Cast Adrift. T. S. Arthur

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СКАЧАТЬ her husband over to her side. This was not difficult, for Mr. Dinneford felt the disgrace of having for a son-in-law a condemned criminal, who was only saved from the State's prison by insanity. An insane criminal was not worthy to hold the relation of husband to his pure and lovely child.

      After a feeble opposition to her father's arguments and persuasions, Edith yielded her consent. An application for a divorce was made, and speedily granted.

CHAPTER IV.

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      OUT of this furnace Edith came with a new and purer spirit. She had been thrust in a shrinking and frightened girl; she came out a woman in mental stature, in feeling and self-consciousness.

      The river of her life, which had cut for itself a deeper channel, lay now so far down that it was out of the sight of common observation. Even her mother failed to apprehend its drift and strength. Her father knew her better. To her mother she was reserved and distant; to her father, warm and confiding. With the former she would sit for hours without speaking unless addressed; with the latter she was pleased and social, and grew to be interested in what interested him. As mentioned, Mr. Dinneford was a man of wealth and leisure, and active in many public charities. He had come to be much concerned for the neglected and cast-off children of poor and vicious parents, thousands upon thousands of whom were going to hopeless ruin, unthought of and uncared for by Church or State, and their condition often formed the subject of his conversation as well at home as elsewhere.

      Mrs. Dinneford had no sympathy with her husband in this direction. A dirty, vicious child was an offence to her, not an object of pity, and she felt more like, spurning it with her foot than touching it with her hand. But it was not so with Edith; she listened to her father, and became deeply interested in the poor, suffering, neglected little ones whose sad condition he could so vividly portray, for the public duties of charity to which he was giving a large part of his time made him familiar with much that was sad and terrible in human suffering and degradation.

      One day Edith said to her father,

      “I saw a sight this morning that made me sick. It has haunted me ever since. Oh, it was dreadful!”

      “What was it?” asked Mr. Dinneford.

      “A sick baby in the arms of a half-drunken woman. It made me shiver to look at its poor little face, wasted by hunger and sickness and purple with cold. The woman sat at the street corner begging, and the people went by, no one seeming to care for the helpless, starving baby in her arms. I saw a police-officer almost touch the woman as he passed. Why did he not arrest her?”

      “That was not his business,” replied Mr. Dinneford. “So long as she did not disturb the peace, the officer had nothing to do with her.”

      “Who, then, has?”

      “Nobody.”

      “Why, father!” exclaimed Edith. “Nobody?”

      “The woman was engaged in business. She was a beggar, and the sick, half-starved baby was her capital in trade,” replied Mr. Dinneford. “That policeman had no more authority to arrest her than he had to arrest the organ-man or the peanut-vender.”

      “But somebody should see after a poor baby like that. Is there no law to meet such cases?”

      “The poor baby has no vote,” replied Mr. Dinneford, “and law-makers don't concern themselves much about that sort of constituency; and even if they did, the executors of law would be found indifferent. They are much more careful to protect those whose business it is to make drunken beggars like the one you saw, who, if men, can vote and give them place and power. The poor baby is far beneath their consideration.”

      “But not of Him,” said Edith, with eyes full of tears, “who took little children in his arms and blessed them, and said, Suffer them to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

      “Our law-makers are not, I fear, of his kingdom,” answered Mr. Dinneford, gravely, “but of the kingdom of this world.”

      A little while after, Edith, who had remained silent and thoughtful, said, with a tremor in her voice,

      “Father, did you see my baby?”

      Mr. Dinneford started at so unexpected a question, surprised and disturbed. He did not reply, and Edith put the question again.

      “No, my dear,” he answered, with a hesitation of manner that was almost painful.

      After looking into his face steadily for some moments, Edith dropped her eyes to the floor, and there was a constrained silence between them for a good while.

      “You never saw it?” she queried, again lifting her eyes to her father's face. Her own was much paler than when she first put the question.

      “Never.”

      “Why?” asked Edith.

      She waited for a little while, and then said,

      “Why don't you answer me, father?”

      “It was never brought to me.”

      “Oh, father!”

      “You were very ill, and a nurse was procured immediately.”

      “I was not too sick to see my baby,” said Edith, with white, quivering lips. “If they had laid it in my bosom as soon as it was born, I would never have been so ill, and the baby would not have died. If—if—”

      She held back what she was about saying, shutting her lips tightly. Her face remained very pale and strangely agitated. Nothing more was then said.

      A day or two afterward, Edith asked her mother, with an abruptness that sent the color to her face, “Where was my baby buried?”

      “In our lot at Fairview,” was replied, after a moment's pause.

      Edith said no more, but on that very day, regardless of a heavy rain that was falling, went out to the cemetery alone and searched in the family lot for the little mound that covered her baby—searched, but did not find it. She came back so changed in appearance that when her mother saw her she exclaimed,

      “Why, Edith! Are you sick?”

      “I have been looking for my baby's grave and cannot find it,” she answered. “There is something wrong, mother. What was done with my baby? I must know.” And she caught her mother's wrists with both of her hands in a tight grip, and sent searching glances down through her eyes.

      “Your baby is dead,” returned Mrs. Dinneford, speaking slowly and with a hard deliberation. “As for its grave—well, if you will drag up the miserable past, know that in my anger at your wretched mesalliance I rejected even the dead body of your miserable husband's child, and would not even suffer it to lie in our family ground. You know how bitterly I was disappointed, and I am not one of the kind that forgets or forgives easily. I may have been wrong, but it is too late now, and the past may as well be covered out of sight.”

      “Where, СКАЧАТЬ