Читать книгу A Sunny Little Lass - Raymond Evelyn - Страница 1

It was in “the littlest house in Ne’ York” that Glory lived, with grandpa and Bo’sn, the dog, so she, and its owner, often boasted; and whether this were actually true or not, it certainly was so small that no other sort of tenant than the blind captain could have bestowed himself, his grandchild, and their few belongings in it.

A piece-of-pie shaped room, built to utilize a scant, triangular space between two big warehouses, only a few feet wide at the front and no width at all at the rear. Its ceiling was also its roof and from it dangled whatever could be hung thus, while the remaining bits of furniture swung from hooks in the walls. Whenever out of use, even the little gas-stove was set upon a shelf in the inner angle, thereby giving floor space sufficient for two camp-stools and a three-cornered scrap of a table at which they ate and worked, with Bo’sn curled beneath.

This mite of a house stood at the crook of Elbow Lane, down by the approaches to the big bridge over East River, in a street so narrow that the sun never could shine into it; yet held so strong an odor of salt water and a near-by fish-market, that the old sailor half fancied himself still afloat. He couldn’t see the dirt and rubbish of the Lane, nor the pinched faces of the other dwellers in it, for a few tenements were still left standing among the crowding warehouses, and these were filled with people. Glory, who acted as eyes for the old man, never told him of unpleasant things, and, indeed, scarcely saw them herself. To her, everything was beautiful and everybody kind, and in their own tiny home, at least, everything was scrupulously clean and shipshape.

When they had hung their hammocks back upon the wall, for such were the only beds they had room for, and had had their breakfast of porridge, the captain would ask: “Decks scrubbed well, mate?”

“Aye, aye, sir!” came the cheery answer, and Glory’s hands, fresh from the suds, would touch the questioner’s cheek.

“Brasses polished, hawsers coiled, rations dealt?”

“Aye, aye, cap’n!” again called the child.

“Eight bells! Every man to his post!” ordered the master, and from the ceiling a bell struck out the half-hours in the only way the sailor would permit time to be told aboard his “ship.” Then Glory whisked out her needle and thread, found grandpa his knife and bit of wood, and the pair fell to their tasks. His was the carving of picture frames, so delicately and deftly that one could hardly believe him sightless; hers the mending of old garments for her neighbors, and her labor was almost as capable as his. It had earned for her the nickname of “Take-a-Stitch,” for, in the Lane, people were better known by their employments than their surnames. Grandpa was “Cap’n Carver” when at his morning work, but after midday, “Captain Singer,” since then, led by his dog Bo’sn, he sang upon the streets to earn his livelihood. In the later hours the little girl, also, wore another title–“Goober Glory”–because she was one of the children employed by Antonio Salvatore, the peanut man, to sell his wares on commission.

But grandpa, Glory, and Bo’sn had the long delightful mornings at home and together; and this day, as usual, their talk turned upon the dream of their lives–“Sailors’ Snug Harbor.”

“Now, grandpa, talk. Tell how ’tis. Do it fast an’ picturey-like, ’less I never can guess how to make this piece do. It’s such a little patch an’ such a awful big hole! Posy Jane gets carelesser an’ carelesser all the time. This very last week that ever was she tore this jacket again. An’ I told her, I said: ‘Jane, if you don’t look out you’ll never wear this coat all next winter nohow.’ An’ she up an’ laughed, just like she didn’t mind a thing like that. An’ she paid me ten whole centses, she did. But I love her. Jane’s so good to everybody, to every single body. Ain’t she, grandpa?”

“Aye, aye, deary. I cal’late she done it a purpose. She makes her money easy, Jane does. Just sets there on the bridge-end and sells second-hand flowers to whoever’ll buy. If she had to walk the streets – ”

Glory was so surprised by this last sentence that she snapped her thread off in the wrong place and wasted a whole needleful. Until yesterday, she had never heard her grandfather speak in any but the most contented spirit about his lot in life. Then he had twice lamented that he “didn’t know whatever was to become o’ two poor creatur’s like them,” and now, again, this gay morning, he was complaining–almost complaining. Glory didn’t feel, in the least, like a “poor creatur’.” She felt as “chirpy as a sparrow bird,” over in City Hall park; and, if the sun didn’t shine in the Lane, she knew it was shining in the street beyond, so what mattered?

Vaguely disturbed, the child laid her hand on his arm and asked, “Be you sick, grandpa?”

He answered promptly and testily, “Sick? No, nor never was in my life. Nothin’ but blind an’ that’s a trifle compared to sickness. What you askin’ for? Didn’t I eat my breakfast clean up?”

“Ye-es, but–but afterward you–you kicked Bo’sn, an’ sayin’ that about ‘walkin’ the street’ just a singin’; why, I thought you liked it. I know the folks like to hear you. You do roll out that about the ‘briny wave’ just grand. I wish you’d sing it to Bo’sn an’ me right now, grandpa, dear.”

Wholly mollified and ashamed of his own ill-temper, the captain tried the familiar tune but it died in his throat. Music was far beyond him just then, yet he stroked the child’s head tenderly, and said, “Some other time, mate, some other time. I’m a little hoarse, maybe, or somethin’.”

“Well, then, never mind. Let’s talk ‘Snug Harbor.’ You begin. You tell an’ I’ll put in what I’m mind to; or I’ll say what I guess it’s like an’ you set me straight if I get crooked. ’Cause you’ve seen it, grandpa, an’ I never have. Not once; not yet. Bime-by – Oh, shall I begin, shall I, grandpa?”

The sailor sighed fit to shake the whole small tenement and nodded in consent; so, observing nothing of his reluctance to their once favorite subject, Glory launched forth:

“‘Sailors’ Snug Harbor’ is the most beautifulest spot in the whole world! It’s all flowery an’ grassy an’ treesy. It’s got fountains an’ birds an’ orchestry-music forever an’ ever. ’Tain’t never cloudy there, nor rainy, nor freezy, nor snowy, nor nothin’ mean. Eh, grandpa? Am I straight or crooked?”

The captain, roused as from a reverie, replied absently, “It’s a beautiful place, mate; I know that. Nobody wants for nothin’ there, an’ once a man casts anchor there he’s in safe haven for the rest of his days. Oh, I ain’t denyin’ none of its comforts, but I wish the whole concern’d burn to the ground or sink in the bay. I wish the man first thought of it had died before he did.”

In his anger, the blind man clasped his knife till its blade cut his hand and Glory cried out in dismay. But he would not have her bathe the wound and resumed his carving in silence. The little girl waited awhile, once more fitting the small patch into the big hole of Posy Jane’s jacket; then she went on as if nothing had occurred:

“When we go there to live, me an’ you, we’ll have a room as big an’ nice as this an’ you won’t have to do a hand’s turn for yourself. You an’ Bo’sn’ll just set round in rockin’-chairs–I’ve seen ’em in the stores–with welwet cushings on your laps–I mean you two a settin’ on the cushings, a dressed up to beat. Maybe, they’ll let you order the whole crew, yourself, into white ducks for muster at six bells, or somethin’.

“An’,” Glory continued, “there’ll be me a wearin’ a white frock, all new an’ never mended, an’ my hair growed long an’ lovely, an’ me just as purty as I wish I was, an’ as everybody has to be that lives to the ‘Harbor.’ An’ bime-by, of a Sunday, maybe, when they can spare the time, Posy Jane an’ Billy Buttons, an’ Nick, the Parson, ’ll come walkin’ up to the beautiful gate, an’ the captain what keeps it’ll write their names in a book an’ say, ‘Walk right in, ladies an’ gentlemens, walk right in. You’ll find Captain Simon Beck an’ Miss Glorietta Beck’–’cause I’m goin’ to put that long tail to my plain ‘Glory’ when I go to live there, grandpa.

“Lemme see. Where was I?” the little girl went on. “Oh, yes. The Elbow folks had just come, an’ was showed in. They was told, ‘Walk right in. You’ll find your friends settin’ in the front parlor on them welwet cushings readin’ stories out o’ books an’ chewin’ candy all day long.’ An’ then they’ll scurce know us, Billy an’ them, an’ not till I laugh an’ show my teeth an’ you get up an’ salute will they suspicion us. An’ you’ll have on gold specs an’ dress-uniform an’ that’ll make you look just like you could see same’s other folks. Why, grandpa, darlin’, I’ve just thought, just this very minute that ever was, maybe, to the ‘Harbor’ you won’t be blind any more; for true, maybe not. In such a splendid place, with doctors settin’ round doin’ nothin’, an’ hospitals an’ all, likely they’ll put somethin’ in your eyes will make you see again. O grandpa – If!”

The old man listened silently.

“An’ when–when do you think would be the soonest we might go? ’Twon’t cost much to take me an’ you an’ Bo’sn on the boat to Staten Island. I know the way. Onct I went clear down to the ferry where they start from just a purpose to see, an’ we could ’most any time. Will we go ’fore next winter, grandpa? An’ yet I hate, I do hate, to leave this dear Lane. We live so lovely in our hull house an’ the folks’d miss us so an’ we’d miss the folks. Anyway, I should. You wouldn’t, course, havin’ so many other old sailors all around you. An’ – Why, here’s that same man again!”

Even in Elbow Lane, where the shadows lie all day long, other and darker shadows may fall; and such a shade now touched Glory’s shoulder as she pictured in words the charm of that blessed asylum to which the captain and she would one day repair. He had always fixed the time to be “when he got too old and worthless to earn his living.” But that morning she had swiftly reasoned that since he had grown cross–a new thing in her experience–he must also have suddenly become aged and that the day of their departure might be near at hand.

The shadow of the stranger pausing at their door cut short her rhapsody and sent her, the table, and Bo’sn, promptly out of doors, because when any of the sailor’s old cronies called to see him, there wasn’t room in “the littlest house” for all. So, from the narrow sidewalk beyond the door, the child listened to the talk within, not much of it being loud enough for her to hear, and fancied, from grandpa’s short, sharp replies to his guest’s questions, that he was crosser, therefore, more ill, than ever.

Bo’sn, too, sat on his haunches beside her, closely attentive and, at times, uttering a low, protesting growl. Both child and dog had taken a dislike to this unknown, who was so unlike the usual visitors to the Lane.

Glory sometimes wandered as far as Fifth Avenue, with her peanut basket, and now confided to Bo’sn:

“He’s just like them dressed-up folks on th’ avenue, what goes by with their noses in th’ air, same’s if they couldn’t abide the smell o’ goobers, whilst all the time they’re just longing to eat ’em. Big shiny hat, clothes ’most as shiny, canes an’ fixin’s, an’ gloves, doggie; gloves this hot day, when a body just wants to keep their hands under the spigot, to cool ’em.

“An’,” continued Glory, “he ain’t like the rest, Cap’n Gray, an’ Cap’n Wiggins, what makes grandpa laugh till he cries, swoppin’ yarns. This one ’most makes him cry without the laughin’ an’ – Why, Bo’sn, Bo’sn!”

In the midst of her own chatter to the terrier, Glory had overheard a sentence of the “shiny gentleman” which sent her to her feet, and the table, work, and stool into the gutter, while her rosy face paled and her wide mouth opened still more widely. The stranger was saying:

“Of course, they’ll never take in the child. You can go to the ‘Harbor’ to-day, if you will, and you ought. She–oh, there are plenty of Homes and Orphanages where they will give her shelter. She’d be far better off than she is here, in this slum, with only a blind old man to look after her. You come of good stock, Beck, and, with a proper chance, the little girl might make a nice woman. Here–whew, I really can’t endure the stench of this alley any longer. We’ll make it this afternoon, captain. At three o’clock I’ll send a man to take you over, and I’ll get my sister, who knows about such things, to find a place for your grandchild. Eh? I didn’t quite catch your words.”

Grandpa was murmuring something under his breath about: “Slum! I knew it was small but ‘slum’–my little Glory–why, why – ”

Colonel Bonnicastle interrupted without ceremony. He had put himself out to do an old employee a service and was vexed that his efforts were so ungratefully received. However, he was a man who always had his way and intended to do so now; so he remarked, as if the captain had not objected to so sudden a removal, “The man will be here at three precisely. Have whatever traps you value put together ready. You’ll not know yourself in your new quarters. Good-morning.”

With that the visitor turned to depart but Bo’sn darted between his feet, causing him either to step about in a peculiar fashion or crush the dog; and, with equal want of courtesy, Glory pushed him aside to fling herself on grandpa’s neck, and to shriek to the guest, “Go ’way! Go ’way! Don’t you come back to Elbow Lane! I hate you–oh, I do hate you!”

The great man was glad to go, nor did he notice her rudeness. His carriage was waiting in the street outside the alley, and even his sister Laura, who spent her days working to help the poor and who had sent him here, could expect no more of him than he had done. Neither his visit of yesterday nor to-day seemed appreciated by that old captain who had once so faithfully commanded the colonel’s own ship.

Miss Laura had chanced to hear of the seaman’s blindness and poverty, and promptly tried to help him by having him placed in “Sailors’ Snug Harbor,” of which her brother was a trustee. Nobody had told her about Glory, nor that the “Harbor” was the subject oftenest discussed within the “littlest house.”

But other old sailors had told the captain of it, and pictured its delights, and once a crony had even taken him to visit it. After that, to him and his grandchild, the asylum had seemed like a wonderful fairyland where life was one happy holiday. When at their work, they talked of this safe “Harbor” and the little girl’s imagination endowed the place with marvelous beauties. In all their dreaming they had still been together, without thought of possible separation, till Colonel Bonnicastle’s sentence fell with a shock upon their ears, “They will never take in the child.”