Cousin Maude Part 3

"Don't try, ma, Loui' good," lisped the infant on the floor, while Mrs. Kennedy, drying at last her tears, told to the wondering Maude that Louis was not like other children--that he would probably never have the use of his feet--that a hunch was growing on his back--and he in time would be--she could not say "deformed," and so she said at last--"he'll be forever lame."

Poor little Maude! How all her childish dreams were blasted! She had antic.i.p.ated so much pleasure in guiding her brother's tottering footsteps, in leading him to school, to church, and everywhere, and she could not have him lame.

"Oh, Louis, Louis!" she cried, winding her arms around his neck, as if she would thus avert the dreaded evil.

Very wonderfully the child looked up into her eyes, and raising his waxen hand he wiped her tears away, saying as he did so, "Loui' love Maude."

With a choking sob Maude kissed her baby brother, then going back to her mother, whose head still lay upon the table, she whispered, "We will love poor Louis all the more, you and I."

Blessed Maude, we say again, for these were no idle words, and the clinging, tender love with which she cherished her unfortunate brother ought to have shamed the heartless man who, when he heard of his affliction, refused to be comforted, and almost cursed the day when his only son was born. He had been absent for a week or more, and with the exception of the time when he first knew he had a son he did not remember of having experienced a moment of greater happiness than that in which he reached his home where dwelt his boy--his pride--his idol. Louis was not in the room, and on the mother's face there was an expression of sadness, which at once awakened the father's fears lest something had befallen his child.

"Where is Louis?" he asked. "Has anything happened to him that you look so pale?"

"Louis is well," answered Matty, and then, unable longer to control her feelings, she burst into tears, while the doctor looked on in amazement, wondering if all women were as nervous and foolish as the two it had been his fortune to marry.

"Oh, husband," she cried, feeling sure of his sympathy, and thinking it better to tell the truth at once; "has it never occurred to you that Louis was not like other children?"

"Of course it has," he answered quickly. "He is a thousand times brighter than any child I have ever known."

"'Tisn't that, 'tisn't that," said Matty. "He'll never walk--he's lame--deformed!"

"What do you mean?" thundered the doctor, reeling for an instant like a drunken man; then, recovering his composure, he listened while Matty told him what she meant.

At that moment Maude drew Louis into the room, and, taking the child in his arms, the doctor examined him for himself, wondering he had never observed before how small and seemingly dest.i.tute of life were his lower limbs. The bunch upon the back, though slight as yet, was really there, and Matty, when questioned, said it had been there for weeks, but she did not tell of it, for she hoped it would go away.

"It will stay until his dying day," he muttered, as he ordered Maude to take the child away. "Louis deformed! Louis a cripple! What have I done that I should be thus sorely punished?" he exclaimed, when he was alone with his wife; and then, as he dared not blame the Almighty, he charged it to her, until at last his thoughts took another channel. Maude had dropped him--he knew she had, and Matty was to blame for letting her handle him so much, when she knew 'twas a maxim of his that children should not take care of children.

He had forgotten the time when his worn-out wife had asked him to hire a nurse girl for Louis, and he had answered that "Maude was large enough for that." On some points his memory was treacherous, and for days he continued to repine at his hard fate, wishing once in Matty's presence that Louis had never been born.

"Oh, husband," she cried, "how can you say that! Do you hate our poor boy because he is a cripple?"

"A cripple!" roared the doctor. "Never use that word again in my presence. My son a cripple! I can't have it so! I won't have it so!

for 'tis a max--"

Here he stopped, being for a second time in his life at a loss what to say.

"Sarve 'em right, sarve 'em right," muttered John, whose quick eye saw everything. "Ole Sam payin' him off good. He think he'll be in the seventh heaven when he got a boy, and he mighty nigh torment that little gal's life out with his mexens and things; but now he got a boy, he feel a heap like the bad place."

Still much as John rejoiced that his master was so punished, his heart went out in pity toward the helpless child whom he almost worshiped, carrying him often to the fields, where, seeking out the shadiest spot and the softest gra.s.s for a throne, he would place the child upon it, and then pay him obeisance by bobbing up and down his wooly head in a manner quite as satisfactory to Louis as if he indeed had been a king and John his loyal subject. Old Hannah, too, was greatly softened, and many a little cake and pie she baked in secret for the child, while even Nellie gave up to him her favorite playthings, and her blue eyes wore a pitying look whenever they rested on the poor unfortunate. All loved him seemingly the more--all, save the cruel father, who, as the months and years rolled on, seemed to acquire a positive dislike to the little boy, seldom noticing him in any way except to frown if he were brought into his sight. And Louis, with the quick instinct of childhood, learned to expect nothing from his father, whose attention he never tried to attract.

As if to make amends for his physical deformity, he possessed an uncommon mind, and when he was nearly six years of age accident revealed to him the reason of his father's continued coldness, and wrung from him the first tears he had ever shed for his misfortune.

He heard one day his mother praying that G.o.d would soften her husband's heart toward his poor hunchback boy, who was not to blame for his misfortune--and laying his head upon the broad arm of the chair which had been made for him, he wept bitterly, for he knew now why he was not loved. That night, as in his crib he lay, watching the stars which shone upon him through the window, and wondering if in heaven there were hunchback boys like him, he overheard his father talking to his mother, and the words that his father said were never forgotten to his dying day. There were, "Don't ask me to be reconciled to a cripple! What good can he do me? He will never earn his own living, lame as he is, and will only be in the way."

"Oh, father, father," the cripple essayed to say, but he could not speak, so full of pain was his little, bursting heart, and that night he lay awake, praying that he might die and so be out of the way.

The next morning he asked Maude to draw him to the churchyard where "his other mother," as he called her, was buried. Maude complied, and when they were there, placed him at his request upon the ground, where stretching himself out at his full length, he said: "Look, Maude, won't mine be a little grave?" then, ere she could answer the strange question, he continued, "I want to die so bad; and if you leave me lying here in the long gra.s.s maybe G.o.d's angel will take me up to heaven. Will I be lame, there, think you?"

"Oh, Louis, Louis, what do you mean?" cried Maude, and as well as he could, for the tears he shed, Louis told her what he meant.

"Father don't love me because I'm lame, and he called me a cripple, too. What is a cripple, Maude? Is it anything very bad?" and his beautiful brown eyes turned anxiously toward his sister.

He had never heard that word before, and to him it had a fearful significance, even worse than lameness. In an instant Maude knelt by his side--his head was pillowed on her bosom, and in the silent graveyard, with the quiet dead around them, she spoke blessed words of comfort to her brother, telling him what a cripple was, and that because he bore that name he was dearer far to her.

"Your father will love you, too," she said, "when he learns how good you are. He loves Nellie, and--"

Ere she could say more she was interrupted by Louis, on whose mind another truth had dawned, and who now said, "But he don't love you as he does Nellie. Why not? Are you a cripple, too?"

Folding him still closer in her arms, and kissing his fair, white brow, Maude answered: "Your father, Louis, is not mine--for mine is dead, and his grave is far away. I came here to live when I was a little girl, not quite as old as you, and Nellie is not my sister, though you are my darling brother."

"And do you love father?" asked Louis, his eyes still fixed upon her face as if he would read the truth.

Every feeling of Maude Remington's heart answered, "No," to that question, but she could not say so to the boy, and she replied, "Not as I could love my own father--neither does he love me, for I am not his child."

This explanation was not then wholly clear to Louis, but he understood that there was a barrier between his father and Maude, and this of itself was sufficient to draw him more closely to the latter, who, after that day, cherished him, if possible, more tenderly than she had done before, keeping him out of his father's way, and cushioning his little crutches so they could not be heard, for she rightly guessed that the sound of them was hateful to the harsh man's ears.

Maude was far older than her years, and during the period of time over which we have pa.s.sed so briefly she had matured both in mind and body, until now at the age of twelve she was a self-reliant little woman on whom her mother wholly depended for comfort and counsel. Very rapidly was Mrs. Kennedy pa.s.sing from the world, and as she felt the approach of death she leaned more and more upon her daughter, talking to her often of the future and commending Louis to her care, when with her he would be motherless. Maude's position was now a trying one, for, when her mother became too ill to leave her room, and the doctor refused to hire extra help, saying, "two great girls were help enough," it was necessary for her to go into the kitchen, where she vainly tried to conciliate old Hannah, who "wouldn't mind a chit of a girl, and wouldn't fret herself either if things were not half done."

From the first Nellie resolutely refused to work--"it would black her hands," she said, and as her father never remonstrated she spent her time in reading, admiring her pretty face, and drumming upon the piano, which Maude, who was fonder even than Nellie of music, seldom found time to touch. One there was, however, who gave to Maude every possible a.s.sistance, and this was John. "Having tried his hand," as he said, "at everything in Marster Norton's school," he proved of invaluable service--sweeping, dusting, washing dishes, cleaning knives, and once ironing Dr. Kennedy's shirts, when old Hannah was in what he called her "tantrums." But alas for John! the entire print of the iron upon the bosom of one, to say nothing of the piles of starch upon another, and more than all, the tremendous scolding which he received from the owner of said shirt, warned him never to turn laundress again, and in disgust he gave up his new vocation, devoting his leisure moments to the cultivation of flowers, which he carried to his mistress, who smiled gratefully upon him, saying they were the sweetest she had ever smelled. And so each morning a fresh bouquet was laid upon her pillow, and as she inhaled their perfume she thought of her New England home, which she would never see again--thought, too, of Janet, whose cheering words and motherly acts would be so grateful to her now when she so much needed care.

"'Tis a long time since I've heard from her," she said one day to Maude. "Suppose you write tomorrow, and tell her I am sick--tell her, too, that the sight of her would almost make me well, and maybe she will come," and on the sick woman's face there was a joyous expression as she thought how pleasant it would be to see once more one who had breathed the air of her native hills--had looked upon her Harry's grave--nay, had known her Harry when in life, and wept over him in death.

Poor, lonesome, homesick woman! Janet shall surely come in answer to your call, and ere you deem it possible her shadow shall fall across your threshold--her step be heard upon the stairs--her hand be clasped in yours!

CHAPTER V.

MRS. JANET BLODGETT.

It was a chilly, rainy afternoon toward the latter part of August.

John was gone, the doctor was cross, and Hannah was cross. Nellie, too, was unusually irritable, and venting her spite upon Hannah because there was nothing for dinner fit to eat, and upon Maude because the house was so desolate and dark, she crept away upstairs, and wrapping a shawl round her, sat down to a novel, pausing occasionally to frown at the rain which beat at the windows or the wind as it roared dismally through the trees. While thus employed she heard the sound of wheels, and looking up, saw standing before their gate a muddy wagon, from which a little, dumpy figure in black was alighting, carefully holding up her alpaca dress, and carrying in one hand a small box which seemed to be full of flowers.

"She must have come to stay a long time," thought Nellie, as she saw the piles of baggage which the driver was depositing upon the stoop.

"Who can it be?" she continued, as she recalled all her aunts and cousins, and found that none of them answered the description of this woman, who knocked loudly at the door, and then walked in to shelter herself from the storm.

"Forlornity!" Nellie heard her exclaim, as she left the chamber in answer to the summons. "Forlornity! No table, no hat-stand, no nothin', and the dingiest old ile-cloth! What does it mean? Your servant, miss," she added, dropping a courtesy to Nellie, who now stood on the stairs, with her finger between the pages of her book, so as not to lose the place. "I guess I've made a mistake," said the woman; "is this Dr. Canady's?"

"It is," answered Nellie, and the stranger continued, "Dr. Canady who married the widder Remington?"

"The same," returned Nellie, thinking how unmercifully she would tease Maude should this prove to be any of her relations.

"And who be you?" asked the stranger, feeling a little piqued at the coldness of her reception.

"I am Miss Helen--Dr. Kennedy's daughter," answered the young lady, a.s.suming an air of dignity, which was not at all diminished by the very, expressive "Mortal!" which dropped from the woman's lips.

"Can I do anything for you?" asked Nellie, and the stranger answered: "Yes, go and call Maude, but don't tell her who I am."