Poor Mrs. Laurens! Her anticipation of a brighter future for her children very speedily dissolved into thin air.
She came back in a week from her wedding tour, and moved into her new home, Mr. Finley’s nice brick residence on Church Hill; and then she hinted broadly to her new-made husband that she would like to take Pansy from the factory and Willie from the store, and send both to school again.
To her grief and dismay, Mr. Finley promptly refused her requests.
“I married you, not your family, Mrs. Finley,” he said coarsely.
“But I surely expected—and you certainly let me think, sir—that you would support my children,” faltered the bride.
“The three younger children, who are yet too young to work for themselves, I expect to board and clothe, certainly, but not the two others. They must remain at work, clothe themselves, and pay a small sum monthly for board,” was the stern reply, which so angered the astonished woman that she cried out resentfully:
“If I had known this I would not have married you!”
“If you married me with mercenary motives you deserve to be disappointed,” was the cold reply of her liege lord, and, as may be supposed, the honeymoon did not proceed very smoothly after that.
Willie kept on at the store, the children at school, and Pansy at the factory. She had not expected anything else, she told her mother, with some slight bitterness, when she half apologized to her for the necessity of her keeping on at work.
She resented with silent jealousy her mother’s marriage to this stern, hard man, so unlike her own father, who had been so gentle and loving, and the breach between her heart and her mother’s grew wider still as days passed on and brought the cold, dark days of winter.
For one day one of the little children had unwittingly let out a secret that Pansy had adjured her to keep. It was the fact that Norman Wylde had several times visited the house during Mrs. Finley’s absence on her wedding tour.
There had been a scene between mother and daughter, harsh reproaches and upbraidings, answered first by tears, then by girlish resentment.
“I had as much right to deceive you as you had to run away and marry that horrid man!” the girl cried, with flashing eyes.
Then Mrs. Finley had so far forgotten love and dignity as to strike her rebellious daughter—slapping both cheeks soundly, and threatening something of the same kind unless Pansy broke off with Norman Wylde.
“He is gone to England,” the girl answered sullenly, and the mother prayed in secret that he might never return, unwitting of the terrible interest Pansy had in the absentee.
So the long winter days wore away, and Pansy’s companions at the factory began to remark a great change in the young girl. Her cheeks had grown pale and wan, and her eyes dim, as if from constant tears. Her light, dancing step had become heavy and dragging, and she no longer seemed to care about her personal appearance, for her dresses were cheap and ill-fitting, and she was always shivering with cold, although constantly wrapped in a thick shawl. The gay girls at the factory often teased her about her chilliness, and told her she must be going into a consumption.
Poor child! If they had guessed what was aching at her heart they must have pitied her. Not a word or line had she received from Norman Wylde since the day he had sailed away from Richmond, after the one week of delirious happiness in which she had been his adored wife.
Faithfully had she kept the secret of her marriage, but the time was coming when it must be declared, or she would have to bear the burden of a bitter shame. Unless Norman Wylde returned soon, she would be the mother of a child on whom the world would frown in scorn, while she, poor girl, would never be able to lift up her head again.
Oh, how she repented her disobedience to her mother! If she had listened to her she would not have come to this terrible pass. Perhaps Norman was false to her, perhaps that marriage in Washington had been a fraudulent one. She had read of such things.
“Heaven pity me, how shall I ever confess the truth to my mother?” she sobbed nightly, as she lay wide awake in her little room, too wretched and frightened to sleep, wondering why her husband did not write to her, and praying always that Heaven would remove her very soon from a world that she had found so dark and cruel.
A dark, terrible day came to her at last—dark, although the sun was shining in the sky, the green grass springing, and the gay birds chirping in the budding trees, for it was May now, and the world was made new again—she was discharged from the factory.
No reason was given, none asked. She understood.
For many days she had seen that her companions at work shunned and sneered at her. She had had many friends among them once, but now not one. She did not blame them. In their place she would perhaps have acted the same. There is a wide, wide gulf between womanly purity and fallen virtue, and they believed that she was a lost and ruined creature.
As she went slowly, wearily homeward she felt that she could not bear to tell her mother of her discharge, for then she would have to confess all the rest.
“I could more easily die than confess to her, for, oh, she will be so angry, so angry!” she shuddered weakly, and a desperate resolve came to her.
She would run away and hide herself from all who had ever known her.
Perhaps she would die when her trouble came. She hoped so, for she was weary of her life.
Out of the money that remained from her wages after paying her board, she had saved a few dollars. She would take it and go away. Mamma would not miss her much. She had never seemed the same to her children since she married the hard, stern man who kept her at work even more slavishly than when she was a widow, for he would not hire a servant, and she was compelled to do the drudgery of the house herself.
Pansy went into the house very quietly, then helped her mother with the supper, as was her usual custom. She pretended to eat something herself, then went up to her own little room, eager to make her arrangements for getting away.
There was not much to do, only to make up a bundle of such clothing as she would need the most and could conveniently carry. There were some tiny garments, too, clumsily fashioned by the poor girl’s unskillful hands; they must not be left behind. She tied them all up securely, put on her hat, and sat down to wait until the house should be still, when she would slip quietly out and make her way to the station, where she could take the first train to Petersburg.
She felt ill and wretched. Her heart was throbbing to suffocation. How dreadful the suspense was, how slowly the time crept by!
Thank Heaven, they were all abed at last, and she could go now.
She rose up with her bundle, shrinking a little at the thought of being alone in the streets by night.
At that inauspicious moment Mrs. Finley suddenly entered the room.