Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 / Devoted to Literature and National Policy

by Various

'Charley, say you want some cakes—a drink of water—anything that's down stairs, and follow me out of this room.'

'I can't go, Maggie,' returned the child, in the same cautious whisper, glancing toward his mother with his large dark eyes wildly dilated, and his small face bleached with fright. 'Harry won't go, and I can't leave Harry.'

'Harry shall go,' energetically repeated the resolute Maggie, putting her head out of the window to say her say. 'He is not going to stay here to be mauled! Harry,' she continued, in the most insinuating tone imaginable, 'come down stairs with Maggie. There's a darling.'

He was leaning out of the window, apparently looking at something in the street below, and did not move as she addressed him.

'Harry, Harry,' she called again, in an excited whisper, 'do you hear me? quick, child, quick!'

He turned toward her his face covered with tears.

'Don't cry, for heaven's sake, child; don't cry here,' returned Maggie, with a suppressed groan, 'or that mother of yours will pounce upon you in spite of me.'

At the mention of that word, what little self-possession he retained gave way, and he sobbed outright. It was a sob so passionate and long suppressed, and it burst forth in spite of him with such vehemence, that it shook the little form from head to foot, and sounded through the still room so miserably hopeless, so heart-broken, that it even aroused the stupefied being nodding in her chair, whom he had the misery to call by the name of mother. It awakened within her some vague thought of motherly sympathy; and, stupidly striving to comprehend what it meant, and idly muttering to her miserable self, she poured out a third glass, held it in her hand as well as she was able, and came tottering forward, swaying to and fro in maudlin efforts to keep her feet. She took up her position directly behind Harry, and looked vacantly out. She was trying to ask what was the matter, with a tongue whose palsied utterance made language incomprehensible, when Harry's friend, whom he had been watching, and whose figure he had, with love's delicate discrimination, picked out from a score of similar figures, and known to be hers, when it was but a mere speck in the distance, passed directly under the open window, and, startled by that sob and by that drunken voice in answer, looked wonderingly up. Oh, heavens! she read that fearful secret in one blank, horrified glance. She read it in the despairing hopelessness of the little face turned toward hers—that look so terrible in a face so young. She read it still more clearly in that fiery, bloated, senseless visage looking down upon her with a dull stare, in the swaying form feebly holding the tell-tale glass. She knew now why that delicate child, nursed in the lap of affluence, having all that wealth could purchase, had come so timidly to her lowly dwelling, and earnestly besought her for a single kiss; what had made the little face sorrowful and wan, and set that seal of suffering upon it. She saw it all, and, under the sudden weight of that astounding revelation, she literally staggered as under the weight of a blow. Looking down through his tear-dimmed eyes at the face he loved so well, Harry saw upon it no look of sympathy or recognition for him—only that blank, amazed, horror-stricken look at that something behind him, a look which embraced every item of the shameful scene, and showed all too clearly how plainly it did so. Then, without a word or glance of kindness, she gathered her veil closely about her pallid visage, and quickly hurried away. Alas for Harry! he feels that the truth has turned her heart from his, and she has gone forever. The anguish of that thought was too great for suppression, and he stretched forth his hands toward the retreating figure with a forlorn wail of supplication. That look of horror, that low, plaintive, heart-broken cry, like a child forsaken of its mother, had sobered her a little. She had been a proud woman once, and a remnant of the nobler pride which had once uplifted her was still left within her soul. To have eyes from which shone forth the pure, unsullied spirit of womanhood, discover her secret, and look upon her in her shame; to behold in a rival, whom unseen she hated, womanhood enthroned in excellence; to see its image in herself fallen and defaced, sunken in degradation; to know that a few kind and well-bestowed caresses had won her child's love from her, that on that strange maternal bosom the little head rested more tranquilly and peacefully than on her own; to owe her a double grudge as discoverer and supplanter—this aroused the smouldering and now perverted pride yet alive within her bosom, and fanned it to a flame. She clinched her hands convulsively, her teeth shut together with a dull, grating sound, the unsteady form swayed to and fro, like a lithe tree shaken in the wind of a coming tempest, and the bloated face, dark with wrath, was terrible to look upon. It was a fearful thing to be alone with that half-drunken creature, and see wave after wave of passion rolling over her tempest-tossed soul, lashing it into fury. Maggie felt it to be so now. As a trusty confidant and able protector, one who, by some strange means, had gained an ascendency over her mistress that no other possessed, and wisely exercised this controlling power, she had been with these poor children through many similar scenes, sheltering them under the broad wing of her protection, but she had never beheld the gathering of so dark a storm, never felt the vague, shuddering dread, the chill apprehension which seized on her now. One glance at that terrible being showed her power lost, her protection insufficient, impotent. To stay with them and endeavor to breast the coming storm would be madness—to try to get the children from the room now would be both impolitic and dangerous; at the least demonstration of the kind that storm would be sure to burst upon them in all its resistless fury, and before its raging power she felt her strength would be utter weakness. She must fly for aid. Perhaps even now some invisible being, conscious of their danger, might be impelling their father to the rescue.

'Harry,' said Maggie, turning very pale, as she glanced at the dreadful figure rocking to and fro in fearful communing with itself, and bending down to whisper a parting injunction as she tied on her bonnet, 'don't speak to her, don't look toward her. Don't cross her in any way. She's the devil's own, now.'

A word, a look, a gesture of entreaty to Charley, placing in dumb show his brother in his charge, and she passed from the room hastily and noiselessly, but not unperceived. As she vanished, an evil smile of triumph at thus being so easily rid of an able antagonist, flashed across the terrible face, giving it almost the look of a demon. In passing out, Maggie has left the door ajar, which perceiving, the wretched woman totters across the room, shuts the door, locks it, throws the key upon the floor, and, tottering back to her seat, again takes a long, deep draught from the glass upon the table. Fixing her fiery eyes full on Harry, she calls out imperiously: