play himself, making up for the minor characters,
although most of his time was spent in painting scenery.
He had married a woman who was on the stage, and she
had deserted him for one of the actors, and left her
child behind. Her faithlessness nearly broke
his heart. Through one of our own people in London
he found us and sent the child to the convent where
we have a school for just such cases. When the
girl got to be seventeen years old he sent for her
and she went to London to see him. He remembered
her mother’s career, and guarded her like a
little plant. He never allowed her to come to
the theatre except in the middle of the day.
Then she would come where he was at work up on the
top of the painting platform high above the stage.
There he and she would be alone. One morning
while he was at work one of the scene-shifters—a
man with whom he had had some difficulty—met
the girl as she was crossing the high platform.
He had never seen her before and, thinking she was
one of the chorus girls, threw his arm about her.
The girl screamed, the scene-painter dropped his brushes,
ran to her side, hit the man in the face—the
scene-shifter lost his balance and fell to the stage.
Before he died in the hospital he told who had struck
him; he told why, too; that the scene-painter hated
him; and that the two had had an altercation the day
before—about some colors; which was not
true, there only having been a difference of opinion.
The man fled to Paris with his daughter. The
girl today is at one of our institutions at Rouen.
The detectives, suspecting that he would try to see
her, have been watching that place for the last five
months. All that time he has been employed in
the garden of a convent out of Paris. Last week
we heard from a Sister in London that some one had
recognized him, although he had shaved off his beard—some
visitor or parent of one of the children, perhaps,
who had come upon him suddenly while at work in the
garden beds. He is now a fugitive, hunted like
an animal. He never intended to harm this man—he
only tried to save his daughter—and yet
he knew that because of the difficulty that he had
had with the dead man and the fact that his daughter’s
testimony would not help him—she being
an interested person—he would be made to
suffer for a crime he had not intended to commit.
Now, would you hand this poor father over to the police?
In a year his daughter must leave the convent.
She then has no earthly protection.”
Miss Jennings gazed out over the sea, her brow knit in deep thought. Her mind went back to the wounded criminal in the hospital cot and to the look of fear and agony that came into his eyes when Hobson stood over him and called him by name. Sister Teresa sat watching her companion’s face. Her whole life had been one of mercy and she never lost an opportunity to plead its cause.
The Nurse’s answer came slowly:
“No, I would not. There is misery enough in the world without my adding to it.”