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Page 72
That was what the Public did for me that night. I was safe again!
CHAPTER LAST.
FAUSTA'S STORY.
Fausta slept late, poor child. I called for her before breakfast. I
waited for her after. About ten she appeared, so radiant, so beautiful,
and so kind! The trunk had revealed a dress I never saw before, and the
sense of rest, and eternal security, and unbroken love had revealed a
charm which was never there to see before. She was dressed for walking,
and, as she met me, said,--
"Time for constitutional, Mr. Millionnaire."
So we walked again, quite up town, almost to the region of pig-pens and
cabbage-gardens which is now the Central Park. And after just the first
gush of my enthusiasm, Fausta said, very seriously:--
"I must teach you to be grave. You do not know whom you are asking to be
your wife. Excepting Mrs. Mason, No. 27 Thirty-fourth Street, sir, there
is no one in the world who is of kin to me, and she does not care for me
one straw, Felix," she said, almost sadly now. "You call yourself 'Child
of the Public.' I started when you first said so, for that is just what
I am.
"I am twenty-two years old. My father died before I was born. My mother,
a poor woman, disliked by his relatives and avoided by them, went to
live in Hoboken over there, with me. How she lived, God knows, but it
happened that of a strange death she died, I in her arms."
After a pause, the poor girl went on:--
"There was a great military review, an encampment. She was tempted out
to see it. Of a sudden by some mistake, a ramrod was fired from a
careless soldier's gun, and it pierced her through her heart. I tell
you, Felix, it pinned my baby frock into the wound, so that they could
not part me from her till it was cut away.
"Of course every one was filled with horror. Nobody claimed poor me, the
baby. But the battalion, the Montgomery Battalion, it was, which had, by
mischance, killed my mother, adopted me as their child. I was voted
'Fille du Regiment.' They paid an assessment annually, which the colonel
expended for me. A kind old woman nursed me."
"She was your Betsy Myers," interrupted I.
"And when I was old enough I was sent into Connecticut, to the best of
schools. This lasted till I was sixteen. Fortunately for me, perhaps,
the Montgomery Battalion then dissolved. I was finding it hard to answer
the colonel's annual letters. I had my living to earn,--it was best I
should earn it. I declined a proposal to go out as a missionary. I had
no call. I answered one of Miss Beecher's appeals for Western teachers.
Most of my life since has been a school-ma'am's. It has had ups and
downs. But I have always been proud that the Public was my godfather;
and, as you know," she said, "I have trusted the Public well. I have
never been lonely, wherever I went. I tried to make myself of use. Where
I was of use I found society. The ministers have been kind to me. I
always offered my services in the Sunday schools and sewing-rooms. The
school committees have been kind to me. They are the Public's high
chamberlains for poor girls. I have written for the journals. I won one
of Sartain's hundred-dollar prizes--"
"And I another," interrupted I.
"When I was very poor, I won the first prize for an essay on bad boys."
"And I the second," answered I.
"I think I know one bad boy better than he knows himself," said she. But
she went on. "I watched with this poor Miss Stillingfleet the night she
died. This absurd 'distribution' had got hold of her, and she would not
be satisfied till she had transferred that strange ticket, No. 2,973, to
me, writing the indorsement which you have heard. I had had a longing to
visit New York and Hoboken again. This ticket seemed to me to beckon me.
I had money enough to come, if I would come cheaply. I wrote to my
father's business partner, and enclosed a note to his only sister. She
is Mrs. Mason. She asked me, coldly enough, to her house. Old Mr. Grills
always liked me,--he offered me escort and passage as far as Troy or
Albany. I accepted his proposal, and you know the rest."
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