ELSPETH.
Eunice and Cricket exchanged frightened glances.
“Where is she now?” repeated Mary Ann, also looking scared.
“In ze water, ’tourse,” returned little Sylvie, impatiently. “Her sailed
down ze water all zis way, an’ zen ze bushes taught her, an’ her
touldn’t sail any more.”
“Listen! what’s that?” cried Eunice, with white lips.
A distant cry was becoming nearer and louder.
“My bairn! my bairn!” rang a wailing voice.
Around the curve of the brook ran a wild-eyed woman, wringing her hands.
Across the fields, attracted by her cries, two men came hurrying.
“She drowned! my bairn is drowned!” the hapless mother cried, pushing
back her falling hair.
“I sawed her fall in!” cried Zaidee.
The questioning men and the half-crazed mother stopped at the child’s
words, and gathered around the little ones. They grew frightened and
incoherent at the storm of questions that assailed them.
Evidently a tragedy had taken place under the children’s very eyes. They
had seen little Elspeth, when they were way up the bank, they said,
chasing yellow butterflies. She had run towards the brook, through the
tall grass, and she must have plunged straight into the water. This was
the main stream of the Kayuna, and the current ran swift and deep there.
The children saw her, and ran to the spot, but they never thought of
giving the alarm, for they had no idea what drowning really is. As they
said, “the baby kicked in the water, and then it sailed up to the top.”
Their chief idea was that they must not poke it with a stick.
They had watched the little creature “sailing” down the brook, and had
run along the bank beside it.
“Zere it is,” Sylvie suddenly broke off, pointing to the curve above.
“It’s under the bushes,” Zaidee said, beginning to cry with nervousness
and fright. The excited group around, all talking and asking questions
at once, the frantic mother catching first at one child and then at
another, Mary Ann crying and groaning in true Irish fashion, completely
bewildered the little ones, who had not the faintest idea of the
importance of what they had seen.
As Zaidee pointed, one of the men sprang into the water, knee deep.
“I see it!” he cried, and pressed forward through the water.
The poor mother was plunging after him when the other man forcibly held
her back.
“Let me go to my bairn,” she cried, struggling.
“We’ll bring your bairn,” he said, motioning to the two nurses to hold
her back, while he tore up the bank.
The brushes grew thick there, and the baby had been caught underneath in
such a way that it could not be seen from the steep bank. Excepting that
the children had known where it had stopped, it would have been much
longer before it was found.
The man on the bank plunged down through the bushes and both men were
lost to view.
Five minutes of breathless waiting passed, while even the poor mother
only moaned brokenly, and then they reappeared, one of them bearing the
little drowned baby.
“Run for your pa, children,” cried Eliza, but Cricket’s swift feet were
already flying along to the house.
The group stood in awed silence as the bearer tenderly deposited the
dripping little burden on the grass. It looked as if it were asleep. The
golden curls clung to its white forehead, and the little face was still
rosy.
The poor mother cast herself down beside it in a perfect abandonment of
grief, kissing its lips, and clasping the lifeless little form to her
breast, as she cried, ceaselessly,—
“Oh, my bairn! my bairn!”
Running at full speed down the lane came Dr. Ward, with blankets, and
close behind him followed his wife, with a whiskey-flask. In a moment he
was among them, and had caught the child from the mother. He tore off
its clothes and put his ear to its heart.
“There is hope, I think,” he said, quickly, and with that, although the
baby had been so long under water, there began a desperate fight for the
little life. The doctor worked with an intensity that would not yield to
despair, rubbing and working the little round, white limbs.
The minutes wore on, and the helpless onlookers could only stand by in
breathless silence. The doctor gave brief, quick orders which willing
hands executed. He carried the baby into the direct glare of the
scorching August sun, which beat down with fierce intensity on his
unprotected head. But no one heeded the sickening heat. The poor mother
sat by, passively now, like a stone, her hands clasped round her knees,
in dull despair. Her long hair, yellow as the baby’s own, rolled in a
rough mass down her back, torn and tangled by the bushes, and her wild
eyes watched the doctor’s every movement.
The work of rubbing the tiny, white body, and working the little arms up
and down, went steadily on, one relieving another, but thus far with no
avail.
Half an hour passed. The doctor worked on with set lips.
“Better give it up, sir,” one of the men ventured at last, stopping to
wipe his streaming forehead. The doctor’s face was dark purple, and
every vein was swelling. At the suggestion of stopping their efforts,
the mother uttered a low moan, and stretched out her hands imploringly.
“Work on,” the doctor made answer, briefly. “Work its arms steadily,
Johnson. Rub evenly, Emily,” he said, bending again to breathe into the
baby’s parted lips. He raised his head suddenly, then bent his ear again
to its heart.
“Thank God!” he breathed. A thrill of life ran through the baby’s
frame. There was a faint quiver of its eyelashes, a gasp for
breath,—another—and the baby stirred. Elspeth was saved.
There was a moment of intense silence, and then the mother threw herself
forward and clasped her baby to her bosom with a hungry cry of joy that
no one present ever forgot.
Papa’s feelings when he learned that his own little ones had seen the
accident may be imagined, and then and there he gave the children a few
instructions that even the youngest ones never forgot.
The mother had missed her baby, but she thought nothing of it at first,
for the little thing often strayed some distance from the house. At
last, growing anxious, she went out again and looked around. Down the
bank she saw a little child in a pink dress, which she thought was her
little one. It was really a glimpse of Helen in her little pink frock.
The mother went back, thinking the child was safe.
After a time she went out to call it home, when, to her horror, she saw
her baby’s sunbonnet caught on a low, overhanging branch, with nothing
else to be seen; and then knowing the baby must have fallen in, she had
rushed, screaming for help, down the bank in search of it.
Little Elspeth, wrapped in blankets, was carried to the doctor’s house
to be cared for further, and the next day she was playing about, as
round and rosy as ever.