The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 23 March 1911, Page 507

The Storyteller

CRONIN’S DAUGHTER It was a still, clear, cold night in the heart of the Maine woods. Mary Cronin drew her frayed shawl closely over her head and shoulders as she closed the door softly' and stepped out into the night. She was very tired, for the day’s work had been hard, and her invalid mother had needed more care than usual. The dishes had been washed and the table re-set for breakfast, the pail had been filled at the ice-encircled spring on the mountain road, her mother’s gruel had been made, her bed smoothed up, and Mary had sung one tune after another, as she held her mother’s wasted hand, till sleep came to the sufferer. The girl stood motionless on the door-stone, and looked eagerly at all the works. Through the windows and doors of the casting-room, which were open this December night, a fiery gleam shone from the red-hot iron running through the moulds. Now and then came a sharp explosion; with a superb play of fireworks around the mouth of the furnace. The violet, orange, green, and crimson stars did not attract Mary’s attention. It was an old story to her, and her heart was too heavy for her eyes to see any beauty in it. She looked above the casting-room up the high brick chimney to the top-house, which was perched on an immense staging just at the mouth of the chimney. i. j Her father was there—for it was his night on—and he had been drinking when he came home to . supper. Fortunately her mother was asleep, and had been spared cruel anxiety. Mary’s heart stood still as her father took his lunch can, without his usual kiss or the, * Good-night, Molly; take good' care of your mother,’ which made her happy every night. He had stumbled over the rag mat, and uttered a curse under his breath. He never did this unless he had been drinking heavily. Poor John Cronin _ His appetite for liquor and his weak will had caused him to drift from one workshop to another from city to city, and from State to State, carrymg with . m his wife and only child. The factory quarters of St. Louis, Pittsburg, Newark, and other manufacturing centres are woefully alike, and had it not been for her mother s stories Mary—the little girl—would have believed the whole world paved and cut into narrow, dirty streets, with a streak of sooty sky above, crossed with clothes-lines. Her mother came from the Catskill Mountain region, an d her nature revolted at the wretched places they had ® a bed home. The sunny old brick farmhouse, built in the Dutch way, the fertile fields and crowded barnyard, grandmother’s flower garden across the road, the mountains framing the little vale, the peace, the. cleanliness, the stability—Mary knew them all through her mother’s words and sighs and tears. A great resolve had crept into the child’s heart to try ana reproduce that peaceful life. ‘To be respectable and stay in one place was what she lived for. If only her father would not drink. There came a day to the child when she began to see her way clear. A letter arrived from a man with whom her father had worked before his marriage, in a Penobscot logging-camp. He wrote of an opening for a family at the Katahdin Iron Works, in Maine—fair wages and a comfortable home were ready. ° When John Cronin read the letter all his old love for the woods came back to him. He could feel the cold steel of the gun-barrel and the supple rod bend in his hand. Before long the money was got together which carried the family from Boston to Bangor, and from there to the works, sixty miles north. Six months had gone— day brought new beauties to Katahdin, Now and then the child left the works, with its black, unsightly buildings, long row of charcoal hoiises, heaps of purple-tinted slag, the refuse of the iron, and acres of dead trees from the sulphur fumes, and explored Pleasant river, leaping from one flat stone, to another, and gathering in the cardinal flowers along the ban k She wandered beside Silver Lake, which reflected old Saddleback Mountain upon its polished surface. Her mother would not let her venture far. Two fierce bear cubs in their cages at the hotel told what the woods contained. Under Mrs. Cronin’s touch the plain wooden cottage grew into a home. . There were a few pretty pictures and ornaments she had brought with her —the remainder of better days—and Mary helped to arrange them in the bare living-room. The curtains of the windows were coarse but white, and the new stove shone resplendant with its silver-plated ornamentation and lettering. ‘ The Star of the East, Bangor Maine,’ Mary read on the oven door many times a day. 1 Mother,’ she said, holding" her stove-rag in her hand as she knelt before the range, ‘ I always give the name an extra polish, for it seems to mean so much to us. This is our first real home. Nobody under us and nobody over us, and such heaps of room all round.’ Mary’s intense, delight in all she saw, and the deep gratitude she expressed for all that was done for her made everyone anxious to give her pleasure. She was thoughtful and unselfish, and the whole settlement learned to love 1 Cronin’s Daughter,’ . ■

Was a child unruly? The mother would call Mary in to help her, and soon the unhappy little one was listening with open eyes and dirty mouth expanding into a smile to her account of some St. Patrick’s Day parade, or a Fourth of July exhibition of fireworks on Boston Common." To Mary, versed in city lore, the country was one thing to be desired; but the Katahdin children, tired of monotony and loneliness of a life in the woods, could never hear enough of the crowds and the noise. So ‘ Cronin’s Daughter ’ became the story-teller of the settlement. Often the workmen stopped and joined the circle of children, and crowded around her in the summer twilight and listened to her story. ‘ Seems a different place, somehow, since ‘ Cronin’s Daughter ” came,’ said many of the people. ‘ The children don’t fight half so much as they did, nor torment the critters. They’re nice folks them Cronins.’ Before her mother was taken ill Mary’s hands and feet and head had been at the service of the whole settlement. Every one loved, petted, and tyrannised over her. In spite of her mother’s sharp but short illness, from which she was now recovering, the summer and autumn had passed happily with Mary. Her father had kept sober, and no one suspected his past shame. John Cronin was a good workman, and soon rose from being a driver qf the four-horse waggons, which carried the ore down from the mountain to the works, to being a top-man. The duties of the top-man were of a very responsible nature. Eight times an hour the elevator, built beside the chimney, came creaking and groaning up to the tophouse with its load of ore and limestone. The top-man fastened the elevator with a bolt, and the, car to the reaj mouth of the chimney. Over this the car rested while the top-man pulled a chain which opened the bottom and precipitated the mass of ore and rock down the chimney and into the furnace below. The car was returned to the elevator, the bolt pushed back, a bell rung, the man below started the machinery, and the elevator began its downward journey. All this required methodical care and wakefulness. The children of the settlement had told Mary of an awful night, two winters before, when, owing to the neglect of the night top-man, an explosion had occurred which wrecked and burned the works and brought all the men in the top-house to a fearful death. * No wonder Mary’s heart stood still with fright when her father reeled through the door, nor that she resolved to follow him to the top-house to make sure that he had not fallen asleep. She had watched the furnace and knew by the shower of sparks that were sent up that the ore was being dumped regularly, but at any moment sleep might overtake himsleep that moans dismissal and disgrace, and possibly death to himself and others The road was white and lonely. The frozen river had no word of encouragement as she crossed the old red bridge, and the stars were far away and cold. She avoided the front works • for fear of being seen by some of the night force in the casting-room. Around the charcoalhouse and through the .thick smoke, up the hill, over the bridge, and up the ladder the child went, with chilled hands and feet, but with a heart warm with love and desperation. Surely that is the elevator rattling up beside her. Now she gtops for breath on the landing, waiting for welcome noise from above that will drive her fears away. How her father will laugh and kiss her, and, with a cheery word, send her home for the night. The intensely cold air may have brought him to himself, she thinks. There as an ominous silence above, and the child hurried up the ladder. John Cronin lay asleep on the floor. Mary had no time for thought; She drew the bolt and secured the elevator. Then she seized the handles

of the car and wheeled it towards the fiery pit. The heat grew more and more intense. Could she guide the car and dump it? Before she knew it, it was done. The car was replaced, the bolt pushed back, and the bell rung. The elevator had gone down and the floor had been replaced. Then Mary crouched beside the sleeping man and moaned and cried:

‘ O father, father, wake up ! I can’t stay here all night. If I call for help you will be dismissed. I’m afraid to stay here alone.’ The man slept on. It was impossible to rouse him. Mary had feared one weakness, but suddenly she became conscious of her inner strength. She knew that she would stay here until morning, but hoped that by that time her father could be roused and that they might go home without suspicion.

The elevator was coming again, and again she must nerve herself to roll the heavy car at that awful brink. 'Well, she had done it once and she could do it again. Again and again she had bent herself to the heavy task. ° The hours went by, Mary counted them by the loadseight; to an hour. At first they went quickly, for she*dreaded the return of the car; but as the night wore on the child became conscious 'of an overpowering desire to sleep. The dreadful sense of responsibility, the loneliness and unnaturalness left her. She even began to forget her desire to save her father. All emotion was swallowed up by the sea of sleep, which surged around her, making her sick and giddy, .

At last she became conscious that she must do something. She struggled to the next dumping, and then opened the door of the warm-house, which was enclosed on three sides, the fourth side opening on the chimney. She closed it behind her, in order that her father might not feel, the cruel cold, and sat on the icy platform and looked down, down on the shapeless works beneath her. The intense coldness revived her and seemed to freeze the sleep out. The December moon shone steadily, and the wind, now rising, blew the charcoal smoke away from her. From this great height the settlement seemed crowded at her feet. Each house stood out from its pure white surroundings, and Mary thought of the friend in each. What would it be to leave them all and go back to the old wandering, disreputable life? Her eyes traversed over the road till they rested on her own —her first home. Then something blurred them, and the old frayed shawl brushed away a tear. Her patient mother was there —her mother who would have died in the city, the Brownsville doctor said, had this illness overtaken her there; her mother who would need the fresh, bracing, balsam air of the mountains for many a long day and all the comforts that her father’s good wages could buy. For her mother’s sake and for her father’s sake she must go on. ‘0 God, keep me awake!’ was the fervent prayer that went up in the frosty air. A shout from below, a rattle of chains, and again came the elevator, creeping up the chimney like some gigantic beetle. Mary went to work with new enthusiasm. Between trips, she sat outside and suffered with the cold. But such suffering was positive joy, after the deadly numbness she had fought within. The worst hours from one to —were past. The moon set and the stars began to pale. A faint pink light spread through the east. Lights appeared here and there in the houses below. The men of the ‘day force’ were being roused and the women were preparing the morning meal. One more load was dumped. It must be half-past five, Mary thought, but she was not sure. She might have lost count once or twice. Yes, she had, for there was the bell clanging below her. It lacked five minutes' of being six, and Jim Brennan, the other day top-man, would come in five minutes. ‘Father, get up!’ Mary called, in a clear whisper, as she shook his shoulder. ‘Father, do you hear!’ Would he move, or had her awful night’s work been in vain? ‘Why, Mary, have I overslept?’ said he, rising suddenly and leaning on his elbow. Then like a lightning flash the truth fell upon him. - The liquor drank in the woods the afternoon before his return to his home to supper ; his difficulty going up the ladder, at which Jim Brennan had unsuspectingly laughed; the first few hours which he fought the stupor that was coming —this John Cronin remembered, but what had followed?

‘ Hush, father, don’t speak a word. Jim Brennan is coming up the ladder. The furnace is all right. Jim will tiiink I have just come to tell you how mother is. No one need ever know, father dear.’ - John Cronin was on his feet in an instant, sobered for life. He took Mary’s hand, grimy from her work. ‘ Open the door,’ he said huskily, ‘or I’ll choke.’ Jim Brennan’s face appeared above the platform. ‘ Well, mate, how goes it? Hello, Mary: blessesd if you didn’t scare me. ’Gainst the rules, you know, to be in the top-house, but I guess the boss won’t mind as long as there’s a sick mother in the case. Had a hard night of it, did you, young ’un ? You look all beat out. There, go ’long, John, put the child to bed; I’ll tend to this load, though it ain’t mine.’ Thank you, Jim,’ said Cronin. Come, Mary, vou must be tired.’ ’ v 3

Not a word was spoken between the pair as they went down the ladder and hurried do’wn the hill. The furnace men were lounging on the floor of the furnace-room. ‘Blessed if here ain’t Cronin and his gal. Hope the missis ain’t no worse,’ said one. ‘ She’s probably been up all night with her. Never seen such a plucky little woman as that gal in all my life said another. ’ Back over the red bridge Mary went, with her hand tightly clasped in her father’s. She gave his hand a little squeeze once, when she felt a hot tear drop on her own. There was a smile on her tired, pale face, and a great content in her heart. Father, mother, friends, and reputation all saved. When they had passed the group of houses that clustered near the bridge, and the woods were before them her father said: ‘Mary, does mother know?’ ’ ‘ No. Don’t tell her. She will think I went to meet you if she is awake.’ know what might have happened ?’ Mary nodded her head vigorously. She could not speak. ‘ Mary, you have saved my life—you have saved the works! , As God hears me, I will never drink another drop !’ And he never broke the vow he made, Mary cried with joy on her father’s neck. All the terror, loneliness, and labor of the night were over like a bad dream. Best of all, the burden of ceaselesss anxiety

which had weighed on her and her mother was laid down for. ever. Never again would she listen to his step, in the fear that it might be, uncertain, or walk with tired feet, seeking him through the slums of a city. They softly opened the door, and found the mother still sleeping. Mary opened the dampers of the ‘ Star of the East,’ and soon a good breakfast was in preparation. John Cronin told his wife of his resolution as he sat by her bedside, after Mary had gone to bed, but he did not tell her then at what a fearful cost of suffering to their child it had been bought. ° His intelligence and perseverance won him the position of foreman, and to-day Mary and her mother, who has recovered her health and gaiety in.Katahdin Woods, rejoice in their new house, which exceeds Mary’s daydreams. ‘ That’s a fine man, .that Cronin,’ said someone in authority the other day. ‘ He and his daughter are studying chemistry together, and he has some first-rate notions about roasting the sulphur out of the ore. I shouldn’t be surprised if we had a rare find in him.’ The girl is a pretty and lady-like one, too,’ said another. ‘ The whole settlement seems to be fond of her.’ John Cronin, passing on the other side of the Red Bridge, himself unseen, heard the words, and smiled and thought, ‘ Where would Cronin be to-day if it were not for Cronin’s Daughter”?’ Catholic Weekly.