VIOLETS.
ALL the neighbours said it was a mystery how the Rodneys lived for the
next three months, for Rodney was away for days together, only coming
home now and then during his sober intervals; but it was no mystery at
all. The wondrous kindness which the poor show to the poor was at work
for them. Mrs. Rodney needed little food, and Nelly was always welcome
to share the stinted meals in any house near at hand. Every day at
dusk Bessie came in, and if she had been lucky in selling her flowers
or fruit in the streets, she did not fail to bring some small, cheap
dainty with her to tempt the sick woman's appetite. So the depth of the
winter passed by; and the spring drew near, with its Easter week of
holiday and gladness.
It was the day before Good Friday, when Rodney was returning, with
lagging steps and a heavy heart, to his wretched home, after an absence
of several days. Every nerve in his body was jarring, and every limb
ached. He could scarcely climb the narrow and steep staircase; and
when he reached his door, he was obliged to lean against it, breathing
hardly after the exertion. It seemed very silent within, awfully still
and silent. He listened for Nelly's chatter, or her mother's cough,
which had sounded incessantly in his ears before he had left home;
but there was no breath or whisper to be heard. Yet the door yielded
readily to his touch, and with faint and weary feet he crossed the
threshold, to find the room empty.
It was his first impression that it was empty; but when he looked round
again with his dim, red eyes, whose sight was failing, they fell upon
one awful occupant of the desolate room. Even that one he could not
discern all at once, not till he had crossed the floor and laid his
hand upon the strange object resting upon the old bed—the poor, rough
shell of a coffin which the parish had provided for his wife's burial.
She was not in it yet, but lay beyond it, in its shadow; her white,
fixed face, very hollow and rigid, at rest upon the pillow, and her
wasted hands crossed upon her breast. The neighbours had furnished
their best to dress her for the grave, and a white cap covered her gray
hair; while between her hands, on the heart that would beat no more,
Bessie had laid a bunch of fresh spring violets.
Rodney sank down on his knees, with his arms stretched over the coffin
towards his dead wife. Some of the deep, hard lines had vanished from
her face, and an expression of rest and peace had settled upon it,
which made her look more like the girl he had loved and married twenty
years ago. How happy they had been then! And how truly he had loved
her! If any man had told him to what a wretched end he would bring her,
he would have asked indignantly, "Am I a dog, that I should do this
thing?"
The memory of their first years together swept over him like a flood:
their pleasant home, of which she had been so proud; their first-born
child, and their plans and schemes for his future; the respect in which
he had been held by all who knew him; and he had thrown them all away
to indulge a shameful sin! And now she was dead; and even if he had the
power to break through the hateful chain which fettered him body and
soul, he could never make amends to her. He had killed her as surely,
but more slowly and cruelly, than if he had stained his hands with her
blood. God, if not man, would charge him with her murder.
The twilight came on as he knelt there, and for a few minutes the
white features looked whiter and more ghastly before the darkness hid
them from him. Then the night fell. It seemed more terrible than ever
now—this stillness in the room which was not empty. His mind wandered
in bewilderment; he could not fix his thoughts upon one subject for a
minute together, not even on his wife, who was lying dead within reach
of his hand. His head ached, and his brain was clouded. One dram would
set him right again, and give him the courage to seek his neighbours,
and inquire after Nelly; but he dared not meet them as he was. He
could not bear to meet their accusing eyes, and listen to their rough
reproaches, and hear how his wife had died in want, and neglect, and
desertion. He must get something to drink, or he should go mad.
There was nothing in the room of any value—he knew that; yet there
was one thing might give him the means of gratifying his quenchless
drouth. He knew a man, serving at the counter of one of the nearest
spirit-vaults, who had a love for flowers; and there was the bunch of
sweet violets withering in the dead hands of his wife. For a minute
or two the miserable drunkard's brain grew steady and clear, and he
shuddered at the thought of thus robbing the dead; but the better
moments passed quickly away. The scent of the flowers brought back to
his troubled memory the lanes and hedgerows where he had rambled with
her, under the showery and sunny skies of April, to gather violets—so
long ago that surely it must have been in some other and happier life,
and he must have been another and far better man. How happy the days
had been! No poverty then; no aching limbs and wandering thoughts. He
had believed in God, and loved his fellow-men. Now there was not a cur
in the streets that was not a happier and nobler creature than himself.
Still, underneath the surface of these thoughts, his purpose
strengthened steadily to exchange the fresh, sweet flowers for one
draught of the poison which was destroying him—he knew it—body and
soul. But the darkness had grown so dense that he could not, with all
the straining of his be-dimmed eyes, trace the white outline of the
dead face and hands; and his skin crept at the thought of touching,
with his hot hand, the deathly chill of the corpse. The flowers were
there; but how was he to snatch them away from the frigid grasp which
held them without feeling her fingers touch his? But the pangs of his
thirst gathered force from minute to minute, until overpowered by them,
he stretched out his feverish and trembling hands across the coffin in
the darkness, and laid them upon the dead hands of his wife.
The cold struck through him with an icy chill that he would never
forget, but he would not now fail in his purpose. He loosed the violets
from her fingers, and rushed away from the place, not daring to pause
for an instant till he had reached the gin-palace where he could sell
them.
[Illustration]