At last one night Tom came home very much the worse of drink, and
in maudlin affection insisted on taking the baby from its cradle.
The baby shrieked. Tom was angry with the weakling, rated him
soundly for ingratitude to "the author of his being," and shook
him roughly to teach him the good manners of the world he had
come to.
Thereat in Letty sprang up the mother, erect and fierce. She
darted to Tom, snatched the child from his arms, and turned to
carry him to the inner room. But, as the mother rose in Letty,
the devil rose in Tom. If what followed was not the doing of the
real Tom, it was the doing of the devil to whom the real Tom had
opened the door. With one stride he overtook his wife, and mother
and child lay together on the floor. I must say for him that,
even in his drunkenness, he did not strike his wife as ho would
have struck a man; it was an open-handed blow he gave her, what,
in familiar language, is called a box on the ear, but for days
she carried the record of it on her cheek in five red finger-
marks.
When he saw her on the floor, Tom's bedazed mind came to itself;
he knew what he had done, and was sobered. But, alas! even then
he thought more of the wrong he had done to himself as a
gentleman than of the grievous wound he had given his wife's
heart. He took the baby, who had ceased to cry as soon as he was
in his mother's arms, and laid him on the rug, then lifted the
bitterly weeping Letty, placed her on the sofa, and knelt beside
her--not humbly to entreat her pardon, but, as was his wont, to
justify himself by proving that all the blame was hers, and that
she had wronged him greatly in driving him to do such a thing.
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