A REVELATION.
"I am a beggar, child, and you are a beggar's daughter. It is to Mr.
Wareham that we are indebted for all that we enjoy. For years he has
paid the expenses of your education; and now that you have grown
to young womanhood he shelters you in a palace, surrounds you with
splendor that a queen might envy, and not satisfied with this,--"
She paused and fixed her eyes upon my face, I know that I was
frightfully pale.
"Offers you his hand in marriage."
For a moment the light, the mirrors, the roof itself swam round me, and
I sank half-fainting in my mother's arms.
"O! this is but a jest, a cruel jest to frighten me. Say, mother, it is
a jest!"
"It is not a jest; it is sober, serious earnest;" and she raised me
sternly from her arms. "He has offered his hand, and you _will_ marry
him."
I flung myself on my knees at the bedside, clasped her hands, and as
my night-dress fell back from my shoulders and bosom, I told her, with
sobs and tears, of my love for Ernest, and my engagement with him.
"Pshaw! A poor clergyman's son," she said bitterly.
"O, let us leave this place, mother!" I cried, still pressing her hands
to my bosom. "You say that we are poor. Be it so. We will find a home
together in the home of my childhood. Or if that fails us, I will work
for you. I will toil from sun to sun and all night long,--beg,--do
anything rather than marry this man. For, mother, I cannot help
it,--but I do hate him with all my soul."
"Pretty talk, very pretty!" and she loosened her hands from my grasp;
"but did you ever try poverty, my child? Did you ever know what the
word meant,--POVERTY? Did you ever work sixteen hours a day, at your
needle, for as many pennies, walk the streets at dead of winter in
half-naked feet, and go for two long days and nights without a morsel
of food? Did you ever try it, my child? That's the life which _poor_
widows and their pretty daughters live in New York, my dear."
"But Ernest loves me,--he will make his way in life,--we will be
married,--you will share our home, dear mother."
These words rendered her perfectly furious. She started up and uttered
a frightful oath--it was the first time I had ever heard an oath from
a woman's lips. Her countenance for a moment was fiendish. She assailed
me with a torrent of reproaches, concluding thus:
"And this is your gratitude for the care, the anxiety, the very agony
of a mother's anxiety, which I have endured on your account for years!
In return for all you condemn me to--poverty! But it shall not be. One
of us must bend, and that one will not be me. I swear, girl,"--her
brows were knit, she was lividly pale, and she raised her right hand to
heaven,--"that you _shall_ marry this man."
"And I swear,"--I bounded to my feet, my bosom bare, and the blood
boiling in my veins--perchance it was the same blood which gave my
mother her fiery temper,--"I swear that I will _not_ marry him as long
as there is life in me. Do you hear me, mother? Before I marry that
miserable wretch, whose very presence fills me with loathing, I will
fall a corpse at your feet."
My words, my attitude took her by surprise. She surveyed me silently
but was too much enraged to speak.
"O, that my father was living!" I cried, the fit of passion succeeded
by a burst of tears; "he would save me from this hideous marriage."
My mother quietly drew a letter from her bosom and placed it open in my
hand.
"Your father is living. That letter is the last one I have received
from him. Read it, my angel."
I took it,--it was very brief,--I read it at a glance. It was addressed
to my mother, and bore a recent date. These were its contents:
"DEAR FRANK:
"My sentence expires in two weeks from to-day. Send me some decent
clothes, and let me know where I will meet you. Glad to hear that your
plans as regards _our daughter_ approach a 'glorious' completion.
"Yours as ever,
"CHARLES."
It was a letter from a convict in Auburn prison,--and that convict was
my father!
"It is false; my father died years ago," I cried in very agony. "This
is not from my father."
"It is from your father," answered my mother; "and unless I send him
the clothes which he asks for, you will see him, in less than three
weeks, in his convict rags."
"O, mother! are you human? A mother to taunt her own daughter with her
father's shame,--"
My temples throbbed madly and my sight failed. All that mortal can
endure and be conscious, I had endured. I sank on the floor, and had
not my mother caught me in her arms, I would have wounded my forehead
against the marble table.
All night long, half waking, half delirious, I tossed on my silken
couch mingling the name of my convict father and of Ernest in my broken
exclamations. Once I was conscious for a moment and looked around
with clear eyes. My mother was watching over me. Her face was bathed
in tears. She was _human_ after all. That moment past, the delirium
returned and I struggled with horrible dreams until morning.