“Don’t you believe one word of that, ma’am, now, don’t, that’s a dear lady! Lors, he wouldn’t have the heart! he couldn’t stay away from you forever, no, not if he was to try to ever so hard,” said Pina, soothingly, as she followed her mistress.
“But he says so himself! he says so!” exclaimed Drusilla, with a passionate burst of weeping.
“Well, he says so, and maybe he thinks so, but he can’t do it. It’s only because some wicked woman has got the whip hand of him now. But lor bless you, that can’t last. All men is fools, ma’am. I know that much, if I don’t know any more. But lor! the foolishest of ’em knows gold from brass, and is sure to come back to the old love and the true love, for their own interests. Goodness knows they never does anything for ours! He’ll come back, ma’am! Bad pennies always does.”
“Oh,” moaned Drusilla, “how low I have fallen! how low, to say what I have said, and to hear what I have heard! Pina, my girl, hush. You must not speak of your master in this manner, especially in my presence. It is untrue of him and disrespectful to us both,” she added, as calmly as she could force herself to speak, as she dropped into her resting chair.
This was but a short lull in the storm of her grief; for presently, the keen sense of her husband’s desertion and her own desolation, pierced her heart, and she fell into a fresh paroxysm of sobs and tears, and leaving her chair, walked distractedly about the room, raving and wringing her hands as before.
Pina went to her and threw her arms around her, saying:
“Oh, mist’ess, mist’ess, don’t do so! You’ll kill yourself and kill your child!”
“Better I were dead! better my child should never be born!” cried the frantic woman, abandoning herself to the wildest excesses of despair.
“Oh, mist’ess, don’t say so! and don’t rave so! If you have no pity for yourself, have some for the poor little blind and breathless baby that depends on you for its life; and don’t kill it before it has even a soul to be saved!” pleaded Pina, touching the most sensitive chord in the mother’s heart and in the Christian conscience.
“Give me something! Give me something to benumb this keen pang, then. Give me opium! Give me anything that will dull my heart and brain without doing harm,” she demanded, sitting down in her chair, and making a great effort to control the violence of her emotions.