THE TWO INFANTS.
Mary Margaret Dillon lay in the sweet sleep which so frequently follows
exhausting efforts. Clasped by her right arm she held the strange baby
close to her bosom with persevering charity that lived even in her
slumber. But her motherly face was turned, with the irresistible
instincts of nature, toward the little chubby-faced fellow at her left.
He had been nestling closer and closer under her arm without arousing
her, and now lay drowsily comforting himself with his little red fist,
at which he tussled and worked with persevering philosophy, now and then
giving out a loud, relishing smack, as if determined to notify the
little interloper how richly he was provided for.
In the energy of his satisfaction, the youngster threw out his feet, and
made his tiny elbows play with a vigor that soon aroused Mary Margaret.
She gathered up the strange baby to her bosom with a warmer clasp, as if
to shield herself from temptation, and then nestled her loving face down
to the other baby, and bending back her arm to give him a hug, she began
lavishing kisses and blessings upon him.
“Bless the rogue—arrah, bless the crathur! Sure his ginerous Irish blood
is up already in consideration of the stranger baby; faix, and isn’t he
independent, as an Irish baby born in this blissed land of liberty
should be, sure, continting himself intirely with a taste of his own
blissed little fist, that by the token’ll yet work for his mother whin
she’s feeble and auld. Faix, and wouldn’t the father of him be a proud
man, this minit, if he could see the little filler acting in all
respects like a gentleman intirely?”
Mary Margaret was interrupted in her pleasant natural talk by a faint
shriek that came from the lower end of the ward, and starting up from
between the two infants, she threw a skirt over her shoulders and ran
down the dim room. She paused suddenly with an exclamation of terror,
for there upon the cot where we left the pale, young mother, she saw a
form so fair, so wild, and yet so spirit-like, standing erect in the
smoky light, that all the native superstition of her race rose up to
chill her.
“Blessed saints! but it’s a wraith,” she murmured, sinking gently to her
knees, “the poor, beautiful crathur has gone sure enough, and this is
the shadow she has left, och, hone—och, hone.”
A less fanciful person than good Mary Margaret might have mistaken the
vision hovering about the pauper couch for something supernatural. The
thin, childish face, so white at the temples and forehead; the burning
red of the cheeks; those wild, feverish eyes flashing like stars; the
long, thick tresses sweeping down in a golden veil to the coverlet, were
full of supernatural loveliness. Mary saw the thin, white hands and arms
uplifted in wild grace; the form, slender, waving “like the stalk of
some tall flower that threatens to break with the first blast of wind,
rising, as it were, into the night.” It was enough to still the blood in
the veins of that kind woman, and send her frightened speech in
fragments of prayer to her lips.
“Whist—whist! what is it sayin’? for sure it’s words that I hear. Drink,
drink! It’s alive! it’s the poor young crathur herself clamoring for the
drop of could water, and no one forenent to give it. And I, unnatural
heathen that I am, lying there atween the babies, and sleeping as if the
whole world belonged to me. Water, drink, sartinly, me poor, white
darlint; jest aise yerself down till the pilly and see if I doesn’t
bring yees a hull teapot full.”
It was useless making the request. The poor, young thing waved to and
fro on the bed, flung out her thin hands, groping in the air for
something to lay hold of; then her fragile limbs seemed to wither up;
she sunk down through the murky white in a pale heap, covered only from
sight by the abundance of her golden hair.
“Hist, hist! what is the matter, darlint?” said Mary Margaret, softly
dividing the silken waves from the childish face and attempting to
arrange the bed.
The young creature looked up, and a gleam of intelligence shot through
the fever in her eyes.
“I am parched, I want drink, my head throbs, my bosom is full of aching
fire. My hands—put them in cold water, they are so hot—they will not let
me touch it while these hands are so burning hot.”
“There is no drink here!” said Mary Margaret, searching among some cups
and bowls that stood upon a chair near the bed, “not a drop of
anything.”
Mary ran to her own bed, seized a basin of cold tea that her kindly
persuasion had obtained from one of the nurses, and held it to the
burning lips of the patient. Then she began to smooth down those long
tresses with her hands, and by a thousand gentle movements intuitive to
her womanly nature, quieted the delirium that had seized upon the poor
girl afresh during the loneliness of night.
As Mary Margaret was performing these kindly offices, she happened to
turn her eyes toward a corner of the room. There was nurse Kelly, not
asleep, as she had at first supposed, but with her arms folded on a
little board table, her chin resting upon them, and her eyes peering
angrily through the light shed from a smoky lamp hung behind her on the
wall.
Sharp and angry as the notice of a rattlesnake, came that glance through
the darkness; and Mary Margaret’s hands shook as she sat down the basin
of tea with a sort of nervous terror. Still she was too brave and too
earnest for anything like an ignominious retreat, even from the glare of
those eyes.
The poor, young patient was relieved by the drink so kindly given, and
lay very quietly, unconscious of the malignant influence that had crept
even to her pauper couch, unmindful of the gentle care that fell like
dew around her. But the noble Irish woman lingered at her post with an
instinctive feeling that she was needed to keep watch and ward over that
frail life.
But young Ireland in the other cot had at last become heartily
dissatisfied with the state of things in that neighborhood. The mouth
from which his tiny fist was withdrawn now filled with indignant cries,
and Mary Margaret, hastily gathering the skirt around her shoulders, ran
back to silence the little rebel before he disturbed every patient in
the ward.
She lay down by the child outside the bed, supporting herself on one
elbow, for some holy instinct still kept her on the watch. After she had
rested a while, and the voice of young Ireland had subsided into
satisfied and half-cooing murmurs, she saw the nurse arise cautiously,
open a drawer of the table, and steal round to Catharine Lacy’s bed,
over which she hovered a moment and disappeared in her corner again.
Then came a few moments of silence, broken only by the deep breathing of
the sleepers and a restless moan or two from the young woman’s cot.