The mystery of Central Park

Richard Treadwell sat moodily on a bench, half supporting the limp form of the girl he had just saved from death.

He had caught her just as she threw up her hands with a pitiful, weak cry, ready to spring into the reservoir.

“My dear young woman, don’t take on so,” he said, vexedly, as the girl leaned against his shoulder, and sobbed in a heart-broken, distracted manner. “You are safe now.”

As if that could be consolation to a woman who was seeking death which sought her not.

“Really, I am sorry, you know, but there’s a good girl, don’t cry,” making a ludicrous attempt to console her. “I did it before I thought; if I had known how much you would have been grieved, I—I assure you, upon my honor, I wouldn’t have done it. I—I haven’t much to live for, either, still when I saw what you intended to do—it shocked me that you should be so desperate. Now that it’s all over I wouldn’t cry any more. I’d laugh, as if it were a joke, you know. I’d say the fates had saved me for some treat they had reserved for me. There, that’s better, don’t cry, you are not hurt—not even wet.”

The girl broke into a nervous, hysterical laugh, in which the sobs struggled for mastery. Dick, much relieved, added a laugh that sounded rather hollow and mirthless.

“I c-can’t help it,” said she, haltingly and endeavoring to stop her sobs. “It seems so unreal to be still living when I wanted to be dead. I—I thought it all over, and it seemed so comforting to think of it being ended. Then I couldn’t see, nor think, nor hear, nor suffer. Oh, why did you stop me?”

“I didn’t know, you see; I didn’t understand it all. I thought you would regret it—that you were making a mistake,” he tried to say cheerfully.

“What right has anybody—what right had you to prevent me from ending my life? I don’t want to live! I am tired of life and of misery. I want to know what right any one has to interfere—to make me live a life that doesn’t concern them and only brings me misery?” she cried, indignantly.

“Come now, don’t be so cast down.” At this burst of anger Richard was himself again. “Tell me all about it; maybe I can help you. Have things gone wrong?”

“Have they ever gone right? Don’t preach to me. It’s easy to preach to people who have friends and money and home. Save your sermons for them. I have nothing! I am all alone in this great big heartless world. I haven’t a cent, a home or a friend, and I’m tired of it all. There is no use in talking to me. Some people get it all, and the others get nothing. I am one of the unlucky ones, and the only thing for me to do is to die.”

“Why, my good girl, there is surely something better for you than death.”

“There is nothing but trouble and hunger, and sometimes work. Do you call that better than death?” she cried despondently.

What a story her few words contained! But Richard, happy, careless, fortunate, little understood their real import.

He knew the girl was very much depressed and morbid, so he concluded it might have a beneficial effect if he could induce her to relate her woes to him.

How mountainous our troubles grow when we brood over them.

How they dwindle into little ant-heaps when we relate them to another.

Richard talked in his frank, healthy way to the girl, and it was not long until she told him the simple, pathetic story of her life.

Her name was Dido Morgan, she said. She was a country girl, the only child of a village doctor, who lived in comfort but died penniless. Her mother died at her birth. She had been raised well, and when reduced to poverty she was too proud to go to work in her native village, so after her father was buried she came to New York.

She soon found that without experience and references she could not get any desirable work in New York. When all other things failed, she, at last, in desperation, applied for and obtained a position in a paper-box factory. She was fortunate enough to learn the work rapidly, and in a few months was able to earn as much as the best workers. She rented a little room on the top floor of a large tenement-house, where she slept and cooked her food. Every week she managed to save a little out of her scant earnings.

One day a girl who worked at the same table with Dido, and who had for a long time been her friend, fainted. The girls crowded around them as Dido knelt on the floor to bathe the sick girl’s head and rub her hands.

“Aha! Away from yer tables durin’ work hours. I’ll pay yer fer this, I’ll dock every one of you,” yelled the foreman, who at this instant entered the workroom.

The girls, frightened, crept quietly back to their work, but Dido still continued to bathe the girl’s head.

“Here, you daisy on the floor, you’ll disobey me, hey? I’ll dock yer twice,” brutally spoke the foreman as he caught a glimpse of Dido’s head across the table.

She looked at him with scorn. If glances could kill, he would have died at her feet. Still, she managed to say, quietly:

“Maggie Williams has fainted.”

“And because a girl faints must all the shop stop work and disobey rules, eh? I’ll pay yer for this. I’ll teach yer,” he vowed, as he quitted the room.

Dido, unmindful of his brutal threats, turned her attention to Maggie, who in a short time opened her eyes and tried to rise.

“Lie still awhile yet, Maggie,” urged her self-appointed nurse. “I’ll hold your head on my knee. Don’t you feel better now?”

But the girl made no reply. Her small gray eyes stared unblinkingly, unseeingly, up at the smoked rafters of the ceiling.

“What is it, Maggie?” asked the kindly Dido, smoothing the wet, tangled hair, her slender fingers expressing the sympathy which found no utterance in words. “Are you still ill? Shall I take you home to your mother?”

The stare in the small gray eyes grew softer and softer; the corners of the mouth drew down into a pitiful curve, the under lip quivering like a tiny leaf in a strong wind; turning her face down, she sobbed vehemently.

Drawing the poor thin body into a closer embrace, Dido sought to comfort the weeping girl.

Some of the nearest workers hearing those low, heavy sobs, started nervously, and their hands were not as cunning as usual as they covered the boxes, but they dared not go near their unhappy companion or speak the sympathy they felt.

“I’m awfully sorry, Maggie,” whispered Dido, “don’t cry so; you’ll feel better by-and-by.”

“Mother’s dead,” blurted out Maggie.

Dido was stunned into silence by this communication. She could say nothing.

What could you say to a girl when her mother is dead?

What could console a girl at such a time?

Maggie told Dido that the dead body of her mother, who, for a year past, had been confined to her bed with consumption, was lying alone, uncared for, at home.

“I loved her so, and I didn’t want her to die,” she said pitifully. “I was afraid to go home after work for fear I’d find her dead, and I was afraid to sleep at night for fear she’d be dead when I woke up. She lay so still, and she looked so white and death-like, and I would lean on my elbow and watch her, fearing her breath would stop. Every few moments I prayed, ‘O God, save her!’ ‘O God, have mercy!’ I—I couldn’t say more, and I would swallow down the thing that would choke my throat and wink away the tears that would come, and watch and watch, until I couldn’t bear the doubt any longer, then I would touch her gently with my foot to see if she was still warm, and that would wake her, and I would be so sorry.

“All last night I never took my eyes off her dear face,” Maggie continued between her sobs, and Dido was softly crying, too, then.

“She wouldn’t eat the things I had brought her, and when I talked to her she didn’t seem to understand, but said things about father, who died so long ago, and once or twice she laughed, but it only made me cry. She didn’t seem to see me either, and when I spoke to her it only started her to talk about something else, so I watched and watched. I didn’t pray any more. Somehow all the prayer had left my soul. Just before morning she got very still, sometimes a rolling sound would gurgle in her throat, but when I offered her a drink she couldn’t swallow, and then I called to her—I couldn’t stand it any longer—‘Mother, mother, speak to me. I have always loved you, speak to me once,’ and her dear lips moved and I bent over her, holding my breath for fear I would not hear, and she whispered: ‘Lucille—my—pretty—one,’ and then her eyes opened and her head fell to one side, but she didn’t see; she was dead—dead without one word to me, and I loved her so.”

Dido Morgan shared her own scant dinner with Maggie that day, and the unhappy girl remained at work that she might earn some money, which would help towards burying her mother.

That afternoon foreman Flint came in, and, nailing a paper to the elevator shaft, told the girls to read it, saying he’d teach them to disobey another time, and that next week they would work harder for their money.

In fear and trembling the girls crowded timidly about the shaft to read what new misery the foreman had in store for them. They instinctively felt it was a reduction, and the first glance proved their fears were not unfounded.

Some of the girls began to cry, and Dido, the bravest and strongest, spoke excitedly to them of the injustice done them. Even now they were working for less than other factories were paying.

“There is surely justice for girls as well as men somewhere in the world, if we only demand it,” she cried, encouragingly. “Let us demand our rights. We will all go down, and I will tell the proprietor that we cannot live under this new reduction. If he promises us the old prices, we will return to work. If he refuses, we will strike.”

The braver girls heartily joined the scheme, and the weaker ones naturally fell in, not knowing what else to do under the circumstances, and frightened at their own boldness.

Dido Morgan, taking little Margaret Williams by the hand, naturally headed the line, and the girls quietly marched after her, two by two, down the almost perpendicular stairs.

Dido stopped before the ground-glass door on the first floor, on which was inscribed:

• TOLMAN BIKE,
• PRIVATE.

Her heart beat very quickly, but clasping Maggie’s hand closer, she opened the door and entered.