Читать книгу Candles' Beams - Francis J. Finn - Страница 10

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In a few minutes, we were standing at the door of Reardon’s home. It was a ramshackle frame structure of three stories. Of course, we knew very well that the Reardon family did not occupy the entire building. Things are not done that way—with a few notable exceptions—in St. Xavier parish in the twentieth century. In such a building as the one before us, there is the following classic division: first-story front, first-story back; second-story front, second-story back; third-story front, third-story back; and there is a family for each division. People who want a whole floor to themselves should move out of St. Xavier’s into Holy Cross; and if they desire an entire house should seek the classic sequestration of Walnut Hills.

We took our chance at the first-floor front and pulled the bell. Already, with a swiftness that astonished me, a crowd of children had gathered on the pavement, watching our movements with unconcealed interest.

“Say, Mister,” said a very dirty little boy in a very long overcoat and a very large hat, “that there door bell don’t ring.”

“The best way to get them,” said a slightly older youth, “is to bang on the door with a brick. They’s both of ’em deef.”

“Does Frank Reardon live here?” asked the head Brother.

“No!” came the chorus.

Then there emerged from the motley group a girl of nine. She evidently belonged, as her speech and manner declared, to the girl’s department of St. Xavier School.

“Please, Brother,” she said, “I’ll show you the way.”

And show us she did—half-way back through a narrow passage, up an outer stairway to the second floor.

“Is this the place?” asked Brother Mark, pointing to a door that evidently belonged to the second floor back.

“Yes, Brother.”

Brother Mark was about to knock, when the little miss, in the artless and unstudied way peculiar to many of her class, threw the door open and called out,

“Frank Reardon! Here’s the Brothers coming after you.”

It was really very awkward for us; but what could we do? The room that met our eyes was the living room—by day at least—though in the far corner a suspicious looking article of furniture, not exactly “a chest of drawers by day,” was evidently destined to be converted into a bed by night.

In the center of the room was a rude table; upon the table was a pitcher, the contents of which was indicated by four glasses in various stages of depletion about the corners of the table. Seated around it were four young women. But they did not remain seated. Seeing us standing without, they scrambled to their feet, and while inviting us to “come in” and calling loudly for Frank, they edged by us, and disappeared down the stairway. Where they went, I do not know; but I have an idea that they first sought out the little Miss who threw open the door for us, and told her in plain and unvarnished terms what they thought of her present standing and future prospects.

Also, by some legerdemain, the pitcher and the four glasses, as we entered, were no longer on the table; and what became of them I know not to the present day. I learned later that two of the young women were Frank’s sisters—who did piece-work in a factory—and that the other two were “lady-friends.”

The quartet was hardly well on the stairway when from the back room emerged Frank, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and a large blue apron, telling its tale of many a washed dish, encircling his entire body.

“I was washing the dishes,” he said; then, raising his voice, “say, ma, here’s my teacher and the head Brother come to see us—come on in here; ma’s sick in bed.”

I was by this time somewhat bewildered. There was an abruptness and unconventionality about all the proceedings, beginning with the little girl’s throwing open the door, for which I was not prepared. Throughout it all, Brother Mark remained cool and smiling. He had visited in such neighborhoods before.

As Master Francis led the way, there was nothing for us but to follow him into the adjoining room; and a very small room it was. It led directly by another door into the kitchen. One window afforded a close and intimate view of a porch and stairway belonging to the next house—so close, so intimate that one could almost reach across by leaning out and stretching one’s arm. The room was clean, and save for a chair, a washstand, a lamp on the mantle, and over the lamp a picture of the Sacred Heart, almost bare. On the bed lay a white-haired woman, her knotted hands upon the coverlet telling the story of chronic rheumatism. Pain and hardship had prematurely aged her face—a face gentle and long-suffering. She endeavored to raise herself up as we entered but Brother Mark protested.

“Just stay as you are,” he said.

Mrs. Reardon was plainly glad to see us.

“Which of you is the teacher of my boy?” she asked.

“There he is,” answered my Superior, pointing his hand at me.

“Oh, how glad I am to see you,” she cried. “You don’t know all you’ve done for my little boy. He was rough and wild till you got hold of him, and now he’s always talking of you. I suppose you know he’s had very hard times the last few months?”

“I suspected,” I replied, “that there was some sickness in the family.”

“Sickness! It’s been nothing else. Do you know that in October, besides myself being down, both my girls were sick, and my other boy who is working—he’s a little wild you know—disappeared and hasn’t been heard of till to-day. Poor little Francis here was cook and nurse and everything else.”

Francis was standing beside the bed, his arms akimbo, and looking alternately at his mother and the head Brother.

“What, Francis!” I cried, “can you cook?”

“I can cook and wash dishes and scrub and clean and go a-marketing,” answered Francis with simplicity.

“Can you cook a beefsteak?” I pursued.

“We never had none to cook. But I know how to do sausages. We had them twicet.”

“I am astonished,” I went on addressing the mother. “In October I noticed that Francis was falling back in his studies, but I had no idea that at his age he was acting as head of the family, trained nurse, general housekeeper, up-stairs girl and man-of-all-work. I—I’m astounded!”

“Yes, and for weeks we hadn’t a cent in the house. The boy couldn’t buy pencil or paper; we had no money even for bread. Somehow, Frank managed to do something or other after class, and if he hadn’t we’d have been thrown upon the Vincent de Paul.”

“Wonderful!” I cried out, and Brother Mark re-echoed my exclamation. “But why didn’t Frank let me know all about the conditions at home?”

“Indeed, I told him to tell you many a time; but he just couldn’t. He’s the dearest and best boy in the world, and a sick mother’s prayers will always go to the man who changed him—not that he didn’t always love his mother. Oh, he did—indeed, he did! But this year he has stayed up late and got up early to help me—God bless him and all his friends.”

“Shake hands, Frank,” said Brother Mark, “and after this, always tell your teacher about any sickness in your home.”

“Yes, Brother, I will,” said Frank, quite radiant. He was proud of his mother.

“And how are things with you now, Mrs. Reardon?” Brother Mark went on.

“I’ve just got good news. Harry, my oldest boy, has just written me. The poor fellow got restless and skipped to Detroit. He’s coming back to-morrow with a promise of a position at thirty-five dollars a month. Then, I can take my youngest girl out of the factory and keep her home, and little Francis will go to bed early and get his lessons and eat better meals with the money coming in. You’ll find, Brother John, that he’ll be the same little Francis that I started to school in September. I have been praying hard, and God has heard me; and my boy, my big boy, is coming home again to his old mother.”

The tears stole down her face—tears of present joy, reminiscent, too, of past suffering.

“He’s a good boy,” she continued, “only a little wild.”

We remained a few minutes longer. I had entered the second floor back with a sneer in my heart; I left it a wiser, and, I trust, humbler man. It was my first direct dealing with abject poverty. No wonder St. Francis almost apotheosizes “my lady poverty,” that St. Ignatius tells his followers to love it as a mother. Best of all, Francis Reardon, in his most degraded moments, as I had considered them, had been a hero, and he doesn’t know it to this day.

But I couldn’t even then get over the matter of that pitcher of beer and the four disappearing glasses. I mentioned my difficulty on the way home to Brother Mark.

“Beer is cheap,” he said. “It is the cheapest thing in the market. You don’t expect those girls to go automobiling, do you?”

“Brother, you are ironical.”

“I’m not. Perhaps, you expect them after eight or nine hours in the factory to go out and play lawn tennis; or spend the evening like their wealthier Christian sisters, in doing the Turkey Trot and dancing the Tango. A pitcher of beer is an amusement; and I dare say, bad though it be at times, it’s not so dangerous as automobiling to the body and not near so dangerous as turkey-trotting to the soul. Brother John, it’s the only amusement some poor people know of; and it’s your business and mine as teachers to educate them up to something healthier and higher. There’s less mischief in a pitcher of beer—one pitcher, mind you—than in most of the dances and novels and magazines now most popular.”

My education was progressing too rapidly. The thought of beer as an amusement reduced me to silence.