"My little son!" my mother said. "My--little--son!"
"My mother!" I responded, looking up.
She lifted my right hand. "Dear Jesus, lover of children," she prayed,
"take, oh, take this little hand!"
And I began to say my prayers, while my mother's fingers wandered
tenderly through my curls, but I was a tired child, and fell asleep as I
prayed. And when I awoke, my mother's hand lay still and strangely heavy
on my head.
* * * * *
Then the child that was I knew that his mother was dead. He leaped from
his knees with a broken cry, and stood expectant, but yet in awe,
searching the dim, breathless room for a beatified figure, white-robed,
winged, radiant, like the angel of the picture by his bed, for he
believed that souls thus took their flight; but he saw only shadows.
"Mama," he whispered, "where is you?"
There was no answer to the child's question. The risen wind blew wildly
in the black night without. But it was still dim and breathless in the
room.
"Mama," said the child, "is your soul hidin' from me?"
Still the child was left unanswered. He waited, listening--but was not
answered.
"Don't hide," he pleaded. "Oh, don't hide, for I'm not wantin' to play!
Oh, mother, I'm wantin' you sore!"
And, now, he knew that she would come, for, "I'm wantin' you, mother!"
he had been used to crying in the night, and she had never failed to
answer, but had come swiftly and with comfort. He waited for a voice and
for a vision, surely expecting them in answer to his cry; but he saw
only shadows, heard only the scream of the wind, and a sudden, angry
patter of rain on the roof. Then the child that was I fancied that his
mother's soul had fled while yet he slept, and, being persuaded that its
course was heavenward, ran out, seeking it. And he forgets what then he
did, save that he climbed the broken cliff behind the house, crying,
"Wait, oh, wait!" and that he came, at last, to the summit of the
Watchman, where there was a tumult of wind and rain.
"Mama!" he screamed, lifting his hands in appeal to the wide, black
sky. "You forgot t' kiss me good-bye! Oh, come back!"
He flung himself prone on the naked rock, for the soul of his mother did
not come, though patiently he had watched for the glory of its returning
flight.
"She've forgot me!" he moaned. "Oh, she've forgot me!"
* * * * *
When, trembling and bedraggled, I came again to the room where my
mother's body lay, my sister was kneeling by the bed, and my father was
in converse with a stranger, who was not like the men of our coast. "Not
necessarily mortal," this man was saying. "An operation--just a simple
operation--easily performed with what you have at hand--would have saved
the woman."
"Saved her, Doctor?" said my father passionately. "Is you sayin'
_that_?"
"I have said so. It would have saved her. Had we been wrecked five days
ago she would have been alive."
A torrent of rain beat on the house.
"Alive?" my father muttered, staring at the floor. "She would have been
alive!"
The stranger looked upon my father in pity. "I'm sorry for you, my man,"
he said.
"'Tis strange," my father muttered, still staring at the floor. "'Tis
strange--how things--comes about. Five days--just five...."
He muttered on.
"Yes," the stranger broke in, stirring nervously. "Had I come but five
days ago."
A sudden rising of the gale--the breaking of its fury--filled the room
with a dreadful confusion.
"Indeed--I'm--sorry--very sorry," the stranger stammered; his lips were
drawn; in his eyes was the flare of some tragedy of feeling.
My father did not move--but continued vacantly to stare at the floor.
"Really--you know--I am!"
"Is you?" then my father asked, looking up. "Is you sorry for me an'
Davy an' the lass?" The stranger dared not meet my father's eyes. "An'
you could have saved her," my father went on. "_You_ could have saved
her! She didn't have t' go. She died--for want o' you! God Almighty," he
cried, raising his clenched hand, "this man come too late God
Almighty--does you hear me, God Almighty?--the man you sent come too
late! An' you," he flashed, turning on the stranger, "could have saved
her? Oh, my dear lass! An' she would have been here the night? Here like
she used t' be? Here in her dear body? Here?" he cried, striking his
breast. "She would have lain here the night had you come afore? Oh, why
didn't you come?" he moaned. "You hold life an' death in your hands,
zur, t' give or withhold. Why didn't you come--t' give the gift o' life
t' she?"
The stranger shrank away. "Stop!" he cried, in agony. "How was I to
know?"
"Hush, father!" my sister pleaded.
In a flash of passion my father advanced upon the man. "How was you t'
know?" he burst out. "Where you been? What you been doin'? Does you hear
me?" he demanded, his voice rising with the noise of wind and rain.
"What you been doin'?"
"Stop it, man! You touch me to the quick! You don't know--you don't
know--"
"What you been doin'? We're dyin' here for want o' such as you. What you
been doin'?"
There was no answer. The stranger had covered his face with his hands.
"O God," my father cried, again appealing to Heaven, "judge this man!"
"Stop!"
It was a bitter cry--the agony sounding clear and poignant above the
manifold voices of the storm--but it won no heed.
"O God, judge this man!"
"Will no one stop him?" the stranger moaned. "For God's sake--stop
him--some one!"
"O God, judge this man!"
The stranger fled....
* * * * *
"Oh, my dear wife!" my father sobbed, at last, sinking into the great
armchair, wherein the mail-boat doctor had not sat. "Oh, my dear wife!"
"Father!" my dear sister whispered, flinging her soft arms about his
neck and pressing her cheek against his brow. "Dear father!"
And while the great gale raged, she sought to comfort my father and me,
but could not.