The Secret,

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 17, 30 June 1911, Page 4

The Secret,

Or "Breaking JJp the Home."

By GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND

IN SIX CHAPTERS—CHAPTER IV

For three days Dan kept clear. The woman did not send to hunt him down. Her first savage vow to hound him to the chair died out of her lax : mind as liquor dies. She knew not what to do, where to find him, and her own vivid fear of the polioe, of scandal and possible danger to herself rose till about her anger, smothering it. She was afraid to ask advice; alone., she lacked intelligence to know wliat course to follow. She told Mary, with dull cunning and a few tears (half real, half simulated), that "the baby had died of colic; she told such few of her neighbours as she knew, and the .story was believed.

Her greatest difficulty she found in to weep; for after the first scanty dribble of grief there flowed no more. The death caused hardly a ripple on the dark pool of tenement atrairs. One baby more or less, when ■babies come and go so fast? The granting of the death-certi-ficate was quite perfunctory, like the burial itself—at puhlic charge. Thus the baby took its scarce-regietted leave and life for Maggie once more closed in its stifling circle of miserable toil. Her anger, she soon found, would not stay hot. Labour deadened the blaze to mere charred coals. The washing, the cooking, the rude care of her remaining children stifled even those coals to ashes. The lie she had told and now had to stand by diverted her puriiose like a false lure dragged across a trail. Thereto she added another, that Dan Avas off a-drinking and that ho knew nothing of the death. And very soon she found herself almost believing both lies. Jrier shallow and unstable wit could hold no purpose

very- long. The main thing, alter ail, was just to live. And only too well she realised the consequence of denunciation on her part—Dan's punishment, of whatsoever n-sture, would have to be paid for by her with frightful struggles against sheer starvation. That thought numbed her keenness for revenge. Other aims then just crude bare life itself find in the Pit slim holding-ground. At the first footstep of necessity 7 along the narrow margin where they cling their grasp relaxes and they drop away. As Maggie dumbly" built her plans, ; feeling where alio could not dully think, another factor of the " case began to loom all-shadowingiy—vague , at first, but hourly growing into im- - ages of dominance —the knowledge of the secret which no one knew, save . only Dan and she. ; In this she found a sort of savage joy which grow, as her understanding grew, into a rank luxuriance. With almost wonder dawned the realisation that now, now, after all these years of

misery, abuse, threats, manhandling, she held the lash above Dan's back, that henceforth she could bullyrag and , rule him; that she could make him ; cringe and whine; that she could drink down hatred to the clotted .settlings and could dominate her husband's brute barbarities with her own masterweapon, Fear. Dan should now be the ; slave! She nursed the thought till ' longing for his return rose in her, that this great change,, this now regime of : tyranny might come into its own. "Ah, ay he only ©ooines back now, I've got him where I want him,, shure!" she jubilated. The thought; that Dan might prove rebellious, that he might kill too, by way of safety or revenge, she slipped aside. "He wudn't dare, th' sneak 1" she told , herself. "He's scairt an' lost his nerve , entoirely ! No —he'll make no more talk o' runnin' away; I'd put the polis afther him in a second. N© more whacks an' curses ! I'll learn him man- ; ners, th' spalpeen I I'll show Mm j who's boss, after now !".... | ;

The knowledge and fore-soent of vengeance burned with a sinister flame •whose evil glare liglrted the nooks And crannies of Iter stunted soiil. Th© pleasure of anticipated despotisn-i exitweighed her labour, banished _er shallow grief, strangled regret and misery.

in the " Chicago Daily Socialist.")

! Yet even in the undamned current; ,of her hate, sometimes a little ' thought came floating down which bore :an of those better times., the first few months of marriage, when Maggie had been comely still, when Dannie had been reasonably kind, and life had turned toward them a face not all of frowning. That was before the railroad strike had ruined Dan by poisoning his mind with the mad heresy that he was really not a -slave, that between him and the Masters of the Bread might stretch some tenuous bonds of equity. The strike had laid Dan off for sixteen weeks; he had. been guilty of that mortal crime against the Masters—"agitating." So,

when the Jong, losing fight was at an end, and the humbler drove had all crept back, there had been nothing but a closed and bolted door for Dan. He had been black-listed. Thus he had fallen low, to uns-killed labour. That was for them the definite beginning of the end. A time they had fought on with the pittance of the unskilled, while hunger nipped their trail. There had come babies, sickness and slack times, and they had often shifted ground; but everywhere their Nemesis had dogged them faithfully. At each new door, even as they entered, they had

found want stretching out his bony hand to them. After a while—a long while it was and dreary—Dan had given up. The drink had caught him, finally; the tenements had sucked them in. Then, a miserere ; long, evil years when they had spiralled ever lower, when ail the colours of their life had been smeared out to a dull drab. That story needs no telling, the sordid and familiar story of the swarming poor. And as for blame, the Masters have already placed it. Surely, they must know. The woman's thoughts dragged on and on, that morning, the fourth day of her husband's absence. She stood there by the table, clearing up hastily the breakfast-dishes before commencing with another wash. Through the unclean window-panes a little winter sunlight ventured for a few brief

minutes, till the bulk of the opposite "double-decker" should interpose and shut it out. The sunlight added to the woman's sense of bcter times to come, which grew as her plans fell to shape. For the first time in years hsr thoughts ran almost happily; and as she worked, tag-ends of song rose to her coarsened lips. "Whisht!" All at once the song died, A loose board was creaking in the hall. Some one stood without, there, at the door.

A furtive hand la,y on the knob. The door complained, swung free. And Maggie turned to see within its opening the figure of a man, timorous, cr*nging, with up-drawn shoulders and bent back. Under the hat-brim, eyes blinked out at her. She flung a harsh laugh at this-ser-vile thing. "Coome right in, Dan! Coome in"!'" She domineered. "1 got some things t' tell yezl" . . . (Chapter V. next week.)