Natalie and her mother were sitting on the west veranda of Consolation
Cottage at the evening hour. Just within the open door of the
dining-room mammy swayed to and fro in a vast rocking-chair that looked
too big for her.
The years had not dealt kindly with the three. Years in the tropics
never do deal kindly with women. Mammy had grown old and thin. Her
clothes, frayed, but clean, hung loosely upon her. Her hair was turning
gray. She wore steel-rimmed glasses. Mrs. Leighton's face, while it had
not returned to the apathy of the years of sorrow at Nadir, was still
deeply lined and of the color and texture of old parchment. The blue of
her eyes had paled and paled until light seemed to have almost gone from
them. To Natalie had come age with youth. She gave the impression of a
freshly cut flower suddenly wilted by the sun.
In Mrs. Leighton's lap lay two letters. One had brought the news that
Natalie had inherited from a Northern Leighton aunt an old property on a
New England hillside. The other contained the third offer from a
development company that had long coveted the grounds about Consolation
Cottage.
"It's a great deal of money, dear," said Mrs. Leighton to Natalie. "What
shall we do?"
For a moment Natalie did not reply, and when she spoke, it was not in
answer. She said:
"Mother, where is Lew? I want him." Her low voice quivered with desire.
Mrs. Leighton put her fingers into Natalie's soft hair and drew the
girl's head against her breast. A lump rose in her throat. She longed to
murmur comfort, but she had long since lost the habit of words. What was
life worth if she could not buy with it happiness for this her only
remaining love?
"Darling," she whispered at last, "whatever you wish, whatever you say,
we'll do. Do you think--would you like to go back to--to Nadir--and look
for Lewis?"
Natalie divined the sacrifice in those halting words. Her thin arms went
up around Ann Leighton's neck. She pressed her face hard against her
mother's shoulder. She wanted to cry, but could not. Without raising her
face, she shook her head and said:
"No, no. I don't want ever to go back to Nadir. Lew is not there. That
night--that night after we buried father I went out on the hills and
called for Lew. He did not answer. Suddenly I just knew he wasn't there.
I knew that he was far, far away."
Ann Leighton did not try to reason against instinct. She softly rocked
Natalie to and fro, her pale eyes fixed on the setting sun. Gradually
the sunset awoke in her mind a stabbing memory. Here on this bench she
had sat, Natalie, a baby, in her lap, and in the shelter of her arms
little Lewis and--and Shenton, her boy. By yonder rail she had stood
with her unconscious boy in her arms, and day had suddenly ceased as
though beyond the edge of the world somebody had put out the light
forever. Her pale eyes grew luminous. The unaccustomed tears welled up
in them and trickled down the cheeks that had known so long a drought.
They rained on Natalie's head.
"Mother!" cried Natalie, looking up--"Mother!" Then she buried her face
again in Ann's bosom, and together they sobbed out all the oppressing
pain and grief of life's heavy moment. Not by strength alone, but also
by frailty, do mothers hold the hearts of their children. Natalie,
hearing and feeling her mother sob, passed beyond the bourn of
generations and knew Ann and herself as one in an indivisible, quivering
humanity.
Mammy's chair stopped rocking. She listened; then she got up and came
out on the veranda. Her eyes fell upon mother and daughter huddled
together in the dusk. She hovered over them. Her loose clothes made her
seem ample, almost stolid.
"Wha' fo' you chilun's crying?" she demanded.
"We're _not_ crying," sobbed Natalie.
"Huh!" snorted mammy. "Yo' jes come along outen this night air, bof of
yo', an' have yo' suppah. Come on along, Miss Ann. Come on along, yo'
young Miss Natalie."
"Just a minute, mammy; in just a minute," gasped Natalie. "You go put
supper on the table." Then she rose to her feet, and drew her mother up
to her. "Kiss me," she said and smiled. She was suddenly strong again
with the strength of youth.
Ann kissed her and she, too, almost smiled.
"Well, dear?" she said.
"We're going away," said Natalie, holding protecting arms around her
mother. "We're going to sell this place, and then we're just going away
into another world. This one's too rough for just women. We'll go see
that old house Aunt Jed left to me. I want to live just once in a house
that has had more than one life."
Day after day the ship moved steadily northward on an even keel. Upon
mammy, Natalie, and Mrs. Leighton a miracle began to descend. Years fell
from their straightening shoulders. At the end of a week, Ann Leighton,
kneeling alone in her cabin, began her nightly devotions with a paean
that sounded strangely in her own ears: "Oh, Thou Who hast redeemed my
life from destruction, crowned me with loving-kindness and tender
mercies, Who hast satisfied my mouth with good things so that my youth
is renewed like the eagle's!"