MOTHER AND SON.

Sterling turned back reluctantly. He was ill at ease, and in the heat of his disappointment had gone blindly in search of Dora. That morning he had asked her father's consent to their marriage, and had been refused, not rudely, but with that delicate firmness from which there was little hopes of appeal. When Sterling asked for the reasons, they were given. The young man had neither position, family, wealth, or any one of the requisites which would warrant him in proposing to the only daughter of a man who had earned all these things for himself. This was said kindly, but with sufficient force to kill all hope in the proud young man. Every word of these objections was true. Sterling was uncertain of his future as any man of six-and-twenty could be. A good education, active genius, and his present situation, were all he had to depend on. These he had offered with all due humility, and they were rejected.

In the first pang of his wounded pride he sought for Dora, but she was not alone; so he went back to the house, and betook himself to the next dearest creature to him on earth—his mother. Rhoda saw that something was wrong, and, with her usual shrewd tact, betook herself to the summer kitchen, where she fell to picking over her grapes, and sifting sugar with energy, now and then casting anxious glances through a back window of the cabin, where Sterling and his mother sat in earnest conversation.

This was what they were saying:

"And he said this."

Mrs. Holt spoke in a low voice; the color in her cheek grew warm and red. Sterling marked this; he saw, too, that her hand trembled as she made an effort to continue the work she was doing.

"It was his chief objection. Had I possessed a family and connections, I think he would have been less positive; but I had only Mr. Holt, and he——"

Mrs. Holt shrunk within herself, and answered quickly,

"Yes, I know—I know!"

"Mother, you have never told me anything about myself."

Sterling looked at his mother, then, and saw that she was deadly pale.

"Is there nothing that ought to soften this man's prejudice, mother?"

She did not answer his question, but abruptly asked one herself.

"Do you love this girl so much, William?"

"Love her? Great heavens! can you ask this when I have gone, with all my disadvantages, and besought her proud father to let me have her? It was like death to do it, knowing how little I had to offer."

"Yes," Mrs. Holt answered, as if talking to herself; "I only wonder the proud blood could so force itself."

"Mother, you have not answered me!"

Again she evaded him with a question.

"And she loves you? This is no light passion—no fancy that will die out. Boy, boy, tell me, have you discovered, of a truth, what real love is?"

"Mother, it is enough, we love each other truly, deeply, in such earnest as admits of no doubt."

"But it is your first love, Sterling."

Then the young man grew white in all his features, and after the dead silence of a minute, told his mother everything; how he had been married—all, all that the reader knows. Mrs. Holt, remembering the young beauty she had seen on the stairs of that tenement-house, thanked God that her son had broken the fetters which would have chained him down to earthliness forever. This entire confidence drew the mother and son close together, and she answered his question kindly, but not with the fullness he desired.

"We will talk this over again; you have taken me by surprise. I saw that it might come in time; but now it finds me unprepared."

Sterling kissed his mother and went out, comforted, without just reason, perhaps; but he had great faith both in the love and ability of his mother, who had always been a guardian and friend outside of the affection which all mothers are expected to feel for their offspring.

After he was gone, the effect of this interview became painfully visible in the lady. She sat for a long time, with her hands locked in her lap, gazing on the floor in deep thought. The exigencies of this case demanded some great sacrifice of her, which it was almost death to make—that appeared certain.

The battered old chest of camphor-wood, which was invariably her companion, let her go where she would, was now drawn out from under her bed, and from it the lady took a malachite-box, mounted and bound with bands of gold, somewhat dimmed by time, but an article of great beauty and value, such as the Czars of Russia give their favorite ambassadors when they wish to be generous. She unlocked this casket with some difficulty, for it was a long time since it had been opened, and took from it a quantity of papers, one or two of which were partly printed.

Mrs. Holt read these papers over with a sort of dumb shock, which left her face ashen, and her lips blue. It seemed to be the order from some court, for a seal was attached, on which the arms of England were stamped, and the document was written on vellum. You might have seen that it was killing the woman to read the words that stood out from that vellum; but she went through them twice, the first time in shivering haste, then again slowly, but shrinking into colder whiteness, as if every word had been a poisoned arrow, killing her slowly.

This paper, with two others, which seemed to be marriage or baptismal certificates, perhaps both, with a sealed letter, she took from the box, and placed about her person, as if for use. After this she sat down by the window, and drearily watched little Rhoda as she went about her work in the back kitchen. This lasted, perhaps, ten minutes, but it seemed to her an hour. Then she started up and beckoned to Rhoda, who was looking that way. At heart Mrs. Holt was a courageous woman, and with such the impulse to meet any evil thing, face to face, when it becomes necessary to meet it at all, is sure to arise.

"Go, tell my son I wish to see him at once," she said, frightening little Rhoda by her abruptness and her pallor.

Rhoda went on the instant, and directly young Sterling returned from a sharp walk along the wagon-road which led to the village, and entered the cabin. Mrs. Holt was walking up and down the room trembling, but resolute. Sterling closed the door after him, and then observed that she had rolled down the paper blinds, and drawn the muslin curtains, leaving the room in dim twilight, in the midst of which she stood like a ghost.

"Come here," said the lady, seating herself on the couch. "Come here, Sterling, and kiss me once more with the old love, before I make you hate me forever."

Sterling went up to the couch, and dropping upon his knees, wound both arms around his mother, kissing her cold hands and white face with pathetic tenderness, for he loved her dearly, and saw that she was suffering.

She shivered under his caresses, and pushed him from her, then drew him closer, and kissed him passionately, crying out, "It is the last—the last! One hour more, and these lips will recoil from mine!"

"Mother, you are wild; you do not know how much I love you!"

"Not enough to overcome disgrace—infamy!" she said, in a hoarse, low voice, while her eyes, full of shrinking pain, searched his face.

"Enough to overcome everything, be it misfortune or be it crime. The one holy fact that you are my mother, will lift me above it all."

Then the woman burst into tears, and sobbed piteously.

"I would not tell you; I would never have done it, but that your own happiness was at stake. I am an old woman, Sterling, worn, broken, incapable of much beyond sorrow. You are young, ardent; with my shame I will purchase your happiness. Read it; my lips refuse to say the things you must know. I wrote it, thinking to die, in silence; hoping that, with the grave between us, you might not feel it so much. But God will not let this cup pass from me. I only pray that it may earn you happiness."

She laid a sealed letter in his hands, with the legal papers which she had taken with it from the malachite-box. He looked at the door as if thinking to go out, but she pointed to the window and said,

"No, read it there."

Sterling sat down, raised the blind a little, and took up the vellum with its seal. A stream of light fell directly upon his face, and along the paper he was reading, while Mrs. Holt sat almost in darkness, watching him as a criminal reads the features of his judge. The young man felt the searching wildness of those eyes, and gave little sign of agitation. Sometimes his face flushed and his eyes kindled, then she could see that his hand pressed the paper fiercely; but after he broke open the letter it relaxed, a look of tender commiseration stole into his eyes, and she felt that he was thinking of her as if already in her grave, as she had always hoped to be before her son read that narrative.

All this time, the dead silence of the room was terrible. The poor woman could hear her own heart beat out its pain audibly. When the paper rustled in her son's hand, a faint shriek died in her throat. She sat there like a poor hunted antelope, watching for the bullet which was sure to pierce its heart. Of all her hard, wretched life, this one hour was the most wounding in its still bitterness.

Sterling got up at length, grasping the papers in his hand. She saw that he moved unsteadily, and looked downward on the floor, as if afraid that his eyes might wound her. Feeling this, she shrunk back, breathless. The motion that she made, faint as it was, struck him with something like remorse. That instant he was kneeling by her; again his lips pressed hers with a tenderness unknown to them before.

"My mother! My poor, poor mother!"

Here his manhood gave way, and, with her withered cheek pressed against his, wept like a child.

"And all this misery you have suffered without a word to your own son," he said, smoothing her gray hair with the hand with which he had just wiped away her tears.

"My sorrow would have made you sad, my shame degraded you," she answered.

"Do not speak of shame like that. Such words are not for a son to hear, even from his own mother. If there was wrong, a lifetime of atonement is enough."

She interrupted him. "No, not enough. Atonement is not a thing of this world, Sterling. The time which God gives us is all his own; we cannot take one portion in which to redeem another. What human soul can atone for pain once given, or wrong done. Like a stone cast into the waters of a lake, the wrong has sent forth its circles which nothing can arrest. Repentance may be ours, and forgiveness; but atonement is seldom to be hoped for."

"How sadly you talk, mother."

"Because I feel sadly, but more at rest since this heavy secret has left me. Use it, Sterling, and be happy with this sweet girl. Her father will consent when he knows who my son is."

"No," answered the young man, firmly. "Let this rest between us two. I will not use it to win even Dora. Her father shall yet give her to me for what I am."

Mrs. Holt drew a deep breath; a stone seemed rolled away from her heart. She held out her hand.

"It will not be long, Sterling. I am getting near the end now."

Sterling kissed the hand she held out, and went away greatly disturbed, but filled with compassion for the woman he left prostrate on that dainty couch, weak and weeping.