And where was her husband then? Walking to and fro upon the cold flagstones of a felon’s cell, upon a charge of murdering his child, his own child; doomed thither by his own wife. A close investigation of every matter connected with this mysterious affair was set on foot. No proof of Mr. Wilson’s guilt could be obtained. He was arraigned before his country’s laws, and, after a patient trial, was discharged, as his judge emphatically pronounced, without a stain upon his character. Discharged, forsooth, to what? To meet the frowns and suspicions of a too credulous world; to see the people turn and stare behind him, as he passed along the streets; to see the children shrink from him and flee, as from some monster; and to dwell in a desolate home, his own offspring trembling as he touched them, and his wife—that wife who had accused him—looking with cold, suspicious, unhappy eye upon the being she had sworn to love and cherish with her life. Such was his fate! who had wrought it? His wife recovered from her illness; and her sister went her way back to her home in France.
Seldom did the poor man even speak: there was gloom about that desolate house. His trade fell off, and his credit declined; and why? because his heart was broken. Day after day he sat in his lone counting-house; there was no bustle there. His books were covered with a thick coat of dust; and, as one by one his customers stepped off, so poverty stepped in, until at last he found himself almost a beggar. He shut his office-doors, shut them for the last time, then wiped away a tear, the first he had shed for many a day. He went home, but not to the home he used to have. His furniture had been sold to supply the common necessaries of life; and poor indeed was their now humble abode. There was silence in that little house, scarcely a whisper. In the secret fountains of his wife’s heart there was still a depth of love for him; but, always when she would have breathed it forth, the strange horrid suspicion would flit across her brain—her child was not. He often looked at her, a long, earnest gaze, but he seldom spoke.
One evening, he was more than usually sad. He kissed his children fondly. He took his wife’s cold hand, and pressed it in his own. “Jessie,” said he, “as ye have sown, so shall ye reap; but I forgive you. God bless you, wife!” He lay down upon his hard pallet, and when they would have roused him in the morning, he was dead.
Time rolled on with rapid sweep, alas! bringing death and its attendant evils in his train. Two of the widow’s children died; and Jane was now about eighteen years of age. Sorrow, rather than age, had already blanched the widow’s hair. They were in great poverty; eked out a scanty livelihood with their needle. Indeed, their only certain dependence lay in the small assistance which Madame de Bourblanc sent from France. Perhaps, had that sister known the straits of her poor relatives, her paltry pittance might have been increased. They were perhaps too proud to make it known; as it was, she knew not, or, if she did, she heeded not.
About this time a letter reached the widow from her sister. Besides containing the usual remittance, the letter was unusually long. She requested Jane to read it to her, while she sat and sewed. What ailed the girl, her mother thought, as Jane gazed upon the page with some indescribable emotions depicted on her face. “Mother,” she cried, “my sister lives! your child is found again!” The widow tore the letter from her daughter’s hand, and read it eagerly, while her face grew paler every moment. She gasped for utterance; and the mystery was solved at last.
Yes, reader, at last was the mystery unraveled, and the criminal was her sister—she who had stood calmly by, and seen the agony of the bereaved mother—she who had beheld the injured father dragged as a felon to prison, when a word from her would have cleard it all—she was that wretch. Madame de Bourblanc was childless
and her heart yearned for some one she could love. She saw the little cherub of her sister, and she envied it. She knew that, if she had asked the child, the mother’s heart would have spurned the offer, so she laid her plans to steal the infant. She employed a woman from France, who, as she prowled about the house, had seized the favorable moment, and snatched the infant from its cradle, and the child was safely housed in France before the tardy law began its investigations. Madame de Bourblanc remained beside her sister for a time; then hurried off to France, to lavish all her love upon the stolen child. It is true, she loved the child; but was it not a selfish love to see the bereaved mother mourn its loss, yet never soothe her troubled heart? and was it not a cruel love, to see a household broken up, affections desolated, and all to gratify a selfish whim of hers? It was worse than cruel—it was deeply criminal.
She brought up the infant as her own: she named it Amalie, and a pretty child she was. Did a pang never strike into the heart of that cruel woman, as the child would lift its little eyes to hers, and lisp “My mother?” She must have thought of the true mother, broken-hearted, in another land. Yes, a pang did pierce her heart; but alas! it came too late; the misery was already wrought. She wrote to her injured sister, begging her forgiveness, and at the same time offering a considerable sum, if she would permit the child to remain with her, still ignorant of her real parentage. But she was mistaken in her hope; for not only did the mother indignantly demand the restoration of her child, but she did more; she published the sister’s letter, and triumphantly removed the stains that lingered on her dead husband’s memory.
A few weeks after this, the widow went to pay a visit to the green grave of her broken-hearted husband: she knelt upon the verdant mound, and watered it with her tributary tears. All her unjust suspicions crowded on her mind: conscience reproached her bitterly. She knelt, and supplicated for forgiveness, seeming to commune with his spirit on the spot where his poor frail body reposed in its narrow bed. She felt a gentle touch upon her shoulder; it was her daughter Jane. One moment after, and she was clasped in the embrace of a stranger. Nature whispered to the mother’s heart her child was there, her long lost child. She too had come to look upon that lowly grave—the grave of a father.
After the first transports of meeting were over, the widow found leisure to observe her child. But what a poor young delicate flower was she, to brave the rude blasts of poverty. She was a lovely girl: like a lily, fragile and pale, the storms of life would wither her. Her mother took her home; but the contrast was too great, from affluence to poverty—Amalie wept. Poor Jane strove to comfort her; but she might only use the language of the eyes, for her foreign sister scarcely understood two words of English. Amalie struggled hard to love her new mother, and to reconcile her young heart to this sudden change, but the effort was too great, and she gradually sank. Early and late her mother and her sister toiled, to obtain for her, in her delicate state, some of those luxuries to which she had been accustomed; but their efforts were vain—she was not long for earth. The widow had indignantly refused all offers of assistance from her cruel sister though she felt that, unless Providence should interpose, her strength must soon fail under its additional exactions.