The Fatal Glove | Page 4

a letter as he
received in return! It bade him give up the girl at once and return home.
If he ever spoke to her again he was disowned forever! He might
consider himself houseless and homeless.
Hubert had some of the proud Trevlyn blood in his composition, and
this letter roused it thoroughly. A week afterward he was the husband
of Helen Crayton. He took his young wife to the city, and, having
something of a talent for painting, he opened a studio, hoping to receive
sufficient patronage from his friends to support his family in comfort.
But he had not rightfully calculated the extent of his father's hatred. He
made himself the evil genius of his disobedient son; and, in
consequence, nothing Hubert touched prospered. Mr. Trevlyn
destroyed the confidence of his friends in him; he circulated scandalous
reports of his wife; he made the public to look with suspicious eyes
upon the unfortunate pair, and took the honestly earned bread out of
their very mouths. From bad to worse it went on, until, broken in health
and spirits, Hubert made an appeal to his father. It was a cold, wet night,
and he begged for a little food for his wife and child. They were
literally starving! Begged of his own father, and was refused with
curses. Not only refused, but kicked like a dog from the door of his
childhood's home! There was a fearful storm that night, and Hubert did
not come back. All night his young wife sat waiting for him, hushing
the feeble cries of the weary infant upon her breast. With the dawn, she
muffled herself and child in a shawl, and went forth to seek him. Half
way from her wretched home to the palatial mansion of Mr. Trevlyn
she found her husband, stone dead, and shrouded in the snow--the
tender, pitiful snow, that covered him and his wretchedness from sight.
After that, people who knew Mr. Trevlyn said that he grew more fretful
and disagreeable. His hair was bleached white as the snow, his hands
shook, and his erect frame was bowed and bent like that of a very aged
man. His wife, Hubert's mother, pined away to a mere shadow, and

before the lapse of a year she was a hopeless idiot.
Helen Trevlyn took up the burden of her life, refusing to despair
because of her child. It was a hard struggle for her, and she lived on,
until, as we have seen, when Archer was nine years of age, she died.
When all this was known to Archer Trevlyn he was almost beside
himself with passion. If he had possessed the power, he would have
wiped the whole Trevlyn race out of existence. He shut himself up in
his desolate garret with the tell-tale letters and papers which had
belonged to his mother, and there, all alone, he took a fearful oath of
vengeance. The wrongs of his parents should yet be visited on the head
of the man who had been so cruelly unpitying. He did not know what
form his revenge might take, but, so sure as he lived, it should fall
some time!
* * * * *
Five years passed. Archer was fourteen years of age. He had left the
street-sweeping business some time before, at the command of
Grandma Rugg, and entered a third-class restaurant as an under-waiter.
It was not the best school in the world for good morals. The people
who frequented the Garden Rooms, as they were called, were mostly of
a low class, and all the interests and associations surrounding Arch
were bad. But perhaps he was not one to be influenced very largely by
his surroundings. So the Garden Rooms, if they did not make him
better, did not make him worse.
In all these years he had kept the memory of Margie Harrison fresh and
green, though he had not seen her since the day his mother died. The
remembrance of her beauty and purity kept him oftentimes from sin;
and when he felt tempted to give utterance to oaths, her soft eyes
seemed to come between him and temptation.
One day he was going across the street to make change for a customer,
when a stylish carriage came dashing along. The horses shied at some
object, and the pole of the carriage struck Arch and knocked him down.
The driver drew in the horses with an imprecation.

Arch picked himself up, and stood recovering his scattered senses,
leaning against a lamp-post.
"Served ye right!" said the coachman roughly. "You'd no business to be
running befront of folkses carriages."
"Stop!" said a clear voice inside the coach. "What has occurred, Peter?"
"Only a ragged boy knocked down; but he's up again all right. Shall I
drive on? You