'Oh, ma! Oh, ma!' gasps the poor child, crouching down in the extremity of terror as the terrible figure comes flying toward him. 'Don't kill me, oh, don't kill me; I'm such a little boy!'
She pounces upon him like a tigress, lifting the fragile form high in the air, and dashing it down to the floor again with all her cruel force. She shakes, she bites him, she rains blows upon the poor, defenceless child, leaving prints of her vicious fingers all over the poor little body wherever she touches the tender skin, marks of her cruel nails on the delicate arms and hands, long, deep scratches from which the blood exudes slowly. One last cruel blow hushes the suppressed cries of pain and terror, the low moans for mercy, and lays the bruised and quivering form senseless at her feet. Then the mad creature, crazed with drink and passion, goes careering up and down the room, snatching from table and bureau the costly trinkets with which they are adorned, and wildly trampling them beneath her feet as she hurries to and fro. She is so terrible to look upon, with that scarlet, bloated face, distorted by passion, and the long, thick hair unbound hanging wildly about it, and that baleful light in her bloodshot eyes, so terrible in the frenzied excitement of look and motion, that Charley, who has crept to the side of his prostrate brother, and is tenderly holding the unconscious head, has no power to cry or move, but sits half frozen with horror, with his great brown eyes wildly dilated, fixed in a species of fascination upon the strange motions of that dreadful figure, and merely in obedience to the instinct of self-preservation endeavors to shield himself and his insensible charge from the heavy blows aimed at them as she comes flying past. A few brief moments pass in this way, moments which to that poor child, alone with that wild being, seem dreadful hours of torturing length. Then the blessed sounds of coming relief fall on his ear, footsteps are approaching, a man's firm, hurried tread and woman's lighter but no less rapid step are heard through the hall below, up the staircase—on, on they come, crossing the long upper hall, pausing at the threshold. Then they try the door; swift, crushing blows are rained upon it, the door is burst open, and they come rushing distractedly in.
'Oh, pa! pa!' The tongue is loosed whose utterance fear has palsied, and Charley stretches forth his hands to the strong arm of his earthly saviour. One hasty glance around the room strewn with fragments of costly toys, one look at the maniacal form in the centre with wildly dishevelled hair, and leering, vacant face, then the anguished eyes fall on that for which they are searching, see the outstretched arms of the little figure cowering in a corner half hid by the window curtain, see that other figure lying at its feet, so livid and motionless, so breathless, with the deathly face upturned, and the long brown lashes, still wet with tears, resting on the marble cheeks.
'O God! too late! too late!' The strong agony of that father's heart bursts forth from his bleached lips in that wild, irrepressible cry. He seizes the tottering form. He shakes it fiercely: 'Woman! fiend! blot on the name of mother! you have killed my boy!'
That momentary burst of passion past, he leaves the hapless creature to her witless mumbling, and, with great waves of anguish rolling over his soul, the broken-hearted father kneels beside his boy.
'Not dead! oh, thank God! not dead.'
There is a slight throbbing motion of the heart, a faint, scarcely perceptible pulsation at the wrist. They raise the senseless form from off the floor. Up to his room they bear him; softly on his little bed they lay him—that little bed from which he is never more to rise. Gentle footsteps glide noiselessly about the room, loving eyes are bent above him, and tears fall upon the upturned face. Long days go and come, fragrant sunny days, bright with the bloom of summer, each day one less of earth, one nearer heaven. The loving watchers know it, and ever and anon there are sounds of smothered weeping there. But there are no answering tears from eyes soon to look on immortal things, for on the passing soul dawns a vision of a home beyond the shadow and the blight, where, in meadows fragrant with immortal flowers, the Great Shepherd feedeth His sheep, and, as He tenderly leads them beside the still waters, gathers the lambs to His bosom. In that clime glows the glory of unfading light, the bloom of undying beauty. Henceforth the beauty and the light of this transitory sphere seem wan and cold, and the fading things of earth grow worthless in the dying eyes, and the tranced soul longs to be gone, yet bides its time with patient sweetness. Patient amid all his pain, no groan escapes the parched lips, no complaining murmur. Bearing all his sufferings with meek endurance, quiet and very thoughtful he lies upon his little bed, smiling placidly upon those about him—grateful, very grateful for their love and care; watching with musing eyes the long hours through the changes of the day on the sky as seen from his window—gray dawn melting into morning, morning into mellow day, day, with its varied changes, sinking into night. The heaven beyond on which he muses as he gazes, the home for which he longs, baptizes him with its light beforetime. On the sinless brow the seal of a perfect peace is set, and the air about the child grows holy. A hush falls on the room mysterious and solemn, and they know that white-robed immortals are treading earthly courts, mingling in earthly company; for he murmurs in his dreams of radiant faces that bend above him; and the wan face, as they watch it in its slumbers, grows bright with the look of heaven. A few more hours of earth, a little longer tarrying of the immortal with the mortal part where it has lived and loved, suffered and rejoiced; a few more moans of pain, and the blue eyes open and look upon the day whose silent light will dawn upon us all. They had not thought the end so near at hand; and, worn out with grief and watching, the father and his faithful nurses had one by one retired to rest, leaving Charley, at his earnest solicitation, to sit beside the bed and watch his brother's fitful slumbers. Since that fatal day, a dread and horror of his mother had seized upon the child. Though surrounded by those he loved, her near approach would cause strong nervous chills, and her kiss or touch would throw him into frightful spasms, from which they could with difficulty recover him; hence, by the doctor's orders, she was forbidden the room, and it was only when utter exhaustion had steeped his refined spiritual sense into perfect oblivion of surrounding objects, that she was permitted to enter there and gaze for a little on the wan features of her sleeping child. That day, knowing his time on earth was short, and possessed by a restless and uncontrollable desire to be near him, even though she could not look upon his face, into the room of her dying boy she had stolen like a culprit, and noiselessly shrank into the farthest corner of the room, screened from his observation by the heavy window-curtain and the high head-board of the bed. They had discovered her there after a time, but she, in terms which would have moved the coldest heart to pity, implored them with tears to allow her to remain; and they, seeing that the demon had departed from her for a season, and compassionating the forlorn being, had gone away and left her there. She sits motionless in the silent room, her despairing eyes fixed on the serene heaven to which her darling will soon be gone, and from which the stern justice of an accusing conscience tells her she may be forever excluded.
And oh! if this be truth, if in the world beyond there is no hope for sinful souls that have gone astray in this, and this parting is eternal, then, oh then, through the long, dark ages of suffering which may be her future portion, never to look upon her darling more, never more to kiss the sweet lips that have called her mother, never more to look upon him here till the silken lashes droop toward the marble cheek and the half-veiled eyes have lost their lustre, and they lead her in for a last look ere the little face is shut out from mortal gaze forever!—oh! the unutterable anguish of that thought, and the remorse which mingles with it! Not for that last dreadful act, for she never knew that she had killed him. No clear remembrance of that day lives within to curse her memory, but she knows that a strange and unaccountable dread of her has seized upon the child, that she is banished from his dying presence; and an undefined and vague remembrance, a misty horror, has fallen on her life, rests on her like an incubus, pursues her in a thousand phantom shapes through the long, dark watches of the terror-laden night, and through burdened days of ceaseless suffering. She knows, for they have told her, that when his consciousness returned, his first cry had been for the mother of his heart; that she had left everything and come to him; that she had taken her place beside his bed, a dearer place than she had ever occupied in his heart; that no hands like those chill, magnetic ones could soothe him in his pain, or charm him to his fitful slumbers; that on no bosom could the throbbing head rest so tranquilly as on her own. What the mother's heart suffered in that knowledge when her better nature prevailed, only the Being knows Who framed it. The hours of the long day wore heavily on. The sun, that had paused awhile in mid-heaven, was now sinking slowly toward the west. Yet, unmindful of food or rest, seated in the same corner into which she had shrunk on entering the room, ever and anon rocking herself to and fro, or wringing her hands in silent agony, there sits the wretched mother, hidden watcher by the bedside of her dying boy. The room has been chosen for its retired situation, and is removed from the noise of household occupations; and the bustle of the crowded street, even in its busiest hours, falls on the ear in a distant hum. It is quiet now, very quiet. Harry has awakened once from his slumbers, asked to be moved nearer the front of the bed, that they may be very near each other while he sleeps again, and, when that was done, has smiled lovingly upon the little, sorrowful watcher, and, with his wasted hand tightly clasped in his, has fallen into sounder slumbers. In the deathlike stillness which has fallen on the room, she can hear his breathing, and has ventured twice or thrice, while he slept thus, to steal softly to the bedside and look upon his face; but as at each successive attempt he has seemed almost immediately to feel the dreaded atmosphere, and his slumbers have become broken and uneasy, with a heavy heart she has crept silently back again. Charley has waited until the thin hand of the sick child has relaxed its clasp on his own, then, moved by a loving impulse, noiselessly busies himself in removing a littered mass of vials, cups, and glasses, which have accumulated on the stand near the bed, to a table just at hand, and taxes his childish ingenuity in arranging thereon, in the prettiest possible form, a multitude of toys and trinkets, gifts sent by the servants of the house to his brother, putting the new ones in front, so that his eye may fall on them first when he wakes again. This done, he creeps back to his seat by the bedside, and silently watches his slumbers as before.
A ray of sunlight, bright and warm, creeps through the lattice and falls on the veined lids; the eyes open, and instinctively moving from the too dazzling light, rest placidly on a fragment of blue sky just visible through the half-closed window. With eyes fixed intently on that hazy distance, moment after moment, silent and motionless he lies, and the blue orbs grow lustrous as he gazes with the mystic beauty of eyes whose inner vision rests on unutterable things, and gradually there comes upon the little face the look that never comes on any face but once. Oh, mystic change! Oh, strange solemnity of death! The little watcher by the bedside, face to face with its mysterious presence for the first time, ignorant of its processes, feels a dread, half-defined idea of what it may be, and, with a piteous effort to recall his dying brother back to his old look and seeming, tremulously falters:
'See all the nice things they've sent you, Harry, all the pretty toys you've got! Here they are, spread out upon the table. Look, brother, look!'