The Mysteries of Montreal: Being Recollections of a Female PhysicianFührer, Ch. (Charlotte)
Science
The Mysteries of Montreal: Being Recollections of a Female Physician
Führer, Ch. (Charlotte)
Montréal (Québec) -- Fiction; Women physicians -- Fiction
Mrs. Rogers employed three servants besides a coachman: a cook,
a housemaid, and a tablemaid. The latter was a young and
attractive-looking girl from Glengarry, Ontario, named Ellen MacNee, who
was about seventeen years old, and had never before been in service. For
this damsel Jack Rogers conceived an attachment, and although at
first the girl withstood his attentions, ere long she gave way to
his importunities, and for months they lived on terms of the closest
intimacy. Jack of course promised (as all men do) to marry her, and
to do him justice I must say that he fully intended to do so, but his
income as a bank clerk was only twenty dollars a month, and he knew he
had no hope of receiving any assistance from his father. So things went
on till Ellen felt she could keep her secret no longer from those around
her, and she told her mistress she was going home to visit a sick aunt,
and did not know whether she would return or not. Mrs. Rogers was very
sorry indeed to part with her (for she had ingratiated herself with all
the family, although not to the same extent), and told her if she would
undertake to return she would only fill her place temporarily with
another girl. With this understanding Ellen left her place and entered
the Female Home, where shortly afterwards her baby (a girl) was born;
she had the child baptized almost immediately, calling it Beatrice,
after her young mistress, to whom she had been much attached, although
it is doubtful if the young lady in question would, had she known it
have appreciated the honor conferred upon her.
Ellen was scarcely recovered from her illness when her brother, a
country farmer, who had by some means got wind of the state of affairs,
came to Montreal, and had his misgivings confirmed. When he learnt
the truth he was furious, and would, he vowed, shoot both her and her
betrayer; but fraternal affection was so strong within him that he
gradually became more calm, and exerted himself to make the best he
could of a bad business. He requested me to take the child and place it
in a nunnery in spite of the earnest protestations of its mother, and
persuaded the latter to return to her home in Glengarry, promising to
hide her shame from her mother and friends if she would bid farewell
forever to the child and her betrayer. He persistently refused even to
look at the baby, but, rough and uncultivated as he was, I could see a
tear glisten in his eye as his manly heart quivered with emotion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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