Part 10 (2/2)
”I want to show you a bit of h.e.l.l: outskirt. You're in a fit state: it'll do you good. I'm minister there. The clergy can't attend to it just now: they're too busy measuring G.o.d's truth by the States'--Rights doctrine, or the Chicago Platform. Consequence, religion yields to majorities. Are you able? It's only a step.”
She went on indifferently. The night was breathless and dark. Black, wet gusts dragged now and then through the skyless fog, striking her face with a chill. The Doctor quit talking, hurrying her, watching her anxiously. They came at last to the railway-track, with long trains of empty freight-cars.
”We are nearly there,” he whispered. ”It's time you knew your work, and forgot your weakness. The curse of pampered generations. 'High Norman blood,'--pah!”
There was a broken gap in the fence. He led her through it into a muddy yard. Inside was one of those taverns you will find in the suburbs of large cities, haunts of the lowest vice. This one was a smoky frame, standing on piles over an open s.p.a.ce where hogs were rooting. Half a dozen drunken Irishmen were playing poker with a pack of greasy cards in an out-house. He led her up the rickety ladder to the one room, where a flaring tallow-dip threw a saffron glare into the darkness. A putrid odour met them at the door. She drew back, trembling.
”Come here!” he said, fiercely, clutching her hand. ”Women as fair and pure as you have come into dens like this,--and never gone away. Does it make your delicate breath faint? And you a follower of the meek and lowly Jesus! Look here! and here!”
The room was swarming with human life. Women, idle trampers, whiskey-bloated, filthy, lay half-asleep, or smoking, on the floor, and set up a chorus of whining begging when they entered. Half-naked children crawled about in rags. On the damp, mildewed walls there was hung a picture of the Benicia Boy, and close by, Pio Nono, crook in hand, with the usual inscription, ”Feed my sheep.” The Doctor looked at it.
”'Tu es Petrus, et super hanc'---- Good G.o.d! what IS truth?” he muttered, bitterly.
He dragged her closer to the women, through the darkness and foul smell.
”Look in their faces,” he whispered. ”There is not one of them that is not a living lie. Can they help it? Think of the centuries of serfdom and superst.i.tion through which their blood has crawled. Come closer,--here.”
In the corner slept a heap of half-clothed blacks. Going on the underground railroad to Canada. Stolid, sensual wretches, with here and there a broad, melancholy brow, and desperate jaws. One little pickaninny rubbed its sleepy eyes, and laughed at them.
”So much flesh and blood out of the market, unweighed!”
Margret took up the child, kissing its brown face. Knowles looked at her.
”Would you touch her? I forgot you were born down South. Put it down, and come on.”
They went out of the door. Margret stopped, looking back.
”Did I call it a bit of h.e.l.l? It 's only a glimpse of the under-life of America,--G.o.d help us!--where all men are born free and equal.”
The air in the pa.s.sage grew fouler. She leaned back faint and shuddering. He did not heed her. The pa.s.sion of the man, the terrible pity for these people, came out of his soul now, writhing his face, and dulling his eyes.
”And you,” he said, savagely, ”you sit by the road-side, with help in your hands, and Christ in your heart, and call your life lost, quarrel with your G.o.d, because that ma.s.s of selfishness has left you,--because you are balked in your puny hope! Look at these women. What is their loss, do you think? Go back, will you, and drone out your life whimpering over your lost dream, and go to Shakspeare for tragedy when you want it? Tragedy! Come here,--let me hear what you call this.”
He led her through the pa.s.sage, up a narrow flight of stairs. An old woman in a flaring cap sat at the top, nodding,--wakening now and then, to rock herself to and fro, and give the shrill Irish keen.
”You know that stoker who was killed in the mill a month ago? Of course not,--what are such people to you? There was a girl who loved him,--you know what that is? She's dead now, here. She drank herself to death,--a most unpicturesque suicide. I want you to look at her.
You need not blush for her life of shame, now; she's dead.--Is Hetty here?”
The woman got up.
”She is, Zur. She is, Mem. She's lookin' foine in her Sunday suit.
Shrouds is gone out, Mem, they say.”
She went tipping over the floor to something white that lay on a board, a candle at the head, and drew off the sheet. A girl of fifteen, almost a child, lay underneath, dead,--her lithe, delicate figure decked out in a dirty plaid skirt, and stained velvet bodice,--her neck and arms bare. The small face was purely cut, haggard, patient in its sleep,--the soft, fair hair gathered off the tired forehead. Margret leaned over her, shuddering, pinning her handkerchief about the child's dead neck.
”How young she is!” muttered Knowles. ”Merciful G.o.d, how young she is!--What is that you say?” sharply, seeing Margret's lips move.
”'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.'”
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