THE STRANGE LADY AND HER CHILD.
Catharine reached out her hand. The little boy looked up with a rosy
smile, and gave his.
“Do you like to hunt bird’s-nests, and wade through the wet grass for
peppermint, darling?” she inquired, taking the child’s hand, while her
own began to tremble at the touch.
“I don’t know about the other, but birds, yes, yes, I love birds; mamma
has got, oh, so many, in a big cage at home,” answered the boy.
“He has not been much used to the country,” added the mother; “we only
came to the Island last week, and our place is so new, that it scarcely
can be called rural just now. These old trees and thickets make me
almost dissatisfied with the barrenness of our home.”
“Then you live in the new house yonder? I am glad of it. We are close
neighbors. I have looked at your pretty villa from the window yonder,
for months, wondering who would live in it. You will remain there, and
this little boy—oh, how glad I am that he will stay in the
neighborhood.”
“Thank you; this is very kind, after our intrusion; but your father must
think it strange. We did not intend to come so near the house,” said the
lady, glancing at the window, at which a venerable head appeared, while
Elsie was seen fluttering like an unquiet spirit in the dusk of the room
beyond.
“He is not my father,” said Catharine, simply, “only the person I live
with. His daughter is ill; I am her friend, that is all.”
“The companion of a sick woman, and so young, so—”
The lady was about to have said “so beautiful,” but checked herself,
blushing.
“It is a pleasant life,” said Catharine, “and I am happy in it—merely to
have a _home_ is so much of itself.”
“Yes, it must be a great blessing to those who have ever been homeless,”
answered the lady, with a look of interest. “It makes me shudder to
think how desolate a poor young creature must be, cast upon the wide
world. I have known beautiful, helpless women driven to the very
almshouse from the want of a roof to shelter them.”
A shudder passed over the lady as she spoke, and her eyes filled with
trouble.
“Yes,” said Catharine, with a degree of composure that had the dignity
of experience in it, “I have seen these things—they do happen, but there
are troubles that make even the almshouse as nothing. While we have one
true heart to love us, it is shelter enough. To be unloved is perfect
desolation.”
A faint blush stole over the lady’s face, the flush of suppressed tears.
She looked down at the child, and clasped his hand closer.
“We have lost our shelter,” she said.
The boy’s face clouded. He understood that look of gentle grief too
well.
“He has no father, then?” inquired Catharine.
“No one but me in the wide world.”
The boy took hold of his mother’s garments, and looked lovingly in her
face. It was a pretty habit of dependence that he had learned while an
infant, that of clinging to his mother’s skirts, and she loved him for
it.
These two women, complete strangers to each other, wandered slowly away
from the house, talking quietly and sadly, like old friends that could
afford to be natural; but by degrees Catharine became restless and
slightly perturbed. There was something strange in this sudden
confidence with a stranger, that made her thoughtful. Familiar sounds in
the voice, a sort of mesmeric atmosphere that had hung about her own
childhood, came back. It seemed as if she had known this gentle widow
years ago, and the wildness of the idea harassed her. The child, too—his
eyes, the pretty curve of his red lips, the pure forehead, all were
familiar; she seemed to have kissed them a thousand times; and it was
with an effort of self-constraint that she kept from throwing her arms
around him.
This strangely familiar feeling was shared by the widow; while the boy
gave his hand lovingly to Catharine, and walked by her side silent, but
listening to all they said. But he became restless after a while, and
looking up roguishly in Catharine’s face, lisped out—
“You so pretty—what is ou’s name?”
“My name is Catharine—Catharine Barr, my little man. Now tell me what
yours is?”
“My name is Edward Oakley,” answered the child, “and my papa has gone to
heaven, he has.”
Catharine started, and dropped the child’s hand. Mrs. Oakley was looking
another way, and did not observe the change in her countenance, but the
child saw it, and, thinking that she was cross, hung back and began to
search for amusement for himself, while the two women passed on,
unconscious that he had deserted them; for the name of Oakley had
disturbed Catharine so much that she lost all self-possession. More than
once she cast a long, searching look on the face of her companion, and
each time became more and more satisfied that her intuition had been
correct. She had known and loved that woman in her childhood.
But little Edward had forgotten them both in the beauty of everything
around him. The night was just setting in, balmy and clear. The dew was
falling, and the grass sparkled with moisture beneath the glow of a full
moon. The fire-flies scattered their tiny stars along the sward, and
flashed in and out of the thickets with a brightness that dazzled the
child. He sprang away, with his arms extended, rushing on, and grasping
at the grass with his little hands here and there, hoping to fill them
with sparks.
The ground was uneven and rolling where they stood; a hickory-grove lay
in the distance, and all along the slope of the hill were knolls covered
with winter green and barberry thickets, in which the child soon lost
himself.
The fire-flies were constantly deluding him, flashing here and there,
but never giving themselves to his grasp. He had outrun the voice of his
mother, and the stillness frightened him. All at once as he stood
listening, a whippoorwill began his night-plaint in the hickory-grove.
The boy began to tremble as he heard it, the sound was so near a human
lament, that it filled him alike with affright and compassion. Some one
was in pain; he was sure that wicked robbers were hurting some lady down
in the woods. What could he do? Where was his mother that she did not
help the poor creature, whose lament fell so plaintively on the night?
The child called aloud for his mother, who had gone wildly in an
opposite direction in search of him; and Catharine had blindly followed.
Thus every instant increased the distance that separated them. Each
interval of silence filled him with fresh terror, and when the bird-wail
came, his own wild cry for help rang with it to return upon him without
answer.
At last shriek after shriek rent the air; but all in vain. Then he sunk
to the ground. Lifting his eyes to the stars, and folding his hands palm
to palm, he began to say his prayers. They were broken with sobs of
grief, for it was difficult for the child to have faith in heaven, when
his mother neglected to come.
As he knelt upon the turf, sobbing out fragments of the Lord’s Prayer, a
light tread came behind him, and he was lifted suddenly from the ground.
“Mamma! mamma!” he cried, joyously.
But it was not mamma. It was a pale, dark face, that, lighted up with
passionate joy, bent over him. The dark eyes, taking that strange
brilliancy that nothing but moonlight can give, seemed burning their
glances into his. The lips, all in motion, and agitated with broken
murmurs, rained kisses upon his face, his arms, his hair, and even upon
the folds of his dress.
“George!—Georgie, my own Georgie!”
“No, no, not yours. I won’t, I won’t!”
The little fellow struggled violently in the strange arms that had
seized upon him, and his eyes grew wild and large with terror. But the
female bore him on, whispering to herself,—
“I have found him, I have found him. Let them take all the rest. He is
mine, mine!”
She raised her voice and sped on, shouting, “Mine, mine!” Her long,
iron-gray hair had fallen loose, and floated out upon the wind; a tragic
joy sat upon her features, as the moonlight glanced over them; and
between her words she laughed a clear, gleeful laugh of defiance, which
the whippoorwill answered by his slow wail.
The boy grew still. Something in the face of his captor fascinated him.
The breath was checked upon his parted lips as she bore him along.
As she approached the house, Elsie, for it was she, slackened her pace,
and began to caress the child with a gentle sweetness that soon
dispelled his terror. The words fell from her lips with a sort of charm.
He began to wonder, rather than fear.
“Hush, now hush, don’t speak a word, little Georgie; don’t breathe loud,
that’s a dear. There, there!”
She pressed his cheek to hers, whispering these cautions softly, and
stole through the lilac and snow-ball thickets into the house.
She glided, with ghost-like stillness, through the hall, and through a
long, dark passage, into the library. The shutters had been left open,
and the room was filled with moonlight. It came through the bay-window
in a silvery flood, leaving but few shadows, and lying full and broad
upon the two pictures.
A great easy-chair stood in the centre of the room, and in this she
placed the child, still holding both arms around him, while she crouched
half upon her knees to the floor.
“See, see! the boy comes willingly; he wishes to come; he loves me, and
will stay forever and ever. Oh! ha! smile and smile; you cannot get him
away again; he is mine, I tell you, all mine!”
As she spoke, Elsie fell to caressing the boy, stilling his fears with
the mesmerism of a strong though disturbed volition, till at last he
wound his arms about her neck, and fell asleep, with his head bent
forward upon her bosom.
Softly the poor, demented woman drew him down to her side upon the
floor, and making a couch of the cushions which she took from the chair,
she covered him with the great crimson shawl worn over her loose, white
robe.
Thus resting upon one elbow, and brooding over the child, as a thousand
sweet feelings settled upon her face in the moonlight, she lay till
daybreak, watchful and silent, triumphing in her soul over the two
portraits that were to her human beings over whom she had attained a
conquest.