Part 2 (1/2)
”For Jesus' sake.”
The next time she added these words of her own accord; and again and again was the solemn cry repeated, until there came a sudden changing of the purple shadows into solemn ashy gray, and with one half-murmured effort, ”not a drop of rum” and ”for Jesus' sake,” the voice was forever hushed.
The neighbor watcher was the first to break the stillness.
”Well, I never in all my life!” she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, speaking solemnly. ”For the land's sake! I wish every rum-seller in the world could a heard her.
Well, her troubles is over, Mr. Birge. Now, what's to be done next?”
”Is she anything to you, Mary, except an acquaintance?”
”I'm thankful to say she ain't. If she had been I'd expect to die of shame for letting her die in this hole. She's a neighbor of mine, at least I live around the corner; but I don't know much about her, only that her man comes home drunk about every night, and tears around like a wild beast.”
Which last recalled to John's remembrance the reason of his being in that room.
”Is that her husband lying out there?” he asked, nodding toward the door.
”Yes, it is. Been there long enough to know something by this time, I should think, too.”
”It seems to me the first thing to be done is to get him in here; it isn't decent to leave him in this storm.”
”It's decenter than he deserves, in my opinion, enough sight,” Mary muttered.
Nevertheless they went toward the door, and with infinite pains and much fearful swearing from the partially roused man, they succeeded in pus.h.i.+ng and pulling and dragging him inside the cellar on the floor, when he immediately sank back into heavy sleep.
”Isn't he a picture of a man, now?” said the st.u.r.dy Mary, with a face and gesture of intense disgust.
”I would rather be he than the man who sold him the rum,” her companion answered, solemnly. ”Well, Mary, have you time to stay here awhile, or must you go at once?”
”I'll _take_ time, sir. Feelings is feelings, if I be poor; and I can't leave the boy and all, like this.”
”Very well. You shall not suffer for your kind act. I'll go at once to notify the Coroner and the proper authorities, and meantime my mother will probably step around. Shall I have this fellow taken to the station?”
”No,” said Mary, with another disgusted look at the drunken man. ”Let the beast sleep it out; he's beyond hurting anybody, and _she_ wouldn't want him sent to the station.”
”It was the most solemnly awful sight I ever saw,” said John Birge, telling it all over to his friend McElroy. ”I never shall forget that woman's prayer. It was the most tremendous temperance lecture I ever heard.”
”Is the woman buried?”
”Yes, this afternoon. They hurry such matters abominably, McElroy.
Mother saw, though, that things were decent, and did what she could. We mean to keep an eye on the boy. He has great wild eyes, and a head that suggests great possibilities of good or evil, as the case may be. We would like to get him into one of the Children's Homes, and look after him. I meant to go around there this very evening and see what I could do. What do you say to going with me now?”
”Easy enough thing to accomplish, I should think. I presume his father will be glad to get rid of him; but it's storming tremendously, is it not?”
”Pretty hard. It does four-fifths of the time in Albany, you know.
Wouldn't you venture?”
”Why, it strikes me not, unless it were a case of life and death, or something of that sort. I should like to a.s.sist in rescuing the waif, but won't it do to-morrow?”