Little Fishers: and their Nets

JOE DECKER gave his chair a noisy shove backward from the table, over the uneven floor, shambled across the space between it and the kitchen door, a look of intense disgust on his face, then stopped for his good-morning speech:

"You may as well know, first as last, that I've sent for Nan. I've stood this kind of thing just exactly as long as I'm going to. There ain't many men, I can tell you, who would have stood it so long. Such a meal as that! Ain't fit for a decent dog!

"Nan is coming in the afternoon stage. There must be some place fixed up for her to sleep in. Understand, now, that has got to be done, and I won't have no words about it."

Then he slammed the door, and went away.

Yes, he was talking to his wife! She could remember the time when he used to linger in the door, talking to her, so many last words to say, and when at last he would turn away with a kind "Well, good-by, Mary! Don't work too hard."

But that seemed ages ago to the poor woman who was left this morning in the wretched little room with the door slammed between her and her husband. She did not look as though she had life enough left to make words about anything. She sat in a limp heap in one of the broken chairs, her bared arms lying between the folds of a soiled and ragged apron.

Not an old woman, yet her hair was gray, and her cheeks were faded, and her eyes looked as though they had not closed in quiet restful sleep for months. She had not combed her hair that morning; and thin and faded as it was, it hung in straggling locks about her face.

I don't suppose you ever saw a kitchen just like that one! It was heated, not only by the fierce sun which streamed in at the two uncurtained eastern windows, but by the big old stove, which could smoke, not only, and throw out an almost unendurable heat on a warm morning like this, when heat was not wanted, but had a way at all times of refusing to heat the oven, and indeed had fits of sullenness when it would not "draw" at all.

This was one of the mornings when the fire had chosen to burn; it had swallowed the legs and back of a rickety chair which the mistress in desperation had stuffed in, when she was waiting for the teakettle to boil, and now that there was nothing to boil, or fry, and no need for heat, the stump of wood, wet by yesterday's rain, had dried itself and chosen to burn.

The west windows opened into a side yard, and the sound of children's voices in angry dispute, and the smell of a pigsty, came in together, and seemed equally discouraging to the wilted woman in the chair.

The sun was already pretty high in the sky, yet the breakfast-table still stood in the middle of the room.

I don't know as I can describe that table to you. It was a square one, unpainted, and stained with something red, and something green, and spotted with grease, and spotted with black, rubbed from endless hot kettles set on it, or else from one kettle set on it endless times; it must have been that way, for now that I think of it, there was but one kettle in that house. No tablecloth covered the stains; there was a cracked plate which held a few crusts of very stale bread, and a teacup about a third full of molasses, in which several flies were struggling. More flies covered the bread crusts, and swam in a little mess of what had been butter, but was now oil, and these were the only signs of food.

It was from this breakfast-table that the man had risen in disgust. You don't wonder? You think it was enough to disgust anybody? That is certainly true, but if the man had only stopped to think that the reason it presented such an appearance was because he had steadily drank up all that ought to have gone on it during the months past, perhaps he would have turned his disgust where it belonged-on himself.

The woman had not tried to eat anything. She had given the best she had to the husband and son, and had left it for them. She was very willing to do so. It seemed to her as though she never could eat another mouthful of anything.

Can you think of her, sitting in that broken chair midway between the table and the stove, the heat from the stove puffing into her face; the heat from the sun pouring full on her back, her straggling hair silvery in the sunlight, her short, faded calico dress frayed about the ankles, her feet showing plainly from the holes of the slippers into which they were thrust, her hands folded about the soiled apron, and such a look of utter hopeless sorrow on her face as cannot be described?

No, I hope you cannot imagine a woman like her, and will never see one to help you paint the picture. And yet I don't know; since there are such women-scores of them, thousands of them-why should you not know about them, and begin now to plan ways of helping them out of these kitchens, and out of these sorrows?

Mrs. Decker rose up presently, and staggered toward the table; a dim idea of trying to clear it off, and put things in something like order, struggled with the faintness she felt. She picked up two plates, sticky with molasses, and having a piece of pork rind on one, and set them into each other. She poured a slop of weak tea from one cracked cup into another cracked cup, her face growing paler the while. Suddenly she clutched at the table, and but for its help, would have fallen. There was just strength enough left to help her back to the rickety chair. Once there, she dropped into the same utterly hopeless position, and though there was no one to listen, spoke her sorrowful thoughts.

"It's no use; I must just give up. I'm done for, and that's the truth! I've been expecting it all along, and now it's come. I couldn't clear up here and get them any dinner, not if he should kill me, and I don't know but that will be the next thing. I've slaved and slaved; if anybody ever tried to do something with nothing, I'm the one; and now I'm done. I've just got to lie down, and stay there, till I die. I wish I could die. If I could do it quick, and be done with it, I wouldn't care how soon; but it would be awful to lie there and see things go on; oh, dear!"

She lifted up her poor bony hands and covered her face with them and shook as though she was crying. But she shed no tears. The truth is, her poor eyes were tired of crying. It was a good while since any tears had come. After a few minutes she went on with her story.

"It isn't enough that we are naked, and half-starved, and things growing worse every day, but now that Nan mast come and make one more torment. 'Fix a place for her to sleep!' Where, I wonder, and what with? It is too much! Flesh and blood can't bear any more. If ever a woman did her best I have, and done it with nothing, and got no thanks for it; now I've got to the end of my rope. If I have strength enough to crawl back into bed, it is all there is left of me."

But for all that, she tried to do something else. Three times she made an effort to clear away the few dirty things on that dirty table, and each time felt the deadly faintness creeping over her, which sent her back frightened to the chair. The children came in, crying, and she tried to untie a string for one, and find a pin for the other; but her fingers trembled so that the knot grew harder, and not even a pin was left for her to give them, and she finally lost all patience with their cross little ways and gave each a slap and an order not to come in the house again that forenoon.

The door was ajar into the most discouraged looking bedroom that you can think of. It was not simply that the bed was unmade; the truth is, the clothes were so ragged that you would have thought they could not be touched without falling to pieces; and they were badly stained and soiled, the print of grimy little hands being all over them. Partly pushed under, out of sight, was a trundle-bed, that, if anything, looked more repulsive than the large one. There was an old barrel in the corner, with a rough board over it, and a chair more rickety than either of those in the kitchen, and this was the only furniture there was in that room.

The only bright thing there was in it was the sunshine, for there was an east window in this room, and the curtain was stretched as high as it could be. To the eyes of the poor tired woman who presently dragged herself into this room, the light and the heat from the sun seemed more than she could bear, and she tugged at the brown paper curtain so fiercely that it tore half across, but she got it down, and then she fell forward among the rags of the bed with a groan.

Poor Mrs. Decker! I wonder if you have not imagined all her sorrowful story without another word from me!

It is such an old story; and it has been told over so many times, that all the children in America know it by heart.

Yes; she was the wife of a drunkard. Not that Joe Decker called himself a drunkard; the most that he ever admitted was that he sometimes took a drop too much! I don't think he had the least idea how many times in a month he reeled home, unable to talk straight, unable to help himself to his wretched bed.

I don't suppose he knew that his brain was never free from the effects of alcohol; but his wife knew it only too well. She knew that he was always cross and sullen now, when he was not fierce, and she knew that this was not his natural disposition. No one need explain to her how alcohol would effect a man's nature; she had watched her husband change from month to month, and she knew that he was growing worse every day.

There was another sorrow in this sad woman's heart. She had one boy who was nearly ten years old, when she married Mr. Decker; and people had said to her often and often, "What a handsome boy you have, Mrs. Lloyd; he ought to have been a girl." And the first time she had felt any particular interest in Joe Decker was when he made her boy a kite, and showed him how to fly it, and gave him one bright evening, such as fathers give their boys. This boy's father had died when he was a baby, and the Widow Lloyd had struggled on alone; caring for him, keeping him neatly dressed, sending him to school as soon as he was old enough, bringing him up in such a way that it was often and often said in the village, "What a nice boy that Norman Lloyd is! A credit to his mother!" And the mother had sat and sewed, in the evenings when Norman was in bed, and thought over the things that fathers could do for boys which mothers could not; and then thought that there were things which mothers could do for girls that fathers could not, and Mr. Joseph Decker, the carpenter, had a little girl, she had been told, only a few years younger than her Norman. And so, when Mr. Decker had made kites, not only, but little sail boats, and once, a little table for Norman to put his school books on, with a drawer in it for his writing-book and pencil, and when he had in many kind and manly ways won her heart, this respectable widow who had for ten years earned her own and her boy's living, married him, and went to keep his home for him, and planned as to the kind and motherly things which she would do for his little girl when she came home.

Alas for plans! She knew, this foolish woman, that Mr. Decker sometimes took a drink of beer with his noon meal, and again at night, perhaps; but she said to herself, "No wonder, poor man; always having to eat his dinner out of a pail! No home, and no woman to see that he had things nice and comfortable. She would risk but what he would stay at home, when he had one to stay in, and like a bit of beefsteak better than the beer, any day."

She had not calculated as to the place which the beer held in his heart. Neither had he. He was astonished to find that it was not easy to give it up, even when Mary wanted him to. He was astonished at first to discover how often he was thirsty with a thirst that nothing but beer would satisfy. I have not time for all the story. The beer was not given up, the habit grew stronger and stronger, and steadily, though at first slowly, the Deckers went down. From being one of the best workmen in town, Mr. Decker dropped down to the level of "Old Joe Decker," whom people would not employ if they could get anybody else. The little girl had never come home save for a short visit; at first the new mother was sorry, then she was glad.

As the days passed, her heart grew heavier and heavier; a horrible fear which was almost a certainty, had now gotten hold of her-that her handsome, manly Norman was going to copy the father she had given him! Poor mother!

I would not, if I could, describe to you all the miseries of that long day! How the mother lay and tossed on that miserable bed, and burned with fever and groaned with pain. How the children quarreled and cried, and ran into mother, and cried again because she could give them no attention, and made up, and ran out again to play, and quarreled again. How the father came home at noon, more under the influence of liquor than he had been in the morning; and swore at the table still standing as he had left it at breakfast time, and swore at his wife for "lying in bed and sulking, instead of doing her work like a decent woman," and swore at his children for crying with hunger; and finally divided what remained of the bread between them, and went off himself to a saloon, where he spent twenty-five cents for his dinner, and fifty cents for liquor. How Norman came home, and looked about the deserted kitchen and empty cupboard, and looked in at his mother, and said he was sorry she had a headache, and sighed, and wished that he had a decent home like other fellows, and wished that a doctor could be found, who didn't want more money than he was worth, to pay him for coming to see a sick woman, and then went to a bakery and bought a loaf of bread, and a piece of cheese, and having munched these, washed them down with several glasses of beer, went back to his work. Meantime, the playing and the quarreling, and the crying, went on outside, and Mrs. Decker continued to sleep her heavy, feverish sleep.

Several times she wakened in a bewilderment of fever and pain, and groaned, and tried to get up, and fell back and groaned again, and lost her misery in another unnaturally heavy sleep, and the day wore away until it was three o'clock in the afternoon. The stages would be due in a few minutes-the one that brought passengers over from the railroad junction a mile away. The children in the yard did not know that one of them was expected to stop at their house; and the father when he came home at noon had been drinking too much liquor to remember it; and Norman had not heard of it, and for his mother's sake would have been too angry to have met it if he had; so Nan was coming home with nobody to welcome her.

If you had seen her sitting at that moment, a trim little maiden in the stage, her face all flushed over the prospect of seeing father, and the rest, in a few minutes, you would not have thought it possible that she could belong to the Decker family.

She had not seen her home in seven years. She had been a little thing of six when she went away with the Marshall family.

It had all come about naturally. Mrs. Marshall was their neighbor, and had known her mother from childhood; and when she died had carried the motherless little girl home with her to stay until Mr. Decker decided what to do; and he was slow in deciding, and Mrs. Marshall had a family of boys, but no little girl, and held the motherless one tenderly for her mother's sake; and when the Marshalls suddenly had an offer of business which made it necessary for them to move to the city, they clung to the little girl, and proposed to Mr. Decker that she should go with them and stay until he had a place for her again.

Apparently he had not found a place for her in all these seven years, for she had never been sent for to come home.

The new wife had wanted her at first, to be mother to her, as she fancied Mr. Decker was going to be father to her boy. But it did not take her very many months to get her eyes open to the thought that perhaps the girl would be better off away from her father; and of late years she had looked on the possible home-coming with positive terror. Her own little ones had nothing to eat, sometimes, save what Norman provided; and if "he"-and by this Mrs. Decker meant her husband; he had ceased to be "Mr. Decker" to her, or "Joseph," or even Joe-if "he" should take a notion to turn against the girl, life would be more terrible to them in every way; and on the other hand, if he should fancy her, and because of her, turn more against the wife, or Norman, what would become of them then?

So the years had passed, and beyond an occasional threat when Joe Decker was at his worst, to "send for Nan right straight off," nothing had been said of her home-coming. The threat had come oftener of late, for Joe Decker had discovered that there was just now nothing that his wife dreaded more than the presence of this step-daughter; and his present manly mood was to do all he could for the discomfort of his wife! That was one of the elevating thoughts which liquor had given him!

Three o'clock. The stages came rattling down the stony road. Few people who lived on this street had much to do with the stage; they could not afford to ride, and they did not belong to the class who had much company.

So when the heavy carriages kept straight on, instead of turning the corner below, it brought a swarm of children from the various dooryards to see who was coming, and where.

"It's stopped at Decker's, as true as I live!" said Mrs. Job Smith, peeping out of her clean pantry window to get a view. "I heard that Joe had sent for little Nan, but I hoped it wasn't true. Poor Nan! if the Marshalls have treated her with any kind of decency, it'll be a dreadful change, and I'm sorry enough for her. Yes, that must be Nan getting out. She's got the very same bright eyes, but she has grown a sight, to be sure!" Which need not have seemed strange to Mrs. Smith, if she had stopped to remember that seven years had passed since Nan went away.

The little woman got down with a brisk step from the stage, and watched her trunk set in the doorway, and got out her red pocket-book, and paid the fare, and then looked about her doubtfully. Could this be home!

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