LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER V.

      "COME! WE WILL END IT."

      When Dr. Spenlove left Mrs. Turner she sat for some time in a state of dull lethargy. No tear came into her eyes, no sigh escaped from her bosom. During the past few months she had exhausted the entire range of remorseful and despairing emotion. The only comfort she had received through all those dreary months sprang from the helpful sympathy of Dr. Spenlove; apart from that she had never been buoyed up by a ray of light, had never been cheered by the hope of a brighter day. Her one prevailing thought, which she did not express in words, was that she would be better dead than alive. She did not court death; she waited for it, and silently prayed that it would come soon. It was not from the strength of inward moral support that she had the courage to live on, it was simply that she had schooled herself into the belief that before or when her child was born death would release her from the horrors of life. "If I live till my baby is born," she thought, "I pray that it may die with me."

      Here was the case of a woman without the moral support which springs from faith in any kind of religion. In some few mortals such faith is intuitive, but in most instances it requires guidance and wise direction in childhood. Often it degenerates into bigotry and intolerance, and assumes the hateful, narrow form of condemning to perdition all who do not subscribe to their own particular belief. Pagans are as worthy of esteem as the bigots who arrogate to themselves the monopoly of heavenly rewards.

      Mrs. Turner was neither pagan not bigot; she was a nullity. Her religious convictions had not yet taken shape, and though, if she had been asked, "Are you a Christian?" she would have replied, "Oh, yes, I am a Christian," she would have been unable to demonstrate in what way she was a Christian, or what she understood by the term. In this respect many thousands of human beings resemble her.

      Faith is strength, mightier than the sword, mightier than the pen, mightier than all the world's store of gold and precious stones, and when this strength is displayed in the sweetness of resignation, or in submission to the divine will which chastens human life with sorrow, its influence upon the passions is sustaining and purifying and sublime. If Mrs. Turner had been blessed with faith which displayed itself in this direction she would have been the happier for it, and hard as were her trials she would to the last have looked forward with hope instead of despair.

      The story related by Mr. Gordon to Dr. Spenlove was true in every particular. There was no distortion or exaggeration; he had done for Mrs. Turner and her father all that he said he had done. He had not mentioned the word "love" in connection with the woman he had asked to be his wife. She, on her part, had no such love for him as that which should bind a man and a woman in a lifelong tie; she held him in respect and esteem--that was all. But she had accepted him, and had contemplated the future with satisfaction until, until----

      Until a man crossed her path who wooed her in different fashion, and who lavished upon her flatteries and endearments which made her false to the promise she had given. For this man she had deserted the home which Mr. Gordon had provided for her, and had deserted it in such a fashion that she could never return to it, could never again be received in it--and this without a word of explanation to the man she had deceived. She was in her turn deceived, and she awoke from her dream to find herself a lost and abandoned woman. In horror she fled from him, and cast her lot among strangers, knowing full well that she would meet with unbearable contumely among those to whom she was known. Hot words had passed between her and her betrayer, and in her anger she had written letters to him which in the eyes of the law would have released him from any obligation it might otherwise have imposed upon him. He was well pleased with this, and he smiled as he put the letters into a place of safety, to be brought forward only in case she annoyed him. She did nothing of the kind; her scorn for him was so profound that she was content to release him unconditionally. So she passed out of his life as he passed out of hers. Neither of these beings, the betrayed or betrayer, reckoned with the future; neither of them gave a thought to the probability that the skeins of fate, which to-day separated them as surely as if they had lived at opposite poles of the earth, might at some future time bring them together again, and that the pages of the book which they believed was closed forever might be reopened again for weal or woe.

      The child's moans aroused the mother from her lethargy. She had no milk to give the babe; Nature's founts were dry, and she went from door to door in the house in which she lived to beg for food. She returned as she went, empty-handed, and the child continued to moan.

      Dr. Spenlove, her only friend, had bidden her farewell. She had not a penny in her pocket; there was not a crust of bread in the cupboard; not an ounce of coal, not a stick of wood to kindle a fire. She was thinly clad, and she did not possess a single article upon which she could have obtained the smallest advance. She had taken the room furnished, and if what it contained had been her property a broker would have given but a few shillings for everything in it.

      The little hand instinctively wandered to the mother's wasted breast, and plucked at it imploringly, ravenously. The woman looked around in the last throes of an anguish too deep for expression except in the appalling words to which she gave despairing utterance.

      "Come!" she cried, "we will end it!"

      Out into the cold streets she crept, unobserved. She shivered, and a weird smile crossed her lips.

      "Hush, hush!" she murmured to her babe. "It will soon be over. Better dead--better dead--for you and for me!"

      She crept toward the sea, and hugged the wall when she heard approaching footsteps. She need not have feared; the night was too inclement for any but selfish considerations. The soft snow fell, and enwrapt her and her child in its pitiless shroud. She paused by a lamp post, and cast an upward look at the heavens, in which she could see the glimmering of the stars. Then she went on, and pressed her babe close to her breast to stifle its feeble sobs.

      "Be still, be still," she murmured. "There is no hope in life for either of us. Better dead--better dead!"