Читать книгу Lover and Husband. A Novel онлайн

43 страница из 136

Some time passed, and then Marion reluctantly withdrew from the terrace and re-entered the little salon. It looked quite dark from the contrast with the flood of light outside; and as the girl’s eye fell on her little writing-desk which she had set on the table intending to write to Harry, it seemed as if the darkness had entered her heart too.

“What can I say to him?” thought she, “and poor Cissy ill and tired. I can’t even talk to her!”

And then there came before her a picture of Harry compelled to confess all to his father. A terrible scene of parental reproaches and harshness. Harry cast of for ever, perhaps running away to sea, and his life utterly separated from hers, and from all happy and wholesome influences. It was too dreadful to think of! Very foolish and exaggerated no doubt. Still such things have been! Then too, there was great excuse for Marion’s anxiety, even if carried too far. Harry, though little more than two years her junior, had been almost like a son to her as well as a brother. She was naturally stronger in character than he, and also much more thoughtful and considerate. And then to a gentle unselfish girl it comes so naturally to act a mother’s part at almost any age. I think as I write of a tottering nursemaid of six or seven, all but overwhelmed by the baby in her arms, at first glance quite as big as herself. A cold day and the clothing of both babies of the scantiest. Of course the small nursemaid has a tiny shawl. Small nursemaids always have. Her charge at last succumbs to cold and sets up a dismal howl. Then see the poor little woman, poor baby that she is, untaught, unkempt, uncared for. With what sweetest tenderness she soothes the crying infant, seating herself with infinite pains on a door step, and wrapping round the other the poor little rag of a shawl which was the only protection of her own shivering shoulders. Dear, good little girl. True-hearted, unselfish child. How many such as these are in our streets! Ugly, dirty little creatures we shrink from them as we pass, who yet are already fulfilling nobly, in utter unconsciousness, their part of woman’s work.