Part 6

“I want a touch of what is called the artistic in our room and the sitting-room, if we can’t do more. Let me help to choose the wall-paper. I shall have to see it every minute of the day,” she said.

A first-class Brussels carpet, somewhat worn, was bought at auction. This was so remodeled as to appear new and elegant. A fringed lambrequin for the mantel-shelf (which was not marble); a few pretty, but cheap, brackets; a few photographs of fine paintings, which had lain out of sight for years, made into passe-partouts, and hung judiciously. Pretty imitation chintz curtains, with lambrequin top, for the bed-room; sheer muslin, lined with Turkey-red, for the living-room; well-fitting chintz covers for the old couch and armchair, the colors made to harmonize with carpet and wall-paper, which latter was, of course, neutral-tinted; a hanging-basket, already well-filled and growing, in each window; a few inexpensive, urn-shaped vases for flowers; a graceful evening lamp. This last Jannette feared an extravagance, but “it will be so restful to our eyes; think of it, dear, every evening.”

When all was ready, a house-warming was given, and was not our little wife proud of her success? She really had not realized before her own talent and good taste. “I am sure, Mr. T., you must have spent hundreds of dollars on all this,” said Mr. T.’s partner’s wife, who frowned severely on all extravagance. Jannette shook her head and smiled.

And now, in a few weeks, all was ready for the newcomer--Master Thomas Bliss Trescott, as he was named. In after years the mother still remembered the pleasure she had had in the arrangement of their lovely home, but she did not connect that fact with the sterling intellect and marked artistic ability of her fourth child (and second son), notwithstanding that he was seen by all to be head and shoulders above the rest in all that makes a man.

JEALOUSY.

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.

THE NEW BERLIN PROSTITUTE.