Was this a crime? It would have been had I attempted to win from her any thing beyond a sentiment of friendship. But this I never did after her marriage, and do not believe that she regarded me in any other light than as her own and her husband"s friend. This is all that, as a dying man, I can do or say. May heaven right the innocent! HENRY WESTFIELD."
Besides the paper in the handwriting of Mrs. Miller, which I have given, there were many more, evidently written at various times, but all shortly after her separation from her husband. They imbodied many touching allusions to her condition, united with firm expressions of her entire innocence of the imputation under which she lay. One sentiment particularly arrested my attention, and answered the question that constantly arose in my mind, as to why she did not attempt, by means of Westfield"s dying a.s.severation, to establish her innocence. It was this:--
"He has prejudged me guilty and cast me off without seeing me or giving me a hearing, and then insulted me by a legislative tender of five hundred dollars a year. Does he think that I would save myself, even from starvation, by means of his bounty? No--no--he does not know the woman he has wronged."
After going over the entire contents of the casket, I replaced them, and sent the whole to Mr. Miller, with a brief note, stating that they had come into my possession in rather a singular manner, and that I deemed it but right to transmit them to him. Scarcely half an hour had elapsed from the time my messenger departed, before Miller himself entered my office, pale and agitated. I had met him a few times before, and had a slight acquaintance with him.
"This is from you, I believe, doctor?" he said, holding up the note I had written him.
I bowed.
"How did you come in possession of the casket you sent me?" he continued as he took the chair I handed him.
I was about replying, when he leaned over toward me, and laying his hand upon my arm, said, eagerly--
"First tell me, is the writer of its contents living?"
"No," I replied; "she has been dead over two years."
His countenance fell, and he seemed, for some moments, as if his heart had ceased to beat. "Dead!" he muttered to himself--"dead! and I have in my hands undoubted proofs of her innocence."
The expression of his face became agonizing.
"Oh, what would I not give if she were yet alive," he continued, speaking to himself. "Dead--dead--I would rather be dead with her than living with my present consciousness."
"Doctor," said he, after a pause, speaking in a firmer voice, "let me know how those papers came into your hands?" I related, as rapidly as I could, what the reader already knows about little Bill and his mother dwelling as strongly as I could upon the suffering condition of the poor boy.
"Good heavens!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Miller, as I closed my narrative--"can all this indeed be true? So much for hasty judgment from appearances! You have heard the melancholy history of my wife?"
I bowed an a.s.sent.
"From these evidences, that bear the force of truth, it is plain that she was innocent, though adjudged guilty of one of the most heinous offences against society. Innocent, and yet made to suffer all the penalties of guilt. Ah, sir--I thought life had already brought me its bitterest cup: but all before were sweet to the taste compared with the one I am now compelled to drink. Nothing is now left me, but to take home my child. But, as he grows up toward manhood, how can I look him in the face, and think of his mother whom I so deeply wronged."
"The events of the past, my dear sir," I urged, "cannot be altered.
In a case like this, it is better to look, forward with hope, than backward with self-reproaches."
"There is little in the future to hope for," was the mournful reply to this.
"But you have a duty to perform, and, in the path of duty, always lie pleasures."
"You mean to my much wronged and suffering child. Yes, I have a duty, and it shall be performed as faithfully as lies in my power.
But I hope for little from that source."
"I think you may hope for much. Your child I have questioned closely. He knows nothing of his history; does not even know that his father is alive. The only information he has received from his mother is, that W---- is his uncle."
"Are you sure of this?"
"Oh yes. I have, as I said, questioned him very closely on this point."
This seemed to relieve the mind of Mr. Miller. He mused for some minutes, and then said--
"I wish to see my son, and at once remove him from his present position. May I ask you to accompany me to the place where he now is."
"I will go with pleasure," I returned, rising.
We left my office immediately, and went direct to Maxwell"s shop. As we entered, we heard most agonizing cries, mingled with hoa.r.s.e angry imprecations from the shoemaker and the sound of his strap. He was whipping some one most severely. My heart misgave me that it was poor little Bill. We hurried into the shop. It was true. Maxwell had the child across his knees, and was beating him most cruelly.
"That is your son," I said, in an excited voice to Miller, pointing to the writhing subject of the shoemaker"s ire. In an instant Maxwell was lying four or five feet from his bench in a corner of his shop, among the lasts and sc.r.a.ps of leather. A powerful blow on the side of his head, with a heavy cane, had done his. The father"s hand had dealt it. Maxwell rose to his feet in a terrible fury, but the upraised cane of Miller, his dark and angry countenance, and his declaration that if he advanced a step toward him, or attempted to lay his hand again upon the boy, he would knock his brains out, cooled his ire considerably.
"Come, my boy," Miller then said, catching hold of the hand of the sobbing child--"let me take you away from this accursed den for ever."
"Stop!" cried Maxwell, coming forward at this; "you cannot take that boy away. He is bound to me by law, until he is twenty-one. Bill!
don"t you dare to go."
"Villain!" said Miller, in a paroxysm of anger, turning toward him--"I will have you before the the court in less than twenty-four hours for inhuman treatment of this child--of _my child_."
As Miller said this, the trembling boy at his side started and looked eagerly in his face.
"Oh, sir! Are you indeed my father?" said he, in a voice that thrilled me to the finger ends.
"Yes, William; I am your father, and I have come to take you home."
Tears gushed like rain over the cheeks of the poor boy. He shrank close to his father"s side, and clung to him with a strong grasp, still looking up into a face that he had never hoped to see, with a most tender, confiding, hopeful, expressive countenance.
The announcement of the fact subdued the angry shoemaker. He made a feeble effort at apology, but was cut short by our turning abruptly from him and carrying of the child he had so shamefully abused.
I parted from the father and son at the first carriage-stand that came in our way. When I next saw Bill, his appearance was very different indeed from what it was when I first encountered him. His father lived some ten years from this time during the most of which period William was at school or college. At his death he left him a large property, which remained with him until his own death, which took place a few years ago. He never I believe, had the most distant idea of the cause which had separated his mother from his father.
That there had been a separation he knew too well but, he always shrank from inquiring the reason, and had always remained in ignorance of the main facts here recorded.
EUTHANASY.
"YOU remember Anna May, who sewed for you about a year ago?" said one fashionably-dressed lady to another.
"That pale, quiet girl, who made up dresses for the children?"
"The one I sent you."
"Oh yes; very well. I had forgotten her name. What has become of her? If I remember rightly, I engaged her for a week or two in the fall; but she did not keep her engagement."
"Poor thing!" said the first lady, whose name was Mrs. Bell, "she"ll keep no more engagements of that kind."
"Why so? Is she dead?" The tone in which these brief questions were asked, evinced no lively interest in the fate of the poor sewing-girl.
"Not dead; but very near the end of life"s weary pilgrimage."