LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1895, 20 March 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

MARTHA JACOBI: A TRACED? IN REAL LIFE. [Abridged from the Christmas Number of “ Belgravia.”] This Is a true story. I, Martha Jacobi—a woman who was never to be trusted, people said, and whose word was never worth much —vouch to every syllable I utter. This may bo the death-bed of one of God’s unfortunates for what I know or care, and I am not likely to die with a lie in my mouth. It is a story of other lives and temptations, and it is upon my mind. Lying thus bedridden, and helpless, for good or evil, it weighs me down, and I must speak of it. I was forty-five years of age when I left the Fulham Refuge for service with the Mayfields. They had been forty-five strange, wicked years to me, and I was glad to turn my back upon them. I had bean more than once in prison, and more than once sorry for the sins I had committed.

‘ This is the last time,’ I had always said when my prison days were over ; and ‘ This is the very last,’ I protested when the refuge had given me a good word, and there had come to my unprofitable life another chance. At forty-five I had learned something of what was right—before then I had guessed at it, and followed wrong as easier work for me. They were a young couple, those Mayfields —they had not been married three months when I entered their service. They had known trouble quickly after their wedding, day. There are some people born unto it, and the Mayfields were two of them. In three months they had dropped like a stone from good lack to bad—reckoning in the honeymoon as well, Arthur Mayfield had held a responsible post as “buyer” in a wholesale city house, and on the strength of his position, his future, he married for love. He had been four weeks on his wedding tour when the news came that his firm had failed —“smashed up ” for hundreds of thousands, carrying away other firms in the great crash, and sending a little army of old servants adrift on the world. Arthur Mayfield went adrift with the rest, and reached not the shore again. He had saved a little money —a few hundreds—and this sum came in handy. He had hoped to step into a similar position to that which he had lost; but the opportunity came not, and an ugly rumour got abroad that he had known of many doubtful transactions of the firm, and helped in them after his fashion. This he denied always. I have heard him protest to hia wife against the scandal, and curse those who had set it afloat; protest to himself ■even when pacing up and down his little drawing room like a wild beast in his den. I believe he was a thoroughly honest young man at that time, although I was a bad judge of what was honest. He and his wife were both religious folk who went regularly to church and dealt in long graces before meals, after the fashion of their parents before them, I suppose. I was never religions—l never git religious, not even when the lady superintendent of the refuge told me she would trust me again with all her heart, and advised others to trust me. The Mayfields took me away to their honest home, saying—‘Come with na, Martha. We know what misfortune is, and we sympathise with it—especially with such hard misfortune as yours.’ ‘ A misfortune brought about by own hands—my own sheer badness, madam,’ I confessed to the young wife when I was duly installed in her service. ‘No matter now, if you ar? penitent —is it? ’ ‘No.’ ‘ And no one to blame but yourself—no one dragged down by you, or with you. That should surely be some consolation, Martha V ' I dare say It is—l don’t know, ’ I answered moodily. ‘My poor stolid woman, but yon do know in your heart,’ said Mrs Mayfield placing her two fair hands upon my shoulders, ‘ and you will be all the happier for your knowledge some day.’ ‘ I shall never be happy—l don’t deserve to be—l don’t wan’t, ma’am.’ ‘ There, that will do,’ she said, running away. ‘ I will not argue with yon any more —I will send Arthur to yon instead, ’ ‘ Oh! please no.’

She laughed again. She knew I was afraid cf Arthur—that was her husband—and of his prayers, many of which were launched at me, I was certain.

I loved the young wife. She was the one woman who had thought any good of me, and I was grateful. I dare say I should have respected Arthur Mayfield more had he been less in the way, and* more out of the house. Being always at home, he interfered with home too much. In the old days—the bad old days—l should have run at him with a knife ; but, though he tried my temper, I wouldn’t let him see it, or his wife know it. I was always ‘comfortable,’ I said ; and I had learned to see, as months and months went on, that they were not — and that trouble was creeping on towards them. When they thought I was in bed, instead of listening on the stairs to learn what was the matter, they talked of their ill - fortune, their expenses, the money melting away in the bank, the bad times in the city ; and it was always the woman who cheered up the man, and who would not look at the dark side of things, but prophesied the sunshine—which never came, however, such devil’s luck seme people have. Arthur would brighten up at last, and believe in her : ‘ Yes, it’s a long long lane which has no turning, Jenny,’ he would say, taking her in his arms and kissing her, ' and we have a few pounds yet in the money-box. And presently, to make our hearts rejoice—perhaps to turn our luck—the baby, Jenny ! ’ ‘ I —l thought, Arthur, you might fancy the baby would be—a leetle—expensive for us just now. I hope you don’t,’ she murmured. ‘lt will be a comfort—a blessing—God’s blessing on our happy marriage.’ ‘My own dear husband!’ cried Jenny Mayfield rapturously. I had listened enough—l went upstairs with a choking, gasping feeling at my heart and throat—there was a meaning in their words which stabbed me terribly. I thought that night that I would run away from them, that I ought to tell them everything, or go —and then that I could never say one solitary word, or they would hate and loathe me. But I stayed with them ; and a month or two after this their little baby-boy was born. Then came more trouble —an awful trouble for a while, for the young wife’s life was despaired of ; and the doctor, and the physician who came twice in his pair-horse carriage and took away their money for an opinion that everybody had, said there was no hope, and she must die. She recovered, though; she was saved, as by a miracle; and it was like one, to see her down-stairs again for the first time—in her old place by the fireside—a woman risen from the dead. This was four or five months after her confinement—four or five months of heavy expenses—in the hope to save the wife. The hope came, and Jenny Mayfield was spared. The baby had been christened Paul, In the mother’s delicate state of health it had become necessary to wean it a few weeks after its birth, and the greater portion of the care of the child devolved upon me. They were not afraid to trust me—they would not have known what to do without my love and forethought, they said—they hoped the time would come when they would be able to show substantially their gratitude to good, honest, faithful Martha—as they called me! They knew well enough, for there was no hiding it away, that I loved the child—that it was a mad love, more like the mother’s than the nurse’s, and stronger too ; but they did not know that I had killed my baby, years and years ago, when I was scarcely more than a child myself, and been put in prison for it, and suffered long and justly. I had thrown mine in the river, in despair and madness ; and this was like the child again—blue eyes, fair hair; my sin come back to life, and to ha loved now with all my poor dark soul’s great strength. They called it ‘ Martha’s baby, ’ jestingly, whilst the mother lay weak, and the father was praying on his knees. How proud I was of this! —how I began to think that this was forgiveness for my past offence, my ticket-of-leave, by Heaven’s will, at last. I did not know I could not see —that this was Heaven’s extra punishment. I was content to know that the baby loved me best of them all—l knew I loved it best, and that the mother’s love, deep as it might be, was nothing to my own. This was the one fleeting glimpse of a happy, peaceful homelife which I had ever had, and it turned my braia to be a part of it. The boy grew brave and strong. With the odds against him from the first, Paul flourished and waxed fat; at one year and eight months of age he was the handsomest, brightest, healthiest of children. Oh, how I loved him !

• This is wrong, Martha—this is idolatry—yon must not think Hke this of Paul, or I shall send him away,’said Mrs. Mayfield, growing alarmed, perhaps jealous, at some extravagance of affection which I had shown. I was on my guard from the moment of that reproof—l was suspected of too much love for the child, and it would be necessary to disguise it, lest I should set the mother against me. I did not show my affection so much in the parents’ presence now ; there was plenty of opportunity to love him—the boy was always happy with me, always seeking old Martha out for his companion. He was twenty months old, I have said. In all those months luck had not come to the Mayfields. I knew the money was nearly gone. Tradesmen were more chary of trusting them ; there was a heap of unpaid bills upon the mantelpiece, and I missed things out of the house that came not back again, and upon which it had become necessary to raise money for immediate requirements. It was said at last that I must go ; they were unable to pay my wages, and my mistress—my poor sick mistress, hardly able to crawl from one room to another even yet —though herself strong enough to do the household work. I did not leave them because there was no more money to be paid me ; I begged to be allowed to remain in the one home I had known. I prsyed hard not to be cast adrift. I brought them all the money I had had of them, and saved for them, and asked them to take it in earnest of my gratitude. I moved them to tears and to a consent that I should stay whilst is was possible. It was surely ordained that I should stay a while, for that very evening little Paul met with a serious accident. He had nearly severed his wrist with the broken glass of a picture, and there was fresh grief for the parents and me, and much concern till the blood was staunched and the wound stitched up by a surgeon. He was not well again very quickly. It had been an ugly wound, within an ace of killing him, and there was a deep soar on his dimpled wrist, over which I grieved, because it was an ugly mark which he would carry to his grave. I was as foolish over this scar as a doting mother might have been over an only daughter whose beauty she would have had without a spot and blemish, and to whom a scratch was a serious defect.

I was content when the boy was well and strong again. At two years of age he was the picture of health and childish beauty. His mother had grown to be almost as proud of him as I was, and I began to fret a little because she made more fuss over him, and he turned, child like, more to her and less to me.

The boy was invariably well dressed ; there was still money for him. I saw to that myself. When I gave up my earnings to the Mayfields, and bought their gratitude by the sacrifice, I kept something back for Paul, and there was always ready a smart ribbon for his neck, bright steel buckles for his shoes, or a feather for his hat; and the mother was too ill to wonder much about them, or where they came from. I did not think my taste was very refined. I had the love of the lower orders for bright colours ; but if I decked him out too gaudily, it attracted the notice of the passers-by, and the boy’s beauty won their admiration, if his costume shocked their taste occasionally. I was content; I liked him noticed ; I was very, very proud of all the attention ho received. One afternoon in Kensington Gardens he received an extra attention which I am never- likely to forget. Two gentlemen came along together, both walking slowly, one with his hands behind him and trailing a oane along the cravd, as he listened to the conversation of the other. The man who was listening glanced towards us as we passed, caught the arm of his companion, and dropped his cane upon the path, ‘ Good God, Baumann ! look at that child !’ was the exclamation which startled me as well as his companion. I glanced down, fearful that something had Happened to my boy without my knowledge ; but little Paul was tottering towards the cane, the head of which I saw strangely jewelled and sparkling with diamonds in the snn. ‘Paul,’ X ciied, ‘you must not ’ ‘Let the child pick it up,’said the man who had dropped the cane ; ‘ I am very fond of children.’ {To he continued,')