The Secret,, Or "Breaking Up the Home."

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 19, 14 July 1911, Page 5

The Secret,, Or "Breaking Up the Home."

By GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND ( IN SIX CHAPTERS—CHAPTER SIX. Late winter lengthened into early spring, while Maggie rought the losing battle against starvation. Toiling, hating, suffering, sho watched the inevitable close around her and her children. The wolf whined and scratched every day more insistently at the door. Now that the barrier of even Dan's uncertain pittance was swept away, the end was not far. Dropping her labor now and then, Maggie snatched a half-hour to visit the station house. No news—never any news—not oven a clue. When sho railed at the police with scorching epithets, they jostled her out and warned her to keep clear. Th© loose-tongued neighbour women mocked her at such times. A manP Ochone! Sure, and the men were plenty. Bait Maggie never argued, tho proposition. No other man would do. Sometimes it was the pawnshop that sh*» visited. The two rooms gradually stripped themselves as though for battle with the beast at the door. Mary's cough was growing rapidly worse, and tho girl often had to stay from school. The other children dwindled visibly. Food scarcened, dirt and rags multiplied. The labor of two hands oould never pay the rent, clothe th© bodies, feed the mouths. Soon the debacle must swoop in upon them, when everything would crash to ruin in that supreme abandon of tho slums—almsbegging at the publio purse. Like hundreds and thousands or others, Maggie felt she never could survive that ultimate degradation. So, all her energies centred now in the mere lust of living on, uninterfered with until Dan should be dragged back to her. till sho could face him, brand him, start him toward the chair. After that —no matter. The end came sooner than she had expected. It was toward mid-March, a nipping day with gusty recrudescences of winter, when a mere chance wrote Finis on the last page of her life. She had sent little Terence out with three coppers for half a loaf of left-over bread at the basement grocery midway of the block. For some time past, this sort of bread, with hot water, had been their staple. Mary was at school; the other two children were up the street at a new building, gathering rubbish and lath-ends for fuel. The big tenement seemed quieter than usual. Terence came puffing in with the bread wrapped in a newspaper, "G'wan iiotv, youse, get wood!" she commanded, and the little shrimp, purple with cold, took himself hastily away. Maggie stood by the table, dully holding the parcel in her hand. She felt sick clear through, dazed with the interminable fight, longing for nothing in the world but to be well away and out of it. She stared at the week-old paper.

By GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND ( IN SIX CHAPTERS—CHAPTER SIX.

n the " Chicago Daily Socialist.") Mechanically she read here and there a line—a railroad wreck in Canada, murder trial, failure—gleanings or the blessed crop of civilisation. Then a r smaller item took her eye: "Unknown Man Killed." "Some luck in this wurrld yet I" she grimaced. , "That's worth readin'." She spelled a line or two, following the print with an unseemly forefinger: " 'Thryin' t' jump a freight bechune Pittsburg an' Wheeliu'—crushed t' death. Five feet 'leven—judgin' by his clo'es a workin'man.' Shure, that's nothin' j they get kilt ivery daay. 'No 'dentififcatfion except—' Haaa, vot? The parcel dropped and rolled aside. Maggie clung to the table-edge with gaping mouth and glazed, unseeing eyes. The mainspring of her life had broken. Everything was ended. fhe smiled, suddenly reached for a le-knife—the sharpest. Then quite firmly, with something almost of strength and pride, she walked off into the inner room ,and shut the door. The "cub" reporter on the case gave it, in crude enthusiasm,, half a column write-up—tried to work in lots of local j- colour, human interest, and all that sort of thing. But the city editor, profane and dexterous with blue-pencil-lngs, cut it to a single stick. 'Hell I" he exclaimed with irritation. "Think we got all out-doors for dope like this? It's overdone, this low-life sount isl Who in Gehenna wants J;o bother with such cattle?" So he marked it, "Fourth page, bottom"} and another secret was forever buried. (The End.)