The Web of Time

No, father's not home yet—go to sleep, dear, and the mother-hand tucked the clothes securely about the two snuggling forms; "don't ask any more, Harvey, or you'll waken Jessie—and go to sleep." Mrs. Simmons went back to the kitchen, crooning softly to the wakeful baby in her arms. Glancing at the clock, she marked, with an exclamation of surprise, how late it was. "He might be in any minute now," she said to herself as she thrust in another stick for the encouragement of the already steaming kettle. Then she busied herself a few minutes about the table; a brief pause, as if pondering, ended in her moving quickly towards the pantry, emerging a moment later with some little luxury in her hand. "Poor Ned, this night-work seems so hard—if he's working at all," she thought to herself, "and he'll be cold and tired when he comes in—hush, baby, isn't that your father?" as she laid a finger on the crowing lips. The footfall came nearer, firm and steady, too—at which the anxious face lighted up; but a moment later it was gone, and silence reigned again. The baby seemed, in some mysterious way, to share the disappointment; in any case, it became suddenly quiet, the big blue eyes gazing up at the mother's. The unfathomed depths, as such depths are prone to do, seemed to start some hidden springs of thought in the woman's mind; for the anxious eyes that peered into them were now suffused with tears, then bright again with maternal fondness as she clasped the infant to her breast. For she dreaded the home-coming of her husband, even while she longed for it. The greatest of all books assures us that fear is cast out by love—but love may still fear something in the very one it loves above all others; some alien habit, some sin that changes the whole complexion of a soul. And thus was it with the wife who now awaited her husband's coming with a troubled heart. It had not been ever thus. Far different had it been in the happy days with which her thoughts were busy now as she moved hither and thither, doing what deft and loving hands could do to make all bright and cheery before her husband should arrive. Those vanished days had been happy ones indeed, with nothing to cloud their joy. When Edward Simmons first crossed her path, she knew that her hour of destiny had come. He was then a journeyman printer—and he was handsome and chivalrous and fascinating; sensitive to the last degree, imperious by nature, but tender in the expression of his love for her. And how rapturously sure of the happiness that lay before them both! Passionate in temper he undoubtedly was—but tideful natures ever are. And he was slower to forgive himself than others. She had been little more than a girl, a fatherless girl, when first she met Edward Simmons—Ned, as his friends all called him—and in less than a year after their meeting she gave herself to him forever. Then her real life began, she thought; but before a year had passed, it was new-quickened and enriched beyond all of which she had ever dreamed. Her first-born son came to swell the fullness of her joy, and Eden itself broke into flower at his coming. The anguish and the ecstasy of motherhood had come twice again since then—and she marvelled at the new spring of love that each new baby hand smites in the wilderness of life. But the sky had darkened. When at its very brightest, the clouds had gathered. Steady employment and good wages and careful management had enabled her to garner a little, month by month; womanlike, she was already taking thought of how Harvey should be educated. And just when everything seemed prosperous, that awful trouble had come among the printers—between the masters and the men. Then came strikes and idleness—work by spasmodic starts, followed by new upheavals and deepening bitterness—and Ned had been more with the muttering men than with his Annie and the children.