Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1884 — ONLY A MAID-OF-ALL-WORK. [ARTICLE]

ONLY A MAID-OF-ALL-WORK.

“Even the dock seems to tick faster, as if harrying to make np for lost time,” she aaid to herself as she re-folded the telegram announcing her brother’s arrival in New York i The ticking seemed loader, clearer, than it ever sonnded before, she thought, as her eyes rested on the clock, and noted the apparent rapidity with which the minntes separating her fr ( om her brother were measured off. The house seemed so silent, too; or was the stillness broken at intervals by the clang of the mills mere fancy? The summer air blew in through the open door, tossed half a dozen withered leaves from the vine through the window, then lifted a paper lying on the table near her. She grasped it quickly, sighed, and said: “Thanks lie to God, he’s "well over, anyhow. He sailed on the eighth—and here it’s only the eighteenth, and me allowing twelve days at the lowest! Sure they couldn’t do much better than that if they built a bridge over the ocean. He’ll be here before I have everything ready for him.” She looked at the clock again in an absent-minded way. It was plain her mind was not upon her work. For that matter, the bulk of her day’s work was done. The room was clean; everything was in its plaoe. The maid-of-all-work was enjoying a “breathing spell.” When the messenger boy came with the telegram she was making curious marks on a piece of paper, the paper she now held in her hand as she looked at the dock, as though noting the flight of the hours that divided her from her brother. “I wonder what he is like now?” she asked herself. Like people who scrutinized an unexpected letter, examining the post-mark, date of reception, and chirography, speculating upon the writer, she indulged the pleasures of anticipation. “It was on a day much

like this I left B&nbridge. The grass was green—far greener than it is here —anyway, there’s no sucli dirt as we have here, Will I ever see such a rlcv again? Jamie was a bit of a gossoon that oared no more for the next day than the wind that tossed his ctirly hair. He was the worst —and the Brightest lad in the school. He scarcely sat still long enough to find the place in his kook, the master told me, and he stood at the head of his class. No thanks and no credit to him, as Dr. Low said more than once, for it cost him no trouble at all. He’ll be a head taller than me at least, if he takes after the Sloan’s side of the house. He’ll be six feet, maybe.” She marked a spot on the side of the door, smiling onrionsly, walked back and looked at it. “That’s about the height Tm to look up to all my life, I suppose. John reaches there, and if my brother is as tall—but what odds whether he is short or tall. It's all one—only he might have told me. It’s a grand secret he has made of it everywhere. And he'll be here to-morrow. She looked across the river at the hilltops, where quiet stretches of farmland lay in the broad, warm sunlight; at the columns of smoke vomited from the great chimneys near, and which sometimes shut out the beautiful landscape, darkening the skr. Then again she was recalled to herself by the silence of the house. Where were the children? She looked out. of the window. At a considerable distance from the house, something that might be a child’s-head or a dog was moving back of a log. Then another object appeared and disappeared, but the instant of time sufficed to satisfy tlie maid-of-all-work. The children were playing in the open field near the konse. Bnt where was the nurse? Strolling a long distance from the little heads that were bobbing up and down between the logs that were scattered over the open field. Nelly Moore observed a familiar figure; beside her, moving an arm as though he were switching the air with a cane, was another form almost as familiar. The nurse evidently was proud of her conquest It was not every girl in her sphere who could boast a lover who carried a cane. The maid-of-all-work turned back from the window,-renewed the fire in the range, and sat down at the table with the paper she still held in her . hand. Producing a piece of lead pencil aa long as one’s finger, she bent over the peper. i And she drew curions lines upon the paper, her thoughts ran thiswise: “The new suit, the cravat, gloves, hat and boots must wait Jamie’s coming. So long as the main thing—the monev—is provided, I’m noways uneasy. There’s enough and to spare —it’ll be my lookout to set him off so that no one'will call him a ‘Paddy,’— although there’s no disgrace in it—only when one cornea among strangers there’s nothing loet by putting the best , foot foremost. Many a pain and ache I would have been saved these seven years pest if somebody had thought for and

provided for me beforehand. I hope Jamie will never experience what I’ve endured, and nobody any tho wiser. There?" lookibg sideways it the paper covered with, curious marks and lines •rossing each other. “That’ll be Mower’s mills up there by the dam. I think I've not got it too neta Drexel’s mills. He’ll never lose himself once lie is in Bight of either. That's tho short side of the city, too. If hell get Fenn avenue set fairly in bis mind, the long side will be as easy to learn. But I must , make the near out plain—the near cut across to the South side. And the bridges—that'll be all that's needed. There’s not a mill left out.” I‘tNelly!” a voice cried at that moment. It was Mrs. Britt, who stood on the landing. “Yes, ma’am.” “Where are Mary and the children 1” , “In the open lot.” - “Is Mary with them?—the fence is down notv, and they must not be allowed to go near the railroad. Toll her to be very careful. lam going to my room and must not be disturbed.” Mrs. Britt spoke like a woman accustomed to implicit obedience. Mrs, Britt, a well-meaning woman who had never experienced hardship nor misfortune -one of those people who are born to ease and plenty, and accept them as a matter of course rather than as blessings—sat down before her escritoire, waiting for the inspiration which experience justified her in assuming nine times out of ten was belated ere it reached her pen. The best incidents, the extraordinary coincidences and dramatic situations were always worked out by other people. In her leisure she had written many verses—performances that occupied her time, were admired by her friends and dreaded by the editors of the daily papers of Gritsburgh more than a competitor’s proposition to compare circulation. Unfortunately for Mrs. Britt and the editors, two or three of these performances got into print, and ever after they were compelled to do penance, Mrs. Britt’s life was as placid as a pool of water in a prairie, but like many whose lives are barren of incident, she was forever in quest of the intense; her disrelish of the common-plaqe was so great that she was in the habit of declaring “it positively amounted to disgust.” Time and again she began intensely thrilling poems and stories, but she never got farther than five or six verses or as far as the middle of the first chapter. Fragments of these performances littered her escritoire and amused her husband. Of the tragedies enacted every day about her, she had no conception. She sought incidents in the now’ West, in flood and battlefield and in the wake of lost steamers. The drudgery of every day life could not supply her with heroism. Mrs. Britt had at last found a thrilling situation. All it required was good management. There was the great steamer with its machinery disabled, signal guns firing, a treriiendons cliff within biscuit-throw of the steamer, the steamer pounding on the rocks, and breakers foaming all around the hepless passengers. It required some dexterity to reach this point and extricate the half-dozen passengers essential to Mrs. Britt’s story after committing the remainder to the waves. Down stairs Nelly Moore was making strange lines and marks on the paper that occupied her attention. Mr. Britt, who was employed in a large factory near at hand, “rim in a moment to see how they were doing,” and to satisfy the inner man with a piece of pio and a glass of milk. He was in the habit of popping in and out unannounced. As he returned to the factory a vision of a curly head, laughing, mischievous eyes, and blue stockings—stockings that seemed to twinkle in the sunlight, as his youngest, Benny, scampered from log to log, scrambling up and down with his brother Oscar and his sister Grace in his wake—rose before him. The first chapter of Mrs. Britt’s new story was half completed, when the loud, shrill and unusually prolonged whistle of a locomotive attracted her attention. She glanced carelessly, aimlessly out of her window. The noon express was thundering around a curve near the open lot where her children were at play half an hour ago. Here and there a head was thrust out of a car window. A cry of warning, a piercing cry, followed by others, as shrill and sharp caused Mrs. Britt to rise and advance to the window. Then suddenly Mrs. Britt’s pulses seemed to stop, j her heart swelled as if it would burst. Ghe strove to cry out, but her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. There, fair in the path of the rushing locomotive, standing motionless as though paralyzed with fright, stood her baby bov, Benny. Sky and earth were blurred together, as Mrs. Britt fainted dead away. The open lot was not large enough for Benny. His venturesome little legs had marked out new territory beyond the fence-line; beyond the railway, up nearer the hillside. While the nurse was listening to The soft nonsense which fiowed from a loiterer's tongue, Oscar and Grace heedlessly pursued Benny on the new ground. When the train swept round the curve the nurse was nowhere to be seen. The eldest children were on one side of the track, Benny on the other. Benny started to meet his birother and sister; Grace was endeavoring to reach him when Oscar held her firmly, shouting to Benny to run back. So Benny stood dazed in the middle of the track while the locomotive swooped down upon him. Nelly Moore was smiling in a selfsatisfied way over the bit of paper with the curious marks and enrves on it, when the prolonged whistle of the locomotive attracted her attention likewise. She looked quickly across the vacant lot. It was deserted. Then she described the children on tlie hillside » "I’ll save the child if I die for it!” she exclaimed between her set teeth as she sped across the open lot, » Those who witnessed her subsequent actions from a distance averred they never beheld.mortal lessen distance as rapidly as sdlv Moore irfltlist mad race for a human life. Men at a> distance dbouted warningly. Passengers'on the train seeing people dn the streets making motions, craned their necks out of car windowa. - .

The supreme mom'ent in the life of Nelly Moote presented itself tliemand there. Sho realized that the chances were against her ; that in all probability one, perhaps both, Would be killed. If she had time to grasp and throw little Benny from the path of-the locomotive, its cruel wheels would grind her remorselessly. How often had she shuddered at spectacles presented near that spot? Th? laws of a great State, powerful and far-reaching though they were, were not as powerful as the railway lobby that exempted the great corporation from the outlay necessary to the erection an maintenance of that simplest form of preventive —an enclosure. The corporation plowed its wny through flesh and blood as if they were things of less moment than the machinery that mangled ( human forms beyong recognition. The passengers looking out, and the witnesses on the street turned shudderingly away as Nelly Moore sprang upon the railway and tossed the child far from it. The many wheels revolving stopped W’ith a grating sound, and a score of men rushed to the spot where the maid-of-all-work lay writhing and gasping in a heap. “I’m next death’s door—take me home,” she gasped when they lifted her tenderly. “I would never have belaved that, sur, if I had not seen it with my own eyes,” said a fine-looking, straightlimbed young fellow, whose dress and accent indicated the new-come Irishman. He was visibly affected. His voice trembled. He did not attempt to restrain his tears as be looked after the group bearing Nelly to her mistress’ residence. “What did you say her name is?” to a lad standing near, who was talking with the volubility of youth to those around him.

“All aboard!” the conductor shouted as lie walked leisurely toward a platform. The young Irishman looked at the motionless train, turned again to tlie group of horror-stricken people near, and again askedr “ What jiame did you say, my lad ?” “Nelly Moore. She lives with Britts over there, and—” The man’s strong hand grasped the boy’s arm w’ith a vise-like grip as lie bent over him. His lips were drawn, his face ashy pale, his eyes staring wildly, as he exclaimed: “It can never be—it is not possible—there’s some awlul mistake, my lad— I—” His features worked convulsively, liis grasp relaxed as he staggered back, and James Moore, who had never known either sickness or fear, swooned, and would have fallen had not a friendly hand caught him in time. When he regained consciousness he said: “Take me to her. If there’s life in her, she will remember her brother, Jamie. The merciful God will not let her die without .seeing—without speaking to me." But Nellie Moore to all appearance had loooked her last on things earthly. She was groping feebly, very feebly in the night which precedes death. Perhaps the morning would never dawn again for her. When James Moore sat down beside her, he lifted her unmaimed hand to his lips, kissed it through blinding tears, stroked it gently, and with streaming eyes said: “Aye, this is the hand that worked and slaved to pay for my schooling; that gave me all I ever had; that paid my way over, when I was running over the meadows, and dabbling in the burn, this hand wrought hard, bearing my burden, sparing me all the sharp corners. She might have saved her earnings—put them in bank—she might have done like thousands before her—married and made a home for herself, and no one would have said she did not do her duty. But she never thought of herself. She was not content until I was sohooled—made fit for the new country. ‘When you come, Jamie,’she wrote me, ‘I want you to surprise the Americans extractin’ the cube root, you talk about. Don’t come,’ she w’rote, ‘till I send for you. I’ll be sure to send in good time.’ She wrote me the names of the coin—and the curious Words a poor stranger like me would never make out at all. There was nothing she did not think of; no task too heavy for her. And I was io repay her four-fold some day. That was her way of putting it- She would have a double pleasnre—the pleasure of helping me, and of getting her own back with interest when I was sure of my footing.” He stroked the cold, nerveless hand that lay limp in his own; softly, now, with dry eyes, kissed it again ap'd again, and, kneeling down beside her, bowed his head in prayer. Through the long night he knelt beside her. When the attendants looked in upon this picture—the brother kneeling beside the sister he bad traveled thousands of miles joyously to meet — when they saw his haggard face and burning eyes, they stole softly out again. Mrs. Britt, who was prostrated throughout the night, was up betimes in the morning. As she flung open her window’ shutters and looked out on the reddening sky, the sound of a voice beneath her arrested her attention. It was she brother's voice praving for his only sister. Mrs. Britt stole softly to the*side of tlie crib where Benny and Oscar lay with arms and bending over, kissed first one, then the other. Then she descended to the living room. The disorder noticeable everywhere reminded her of the dying servant. Nelly's dress—the dress the surgeons removed with a single movement of the scissors, was lying over a chair. Mrs. Britt lifted it mechanically and removed the articles from the pocket. Among other articles was a piece of yellowish, tough paper. A crumpled, * yellow envelope attracted her. A footstep approached at that moment, and her husband looked over her shoulder. . “Why, she most have known he was coming, Oscar. This is the saddest of all” ■ ' Mr. Britt read the telegram slowly. "Poor Nelly—that should have been given to her the evening before. And she got it at noon yesterday. Don’t you see the date here?" His finger gointed to the hour the message was re xsived. “No matter. It is not worth making a fuss over now,” he added sadly, for he appreciated the excellent

qualities of the dying maid-of-all-work. “I will never-never forgive myself,” said Mrs. Britt, sobbing. “If I had even taken the trouble to talk to Nelly of her brother more—if I had Jooked at this dispatch yesterday—who know's? Her lifemight have been saved.” “What is this?” Mr. Britt smoothed out the crumpled paper covered with eccentric lines and curious marks. “It is a rough map of the City. Here are the rivers—the. point—the Court House —and what are these ? !J.’his is really wonderful. ” Mr. Britt looked at his wife wonderingly, who in her turn now examined the paper. “Why, what made the poor girl waste all that time when she could have bought a good map of the city for half a dollar.

“You do not understand it,” said Mr. Britt. “Every mill iu the city is down —every large manufacturing establishment—all the principal points of interest. Plainly this was mnde for her brother—a guide for him. With this in his pocket he could never go astray. He would learn the city thoroughly in a week’s time, or less. The thoughtfulness that girl displayed surpasses everything.” He folded the paper almost reverently, and carefully placed it in his pocket. “I will give this to her brother when she is dead.” The surf was gliding the eastern horizon with its wealth of summer beauties when the watcher fancied he saw the dying girl’s eye-lids move. He bent closer, grasping the hand he had held the livelong night.

“Speak to me, Nelly. Open your eyes that I may see their light before you pass into glory.” Instead of opening her eyes, Nelly startled him by saying very quietly: “Hands off now. ~ Give one a chance. There’s never one of you can beat me across the burn, an’ give me fair play. But no holding back now’. There! I wont run at all. Listen! Hushi Hold yer claverin’. Listen to the lark. Bo quiet, Jamie. See! That’s the sweetest bird ever sung—the bird of birds. See! You-an’ I’ll never be as high as that, Jamie, till we are in the arms o’ she angels.” “You are all gay an’ merry this morn, as if we hadn’t a hard day’s work before you. Well, it’s work ye’ll have without let or stop till ye go to America, where they’ve nothing to do at all, they sav, but eat and drink, and wonder what new dish they’ll have for supper. If I’d a few more years over me, I’d go there myself, and take you along Jamie. “ Witlis! There’s the lame Maguire. Sorra one of him will ever pit a sound fut on the ground again, I’m afeerd. Patience! Look at the sack on bis back. Comenow—who’ll be the first to give him a lift ? Sure there's as much fun in it as in paddlin’ over the burn. Do a good turn when you Can—it costs nothing.” “Now, Jamie— hoot! ain’t ye ashamed to let your sister beat ye runnin’ ? Now’ then. Hold! That’s no fair, Jamie. Come back—come back, an’ take a fair start. I’ll give ye as far as from here to the road—an’ beat ye across the meadow. Come—away now—away, Jamie, an’ no trippin.” And so the spirit of the maid-of-all-work sped heavenwards.— Dav id Lowry, in the Current.