Rose A Charlitte Part 30

It was a lovely evening of late summer. The square in which she lived was cool and quiet, for very few of its inhabitants had come back from their summer excursions. Away in the distance, beyond the leafy common, she could hear the subdued roar of the city, but on the brick pavements about her there was scarcely a footfall.

The window at which she sat faced the south. In winter her son's room was flooded with sunlight, but in summer the branching elm outside put forth a kindly screen of leaves to shield it from the too oppressive heat. Her glance wandered between the delicate lace curtains, swaying to and fro, to this old elm that seemed a member of her family. How much her son loved it,--and with an indulgent thought of Vesper's pa.s.sion for the natives of the outdoor world, a disagreeable recollection of the Acadien woman's child leaped into her mind.

How absurdly fond of trees and flowers he had been, and what a fanciful, unnatural child he was, altogether. She had never liked him, and he had never liked her, and she wrinkled her brows at the distasteful remembrance of him.

A knock at the half-open door distracted her attention, and, languidly turning her head, she said, "What is it, Henry?"

"It's a young woman, Mis' Nimmo," replied that ever alert and demure colored boy, "what sometimes brings you photographs. She come in a hack with a girl."

"Let her come up. She may leave the girl below."

"I guess that girl ain't a girl, Mis' Nimmo,--she looks mighty like a boy. She's the symbol of the little feller in the French place I took you to."

Mrs. Nimmo gave him a rebuking glance. "Let the girl remain down-stairs."

"Madame," said a sudden voice, "this is now Boston,--where is the Englishman?"

Mrs. Nimmo started from her chair. Here was the French child himself, standing calmly before her in the twilight, his small body habited in ridiculous and disfiguring girl's clothes, his cropped curly head and white face appearing above an absurd kind of grayish yellow cloak.

"Narcisse!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"Madame," said the faint yet determined little voice, "is the Englishman in his house?"

Mrs. Nimmo's glance fell upon Henry, who was standing open-mouthed and grotesque, and with a gesture she sent him from the room.

Narcisse, exhausted yet eager, had started on a tour of investigation about the room, holding up with one hand the girl's trappings, which considerably hampered his movements, and clutching something to his breast with the other. He had found the house of the Englishman and his mother, and by sure tokens he recognized his recent presence in this very room. Here were his books, his gloves, his cap, and, best of all, another picture of him; and, with a cry of delight, he dropped on a footstool before a full-length portrait of the man he adored. Here he would rest: his search was ended; and meekly surveying Mrs. Nimmo, he murmured, "Could Narcisse have a gla.s.s of milk?"

Mrs. Nimmo's emotions at present all seemed to belong to the order of the intense. She had never before been so troubled; she had never before been so bewildered. What did the presence of this child under her roof mean? Was his mother anywhere near? Surely not,--Rose would never clothe her comely child in those shabby garments of the other s.e.x.

She turned her puzzled face to the doorway, and found an answer to her questions in the presence of an anxious-faced young woman there, who said, apologetically, "He got away from me; he's been like a wild thing to get here. Do you know him?"

"Know him? Yes, I have seen him before."

The anxious-faced young woman breathed a sigh of relief. "I thought, maybe, I'd been taken in. I was just closing up the studio, an hour ago, when two men came up the stairs with this little fellow wrapped in an old coat. They said they were from a schooner called the _Nancy Jane_, down at one of the wharves, and they picked up this boy in a drifting boat on the Bay Saint-Mary two days ago. They said he was frightened half out of his senses, and was holding on to that photo in his hand,--show the lady, dear."

Narcisse, whose tired head was nodding sleepily on his breast, paid no attention to her request, so she gently withdrew one of his hands from under his cloak and exhibited in it a torn and stained photograph of Vesper.

Mrs. Nimmo caught her breath, and attempted to take it from him, but he quickly roused himself, and, placing it beneath him, rolled over on the floor, and, with a farewell glance at the portrait above, fell sound asleep.

"He's beat out," said the anxious-faced young woman. "I'm glad I've got him to friends. The sailors were awful glad to get rid of him. They kind of thought he was a French child from Nova Scotia, but they hadn't time to run back with him, for they had to hurry here with their cargo, and then he held on to the photo and said he wanted to be taken to that young man. The sailors saw our address on it, but they sort of mis...o...b..ed we wouldn't keep him. However, I thought I'd take him off their hands, for he was frightened to death they would carry him back to their vessel, though I guess they was kind enough to him. I gave them back their coat, and borrowed some things from the woman who takes care of our studio. I forgot to say the boy had only a night-dress on when they found him."

Mrs. Nimmo mechanically felt in her pocket for her purse. "They didn't say anything about a woman being with him?"

"No, ma'am; he wouldn't talk to them much, but they said it was likely a child's trick of getting in a boat and setting himself loose."

"Would you--would you care to keep him until he is sent for?" faltered Mrs. Nimmo.

"I--oh, no, I couldn't. I've only a room in a lodging-house. I'd be afraid of something happening to him, for I'm out all day. I offered him something to eat, but he wouldn't take it--oh, thank you, ma'am, I didn't spend all that. I guess I'll have to go. Does he come from down East?"

"Yes, he is French. My son visited his house this summer, and used to pet him a good deal."

The young woman cast a glance of veiled admiration at the portrait. "And the little one ran away to find him. Quite a story. He's cute, too,"

and, airily patting Narcisse's curly head, she took her leave of Mrs.

Nimmo, and made her way down-stairs. A good many strange happenings came into her daily life in this large city, and this was not one of the strangest.

Mrs. Nimmo sat still and stared at Narcisse. Rose had probably not been in the boat with him,--had probably not been drowned. He had apparently run away from home, and the first thing to do was to communicate with his mother, who would be frantic with anxiety about him. She therefore wrote out a telegram to Rose, "Your boy is with me, and safe and well,"

and ringing for Henry, she bade him send it as quickly as possible.

Then she sank again into profound meditation. The child had come to see Vesper. Had she better not let him know about it? If she applied the principles of sound reasoning to the case, she certainly should do so.

It might also be politic. Perhaps it would bring him home to her, and, sighing heavily, she wrote another telegram.

In the meantime Narcisse did not awake. He lay still, enjoying the heavy slumber of exhaustion and content. He was in the house of his beloved Englishman; all would now be well.

He did not know that, after a time, his trustful confidence awoke the mother spirit in the woman watching him. The child for a time was wholly in her care. No other person in this vast city was interested in him. No one cared for him. A strange, long-unknown feeling fluttered about her breast, and memories of her past youth awoke. She had also once been a child. She had been lonely and terrified, and suffered childish agonies not to be revealed until years of maturity. They were mostly agonies about trifles,--still, she had suffered. She pictured to herself the despair and anger of the boy upon finding that Vesper did not return to Sleeping Water as he had promised to do. With his little white face in a snarl, he would enter the boat and set himself adrift, to face sufferings of fright and loneliness of which in his petted childhood he could have had no conception. And yet what courage. She could see that he was exhausted, yet there had been no whining, no complaining; he had attained his object and he was satisfied. He was really like her own boy, and, with a proud, motherly smile, she gazed alternately from the curly head on the carpet to the curly one in the portrait.

The external resemblance, too, was indeed remarkable, and now the thought did not displease her, although it had invariably done so in Sleeping Water, when she had heard it frequently and navely commented on by the Acadiens.

Well, the child had thrown himself on her protection,--he should not repent it; and, summoning a housemaid, she sent her in search of some of Vesper's long-unused clothing, and then together they slipped the disfiguring girl's dress from Narcisse's shapely body, and put on him a long white nightrobe.

He drowsily opened his eyes as they were lifting him into Vesper's bed, saw that the photograph was still in his possession, and that a familiar face was bending over him, then, sweetly murmuring "_Bon soir_" (good night), he again slipped into the land of dreams.

Several times during the night Mrs. Nimmo stole into her son's room, and drew the white sheet from the black head half buried in the pillow. Once she kissed him, and this time she went back to her bed with a lighter heart, and was soon asleep herself.

She was having a prolonged nap the next morning when something caused her suddenly to open her eyes. Just for an instant she fancied herself a happy young wife again, her husband by her side, their adored child paying them an early morning call. Then the dream was over. This was the little foreign boy who was sitting curled up on the foot of her bed, nibbling hungrily at a handful of biscuits.

"I came, madame, because those others I do not know," and he pointed towards the floor, to indicate her servants. "Has your son, the Englishman, yet arrived?"

"No," she said, gently.

"Your skin is white," said Narcisse, approvingly; "that is good; I do not like that man."

"But you have seen colored people on the Bay,--you must not dislike Henry. My husband brought him here as a boy to wait on my son. I can never give him up."

"He is amiable," said Narcisse, diplomatically. "He gave me these," and he extended his biscuits.

They were carrying on their conversation in French, for only with Vesper did Narcisse care to speak English. Perfectly aware, in his acute childish intelligence, that he was, for a time, entirely dependent on "madame," whom, up to this, he had been jealous of, and had positively disliked, he was keeping on her a watchful and roguish eye. Mrs. Nimmo, meanwhile, was interested and amused, but would make no overtures to him.

"Is your bed as soft as mine, madame?" he said, politely.

"I do not know; I never slept in that one."

Narcisse drew a corner of her silk coverlet over his feet. "Narcisse was very sick yesterday."

"I do not wonder," said his hostess.

"Your son said that he would return, but he did not."

"My son has other things to think of, little boy."