MASTER AND MAN

New Zealand Tablet, 9 January 1913, Page 9

MASTER AND MAN

Weak and inexpressibly weary, Mary Barzynski dragged herself about the room. Her preparations for dinner were simple, and did not consume much time. First, she cleared the only table, a rickety, battered thing, bought at the second-hand dealer’s across the way. It had been piled high with two or three boys’ waists in which she had tried to make button-holes; but all day the pain in her head had been so violent that she could accomplish little, and it was with a sigh of discouragement that she laid the unfinished garments on a cot in the corner of the room. She placed upon the bare table knives, forks, and plates for Peter and herself, a loaf of bread, a dish destined to hold the potatoes boiling languidly over a sickly fire, and another for some thick pieces of fat pork. Soon all was in readiness, but her husband had not come. As he was often detained at the steel plant Mary was not uneasy. She stood for a few minutes at their one narrow window trying to find her husband among the jaded laborers who hurried this way and that, all eager for rest and food—for home, however poor that home might be. On and on they came in twos and threes, tens of them and hundreds. The young were there, the old, the weak, the strongbut no Peter. At last, weary of watching, Mary left her station at the window, and ran down the hall, and into a room even smaller and darker than their own. A young Irish woman lay there. Her husband worked with Mary’sworked hard during many hours each day and afterward, when he should have rested, often spent the greater part of the night clumsily caring for the invalid. When Mary opened the door she found that Nora was not alone. Beside her sat ‘ the good lady,’ as the poor people in the quarter called her for want of a more specific name. She was a tall, slender woman, young, and with a face sweet and fair, but very sad. Her clothes were always of the simplest that they were also exquisitely fine her proteges did not see. She was well known in the neighborhood, coming every day to visit all who were ill or in trouble. The poor knew that at heart she was one of themselves. Mrs. Barzynski spoke to her, said a kind word to Nora and turned to leave the room. ‘ Do not hurry. I must go now, and Mr. Shae has not come,’ the ‘good lady urged; then, noticing the paiior or ivxary s itice and the weary slowness of her movement, she asked, ‘ And how are you, Mrs. Barzynski V ■‘Tired/ Mary answered laconically. After a pause, she added despairingly, ‘ Always tired. This is

a land of woe, and we thought, Peter and I, that we were coming to a land of plenty.’- Without another word she left the room, the stranger looking after her with mute agony stamped on her own,face. Mary pushed the dinner far back on the stove to prevent its scorching; and afterward stood again at the window, thinking, pining, mourning. She had reason to be sad. She thought first of the years in their native Poland when she and Peter and their children had known cold and hunger, but where there was at least fresh air and cleanliness, and in summer time the woods, the flowers, and *the merry babbling streams. She thought of the terrible winter when their two little girls had died of want; and she well remembered how over their graves she and Peter had determined to work their fingers to the bone, if necessary, to make money enough to carry them and' Thaddeus, their one remaining to America. After many months of saving came the awful journey in the steerage, during every long hour of which she and Thaddeus had been ill ; but she smiled to herself, tenderly and wistfully, as she recalled how kind, how full of hope' and courage, and even merriment, Peter had been throughout their passage. He was ever so in those days. It was only after weeks of toil at the steel plant had bent his broad shoulders and stolen away youth that he had changed. First, Mary had grieved to see how tired he was by evening ; too worn to do anything but throw himself, dressed as he was, across his bed as soon as he had eaten his dinner. Before long he began to complain of his work, of his wages, of the length of his working day; to rail at the rich, at all in authority; to bring home with him, from time to time, two dark-faced, ugly, savage fellows, to whom he would talk far into the night, while Mary tried to soothe Thaddeus to sleep in the corner of the room farthest from them. And then, in the depth of a winter, colder than any they had ever known in Poland, Peter, along with hundreds of his fellow workmen, had struck for higher wages. Mary shuddered, standing there at her window staring down into the darkening street, as she recalled those fearful weeks. There had been a time of hunger, of fierce anger, and of bloodshed; and before -V- settlement was made, and the men, beaten, cowed, and sullen, were at work again, their little child had gone to heaven by the road his sisters had taken. From that day Peter’s heart had had room for naught but hatred. He railed against the rich more bitterly than before, and he did not hesitate to include the priests in his tirades; he even blasphemed ; and Mary, trembling, made the sign of the Cross, and begged God to forgive him. He refused to go to church. He was a Socialist, he told her; and Mary wondered what the word meant, and knew only that it was something wicked. ■' ’• At last a heavy footfall sounded in the passage and Peter had reached home half an hour late. He was sullen, hopeless, and more than half intoxicated. It did not take him long to tell his new - grievance; for Mary saw at once that he had a new one. . Work, it seemed, was a little slack at the plant; they could contrive to do what there was with fewer men, and he was one of fifty who had been turned adrift. - Pie swore horribly as he told his story, and Mary trembled and was silent. She would have liked to say some word of encouragement, but her tired heart could see no glimmer of hope. And her troubles had only begun. During the weeks that followed Peter spent his days and a great part of every night in the nearest saloon in company with a number of malcontents, hungry like himself, and like him hovering on the brink of "despair desperate men with no money to lose, no reputations to jeopardise, and lives too dreary and hopeless to be worth a second thought. As for the world to come, they had forgotten it, or boasted that they had. Meanwhile Mary sewed, sewed, sewed, ‘ in poverty, hunger, and dirt, day after day, ‘ from weary chime to chime,’ praying short, agonising prayers for patience, for health and 'Fop Peter 'FUtq.t-.t /T o-»▼ „u « u w „ i_ _ -i. , - * ■ -uvwj vacvj ouo ucoamo wettiter axla ner work seemed harder. She began to see strange shadows, and to hear strange noises. There came a day when even her slave-like endurance could force her fingers no farther. &

Then it was that the ‘ good lady ’ began to come to see her. How or when she learned of her illness Mary did not know. She knew only that she awoke from a long, feverish sleep to find the kind face of the doctor bending over her, and the ‘ good lady ’ standing at the foot of her cot. She came every day after that, and often cared for her several hours at a time. -Mary loved her; and often, often watched her from under her half-closed lids, marvelling at the fervor with which' she would slip on her knees and say her beads, and wondering why her sweet, thoughtful face was so sad. Surely, starvation was not staring her in the face! Surely she had no husband grown sullen, morose, wicked; and without these woes, Mary thought, why should anyone be sorrowful. Even Peter loved the ‘good lady.’ He was not unlike his old gay-self when he chanced to be at home and she was there. Perhaps it was because she treated him as she would have treated a gentleman, because she expected courtesy as well as gave it. Even when, as happened once or twice, he gave expression in her presence to his, hatred of the rich and the powerful, even then she was all gentleness and compassion; though she talked to him seriously and sternly about this Socialism which ' Mary had instinctively known to be wrong. A month passed. Mary was slowly struggling back to health, almost happy because her husband had been a little more gentle of late, and once or twice had even teased her as he used to love to do. But one Saturday afternoon when Peter and his friends went . to. the saloon as usual, they were refused further credit. They strolled away, feigning indifference; and gathered in a knot at the nearest corner talked in whispers, gesticulating menacingly. One uncouth fellow—Adam, they called himalways a leader among them, drew a sen-sationally-colored picture of the gay, easy life led by Mr. Morrison, the president of the steel plant, and artfully contrasted it with the squalor into which hehad thrust them, or at least allowed them to fall. lie went farther, and did what none of them had ever dared to do before ; he advocated revengerevenge, in the shape of death. Peter was roused to a state of .frenzy. He approved of all Adam said, and declared himself ready to do the deed. Nor was Adam loathe to yield him the honor. He was far more daring in word than in action, as other men have been before and since. An hour later Peter was hanging about an elegant mansion. Inside his threadbare coat a revolver was concealed. There he waited and watched,...nursing his anger on the thought of his wrongs. Dusk fell, and the early winter darkness, and still he waited. At length an automobile came and stood before the house; the door opened, and the man whom he sought , appeared. Peter glanced fearfully about him. There was no one in sight, but he decided to wait until his victim was seated in the automobile before he fired at him, and then make his escape in the friendly darkness. • - Mr. Morrison came down the steps— and his wife was with him. Peter was a little disconcerted to see her. He wished her far away. It would be bitterly bard on her, he realised, with the first pang his heart had felt that day. Mr. and Mrs. Morrison reached the foot of the steps, passed through the gate, and came close to him; and Peter looked at the wife . rather than at him, wondering vaguely where he had seen her face before. Mrs. Morrison chanced to glance at the shabby figure pressed close against the fence; and to Peter’s amazement a smile of recognition brightened her face, and she held out her daintily gloved hand, saying cordially: 6 ‘ How do you do, Mr. Barzynski ? And how is your wife?’ Then Peter saw that Mrs. Morrison was the ‘ good lady.’ 6 ‘ She —she’s better,’ he managed to falter. Mr. had been giving some directions to the chauffeur, but when he turned to his wife, she said, ‘ John, this is Peter Barzynski, one of your old men! You remember, I told you about him and his sick wife.’

Mr. Morrison, a stout, pleasant-faced man, much older than his wife, shook Peter’s hand in the friendliest way possible: a minute more, and he and Mrs. Morrison had stepped into their automobile and were gone; and Peter stood watching the car disappear in the distance, his right hand resting limply; against his revolver. ■ Long, long, he stood there, remorse and-horror little by little filtering into the depths of his soul, as he realised what he had been about to do. He thought of all Mrs. Morrison’s kindness to his wife, and of the sorrow with which he had almost repaid it. He thought of the grief ho had nearly caused his patient Mary. He thought of the fearsome death penalty he must have faced had he done the deed ; and this thought recalled the still more awful punishment awaiting crime in y the world to come. His, faith was not dead. In an agony of terror and remorse Peter turned away from Mr. Morrison’s house, and wandered through, the streets, face to face with his own sin-stained ■ soul; hating himself; and loathing the odious doctrines which had enslaved and deceived him. He resolved to repudiate them, and to avoid their advocates. Still the luture showed no gleam of hope to guide or cheer him. He was out of work; he was penniless; he was about to add, friendless as well, when there stole into his embittered soul the sweet remembrance of One Friend Who is ever true, ever loving, every ready to forgive. The magic of the thought calmed him, and stumbling across a church in his aimless rambling, he tiptoed in. Straight to the altar steps he went, and prayed there fervently, but not-for long, as they pray who are in earnest, but unaccustomed to the language of their fatherland. It was .only a few minutes after ho first entered the church that he went and stood beside a confessional, waiting for the penitent within to give him his place. The minutes passed, and Peter, growing tired, allowed his eyes to wander curiously over the great, hushed spaces. Presently he discovered that the woman who knelt before Our Lady’s altar was Mrs. Morrison, and with a kind of awe he watched her upturned face, and noted that it- was smiling as he had never seen it smile before. ■ At last there was a slight rustle within the -confessional, the curtain was pushed aside—and Peter fell back a step when Mr. Morrison came out, pale and a little tremulous, and going forward knelt beside his wife at Our Lady’s feet,' A moment more, and Peter was on his knees in his master’s place. On the following Monday morning Peter and the other men who had been discharged from the steel plant, because by driving those who remained a little harder it was possible to do without them, were reinstated in their old places. A few weeks later their pitilessly long working day was shortened; and before long their wages were advanced a little. Mary Barzynski learned to smile again ; and as for Peter, the money in his pocket and the peace in his heart taught him to laugh and to pray as he had not done for many a weary month. And theie ; was a soul saintly and detached amid horrible luxury, and a heart filled with love for one who had long wandered from the fold in his greedy quest for wealth, which overflowed at last with the joy as well as the peace which passeth understanding. Florence Gilmore, in Extension. *