A LIFE FOR A LIFE.
It was a time of struggle at Mulberry Hill. Love and death fought
for the life of little Hildreth Le Moyne. The father and the "new
grandma" watched over him most assiduously; the servants were untiring
in their exertions; the physician's skill was not lacking, but
yet none could foresee the result. The invalid below sent frequent
inquiries. First one and then the other stole away to ask her some
question or bring her tidings in regard to the lad in whose life
was bound up the hope of two old families.
One morning, while the child was still very sick, when Miss
Ainslie awoke after the brief sleep which had been all the rest
she had allowed herself from her self-imposed task, her head seemed
strangely light. There was a roaring in her ears as if a cataract
were playing about them. Her limbs ached, and every movement seemed
unusually difficult--almost painful. She walked across the room
and looked dully into the mirror on her dressing-case, resting her
hands on the top of the high old-fashioned furniture as she did
so. She was only able to note that her eyes looked heavy and her
face flushed and swollen, when a sharp pain shot through her frame,
her sight grew dim, the room spun round and round. She could only
crawl back and clamber with difficulty upon the high-posted bed,
where the servant found her fevered and unconscious when she came
an hour later to awaken her for breakfast. The struggle that had
been waged around the bed of the young child was now renewed by
that of his self-constituted nurse. Weeks passed away before it was
over, and ere that time the music of little feet had ceased about
the ancient mansion, and the stroke to pride and love had rendered
the invalid grand-mother still more an invalid.
The child had been her hope and pride as its mother had been her
favorite. By a strange contrariety the sunny-faced little mother
had set herself to accomplish her son's union with the tall, dark,
and haughty cousin, who had expired in giving birth to little
Hildreth. There was nothing of spontaneity and no display of
conjugal affection on the part of the young husband or his wife;
but during the absence of her son, the invalid was well cared for
and entertained by the wife, whom she came to love with an intensity
second only to that she lavished on her son. In the offspring of
these two her heart had been wrapped up from the hour of his birth.
She had dreamed out for him a life full of great actualities,
and had even reproached Hesden for his apathy in regard to public
affairs during the stirring scenes enacting around them, urging
him to take part in them for his son's sake.
She was a woman of great ambition. At first this had centered in her
son, and she had even rejoiced when he went into the army, though
he was earnestly opposed to the war, in the hope that it might
bring him rank and fame. When these did not come, and he returned
to her a simple private, with a bitterer hate for war and a sturdier
dislike for the causes which had culminated in the struggle than
he had when it began, she had despaired of her dream ever being
realized through him, but had fondly believed that the son of the
daughter-in-law she had so admired and loved would unite his father's
sterling qualities with his mother's pride and love of praise, and
so fulfill her desire that the family name should be made famous
by some one descended from herself. This hope was destroyed by the
death of the fair, bright child whom she loved so intensely, and
she felt a double grief in consequence. In her sorrow, she had
entirely secluded herself, seeing no one but her nurse and, once
or twice, her son. The sick girl in the room above was somehow
unpleasantly connected with her grief, and received no real sympathy
in her illness. There was even something of jealousy in the mind
of the confirmed invalid, when she remembered the remarkable manner
in which the child had been attracted toward the new-comer, as well
as the fact that she had nursed him so faithfully that his last
words were a moan for his "new grandma," while his real grandmother
lay useless and forgotten in her dim-shadowed room below.
Besides, it was with a feeling of envy that she recognized the fact
that, for the first time in his life, her son was more absorbed
in another's welfare than in her own. The chronic ailment of the
mother had no doubt become so much a thing of habit in his life that
it failed to impress him as it should, while the illness of the
young girl, having, as he believed, been incurred by her voluntary
attendance upon his son inspired him with a feeling of responsibility
that would not otherwise have existed. Something had occurred,
too, which had aroused a feeling upon his part which is often very
close akin to a tenderer one. As soon as he had learned of her
illness, he had endeavored to induce some of his female relatives
to come and attend her, but they had all flatly refused. They
would come and care for the child, they said; they would even send
the "Yankee school-marm" flowers, and make delicacies to tempt her
appetite, but they would not demean themselves by waiting upon a
sick "nigger teacher." They did not fear the contagion; indeed they
would have come to take care of little Hildreth but that they did
not care to meet his Yankee nurse. They even blamed Hesden for
allowing her to come beneath his roof, and intimated that she had
brought contagion with her.
He was angry at their injustice and prejudice. He had known of its
existence, but it never before seemed so hateful. Somehow he could
not rid himself of two thoughts: one was of the fairy creature
whose song and laughter and bird-like grace and gaiety, as she
masqueraded in the quaint dress of olden time, had made the dull
old mansion bright as a dream of Paradise for a single night. It
had seemed to him, then, that nothing so bright and pure had ever
flitted through the somber apartments of the gray old mansion. He
remembered the delight of his boy--that boy whom he loved more than
he had ever loved any one, unless it were his invalid mother--and
he could not forget the same slight form, with serious shadowed face
and earnest eyes moving softly about the sick-room of the child,
her eyes full of sorrowful anxiety as if the life she sought to
save were part of her own being. He wondered that any one could
think of her as a stranger. It was true she had come from the North
and was engaged in a despised avocation, but even that she had
glorified and exalted by her purity and courage until his fastidious
lady mother herself had been compelled to utter words of praise.
So his heart grew sore and his face flushed hot with wrath when
his cousins sneered at this lily which had been blighted by the
fevered breath of his son.
They tauntingly advised him to send to Red Wing and get some of
her "nigger" pupils to attend upon her. Much to their surprise he
did so, and two quiet, gentle, deft-handed watchers came, who by
day and by night sat by her bedside, gladly endeavoring to repay
the debt they owed to the faithful teacher. But this did not seem
to relieve Mr. Le Moyne of anxiety. He came often and watched the
flushed face, heard the labored breathing, and listened with pained
heart to the unmeaning murmurs which fell from her lips--the echoes
of that desert dreamland through which fever drags its unconscious
victims. He heard his own name and that of the fast-failing sufferer
in the adjoining room linked in sorrowful phrase by the stammering
tongue. Even in the midst of his sorrow it brought him a thrill of
joy. And when his fear became fact, and he mourned the young life
no love could save, his visits to the sick-room of her who had
been his co-watcher by his child's bedside became more frequent.
He would not be denied the privilege until the crisis came, and
reason resumed her sway. Then he came no more, but every day sent
some token of remembrance.
Mrs. Le Moyne had noted this solicitude, and with the jealousy of
the confirmed invalid grudged the sick girl the slightest of the
thoughtful attentions that she alone had been accustomed to receive.
She did not dream that her son, Hesden Le Moyne, cared anything for
the little Yankee chit except upon broadly humanitarian grounds,
or perhaps from gratitude for her kindly attention to his son; but
even this fretted her. As time went on, she came more and more to
dislike her and to wish that she had never come beneath their roof.
So the days flew by, grew into weeks, and Mollie Ainslie was still
at Mulberry Hill, while important events weve happening at Red
Wing.