Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/99

57 L

THE nCKWlCK CLUB. 57

' fo?1ier child's sake, and, however strange it may seem to many, for his father's too ; for brute as he was and cruelly as he treated her, she had loved him once ; and the recollection of what he had been to her, awakened feelings of forbearance and meekness under suffering in her bosom, to which all God's creatures, but women, are strangers.

" They were poor — they could not be otherwise when the man pur- sued such courses; but the woman's unceasing and unwearied exertions, early and late, morning, noon, and night, kept them above actual want. Those exertions were but ill repaid. People who passed the spot in the evening — sometimes at a late hour of the night — reported that they had heard the moans and sobs of a woman in distress, and the sound of blows : and more than once, when it was past midnight, the boy knocked softly at the door of a neighbour's house, whither he had been sent, to escape the drunken fury of his unnatural father.

" During the whole of this time, and when the poor creature often bore about her marks of ill-usage and violence which she could not wholly conceal, she was a constant attendant at our little church. Regularly every Sunday, morning and afternoon, she occupied the same seat with the boy at her side ; and though they were both poorly dressed — much more so than many of their neighbours who were in a lower station — they were always neat and clean. Every one had a friendly nod and a kind word for * poor Mrs. Edmunds ;' and sometimes, when she stopped to exchange a few words with a neighbour at the con- clusion of the service in the little row of elm trees which leads to the church porch, or lingered behind to gaze with a mother's pride and fondness upon her healthy boy, as he sported before her with some little companions, her care-worn face would lighten up with an expres- sion of heartfelt gratitude ; and she would look, if not cheerful and hanpy, at least tranquil and contented.

well-grown youth. The time that had strengthened the child's slight frame and knit his weak limbs into the strength of manhood, had bowed his mother's form, and enfeebled her steps ; but the arm that should have supported her was no longer locked in hers ; the face that should have cheered her, no more looked upon her own. She occupied her old seat, but there was a vacant one beside her. The Bible was kept as carefully as ever, the places were found and folded down as they used to be : but there was no one to read it with her ; and the tears fell thick and fast upon the book, and blotted the words from her eyes. Neighbours were as kind as they were wont to be of old, but she shunned their greetings with averted head. There was no lingering among the old elm trees now — no cheering anticipations of happiness yet in store. The desolate woman drew her bonnet closer over her face, and walked hurriedly away.
 * Five or six years passed away ; the boy had become a robust and

" Shall I tell you, that the young man, who, looking back to the earliest of his childhood's days to which memory and consciousness extended, and carrying his recollection down to that moment, could remember nothing which was not in some way connected with a long series of voluntary privations suffered by his mother for his sake, with ill-usage, and insult, and violence, and all endured for him ; — shall I tell you, that he, with a reckless disregard of her breaking heart, and