The Trials of the Soldier's Wife: A Tale of the Second American RevolutionAbrams, Alex. St. Clair (Alexander St. Clair)
History
The Trials of the Soldier's Wife: A Tale of the Second American Revolution
Abrams, Alex. St. Clair (Alexander St. Clair)
Confederate States of America -- Fiction; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
"There is a virtue which shines far more than all the gold you
possess," replied Mrs. Wentworth. "It is in man what chastity is in a
woman. An act of charity ennobles man more than all the fame bestowed
upon him for any other merit, and his reward is always commensurate
with his works. Let this virtue move you. The ear of God cannot always
be turned against my prayers to Him, and the hour must surely come,
when my husband will be released from prison, and be enabled to repay
any kindness you may show his wife and children. Let me have the money
I have asked you for." "Oh, sir!" she continued, falling on her knees
before him, "believe the words I speak to you, and save my child from
the hands of death. But a short time ago I left her gasping for
breath, with cold drops of perspiration resting on her brow, perhaps
the marks of approaching dissolution. She is very ill, and can only
recover through proper treatment. Place it in my power to call a
physician and to procure medicines, and I shall never cease to bless
you."
He moved uneasily in his chair, and averted his head from where she
was kneeling, not because he felt touched at her appeal, but because
he felt annoyed at her importuning him for money.
"Here my voman," he said at last. "Here is von tollar pill, dat is all
I can give you."
She looked at the note in his extended hand, and felt the mockery.
"It will not do," she answered. "Let me have the amount I have asked
you for. You can spare it. Do not be hardened. Recollect it is to
provide medicine for the sick."
"I can't do it," he replied. "You should be shankful for what you
get."
His motive in offering her the dollar, was not from a charitable
feeling, it was only to get rid of a beggar.
"Oh God!" she groaned, rising from her knees, and resting her elbow on
an iron safe near by. "Have you a heart?" she exclaimed wildly, "I
tell you my child is ill, perhaps at this moment dying, aid me! aid
me! Do not turn away a miserable mother from your door to witness her
child die through destitution, when it is in your power to relieve its
sufferings, and save it, so that it may live to be a blessing and
solace to me. If not for my sake, if not for the sake of the child,
let me appeal to you for charity, for the sake of him, who is now
imprisoned in a foreign dungeon. He left me to defend you from the
enemy--left his wife and children to starve and suffer, for the
purpose of aiding in that holy cause we are now engaged in conflict
for. For his sake, if for no other, give me the means of saving my
child."
He did not reply to her passionate words, but simply rang a bell that
stood on the table before which he was seated. His clerk answered the
summons.
"If you vont quit mithout my making you," he observed to Mrs.
Wentworth in a brutal tone, "I must send for a police officer to take
away. Gootness," he continued, speaking to himself, "I pelieve te
voman is mat."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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