There spoke the wife, as, ever since that holy name was known, the wife has spoken—can speak alone.
How can she go?
Something clings to her dress and pulls her back. She looks around upon a little boy and girl—it is the hot corn girl, just driven from the banking-house steps three squares below.
"Mother, mother, do speak to us; it is Bill and me. Is father dead? What killed him?"
Rum! She did not say so. She only thought. She thought, too, of her helpless children, and what would they do if she went to take care of their father. She did not think of the blows, the kicks, and cuffs, and curses, received from him during long bitter years, for they were given by—not by him—not by her husband—but by the demon in him—the devil engendered by rum. She thought nothing of the cruel neglect and poverty and suffering of herself and children, for that was a sequence of the other. She did think of this night, fourteen years ago. She did think of the night when this girl, now clinging to her dress and convulsively crying, "Mother, is he dead," was born, for then she was a happy wife and mother. Then that father took that child in his arms and kissed and blessed it—then he took her in his arms and kissed and loved her, and called her his dear wife. She did not think of the night when that little slender boy, now ten years old, was born, for then a devil—not a husband—dragged her by the hair, while in labor, from her poor cot, and bid her go out in the pitiless storm to fill his bottle for him. No, she did not remember that; she only remembered that he was her husband; wounded, dying husband, in need of some kind hand to make his bed and smooth his passage to the grave, and she would leave all without a thought to follow him to the hospital. She was his wife. Now there is a struggle between duty and affection—between husband and children. She cannot go with both. One must be neglected; which shall it be? Had the husband been what he was when that girl was born, the heart of many a wife would give the ready answer. She looked upon her and remembered the time when she first heard these words, "Have you got a baby?" She looked upon her, and all intervening time faded from memory, and she thought and felt as she would have felt if he had been struck down that night. She tears herself away from the grasp of the little girl, telling her to pick up the apples and go home, she must go with father.
Another hand clings to her dress, and looks up with such an appealing look and says:—
"Don't go, mother; they will take care of father. Don't leave us."
She looked upon her sickly boy, and thought of the night he was born. Why does she start and turn round? Did some one pull her by the hair? No, it was only fancy. A sort of magnetic influence, linked with thought. That twinge decided her. That twinge decided his fate, and saved her children's lives. She went home with them, and tired nature slept in spite of mental agony. At four o'clock the bells rung for fire; it was long before she could wake sufficiently to count the eight strokes which told it was in her district. Dreamily unconscious of danger, she moves not till she hears a crash and sees a light through the small rear window, when she springs up, opens the door, looks out in the direction of the stairs, and meets a burst of flame and smoke coming up. Back, back to the bed, closing the door—a thin pine door—the only barrier between the fire and her sleeping babes, she drags them out and up to the window. Will she throw them down upon the pavement below, as the only hope of saving their lives, for the fire is fairly up the stairs and rattling at the door behind her? If it enters all is lost. The window is opened, and the little boy first—he is the darling—poised upon the sill, in the bewildered amazement of half-awaking consciousness.
"Oh mother, mother, don't throw me out! I will be a good boy, mother. I never will tear my jacket again. Indeed I could not help it. It was a big boy that pulled me. Oh, mother, mother, don't, pray don't."
He screams with fear, as he hangs convulsively upon his mother's neck, and looks down upon the gathering crowd, crying, "Throw him out, throw him out; we will catch him." And a hundred hands are outstretched, a hundred noble hearts would prostrate themselves upon the pavement to save, to break the fall of a beggar boy whom they would have kicked out of their path the day before. Now a mother appeals to her fellow men to save her child. She had oft appealed before, but then the house was not on fire; the fire was in his father's mouth—and that they heeded not. No bells rung, to call the engines with copious streams of water to put it out—they are ringing now. And now see the outstretched hands, each ready to risk its own life to save that of a child.