The mother, who, during one of the longest and hardest of winters had exerted herself daily and nightly far beyond her strength to provide for the wants of her children, who had in reality no other support but her, drooped when the “life-inspiring” spring came round again. The health which was so shattered by the struggles and heart-sorrows of the winter, was not restored again when the sunlight streamed so richly through her cheerless home. With the blossoming trees, and the violets, her hope did not strongly revive. The voices of the returning birds did not bring to her the lightness and happiness of spirit she had known in other days—for every day the brand of drunkenness was graven deeper and deeper on the forehead of the lover of her youth. Long, long after all her natural strength had failed, the mother’s love, and the wife’s devotion sustained, supported her. Long after her voice was faltering with weakness, did she supplicate that husband to rouse him to his former manliness, to exert himself once more. Long after her hands were trembling with disease, did she continue to ply the needle, whose labor was to bring them their daily food.
And heavy debts hung over them. Then the creditors, who saw no probability of these being ever satisfied, determined to liquidate them by selling off the little farm and residence of Mr. Hogg. And so they were sold. With the miserable remnant of their household goods which was left them, they removed to a smaller and less comfortable home. Then, as if evil days had not dawned on them already, one morning found the toiling mother laid on the bed of sickness and of death. To leave those helpless children thus! oh, it had been hard to part with those little ones, when around each one her heart-strings clung, even had their future been very bright, but to leave them when darkness and dreariness of life was before them, when a path so beset with sorrow and trial was all that she could see in store for them! bitter, bitter it was, indeed! Pass we over the sacredness of that hour, when the dying mother breathing the few faint parting words in the ear of her eldest child, left them to struggle on in their hard road alone. Words fail me to tell her anguish, who, in the last moments of her life, was racked by the thought of all that they might be called on to endure. No living voice should essay to speak of all that was in her heart, when she clasped the youngest, a bright-eyed boy, to her bosom, while his gay voice broke forth in laughter, and he flung his arms about her neck, and hid his face, all radiant with smiles, in her bosom. I am powerless when I attempt to tell you of the girl who stood shuddering with agony beside that bed, while the shadows of the coming night were fast filling the little room, when, after a long, and to her terrible silence, with trembling hands she lifted the boy from his mother’s arms, and felt as her fingers loosened the parent’s grasp, that the thin hands were icy cold, when she fell almost lifeless to the floor with the little one in her arms, feeling that those children had no mother or protector but her. I cannot tell you as should be told, if told, indeed, at all, of the terrible sorrow that filled her soul, when the little one said to her, “put me back with mamma, she is sleeping!”
From that day Delle went with us no more to the village school, neither joined us in our hours of gayety. While she was so young, the cares and anxieties of a woman had overtaken her, and trials which older heads and hearts find it hard to bear, were thick in her path, all that delights the young and excitable, did she most cheerfully forego; I never heard a murmur from her lips. The living witnesses of her mother’s love and life-devotion surrounded her; they forbade every expression, every feeling of impatience, or envious regard of the happiness of others, no worthier than herself.
It was a heart-cheering sight, the firmness and perseverance of that strong-minded girl, when the first wildness of her sorrow was passed, and she stood amid that family group, a support, and a counsellor, and guide, plying her little hands on the coarse work with which the neighbors had supplied her. All the counsel and advice of the dead mother she kept most religiously. Never for a moment did she falter in her duty, but no one knows how much of sadness there was in her heart.
At the time of his wife’s death, the father seemed to pause for a little in his downward course, for he had loved her once, and remembered well that happy time, and perhaps, but no, I cannot dignify the affection with which still, in his sober hours, he thought of her, with the name of love. No, he did not love her in her better days, because love would have prompted him to deeds commensurate with so ennobling and exalting a faculty. Yet when she died, the husband sorrowed for her, and conscience reproached him, too, when he looked for the last time on the care-worn, faded countenance of his departed wife, who had always been his good angel. Still it was not with such sorrow as he should have sorrowed for her, that he followed her to the grave, and then led his little ones back to his home; had it been, he would have sought then, in a better life, to pay a fitting homage to her memory.
For a few weeks he did labor with what little skill was left him, at his old trade; but his was not the will, nor the mind, nor the heart to pursue the good because it was right, and just, and his duty. His recent excesses had shattered his constitution—his hands trembled, and his feet went tottering, and ere long these evil inclinations quite overcame him again. Poor Delle! she had no more hope for him when she saw that the death of her mother was a thing so feebly remembered and cared for by him. How strange it seemed to her that he could ever forget the words of entreaty the dying woman addressed to him. To the mind of the innocent child it was wonderful that he should ever seek to drown those words of pleading and warning that she had spoken to him in the horrible forgetfulness that is bought by intoxication.
But aside from this great sorrow, there was another and a different kind of care that weighed heavily on Delle’s mind. Her only sister was ten years old at the time of her mother’s death. She had been always a puny, sickly little thing—the object of that mother’s unceasing and peculiar care. It is said that the heart of the parent is always filled with a deeper and tenderer sympathy and love for an unfortunate child. Most true was this in the case of Jane. She had never been much at school, and rarely had left her mother’s side. A sober little creature she was, always seeking to make herself useful, and quite unlike in all respects the romping boys who filled the house with their noise. When Mrs. Hogg died, Jane, to use Mrs. Jones’ expressive words, “wilted right down, just like a cabbage-leaf;” and the scrofula, which had afflicted her for many years, manifested itself in a fearful form. It seemed to Delle that the cup of bitterness was running over when the village doctor, who was called to the child’s aid, told her, for she would know the truth, that he could do nothing for her—that her spine would be inevitably curved. It might be, he said, that constant care and watching would in a measure restore her health, and her life might be spared for years, but she could never wholly recover.
All the tenderness and affection her mother had borne toward little Jane, seemed to have centered itself in the bosom of Delle. A most patient and untiring nurse was she, doing every thing so cheerfully, sacrificing all her own wants that she might procure comforts for the invalid, and never giving the child reason to suppose for a moment that her, I mean Delle’s, constitution was not made of iron. Often and often, after a day of exertion, would she sit for half the night by the side of the little sufferer, who was writhing in agony, watching her and supporting her with the fondest care; and to all poor Jane’s anxious fears that she would weary out, the gentle voice of Delle assured her it was not possible to weary in doing for her.
Three years from the spring when the weeping children had gathered around their mother’s grave, they stood together in the church-yard again, and saw the dust and the sod heaped over the dead body of their father. I would not say that it was not with much sorrowing, with many tears, that Delle had nursed him through his death-sickness; that it was not with love and a martyr’s patient endurance she had ministered to his numberless wants; but I should be far wrong (and you will not impute it to her sin) were I to say that it was the same great sorrow which had bowed and well-nigh crushed her gentle spirit when her mother died, that brought forth those tears when she stood by her father’s death-bed. He was her father; she remembered with affectionate gratitude the days of old, when he was to his children a parent indeed, when he had been the tender and devoted husband of his wife; but even that remembrance was not strong enough to obliterate all recollection of the recent past; and I say it was not in her nature, nor, indeed, in human nature at all, to mourn very deeply over such a man. It was not with such a dreadful sense of bereavement that she followed him to the grave, as had once before swept over her. The “cloud had spent its fury” upon her, the bolt had fallen the day her worshiped mother died.
The children returned to their home, orphaned—four of them dependent on the exertions of that frail young creature on whom only the sun of sixteen years was beaming. There were no friends on whom they might depend, for their mother’s relatives lived somewhere in the far South; and had Delle even known where they lived, there was far too much independence and self-reliance in her nature to impose on them the maintenance of five strange children, which she felt could not be a very agreeable accession to any family; and her heart was so filled with almost parental affection for those young beings, that she could not bear to think of subjecting them to the possible hard treatment of unsympathizing relatives.