Cast Adrift

T >> T. S. Arthur >> Cast Adrift

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TO THE READER.

IN this romance of real life, in which the truth is stranger than
the fiction, I have lifted only in part the veil that hides the
victims of intemperance and other terrible vices--after they have
fallen to the lower deeps of degradation to be found in our large
cities, where the vile and degraded herd together more like wild
beasts than men and women--and told the story of sorrow, suffering,
crime and debasement as they really exist in Christian America with
all the earnestness and power that in me lies.

Strange and sad and terrible as are some of the scenes from which I
hare drawn this veil, I have not told the half of what exists. My
book, apart from the thread of fiction that runs through its pages,
is but a series of photographs from real life, and is less a work of
the imagination than a record of facts.

If it stirs the hearts of American readers profoundly, and so
awakens the people to a sense of their duty; if it helps to
inaugurate more earnest and radical modes of reform for a state of
society of which a distinguished author has said, "There is not a
country throughout the earth on which it would not bring a curse;
there is no religion upon the earth that it would not deny; there is
no people upon the earth it would not put to shame;"--then will not
my work be in vain.

Sitting in our comfortable homes with well-fed, well-clothed and
happy-hearted children about us--children who have our tenderest
care, whose cry of pain from a pin-prick or a fall on the carpeted
floor hurts us like a blow---how few of us know or care anything
about the homes in which some other children dwell, or of the hard
and cruel battle for life they are doomed to fight from the very
beginning!

To get out from these comfortable homes and from the midst of
tenderly cared-for little ones, and stand face to face with squalor
and hunger, with suffering, debasement and crime, to look upon the
starved faces of children and hear their helpless cries, is what
scarcely one in a thousand will do. It is too much for our
sensibilities. And so we stand aloof, and the sorrow, and suffering,
the debasement, the wrong and the crime, go on, and because we heed
it not we vainly imagine that no responsibility lies at our door;
and yet there is no man or woman who is not, according to the
measure of his or her influence, responsible for the human
debasement and suffering I have portrayed.

The task I set for myself has not been a pleasant one. It has hurt
my sensibilities and sickened my heart many times as I stood face to
face with the sad and awful degradation that exists in certain
regions of our larger cities; and now that my work is done, I take a
deep breath of relief. The result is in your hands, good citizen,
Christian reader, earnest philanthropist! If it stirs your heart in
the reading as it stirred mine in the writing, it will not die
fruitless.

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. The unwelcome babe--The defrauded young mother--The
struggle between life and death--"Your baby is in heaven"--A brief
retrospect--A marriage for social position--An ambitious wife and a
disappointed husband--The young daughter--The matrimonial
market--The Circassian slaves of modern society--The highest
bidder--Disappearance--The old sad story--Secret marriage--The
letters--Disappointed ambition--Interview between the parents--The
mother's purpose--"Baffled, but not defeated"--The father's
surprise--The returned daughter--Forgiven--"I am not going away
again, father dear"--Insecurity and distrust

CHAPTER II. The hatred of a bad woman--Mrs. Dinneford's plans for
the destruction of Granger--Starting in business--Plots of Mrs.
Dinneford and Freeling--The discounted notes--The trap--Granger's
suspicions aroused--Forgery--Mrs. Dinneford relentless--The
arrest--Fresh evidence of crime upon Granger's person--The shock to
Edith--"That night her baby was born"

CHAPTER III. "It is a splendid boy"--A convenient, non-interfering
family doctor--Cast adrift--Into the world in a basket, unnamed and
disowned--Edith's second struggle back to life--Her mind a
blank--Granger convicted of forgery--Seeks to gain knowledge of his
child--The doctor's evasion and ignorance--An insane asylum instead
of State's prison--Edith's slow return to intelligence--"There's
something I can't understand, mother"--"Where is my baby?"--"What of
George?"--No longer a child, but a broken hearted woman--The divorce

CHAPTER IV. Sympathy between father and daughter--Interest in public
charities--A dreadful sight--A sick babe in the arms of a
half-drunken woman--"Is there no law to meet such cases?"---"The
poor baby has no vote!"--Edith seeks for the grave of her child, but
cannot find it--She questions her mother, who baffles her
curiosity--Mrs. Bray's visit--Interview between Mrs. Dinneford and
Mrs. Bray--"The baby isn't living?"--"Yes; I saw it day before
yesterday in the arms of a beggar-woman"--Edith's suspicions
aroused--Determined to discover the fate of her child--Visits the
doctor--"Your baby is in heaven"--"Would to God it were so, for I
saw a baby in hell not long ago!"

CHAPTER V. Mrs. Dinneford visits Mrs. Bray--"The woman to whom you
gave that baby was here yesterday"--The woman must be put out of the
way--Exit Mrs. Dinneford, enter Pinky Swett--"You know your
fate--New Orleans and the yellow fever"--"All I want of you is to
keep track of the baby"--Division of the spoils--Lucky
dreams--Consultation of the dream-book for lucky figures--Sam
McFaddon and his backer, who "drives in the Park and wears a two
thousand dollar diamond pin"--The fate of a baby begged with--The
baby must not die--The lottery-policies

CHAPTER VI. Rottenness at the heart of a great city--Pinky Swett's
attempted rescue of a child from cruel beating--The fight--Pinky's
arrest--Appearance of the "queen"--Pinky's release at her
command--The queen's home--The screams of children being beaten--The
rescue of "Flanagan's Nell"--Death the great rescuer--"They don't
look after things in here as they do outside--Everybody's got the
screws on, and things must break sometimes, but it isn't called
murder--The coroner understands it all"

CHAPTER VII. Pinky Swett at the mercy of the crowd in the
street--Taken to the nearest station-house--Mrs. Dinneford visits
Mrs. Bray again--Fresh alarms--"She's got you in her power"---"Money
is of no account"--The knock at the door--Mrs. Dinneford in
hiding--The visitor gone--Mrs. Bray reports the woman insatiable in
her demands--Must have two hundred dollars by sundown--No way of
escape except through police interference--"People who deal with the
devil generally have the devil to pay"--Suspicion--A mistake--Sound
of feet upon the stairs--Mrs. Dinneford again in hiding--Enter Pinky
Swett--Pinky disposed of--Mrs. Dinneford again released--Mrs. Bray's
strategy--"Let us be friends still, Mrs. Bray"--Mrs. Dinneford's
deprecation and humiliation--Mrs. Bray's triumph

CHAPTER VIII. Mrs. Bray receives a package containing two hundred
dollars--"Poor baby! I must see better to its comfort"--Pinky meets
a young girl from the country--The "Ladies' Restaurant"--Fried
oysters and sangaree--The "bindery" girl--"My head feels
strangely"--Through the back alley--The ten-cent lodging
house--Robbery--A second robbery--A veil drawn--A wild prolonged cry
of a woman--The policeman listens only for a moment, and then passes
on--Foul play--"In all our large cities are savages more cruel and
brutal in their instincts than the Comanches"--Who is responsible?

CHAPTER IX. Valuation of the spoils--The receiver--The "policy-shop"
and its customers--A victim of the lottery mania

CHAPTER X. "Policy-drunkards"--A newly-appointed policeman's
blunder--The end of a "policy-drunkard"--Pinky and her friend in
consultation over "a cast-off baby in Dirty alley"--"If you can't
get hush-money out of its mother, you can bleed Fanny Bray"--The way
to starve a baby--Pinky moves her quarters without the use of "a
dozen furniture cars"--A baby's home--The baby's night nurse--The
baby's supper--The baby's bed--How the baby's money is spent--Where
the baby's nurse passes the night--The baby's disappearance

CHAPTER XI. Reserve between mother and daughter--Mrs. Dinneford
disapproves of Edith's charitable visits--Mrs. Dinneford meets
Freeling by appointment at a hotel--"There's trouble brewing"--"A
letter from George Granger"--Accused of conspiracy--Possibility of
Granger's pardon by the governor--An ugly business--In great
peril--Freeling's threats of exposure--A hint of an alternative

CHAPTER XII. Mr. Freeling fails to appear at his place of
business--Examination of his bank accounts--It is discovered that he
has borrowed largely of his friends--Mrs. Dinneford has supplied him
$20,000 from her private purse--Mrs. Dinneford falls sick, and
temporarily loses her reason--"I told you her name was Gray--Gray,
not Bray"--Half disclosures--Recovery--Mother and daughter mutually
suspicious--The visitor--Mrs. Dinneford equal to the
emergency--Edith thrown off the track

CHAPTER XIII. Edith is satisfied that her babe is alive--She has a
desire to teach the children of the poor--"My baby may become like
one of these"--She hears of a baby which has been stolen--Resolves
to go and see it, and to apply to Mr. Paulding of the Briar street
mission for assistance in her attempt--Mr. Paulding persuades her
that it is best not to see the child, and promises that he himself
will look after it--Returns home--Her father remonstrates with her,
finally promises to help her

CHAPTER XIV. Mr. Dinneford sets out for the mission-house--An
incident on the way--Encounters Mr. Paulding--Mr. Paulding makes his
report--"The vicious mark their offspring with unmistakable signs of
moral depravity; this baby has signs of a better origin"--A
profitable conversation--"I think you had better act promptly"

CHAPTER XV. Mr. Dinneford with a policeman goes in quest of the
baby--The baby is gone--Inquiries--Mr. Dinneford resolves to
persevere--Cause of the baby's disappearance--Pinky Swett's
curiosity--Change of baby's nurse--Baby's improved condition--Baby's
first experience of motherly tenderness--Baby's first smile--"Such
beautiful eyes"--Pinky Swett visits the St. John mission-school--
Edith is not there

CHAPTER XVI. Mr. Dinneford's return, and Edith's disappointment--"It
is somebody's baby, and it may be mine"--An unsuspected
listener--Mrs. Dinneford acts promptly--Conference between Mrs.
Dinneford and Mrs. Hoyt, _alias_ Bray--The child must be got out of
the way--"If it will not starve, it must drown"--Mrs. Dinneford sees
an acquaintance as she leaves Mrs. Hoyt's, and endeavors to escape
his observation--A new danger and disgrace awaiting her

CHAPTER XVII. Mental conditions of mother and daughter--Mr.
Dinneford aroused to a sense of his moral responsibilities--The
heathen in our midst--The united evil of policy-lotteries and
whisky-shops--The education of the policy-shops

CHAPTER XVIII. News item: "A child drowned"--Another news item:
Pinky Swett sentenced to prison for robbery--Baby's improved
condition--Mrs. Burke's efforts to retain the baby after Pinky
Swett's imprisonment--Baby Andy's rough life in the street--Mrs.
Burke's death--Cast upon the world--Andy's adventures--He finds a
home and a friend

CHAPTER XIX. Mr. Dinneford visits the mission-school--A comparison
of the present with the past--The first mission-school--
Reminiscences of the school in its early days--The zealous
scholar--Good effects of the mission--"Get the burning brands
apart, or interpose incombustible things between them"--An
illustration--"Let in light, and the darkness flees"

CHAPTER XX. "The man awoke and felt the child against his bosom,
soft and warm"--Led by a little child--"God being my helper, I will
be a man again"--A new life--Meeting of an old friend--A friend in
need--Food, clothes, work--A new home--God's strength our only
safety

CHAPTER XXI. Intimate relations of physical and moral purity--Blind
Jake--The harvest of the thieves and beggars--Inconsiderate
charity--Beggary a vice--"The deserving poor are never common
beggars"--"To help the evil is to hurt the good" The malignant ulcer
in the body politic of our city--The breeding-places of epidemics
and malignant diseases--Little Italian street musicians--The
existence of slavery in our midst--Facts in regard to it

CHAPTER XXII. Edith's continued interest in the children of the
poor--Christmas dinner at the mission-house--Edith perceives Andy,
and feels a strange attraction toward him--Andy's disappearance
after dinner--Pinky Swett has been seen dragging him away--Lost
sight of

CHAPTER XXIII. Christmas dinner at Mr. Dinneford's--The dropped
letter--It is missed--A scene of wild excitement--Mrs. Dinneford's
sudden death--Edith reads the letter--A
revelation--"Innocent!"--Edith is called to her mother--"Dead, and
better so!"--Granger's innocence established--An agony of
affection--No longer Granger's wife

CHAPTER XXIV. Edith's sickness--Meeting of Mrs. Bray and Pinky
Swett--A trial of sharpness, in which neither gains the
advantage--Mr. Dinneford receives a call from a lady--The lady, who
is Mrs. Bray, offers information--Mr. Dinneford surprises her into
admitting an important fact--Mrs. Bray offers to produce the child
for a price--Mr. Dinneford consents to pay the price on certain
stipulations--Mrs. Bray departs, promising to come again

CHAPTER XXV. Granger's pardon procured--How he receives his
pardon--Mrs. Bray tries to trace Pinky home--Loses sight of her in
the street--Mrs. Bray interviews a shop-woman--Pinky's
destination--The child is gone

CHAPTER XXVI. Mrs. Bray does not call on Mr. Dinneford, as she
promised--Peril to Andrew Hall through loss of the
child--Help--Edith longs to see or write to Granger, but does
not--Edith encounters Mrs. Bray in the street--"Where is my
baby?"--Disappointment--How to identify the child if found

CHAPTER XXVII. No trace of Andy--Account of Andy's abduction--Andy's
prison--An outlook from prison--A loose nail--The escape--The
sprained ankle--The accident

CHAPTER XXVIII. Edith's visit to the children's hospital--"Oh, my
baby! thank God! my baby!"--The identification

CHAPTER XXIX. Meeting of Mr. Dinneford and George Granger--"We want
you to help us find your child"--"Edith's heart is calling out for
you"--The meeting--The marriage benediction

CAST ADRIFT.

CHAPTER I.

_A BABY_ had come, but he was not welcome. Could anything be sadder?

The young mother lay with her white face to the wall, still as
death. A woman opened the chamber door noiselessly and came in, the
faint rustle of her garments disturbing the quiet air.

A quick, eager turning of the head, a look half anxious, half
fearful, and then the almost breathless question,

"Where is my baby?"

"Never mind about the baby," was answered, almost coldly; "he's well
enough. I'm more concerned about you."

"Have you sent word to George?"

"George can't see you. I've said that before."

"Oh, mother! I must see my husband."

"Husband!" The tone of bitter contempt with which the word was
uttered struck the daughter like a blow. She had partly risen in her
excitement, but now fell back with a low moan, shutting her eyes and
turning her face away. Even as she did so, a young man stepped back
from the door of the elegant house in which she lay with a baffled,
disappointed air. He looked pale and wretched.

"Edith!" Two hours afterward the doctor stood over the young mother,
and called her name. She did not move nor reply. He laid his hand on
her cheek, and almost started, then bent down and looked at her
intently for a moment or two. She had fever. A serious expression
came into his face, and there was cause.

The sweet rest and heavenly joy of maternity had been denied to his
young patient. The new-born babe had not been suffered to lie even
for one blissful moment on her bosom. Hard-hearted family pride and
cruel worldliness had robbed her of the delight with which God ever
seeks to dower young motherhood, and now the overtaxed body and
brain had given way.

For many weeks the frail young creature struggled with
delirium--struggled and overcame.

"Where is my baby?"

The first thought of returning consciousness was of her baby.

A woman who sat in a distant part of the chamber started up and
crossed to the bed. She was past middle life, of medium stature,
with small, clearly cut features and cold blue eyes. Her mouth was
full, but very firm. Self-poise was visible even in her surprised
movements. She bent over the bed and looked into Edith's wistful
eyes.

"Where is my baby, mother?" Mrs. Dinneford put her fingers lightly
on Edith's lips.

"You must be very quiet," she said, in a low, even voice. "The
doctor forbids all excitement. You have been extremely ill."

"Can't I see my baby, mother? It won't hurt me to see my baby."

"Not now. The doctor--"

Edith half arose in bed, a look of doubt and fear coming into her
face.

"I want my baby, mother," she said, interrupting her.

A hard, resolute expression came into the cold blue eyes of Mrs.
Dinneford. She put her hand firmly against Edith and pressed her
back upon the pillow.

"You have been very ill for nearly two months," she said, softening
her voice. "No one thought you could live. Thank God! the crisis is
over, but not the danger."

"Two months! Oh, mother!"

The slight flush that had come into Edith's wan face faded out, and
the pallor it had hidden for a few moments became deeper. She shut
her eyes and lay very still, but it was plain from the expression of
her face that thought was busy.

"Not two whole months, mother?" she said, at length, in doubtful
tones. "Oh no! it cannot be."

"It is just as I have said, Edith; and now, my dear child, as you
value your life, keep quiet; all excitement is dangerous."

But repression was impossible. To Edith's consciousness there was no
lapse of time. It seemed scarcely an hour since the birth of her
baby and its removal from her sight. The inflowing tide of
mother-love, the pressure and yearning sweetness of which she had
begun to feel when she first called for the baby they had not
permitted to rest, even for an instant, on her bosom, was now
flooding her heart. Two months! If that were so, what of the baby?
To be submissive was impossible.

Starting up half wildly, a vague terror in her face, she cried,
piteously,

"Oh, mother, bring me my baby. I shall die if you do not!"

"Your baby is in heaven," said Mrs. Dinneford, softening her voice
to a tone of tender regret.

Edith caught her breath, grew very white, and then, with a low,
wailing cry that sent a shiver through Mrs. Dinneford's heart, fell
back, to all appearance dead.

The mother did not call for help, but sat by the bedside of her
daughter, and waited for the issue of this new struggle between life
and death. There was no visible excitement, but her mouth was
closely set and her cold blue eyes fixed in a kind of vacant stare.

Edith was Mrs. Dinneford's only child, and she had loved her with
the strong, selfish love of a worldly and ambitious woman. In her
own marriage she had not consulted her heart. Mr. Dinneford's social
position and wealth were to her far more than his personal
endowments. She would have rejected him without a quicker pulse-beat
if these had been all he had to offer. He was disappointed, she was
not. Strong, self-asserting, yet politic, Mrs Dinneford managed her
good husband about as she pleased in all external matters, and left
him to the free enjoyment of his personal tastes, preferences and
friendships. The house they lived in, the furniture it contained,
the style and equipage assumed by the family, were all of her
choice, Mr. Dinneford giving merely a half-constrained or
half-indifferent consent. He had learned, by painful and sometimes.
humiliating experience, that any contest with Mrs. Helen Dinneford
upon which he might enter was sure to end in his defeat.

He was a man of fine moral and intellectual qualities. His wealth
gave him leisure, and his tastes, feelings and habits of thought
drew him into the society of some of the best men in the city where
he lived--best in the true meaning of that word. In all enlightened
social reform movements you would be sure of finding Mr. Howard
Dinneford. He was an active and efficient member in many boards of
public charity, and highly esteemed in them all for his enlightened
philanthropy and sound judgment. Everywhere but at home he was
strong and influential; there he was weak, submissive and of little
account. He had long ago accepted the situation, making a virtue of
necessity. A different man--one of stronger will and a more
imperious spirit--would have held his own, even though it wrought
bitterness and sorrow. But Mr. Dinneford's aversion to strife, and
gentleness toward every one, held him away from conflict, and so his
home was at least tranquil.

Mrs. Dinneford had her own way, and so long as her husband made no
strong opposition to that way all was peaceful.

For Edith, their only child, who was more like her father than her
mother, Mr. Dinneford had the tenderest regard. The well-springs of
love, choked up so soon after his marriage, were opened freely
toward his daughter, and he lived in her a new, sweet and satisfying
life. The mother was often jealous of her husband's demonstrative
tenderness for Edith. A yearning instinct of womanhood, long
repressed by worldliness and a mean social ambition, made her crave
at times the love she had cast away, and then her cup of life was
very bitter. But fear of Mr. Dinneford's influence over Edith was
stronger than any jealousy of his love. She had high views for her
daughter. In her own marriage she had set aside all considerations
but those of social rank. She had made it a stepping-stone to a
higher place in society than the one to which she was born. Still,
above them stood many millionnaire families, living in palace-homes,
and through her daughter she meant to rise into one of them. It
mattered not for the personal quality of the scion of the house; he
might be as coarse and common as his father before him, or weak,
mean, selfish, and debased by sensual indulgence. This was of little
account. To lift Edith to the higher social level was the all in all
of Mrs. Dinneford's ambition.

But Mr. Dinneford taught Edith a nobler life-lesson than this, gave
her better views of wedlock, pictured for her loving heart the bliss
of a true marriage, sighing often as he did so, but unconsciously,
at the lost fruition of his own sweet hopes. He was careful to do
this only when alone with Edith, guarding his speech when Mrs.
Dinneford was present. He had faith in true principles, and with
these he sought to guard her life. He knew that she would be pushed
forward into society, and knew but too well that one so pure and
lovely in mind as well as person would become a centre of
attraction, and that he, standing on the outside as it were, would
have no power to save her from the saddest of all fates if she were
passive and her mother resolute. Her safety must lie in herself.

Edith was brought out early. Mrs. Dinneford could not wait. At
seventeen she was thrust into society, set up for sale to the
highest bidder, her condition nearer that of a Circassian than a
Christian maiden, with her mother as slave-dealer.

So it was and so, it is. You may see the thing every day. But it did
not come out according to Mrs. Dinneford's programme. There was a
highest bidder; but when he came for his slave, she was not to be
found.

Well, the story is trite and brief--the old sad story. Among her
suitors was a young man named Granger, and to him Edith gave her
heart. But the mother rejected him with anger and scorn. He was not
rich, though belonging to a family of high character, and so fell
far below her requirements. Under a pressure that almost drove the
girl to despair, she gave her consent to a marriage that looked more
terrible than death. A month before the time fixed for, its
consummation, she barred the contract by a secret union with
Granger.

Edith knew her mother's character too well to hope for any
reconciliation, so far as Mr. Granger was concerned. Coming in as he
had done between her and the consummation of her highest ambition,
she could never feel toward him anything but the most bitter hatred;
and so, after remaining at home for about a week after her secret
marriage, she wrote this brief letter to her mother and went away:

"My DEAR MOTHER: I do not love Spencer Wray, and would rather die
than marry him, and so I have made the marriage to which my heart
has never consented, an impossibility. You have left me no other
alternative but this. I am the wife of George Granger, and go to
cast my lot with his.

"Your loving daughter,

"EDITH."

To her father she wrote:

"My DEAR, DEAR FATHER: If I bring sorrow to your good and loving
heart by what I have done, I know that it will be tempered with joy
at my escape from a union with one from whom my soul has ever turned
with irrepressible dislike. Oh, my father, you can understand, if
mother cannot, into what a desperate strait I have been brought. I
am a deer hunted to the edge of a dizzy chasm, and I leap for life
over the dark abyss, praying for strength to reach the farther edge.
If I fail in the wild effort, I can only meet destruction; and I
would rather be bruised to death on the jagged rocks than trust
myself to the hounds and hunters. I write passionately--you will
hardly recognize your quiet child; but the repressed instincts of my
nature are strong, and peril and despair have broken their bonds. I
did not consult you about the step I have taken, because I dared not
trust you with my secret. You would have tried to hold me back from
the perilous leap, fondly hoping for some other way of escape. I had
resolved on putting an impassable gulf between me and danger, if I
died in the attempt. I have taken the leap, and may God care for me!

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