Fashion and Famine

by Ann S. Stephens

"My husband had embezzled his employers' money. He was tried, found guilty, sentenced to the state prison for seven years. I—I had done it! When he went up to Sing Sing, linked wrist to wrist with a band of the lowest felons, I followed to the wharf, and my little boy, his child and mine, only a few weeks old, lay crying against my bosom. I watched the boat through the burning tears that seemed to scorch my eyes, and when it was lost, I turned away still as the grave, but the most desolate wretch that ever trod the earth. Seven years, it was an eternity to me! I had no moral strength—I was mad. But his child was there, and I struggled for that!"

The woman paused. Her voice, full of rude strength before, grew soft with mournful desolation.

"I went often to see him; I struggled for a pardon, it was his first offence, but he must stay a year or two in prison; there was no hope before then—I have told you how innocent he really was. But a sense of shame, the hard fare, the toil—he drooped under these things! Every visit I found him thinner; his smile more sad; his brow more pallid. One day I went to see him with the child, and they told me to go home, for my husband was dead.

"I went home quietly as a lamb that has been numbed by the frost. That night I drank laudanum, intending to be nearer my husband before morning, but there was not enough. It threw me into a sleep, profound as death, except that I could not find him in it. The potion did not kill, but it taught me where to seek for relief, how to chain sleep. It was my slave then, we have changed places since."

Ada sat cowering in her chair, while the woman went on with her narrative. It seemed as if she herself were the person who had inflicted the great wrong to which she had listened; as if the fierce anger, the just reproaches of that woman were levelled at her own conscience.

"What atonement can be made? What can be done for you?" she faltered, weaving her pale fingers together, and lifting her eyes beseechingly to the woman's face, which was bent down and haggard with exhausted anguish.

"What atonement can be made?" cried the woman, throwing back her head till the crimson hood fell half away from her dark tresses. "He is making atonement now—now—ha! ha!"

The laugh which followed this speech made Ada cower as if a mortal hand had fallen upon her heart. She looked piteously at the woman, and after a faint struggle to speak, fell back in her chair quite insensible.

This utter prostration—this deathly helplessness, touched the still living heart of the woman. She could not understand why her terrible story had taken such effect upon a person, lifted as it seemed so far above all sympathy for one of her wretched cast; but she was a woman, had suffered and could still feel for the sufferings of others. A gush of gentle compassion broke up through the blackness and rubbish which had almost choked up the pure waters of her heart, humanising her countenance, and awaking her womanhood once more.