PREFACE.

It has happened of late that several of my books have been more or less criticised for improbabilities attached either to a character, or some event selected from the rest of the book as too extravagant for belief or for the harmonies of true art. Now, singular enough, in every instance, the events or characters selected for these criticisms have been facts in themselves, or portraits drawn from persons well known to myself and others. If such criticism should fall on the character of Madame De Marke, I may perhaps be permitted to state that this woman has lived within the last fifteen years, and was well known in a certain neighborhood in the city of New York for her wealth, her eccentricity, and her avaricious habits. Her person, her manner of life, and her extreme parsimony, are in no respect overdrawn. The room in which she lived and died is described exactly as she inhabited it in 1849. Of course, the events of the story which runs through this volume are not absolute facts, but the character of the woman, improbable as it may seem, is the vraisemblance of a real individual.

CHAPTER I. A WARD IN BELLEVUE.

The sick ward of a hospital, mockingly, it would seem, called Bellevue. The room was long, low in the ceiling, and lighted by a range of windows sunk deep in the wall, which overlooked the East River and an expanse of Long Island that curved along the opposite shore.

A few poverty-stricken women, and some worse than that, because bowed down by shame as well as poverty, had sought this ward as the only place in which their anguish and sorrow could find shelter.

Narrow, pauper cots, furnished with straw beds and covered with coarse, checkered cotton, were ranged down each side, of the room, with just space enough between to allow a sort of foot-path in which the nurses could pass from one bed to another.

Every cot was occupied. Here a young face, so pale and mournful that your heart ached while gazing on it, was turned sadly toward you on the straw pillow, or a feeble 26hand would make an effort to draw up the coverlet, that you might not mark the flush of shame that stole over her forehead, or discover the cause of that shame which lay nestled in her bosom.

Other faces met your view, coarse and shameless, or haggard with long suffering; and some turned upon you eyes so full of gentle submission, that you wondered why human beings so opposite in their nature should be crowded together in one room, even by the terrible leveller Poverty.

Sounds, in painful harmony with the scene, greeted your entrance. Murmurs of sharp impatience, imprecations suppressed only by fear, and open complaints from the coarser and ruder inmates, drowned the sighs and timid whispers of maternal love that gave a breath of heaven even to that miserable place.

Two cots in the room, both standing in a remote corner, were occupied like the rest, but gave forth no signs of life. They stood close together, and of the occupants it seemed impossible to say which was living, or which was actually dead, so coldly pale were the two faces that gleamed upon you from the pillows. Both were young, and one was wondrously beautiful even in that deathly state, when forehead, hands and lips were blanched to the whiteness of a corpse.

The other was less beautiful, but very young, and so fragile that you wondered why death had waited to find her in that miserable place, for she was dying. The gray shadows, settling like a mist upon her face, the locked whiteness of her features, the imperceptible stiffening of her white hand upon the coverlet, all proclaimed this truth with terrible distinctness. But there was yet a breath of life close to her heart, a faint flutter as if a wounded bird had folded its wings forever, and then all was quiet as if sleep were there, or death had come twice.

The gray shadows of a winter’s morning crept through the checkered curtains of a neighboring window, and hung 27coldly around that pauper couch; and amid the muttering of patients restless with fever, or clamorous for nourishment, the wail of sickly infants, and the outcries of healthy ones, this poor young creature died and grew cold, unwatched and unwept.

The other, she who lay so like an exquisite statue on the neighboring couch, would no life ever return to her? There was a faint motion of the bed-clothes, as if breath still lingered there; but did it exist in that fair young mother or in the child, for she, poor thing, was a mother, and even in the chill of insensibility she held the little being into which her own seemed to have merged, clasped to her bosom.

Just as the day dawned, a nurse came into the ward, not with her usual dauntless step, but stealthily, and casting sidelong glances from cot to cot, like a panther fearing to arouse his prey. She stopped once or twice and arranged the pillows of her patients, with a sort of cajoling attention, always leaving their faces turned from the corner where those two young creatures suffered. Then she stole softly between the two cots, and bending down her face till her soiled curl-papers almost touched the dead, listened, felt the cold hand on the coverlet, and cautiously turned down the clothes.

At the head of each cot a square wooden label was hung against the wall, on which was painted the name and number of the occupant. The nurse took down these labels when quite sure that one of these young women was dead, and replaced them again, looking furtively around as she did so.

After making herself busy with the labels a while, the nurse stood over the cot of the dead woman and took a rapid survey of the ward.

All was quiet, save the murmurs of a child, far down the room, who was struggling to keep its place in the arms of a drowsy mother.

28The nurse was relieved by this sound. It gave her time for breath. The rustle of her own dress seemed less startling. She turned to the other bed, stooped over it still more cautiously, and laid her hand down upon the heart of the senseless woman.

She half rose, gave a sharp glance over her shoulder, and taking each of the fair hands, clasped so fondly around a sleeping infant, forced them gently apart, and lifted the child from its mother’s bosom.

A shudder passed through the frame of that young mother, as if the last gleam of life had been torn from her heart. Her eyelids quivered, and her lips were, for an instant, faintly convulsed.

The nurse turned suddenly to the other couch, and back again, while this life-struggle was going on. Without unclosing her eyes, the poor creature reached forth her arms, clasped them fondly again with a sigh of ineffable delight, and sunk away motionless, without a perceptible breath.

But it was not for joy. As the child, a moment before, had seemed to keep the vitality in her heart with its own warmth, so now some outward chill drove back the blood to its centre. With a moan, and a struggle, she came to life, opened her great blue eyes, and fixed them wildly on the nurse.

“I am cold, oh! so cold,” she said, shivering, and cowering down into the bed; “what have you done to me?”

“Done to you?” said the nurse, faintly, “done to you? Nothing, but try my best to bring you to. Why, it’s almost dead you’ve been, I don’t know how long.”

The invalid did not hear this. A momentary impulse of strength seized upon her. She flung back the bed-clothes, and bending her face downward, fixed those wild eyes upon the child. One glance, and she lifted them with a sharp, questioning look to the woman, and passing her hand over the little face, whispered hoarsely,—

29“What is this?”

The nurse put her hands down and touched the infant. The poor mother felt those coarse hands shaking against her own, and shrunk away with a faint cry: it seemed as if they had inflicted a wound upon her.

It was some moments before the woman spoke. When she did, it was with a sort of unnatural quickness, accompanied with hurried glances down the room.

“Where’s the doctor? It might have been expected. Fainting fits all night—overlaid and smothered it. Half on your face when I came in—arms grasped around it like a vice. No wonder it’s cold.”

“Cold. Is that all—only cold?” cried the mother, trembling all over,—“only cold?”

“Cold as a stone, and dead as a door-nail, that’s what it is?” answered the nurse, sharply, for that moment the physician of the ward came in sight, and the nurse judged well of the effect her brutal speech would have on the young creature.

With a cry, that in her feebleness scarcely arose above a wail, she fell back perfectly senseless again.

“What is the trouble here?” inquired the doctor, coming forward. “Oh, I expected this!” he added, glancing at the dead; “scarcely a breath of life in her from the first. The baby too, I suppose.”

“No!” answered the nurse, quickly; “that poor creature has lost her baby. Hers is just alive yet; I wish they wouldn’t send such delicate creatures here. It’s enough to destroy one’s character to have them die off so.”

“But she is not dead,” replied the doctor, passing between the two cots, and taking the little hand that had fallen away from the child; “almost as bad though; a hard chill—we shall have fever next! Take the child away. No wonder she feels cold! How long has it been dead?”

“It was cold when I came in.”

30“Well, well, have it removed. She will never come to with that freezing her to the heart.”

“And the other baby?” questioned the nurse, anxiously.

“Give it to one of these women to nurse, till something can be done; and order two coffins. They mustn’t lie here, or we shall have a panic among the patients.”

The nurse made an effort to take the child once more from its mother’s arms; but, for the first time, she seemed nervous and reluctant to touch the dead. The doctor startled her, saying impatiently,—

“There, be quick, or the woman will die! That will do—now let me see if anything can put life into her? Poor thing, poor thing! It’s a pity the baby is dead—but then what chance has an orphan in this world?—better dead, if she could only be brought to think so!”

While he was talking, the nurse bent suddenly to the floor and snatched up a small, silken bag, which, suspended by a braid chain, had been torn from the invalid’s neck when the babe was first removed from her arms. The doctor turned his eyes that way.

“I am always dropping this pin-cushion from my side!” she said, hurriedly, gathering up the chain in her hand; “there is no keeping any thing in its place.”

“Don’t stop for such nonsense,” cried the physician, impatiently, “or the woman will die under our hands.”

The nurse thrust the silken chain and its appendage into her bosom, and began in earnest to render assistance.

CHAPTER II. MARY MARGARET DILLON.

The poor young creature was aroused at length from the chill torpor that had seized upon her; but she awoke to a hot flush of fever, raving with pathetic wildness of a thousand things which no one comprehended—of a husband that had left her in the depths of trouble, of the child that she fancied herself clasping, and of the nurse who seemed forever and ever over her bed, as she persisted in thinking, like a great, black statue that had chilled her heart to death beneath its shadow. Thus she raved and muttered, while the fever kindled wilder and hotter within her veins, and her eyes grew star-like in their glittering brightness.

Hour after hour she kept up these mental wanderings, and then sunk away again.

Meantime the nurse had been very restless under the doctor’s eye, and negligent beyond anything known of her before when he was away. But for the kindly interposition of a convalescent patient in the ward, the poor invalid must have perished from inattention, if not from positive violations of all medical rules.

The woman of whom we speak was a plump, wholesome, little Irish dame, with the freshest face and warmest heart that ever looked poverty in the face.

She had entered the hospital quietly, and grateful for the asylum thus provided for her in time of need. In the depths of winter, with three little children “to the fore,” as she said, and the husband without a hand’s turn of work, what had she to do eating up the bread that was but half enough to keep the hunger from so many clamorous mouths. Why shouldn’t she take herself to the hospital thankfully, 32while the good man—for want of better work—minded the childer at home?

Mary Margaret Dillon had no pride in the matter, not she. Bellevue, in her estimation, belonged to the people. John possesses a right to vote among the sovereigns and had paid taxes, for which his landlord took the credit, in the shape of exorbitant rents for the last ten years. Thus he had secured, as she considered it, a lien upon at least one humble straw bed in the hospital, and of that she took possession with as little feeling of humiliation as beset Victoria when she mounted the throne of England.

When the scene we have just described happened, Mary Margaret, who had neither lost her roses nor her cheerfulness, was sitting upon the side of her cot, striving with her active little hands to remedy the fit of a scant calico dress in which her fourth born was arrayed. As she sat thus, smiling fondly upon the infant, and finding a world of beauty in its plump face and tiny red hands, the buxom mother would have made a capital model for one of Rubens’s Madonnas.

“Isn’t it a darlint?” she murmured, touching each velvet cheek daintily with the tip of her finger, pursing up her lips and emitting a succession of audible kisses upon the air, the sound of which almost brought the first smiles to her baby’s mouth.

“Isn’t it a wonder and a beauty, with its diamond black eyes and ilegant hair, like his father before him?” she continued, stretching the little fellow across her lap, and striving to cover the tiny feet that would peep out from beneath the coarse dress, by two or three vigorous pulls at the skirt. “Won’t the children be dancing with joy when they get us home again; and John, faix! but he’ll never grumble that there’s another mouth to fill—barring the year when it’s in arms, poor crathur—for the blessed Virgin that sent the baby’ll find work for us long before it’ll have teeth for the praties, sure.”

Thus the good woman and unconscious philosopher muttered 33to herself, as she sought to redeem her babe from the unbecoming effects of his pauper dress—smoothing its silken hair with the tips of her fingers; and coaxing it to smile with kisses and gentle touches of the cheek between whiles, she continued her murmurs of gentle fondness, happy as a mother bird upon her nest.

She had tied the awkward sleeves back from its shoulders with knots of faded pink ribbon, taken from her own cap, and was holding it at arm’s length with a broad smile of triumph, when the nurse passed the cot with her checkered apron folded over some object that she held to her bosom.

“What have ye there, Misses Kelly, saving yer prisence?” inquired Mary Margaret, holding her baby poised in mid-air, and turning her kindly eyes upon the nurse. “It isn’t dead, sure?”

“She is,” answered the nurse, nodding her head toward the cot.

Mary Margaret held her breath, and tears stole to her eyes as she stood up, trembling beneath the weight of her infant—for she was still very feeble—and looked toward the pale face of the dead.

“And the poor, young crathur in the cot alongside, what has happened to her?” inquired Mary Margaret.

“She’s as good as dead, don’t you hear how she raves? Mutter—mutter, she hasn’t strength for more: all the doctors on earth couldn’t save her.”

“And her baby?” asked Mary Margaret, filled with compassion, and hugging her own child fondly to her bosom.

“Oh? that’s yonder by the dead woman, cold as she is!”

Mary Margaret held her child closer, and the tears streamed down her face.

“Give me a look at the motherless crathur,” she said, laying her child upon the cot, and reaching forth her arms.

The nurse hesitated an instant, and then flung back her apron from the face of the infant.

34“Poor thing, poor thing, how deathly it looks! what great, wild eyes! How it stares at one!” exclaimed Mary Margaret, half sobbing.

“It’s half starved,” answered the nurse, looking down upon her burden with a callous smile; “it won’t feed. To-night will see the end on’t.”

Mary Margaret glanced at her own sleeping child, and then turned her brimming eyes upon the other.

“Give it here,” she said, “there’s enough for both—give him here.”

The nurse frowned and drew up her apron.

“The doctor must settle that. It’s not my business, Mrs. Dillon,” she said, harshly.

“The doctor! Well, where is he? Be quick and ask him, or let me.”

“When he comes in the morning will be time enough,” answered the nurse, preparing to move on.

“The morning! Why, the poor crathur’ll be gone afore that,” persisted the kind woman, stepping a pace forward, and supporting herself with difficulty. “Let me have it, I say!”

The nurse jerked her arm from the feeble grasp laid upon it, and harshly bade the woman return to her bed and mind her own business.

Mary Margaret tottered back and sat down upon the foot of her couch.

“It’ll die, it’ll die afore the blessed day is over,” she muttered, sadly, for her maternal heart ached over the orphan. “Arrah, if the doctor was only to the fore!”

She ended this piteous exclamation with a joyful outburst.

“The saints be praised, here he is, welcome as cowslips in spring!” and regardless of her feeble state, she arose and stood ready to address the doctor, as he came down the ward.

The nurse uttered a sharp exclamation, in which an oath was but half smothered, and advancing fiercely toward the 35cot, flung the famished child down by the sleeping babe of Mary Margaret.

“There, take the brat!” she said, with an unnatural laugh. “I meant that you should nurse it all the time, if you hadn’t teased one’s life out about it.”

Mary Margaret did not answer; her limbs were trembling like aspens, and she sunk upon the cot overpowered with fatigue. Drawing the little stranger softly to her bosom, she pressed it gently there, felt the thrill of its eager lips, and drawing a deep breath of satisfaction, watched its great eyes turned upon her own, till, as if struck by the same mesmeric influence, the woman and the infant slumbered together.

It was a sweet picture of helplessness and charity, a noble proof that no human being can find a place so humble upon this earth, that some good to others may not be wrought out of it.

As the woman and children lay thus, buried in that gentle sleep which sometimes falls like dew after a good action, the lifeless young creature was lifted from her pauper death-bed, and carried forth to be stretched in the still more poverty-stricken pine coffin. Then the marble form of the infant was carelessly carried after, and that bereaved mother followed it with her wild, bright eyes, and laughed as the door closed.

CHAPTER III. THE HOSPITAL NURSE.

Late in the evening, the hospital nurse, who had been an evil actor in the scene we have just described, stood, with a smoking lamp in her hand, in a closet or store-room 36where the patient’s garments were kept. From one of the shelves she took a bundle tied up in a coarse woollen shawl, and drew forth a long merino cloak that had evidently found its origin in old Ireland. She folded the cloak cautiously around her, and selecting a bonnet from a score or two that filled a side press, she tied a green veil closely over it. Then she extinguished her lamp, finding her way out by the glow of its smouldering wick, and leaving a cloud of offensive smoke to deepen the already unpleasant atmosphere of the room.