Part 15 (2/2)

Oh, how she worked one whole year to learn her dress-maker's trade, without one cent of compensation. Such is the law. The law of custom with milliners' apprentices.

Then she went home. How joyfully her mother opened her arms; how sweet was that kiss--a loved mother's kiss. Did she love her father? How could she love a man who often cursed, and sometimes beat that mother? She went home to stay, to ply her new trade among her old neighbors. How could she love her father when he would not let her stay, and, like a drunken brute as he was, drove her back again to the city?

”You have learnt a city trade, and you have got city airs; n.o.body wants you here.”

It was not so. Everybody wanted her there but her miserable father.

Everybody else loved Athalia. They saw no city airs; all they saw was that a rough diamond had been polished. What is it worth without?

So she came back to the city with a heavy heart. What was she to do? She could go back to her old shop and work eighteen hours a day, for twenty-five cents, and scanty food; lodging, as she had done during her long year of apprentices.h.i.+p, three in a narrow bed, in a room with just air and s.p.a.ce enough for the decent accommodation of a cat, nothing more. What hope in such a life? What would she have at the end of the year? Just what she had at the beginning? No; for one year of youth would be gone.

She could not go back; there was no hope there. So, with another girl just as poor, but just as willing to work, she took a room, and took in work, or went out to do it. Then how she was exposed, how in danger.

Libertines live in genteel families. Ah, and are pet sons of mothers who would give dollars to dissipated rakes, and grudge s.h.i.+llings to poor dress-makers. And if the poor girl should be caught in the snare of such a son, how the mother would rave and drive her away unpaid, because she had disgraced her ”respectable boy.”

Mrs. Morgan was one of Athalia's lady ”patrons.” Haughtily proud, yet not, like some of her cla.s.s, positively dishonest, cruelly dishonest.

She wanted the labor of the poor sewing girl, because she possessed great taste, and could dress her daughters better, and what was still more, though so little practised by the rich, cheaper, than she could get their dresses at a ”regular establishment.” That was just what the daughters most disliked. They knew that none of their acquaintances wore such neat-fitting dresses, but when the question was put, ”Where did you get them made?” they could not answer, ”Oh, we always get everything at Madame Chalambeau's fas.h.i.+onable establishment in Broadway.”

They could not change their mother's policy, and so they determined to drive poor Athalia out of the house.

They had another object. Athalia was beautiful. Her face was such as we are apt to conceive that an angel must have. And everybody who came in the house while she was there, and saw her, said, ”Oh, what a sweet face!”

This was gall and wormwood to the ”young ladies,” for their faces were just such as you would suppose were made out of those two ingredients, and they were true indications of their minds. So they hated the poor seamstress for double cause.

At first she came to the table with the family. But the girls could not help observing that she was the diamond, they the setting, to all eyes.

She was better bred than they, with all their boarding-school education.

Where had she got it? In a country school house, and her mother's kitchen.

Once, once only, after tea she was invited to sing. Who supposed that she could touch a piano note. She accepted the invitation, as all well-bred girls do, who know that they can sing, and Walter offered his arm to lead her to the piano.

Walter was the brother, the only ”son and heir of our family.” He had just returned from a lady-killing Niagara tour, and met Athalia for the first time at the tea table. It was the last time, the sisters said, that he should meet her there. She went home that evening; she had finished her job and received her poor pay. That was one of Mrs.

Morgan's virtues; she paid the stipulated price to those who worked for her.

What daggers, scorpions' stings, and poisoned darts, poor Athalia and Walter would have felt, while he stood over her at the piano, if they could have felt the glances of scornful, angry eyes. How he was taken to task afterwards for paying attention to ”a sewing girl,” particularly for waiting upon her home.

How he justified himself. Just as though there was need of it. But aristocracy had stept down to the level of one who

”Plied her needle and thread, In poverty, hunger, and toil;”

Who sang with a voice of saddening song, Of the home on her own native soil.

Of the spring and the brook where it flow'd, Of the plums and the pears where they grew, Of the meadows and hay lately mow'd.

And the roses all dripping with dew.

And her heart it went journeying back, While her fingers plied needle and thread, Till the morning came in at a crack, Where it found her still out of her bed.

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