"Well mama," said Mrs. Lasette's daughter to her mother, "I cannot
understand why you take so much interest in Annette. She is very
unpopular. Scarcely any of the girls ever go with her, and even her
cousin never calls for her to go to church or anywhere else, and I
sometimes feel so sorry to see her so much by herself, and some of the
girls when I went with her to the exposition, said that they wouldn't
have asked her to have gone with them, that she isn't our set."
"Poor child," Mrs. Lasette replied; "I am sorry for her. I hope that you
will never treat her unkindly, and I do not think if you knew the sad
story connected with her life that you would ever be unkind enough to
add to the burden she has been forced to bear."
"But mamma, Annette is so touchy. Her aunt says that her tear bags must
lay near her eyes and that she will cry if you look at her, and that she
is the strangest, oddest creature she ever saw, and I heard she did not
wish her to come."
"Why, my dear child, who has been gossipping to you about your
neighbors?"
"Why, Julia Thomas."
"Well, my daughter, don't talk after her; gossip is liable to degenerate
into evil speaking and then I think it tends to degrade and belittle the
mind to dwell on the defects and imperfections of our neighbors. Learn
to dwell on the things that are just and true and of good report, but I
am sorry for Annette, poor child."
"What makes her so strange, do you know?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Lasette somewhat absently.
"If you do, won't you tell me?"
Again Mrs. Lasette answered in the same absent manner.
"Why mama, what is the matter with you; you say yes to everything and
yet you are not paying any attention to anything that I say. You seem
like someone who hears, but does not listen; who sees, but does not
look. Your face reminds me of the time when I showed you the picture of
a shipwreck and you said, 'My brother's boat went down in just such a
fearful storm.'"
"My dear child," said Mrs. Lasette, rousing up from a mournful reverie,
"I was thinking of a wreck sadder, far sadder than the picture you
showed me. It was the mournful wreck of a blighted life."
"Whose life, mama?"
"The life of Annette's [grand]mother. We were girls together and I loved
her dearly," Mrs. Lasette replied as tears gathered in her eyes when she
recalled one of the saddest memories of her life.
"Do tell me all about it, for I am full of curiosity."
"My child, I want this story to be more than food for your curiosity; I
want it to be a lesson and a warning to you. Annette's grandmother was
left to struggle as breadwinner for a half dozen children when her
husband died. Then there were not as many openings for colored girls as
there are now. Our chief resource was the field of domestic service, and
circumstances compelled Annette's mother to live out, as we called it.
In those days we did not look down upon a girl and try to ostracize her
from our social life if she was forced to be a servant. If she was poor
and respectable we valued her for what she was rather than for what she
possessed. Of course we girls liked to dress nicely, but fine clothes
was not the chief passport to our society, and yet I think on the whole
that our social life would compare favorably with yours in good
character, if not in intellectual attainments. Our dear old mothers were
generally ignorant of books, but they did try to teach good manners and
good behavior; but I do not think they saw the danger around the paths
of the inexperienced with the same clearness of vision we now do. Mrs.
Harcourt had unbounded confidence in her children, and as my mother
thought, gave her girls too much rein in their own hands. Our mother was
more strict with her daughters and when we saw Mrs. Harcourt's daughters
having what we considered such good times, I used to say, 'O, I wish
mother wasn't so particular!' Other girls could go unattended to
excursions, moonlight drives and parties of pleasure, but we never went
to any such pleasure unless we were attended by our father, brother or
some trusted friend of the family. We were young and foolish then and
used to chafe against her restrictions; but to-day, when I think of my
own good and noble husband, my little bright and happy home, and my
dear, loving daughter, I look back with gratitude to her thoughtful care
and honor and bless her memory in her grave. Poor Lucy Harcourt was not
so favored; she was pretty and attractive and had quite a number of
admirers. At length she became deeply interested in a young man who came
as a stranger to our city. He was a fine looking man, but there was
something about him from which I instinctively shrank. My mother felt
the same way and warned us to be careful how we accepted any attention
from him; but poor Lucy became perfectly infatuated with him and it was
rumored that they were to be shortly married. Soon after the rumor he
left the city and there was a big change in Lucy's manner. I could not
tell what was the matter, but my mother forbade me associating with her,
and for several months I scarcely saw her, but I could hear from others
that she was sadly changed. Instead of being one of the most
light-hearted girls, I heard that she used to sit day after day in her
mother's house and wring her hands and weep and that her mother's heart
was almost broken. Friends feared that Lucy was losing her mind and
might do some desperate deed, but she did not. I left about that time to
teach school in a distant village, and when I returned home I heard sad
tidings of poor Lucy. She was a mother, but not a wife. Her brothers had
grown angry with her for tarnishing their family name, of which they
were so proud; her mother's head was bowed with agony and shame. The
father of Lucy's child had deserted her in her hour of trial and left
her to bear her burden alone with the child like a millstone around her
neck. Poor Lucy; I seldom saw her after that, but one day I met her in
the Park. I went up to her and kissed her, she threw her arms around me
and burst into a flood of tears. I tried to restrain her from giving
such vent to her feelings. It was a lack of self-control which had
placed her where she was."
"'Oh Anna!' she said, 'it does me so much good to hold your hand in mine
once more. I reminds me of the days when we used to be together. Oh,
what would I give to recall those days.'"
"I said to her, Lucy, you can never recall the past, but you can try to
redeem the future. Try to be a faithful mother. Men may build over the
wreck and ruin of their young lives a better and brighter future, why
should not a woman? Let the dead past bury its dead and live in the
future for the sake of your child. She seemed so grateful for what I had
said. Others had treated her with scorn. Her brother Thomas had refused
to speak to her; her betrayer had forsaken her; all the joyousness had
faded from her life and, poor girl, I was glad that I was able to say a
helpful and hopeful word to her. Mother, of course, would not let us
associate with her, but she always treated her kindly when she came and
did what she could to lighten the burden which was pressing her down to
the grave. But, poor child, she was never again the same light-hearted
girl. She grew pale and thin and in the hectic flush and faltering
tread I read the death sign of early decay, and I felt that my misguided
young friend was slowly dying of a broken heart. Then there came a day
when we were summoned to her dying bed. Her brothers and sisters were
present; all their resentment against her had vanished in the presence
of death. She was their dear sister about to leave them and they bent in
tearful sorrow around her couch. As one of her brothers, who was a good
singer, entered the room, she asked him to sing 'Vital spark of heavenly
flame.' He attempted to sing, but there were tremors in his voice and he
faltered in the midst of the hymn. 'Won't you sing for your dying
sister.'"
"Again he essayed to sing, but [his?] voice became choked with emotion,
and he ceased, and burst into tears. Her brother Thomas who had been so
hard and cold, and had refused to speak to her, now wept and sobbed like
a child, but Lucy smiled as she bade them good bye, and exclaimed,
'Welcome death, the end of fear. I am prepared to die.' A sweet peace
settled down on her face, and Lucy had exchanged, I hope, the sorrow and
pain of life for the peace and rest of heaven, and left Annette too
young to know her loss. Do you wonder then my child that I feel such an
interest in Annette and that knowing as I do her antenatal history that
I am ever ready to pity where others condemn, and that I want to do what
I can to help round out in beauty and usefulness the character of that
sinned against and disinherited child, whose restlessness and
sensitiveness I trace back to causes over which she had no control."
"What became of Frank Miller? You say that when he returned to A.P. that
society opened its doors to him while they were closed to Annette's
mother. I don't understand it. Was he not as guilty as she was?"
"Guiltier, I think. If poor Lucy failed as a woman, she tried to be
faithful as a mother, while he, faithless as a man, left her to bear her
burden alone. She was frail as a woman, but he was base, mean, and
selfish as a man."
"How was it that society received him so readily?"
"All did not receive him so readily, but with some his money, like
charity, covered a multitude of sins. But from the depths of my heart I
despised him. I had not then learned to hate the sin with all my heart,
and yet the sinner love. To me he was the incarnation of social meanness
and vice. And just as I felt I acted. We young folks had met at a social
gathering, and were engaged in a pastime in which we occasionally
clasped hands together. Some of these plays I heartily disliked,
especially when there was romping and promiscuous kissing. During the
play Frank Miller's hand came in contact with mine and he pressed it. I
can hardly describe my feelings. It seemed as if my very veins were on
fire, and that every nerve was thrilling with repulsion and indignation.
Had I seen him murder Lucy and then turn with blood dripping hands to
grasp mine, I do not think that I should have felt more loathing than I
did when his hand clasped mine. I felt that his very touch was
pollution; I immediately left the play, tore off my glove, and threw it
in the fire."
"Oh, mother, how could you have done so? You are so good and gentle."
Mrs. Lasette replied, "I was not always so. I do not hate his sin any
less now than I did then but I think that I have learned a Christian
charity which would induce me to pluck such as he out of the fire while
I hated the garments spotted by his sins. I sat down trembling with
emotion. I heard a murmur of disapprobation. There was a check to the
gayety of the evening. Frank Miller, bold and bad as he was looked
crestfallen and uneasy. Some who appeared to be more careful of the
manners of society than its morals, said that I was very rude. Others
said that I was too prudish, and would be an old maid, that I was
looking for perfection in young men, and would not find it. That young
men sow their wild oats, and that I was more nice than wise, and that I
would frighten the gentlemen away from me. I told them if the young men
were so easily frightened, that I did not wish to clasp hands for life
with any such timid set, and that I was determined that I would have a
moral husband or none; that I was not obliged to be married, but that I
was obliged to be true to my conscience. That when I married I expected
to lay the foundation of a new home, and that I would never trust my
future happiness in the hands of a libertine, or lay its foundations
over the reeling brain of a drunkard, and I determined that I would
never marry a man for whose vices I must blush, and whose crimes I must
condone; that while I might bend to grief I would not bow to shame; that
if I brought him character and virtue, he should give me true manhood
and honor in return."
"And I think mother that you got it when you married father."
"I am satisfied that I did, and the respect and appreciation my daughter
has for her father is only part of my life's reward, but it was my dear
mother who taught me to distinguish between the true and the false, and
although she was [not?] what you call educated, she taught me that no
magnificence of fortune would atone for meanness of spirit, that without
character the most wealthy and talented man is a bankrupt in soul. And
she taught me how to be worthy of a true man's love."
"And I think you have succeeded splendidly."
"Thank you, my darling. But mother has become used to compliments."