No influence, excepting the desire to dislodge and so murder the
unborn, has so damaging an effect on the character of the child as
jealousy. I have but too often seen the workings of this emotion and
its consequent evils.
I once lived in the house of a good-hearted young Irish woman, the
mother of two girls, respectively two and five years old. The younger
was a happy, rollicking little dot, needing small care, and finding
amusement in everything about her.
The older child, a coarse, distorted likeness of her mother in form and
feature, presented a strong contrast to her sister. There was a sly,
malicious expression in her light blue eyes--at times a vicious leer
so horrible in childhood. I used to watch her at my leisure, and have
seen her deliberately stick a pin into her sister and push her down,
standing silently pleased to see she was hurt.
“Do you see how different in disposition your two girls are?” I one day
asked the mother.
“Oh! sure, I do, Miss,” she replied, “and I don’t see why the good God
give Katy thim ways she has. She angers me that much sometimes, that I
could just kill her, I could, when I see her wid me own eyes pinch the
baby, and the darlint looking up as innocent, smilin’, wid the tears in
her eyes, as if she didn’t believe it, nohow.”
“Did you live here among these beautiful hills before Katy was born?” I
asked.
“Shure an’ I did, Miss, and me husband worked in the factory yonder.”
“The scenery is so lovely round here, that if, as you say, you have a
good husband, you ought to have been happy all the time. Were you quite
as happy when you were carrying Katy as you were with Molly?”
“Happy, is it, you say, Miss? an’ shure whin me husband was tuk up wid
another woman, how could I be happy? An’ he a spending his money on
her, too, an’ the wages got lower, an’ it’s not the money that riled
me neither, it’s me as was but a few months married, an’ in a strange
counthrie, and he a riding more nor three times wid her in a chaise, it
is. Och! but he’d been over and larnt the wicked ways before iver he
brought me here. Faith, me heart was broken, it was, an’ I hated that
woman so, I was longing all the time to lay me hands on her. I’d liked
to have murthered the old divil, an’ I wanted to go to the factory an’
inform on her, but me husband cursed me, and threatened to kill me if I
did.”
I knew her husband, and he was a very fair specimen of the better class
of Irish laborers. He behaved himself very well, I thought, and was
never tired of playing with the baby Molly. It was by slow observation
I discovered that illicit relations make a man cruel, brutal to the
wife he deserts.
“And was he still behaving so badly while you were bearing the baby
Molly?” I asked.
“The saints be praised, no, Miss. The woman moved away a bit after
Katy was born. Bad ’cess to her, and Pat giv’ up his bad ways afther,
and trated me rale well, too. The baste of a woman niver come back, an’
I tuk no more throuble consarning her.”
“That was sensible and kind, too, in you,” I said; “but it would have
been better for poor Katy if she had gone sooner. You see, you put
all your hatred of that woman into Katy, and she is not so good or so
pretty in consequence.”
“An’ do you mane to say, Miss, that God could make me Katy bad, an’ me
a sufferin’ too?”
“Well, but did not she lie right under your heart when you were longing
to lay hands on that wicked woman? All your feelings went with the
blood that nourished her every day through all those months. It was a
sad chance for her, poor child.”
It was some time before the good creature could accept an idea so
foreign to her crude opinions on the subject. But she saw at last
how it must be. She promised to control her temper (she was again
pregnant), and I advised her not to be severe in her treatment of poor
Katy, but to give her a little garden in the poorly-fenced lot, with
some cheap seeds to plant to occupy her mind; and for herself, she
should not dwell on Katy’s looks and imperfections, but enjoy Molly all
she could, and sing every day some of her sweet Irish songs.
During courtship it is the habit of the mind to avoid all topics
on which disagreement is anticipated. This comes of a longing for
sympathy, and a fear of losing whatever degree of it is possible
between the parties. It is a dangerous course, and imperils future
happiness, because after marriage all disguises are sure to be dropped,
and the want of harmony in opinion and feeling becomes at once
prominent.
Under such circumstances an excellent young man of our acquaintance,
whom we will call N., became the husband of a lady of equally
admirable, but wholly different character, by name C. A few months of
married life sufficed to reveal the width of the gulf between them. It
could not be ignored. Their estimate of individuals, actions, looks,
were always at variance. Shrinking from the pain of dissent, C. learned
to limit her conversation to the very simplest matters of household
occurrence, then to the baby, who seemed to have inherited all the
inharmony of the alliance, never content, always awake.
Other children were born to them, capable, conscientious children,
wanting serene affection and contentment, as only love can beget love.
So the years went on, when circumstances threw N. almost daily into the
society of one of those women who appeal directly to the passions of a
man--a handsome animal, with no scruples of conscience as to the misery
she might bring on another woman. N. felt more at home in the company
of one below his own plane, than with one who was above it, and plunged
at once into what is politely termed a _liason_.
While this affair was at its height, C. found herself pregnant; and her
husband expressing his annoyance at the prospect of another child, and
dreading the effect on the child of her own desolation and sense of
wrong, she would have rejoiced could she have brought on the menstrual
flow. Finding this an impossibility at so early a stage, and unwilling
to risk injuring the child later on, she made up her mind to do her
“level best” and bear it. By sheer force of will, and by the most
passionate prayer for help from Above, to enable her to live above her
surroundings, to save her from bearing malice; shutting her eyes to the
cruel insensibility of N. and his affinity, keeping them open to the
needs of others, she lived day by day, working, aspiring, dreading lest
her efforts should fail to save her child, determined that he _should_
be saved.
The effect of her high endeavor astonished even herself. She had lifted
him above the clouds and put him _en rapport_ with greater good and
wiser wisdom than came to the other children. His nature proved to be
hopeful and trustful, with more affection to bestow on the mother who
had thus struggled for him, than sons usually feel for mothers, and
more force of intellect than easier conditions would have ensured.
Could any instance more fully prove the mother’s peculiar power in
moulding the constitution of her child? The father’s thoughts were all
engrossed with his mistress. The mother’s persistent, intelligent,
unselfish aspiration alone saved her son from being the spiritual
brother of poor Katy--the child of malice.