"That Old-Time Child, Roberta" Part 8

"Who told you, Uncle Squire?" Her eyes were filled with sudden gathered tears, and her scarlet lips trembled.

"Jim, dat is Kyurnel Tadlock's man, telled me. He seed him en know'd him.

But he is mity sick, honey, mity sick."

"O, Uncle Squire," cried the delighted child, "won't mamma go right straight in town and take me?"

"Well, now, dat's er gray hoss ob ernuther color. Mebbe she mout, en mebbe she mouten."

The child's countenance fell, her sensitive nature touched. Already a womanly intuition, wonderful in one so childlike and ignorant of the world's ways, begun to stir faintly.

"If mamma can't leave Aunt Betsy, don't you reckon she will let me go with you in town to see him, Uncle Squire?"

"You en your mar fur dat, honey. But Squire's your man."

That night after Aunt Betsy had been given her medicine and tucked away, the child climbed to her mamma's lap and coddled down to her.

Instinctively she wanted the magnetism of touch to help her. And then, with her warm breath playing about her mamma's cheek, and her little hand nestling in hers, she told her what Squire had heard. Mrs. Marsden was not especially startled. She had suffered so much it seemed to her sometimes that her feelings were numb.

"Aren't you going in town to see him, Mamma?" the child asked.

"Me! Oh, no; I couldn't. You don't know what you ask, darling." Tears gathered in the beautiful sad eyes.

"Then, may I go, Mamma? May I? Squire will take good care of me."

The mother-arms tightened around the childish form. An unwonted jealousy sprung up in the mother-heart. Hitherto she had had her all to herself.

"Would you leave me, darling," she asked, "my one comfort? Suppose he should take you away from me, and carry you off where I could seldom see you, what would become of me?"

The child looked up in the beautiful, agitated face with surprise.

"He would never do that. Mamma, never. In the first place, n.o.body on earth _could_ take me away from my darling mamma. Then he wouldn't take me away if he could. That would be too mean for any thing, and Squire says my papa is a splendid gentleman."

Mrs. Marsden made no reply to this. She sat gazing dreamily into the glowing fire. Splendid? Yes, that was what she thought him before the hard feeling came between them. She recalled his eyes, glowing--tender. Her little daughter had them exactly. Those ardent glances had so bewitched her she could have followed them to the ends of the earth.

"Suppose he should die, poor papa, all by himself? Squire says he is very, very sick."

"G.o.d forbid!" cried Mrs. Marsden, "G.o.d forbid."

"If papa has come all the way down to Kentucky," continued Roberta, "I don't believe he came down here just to fight us, I don't indeed. It looks to me more like he is hunting for somebody. And who should that somebody be but my own darling mamma?"

"It isn't probable he is hunting me, darling. It has been ten long years since he went away. He knows where the old place is. He could have found me easily enough."

"Well, but may be he wasn't exactly sure about you wanting him to come. He might have wanted ever so bad to come himself, and yet been afraid _you_ didn't want him. I wouldn't go where I wasn't sure I was wanted,"

continued the child, a fine scorn curving her lips, "no, not for any thing."

How much she looked like her father when she said that.

"May I go, Mamma?" she coaxed again. "Say yes, dear Mamma. You don't know how I've longed to have a papa like other little girls."

Then the sorely tried heart gave a great leap and got way beyond self.

"Yes, you may go, darling," she cried; "and may the G.o.d of the pure in heart watch over you and bring you back safely to your lonely mother."

The child coddled down again to her.

"What must I tell him for you, Mamma?" she asked.

Mrs. Marsden started. She had not expected that.

"Send him kind message, Mamma, just like your own sweet self. You are so good to everybody, and he is your little daughter's papa, and you love him dearly, don't you, dear Mamma?"

Then the woman-heart gave a great leap and reached out to that other heart the child was pleading for, and it seemed as if they touched, although miles separated them, and pride lay prostrate.

"I have erred," she reasoned dumbly, "erred in the sight of G.o.d and man. I have been hard, hard. What right have I to hold him to so strict an account? By my own contrition and unutterable yearning to behold his face, will I judge him, and naught else, the husband of my youth, once the delight of my eyes."

Then, having gone thus far, she could stop at nothing. Her eyes shone, varying emotions chased over her beautiful face, her whole nature unbent, tender, as when she stood in that room in the old days and heard the benediction that p.r.o.nounced them man and wife.

"O, you dear child!" she cried, "surely G.o.d has put in your little hands the gift of healing. Tell him, tell him, your Father, that for ten long years, the string has been on the outside of the latch for him. Tell him"--then, utterly unable to say more, she bowed her head and wept.

Roberta clung to her and caressed her. That phase of her mother's character touched her unspeakably, young as she was. She never forgot it.

It was a revelation of how blessed a possession is the heart that is incapable of cherishing resentment.

"O, you darling mother!" she cried, "I don't believe G.o.d's angels are any sweeter than you."

When Roberta and old Squire reached the house where they had been told Colonel Marsden was lying sick they saw an officer sitting in the front room, writing busily by a table. He looked up as they entered, startled by the vision of childish beauty before him. Roberta's scarlet hood, edged with swansdown, was pushed back, and her hair lay in fluffy golden rings on her white forehead. Her cloak, the color of her hood, was bordered with the same snowy, feathery tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. She carried in her hand a tiny, swansdown m.u.f.f. The rich blood of health mantled her cheek. Her eyes were like stars. Where had he seen them before, those wondrously beautiful eyes?

In person and manner Roberta was like her mother, but her features were her father's. A little aristocrat she was, from the poise of her golden head to the tip of her prunella boots.

"Well," said the officer, laying down his pen, "what can I do for you, little lady?"

The child turned to Squire, who came forward and stood in embarra.s.sed silence, uneasily shifting his position from one foot to the other. He had been advised by saucy Polly "not ter skeer fo'ks ter def by de way he dun his face," and he was a little out of his moorings. But finally he managed to say:

"It's Mars Robert Marsden, sah, dat me and Lil Missus wan'er see."

"Well, who is Lil Missus? and what is she to Colonel Marsden?"

His admiring gaze was directed again to the child.

"Shee's his own flesh en blood, sah; nuffin' shorter; hees lil gal dat wuz born'd arfter he wen' back ter N'ark."

"Whew," whistled the officer; "I didn't know Colonel Marsden was a family man. That accounts for many things, I have always thought peculiar in a man of his attractive personality. Well, I am sure I envy him his newly found daughter. Wait here a little, and I will see if the Colonel is awake. He is convalescent now, and will doubtless be glad to see you both."

He returned in a moment and said, "Colonel Marsden is asleep, and I thought best not to awaken him; but you shall see him," he said to Roberta, "just as soon as he awakes."

The child could not repress her eagerness.

"I can't wait," she cried; "I want to see him so bad. Let me go in and look at him while he is asleep. I won't make any noise. That's the way I do mamma when she has headache."

"Well," said the officer, smiling, "go right in."