Part 4 (2/2)

”Miss Marg'et, I think there BE something wrong in my head. Did YOH ever notice it?”

Margret put her hand kindly on the broad, misshapen forehead.

”Something is wrong everywhere, Lois,” she said, absently.

She did not see the slow sigh with which the girl smothered down whatever hope had risen just then, listened half-attentive as the huckster maundered on.

”It was th' mill,” she said at last. ”I kind o' grew into that place in them years: seemed to me like as I was part o' th' engines, somehow. Th' air used to be thick in my mouth, black wi' smoke 'n'

wool 'n' smells.

”In them years I got dazed in my head, I think. 'T was th' air 'n' th'

work. I was weak allus. 'T got so that th' noise o' th' looms went on in my head night 'n' day,--allus thud, thud. 'N' hot days, when th'

hands was chaffin' 'n' singin', th' black wheels 'n' rollers was alive, starin' down at me, 'n' th' shadders o' th' looms was like snakes creepin',--creepin' anear all th' time. They was very good to me, th'

hands was,--very good. Ther' 's lots o' th' Master's people down there, though they never heard His name: preachers don't go there. But He'll see to 't. He'll not min' their cursin' o' Him, seein' they don't know His face, 'n' thinkin' He belongs to th' gentry. I knew it wud come right wi' me, when times was th' most bad. I knew”----

The girl's hands were working together, her eyes set, all the slow years of ruin that had eaten into her brain rising before her, all the tainted blood in her veins of centuries of slavery and heathenism struggling to drag her down. But above all, the Hope rose clear, simple: the trust in the Master: and shone in her scarred face,--through her marred senses.

”I knew it wud come right, allus. I was alone then: mother was dead, and father was gone, 'n' th' Lord thought 't was time to see to me,--special as th' overseer was gettin' me an enter to th' poor-house.

So He sent Mr. Holmes along. Then it come right!”

Margret did not speak. Even this mill-girl could talk of him, pray for him; but she never must take his name on her lips!

”He got th' cart fur me, 'n' this blessed old donkey, 'n' my room. Did yoh ever see my room, Miss Marg'et?”

Her face lighted suddenly with its peculiar childlike smile.

”No? Yoh'll come some day, surely? It's a pore place, yoh'll think; but it's got th' air,--th' air.”

She stopped to breathe the cold morning wind, as if she thought to find in its fierce freshness the life and brains she had lost.

”Ther' 's places in them alleys 'n' dark holes, Miss Marg'et, like th'

openin's to h.e.l.l, with th' thick smells 'n' th' sights yoh'd see.”

She went back with a terrible clinging pity to the Gehenna from which she had escaped. The ill of life was real enough to her,--a hungry devil down in those alleys and dens. Margret listened, waked reluctantly to the sense of a different pain in the world from her own,--lower deeps from which women like herself draw delicately back, lifting their gauzy dresses.

”Miss Marg'et!”

Her face flashed.

”Well, Lois?”

”Th' Master has His people 'mong them very lowest, that's not for such as yoh to speak to. He knows 'em: men 'n' women starved 'n' drunk into jails 'n' work-houses, that 'd scorn to be cowardly or mean,--that shows G.o.d's kindness, through th' whiskey 'n' thievin', to th' orphints or--such as me. Ther' 's things th' Master likes in them, 'n' it'll come right, it'll come right at last; they'll have a chance--somewhere.”

Margret did not speak; let the poor girl sob herself into quiet. What had she to do with this gulf of pain and wrong? Her own higher life was starved, thwarted. Could it be that the blood of these her brothers called against HER from the ground? No wonder that the huckster-girl sobbed, she thought, or talked heresy. It was not an easy thing to see a mother drink herself into the grave. And yet--was she to blame? Her Virginian blood was cool, high-bred; she had learned conservatism in her cradle. Her life in the West had not yet quickened her pulse. So she put aside whatever social mystery or wrong faced her in this girl, just as you or I would have done. She had her own pain to bear. Was she her brother's keeper? It was true, there was wrong; this woman's soul lay shattered by it; it was the fault of her blood, of her birth, and Society had finished the work. Where was the help?

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