A Rich Man's Relatives Volume I Part 6

"A little child!" cried Miss Matilda in transports.

"What a frightful din!" said Miss Stanley, putting her fingers in her ears. "To think that anything so small should make so much noise! What ever shall we do with it?"

"Give it some milk, of course; bathe it, put it to bed. That is what they always do with babies, I believe. Cook! get hot water at once--and a large basin--and some milk--and--and--everything else that is necessary. Quick! you others, and help her," she added, observing the lingering steps of the maids, yawning now, and utterly disgusted and wishing themselves back in bed, though a moment ago they had been all wakefulness and interest.

It was curious to see how Matilda took the lead, now that her sympathies were appealed to, while her practical sister, the mistress and manager of the establishment, stood aside bewildered and confused.

She took the child in her arms and walked up and down, dandling it, singing, and purring forth floods of baby talk, till the little one stopped short in the middle of its lament to look at her, and ascertain who this voluble person might be. Then, finding she could make out nothing by her scrutiny, she prepared to resume with augmented vigour, but Matilda would not have it. She sat down with the doubter in her lap, bent over it, and made a bower for it with her curls, crooning more volubly than ever, and tickling it with the ringlet points, till the astonished infant grew confused, forgot that it had intended to scream, and presently was smiling and crowing and pulling the ringlets like bell-ropes.

Miss Matilda's ringlets were perhaps her most noticeable feature--long, waving, twining ma.s.ses of falling hair; giving her face a pensive and romantic expression which has long ceased to be fashionable, though it once was greatly admired, as was also the poetry of Moore and Mrs. Hemans about the same time. In her youth, and that was not so many years before, an officer in Montreal--it was there the family lived then--had told her she looked like a muse, and not long after he was ordered away to the Crimean war. Her own father was ordered there too, but he said he owed a higher duty to his motherless daughters than to leave them, and he thought he owed it to his own ease not to let himself be sent ranging over Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, in search of transport mules and donkeys, and so he left the Service. He lingered in Montreal after the troops were withdrawn; but soon that community of busy traders grew insupportable in the absence of his fellow-loungers; he bought a farm near Saint Euphrase, and there established himself, carrying his daughters with him. He had already, as he told them, sacrificed his prospects of advancement to their need of a protector, and now it was for them to yield the social comforts of town life, bury themselves in the country, and with grateful a.s.siduity make his home as comfortable, and his rheumatism as little intolerable as possible. After the fall of Sebastopol the troops returned to Canada, and "General" Stanley was able from time to time to relieve the monotony of his retirement with the society of old friends; but the officer who had called Matilda a muse never re-appeared, and no other gentleman since had said anything half as nice. So Matilda cherished her ringlets and her recollections--not very painful ones--and lived tranquilly on, with no event to mark the flight of years, till the death of her father, which took place some three or four years before the time I write of. After that the sisters lived on as before, only more retiredly still. Miss Penelope developed considerable business faculty in managing their affairs, and overlooking Jean Bruneau, the factotum on the farm; and dropped some of the feminine helplessnesses of her youth, though she was still as much in terror of thunder, burglars, fire and snakes as ever. Matilda having less need to exert her powers, continued the same ringletted damsel she had always been. She busied herself with her flowers and her birds, a little music not too difficult or new, a little poetry and fiction, and a good deal of kindness when the need for it was made plain to her. Her youth was pa.s.sing or had pa.s.sed into middle life, but the current of her days had been so even that she had not observed their flight. She had had no cares, and her heart slept peacefully, for it had never been awakened. Captain Lorrimer may have called her a muse, and Major Hopkins may have looked in her eyes, but these things had never been carried to a disturbing length; just enough to afford a little pensive self-consciousness, when she read of deserted maids, or Love's young dream, and make her fancy that she understood it all, and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e that "it was so true." Then she would look up and shake her curls with a quite comfortable sigh, and her prosaic sister would watch her admiringly, and wonder where the men's eyes could have been that she was still unmarried. Perhaps it was well for her that she was so. Perhaps it would be well, at least it would be comfortable, for many of us if our hearts would sleep through life, and leave digestion to do its work in peace. How sweet and enjoyable to lead untroubled lives, free from the ecstasies alike of joy and woe, as do the flowers, as did this "muse"--this "gra.s.s of Parna.s.sus"--basking in summer suns and drinking dews, without ambition or desire or strife.

But this is wandering. We left Miss Penelope desirous of getting to bed; and Miss Matilda engrossed in her new plaything.

"I shall certainly keep it, Penelope! The very thing of all others I should have liked best to have."

"Is not that rather an odd thing to say?"

"That I am charmed to have found a living doll?--I think it is quite natural. _You_ are too sensible, of course, but for other people--for me--it seems the most natural thing in the world. You know I always doted on dolls, especially when they could wink their eyes. This one can do that, and lots of other things besides. It will be delightful.

And to think how I have been mourning the loss of my lame canary these last few days! You would not believe the tears I have shed every time I have looked at the empty cage, and how lonely I have felt; and here, in the middle of the night, just when we are going to bed, arrives this little pet! Is it not opportune? If I had awakened in the night, I might have thought of poor d.i.c.ky, and then I should certainly have cried. Now I shall take this sweet little image with me, and if I awake, it will be to think how I can make up to it the loss of its mother; though indeed the mother who could find it in her breast to cast her off in this disgraceful way can be no loss."

CHAPTER VII.

THE DESOLATE MOTHER.

It was three months later. The Selbys' shrubbery had changed from the vigorous greens of summer to russet, paling here into sulphur yellow, there deepening to orange and crimson which outshone the less vivid tints of the early chrysanthemums. The autumn flowers, nipped by early frosts, lay black and ragged on their erewhile brilliant beds. The sun was warm and the air sweet with the breath of leaves falling softly in their brightness, one by one, peaceful, beautiful, fragrant, like the ending of a well-spent life.

In the parlour the windows were open; and a fire burning in the grate to temper the air in shady corners proclaimed the fall of the year.

Stretched on a sofa, thin and wan, with hair pushed back--hair which three months before had been soft and glossy and of the loveliest brown, now dry, rusty, grizzled, banded with locks of grey, and mixed all through with threads of shining white--her fingers shrunk and bloodless, clasping a baby's bells and coral, and her dim eyes wet with silent tears, lay the desolate mother mourning for her child. She had been very ill, and bodily weakness, unable to suffer more, was the one consoler as yet to mitigate her grief, by benumbing the capacity for pain. Her George had mingled tears with hers, tears drawn as much by the sight of what she suffered as by its cause. He had tended and watched her with more than a woman's tenderness, but after all he was a man, with his day's work to perform whatever might befall, and the doing it supported him by bringing distraction and thereby rest. True, it jarred miserably on the overwrought nerves to keep up the routine of music lessons, to watch the "fingering" of inattentive pupils and have his senses pierced by their frequent discords; but it was easier to find endurance for these physical ills than for the heartstrain he had felt at home. The patience and fatigue of the outdoor toil brought the calmness he needed so much in the presence of his stricken wife.

For her there was no break or respite to the rush of black and miserable thought. If the child had died she could have borne it. It would have been grief, but grief of the common kind, and for which there is consolation in the pious certainties of another life. It would have been agony to part with her treasure, but agony with a hope. In time she would have learned to bear the bereavement with sorrowful patience and resignation--to think of her blossom s.n.a.t.c.hed away, rather as one transplanted and someday to be recovered in brighter bloom, growing in immortal gardens; just as she looked on the other--brother of the lost one, born since her loss, and which had never seen the light. Oh, if she could but have thought of the two as with each other! But even the consolations of faith were denied her.

The child had vanished utterly, and she was left to wonder and surmise whither it might have been carried. Surely if it had died there would have been found some sign or vestige, and then her mother's heart would have been at rest. She would have wept and there would have been an end. She could have rested her thoughts on the armies of the Holy Innocents, and in her dreams a cherub face would have come to her with shining wings, whispering hope and consolation. But even this saddened peace was not for her. She would not entertain the thought that her baby was dead; it was away somewhere--where, oh where?--and perhaps it needed her, and was crying for her, and she could not come to it; and a restlessness seized her, a low dull fever of impotent longing, and kept her pacing the chamber to and fro, till exhaustion numbed her senses and she fell asleep. But oh, what sleep! It was more miserable than waking. Fancy gave shape to her yearnings, and dreams revived their wretchedness into more tangible shape. The baby's cry, as if in pain, rang through them all, and sometimes she could see the arms stretched out to her, but never the face. A shadow undefined came in between, and bore her darling away into darkness. Sometimes her feet would be heavy as lead, and scarcely could she drag herself after, while the shadow fled out of sight, and the cries came to her fitfully, and far away, borne on the wind. At other times she would be able to pursue, but that brought little comfort. The shadow still fled before her, and ah, by what dreary ways! Sometimes it would be dark, and yet she could see them speeding on before; across a raging river, where the waters tossed and tumbled about her, lifting her from her feet, or overwhelming her in their depths; but still she hurried on and clambered up the slippery rocks on the further sh.o.r.e, and up and up where there was no foothold, and she felt herself falling through depths and catching and clinging with her hands and drawing herself upward and up and up among curling mists to dreary deserts far above the clouds. And still the shadow sped on before, and she pursued across the sandy wastes, where horrid reptiles hissed at her as she went by, and clouds of dust arose and came between, obscuring and impeding the way. And still she would pursue and seem to be overtaking. The child's cry would become quite close, and she would see the very dimples at the finger joints and the streaming hair, and she would stretch her hand to lay it on the form, and her hand would pa.s.s through it like a shadow and she would awake. It was all a dream, her darling was gone from her and she was desolate.

On the day of the theft she had driven about the town in search of her husband, sometimes hearing of him but never meeting; and then she had gone to the police station herself, breathless with anxiety and haste, and there they were so mechanical and full of formalities, and heard her story with so aggravating an official calm that it wellnigh drove her mad. The person she addressed on entering was sweltering on two chairs, without coat or collar, and his boots pulled off. Before he would listen to a lady he felt it due to himself to rectify his appearance. The boots were tight and could not be quickly stepped into; the coat was on a nail in another part of the office. Then the book of complaints had to be found, and a pen, and so many flies had drowned themselves in the ink that the stand must be refilled, and Mary stood wringing her hands and swaying back and forth in agonized impatience.

"Calm yourself, madame," he said, while he dipped in the ink his pen, and then removed first a dead fly from the point, and next a hair. "I shall now take down your complaints," and he bent over his book, extending his left elbow and bending his head towards it, with the eyes squinting across the page he was about to ill.u.s.trate with his caligraphy, while with an expert turn of the wrist he made a preliminary flourish in waiting for this member of the public to begin stating her grievance; "but stay one moment, madame; I believe I have mislaid my gla.s.ses;" and he started up and laid his hand upon each of his pockets in turn. "No! I believe I must have lef dem in ze ozer desk beside ze journaux."

"Oh man! man!" cried Mary in desperation, "while you are putting off time my baby is being carried further and further away; and we know not where she may be or what they are doing to her!"

"Be tranquillisee madame! Ze occurrence--is of frequent--how you say?--occurrence. Zere are tree--five!" and he held up his fingers to show the number--"infants vich make disappearance all ze days, and zey all turn zemselves up again before to-morrow. Ze leetle tings march in ze streets voisines, and know not ze retour. Ze police arrest, and bring here; and voila!--l'enfant perdu ees on return to ze famille."

At this point the spectacles were discovered, and the speaker returned to his book.

"My baby _could_ not run away. She cannot walk yet." Mary answered.

"My baby has been carried off, and you are wasting precious time in talk."

"Ze publique ees so deraisonnable! And me. Behold me!"--and he spread out all his fingers and shrugged his shoulders in philosophic and forbearing remonstrance--"I attend madame's informations."

The "informations" were given, recorded and commented on, and the slow machinery of justice set in motion at last, and the distracted mother turned away to the grey nunnery where foundlings are received and cared for. There she left a description of her child, and begged that if any one resembling hers were presented, she might at once be informed. Then she went home. What to her was the thunder storm and lashing rain? A wilder tempest of doubt raged in her own aching heart.

Her husband had arrived before her, and in tears on his shoulder she found the first momentary eas.e.m.e.nt since her trouble began. The world was so hard and callous, so busy, every one with his own affairs; people accepted her desolation so calmly, told her not to fret, that the child would soon be found. She could not have believed the atrocious selfishness of mankind if she had not seen it. The street children, playing after the rain, were as gleeful as ever, without a thought of her distress; losing their b.a.l.l.s across the fence and coming over after them--breaking in on her very inclosure, sacred to miserable anxiety, as if nothing were the matter. Her own servants were no better, they were going on with their cooking and their housework just as usual. There was the dinner bell! Who could think of dinner on a day like this? And yet George--and she could not but own that George had proper feeling, and was as anxious and distressed as a _man_ well could be--even George seemed to have bodily appet.i.te. He was not cannibal enough to dine, but he did eat a slice of beef, and drink a tumbler of wine and water. It seemed incomprehensible to her, somehow, that even the round heavens should revolve as usual. But they did. It was growing dark just the same as if nothing had befallen her baby, and the long still night was before her. There were hours and hours to wait before another day would arise, with its possibilities of news or restoration, and how was she to spend them? She could not sit still, far less lie down. She wondered about the house hour after hour, and three several times her husband took a cab to the police head-quarters in vain. There was no news.

The morrow brought no change; but weariness stilled the restlessness of her misery. She could not eat or drink or sleep, or even wander to and fro; she could but wait, seated in the porch and watching the gate for coming news--for news which did not come. The chief of police appeared, and questioned Lisette and went again. Another day, and Lisette was sent for to see Indians taken upon suspicion, and in the evening she returned having identified one. But still there was no news of the child. The squaw arrested declared she knew nothing of it, had not taken it, had not been in the city that day.

And now Mary's strength gave way. She fainted, and when revived it was found that she was dangerously ill; and through long weeks her life trembled on the verge of dissolution, flickering and waning till it seemed scarce possible the spark should not go out. And then, too weak to suffer, she began to mend, and in the vacuity of utter exhaustion, her mind obtained that rest which no doubt saved her reason, sparing her the weary waitings on for news which never came. In her illness a son was born--was born and died--but only in her convalescence did she become aware of her loss. That was a grief, but it was grief of the more ordinary kind, and one to which the Church's consolations effectively minister. The little one's earthly sojourn was accomplished; it needed her care no longer, and the hopes of religion were a soothing balm to mingle with her tears. But the other?--She was so sure the little daughter needed her still. Sleeping or waking her heart yearned to be with her, and often in the night when she awoke, the baby voice would be ringing in her ears, calling her to come. That was a dry aching feverish una.s.suageable grief, on which ordinary consolation had no power. It might have killed her with its gnawing carking care, but for the gentler sorrow of the other loss, which vented itself naturally in tears, and the tears relieved the over-burdened heart, easing it and strengthening it for the stronger grief. Then, too, there was George to share her sorrow, and sorrows are less crushing when they are not borne alone. And there were friends who came to see her and strove to console. Utterly futile as was all they could say, their presence and their sympathy were grateful. It is so desolate after awhile to have to bear our wretchedness all alone. An ear in which to pour our complaints, an eye to look pitifully on our pain, soothes and strengthens, if it cannot mitigate the anguish. And Mary had these. Her nephew Ralph Herkimer and his wife were, as the servants said, most attentive; and the sympathy of the wife at least was very genuine, while Ralph's was equally well expressed. And after all, till men become able to read each other's souls--a state of things which even the best of us would not relish--it is the expression which is efficacious or otherwise, not the prompting spirit. Consider it, oh ye of the hard sh.e.l.l, who plume yourselves on your good hearts and sweet natures! How many a cocoanut has been left to rot, because the eaters could not penetrate the husk!

Mary's sisters, too, when they heard of her desolation, had relented; and found they must forgive her having married against their wish.

Being human, even if peculiar, they could not but be sorry, only they had said so many things in their heat that each felt awkward about proposing to the other to relax the estrangement so far as to call on the offender. Public opinion, however decided the matter. Mary's distress was perfectly well known to every one, and when the ladies of their acquaintance began to inquire for their sister and to express sympathy, it was even more "awkward" to acknowledge the estrangement than to bring it to an end.

Circ.u.mstances were kind to them in their attempt to make friends, and let them down very gently. When they called the first time their sister was far too ill to see any one, which spared them the "awkwardness" of a meeting. They called every day afterwards, and so had their bulletin ready for inquiring friends, and also had their own feelings modulated gradually to a gentler frame. By-and-by they were admitted to the sickroom. Mary was too feeble to talk; she welcomed them with a faint smile, to which the only possible answer on their part was a kiss, a kiss of reconciliation as well as sympathy, all the more reconciling in that no words were possible on either side, for so soon as it was given the nurse was ready to usher them out again without parley.

On the late October day we have mentioned Mary lay with her thin fingers twined about the baby's plaything, and tears stealing from her eyes. As each movement of her chest stirred the little bells, their ringing thrilled her senses like a pain.

It was the far-away cry of a departed joy, reminding her of its loss.

And yet she clasped the bauble but the tighter for each new sting it inflicted on her heart; it brought the vanished past a little nearer, and she almost coveted the pain as a relief from the leaden desolation under which she lay. So, when a wound begins to heal, one will touch and trifle with it, reviving the smart as an eas.e.m.e.nt from the weary numbness of the congested tissues. She was absorbed in her sorrowful musings and did not note the entrance of her sisters, till, in their sabled gowns, coming between her and the light, they bent over her.

Susan kissed her on the forehead, and Judith's tightened lips delivered a peck upon her mouth. Then she opened her eyes with a wan smile, and faintly bade them welcome, endeavouring to raise herself the while.

"Keep still, Mary," said Susan. "Do not attempt to move. You will get strong all the sooner for taking care now."

"I think," said Judith, observing the child's coral in her hands, which she was at the moment slipping away among her coverings, "you should put away those things. They can do no good, and can only revive distressing thoughts."

Mary sighed, and asked if they had walked.

"Give it to me, Mary!" persisted Judith the energetic, "and let me put it away and lock it up."

"Oh, no!" said Mary, clasping it with both hands to her breast, and smiling sorrowfully. "It comforts me."

"Very wrong! Foolishly injudicious in Mr. Selby to allow it," and Miss Judith stood up with a jerk, as though she would take the obnoxious article by force. "Susan----"

"Judith! Better let alone," her sister interrupted, attempting to draw her back to her chair.

Judith flushed hotly. Like other zealous reformers of their neighbours, she was irritably intolerant of advice to herself; because, of course, she must be right--she always was. So are the others. She turned upon her sister with a frown, and there might have been words; but at that moment the click of the gate-latch sounded.

The gate opened, and a clergyman appeared--a young clergyman. Judith admired clergymen, and we all admire youth, at least all who have lost their own.

By the time the Reverend Dionysius Bunce entered the room. Miss Judith's angry flush had cooled down, and her tightened lips had relaxed into a smile of virgin sweetness. She had a taste for clergymen, just as some other ladies have a taste for horses, and some for cats. People talk of "pigeon-fanciers." Miss Judith was a parson-fancier, that is, she fancied the parsons but she could not keep them, as the pigeon-fanciers keep _their_ pets; they always flew away to fresher fields. Mr. Bunce was curate of St. Wittikind's, the church where Selby was organist and choirmaster. It was a place of worship which Miss Judith's pietistical scruples would not allow her to attend. The people there were given to singing harmoniously words which she held should be said discordantly, and to other practices equally to be regretted. St. Wittikind's, in fact, was "high," and she never mentioned it without drawing a long breath, and shaking her head sadly. Still, if her mind was controversial it was also feminine, and the curate's trim, ecclesiastical uniform attracted her much. The linen was so white, so tight, and so starchy, while that of the married curate of her own St. Silas' was yellow, limp, and even slovenly, like the services in which he a.s.sisted. No doubt it was right, from her standpoint, that the service should be bald and unattractive, and she had very decided views about vestments _in_ church, but in vesture _out_ of church, she had a woman's preference for neatness, and if she could win this young man from his unevangelical vagaries, would it not be like plucking a brand from the burning? She had long known him by sight, as indeed, she knew all the clergy, but hitherto he had been one of the black sheep in her eyes.

Now, when she met him in a room, he was so neat and seemed so young and inexperienced, that her heart yearned towards him with a mother's interest--no! not a mother's interest precisely, but an interest of the adaptable kind, which may change into any other sort as occasion dictates.

In Miss Susan's eyes the curate appeared uninteresting enough. She thought him stubby, commonplace, and scarcely a gentleman, save that to a good churchwoman like herself, his orders, like the Queen's commission in the army, made his position una.s.sailable. But then, Miss Susan had no enthusiasm, and was disposed to let the brands burn, each in its own fashion. She would have liked to go now, when she saw the clergyman sit down beside Mary's sofa, and pull out his book, and had risen with that intention, when Judith, clasping her black gloves and smiling with grave sweetness, as one may smile at a christening, asked if it was absolutely needful that they should go away. "For herself,"

she said, "there was no portion of our beautiful liturgy in which she so much delighted as in those sweet and improving pa.s.sages which occur in the 'visitation of the sick,' and if Mr. Bunce did not object, she would feel it a privilege to be permitted to remain."

Poor Mr. Bunce could only acquiesce, and go on with his function, resigning the hope of whatever satisfaction he might otherwise have found in its performance, and a good deal disturbed by Miss Judith's sighs of extreme interest in one place, and the fervency of her responses in another. Susan, too, perforce sat down again, wondering internally at the queerness of her sister's taste. For herself, she felt perfectly well, and it only depressed her to listen to the curate's words. She looked out of the window where the sun was shining, and could not but think that it would have been far more cheerful to be walking down the street.

Having finished, Mr. Bunce would have liked to remain a little for a quiet chat with Mrs. Selby; but Miss Judith sat still and seemed bent on taking on herself the entire duty of conversing with him. It might be well intended, he thought, to save her sister fatigue, but it was not very interesting, so he quickly rose to leave. Judith did so at the same time, and when he reached the gate, the reverend man discovered that fate had condemned him to accompany the two ladies along more than a mile of suburban street, where he saw no hope of breaking away.

CHAPTER VIII.