“Open, for God’s sake, open!”
It was a woman’s voice—the voice of a woman in distress. Slowly Miller rose and went to the door, which he opened mechanically.
A lady stood there, so near the image of his own wife, whom he had just left, that for a moment he was well-nigh startled. A little older, perhaps, a little fairer of complexion, but with the same form, the same features, marked by the same wild grief. She wore a loose wrapper, which clothed her like the drapery of a statue. Her long dark hair, the counterpart of his wife’s, had fallen down, and hung disheveled about her shoulders. There was blood upon her knuckles, where she had beaten with them upon the door. “Dr. Miller,” she panted, breathless from her flight and laying her hand upon his arm appealingly—when he shrank from the contact she still held it there—“Dr. Miller, you will come and save my child? You know what it is to lose a child! I am so sorry about your little boy! You will come to mine!”
“Your sorrow comes too late, madam,” he said harshly. “My child is dead. I charged your husband with his murder, and he could not deny it. Why should I save your husband’s child?”
“Ah, Dr. Miller!” she cried, with his wife’s voice—she never knew how much, in that dark hour, she owed to that resemblance—“it is my child, and I have never injured you. It is my child, Dr. Miller, my only child. I brought it into the world at the risk of my own life! I have nursed it, I have watched over it, I have prayed for it—and it now lies dying! Oh, Dr. Miller, dear Dr. Miller, if you have a heart, come and save my child!”
“Madam,” he answered more gently, moved in spite of himself, “my heart is broken. My people lie dead upon the streets, at the hands of yours. The work of my life is in ashes—and, yonder, stretched out in death, lies my own child! God! woman, you ask too much of human nature! Love, duty, sorrow, justice, call me here. I cannot go!”
She rose to her full height. “Then you are a murderer,” she cried wildly. “His blood be on your head, and a mother’s curse beside!”
The next moment, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, she had thrown herself at his feet—at the feet of a negro, this proud white woman—and was clasping his knees wildly.
“O God!” she prayed, in tones which quivered with anguish, “pardon my husband’s sins, and my own, and move this man’s hard heart, by the blood of thy Son, who died to save us all!”
It was the last appeal of poor humanity. When the pride of intellect and caste is broken; when we grovel in the dust of humiliation; when sickness and sorrow come, and the shadow of death falls upon us, and there is no hope elsewhere—we turn to God, who sometimes swallows the insult, and answers the appeal.
Miller raised the lady to her feet. He had been deeply moved—but he had been more deeply injured. This was his wife’s sister—ah, yes! but a sister who had scorned and slighted and ignored the existence of his wife for all her life. Only Miller, of all the world, could have guessed what this had meant to Janet, and he had merely divined it through the clairvoyant sympathy of love. This woman could have no claim upon him because of this unacknowledged relationship. Yet, after all, she was his wife’s sister, his child’s kinswoman. She was a fellow creature, too, and in distress.
“Rise, madam,” he said, with a sudden inspiration, lifting her gently. “I will listen to you on one condition. My child lies dead in the adjoining room, his mother by his side. Go in there, and make your request of her. I will abide by her decision.”
The two women stood confronting each other across the body of the dead child, mute witness of this first meeting between two children of the same father. Standing thus face to face, each under the stress of the deepest emotions, the resemblance between them was even more striking than it had seemed to Miller when he had admitted Mrs. Carteret to the house. But Death, the great leveler, striking upon the one hand and threatening upon the other, had wrought a marvelous transformation in the bearing of the two women. The sad-eyed Janet towered erect, with menacing aspect, like an avenging goddess. The other, whose pride had been her life, stood in the attitude of a trembling suppliant.
“You have come here,” cried Janet, pointing with a tragic gesture to the dead child—“you, to gloat over your husband’s work. All my life you have hated and scorned and despised me. Your presence here insults me and my dead. What are you doing here?”
“Mrs. Miller,” returned Mrs. Carteret tremulously, dazed for a moment by this outburst, and clasping her hands with an imploring gesture, “my child, my only child, is dying, and your husband alone can save his life. Ah, let me have my child,” she moaned, heart-rendingly. “It is my only one—my sweet child—my ewe lamb!”
“This was my only child!” replied the other mother; “and yours is no better to die than mine!”
“You are young,” said Mrs. Carteret, “and may yet have many children—this is my only hope! If you have a human heart, tell your husband to come with me. He leaves it to you; he will do as you command.”
“Ah,” cried Janet, “I have a human heart, and therefore I will not let him go. My child is dead—O God, my child, my child!”
She threw herself down by the bedside, sobbing hysterically. The other woman knelt beside her, and put her arm about her neck. For a moment Janet, absorbed in her grief, did not repulse her. “Listen,” pleaded Mrs. Carteret. “You will not let my baby die? You are my sister;—the child
