The Fatal Glove by Clara Augusta Jones Trask


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Page 2

Home! It could hardly be called so, and yet it was home to Archer. His
mother was there--the dear mother who was all the world to him. It was in
a poor part of the city--an old, tumble-down wooden house, swarming with
tenants, teeming with misery, filth, and crime.

Up a crazy flight of steps, and turning to the right, Arch saw that the
door of his mother's room was half-way open, and the storm had beaten in
on the floor. It was all damp and dismal, and such an indescribable air
of desolation over anything! Archer's heart beat a little slower as he
went in. His mother sat in an arm-chair by the window, an uncovered box
in her lap, and a miniature locket clasped in her hand.

"Oh, mother! mother dearest!" cried Arch, holding up the flowers, "only
see what I have got! An angel gave them to me! A very angel, with hair
like the sunshine, and a blue frock, all real silk! And I have got my
pocket full of pennies, and you shall have an orange, mother, and ever
so many nice things besides. See, mother dear!"

He displayed a handful of coin, but she did not notice him. He looked at
her through the gloom of the twilight, and a feeling of terrible awe
stole over him. He crept to her side, and touched her cheek with his
finger. It was cold as ice. A mortal pallor overspread his face; the
pennies and the flowers rolled unheeded to the floor.

"Dead! dead! My mother is dead!" he cried.

He did not display any of the passionate grief which is natural to
childhood--there were no tears in his feverish eyes. He took her cold
hand in his own, and stood there all night long, smoothing back the
beautiful hair, and talking to her as one would talk to a sick child.

It was thus that Mat Miller found him the next morning. Mat was a little
older than himself--a street-sweeper also. She and Arch had always been
good friends; they sympathized with each other when bad luck was on them,
and they cheered lustily when fortune smiled.

"Hurrah, Arch!" cried Mat, as she burst into the room; "it rains again,
and we shall get a harvest! Good gracious, Arch! is--your--mother--dead?"

"Hush!" said the boy, putting down the cold hand; "I have been trying to
warm her all night, but it is no use. Only just feel how like ice my
hands are. I wish I was as cold all over, and then they would let me stay
with my mother."

"Oh, Arch!" cried the girl, sinking down beside him on the desolate
hearth, "it's a hard world to live in! I wonder, if, when folks be dead,
they have to sweep crossings, and be kicked and cuffed round by old
grandmas when they don't get no pennies? If they don't then I wish I
was dead, too, Arch!"

"I suppose it's wicked, Mat. _She_ used to say so. She told me never to
get tired of waiting for God's own time--her very words, Mat. Well, now
her time has come, and I am all alone--all alone! Oh, mother--mother!" He
threw himself down before the dead woman, and his form shook with
emotion, but not a tear came to his eyes. Only that hard, stony look
of hopeless despair. Mat crept up to him and took his head in her lap,
smoothing softly the matted chestnut hair.

"Don't take on so, Arch! don't!" she cried the tears running down over
her sunburnt face. "I'll be a mother to ye, Arch! I will indeed! I know
I'm a little brat, but I love you, Arch, and some time, when we get
bigger, I'll marry you, Arch, and we'll live in the country, where
there's birds and flowers, and it's just like the Park all round. Don't
feel so--don't!"

Arch pressed the dirty little hands that fluttered about him--for, next
to his mother, he loved Mat.

"I will go out now and call somebody," she said; "there Mrs. Hill and
Peggy Sullivan, if she ain't drunk. Either of them will come!" And a few
moments later the room was filled with the rude neighbors.

They did not think it necessary to call a coroner. She had been ailing
for a long time. Heart complaint, the physician said--and she had
probably died in one of those spasms to which she was subject. So they
robed her for the grave, and when all was done, Arch stole in and laid
the pinks and roses on her breast.

"Oh, mother! mother!" he said, bending over her, in agony, "she sent them
to you, and you shall have them! I thought they would make you so happy!
Well, maybe they will now! Who can tell?"

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Fri 29th Mar 2024, 11:49