Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864

They had a table spread before the open window, and had their supper in their mother's room, and, as the light sank into darkness, with an arm thrown around each little form caressingly, and a brown head resting on each shoulder, they sat beside her on the sofa, and listened as she told them, in language suited to their childish comprehension, of the coming joys in store for them, of what a happy home their future home should be, now that she had resolutely parted from the curse that had destroyed their peace, and forever turned her back against it;—listened as she drew glowing pictures of the walks and rides they would take, of the varied pleasures they would enjoy together, pleasures it should be her pleasing task to plan. They had nothing to damp their enjoyment, for she had dismissed Betty, and with her own hands undressed and bathed them, and robed them for the night; and they enjoyed it all, not with the keen zest, the careless hilarity of childhood, but with the subdued and thoughtful gravity seen in beings of maturer years, to whose lot has fallen more of the sorrows than the joys of life, and who receive happiness, when at rare intervals it comes to them, with a tremulous thankfulness, as if fearful of entertaining so strange a guest; and when at last it ended, as all happy seasons must, and both tired heads rested on one pillow, Harry whispered to his brother:

'There is nothing to be sorry for now, Charley. She will never drink that dark stuff any more—I know she never will; she will never forget the promise she has made.'

Then the drowsy eyes, ere they closed, sought the dim night sky for that star, the brightest in the blue above him, which had revealed itself through his tears, when alone in the darkness he had first learned to pray, and, gazing on it, and on the sky beyond, where a happier home than any earthly one is proffered, murmured to himself, with a peaceful smile:

'Oh! we shall be so happy, so very, very, very happy!'

PART THIRD

She promised. Oh, frail and sandy foundation, on which to build bright hopes of earthly happiness! Only for four brief weeks, one happy month, that solemn promise was faithfully remembered. Of the effort that even this short period of abstinence had cost her, of the burning thirst which tortured her by day and night, the fierce desire that battled with and almost overcame her feeble resolution when the enthusiasm that had at first upheld her died away, of the suffering of those weary weeks of conflict, only those can tell who, heroes every one, like her, have battled with this fierce spiritual Apollyon, and who, unlike her, have overcome. Hour by hour the maddening desire of gratification wasted little by little her moral strength. The thirst grew stronger, the will weaker.

The thought of the home she had brightened by her self-denial, the heart she had gladdened, the little ones who had drawn their life from hers, whose trust in her was growing stronger day by day, as evening came and showed the valued promise still remembered, and morning dawned and found her faithful, held her back at first; but gradually this also lost its power. Then that torturing, burning, maddening thirst swept over the doomed soul like a fierce simoom, drying up the fountains of maternal tenderness, bearing away all sense of duty, all tenderness and sympathy, the blessed hope of heaven itself, in its desolating track. One wretched day, when this thirst was so strong upon her that her priceless soul grew worthless in her eyes, and she would smilingly have bartered it but for a single draught; one well-remembered, miserable day, when the little faces were raised to hers, and found upon it no trace of motherly affection, only that dark foreboding look, and grew pale with fright when desire had reached that relentless climax which leaves the victim no choice but of madness or gratification, she had fiercely summoned her usual messenger, sent for her usual drink, and sat grimly waiting for it. In vain that trusty messenger, to whose care the wretched father had confided that pitiful remnant of family honor, the shame of public exposure, boldly setting fear of her aside, earnestly besought her to wrestle with the demon yet a little longer, were it but a single day; and implored her with tears to remember the little ones on whom this blow would fall so heavily. There was no tone of motherly affection within that raging breast to respond to that appeal. With parched, cracked lips, and burning eyes and bloated face fierce with desire, she had driven her from her presence. Fear lest the lack of this great need would drive her to distraction quite, and some worse evil yet befall them, she had gone her way, weeping as she went. She came back presently. There was enough of that terrible poison in the bottle she brought to make her mistress drunk a score of times. She may get drunk now, dead drunk; in a little while she may lie upon the floor a senseless, idiotic, disgusting creature. She almost prays it may be so, as she hands her the glass which she angrily calls for, for there is yet a greater evil to be dreaded. The liquor so long untasted, acting upon her naturally high temper, may arouse within her a wild tempest of passion; in her frenzy she may fall upon those little ones, beat, bruise, maim, murder them perhaps. It is not the first time their lives have been endangered by her violence. To get them from the room without exciting her opposition, so quietly and naturally that it shall hardly attract her observation, is her first care; hence, under pretence of arranging the window curtain, she says to Charley, who is standing near it:

'Charley, say you want some cakes—a drink of water—anything that's down stairs, and follow me out of this room.'

'I can't go, Maggie,' returned the child, in the same cautious whisper, glancing toward his mother with his large dark eyes wildly dilated, and his small face bleached with fright. 'Harry won't go, and I can't leave Harry.'

'Harry shall go,' energetically repeated the resolute Maggie, putting her head out of the window to say her say. 'He is not going to stay here to be mauled! Harry,' she continued, in the most insinuating tone imaginable, 'come down stairs with Maggie. There's a darling.'

He was leaning out of the window, apparently looking at something in the street below, and did not move as she addressed him.

'Harry, Harry,' she called again, in an excited whisper, 'do you hear me? quick, child, quick!'

He turned toward her his face covered with tears.

'Don't cry, for heaven's sake, child; don't cry here,' returned Maggie, with a suppressed groan, 'or that mother of yours will pounce upon you in spite of me.'

At the mention of that word, what little self-possession he retained gave way, and he sobbed outright. It was a sob so passionate and long suppressed, and it burst forth in spite of him with such vehemence, that it shook the little form from head to foot, and sounded through the still room so miserably hopeless, so heart-broken, that it even aroused the stupefied being nodding in her chair, whom he had the misery to call by the name of mother. It awakened within her some vague thought of motherly sympathy; and, stupidly striving to comprehend what it meant, and idly muttering to her miserable self, she poured out a third glass, held it in her hand as well as she was able, and came tottering forward, swaying to and fro in maudlin efforts to keep her feet. She took up her position directly behind Harry, and looked vacantly out. She was trying to ask what was the matter, with a tongue whose palsied utterance made language incomprehensible, when Harry's friend, whom he had been watching, and whose figure he had, with love's delicate discrimination, picked out from a score of similar figures, and known to be hers, when it was but a mere speck in the distance, passed directly under the open window, and, startled by that sob and by that drunken voice in answer, looked wonderingly up. Oh, heavens! she read that fearful secret in one blank, horrified glance. She read it in the despairing hopelessness of the little face turned toward hers—that look so terrible in a face so young. She read it still more clearly in that fiery, bloated, senseless visage looking down upon her with a dull stare, in the swaying form feebly holding the tell-tale glass. She knew now why that delicate child, nursed in the lap of affluence, having all that wealth could purchase, had come so timidly to her lowly dwelling, and earnestly besought her for a single kiss; what had made the little face sorrowful and wan, and set that seal of suffering upon it. She saw it all, and, under the sudden weight of that astounding revelation, she literally staggered as under the weight of a blow. Looking down through his tear-dimmed eyes at the face he loved so well, Harry saw upon it no look of sympathy or recognition for him—only that blank, amazed, horror-stricken look at that something behind him, a look which embraced every item of the shameful scene, and showed all too clearly how plainly it did so. Then, without a word or glance of kindness, she gathered her veil closely about her pallid visage, and quickly hurried away. Alas for Harry! he feels that the truth has turned her heart from his, and she has gone forever. The anguish of that thought was too great for suppression, and he stretched forth his hands toward the retreating figure with a forlorn wail of supplication. That look of horror, that low, plaintive, heart-broken cry, like a child forsaken of its mother, had sobered her a little. She had been a proud woman once, and a remnant of the nobler pride which had once uplifted her was still left within her soul. To have eyes from which shone forth the pure, unsullied spirit of womanhood, discover her secret, and look upon her in her shame; to behold in a rival, whom unseen she hated, womanhood enthroned in excellence; to see its image in herself fallen and defaced, sunken in degradation; to know that a few kind and well-bestowed caresses had won her child's love from her, that on that strange maternal bosom the little head rested more tranquilly and peacefully than on her own; to owe her a double grudge as discoverer and supplanter—this aroused the smouldering and now perverted pride yet alive within her bosom, and fanned it to a flame. She clinched her hands convulsively, her teeth shut together with a dull, grating sound, the unsteady form swayed to and fro, like a lithe tree shaken in the wind of a coming tempest, and the bloated face, dark with wrath, was terrible to look upon. It was a fearful thing to be alone with that half-drunken creature, and see wave after wave of passion rolling over her tempest-tossed soul, lashing it into fury. Maggie felt it to be so now. As a trusty confidant and able protector, one who, by some strange means, had gained an ascendency over her mistress that no other possessed, and wisely exercised this controlling power, she had been with these poor children through many similar scenes, sheltering them under the broad wing of her protection, but she had never beheld the gathering of so dark a storm, never felt the vague, shuddering dread, the chill apprehension which seized on her now. One glance at that terrible being showed her power lost, her protection insufficient, impotent. To stay with them and endeavor to breast the coming storm would be madness—to try to get the children from the room now would be both impolitic and dangerous; at the least demonstration of the kind that storm would be sure to burst upon them in all its resistless fury, and before its raging power she felt her strength would be utter weakness. She must fly for aid. Perhaps even now some invisible being, conscious of their danger, might be impelling their father to the rescue.

'Harry,' said Maggie, turning very pale, as she glanced at the dreadful figure rocking to and fro in fearful communing with itself, and bending down to whisper a parting injunction as she tied on her bonnet, 'don't speak to her, don't look toward her. Don't cross her in any way. She's the devil's own, now.'

A word, a look, a gesture of entreaty to Charley, placing in dumb show his brother in his charge, and she passed from the room hastily and noiselessly, but not unperceived. As she vanished, an evil smile of triumph at thus being so easily rid of an able antagonist, flashed across the terrible face, giving it almost the look of a demon. In passing out, Maggie has left the door ajar, which perceiving, the wretched woman totters across the room, shuts the door, locks it, throws the key upon the floor, and, tottering back to her seat, again takes a long, deep draught from the glass upon the table. Fixing her fiery eyes full on Harry, she calls out imperiously:

'Come here, sir!'

The tone in which the command is given is cruel, stern, and cold, unsoftened by maternal tenderness, untouched by womanly gentleness, and the bloated face has the same evil look upon it. Harry shrinks back affrighted.

'Are you deaf, you adder? Come here, I say, come here.'

There is a fierceness in the tone now which shows a longer delay will be dangerous; and so Charley, pale and trembling, comes forth from the corner in which he has been crouching, and, taking his smaller brother by the hand, they come forward together.

'What made you bawl after that woman—that woman in the street?' she says, viciously grasping the little shoulder, and giving it a shake. 'Answer me this minute. Speak, sir, speak!'

'I—I can't help loving her, ma,' falters the poor child deprecatingly, while the blue eyes fill, and the tears fall slowly down his face.

'There, none of your snivelling,' she cries fiercely, giving him another shake. 'Come up here; come closer. Here! Stand back, you,' pushing Charley from her with a force that makes him stagger. 'Now then,' she furiously demands, 'did you ever cry after me when I went away and left you?'

He is so faint with fright that he can hardly find his voice to answer, and the words are almost inarticulate as he falters forth:

'Sometimes, ma; sometimes, when you are kind to me.'

'You never did; you know you never did, you little liar,' shrieks the crazed creature, savagely dealing him a heavy blow which sends him reeling from her.

'Oh, ma! Oh, ma!' gasps the poor child, crouching down in the extremity of terror as the terrible figure comes flying toward him. 'Don't kill me, oh, don't kill me; I'm such a little boy!'

She pounces upon him like a tigress, lifting the fragile form high in the air, and dashing it down to the floor again with all her cruel force. She shakes, she bites him, she rains blows upon the poor, defenceless child, leaving prints of her vicious fingers all over the poor little body wherever she touches the tender skin, marks of her cruel nails on the delicate arms and hands, long, deep scratches from which the blood exudes slowly. One last cruel blow hushes the suppressed cries of pain and terror, the low moans for mercy, and lays the bruised and quivering form senseless at her feet. Then the mad creature, crazed with drink and passion, goes careering up and down the room, snatching from table and bureau the costly trinkets with which they are adorned, and wildly trampling them beneath her feet as she hurries to and fro. She is so terrible to look upon, with that scarlet, bloated face, distorted by passion, and the long, thick hair unbound hanging wildly about it, and that baleful light in her bloodshot eyes, so terrible in the frenzied excitement of look and motion, that Charley, who has crept to the side of his prostrate brother, and is tenderly holding the unconscious head, has no power to cry or move, but sits half frozen with horror, with his great brown eyes wildly dilated, fixed in a species of fascination upon the strange motions of that dreadful figure, and merely in obedience to the instinct of self-preservation endeavors to shield himself and his insensible charge from the heavy blows aimed at them as she comes flying past. A few brief moments pass in this way, moments which to that poor child, alone with that wild being, seem dreadful hours of torturing length. Then the blessed sounds of coming relief fall on his ear, footsteps are approaching, a man's firm, hurried tread and woman's lighter but no less rapid step are heard through the hall below, up the staircase—on, on they come, crossing the long upper hall, pausing at the threshold. Then they try the door; swift, crushing blows are rained upon it, the door is burst open, and they come rushing distractedly in.

'Oh, pa! pa!' The tongue is loosed whose utterance fear has palsied, and Charley stretches forth his hands to the strong arm of his earthly saviour. One hasty glance around the room strewn with fragments of costly toys, one look at the maniacal form in the centre with wildly dishevelled hair, and leering, vacant face, then the anguished eyes fall on that for which they are searching, see the outstretched arms of the little figure cowering in a corner half hid by the window curtain, see that other figure lying at its feet, so livid and motionless, so breathless, with the deathly face upturned, and the long brown lashes, still wet with tears, resting on the marble cheeks.

'O God! too late! too late!' The strong agony of that father's heart bursts forth from his bleached lips in that wild, irrepressible cry. He seizes the tottering form. He shakes it fiercely: 'Woman! fiend! blot on the name of mother! you have killed my boy!'

That momentary burst of passion past, he leaves the hapless creature to her witless mumbling, and, with great waves of anguish rolling over his soul, the broken-hearted father kneels beside his boy.

'Not dead! oh, thank God! not dead.'

There is a slight throbbing motion of the heart, a faint, scarcely perceptible pulsation at the wrist. They raise the senseless form from off the floor. Up to his room they bear him; softly on his little bed they lay him—that little bed from which he is never more to rise. Gentle footsteps glide noiselessly about the room, loving eyes are bent above him, and tears fall upon the upturned face. Long days go and come, fragrant sunny days, bright with the bloom of summer, each day one less of earth, one nearer heaven. The loving watchers know it, and ever and anon there are sounds of smothered weeping there. But there are no answering tears from eyes soon to look on immortal things, for on the passing soul dawns a vision of a home beyond the shadow and the blight, where, in meadows fragrant with immortal flowers, the Great Shepherd feedeth His sheep, and, as He tenderly leads them beside the still waters, gathers the lambs to His bosom. In that clime glows the glory of unfading light, the bloom of undying beauty. Henceforth the beauty and the light of this transitory sphere seem wan and cold, and the fading things of earth grow worthless in the dying eyes, and the tranced soul longs to be gone, yet bides its time with patient sweetness. Patient amid all his pain, no groan escapes the parched lips, no complaining murmur. Bearing all his sufferings with meek endurance, quiet and very thoughtful he lies upon his little bed, smiling placidly upon those about him—grateful, very grateful for their love and care; watching with musing eyes the long hours through the changes of the day on the sky as seen from his window—gray dawn melting into morning, morning into mellow day, day, with its varied changes, sinking into night. The heaven beyond on which he muses as he gazes, the home for which he longs, baptizes him with its light beforetime. On the sinless brow the seal of a perfect peace is set, and the air about the child grows holy. A hush falls on the room mysterious and solemn, and they know that white-robed immortals are treading earthly courts, mingling in earthly company; for he murmurs in his dreams of radiant faces that bend above him; and the wan face, as they watch it in its slumbers, grows bright with the look of heaven. A few more hours of earth, a little longer tarrying of the immortal with the mortal part where it has lived and loved, suffered and rejoiced; a few more moans of pain, and the blue eyes open and look upon the day whose silent light will dawn upon us all. They had not thought the end so near at hand; and, worn out with grief and watching, the father and his faithful nurses had one by one retired to rest, leaving Charley, at his earnest solicitation, to sit beside the bed and watch his brother's fitful slumbers. Since that fatal day, a dread and horror of his mother had seized upon the child. Though surrounded by those he loved, her near approach would cause strong nervous chills, and her kiss or touch would throw him into frightful spasms, from which they could with difficulty recover him; hence, by the doctor's orders, she was forbidden the room, and it was only when utter exhaustion had steeped his refined spiritual sense into perfect oblivion of surrounding objects, that she was permitted to enter there and gaze for a little on the wan features of her sleeping child. That day, knowing his time on earth was short, and possessed by a restless and uncontrollable desire to be near him, even though she could not look upon his face, into the room of her dying boy she had stolen like a culprit, and noiselessly shrank into the farthest corner of the room, screened from his observation by the heavy window-curtain and the high head-board of the bed. They had discovered her there after a time, but she, in terms which would have moved the coldest heart to pity, implored them with tears to allow her to remain; and they, seeing that the demon had departed from her for a season, and compassionating the forlorn being, had gone away and left her there. She sits motionless in the silent room, her despairing eyes fixed on the serene heaven to which her darling will soon be gone, and from which the stern justice of an accusing conscience tells her she may be forever excluded.

And oh! if this be truth, if in the world beyond there is no hope for sinful souls that have gone astray in this, and this parting is eternal, then, oh then, through the long, dark ages of suffering which may be her future portion, never to look upon her darling more, never more to kiss the sweet lips that have called her mother, never more to look upon him here till the silken lashes droop toward the marble cheek and the half-veiled eyes have lost their lustre, and they lead her in for a last look ere the little face is shut out from mortal gaze forever!—oh! the unutterable anguish of that thought, and the remorse which mingles with it! Not for that last dreadful act, for she never knew that she had killed him. No clear remembrance of that day lives within to curse her memory, but she knows that a strange and unaccountable dread of her has seized upon the child, that she is banished from his dying presence; and an undefined and vague remembrance, a misty horror, has fallen on her life, rests on her like an incubus, pursues her in a thousand phantom shapes through the long, dark watches of the terror-laden night, and through burdened days of ceaseless suffering. She knows, for they have told her, that when his consciousness returned, his first cry had been for the mother of his heart; that she had left everything and come to him; that she had taken her place beside his bed, a dearer place than she had ever occupied in his heart; that no hands like those chill, magnetic ones could soothe him in his pain, or charm him to his fitful slumbers; that on no bosom could the throbbing head rest so tranquilly as on her own. What the mother's heart suffered in that knowledge when her better nature prevailed, only the Being knows Who framed it. The hours of the long day wore heavily on. The sun, that had paused awhile in mid-heaven, was now sinking slowly toward the west. Yet, unmindful of food or rest, seated in the same corner into which she had shrunk on entering the room, ever and anon rocking herself to and fro, or wringing her hands in silent agony, there sits the wretched mother, hidden watcher by the bedside of her dying boy. The room has been chosen for its retired situation, and is removed from the noise of household occupations; and the bustle of the crowded street, even in its busiest hours, falls on the ear in a distant hum. It is quiet now, very quiet. Harry has awakened once from his slumbers, asked to be moved nearer the front of the bed, that they may be very near each other while he sleeps again, and, when that was done, has smiled lovingly upon the little, sorrowful watcher, and, with his wasted hand tightly clasped in his, has fallen into sounder slumbers. In the deathlike stillness which has fallen on the room, she can hear his breathing, and has ventured twice or thrice, while he slept thus, to steal softly to the bedside and look upon his face; but as at each successive attempt he has seemed almost immediately to feel the dreaded atmosphere, and his slumbers have become broken and uneasy, with a heavy heart she has crept silently back again. Charley has waited until the thin hand of the sick child has relaxed its clasp on his own, then, moved by a loving impulse, noiselessly busies himself in removing a littered mass of vials, cups, and glasses, which have accumulated on the stand near the bed, to a table just at hand, and taxes his childish ingenuity in arranging thereon, in the prettiest possible form, a multitude of toys and trinkets, gifts sent by the servants of the house to his brother, putting the new ones in front, so that his eye may fall on them first when he wakes again. This done, he creeps back to his seat by the bedside, and silently watches his slumbers as before.