For she dreaded the home-coming of her husband, even while she longed for it. The greatest of all books assures us that fear is cast out by love—but love may still fear something in the very one it loves above all others; some alien habit, some sin that changes the whole complexion of a soul. And thus was it with the wife who now awaited her husband's coming with a troubled heart.
It had not been ever thus. Far different had it been in the happy days with which her thoughts were busy now as she moved hither and thither, doing what deft and loving hands could do to make all bright and cheery before her husband should arrive. Those vanished days had been happy ones indeed, with nothing to cloud their joy.
When Edward Simmons first crossed her path, she knew that her hour of destiny had come. He was then a journeyman printer—and he was handsome and chivalrous and fascinating; sensitive to the last degree, imperious by nature, but tender in the expression of his love for her. And how rapturously sure of the happiness that lay before them both! Passionate in temper he undoubtedly was—but tideful natures ever are. And he was slower to forgive himself than others.
She had been little more than a girl, a fatherless girl, when first she met Edward Simmons—Ned, as his friends all called him—and in less than a year after their meeting she gave herself to him forever. Then her real life began, she thought; but before a year had passed, it was new-quickened and enriched beyond all of which she had ever dreamed. Her first-born son came to swell the fullness of her joy, and Eden itself broke into flower at his coming. The anguish and the ecstasy of motherhood had come twice again since then—and she marvelled at the new spring of love that each new baby hand smites in the wilderness of life.
But the sky had darkened. When at its very brightest, the clouds had gathered. Steady employment and good wages and careful management had enabled her to garner a little, month by month; womanlike, she was already taking thought of how Harvey should be educated. And just when everything seemed prosperous, that awful trouble had come among the printers—between the masters and the men. Then came strikes and idleness—work by spasmodic starts, followed by new upheavals and deepening bitterness—and Ned had been more with the muttering men than with his Annie and the children.
And—this was so much worse—he had gradually fallen a victim to a sterner foe. A tainted breath at first; later on, thick and confused utterance when he came home at night; by and by, the unsteady gait and the clouded brain—one by one the dread symptoms had become apparent to her. She had known, when she married, that his father had been a drinker; and one or two of her friends had hinted darkly about hereditary appetite—but she had laughed at their fears. Hereditary or not, the passion was upon him—and growing. Lack of work proved no barrier. Little by little, he had prevailed on her to give him of her hard-saved treasure, till the little fund in the post-office savings was seriously reduced.
But there was another feature, darker still. It had changed him so. His whole moral nature had suffered loss. No wonder the woman's face bore tokens of anxiety as she waited and watched through the long midnight hours; for drink always seemed to clothe her husband with a kind of harshness foreign to his nature, and more than once she had trembled before his glance and shuddered at his words. Against this, even her love seemed powerless to avail; for—and it is often so with the mysterious woman-heart—she seemed but to love him the more devotedly as she felt him drifting out to sea. She could only stretch vain hands towards the cruel billows amid which she could see his face—but the face she saw was ever that of happier days.
Suddenly she started, her heart leaping like a hunted hare as she heard, far-off, clear sounding through the stillness of the night, the footfall she was waiting for. The child's eyes seemed to fasten themselves upon the mother's as if they caught the new light that suddenly gleamed within them; she held her babe close as she went swiftly to the door and slipped out into the night. The silent stars looked down on the poor trembling form as she stood and waited, shivering some—but not with cold—listening for the verdict her ears must be the first to catch.
She had not long to wait; and the verdict would have been plain to any who could have seen her face as she turned a moment later and crept back into the house. The stamp of anguish was upon it; yet, mechanically, the babe's eyes still on hers, she took up the little teapot and poured in the boiling water—the kettle went on with its monotonous melody. She had just time to hurry up and steal a glance at the children; they were asleep, thank God.
The baby turned its eyes towards the door as the shambling feet came up to it and the unsteady hand lifted the latch. The mother pretended to be busied about the table, but the eager eyes stole a quick glance at her husband, darkening with sorrow as they looked. The man threw off his coat as soon as he entered.