“Some time, Norman, some time, but not yet awhile, not yet. Tonight let me be happy, boundlessly happy.”
So they walked up and down under the silver maples until the hours waned. The moon had changed her position, and the brightly lighted windows were fading into darkness. Thus reminded of the flight of time, they parted—she to seek her snowy draped chamber and dream of what the dark future might perchance have in store for her. Sunny, golden dreams they were, to judge by the happy smile that lingered on the lips where yet his kisses lay warm, while again a thought of those darker times that lay hidden in the past, would break in upon the sweet present and like a somber cloud overcast the heaven’s blue, so would she feel a gloom cast over her young happiness. Shivering she disrobed and sought her couch, that she might, in sweet slumber, forget the world and its woes, and thus continue her waking dreams of him who constituted her heaven.
And Norman? With his head bared to the cool air, he watched the graceful form flit across the lawn and disappear within the house. Then, murmuring, “You are a mystery, my sweet queen, but, for all that, my pure love. Whatever it may be that makes you differ from other women I know that none but pure emotions can stir that fair bosom. Good night, my winsome love! Good night! Whatever the sad experience may have been that has seemingly destroyed your faith in man, I mean to win it back. I mean to prove to you clearly that at least one man is worthy the unbounded trust of one pure woman.”
A little while longer he stood, until a light, flashing from one of the upper windows, told him that Imelda had entered her room, and was probably preparing to retire. Again his “Good night” was wafted upon the air in a love-laden whisper, and then his firm tread could be heard receding in the distance as he wended his way quickly under the whispering silvery maples.
CHAPTER II.
What of Imelda’s past? What were the dark forbidding shadows that threatened to overcast her future?
Nothing unusual; interwoven only with a story such as has darkened many another young girl’s life. The history of one woman’s life, the threads of which were woven so closely with hers as to hold her to those past memories as in a net in whose meshes no loophole had been left. Imelda’s mother, just such a bright, beautiful and queenly girl as she herself now was, had wrecked her life upon the rock upon which thousands daily, hourly are wrecked. Of what this rock consisted we shall see as our story proceeds.
Nellie Dunbar was the child of poverty. She was one of eight children, whose parents probably could not have taken proper care of one. So, instead of giving Nellie that which every child has the right to demand of those who take upon themselves the responsibility of ushering children into existence, viz: a thorough education to develop their mental capacities; proper care of their young bodies to enable them to become full rounded women and men; careful, tender nurture of both body and soul—instead of giving Nellie and her numerous brothers and sisters all this it was only in their very young days—days when the minds of children should be free and unburdened of care save childhood’s plays, that they were able to send them to school at all. While yet of very tender age, when toys and books should have been their only care, these were laid away upon the shelf and their young strength pressed into the much needed work of helping to support the family.
Oh, ye parents of the millions! Do you ever think of the wrongs daily and hourly perpetrated upon the children, those mites of humanity whose advent into the world you yourselves are directly responsible for; upon whose unborn souls you place a curse that is to work out its woes in the coming ages—children who with all their unfitness are to become in turn, the parents of the race?
Nellie found work in a cloak factory, and, as she sat day by day bending above her machine she often almost cursed the fate that made her a working girl; only she had been taught that such thoughts were impious. That it was a good and all-wise “God” who had mapped out her life, and that it would be wicked to be anything but thankful.