219

WITCH'S GOLD.

By Ellia W Peattie

A Story in Three Parts

Part II.

Mrs. Romeld was not particularly surprised when her husband reephoned that he would not be able to come home to dinner. She didn't even take the trouble to admit herself that it might be something else than business that kept him. What was the use? Sespicion makes such ugly lines in a woman's face!

It's a great comfort to have the latest novels at hand under such circumstance-curcimstances of the sort whose bitterness lies largely in the fact that you dare not even recoginze the existence of the trouble that harasses you. By getting drunk on mimic woes one manages to forget the actual ones. Mrs. Romeld, who, in her way, was something of a philosopher, selected her novel and read till dinner was served. Then she ate heartly and ordered her carriage for 7. She didn't know where she was going. She was acquainted with every inch of the bolevards. She could have told you where each tree stood along the drives of the parks.And it was preposterouse, anyway, for a woman to go out driving at 7, in midsummer, and alone. If the househad not been so intolerably quiet, she would never have done it. Sometimes, as this hour, she wondered who it would seem to have a aittle child to cary ip the stairs in one's arms, and put to bed. She thought of it this night, and paused, as she went out of her little upstairs sitting room, to imagine how that farthest corner would look with a cradle in it. But if the thought awoke a tenderness in her face, it was gone when she remebered her loneliness, and the business that so frequently kept her husband from spending an evening with her, and she walked down the states with the look of calm and seet hauteur which was habitual to her.

The carriage seemed unusually luxrious. She sank back in it, and rested her hands in her lap, letting the cool evening air soothe her body. But after they had ridden a few blocks along the avenue, she gave the coachman an order that made him froget himself so far as to stare at her for a moment. It was only for a moment or less. Then he turned his horses' heads in another direction, and in twenty minutes they were driving along North Market stree.

It's an odd thing, but LaSalle street, on the north side of Chicago, divdes the proietariet from the aristocrat, as sharply as the mandate of a [c?ar] had put a wall around the ghetto. Claribel looked at the houses tht lined the street with intense curiosity. They were comforable, in a way and moder, and perhaps even convenient. They seemed generally to be clean. But there was something about the aspect of them, and of the way the somen sat on the steps, and the children swarmed, and the men sat about in their shirt sleeves, that suggested tool, and its environment in a way that it had never been suggested before to this woman. The night was growing very sultry, and evil smells came up from the sewers, and from the garbage boxes, and the green grocery stoire. The flies buxzed tumutusly about the meat makers- the cries of the children rent the air- and the dinon the street was incessant. All the [es???] stood open, and a hot flare of light came out from them. There was a dog fight on the block , and some boys playing at flaticuffs in another an calling each other indecent names.

The women looked hot and irritable-except the young ones who walked up and down the city street as if it were a shady lane, with their arms locked, making much ado with their conversation, and laughing a great deal. Their dresses were apt to be too short in the skirt, or a trifle too low in the neck. There was a sort of innocent suggestiveness about them-a passionate aspiration toward beauty, checked and defeated in the very nature but the men who sat on the door steps and the girls took these remarks as their natural right, and seemed pleased, and passed on still laughing and embracing each other.

Among these groups of lounging girls Mrs. Romeld saw one woman walking with a quick and nervouse step. The poise of the head looked familiar. And a moment later as the woman walked under the elctric glove, her white hair showed her to be "86" She turned into a drug store, and Claribel Romeld signaled the driver of her carriage to let her out. A sense of impending pain choked her, but she went bravely forward though perhaps it was one of the most disafreeable things she had ever forced herself to do in her life- and laid her hand on team of " 86"

" Is some member of your family [??]?" she asked. Your remember me, of course"

"Yes I remember you, Mrs. Romeld. My sister is ill, thank you."

"Not seriously so, I"

"She is dying."

"86" looked at the woman before her as she had done once before that day.

"Then," said Mrs. Romeld gently, "you must let me go home with you."

" You cannot do any good. It would worry my sister. We have only one room. She would be excited if she saw you. The pleasure it would give you would not make up for the harm it would do to her.

"The pleasure it would give me"

"Yes, It gives a womn like pleasure to think that she is being kind-that she is visiting the slume and putting her white hand on the forehead of a dying woman."

"That is a very strage thing to say to me!"

"Oh, I don't know. I don't feel like apologizing. You have so many pleasures, that you can fet slong without this one. It is very pretty to place at being a benefactor, but I should have to pay too high a price for your pleasure that time. You see, we-sister and I- have paid for so many of your plesures."

The prescription had been filled, and the druggeist handed "86" her bottle of medicine. She paid for it an dnodded good night to Mrs. Romeid. Claribel stepped before her iwth an air of positiveness which astonished "86."

"I am going to drive you home," she said in a commanding way, "I am going to see your sister. I am going to knowjust what you mean. If I am to be accused of wrong doing I will find out the nature of it. I do not propse to be robbed of my slef-respect at your mere say so. You ought to let me defend myself.

"86" stopped and smiled, a slow and beautiful smile. A light came into her gray eyes.

"Well" she exclaimed, "I never expected this. Come on then. I will ride in your carriage, and you shall have the pleasure of being benevoient may sister. You shall know why I accuse you, and what I accuse you of."

They seated themselves in the carriage and the directions were given- there was not far to go.

"First, what is your name?"

"86."
"Do you think that is being fair? i never called your "86" I am not responsible for a sustem I never heard of till today."

"My name is Cecillia O'Grady."

"How long have you worked for my husband?"

"Ten years. My sister has worked six. She has consumption, She worked in the snuff room.. Her wages barely enagbled her to l ive. The say she was taken sick her wages stopped. I hace been trying to earn enough for two. I have not succeeded. If I Have been beautiful I would have got enough some way. But I am not beauriful, and so I am still decent as women say. Besides, Elizabeth, believes in heavenly rewards. She didn't want me to do anything that would keep us apart in the future. I have sold what few things we had to see. But the worst of it is there is nothing left to get money on."

The carriage made a frightfil clatter over the pavement, but "86" made herself heard wasly above it all. Her gray eyes never left Mrs. Romeld's face. They were accusing eyes, but Claribel did not shirnk under them. She looked back with a candid friendly glance.

The carrige stopped at a red brick tenerment.

"86" smiled almost trumphantly as she led the way up the dirsty stairs and the odors of many different dinners came our of the apartment to dismay their nostrills. Her room was at the vack of the third floor- a large, not untidy room, with a bed standing in the middley where it could get all the air in circulation. A tall iron lamp of a beautiful shape stoond near the bed with a light burning dimly in it. Its gleam showed a face most frightfully pinched, lying back on the pillow, and two emanciated hands clapsed above the cropped hair.

Had the picture been arranged fro her coming, it could not have been more spectacular, Claribel thought. Cevlia went softly to the bed, and took the girl's hands.

"I am not alone," she said caresingly- it seemed almost impossible that she was the same woman who had been shrieking out about the roar of the street a few moments before- "I have a woman with me-Mrs. Romeld, the wife of the man you worked for. She wanted to come and so I let her."

Mrs. Romeld moved forward in her gracious way.

"It is a very warm night for you, lying there in bed," she said gently. "I hopw you are not feeling very uncomfrable."

The dying girl did not answer at all, but stared at Mrs. Romeld with her terrible eyes. There was a silence that becarne distressing last. The girl's eyes were so fatally fixed!

"Do you think she is conscious?" whispered Mrs. Romeld to "86."

Suddenly the two women spranf forward together. A swift gray shadow had spread from brow to cin on the dying girl. Her horribly thin arms shot out once conyulsivelyand were still.

"My God!" cried Claibel, rushing to the window and trying to force the sash open wide. But it was open so far as it would go. She reached back to the bed and lifted the miserable little form in her arms. The breath had goen from it. So she laid her down and straightened out the limbs instinctively-not that she had ever done it before, or meen it done. But it seemed the respectful things to do. "86" stood molloniess, starting at the figure of her sister. Then suddenly she threw up her hands and a cry burst from her throat.

"Now!" she cried, "now, Mrs, Romaid! You can see for yourself! And you didn't have a chance to be kind to her afterall. You cannot remember that!! You can only remember that you came here in time to see her die-the woman who made your money for you. She WAS your money, She was the material out of which it was made. Don't you know it is our of human labor that fortunes are made? Your husband will tell you so, anyday. Well, she made the dress on your back, and the rings on your fingers, and those silk stockings on your feet! She, whose poor feet have been so rired, and gone with such poor shoes! She had brains as good as yuor own, very likely. She was just as good to look at in the face, once. She was just as well worth loving. She was just as well born. There was nothing that matter with her in anyway, except that she became one of the emplayed. She was born to be hired. She gave up school for it first, to help her mother. And now she has given up life for it. She might have been the mistress of a dozen men, who would have taken care of her for a little while. And once we actaully talked it over. But she couldn't do it. So there she is dead! And YOU have her body-Mrs. Romeld. That strength and youth wich you think are are yours are rally bers. They were taken form her-sucked from her. You don't look like a vampirem you are one. The vacations she earned you had. The buletness and rest the good victuals and fine clothed the books and travel that you had, she earned for you-she and others like her. And I'm very glad that she died just when she did, and that you didn't have the chance to be kind to her. It would have been so hateful if some little cheap kindness on your part would have scamed to make up for all that you have cheated her out of."

Claribel stood listening with her head up a little smile on her lips. This was the most terrible experience of her life. She had never before been in a situation that required courage. She needed courage now of a physical as well as a moral sort for the women who was haranguing her was losing control of herself. Her breath was coming between herself. Her breath was coming between her teth in gusty sobs; her white hair had been torn down when she wrenched her had from her head, and it hung about her young, avenging face: her hands were working with hate or nervousness. But Claribel stood arid amiled with her head up. Suddenly she tuned and walked toward the door.

"Well" cried "86" tauntingly, "now do you know of what you are accused." Claribel turned once more and said softly:

"Yes, I know. But I do not know whether or not I am guilty. I would like to ask a favor of you-I would like to ask a facor of you-I would like to give your slater a fitting burial. May I?

"She will have a fitting burial, medam. I prefer that she should be buried in the potter's field. It is fitting as you say."

Claribel suddenly felt her pride and antagonism desrt her. She wanted to rush forward and snatch the miserable girl to her breast. She watned to show tenderness toward the dead girl. "86" read her inention in her eyes.

"No, thank you" sje said meeringly, "Do not think a few tears can bring back your good opinion of yourself. It is too late for tears. I am not going to let you cry on my neck, Mrs. Romeld. But I must say before you go, that you're braver than I thought any woman of your sort would ever be. You're much too fine a woman to be a vampire. I guess you know now what I have accused you of. And perhaps you'd better fo home and thnk it over. Never mind stopping to cry over me and my poor, dear"

Her voice broke, and the storm of tears could no longer be kept in check. But for one second longer she shit her teeth on her grief, and pushed her visitor gently but imperativley from the room. Then Claribel, standing outside, heard such groans of anguish as she did not knwo a moral could make except in access of physical pain. SHe listened for a moment, and then ran swiftly down the steps to her carriage.