"INASMUCH--"
Weeks lengthened into months and the days grew short. Philip was still
praying for Mammy Cely and his uncle Richard, but the black woman's skin
was not yet white and Uncle Richard's heart was unchanged.
The case dragged its slow length along. The law's procrastination is
beyond the comprehension of the lay mind. Margaret chafed at it without
avail.
"We cannot hurry it," Judge Kirtley told her, "and you would gain
nothing if you could. It may be six months before it is settled."
During this enforced inactivity and its consequent restlessness Margaret
had gone one day to the Children's Home to execute an errand for Mrs.
Pennybacker. When she returned, that observant lady looked up at her and
said, quietly.
"What is it, Margaret?"
The girl's face was glowing.
"Aunt Mary, I have seen the most beautiful child! So like Philip."
"At the Home?"
"Yes. The matron brought in a lot of little boys for me to try the
mittens on, and this one was the very last. His likeness to Philip
struck me so that before I had time to control myself I had caught him
up in my arms and was crying over him. I acted like a baby. But it came
over me all at once, what if Philip should ever be cast upon the world
like this."
Mrs. Pennybacker wiped her eyes. "What was his name?"
"Louis. Louis Lesseur. I should think he was just about Philip's age. He
seemed so sweet and affectionate. I took him to drive."
"Are his parents living?"
"His mother is. It is a very sad case, the matron says. She is a widow,
has no friends, and they think has only a few months to live. And she is
so desperately anxious about what will become of this child. Aunt
Mary--"
"Yes, Margaret,--"
"Would it be foolish and Quixotic in me to take him? I have more money
than I shall ever need for myself. And Philip has his own. How could I
ever use my surplus better than to give this child a chance in life?"
"It might be foolish, Margaret, as the world counts wisdom, but it would
be a Christ-like folly. 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the
least of these, ye have done it unto me.'"
Later she said, fearing that she had given undue encouragement,
"Margaret, don't do this thing hastily or without sufficient
consideration. You would want in the first place to find out all about
his antecedents. I should go to see the mother. You don't want a child
with bad blood."
"He is not responsible for his blood," Margaret said quickly.
"No, but you would rather it would be good."
"You quoted Christ's words a moment ago. Do you suppose he ever inquired
into people's blood before he helped them?"
"No, I don't. But--" with a wisdom born of a study of the world, not of
the Scriptures--"it will pay you to do it.... Then you ought to find out
whether he and Philip like each other. Children have as strong likes and
dislikes as grown people."
"It is partly on Philip's account that I want to take him. They would be
companions. Besides--oh, Aunt Mary, if the next trial should fail--the
house is so frightfully still."
The following day she took little Louis out to see Philip. The two
played beautifully together, but Mammy Cely looked at him askance. Her
race is always on the lookout for "poor white trash." "No'm, he don't
look lak Philip," she said. "He's got the favor of some chile I've seen,
but it ain't Philip."
He went with her one day to see his mother. It brought quick tears to
Margaret's eyes to witness the meeting. She came back full of pity for
the sick girl.
"Aunt Mary, I don't believe she is as old as I am. So young to die! And
she is so gentle and lady-like. She says she has no relatives at all to
leave him to. Her husband died when Louis was a year old. And I think
she said that neither her husband nor herself had brother or sister.
Poor little tot! He is literally alone in the world. And the world so
big!... Aunt Mary, I think I will have to do it."
She rather feared opposition from Judge Kirtley, but somewhat to her
surprise he acquiesced in the proposed plan without remonstrance.
"Your money is your own and so is your life," he told her. "You are a
woman now, accountable to nobody."
To Mrs. Pennybacker he said afterwards, "I am far from feeling sure
about the outcome of it all. We are doing all we can, but these things
are always uncertain. If it should go against her, it will be a good
thing for her to have this child."
The next visit to the Home decided her. A lady from Chevy Chase had been
there looking for a little boy. She had her eye on Louis Lesseur.
"I told her," reported the matron, "that we had given the refusal of him
to another lady."
Margaret's brows came together in a quick frown. This seemed like
bargaining for flesh and blood.
"If you could make your decision soon--"
"I will make it now," she said. "I am ready to take him at any time."
But when she got home Mrs. Pennybacker objected strongly to the
suddenness of her decision.
"Go and see the mother, Margaret, and insist upon a history of the
family. Don't think of taking him without that." Caution is stronger at
sixty than at twenty-six.
"I shall take him whatever the family history is!... Yes, I know it is a
responsibility. And so is not taking him. He will soon be a motherless
child, and my arms are empty. Aunt Mary," she went on thoughtfully, "I
never used to think about these things as I do now, but I cannot see a
helpless child these days without my whole heart going out to him. Is it
because I am older, or is it Philip?"
"It is Philip, Margaret. This is the way God takes to enlarge our
sympathies. The true mother heart can take in more than her own.... No,
I know it, but all women who have borne children are not true mothers,
and sometimes the very essence of maternity bubbles up in the heart of
one who has never found a mate.... And there is another thing: When
sorrow sits at our fireside and talks with us, it always leaves us with
a quicker ear to catch what she has said to others. I doubt if you could
comprehend this poor mother's anxieties if you were not yourself
acquainted with grief."
She smiled to herself an hour later as Margaret drove off to the
hospital, eager for the interview that would settle the matter.
"For taking her out of herself," she said, "this is almost equal to the
whirl of society."
* * * * *
To a little white bed in the hospital ward Margaret went. Upon it a
young girl, beautiful even with death's seal upon her face, half lay,
half sat, propped up with pillows, her eyes from the contrast with her
white face seeming preternaturally bright. There was a feverish
eagerness of speech battling with a shortness of breath as she received
Margaret, which told its little tale of the flaring up of life's flame,
but back of that was a natural vivacity and profuseness of gesture even
in her weakness that hinted at Gallic blood.
The ward was a lonely one. Over its portals a practiced eye could read,
"All hope abandon, ye who enter here." Its inmates went out sometimes,
but they never returned. A few beds away an old woman moaned
monotonously. She was near enough to have heard their conversation, but
the sands of life were running so low that hearing was dulled and
curiosity blotted out. It was a safe place to talk if one had anything
to say.
Margaret's news that a home had been secured for little Louis was
received with manifest relief.
"And is it a good woman that has taken him?" the mother asked, clasping
her hands, "Will she be good to him? Will she teach him to be good?"
"I am sure she will try to do both," said Margaret. She felt a
disinclination to tell the girl just yet that she herself was the one
who was to take him. She would find out from her the story of her life
first and then tell her. "But she is anxious to know something more
about the child. Would--" she found it difficult to phrase her
sentence--"would you be willing to tell this lady, through me, something
of your life?"
"My life?" faltered the girl, her eyes growing frightened. "Why--why
does she want to know--about my life?"
"Her friends think that she should know something of the little
boy's--antecedents." It was Mrs. Pennybacker's word, not hers. "No, do
not misunderstand me--" a slight flush had crept into the sick girl's
face--"it is not idle curiosity, nor is it that she doubts you. This
lady wishes to know enough to satisfy the child when, in after years, he
begins to want to know something about his own history. There is--pardon
me--I feel that I must ask--there is no blot of any kind upon his name?"
Her own face crimsoned as she put the question, but it was one that Mrs.
Pennybacker insisted must be asked, and indeed, as she talked to the
sick girl now, she felt herself that she must ask it. A child taken from
a Home so often had suspicion cast upon its parentage. The greatest
kindness she could do him was to have a plain answer to a direct
question--cruel though it seemed.
The sick girl lay very still. When at last she spoke she looked into
Margaret's face and answered,
"There is no blot upon his name."
Her breath was labored. She put her hand once to her throat. Then
summoning her strength she went on rapidly. "He was born in lawful
wedlock. His father was--a carpenter,--a plain man but an honorable one.
He died when Louis was a year old--of pneumonia. We were poor but have
always been respectable."
"I am very glad to know this." said Margaret, filled with contrition at
having forced her to say it. "I hope you will not misunderstand my
asking about it. The friends of this lady are more importunate about
this thing than she is, and--"
"Ask me anything you wish," said the woman in a voice strangely quiet
and contained. "I was only distressed for breath a moment ago. I can
tell you anything now."
"Some other time," said Margaret, rising. She could see that the girl's
strength had been overtaxed. "I will go now and see about the little
boy's being taken to his new home. And--" the thought of what it must be
to the girl to feel that another would take her place rushed over
her--"let me promise you for his new mother that she will strive to make
him all that you would have him--all that you would have made him had
you been spared to him--honorable like his father--pure and true as his
mother."
"Oh, madam!" the sick girl cried, and caught her dress. "Oh, madam!"--
But Margaret gently disengaged herself and was gone.
At the office she stopped a moment to ask some questions about Mrs.
Lesseur.
"Ah, yes,--poor Rosalie!" the doctor said. She talked longer with him
than she intended. It was just a question of time, he said, and not a
very long time either. No, it was not tuberculosis, though it seemed
something like it. It was a form of Bright's disease. With that malady
people sometimes simply faded away. It was probable that she would go
that way.... Ah, he was very glad to know that a place had been found
for the child. She had worried so about that.
As Margaret was stepping into her carriage an attendant came hastily
down the steps and spoke to her.
"I beg your pardon, madam, but are you not the lady who has been
visiting Mrs. Lesseur in Ward Five?"
"I am."
"The nurse has just been down to say that her patient is very desirous
of seeing you a moment before you go,--upon a matter of some moment, I
believe."
"Very well. I will go back. Rogers, you may wait."
At the door of the ward the nurse said to her, "You had scarcely gone,
madam, before she seemed in great distress and bade me call you back. I
think there was something she had forgotten to say.... Oh, no, it will
not hurt her to talk."
And again at the little white bed Margaret sat down. The girl had her
eyes closed, and her lips moved as if in prayer or preparation for
something she had to say.
"Rosalie," said Margaret, gently, with a sudden impulse using the girl's
first name, "was there something you wanted to say to me?"
The girl wrung her hands.
"My poor child, what is it? Talk freely to me as you would to a sister."
"Oh, madam, it breaks my heart to have you speak so tenderly. I--I am
not worthy of it. I am not fit to touch your hand. I--I told you falsely
when I said there was no blot upon my little Louis's name. Oh, madam, do
not turn away from him! He is innocent though he is--the child of
shame!"