“Perhaps it was worth your while not to say?”
The man shot a quick glance of suspicion at her, then his eye came back
to Phineas.
“Of course, I don't want to push him into the Poor House, and if he
expects to get work--”
“I do, Dick,” said Phineas fervently. “Monday morning I put my
shoulder-blade to the wheel somewhere.”
“Well, if the ladies'll stand for this month,” said the man, evidently
anxious to get away, “I'll wait a week longer on the back rent.”
Miss Lady was preoccupied and silent on the way home. The world
sometimes seemed desperately sordid, and human nature a baffling
proposition.
At her gate Mrs. Ivy halted suddenly: “Do you know,” she said, “it has
just occurred to me! I shouldn't be one bit surprised if that horrid
one-eyed man was the very one Mr. Morley shot!”
CHAPTER XVI
Christmas night on Billy-goat Hill, and twinkling lights, beginning with
candles set in bottles in the humblest cottages in Bean Alley, dotted
the hillside here and there, until they all seemed to converge at one
brilliant spot on the summit, where a veritable halo of light hung above
the hilltop.
For Angora Heights was having a house-warming, and never since old Bob
Carsey brought home his young bride from Alabama, had such preparations