An Heritage of Crime [pp. 266-275]

An Heritage of Crim?ne.
her darling boy, whose wrong she felt was
equal to her own. In time, she became almost happy, in watching with maternal tenderness the budding intellect of this child,
but the old-time joyfulness and buoyancy of
spirit had gone forever.
She resumed the old family name, and the
boy, who had heard no other, was christened
Walter, in honor of his grandfather. He was
a sprightly, handsome child, in whose appearance the mother had a justifiable pride,
and whose more than usual intellectual promise obscured for a time an innate cruelty of
disposition and deficiency of moral perception, which were early discerned by others
than the poor mother. But, even to these,
there seemed no cause for apprehension, and
it passed for the thoughtlessness of an overindulged child. He passed successfully
through his preliminary education, and later,
at the age of twenty-one, graduated creditably at Harvard. During his college years,
reports of an unpleasant nature, affecting the
character of the young man, sometimes
reached Salem; but they were carefully kept
from his mother, with the hope that they
might prove to be but the usual pranks common with wealthy young men, and would
disappear with the season for "sowing wild
oats." He had, too, a strong redeeming fea ture in his character, in that his love and devotion to his mother was something remark able, and partook in its nature of that which
she had for her fatherless boy.
The year that followed his graduation also
brought the great war of the rebellion, and
young WV- decided to join the army.
The family influence and connections ob tained him a commission in one of the new
regiments, which was early added to the reg ular army; and his mother parted with the
handsome young officer with a proud though
aching heart, for in him were centered all
her hopes and interests in life; while the call
of her country, in its hour of need, had
aroused the slumbering family pride and the
patriotic blood of her revolutionary ances tors.
Reports of his gallantry during the early
engagements of the war were extremely grat
ifying to this lonely mother. Her friends
hoped that the ambition which had been
aroused in the breast of the young officer
would be sufficient to counteract the evil tendency which had been observed in his earlier life. With youth, intelligence, and education, combined with the family and social influences that would be exerted in his favor, it
seemed certain that he would rise rapidly in
the honorable profession upon which he had
entered; and besides the service he would
render to his country, he would himself attain a distinction that would be a credit to
the family, and do much toward compensating for the baseness of that father whom he
had never seen. Already-in the second
year of the war-he had attained the rank of
captain, and it seemed that further advancement could be prevented only by death.
After the news of the Battle of Gettysburg
-on the 3d of July, i863-a dispatch
reached Salem that the name of Captain
W — was among the missing; and, though
his body had not been recovered, it was certain he had fallen in the gallant charge which
had been made by his brigade against the
advancing lines of the rebel infantry, where
so many brave men, of both the blue and
the gray, fell, only to be numbered with the
unknown dead. The mournful duty of
breaking this news to the stricken mother
devolved upon my lawyer friend, who would
gladly have avoided it. But the tie of rela tionship and of long and intimate association,
as the manager of the extensive property she
had inherited at the death of her father and
brother, made it fit that he only should be
the first to bear the tidings. He did not find
her unprepared for even this- the severance
of the last tie that bound her to life. She
had schooled herself for the terrible blow,
which she knew had always been possible;
and her life experience proved a discipline
that now enabled her to pass with mournful
fortitude this final ordeal. By degrees she
again became reconciled to a life in which
there seemed nothing remaining; she was
strengthened in this by a consciousness that
the life of her son had been given to his
country, and that his death had been worthy
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