Wee Wifie Part 12

There was a carriage standing there, and a footman was shivering as he walked up and down the pavement. No one took notice of the beggar-woman as they thought her, and Nea, moved by a strange impulse and desire for warmth and comfort, crept a few steps nearer and looked in.

There was a boy in a velvet tunic sliding up and down the gilded bal.u.s.trades; and a tall woman with dark hair, and a diamond cross on her white neck, swept through the hall in her velvet dress and rebuked him. The boy laughed merrily and went a few steps higher.

"Beatrice and the young Erle Huntingdon," said Nea to herself. And then a tall thin shadow fell across the door-way, and, uttering a half-stifled cry, Nea saw her father, saw his changed face, his gray hair and bowed figure, before she threw herself in his way.

And so, under the gas-light, with servants watching them curiously, Mr. Huntingdon and his daughter met again. One who stood near him says an awful pallor, like the pallor of death, came over his face for an instant when he saw her standing before him with her baby in her arms, but in the next he would have moved on had she not caught him by the arm.

"Father," she sobbed; "father, come with me. Maurice is dying. My husband is dying; but he says he can not die until he has your forgiveness. Come home with me; come home with your own Nea, father;"

but he shook off her grasp, and began to descend the steps.

"Here, Stephen," he said, taking some gold from his pocket; "give this to the woman and send her away. Come, Beatrice, I am ready."

Merciful Heaven! had this man a human heart, that he should disown his own flesh and blood? Would it have been wonderful if she had spoken bitter scathing words to the unnatural parent who was driving her from his door? But Nea never spoke, she only turned away with a shudder from the sight of the proffered gold, and then drawing her thin cloak still closer round her child, turned wearily away.

True, she had sinned; but her punishment was a hundred times greater than her sin, she said to herself, and that was all. What a strange stunned quietness was over her; the pain and the fever seemed all burned out. She did not suffer now. If something that felt like an iron claw would leave off gripping her heart, she could almost have felt comfortable. Maurice must die, she knew that, but something else had died before him. She wondered if it were this same heart of hers; and then she noticed her baby's hood was crooked, and stopped at the next lamp-post to put it straight, and felt a vague sort of pity for it, when she saw its face was pinched and blue with cold, and pressed it closer to her, though she rather hoped to find it dead when she reached home.

"One less to suffer and to starve," thought Nea.

Maurice's wistful eyes greeted her when she opened the door, but she only shook her head and said nothing; what had she to say? She gave her half-frozen infant into a neighbor's care, and then sat down and drew Maurice's face to her bosom, still speechless in that awful apathy.

And there she sat hour after hour, till he died peacefully in her arms, and his last words were, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins."

When she had ceased to wish for them, friends came around her in her trouble, and ministered to her wants.

Kind faces followed Maurice to his last resting-place, and saved him from a pauper's grave.

The widow and her children were clothed in decent mourning, and placed in comfortable lodgings.

Nea never roused from her silent apathy, never looked at them or thanked them.

Their kindness had come too late for her, she said to herself, and it was not until long afterward that she knew that she owed all this consideration to the family of their kind old friend Mr. Dobson, secretly aided by the purse of her cousin Beatrice Huntingdon, who dare not come in person to see her. But by and by they spoke very firmly and kindly to her. They pointed to her children--they had placed her boy at an excellent school--and told her that for their sakes she must live and work. If she brooded longer in that sullen despair she would die or go mad; and they brought her baby to her, and watched its feeble arms trying to clasp her neck; saw the widow's pa.s.sionate tears rain on its innocent face--the tears that saved the poor hot brain--and knew she was saved; and by and by, when they thought she had regained her strength, they asked her gently what she could do. Alas! she had suffered her fine talents to rust. They had nothing but impoverished material to use; but at last they found her a situation with two maiden ladies just setting up a school in the neighborhood, and here she gave daily lessons.

And so, as the years went on, things became a little brighter.

Nea found her work interesting, her little daughter Fern accompanied her to the school, and she taught her with her other pupils.

Presently the day's labor became light to her, and she could look forward to the evening when her son, fetching her on his way from school, would escort her home--a humble home it was true; but when she looked at her boy's handsome face, and Fern's innocent beauty, and felt her little one's caresses, as she climbed up into her lap, the widow owned that her lot had its compensations.

But the crowning trial was yet to come; the last drop of concentrated bitterness.

Not long after Maurice's death, Mr. Huntingdon made his first overture of reconciliation through his lawyer.

His niece, Beatrice, had died suddenly, and her boy was fretting sadly for his mother.

Some one had pointed out to Mr. Huntingdon one day a dark-eyed handsome boy in deep mourning, looking at the riders in Rotten Row, and had told him that it was his grandson, Percy Trafford.

Mr. Huntingdon had said nothing at the time, but the boy's face and n.o.ble bearing haunted him, he was so like his mother, when as a child she had played about the rooms at Belgrave House. Perhaps, stifle it as he might, the sobbing voice of his daughter rang in his ears, "Come home with your own Nea, father;" and in spite of his pride his conscience was beginning to torment him.

Nea smiled scornfully when she listened to the lawyer's overtures. Mr.

Huntingdon was willing to condone the past with regard to her son Percy. He would take the boy, educate him, and provide for him most liberally, though she must understand that his nephew, Erle, would be his heir; still on every other point the boys should have equal advantages.

"And Belgrave House, the home where my boy is to live, will be closed to his mother?" asked Nea, still with that delicate scorn on her face.

The lawyer looked uncomfortable.

"I have no instructions on that point, Mrs. Trafford; I was simply to guarantee that he should be allowed to see you from time to time, as you and he might wish it."

"I can not entertain the proposal for a moment," she returned, decidedly; but at his strong remonstrance she at last consented that when her boy was a little older, the matter should be laid before him; but no doubt as to his choice crossed her mind. Percy had always been an affectionate child; nothing would induce him to give up his mother.

But she became less confident as the days went on; Percy grew a little selfish and headstrong, he wanted a man's will to dominate him; his narrow, confined life and the restraints that their poverty enforced on them made him discontented. One day he encountered the lawyer who had spoken to his mother--he was going to her again, with a letter that Mr. Huntingdon had written to his daughter--and as he looked at Percy, who was standing idly on the door-step, he put his hand on his shoulder, and bade him show him the way.

Nea turned very pale as she read the letter. It was very curt and business-like; it repeated the offer he had before made with regard to her son Percy, only adding that for the boy's future prospects it would be well not to refuse his terms. This was the letter that, after a moment's hesitation, Nea placed in her boy's hands.

"Well, mother," he exclaimed, and his eyes sparkled with eagerness and excitement, "I call that splendid; I shall be a rich man one of these days, and then you will see what I shall do for you, and Fern, and Fluff."

"Do you mean that you wish to leave us, Percy, and to live in your grandfather's house?" she returned, trying to speak calmly. "You know what I have told you--you were old enough to understand what your father suffered? and--and," with a curious faintness creeping over her "you see for yourself there is no mention of me in that letter.

Belgrave House is closed to your mother."

"Yes, I know, and it is an awful shame, but never mind, mother, I shall come and see you very often;" and then when the lawyer had left them to talk it over, he dilated with boyish eagerness on the advantage to them all if he accepted his grandfather's offer. His mother would be saved the expense of his education, she would not have to work so hard; he would be rich himself, and would be able to help them. But at this point she stopped him.

"Understand once for all, Percy," she said with a sternness that he had never seen in her, "that the advantage will be solely for yourself; neither I nor your sisters will ever accept help that comes from Belgrave House; your riches will be nothing to me, my son. Think again, before you give up your mother."

He would never give her up, he said, with a rough boyish caress; he should see her often--often, and it was wicked, wrong to talk about refusing his help; he would talk to his grandfather and make him ashamed of himself--indeed there was no end to the glowing plans he made. Nea's heart sickened as she heard him, she knew his boyish selfishness and restlessness were leading him astray, and some of the bitterest tears she ever shed were shed that night.

But from that day she ceased to plead with him, and before many weeks were over Percy had left his mother's humble home, and after a short stay at Belgrave House, was on his way to Eton with his cousin Erle Huntingdon.

Percy never owned in his secret heart that he had done a mean thing in giving up his mother for the splendors of Belgrave House, that the thought that her son was living in the home that was closed to her was adding gall and bitterness to the widow's life; he thought he was proving himself a dutiful son when he came to see her so often, though the visits were scarcely all he wished them to be.

True, his mother never reproached him, and always welcomed him kindly, but her lips were closed on all that related to his home life. She could speak of his school-fellows and studies, but of his grandfather, and of his new pony and fine gun she would not speak, or even care to hear about them. When he took her his boyish gifts they were quietly but firmly returned to him. Even poor little Florence, or Fluff as they called her, was obliged to give back the blue-eyed doll that he had bought for her. Fluff had fretted so about the loss of the doll that her mother had bought her another.

Percy carried away his gifts, and did not come for a long time. His mother's white wistful face seemed to put him in the wrong. "Any other fellow would have done the same under the circ.u.mstances," thought Percy, sullenly; "I think my mother is too hard on me;" but even his conscience misgave him, when he would see her turn away sometimes with the tears in her eyes, after one of his boasting speeches. He was too young to be hardened. He knew, yes, surely he must have known? that he was grieving the tenderest heart in the world, and one day he would own that not all his grandfather's wealth could compensate him for being a traitor to his mother.

CHAPTER XI.

THE WEE WIFIE.

And that same G.o.d who made your face so fair, And gave your woman's heart its tenderness, So shield the blessing He implanted there, That it may never turn to your distress, And never cost you trouble or despair, Nor granted leave the granted comfortless, But like a river blest where'er it flows, Be still receiving while it still bestows.

JEAN INGELOW.

So far, that my doom is, I love thee still, Let no man dream but that I love thee still.

TENNYSON'S _Guinevere_.