"It"s long ago, Margaret, now; but that night is as fresh in my memory as ever "twas. We little thought then," he added, looking round, "that we should ever meet like this. Your child, Margaret? Let me have it in my arms. Let me hold your child."
He put his hat upon the floor, and took it. And he trembled as he took it, from head to foot.
"Is it a girl?"
"Yes."
He put his hand before its little face.
"See how weak I"m grown, Margaret, when I want the courage to look at it! Let her be, a moment. I won"t hurt her. It"s long ago, but--What"s her name?"
"Margaret," she answered quickly.
"I"m glad of that," he said. "I"m glad of that!"
He seemed to breathe more freely; and after pausing for an instant, took away his hand, and looked upon the infant"s face. But covered it again, immediately.
"Margaret!" he said; and gave her back the child. "It"s Lilian"s."
"Lilian"s!"
"I held the same face in my arms when Lilian"s mother died and left her."
"When Lilian"s mother died and left her!" she repeated, wildly.
"How shrill you speak! Why do you fix your eyes upon me so? Margaret!"
She sunk down in a chair, and pressed the infant to her breast, and wept over it. Sometimes, she released it from her embrace, to look anxiously in its face: then strained it to her bosom again. At those times, when she gazed upon it, then it was that something fierce and terrible began to mingle with her love. Then it was that her old father quailed.
"Follow her!" was sounded through the house. "Learn it, from the creature dearest to your heart!"
"Margaret," said Fern, bending over her, and kissing her upon the brow: "I thank you for the last time. Good night. Good bye! Put your hand in mine, and tell me you"ll forget me from this hour, and try to think the end of me was here."
She called to him; but he was gone. She sat down stupefied, until her infant roused her to a sense of hunger, cold, and darkness. She paced the room with it the livelong night, hushing it and soothing it. She said at intervals, "Like Lilian when her mother died and left her!" Why was her step so quick, her eyes so wild, her love so fierce and terrible, whenever she repeated those words?
"But, it is Love," said Trotty. "It is Love. She"ll never cease to love it. My poor Meg!"
She dressed the child next morning with unusual care--ah, vain expenditure of care upon such squalid robes!--and once more tried to find some means of life. It was the last day of the Old Year. She tried till night, and never broke her fast. She tried in vain.
She mingled with an abject crowd, who tarried in the snow, until it pleased some officer appointed to dispense the public charity (the lawful charity; not that once preached upon a Mount), to call them in, and question them, and say to this one, "Go to such a place," to that one, "Come next week;" to make a foot-ball of another wretch, and pa.s.s him here and there, from hand to hand, from house to house, until he wearied and lay down to die; or started up and robbed, and so became a higher sort of criminal, whose claims allowed of no delay. Here, too, she failed.
She loved her child, and wished to have it lying on her breast. And that was quite enough.
It was night: a bleak, dark, cutting night: when pressing the child close to her for warmth, she arrived outside the house she called her home. She was so faint and giddy, that she saw no one standing in the doorway until she was close upon it, and about to enter. Then, she recognized the master of the house, who had so disposed himself--with his person it was not difficult--as to fill up the whole entry.
"Oh!" he said softly. "You have come back?"
She looked at the child and shook her head.
"Don"t you think you have lived here long enough without paying any rent? Don"t you think that, without any money, you"ve been a pretty constant customer at this shop, now?" said Mr. Tugby.
She repeated the same mute appeal.
"Suppose you try and deal somewhere else," he said. "And suppose you provide yourself with another lodging. Come! Don"t you think you could manage it?"
She said, in a low voice, that it was very late. To-morrow.
"Now I see what you want," said Tugby; "and what you mean. You know there are two parties in this house about you, and you delight in setting them by the ears. I don"t want any quarrels; I"m speaking softly to avoid a quarrel; but if you don"t go away, I"ll speak out loud, and you shall cause words loud enough to please you. But you shan"t come in, that I am determined."
She put her hair back with her hand, and looked in a sudden manner at the sky, and the dark lowering distance.
"This is the last night of an Old Year, and I won"t carry ill-blood and quarrelings and disturbances into a New One, to please you nor anybody else," said Tugby, who was quite a retail Friend and Father. "I wonder you an"t ashamed of yourself, to carry such practices into a New Year.
If you haven"t any business in the world, but to be always giving way, and always making disturbances between man and wife, you"d be better out of it. Go along with you!"
"Follow her! To desperation!"
Again the old man heard the voices. Looking up, he saw the figures hovering in the air, and pointing where she went, down the dark street.
"She loves it!" he exclaimed in agonized entreaty for her. "Chimes! she loves it still!"
"Follow her!" The shadows swept upon the track she had taken like a cloud.
Oh, for something to awaken her! For any sight or sound, or scent, to call up tender recollections in a brain on fire! For any gentle image of the Past, to rise up before her!
"I was her father! I was her father!" cried the old man, stretching out his hands to the dark shadows flying on above. "Have mercy on her, and on me! Where does she go? Turn her back! I was her father!"
But, they only pointed to her, as she hurried on; "To desperation! Learn it from the creature dearest to your heart!"
A hundred voices echoed it. The air was made of breath expended in those words. He seemed to take them in, at every gasp he drew. They were everywhere, and not to be escaped. And still she hurried on; the same light in her eyes.
All at once she stopped.
"Now, turn her back!" exclaimed the old man, tearing his white hair. "My child! Meg! Turn her back! Great Father, turn her back!"
In her own scanty shawl, she wrapped the baby warm. With her fevered hands, she smoothed its limbs, composed its face, arranged its mean attire. In her wasted arms she folded it, as though she never would resign it more. And with her dry lips, kissed it in a final pang, and last long agony of Love.
Putting its tiny hand up to her neck, and holding it there, within her dress, next to her distracted heart, she set its sleeping face against her: closely, steadily against her: and sped onward to the river.
To the rolling River, swift and dim, where Winter Night sat brooding like the last dark thoughts of many who had sought a refuge there before her. Where scattered lights upon the banks gleamed sullen, red and dull, as torches that were burning there to show the way to Death. Where no abode of living people cast its shadow, on the deep, impenetrable, melancholy shade.
To the River! To that portal of Eternity, her desperate footsteps tended with the swiftness of its rapid waters running to the sea. He tried to touch her as she pa.s.sed him, going down to its dark level; but, the wild distempered form, the fierce and terrible love, the desperation that had left all human check or hold behind, swept by him like the wind.
He followed her. She paused a moment on the brink, before the dreadful plunge. He fell down on his knees, and in a shriek addressed the figures in the Bells now hovering above them.
"Have mercy on her!" he exclaimed, "as one in whom this dreadful crime has sprung from Love perverted; from the strongest, deepest Love we fallen creatures know! Think what her misery must have been, when such seed bears such fruit. Heaven meant her to be good. There is no loving mother on the earth who might not come to this, if such a life had gone before. Oh, have mercy on my child, who, even at this pa.s.s, means mercy to her own, and dies herself, and perils her immortal soul, to save it!"
She was in his arms. He held her now. His strength was like a giant"s.