Chaste as Ice, Pure as Snow: A Novel

by C. Despard

It would be a long story to tell what it was that overcame Margaret Grey till she sobbed out her sadness alone in the stillness of the May evening. Partly, perhaps, the squalor of her present surroundings, for the beautiful face and form encased a soul attuned to highest harmonies; partly the sweet womanly sympathy, which she had looked upon only and then put resolutely away from her; partly the daily pinpricks of disappointment and repulse that she had encountered in prosecuting the business which had led her to London. For, like a multitude of helpless women, Margaret was on the look-out for employment.

She had one little girl, a child about six years of age. With such a sweet tie children-lovers might wonder at her utter desolation. Strange to say, this tie, so sweet to many, was to her more of a care than a pleasure. The future of her little one weighed heavily on her mind.

In the lonely seaside village where she had left her it would be scarcely possible to educate her to fill the position that might be hers in the future. Margaret's scanty means did not allow her to think of a residence in town, or of the expenses of a school education for her daughter, unless, indeed, she could earn the necessary money.

Hence her visit to London. She had been well educated herself; of course her first thought was that by educating others she could pay for the education of her child. If she had loved her little one very much, perhaps she would have judged differently. She might have thought it better to make a home for her child in any spot, however lonely, feeling that the lack of some accomplishment would be well compensated by the refining influence of a mother's constant love and care.

But Margaret did not love her child so deeply as to find her presence a sweet necessity. There was a cloud over her motherhood, which robbed it of some of its fair charm. Duty to her child, not pleasure in her, was her one idea of the tie that alone, at this period of her history, bound her to life. It was this made her anxiety that, whatever her own lot might be, Laura should have every advantage in the way of education and training. And with the anxiety came the need for exertion. Up to the moment when the child's growth and development made the mother think of that bugbear of mothers—her education—Margaret had not been troubled with any money difficulties. She had lived in her retirement, the one trouble of her life wrapping her in its gloomy folds, but with no care for the provision of herself and her child in the future. Suddenly, inexplicably, one source of income had failed. Margaret had not been accustomed to trouble herself about money: the sufficient came to her—that was all she required to know—and this poverty was a new and dreadful thing which she found it very difficult to realize.

She tried to fathom the mystery, but it eluded her; only this remained as a hard fact: eighty pounds a year was all she received or seemed likely to receive, and Laura had to be educated.

The spirit of self-sacrifice is strong in some women; it was very strong in Margaret. She had loved her solitude by the great sea, and had succeeded in making it almost pleasant. There she pondered and wept and hoped; there, if anywhere, she thought that her trial must end. She would not enter the great world, to be swamped and lost in its multitude. Hiding her loss where none could know and none would blame, she would live in the midst of a savage loneliness which seemed almost sympathetic to her mood.

This suited her, but would it do for Laura? Was she a fit companion for her child, already dreamy and imaginative beyond her years? No, Margaret told herself; and, leaving the little one in the care of the woman from whom she hired their little cottage, she went to London alone, to try and find some occupation for herself.

She had been directed to Islington as a cheap neighborhood; and there she had stayed in a wretched lodging-house for about three weeks—three ages to poor Margaret, filled with dismal memories of humiliation and disappointment. She was reviewing it all that evening—the rudeness, the repulses, the cruel cross-examinations; for with these came the fresher scenes which that day had brought—the chivalrous admiration that had shone out of Arthur's young eyes, the gentle, womanly tenderness of Adèle.

Employers—so it seemed to poor Margaret; they were a very new class to her—were cast in a different mould. It was their duty to ask disagreeable questions and to probe unhealed wounds; it was their duty to be stiff and cross, and not at all impressed with the outward advantages which Margaret knew she possessed. It seemed very hopeless, but she felt it necessary to persevere, at least for a little while longer. The thought aroused her. She raised her head, and became suddenly conscious of the fact of hunger. She had not eaten a morsel since breakfast. No wonder, she thought, that faintness had overpowered her. So she went into her bedroom and washed away the traces of tears, that the dirty maid-of-all-work might not read her weakness, then rang the bell to order an egg or something a little more substantial than usual for her tea.