Winter again; the city dull, listless and sodden of aspect in the gloom
of a January evening. In the country, and nature's quiet places, the
dusk was throwing a veil over the cheerlessness of earth, as a friend
covers a friend's deficiencies with love; but here, in the haunts of
men, garish electric lights made plain the misery. The air was a
depressing compound which defied analysis; but was apparently composed
of equal parts of snow, drizzle, and stinging sleet; the wind caught it
in sudden whirls, and dashed it around corners and into the eyes and
the coat collars of wayfarers with gusty malevolence.
The streets were comparatively deserted, only such people being abroad
as could not help themselves, and these plodded along with bent heads,
and silent curses on the night. Even the poor creatures who daily
"till the field of human sympathy" kept close within the shelter of
four walls, no matter how forlorn, and left the elements to hold
Walpurgis night in the thoroughfares alone.
In a comfortable easy chair, in the handsome parlor of an elegant
up-town mansion, sat Ethel Cumberland, reading a novel. Since her
second marriage, life had gone pleasantly with her and she was content.
Cecil never worried her about things beyond her comprehension, or
required other aliments for his spiritual sustenance than that which
she was able and willing to furnish; he was a commonplace man and his
desires were commonplace--easily understood and satisfied. He liked a
pretty wife, a handsome house, a good dinner with fine wine and jolly
company; he liked high-stepping horses, a natty turn-out, and the smile
of Vanity Fair. Ethel's tastes were similar, and their lives so far
had fitted into each other without a single crevice. The Cumberlands
were grim and unbending, it is true, and after that one concession to
fraternal feeling, made no more; they held themselves rigidly aloof
from the pair, and invested all intercourse with paralyzing formality.
Ethel did not care a pin for them or their opinion; if they chose to be
old-fogyish and disagreeable, they were quite welcome to indulge their
fancy. As long as society smiled upon her, Madam Ethel was superbly
indifferent to the Cumberland frown.
Cecil worried over it, as men will worry, who have been accustomed to
the adulation of their womenkind, when that adulation is withdrawn. He
grumbled and fumed over their "damned nonsense," as he called it, and
bored his wife no little with conjectures as to their reasons for being
stiff and unpleasant when nobody else was.
Since her return from her wedding trip, which had lengthened to four
months amid the delights of Paris, Mrs. Cumberland had found time for
only one short visit to her little son. There had been such an
accumulation of social duties and engagements, that pilgrimages over to
Brooklyn were out of the question; and besides, she disliked Mrs.
Creswell, Thorne's aunt, who had charge of the boy, and who had the bad
taste, Ethel felt sure, to disapprove of her. It was too bad of Nesbit
to put the child so far away, and with a person whom she did not like;
it amounted to a total separation, for of course it would be impossible
for her to make such a journey often. When her time should be less
occupied, she would write to Nesbit about it; meanwhile, her maternal
solicitude found ample pacification in sending a servant across at
intervals to carry toys and confectionery to the little fellow, and to
inquire after his welfare.
The portières were drawn aside to admit Mr. Cumberland in smoking
jacket and slippers, yawning and very much bored. He was a large,
heavy looking man, very dependent on outside things for his
entertainment. Failing to attract his wife's attention, he lounged
over to the window, and drew aside the velvet curtain. The atmosphere
was heavy, and the light in front of the house appeared to hold itself
aloof from the environment in a sulky, self-contained way; all down the
street, the other lamps looked like the ghosts of lights that had
burned and died in past ages.
A little girl with a bag of apples in her frost-bitten hands came
hastily around the corner, and, going with her head down against the
sleet, butted into an elderly gentleman, with a big umbrella, who was
driving along in an opposite direction. The gentleman gave the child
an indignant shove which caused her to seat herself violently upon the
pavement; the bag banged hard against the bricks and delivered up its
trust, and the apples scudded away into the gutter.
Cecil laughed amusedly as the little creature picked herself up crying,
and proceeded to institute search for the missing treasure. A kindly
policeman, who doubtless had children of his own, stopped on his beat,
and helped her, wiping the mud from the rescued fruit with his
handkerchief, and securing all again with a newspaper and a stout twine
string which he took from his pocket; then they went away together, the
officer carrying the bundle and the child trotting contentedly in the
lee of him. They seemed to be old acquaintances.
Nothing else happened along to amuse him, so Mr. Cumberland let the
velvet folds fall back in their place and came over to the fire. He
had been suffering with a heavy cold, and found confinement to the
house in the last degree irksome. His wife was too much engrossed with
her book to be willing to lay it aside for his entertainment, and he
spurned her suggestion of the evening paper, so there was nothing for
it but to sulk over a cigar and audibly curse the weather.
A sharp ring at the door-bell, tardily answered by a servant, and then
footsteps approached the parlor door. Husband and wife looked up with
interest--with expectation. Was it a visitor? No; only the servant
with a telegram which he handed Mr. Cumberland, and then withdrew.
Cecil turned the thin envelope in his hand inquisitively. He was fond
of having every thing pass through his own hands--of knowing all the
ins and outs, the minutiae of daily happenings. "What is it?"
questioned Ethel, indolently.
"A dispatch for you. Shall I open it?"
"If you like. I hate dispatches. They always suggest unpleasant
possibilities. It's a local, so I guess it's from my aunt, about that
rubbishing dinner of hers."
Cecil tore open the envelope and read the few words it contained with a
lengthening visage; then he let his hand fall, and stared blankly
across at his wife.
"It's from that fellow! and it's about the child," he said, uneasily.
"What fellow? What child? Not mine! Give it to me quickly, Cecil.
How slow you are!" And she snatched the telegram from his unresisting
hand. Hastily she scanned the words, her breath coming in gasps, her
fingers trembling so that she could scarcely hold the paper. "The
child is dying. Come at once!" That was all, and the message was
signed Nesbit Thorne. Short, curt, peremptory, as our words are apt to
be in moments of intense emotion; a bald fact roughly stated.
For a moment Ethel Cumberland sat stunned, with pallid face and shaking
hands, from which the message slipped and fluttered to the carpet.
Then she sprang to her feet in wild excitement, an instinct aroused in
her breast which even animals know when their young are in danger.
"Cecil!" she cried, sharply, "don't you hear? My child! My baby is
dying! Why do you stand there staring at me? I must go--you must take
me to him now, this instant, or it will be too late. Don't you
understand? My darling--my boy is dying!" and she burst into a passion
of grief, wringing her hands and wailing. "Go! send for a carriage.
There's not a moment to lose. Oh, my baby!--my baby!"
"You can't go out in this storm. It's sleeting heavily, and I've been
ill. I can't let you go all that distance with only a maid, and how am
I to turn out in such weather?" objected Mr. Cumberland, who, when he
was opposed to a thing, was an adept in piling up obstacles. "I tell
you it's impossible, Ethel. It's madness, on such a night as this."
"Who cares for the storm?" raved Ethel, whose feelings, if evanescent,
were intense. "I _will_ go, Cecil! I don't want you, I'll go by
myself. Nothing shall stop me. If it stormed fire and blood I should
go all the same. I'll walk--I'll _crawl_ there, before I will stay
here and let my boy die without me. He is _my_ baby--my _own_ child, I
tell you, Cecil!--if he isn't yours."
Of this fact Cecil Cumberland needed no reminder. It was a thorn that
pricked and stung even his dull nature--for the child's father lived.
To a jealous temperament it is galling to be reminded of a predecessor
in a wife's affections, even when the grave has closed over him; if the
man still lives, it is intolerable.
He was not a brute, and he knew that he must yield to his wife's
pressure--that he had no choice but to yield; but he stood for a moment
irresolute, staring at her with lowering brows, a hearty curse on
living father and dying child slowly formulating in his breast.
As he turned to leave the room to give the necessary orders, a carriage
drove rapidly to the door and stopped, and there was a vigorous pull at
the bell. Thorne had provided against all possible delay. Then the
question arose of who should accompany her, and they found that there
was not a single available woman in the house. It was impossible to
let her go alone, and Cumberland, with the curses rising from his heart
to his lips, was forced, in very manhood, to go with her himself.
In Brooklyn Mrs. Creswell met them herself at the door, and appeared
surprised--as well she might--to see Mr. Cumberland. She motioned
Ethel toward the staircase, and then with a formal inclination of the
head, ushered her more unwelcome guest into a small parlor where there
was a fire and a lamp burning. Here she left him alone. Her house was
in the suburbs, and there was nowhere else for him to go at that hour
of the night and in that terrible storm.
The room was warm and cheerful, a child's toys lay scattered on floor
and sofa, a little hat and coat were on the table, beside a cigar case
and a crumpled newspaper. There was nothing for the man to do save to
stare around and walk the floor impatiently, longing for death to
hasten with his work, so that the false position might be ended.
Guided by unerring instinct, Ethel went straight to the chamber where
her child lay dying--perhaps already dead. Outside the door she paused
with her hand pressed hard on her throbbing heart.
It was a piteous sight that met her view as the door swung open,
rendered doubly piteous by the circumstances. A luxurious room, a
brooding silence, a tiny white bed on which a little child lay, slowly
and painfully breathing his life away.