Chapter 20

Winter again; the city dull, listless and sodden of aspect in the gloom of a January evening. In the country, and nature's quiet places, the dusk was throwing a veil over the cheerlessness of earth, as a friend covers a friend's deficiencies with love; but here, in the haunts of men, garish electric lights made plain the misery. The air was a depressing compound which defied analysis; but was apparently composed of equal parts of snow, drizzle, and stinging sleet; the wind caught it in sudden whirls, and dashed it around corners and into the eyes and the coat collars of wayfarers with gusty malevolence.

The streets were comparatively deserted, only such people being abroad as could not help themselves, and these plodded along with bent heads, and silent curses on the night. Even the poor creatures who daily "till the field of human sympathy" kept close within the shelter of four walls, no matter how forlorn, and left the elements to hold Walpurgis night in the thoroughfares alone.

In a comfortable easy chair, in the handsome parlor of an elegant up-town mansion, sat Ethel Cumberland, reading a novel. Since her second marriage, life had gone pleasantly with her and she was content. Cecil never worried her about things beyond her comprehension, or required other aliments for his spiritual sustenance than that which she was able and willing to furnish; he was a commonplace man and his desires were commonplace--easily understood and satisfied. He liked a pretty wife, a handsome house, a good dinner with fine wine and jolly company; he liked high-stepping horses, a natty turn-out, and the smile of Vanity Fair. Ethel's tastes were similar, and their lives so far had fitted into each other without a single crevice. The Cumberlands were grim and unbending, it is true, and after that one concession to fraternal feeling, made no more; they held themselves rigidly aloof from the pair, and invested all intercourse with paralyzing formality. Ethel did not care a pin for them or their opinion; if they chose to be old-fogyish and disagreeable, they were quite welcome to indulge their fancy. As long as society smiled upon her, Madam Ethel was superbly indifferent to the Cumberland frown.

Cecil worried over it, as men will worry, who have been accustomed to the adulation of their womenkind, when that adulation is withdrawn. He grumbled and fumed over their "damned nonsense," as he called it, and bored his wife no little with conjectures as to their reasons for being stiff and unpleasant when nobody else was.

Since her return from her wedding trip, which had lengthened to four months amid the delights of Paris, Mrs. Cumberland had found time for only one short visit to her little son. There had been such an accumulation of social duties and engagements, that pilgrimages over to Brooklyn were out of the question; and besides, she disliked Mrs. Creswell, Thorne's aunt, who had charge of the boy, and who had the bad taste, Ethel felt sure, to disapprove of her. It was too bad of Nesbit to put the child so far away, and with a person whom she did not like; it amounted to a total separation, for of course it would be impossible for her to make such a journey often. When her time should be less occupied, she would write to Nesbit about it; meanwhile, her maternal solicitude found ample pacification in sending a servant across at intervals to carry toys and confectionery to the little fellow, and to inquire after his welfare.

The portières were drawn aside to admit Mr. Cumberland in smoking jacket and slippers, yawning and very much bored. He was a large, heavy looking man, very dependent on outside things for his entertainment. Failing to attract his wife's attention, he lounged over to the window, and drew aside the velvet curtain. The atmosphere was heavy, and the light in front of the house appeared to hold itself aloof from the environment in a sulky, self-contained way; all down the street, the other lamps looked like the ghosts of lights that had burned and died in past ages.

A little girl with a bag of apples in her frost-bitten hands came hastily around the corner, and, going with her head down against the sleet, butted into an elderly gentleman, with a big umbrella, who was driving along in an opposite direction. The gentleman gave the child an indignant shove which caused her to seat herself violently upon the pavement; the bag banged hard against the bricks and delivered up its trust, and the apples scudded away into the gutter.

Cecil laughed amusedly as the little creature picked herself up crying, and proceeded to institute search for the missing treasure. A kindly policeman, who doubtless had children of his own, stopped on his beat, and helped her, wiping the mud from the rescued fruit with his handkerchief, and securing all again with a newspaper and a stout twine string which he took from his pocket; then they went away together, the officer carrying the bundle and the child trotting contentedly in the lee of him. They seemed to be old acquaintances.

Nothing else happened along to amuse him, so Mr. Cumberland let the velvet folds fall back in their place and came over to the fire. He had been suffering with a heavy cold, and found confinement to the house in the last degree irksome. His wife was too much engrossed with her book to be willing to lay it aside for his entertainment, and he spurned her suggestion of the evening paper, so there was nothing for it but to sulk over a cigar and audibly curse the weather.

A sharp ring at the door-bell, tardily answered by a servant, and then footsteps approached the parlor door. Husband and wife looked up with interest--with expectation. Was it a visitor? No; only the servant with a telegram which he handed Mr. Cumberland, and then withdrew. Cecil turned the thin envelope in his hand inquisitively. He was fond of having every thing pass through his own hands--of knowing all the ins and outs, the minutiae of daily happenings. "What is it?" questioned Ethel, indolently.

"A dispatch for you. Shall I open it?"

"If you like. I hate dispatches. They always suggest unpleasant possibilities. It's a local, so I guess it's from my aunt, about that rubbishing dinner of hers."

Cecil tore open the envelope and read the few words it contained with a lengthening visage; then he let his hand fall, and stared blankly across at his wife.

"It's from that fellow! and it's about the child," he said, uneasily.

"What fellow? What child? Not mine! Give it to me quickly, Cecil. How slow you are!" And she snatched the telegram from his unresisting hand. Hastily she scanned the words, her breath coming in gasps, her fingers trembling so that she could scarcely hold the paper. "The child is dying. Come at once!" That was all, and the message was signed Nesbit Thorne. Short, curt, peremptory, as our words are apt to be in moments of intense emotion; a bald fact roughly stated.

For a moment Ethel Cumberland sat stunned, with pallid face and shaking hands, from which the message slipped and fluttered to the carpet. Then she sprang to her feet in wild excitement, an instinct aroused in her breast which even animals know when their young are in danger.

"Cecil!" she cried, sharply, "don't you hear? My child! My baby is dying! Why do you stand there staring at me? I must go--you must take me to him now, this instant, or it will be too late. Don't you understand? My darling--my boy is dying!" and she burst into a passion of grief, wringing her hands and wailing. "Go! send for a carriage. There's not a moment to lose. Oh, my baby!--my baby!"

"You can't go out in this storm. It's sleeting heavily, and I've been