The Little Hunchback (Part Two) - Mary Tells Her Story

A Second Visit to the Shanty

Rebecca Gordon Ball

One morning shortly after my first visit, I went again to the shanty. This time I found the children quite alone. Little Cathy met me and told me that Aunty had gone somewhere, she did not know where; but she often went away and left them alone, and that sometimes they were very cold and hungry, and that when Aunty came home, if she had the “staggers,” she would beat them O’ so hard.

“Well, but, Cathy, said I, “don’t you remember you told me, some time ago, that the old woman was good to you?”

“Yes, ma’m,” said she, “I was afeard to say she wasn’t, ‘cause when you’d go away, then she’d beat me.”

“Which do you fear the most, Cathy,” said I, “God, or the old woman?”

“Oh!” she answered quickly, “I’se most afeard of the old woman.”

“But, don’t you know it’s very wicked to lie?”

“Yes, ma’m,” said Cathy, “but the old woman said she would get Father Dennis, the priest, to rub it out, and then God wouldn’t know it.”

“But,” said I, “do you believe the priest can rub out the falsehoods you tell, so that the great God above would not see and hear them?”

“Yes, ma’m, I know he does, cause Aunty tells heaps of them, and then she goes to him and he takes them all away from her.”

I tried to convince Cathy of the great sin of lying, but could not help thinking if this child sinned through fear and ignorance, how much more terrible must be the crime of falsehood in children who have nothing to plead in extenuation of that most wicked and degrading practice – children who have no cruelty to dread, and have been shielded by kind parents from those chilly blasts of poverty which the charity orphan has to buffet.

As the children were quite alone this morning, and Mary looked bright and seemingly free from pain, I thought I would remain with them and learn, if I could, something of their previous history. There was quite a difference between the two sisters. Cathy had been brought up by the old woman who now had them in her charge and was taught only to beg and say anything that warranted the occasion, true or false.

Mary had received instructions from her mother and was a remarkably intelligent child. Indeed, I had seldom seen one of her age whose expressions were more appropriate. Poverty seemed to have forced her beyond her years, although so young, in sorrow she was very, very old.

Mary Recalls Her Past

Uknown Orphan Girl

“Mary,” said I, “Do you remember your parents?”

“Oh! Yes, ma’m,” she replied. “I could never forget my mother, for she comes to me every night, and I am always so glad when Aunty puts out the candle and goes to bed, for then my mother always comes and sings to be so sweetly.”

“You have such pleasant dreams, then?” said I.

“Yes, ma’m, I suppose they are dreams, but they don’t seem so. It just seems as if she comes and sits by me, like you are doing now, and I don’t want it to get light, for then she always goes away.

Here Mary’s eyes brightened as she turned them to the window and said, “Listen, ma’m.” Close to the window near which her bed lay, there was a large old tree with branches crooked and knotted, but there came to it every morning one little merry bird, and sang its early sweet song, as Mary used to think, purposely for her. This morning it was late in coming, and I heard it for the first time, with much surprise, for it was yet in March.

Mary noticed my suspense, and said, “I think, ma’am, that must be one of God’s birds that my mother has sent to sing to me, ‘cause there’s none anywhere else. It’s too soon, you see, ma’am, there’s no leaves on the trees yet.”

The thought seemed to give her so much pleasure, and her enjoyments in this world were so few, that I felt inclined to favor the delusion. So opening the little dusty window, I seated myself with Cathy and listened til the bird ceased its song and flew away. I returned to Mary’s bedside and asked how long since her mother had died.

“I don’t know ma’am,” she said, “but the very day we came ashore from the ship which brought us from Ireland, my father was taken sick and the doctor said it was ship fever; he only lived a week. Then my mother cried all the time, ‘cause she said she was left in a strange country without friends or money, and that she did not know where to go or what to do; and that she and her children would be turned out to starve in the street.

Old Aunty was there; she came over in the ship with us, from Ireland, and stopped at the same house, down by the water’s side. She told my mother that nobody starved her; that the streets were paved with gold and she wasn’t a bit afraid of starving. Here, Mary looked up in my face with a good deal of meaning and said, “But Aunty don’t think so now, ‘cause we’ve been nearly starved since then.”

“After my father died, my mother was taken down with the same fever. When she had been sick a few days, she told Aunty one night that she knew she was to die, and that she wanted to get her children in the Catholic Asylum and begged her to bring the priest. But Aunty did not understand what my mother wanted. You know she takes spells, ma’am,” said Mary, looking keenly in my face to see if I understood her meaning. “And she had one that night. Then she called me to her and said, ‘I am going to die, Mary; be good to Cathy, for when I am gone you will be orphans. I wondered what my mother meant by orphans, then, but I know now what it means.” Then she gave me this,” said she, taking hold of a dirty twine string and drawing from her bosom a little black cross, “and told me that her mother in the  old country had given it to her, and she had always worn it in her bosom, and that it had comforted her, and that I must always wear it, and it would comfort me when she was dead. It had a better string then, but it got broken, and this was all I had.

Then my mother said, ‘If God will let me, I will come and watch over you and Cathy.’ And, oh, ma’am, many a times when I have gone to great houses to beg, and the people have spoken cross to me and driven me away, I would go out and sit on the steps and press this little cross to my heart and think of what my mother said, that she would come to us and watch over us, and I always felt better, ma’am. But that night she died. It was snowing very hard the next morning when the Poor Master brought the cart to take her to the graveyard. Cathy and I were standing beside our dead mother, crying; when he came in, we begged him to let us go wither her, for we thought it was so lonesome for her to go to the grave all alone. But he said it was a long way off and we were too little to walk so far in the snow.

Then, I said, please, sir, won’t you let us ride in the card with our mother? The man looked sorry for us and said, ‘yes.’ After they had put the coffin on the cart, the Poor Master lifted us in and told Aunty to bring out something to cover us with, so she got an old blanket and he wrapped it around us, and we went to the graveyard. When we were there, a man came out of a little house close by with a shovel in his hand; he called out to the driver, ‘Who have you got there?’ He said, ‘I don’t know, only that she is an Irish woman, and these are her children, and helped out with the coffin and laid it down beside a grave which was half full of snow. Then the man with the shovel came back to the cart and looked at us, and told us not to get out as the snow was very deep, and said to the other man, ‘poor things; they’ll have wading enough before they get through the world. Pity they ain’t ready to lie down with their mother.’ So we sat in the cart and looked at the little white crosses that were on the graves. There was a great many little birds there, but they did not sing any. I guess it was because they had come to the burying and felt sorry.

When the man came back, he told Aunty that he was going to take us to the poorhouse, but Aunty said, ‘No,’ that she would take care of us, that our mother had given us to her, but that was not true, and I ran out to tell him that it wasn’t true, but Aunty pulled me back and shut Cathy and me in a room and went and talked to him herself. When she came back she spoke kindly to us, and said that we would all go out begging, but that she would stand up an alley while we went into the houses, and whatever they gave us we must bring to her, and that we must always ask for a few pennies. The next morning, she took us with her down to an old house, where another woman lived, and we all lived together.

Before we started out to beg, she took our warm shawls, and we were out all day in the cold. Sometimes people would pity us and give us clothes, but the old woman and Aunty always took them away and sold them. We never, hardly, could get into the great houses; when they would open their doors and see Cathy and me, they would look very cross and tell us to go away and would shut us out in the cold. Bu the poor people would let us come in and stand by their fires, but they found out how Aunty used to do, and they said they would take us away and put her in jail. That frightened her, and she left the great city, and we came begging all the way out here, and Cathy and I have been begging ever since.”

“No, Mary,” I answered. It is a very unkind way of judging, and I know we are all too apt to run into the error of judging people by their circumstances, and of adding to the ills of their poverty by suspecting their honesty.”