The Legacy of Cain | Page 7

a momentary hesitation, gave her to her mother. The horror of the situation overpowered him: he turned his face away from us. I understood what he felt; he almost overthrew my own self-command.
The Prisoner spoke to the nurse in no friendly tone: "You can go."
The nurse turned to me, ostentatiously ignoring the words that had been addressed to her. "Am I to go, sir, or to stay?" I suggested that she should return to the waiting-room. She returned at once in silence. The Prisoner looked after her as she went out, with such an expression of hatred in her eyes that the Minister noticed it.
"What has that person done to offend you?" he asked.
"She is the last person in the whole world whom I should have chosen to take care of my child, if the power of choosing had been mine. But I have been in prison, without a living creature to represent me or to take my part. No more of that; my troubles will be over in a few hours more. I want you to look at my little girl, whose troubles are all to come. Do you call her pretty? Do you feel interested in her?"
The sorrow and pity in his face answered for him.
Quietly sleeping, the poor baby rested on her mother's bosom. Was the heart of the murderess softened by the divine influence of maternal love? The hands that held the child trembled a little. For the first time it seemed to cost her an effort to compose herself, before she could speak to the Minister again.
"When I die to-morrow," she said, "I leave my child helpless and friendless--disgraced by her mother's shameful death. The workhouse may take her--or a charitable asylum may take her." She paused; a first tinge of color rose on her pale face; she broke into an outburst of rage. "Think of my daughter being brought up by charity! She may suffer poverty, she may be treated with contempt, she may be employed by brutal people in menial work. I can't endure it; it maddens me. If she is not saved from that wretched fate, I shall die despairing, I shall die cursing--"
The Minister sternly stopped her before she could say the next word. To my astonishment she appeared to be humbled, to be even ashamed: she asked his pardon: "Forgive me; I won't forget myself again. They tell me you have no children of your own. Is that a sorrow to you and your wife?"
Her altered tone touched him. He answered sadly and kindly: "It is the one sorrow of our lives."
The purpose which she had been keeping in view from the moment when the Minister entered her cell was no mystery now. Ought I to have interfered? Let me confess a weakness, unworthy perhaps of my office. I was so sorry for the child--I hesitated.
My silence encouraged the mother. She advanced to the Minister with the sleeping infant in her arms.
"I daresay you have sometimes thought of adopting a child?" she said. "Perhaps you can guess now what I had in my mind, when I asked if you would consent to a sacrifice? Will you take this wretched innocent little creature home with you?" She lost her self-possession once more. "A motherless creature to-morrow," she burst out. "Think of that."
God knows how I still shrunk from it! But there was no alternative now; I was bound to remember my duty to the excellent man, whose critical position at that moment was, in some degree at least, due to my hesitation in asserting my authority. Could I allow the Prisoner to presume on his compassionate nature, and to hurry him into a decision which, in his calmer moments, he might find reason to regret? I spoke to him. Does the man live who--having to say what I had to say--could have spoken to the doomed mother?
"I am sorry to have allowed this to go on," I said. "In justice to yourself, sir, don't answer!"
She turned on me with a look of fury.
"He shall answer," she cried.
I saw, or thought I saw, signs of yielding in his face. "Take time," I persisted--"take time to consider before you decide."
She stepped up to me.
"Take time?" she repeated. "Are you inhuman enough to talk of time, in my presence?"
She laid the sleeping child on her bed, and fell on her knees before the Minister: "I promise to hear your exhortations--I promise to do all a woman can to believe and repent. Oh, I know myself! My heart, once hardened, is a heart that no human creature can touch. The one way to my better nature--if I have a better nature--is through that poor babe. Save her from the workhouse! Don't let them make a pauper of her!" She sank prostrate at his feet, and