Celia, after a round of visits, had come late this year to their
country-house. Miss Greene, called in to make shorter a walking-skirt
for country rambles, as she stitched, told the news, according to
her wont. She had discovered that she was more acceptable to
Celia when she left the Brays out of her conversation, just as she
was more acceptable to Judith when she turned it upon the Comptons.
As this diminished her immediate store of topics while at the
Comptons--village doings were so inwoven with the Brays' affairs--Miss
Greene felt obliged to extend the radius which her reports took in.
"You ever drive over Quarryville way these days?" After an interval of
silence, long for her, she thus started a new subject.
"I haven't driven there for a long time. Do you think it a pretty
road? I have never cared for it."
"No, no more do I. It ain't tree-sy, nor yet there ain't nothin' much
to see of any sort. But Miss Goodrich she drove over there this summer
early, she's got a relative livin' over there, and--Did you ever
notice between this and there a little tumble-down farm-house jest a
little mite off the road? I don't believe there's more'n half a dozen
houses between here and Quarryville, so you must have seen it, though
perhaps you never took no particular notice. Tell you what you might
remember it by. It's got an oleander-tree in a box near the door in
the front yard. The man and woman who live there come from some furrin
place and are most as black as colored people. They've been there a
long time, five or six years, I guess, and have got a vegetable-garden
and a corn-patch. I guess you never took no notice. Well, Miss
Goodrich, drivin' past on her way home from visitin' her relative,
stopped there jest by chance--I forgit now whether a rain-storm come
up or she wanted a drink o' water--but there in that 'most black
woman's house she see the fairest boy-baby she says she ever set eyes
on. Then she began askin' questions, and the woman owned 'twarn't
hers, and it come out, not all at once, but gradually, for Miss
Goodrich she was interested, that when that baby was nothin' but a few
weeks old, a well-dressed lady, she might have been fifty or so,
brought him to her in the carry-all from the depot, and said would she
keep him and bring him up as her own, and here was a sum o' money and
there to be the end o' the whole thing. You can't rightly tell how
much she give her, the woman don't let on, and as she don't talk much
English, it's sort o' hard gettin' things out o' her. But I shouldn't
wonder if it had been somethin' like a thousand dollars. I guess it
was as much as that, for she was a fashionable-lookin' lady. And from
that day to this not a word nor a sign further, and the woman ain't no
more idea than you or me who the lady was or whose child she's got.
But she ain't any children of her own, nor ever has had, and he's a
purty little fellow, and she don't seem to mind the care of him any
more 'n if he was her own. The lady never left any name to call him
by,--she jest wanted to wash her hands of him, that's clear
enough,--and the woman calls him Larry, 'cause she thinks that's one
of our names. But it's queer, ain't it, the whole thing? If it wasn't
so far I'd drive over myself, jest out o' curiosity. I sh'ld think
you'd like to, Miss Ceely. Things like that, that sounds as if they
come out of a story-book, is in your line, I sh'ld jedge."
Celia remembered afterwards, marvelling, how small hand she had had in
the incidents which brought her to the place where a treacherous fate
lay in wait for her. It seemed to her that her will had been at every
step counter to the direction she finally must take.
It was a friend on a visit to her, who, when in the afternoon they
hesitated in the choice of a drive, proposed Quarryville. Celia,
though in the least degree repelled, could find no reason for setting
aside the suggestion. But she regretted--yet again without good
reason, as she argued with herself--having permitted just the sort of
person this gifted and charming Mary Havens could not help being, to
be present at her trying-on with Miss Greene. They had no difficulty
in recognizing the house. The oleander stood beside the door-step in
the rough front yard, where common flowers and flourishing weeds made
about an even mixture. Among them toddled a child in a faded pink
slip. As Celia reined in the horse that they might pass slowly, Mary
Havens, before Celia knew what she intended, jumped out, and Celia saw
her in a moment more, down in the tall grass, scrutinizing the child's
face, and heard her foolish, eager chatter at him. Celia waited, with
a misleading effect of patience, looking off at the meadows on the
other side, in an unaccountable distaste, till she became aware of
Mary trying to find footing for the child in front of her knees.
"Look at him!" Mary said to her in an impressed tone, "Isn't he
_different_?"
Celia, in the supposition that any baby lifted off his feet by a
stranger would scream, had braced her nerves for the shock. But as she
looked at the child, she ceased to think of that, her displeasure with
Mary dispersed.
He was a being after her own heart, that was all,--exactly after
her own heart. She had not the general love of children common in
women, which seemed proof that this one who so captured her fancy
must have about him something extraordinary. He was so fair that
the sun to which he was indiscriminately exposed could not prevail
against his firm, uniform, healthy whiteness. He was large for his
small age,--for though he could walk, it was plain he could not yet
talk, or else he did not regard language as necessary, for not by
one sound did he depart from his self-possessed dumbness. The soilure
of the earth upon it could not make his splendid little face funny. A
straight-limbed, strong, calm, fearless, and somewhat solemn baby,
noble in size, noble in the whole effect of him, with just a touch
of something which melted the heart in his wide, sweet, steady,
unsmiling eyes and the drooping arch of his lip. We have described
him as he appeared to Celia.
"He looks like a king," she breathed, "or like a prophet!"
"That's just it--I couldn't define it. Think--think of rejecting a
creature like that! Why--if he had been mine----"
Celia was not listening. She had taken in hers one of his little
strong, firm, white hands, beautiful in shape, in texture surpassing,
and, quite absorbed in him, pressing it as earnestly as if she entered
into a compact with him, was saying over to him just "Larry ... Larry
..." in her voice itself a communication and a caress.
After a little he wearied of these women, and turned his back upon
them to look at their horse. They became aware of a woman not far from
the carriage-step, clothed in the nondescript dark cotton dress of a
poor farmer's wife, a once bright kerchief around her neck. She was
swart in color, with straight, good features, severer in expression
than were her brown eyes, which suggested possibilities of kindness
when need should arise. She smiled deferentially and said nothing. It
might easily be supposed that English was not her tongue. Miss Havens
fell upon her with questions, which Celia cut short by hurrying their
departure.
But the thought of Larry would not leave her, and it brought
disturbance almost, making her feel, as she had never felt, a
loneliness in her life, an emptiness. The appeal he had made to her
was beyond anything she had imagined of her nature; the sense of him
haunted her, his image passed before her ten times an hour, a heroic
yet divinely innocent little figure, possessing indescribable
affinities with her deepest soul, or, if this were infatuated
imagination, fulfilling at the very least her every taste.
When Miss Havens had left, not before, she returned to see him, alone.
And after that, at intervals growing more frequent, she went, sinking
deeper, as she found, in attachment to this child, instead of
recovering from her unaccountable fancy, as it had seemed not quite
impossible one might.
A drop of bitter it was to her, as when in blowing bubbles one gets a
taste of soapwater, to realize after a time that her interest in Larry
had become a subject of discussion in the village. Even some
perversion of her remark that he looked like a small predestined
Knight of the Grail came back to her ears, with the effect of a
humorous sally. It was almost enough to make one resolve not to see
him any more. Such a thought, however, could be but momentary: her new
love had too strong a hold on her, and she was grown philosophical,
she believed, where village gossip was concerned.
Dimly there formed in the background of her mind the thought that
sometime, if certain matters could be arranged, she might make herself
responsible for Larry's future. She had no idea of forsaking him,
ever; but he was happy, for the present, and well cared for where he
was. The woman was kind to him, and she was a person of natural good
sense. Celia could see him as often as she pleased; in a manner
already she directed his small affairs. The subsidized Cape Verde
Islander bathed and kept him clean and observed hygienic practices, to
her full of mystery. Closely as her heart was involved, a perfect
prudence restrained Celia: there certainly was no occasion for haste
in coming to any determination, and the thought lurked within vague
undergrowths of her mind that perhaps time would bring forth some
effect of taint in this fruit of strange parentage, which the present
superbly triumphed over.
It was after an absence from him of perhaps a week, that, coming upon
Larry as he played among the weeds, she spied upon the ground near him
a toy of the richest and gaudiest. The sight of it gave her heart a
sharp pang before her brain had framed the smallest theory of it. She
had taken Larry upon her arm--his weight did but charm her; holding
him, she went about the house calling for Julia, the foster-mother.
She was not to be found, though the doors were open. Celia sat down
with Larry upon the door-step and took up the dazzling puppet, a male
doll with a squeak. She turned it about, sniffing it with faint,
jealous dislike, as if by some emanation from it to divine whence it
came, what it meant. Unenlightened, she at last, though without hope,
asked the baby, "Who gave it to you, Larry?" He only put out his hand
for it masterfully, fumbled its satins, waved it up and down in the
air, and cast it far.
Celia derived from the woman, returning by and by from the field, that
the doll was the gift of Judith Bray. The woman did not know the young
lady's name, but her broken and laborious description was perfectly
illuminating to Celia. According to the woman's story, Judith had
been there three times within the week, bringing extravagant gifts for
Larry, over whom she screamed with admiration and whom she fondled as
if she would eat him. Celia felt ice hardening about her heart. That
day she spoke decisively to Julia of her intention to take Larry off
her hands. When she had understood, Julia unexpectedly gave evidence
of satisfaction; explaining that this would be for them a desired
thing: her husband had been wishing for some time to move away from
there and go to a factory-town, where the child would be a hindrance.
Celia remembered the money the couple were supposed to have received,
for the care of Larry; the man had no doubt some plan of outlay for
his little capital; her scheme and theirs fell into accord. Celia
impressed it upon Julia before leaving that Larry was from that moment
forth to be regarded as hers, her property. She proposed to fetch him
as soon as suitable preparations could be made, after which Julia and
her husband, delivered for good and all from the burden and expense of
him, would be free to go where they were more likely to make their
fortunes than here.
With grave, peculiar tenderness, Celia, before leaving, took up the
baby and searched his little face, looked deep into his eyes, which
told her of his mysterious little soul no more than before. She knew
it was like trying to force open a shut flower. "Whatever happens
now, dear," she said to him, though without audible words, "we two
go together. All that happens to you, happens to me. If you are in
the future to be bad or afflicted, I am to be unhappy. But I will
never repent, remembering the glory of you now." She wondered,
seriously, at so beautiful a thing being permitted to live. She
kissed him many more times than she usually did, upon his eyes, his
cheeks, his forehead,--he was royally passive under kissing--and
having left him, almost as if something had warned her, she went back
and pressed him to her a last time. As she started the horse, she
held up a finger to Julia at the gate, in reminder of their agreement;
Julia smiled back her good trustworthy smile.
Celia had expected to meet with objections at home; they were more
obstinate than she had looked for. But Celia was sure of her way where
only her relatives' prejudices were opposed as a barrier. She had the
whip-hand of an exceptional devotion from them, fairly earned, no
doubt. In this case she was able to allay some anxieties, some
difficulties she over-rode; all were surprised at the willingness she
displayed to make a genuine sacrifice of interests. There was
conducted a quiet, polite domestic campaign, at the closing of which
she was granted unconditionally, with whatever grim forewarnings, an
open field in which to make her life's mistake.
A little out of conceit with the whole matter, from the weariness of
this contending--impressed, too, in spite of herself, with the
pertinence of some of the objections which had been made, but staunch
in her main purpose, she at last set forth to fetch Larry. As she
passed the Brays' house, a sickly surge of resentment rose from her
momentary general disaccord with the world, and beat against the
windows that were Judith's, for it had been she who indirectly
precipitated this adoption: without her and the indefinable pollution
of her caresses, all being allowed to come to its ripeness naturally,
there would not have been this effect of strain and muffled discord in
bringing home the son-elect. Judith's windows were shuttered; her gay,
long-fringed hammocks taken in. Celia had heard that she was gone
unexpectedly early this year.
But why--why were the windows of the grey farm-house closed and
shuttered too? What could be the meaning of that? Celia could hardly
believe her eyes. Never once had she seen them closed. And the
door was closed, and the garden empty, and the clothes-line gone, the
oleander gone. She remained for a time without getting out of the
carriage, staring in puzzlement over at the house. It was like
something in a dream. When she got out, she found that her knees
were unsteady, and wondered at it, because she as yet felt little
but a futile effort of the brain to find some common explanation
of these circumstances, which only superficially, of course, seemed
so unnatural. Why should not Julia for once in her life have gone on a
visit, or a jaunt, or an errand? It was a long knowledge of all the
conditions which made this surmise insufficient. Celia fumbled
with a shutter and got it open. She made blinders with her hands and
peered in. Then her heart sank away, as if one should suddenly find
by the touch that a person one supposed alive was dead. It was a house
from which the inmates plainly had moved away. She made the circuit
of the house, examining things. All told the same story, no
possibility of deceiving oneself. They had gone. Celia went to the
gate and seated herself upon a stone facing the house, and stared at
it. She felt no pain. Indeed, something said within her, in the tone
she took discussing things sometimes, when she was drawing from a
worldly philosophy: "Well, it simplifies matters." The solution first
to present itself satisfied her. The same who had placed Larry there
had come for him. Perhaps they had got wind of the proposed
adoption,--Julia was deeper than had been suspected,--and in
order that the darkness they evidently sought should be ensured past
all doubt, they had prevailed upon the foster-parent to leave, like
the Arabs. No house was so near that she might to any purpose have
made inquiry, if she had cared to do that. But, as has been said, she
was satisfied. What had happened seemed to her obvious and what,
had she been a little wiser, she would have been prepared for. As
she rose, she laughed, or did something more or less like it, and
said aloud for the crows to hear: "What a fool I was to suppose that
anything I cared so much about could go right!" She got into her
phaeton and drove back. She said to them at home, and the hard sadness
setting her features was in its effect vindictive, "You see, you are
to have your wish, after all." To make investigation did not even
later enter her mind. She would not grant to her persecuting fate
the joy of beholding her tortured with suspenses or uncertainties. She
was persuaded of the worst. Her heart told her it was finished with
that dream.
After that she tried to make the best of her position, to keep her
mind fixed upon the advantages of her defeat. But the persistent image
of Larry, the memory of his thousand ways of being dear and The Only,
with the thought of never seeing him again or knowing anything further
about him, made her struggle for an ordinary exterior at moments more
than difficult. She came to learn the measure of the cheated feminine
tenderness which, denied any natural channel, had fastened so hungrily
upon that child of strangers, when it was thrown back useless upon her
heart. She selected finally, to dwell upon, the best of all the
possibilities: that among the people who had claimed him back--of fine
race, if he resembled them--he would find all for the absence of which
he had been pitied: the tender love of parents, the opportunities of a
privileged life. She agreed that his case would be better than if he
had been left to her. But after she had by arguments persuaded
herself, when by her own logic she had reason for rejoicing, there
closed down upon her a melancholy such as she had at intervals in her
life suffered from before. The experience was like going into a
tunnel, of which nothing could avail to lighten the darkness until by
the grace of God one came out at the other side of the hill. There was
no fighting it off by reason, no discovering an adequate cause for it,
no foreseeing the moment of its end. One endured it like a prolonged
bad dream, wherein the magnified affections shake one in one's
helplessness at their will. At such times all that had ever been pain,
disappointment, defeat, however long recovered from, came again to
perfect life in memory, while all that had been happy, diminished to
insignificant proportions, retreated out of sight. "Why do I feel like
this?" Celia could still ask herself by daylight, and repeat,
"Everything is all right." But in the night time the power of the
thing was complete.
She had at last, after some three days of such nerve-sickness, taken
something to assist sleep. But the small hours found her, in spite of
all, awake and staring into the dark, with her troubled mind harping
upon the same chords. She sat up in bed, old sorrows bleeding
afresh with the new; she took her confused head between her hands,
and was voicing the unreconcilement of millions before her and to
follow: "Why is everything I love made into an instrument to punish
me? What have I done? Why all this senseless pain and calamity to
me? Why to me one after the other two losses such as, coming singly
in a life, would be enough to darken the sun? Are you, stupid
blind Fate, weaving a pattern in which the same design must repeat
itself? For is it justice that twice I should have the thing my heart
had grown around taken from me, and not in the terrible legitimate
way of death, but just placed out of reach and sight, while I
torture myself with wondering what may be happening to make the
beloved suffer?... Oh, Larry, why ... why this dismay inseparable from
the thought of you?" The torture of the visions of Larry which,
spite of her shuddering repudiation, would obtrude themselves, was
such now that even in her morbid mood she recognized something
disproportionate in it, and had clear-sightedness to attribute it to
a reaction from the narcotic. She tried to get herself more
normally awake. She strained her eyes to see the figures upon her
watch, and a sort of patience fell upon her, ascertaining that in
an hour or so it would begin to be day, by the light of which the
worst never appears quite so unendurable. She felt cold now, and
drawing up her quilt went through the forlorn mockery of composing
herself to sleep.
Perhaps for a moment without knowing it she dozed, for when the
barking of Beech, who slept in the laundry, roused her with a start,
it was certainly lighter, she could distinguish the vine-branches
against her window. The muffled bark of lugubrious timbre came again
and again, deadened by distance and doors. The shock of the first
outburst--her heart had seemed to roll over--had plunged Celia into
what we call, when children suffer it, a fit of the horrors.
Twitching, she sat up again, and receiving from Beech's voice, as his
angry barks multiplied, a message of warning, she kept her eyes
instinctively fixed upon the square of light.
She slept on the ground-floor, and a garden-walk passed under her
window. A figure now darkened it. It could hardly be said that she was
frightened, she seemed to have turned to stone. Some one tapped, then
stood peering in and making signs. As she did not stir, the tapping
was repeated, urgent and more urgent. She arose and with less
astonishment than seemed explicable, recognized Judith Bray, who
whispered gaspingly, "Let me in, let me in--you must!" At this point
was entered by Celia a quite different phase of sensation. Now that
there seemed to be something to do, a call upon her for she as yet did
not know what, her nerve got back its tensest steadiness, her mind its
calm,--she was the effective daughter of a long line of effective
people.
She had signed the auroral intruder to a side-entrance, the furthest
from the sleepers in the house, and when they had tiptoed back to her
own chamber and noiselessly closed its door, she re-entered her bed,
being conscious in an undercurrent fashion of cold. As her eyes
consulted Judith, the livid atmosphere in which her bad dreams had
been enacting themselves through the night was shot with sanguine.
Judith's face prepared the mind for revelations which should smother.
That touch of excess which, however expressed, had always been an
element in the repugnance with which she inspired Celia, showed itself
now in a haggardness beyond all one could conceive a person achieving
in the brief space since the girl had been seen at the gate of her
garden jesting with the passers. She was bareheaded; the wide hood of
a travelling-cape, which had perhaps replaced her hat, lay back, and
her blown hair made a great wreath to her bloodless face. Her
breathing spoke of a merciless excitement driving her heart.
Celia sat up and clasped her knees with cramped fingers, pale with the
gray pallor of the dawn, in which her long coppery hair was just
beginning to glimmer a little--with the gilt picture-frames, and the
griffins of the candlesticks, and the like. "Well?" she said.
"Oh, I don't know how to tell you!" broke forth Judith, and the manner
of this first utterance exposed shockingly the fact that here stood
that sickening anomaly, a Judith clean emptied of spirit, pride, or
courage: "How shall I tell you?"
"Hush!... Speak lower!"
"Oh, who cares?... I have brought him back to you----"
"You have brought back whom?" Celia inquired in blank wonder, "You
have brought back--No, no, you don't mean--What? You never can mean
_Larry_?"
"I do.... For pity's sake _wait_ till I've told you...."
"Then it was _you_ who took him away?..."
"Yes, it was.... And now I've got him dead on my hands!"
Celia's understanding could not at once fully grasp this which was
offered, and she remained open-mouthed and mute.
"Of course it was I took him. Do you mean you didn't even suspect
me?... When I found you meant to have him, I couldn't let you, that's
all. You had been so mortally mean.... But that wasn't the whole. I
could see all you saw in him, too. I was just as crazy about him as
you. And when I heard you were going to adopt him, the thought came in
a flash, 'Why shouldn't I?' as long as I meant never to marry. And it
seemed a great lark, a good one on you, just lifting him away like
that. I paid a good price, I can tell you. But what does all that
matter now?... We were going to drive him to Jess's home in the
country--Jess said she knew all about babies--and then, after a time,
he was to reappear here as an orphan I'd adopted. You would recognize
him, of course, but what could you do?... When I think of the
light-hearted way I went into this thing, I could kill myself.... But
it's going to kill me, anyhow. Oh, you shouldn't have treated me
so.... I have a heart, too! But what do you care?... I did care about
him, though. I did. I did. You can't hate me as much as if I hadn't
truly cared. That little fellow had got a sort of hold on me nothing
has ever had. You should have seen him when we left, all in laces and
embroideries, like a little fairy prince. And he seemed all right. We
stopped the first night at a country hotel, and Jess and I gave him
his bath and fed him, just as nice.... We drove all the next day. He
seemed interested in the things we passed. The night after that we
were at a hotel again. I thought something wasn't quite usual with
him, but Jess said it was all right, and wouldn't hear of my calling
in a doctor. And suddenly, in the middle of the night, when we were
both asleep, I was wakened by a sound, and I don't know what was
wrong--he was struggling, he seemed to be choking, and after just the
shortest time he was still, and anyone could see how it was. We were
so frightened we didn't know what to do. We didn't dare call anybody,
and Jess got so scared thinking all sorts of things which might
happen, how we might be called to account before the law, that, will
you believe it, she wouldn't stay with me a second longer. She put on
her things and the instant it was light off she started for her home.
Then--I can never tell you how I did it. I dressed him and wrapped
him up and wound my veil around his head, and I asked for my carriage,
and I haven't stopped since, except to feed and water the horse----"
"Do you mean ..." gasped Celia.
"Yes.... Outside...."
Celia pressed her drained face to her knees and beat the bedclothes
with her hands.
"That's the way I feel, too," said Judith, with a dizzy movement of
her hand across her forehead, "I want to scream aloud till I go mad."
Celia was moaning into the covers.
"Stop, stop, you poor thing!" Judith's breath caught in her
throat, and her hand travelled tremblingly toward Celia's shoulder,
"Oh, I know--I know how you feel! Don't.... Don't!... you poor
thing. I've been and done it, haven't I.... There was no one--no one
like him, nor ever will be again. A human flower, wasn't he?... And
why I should come here to the one I've hurt most and who must hate me
worst, I don't know.... I suppose it's the way criminals give
themselves up. Unless it's because, as I've hated you so, and had good
reason to, and you've known it, I felt you would understand better
than the others. Then, you've got brains, you can tell me what to
do. After driving those millions of miles with that poor angel like
lead upon my arm, I haven't an idea in my head beside ... I'm afraid
to go to my father--" She shivered. "He's been sick of my pranks
for some time. You will stand by me, Celia Compton, just for the
first?... I could have been devoted to you, if you had let me....
You know I was never anything but a soft-hearted fool--and now to
have upon my soul the responsibility of this ghastliness...."
Celia had got up, and with the dainty carefulness forming part in her
of that second nature which stands us in stead when the directing
faculties are dazed, was fastening up her hair.
"First," she said, "we shall have to call my brother. Then go to your
father."
At these words, which could be interpreted as a promise of assistance,
Judith laid down her head, and let tears at last have their way with
her. In floods, more and more uncontrolled they came. Celia stood over
her, but even a racking compassion could not make her touch the
heaving figure. "The fault was more mine than yours," she said, with
dry lips and inexpressive voice, like that of an oracle, or a sleeper
speaking. "In the bottom of my heart I must have always known that the
blame of our silly feud was with me. With a word I could have set
everything right. What are you?... A leaf in your own passions. But I
know what I am about, and do what I do deliberately.
"And with a heart just a little larger ... but now, as you say,
between us, we've done it. But you need not blame yourself as much as
me.... Come. You must go outside and remain with ... with him, while I
explain to my brother. In a moment it will be sunrise."
As Judith's strength and command over her will seemed now to have
forsaken her, Celia helped her to her feet and guided her out of the
house. It was a shock, turning the corner, to find the carriage
directly at hand, high upon the lawn. The pearl-grey carriage-rug lay
massed upon the seat.
The sweet daylight brightening over all the familiar things had its
moment of trying to convince that the strange and terrible must be
unreal. Only, there upon the carriage-seat lay the proof that the past
belief was true. Celia stood, her eyes held by it, a chill from it
stealing congealingly upon her. And as at the sight, with the horror,
the sorrowfulness of it all smote her directly upon the heart,--and
the sense, at last fully brought home, of the ruin of the most
adorable thing the earth had given her to know wrung from her a
scalding quintessence of tears,--her eyes closed against the image
that would form of what the grey folds concealed, and her figure
swayed. Judith, beside her, had been struggling to screw her nerve to
the point where it might be subjected once more to the strain that had
broken it down; but at the sight in accusing daylight of the burden
which must be taken up again, her whole being recoiled with such
violence that her head jerked convulsively back and her hand reached
out for something steadying--and the two women, in a common anguish
before their work, clung to each other for support.