Wherein Freckles Finds His Birthright and the Angel Loses Her Heart
The nurse left the room quietly, as the Angel entered, carrying the
bundle and picture. When they were alone, she turned to Freckles and saw
that the crisis was indeed at hand.
That she had good word to give him was his salvation, for despite the
heavy plaster jacket that held his body immovable, his head was lifted
from the pillow. Both arms reached for her. His lips and cheeks flamed,
while his eyes flashed with excitement.
“Angel,” he panted. “Oh Angel! Did you find them? Are they white? Are
the little stitches there? OH ANGEL! DID ME MOTHER LOVE ME?”
The words seemed to leap from his burning lips. The Angel dropped the
bundle on the bed and laid the picture face down across his knees.
She gently pushed his head to the pillow and caught his arms in a firm
grasp.
“Yes, dear heart,” she said with fullest assurance. “No little clothes
were ever whiter. I never in all my life saw such dainty, fine, little
stitches; and as for loving you, no boy's mother ever loved him more!”
A nervous trembling seized Freckles.
“Sure? Are you sure?” he urged with clicking teeth.
“I know,” said the Angel firmly. “And Freckles, while you rest and be
glad, I want to tell you a story. When you feel stronger we will look at
the clothes together. They are here. They are all right. But while I
was at the Home getting them, I heard of some people that were hunting
a lost boy. I went to see them, and what they told me was all so exactly
like what might have happened to you that I must tell you. Then you'll
understand that things could be very different from what you always have
tortured yourself with thinking. Are you strong enough to listen? May I
tell you?”
“Maybe 'twasn't me mother! Maybe someone else made those little
stitches!”
“Now, goosie, don't you begin that,” said the Angel, “because I know
that it was!”
“Know!” cried Freckles, his head springing from the pillow. “Know! How
can you know?”
The Angel gently soothed him back.
“Why, because nobody else would ever sit and do it the way it is done.
That's how I know,” she said emphatically. “Now you listen while I tell
you about this lost boy and his people, who have hunted for months and
can't find him.”
Freckles lay quietly under her touch, but he did not hear a word that
she was saying until his roving eyes rested on her face; he immediately
noticed a remarkable thing. For the first time she was talking to him
and avoiding his eyes. That was not like the Angel at all. It was the
delight of hearing her speak that she looked one squarely in the face
and with perfect frankness. There were no side glances and down-drooping
eyes when the Angel talked; she was business straight through. Instantly
Freckles' wandering thoughts fastened on her words.
“--and he was a sour, grumpy, old man,” she was saying. “He always had
been spoiled, because he was an only son, so he had a title, and a big
estate. He would have just his way, no matter about his sweet little
wife, or his boys, or anyone. So when his elder son fell in love with a
beautiful girl having a title, the very girl of all the world his
father wanted him to, and added a big adjoining estate to his, why, that
pleased him mightily.
“Then he went and ordered his younger son to marry a poky kind of a
girl, that no one liked, to add another big estate on the other side,
and that was different. That was all the world different, because the
elder son had been in love all his life with the girl he married, and,
oh, Freckles, it's no wonder, for I saw her! She's a beauty and she has
the sweetest way.
“But that poor younger son, he had been in love with the village
vicar's daughter all his life. That's no wonder either, for she was more
beautiful yet. She could sing as the angels, but she hadn't a cent. She
loved him to death, too, if he was bony and freckled and red-haired--I
don't mean that! They didn't say what color his hair was, but his
father's must have been the reddest ever, for when he found out about
them, and it wasn't anything so terrible, HE JUST CAVED!
“The old man went to see the girl--the pretty one with no money, of
course--and he hurt her feelings until she ran away. She went to London
and began studying music. Soon she grew to be a fine singer, so she
joined a company and came to this country.
“When the younger son found that she had left London, he followed her.
When she got here all alone, and afraid, and saw him coming to her, why,
she was so glad she up and married him, just like anybody else would
have done. He didn't want her to travel with the troupe, so when they
reached Chicago they thought that would be a good place, and they
stopped, while he hunted work. It was slow business, because he never
had been taught to do a useful thing, and he didn't even know how to
hunt work, least of all to do it when he found it; so pretty soon things
were going wrong. But if he couldn't find work, she could always sing,
so she sang at night, and made little things in the daytime. He didn't
like her to sing in public, and he wouldn't allow her when he could
HELP himself; but winter came, it was very cold, and fire was expensive.
Rents went up, and they had to move farther out to cheaper and
cheaper places; and you were coming--I mean, the boy that is lost was
coming--and they were almost distracted. Then the man wrote and told his
father all about it; and his father sent the letter back unopened with
a line telling him never to write again. When the baby came, there was
very little left to pawn for food and a doctor, and nothing at all for
a nurse; so an old neighbor woman went in and took care of the young
mother and the little baby, because she was so sorry for them. By that
time they were away in the suburbs on the top floor of a little wooden
house, among a lot of big factories, and it kept growing colder, with
less to eat. Then the man grew desperate and he went just to find
something to eat and the woman was desperate, too. She got up, left the
old woman to take care of her baby, and went into the city to sing for
some money. The woman became so cold she put the baby in bed and went
home. Then a boiler blew up in a big factory beside the little house and
set it on fire. A piece of iron was pitched across and broke through
the roof. It came down smash, and cut just one little hand off the poor
baby. It screamed and screamed; and the fire kept coming closer and
closer.
“The old woman ran out with the other people and saw what had happened.
She knew there wasn't going to be time to wait for firemen or anything,
so she ran into the building. She could hear the baby screaming, and she
couldn't stand that; so she worked her way to it. There it was, all hurt
and bleeding. Then she was almost scared to death over thinking what its
mother would do to her for going away and leaving it, so she ran to a
Home for little friendless babies, that was close, and banged on the
door. Then she hid across the street until the baby was taken in, and
then she ran back to see if her own house was burning. The big factory
and the little house and a lot of others were all gone. The people there
told her that the beautiful lady came back and ran into the house to
find her baby. She had just gone in when her husband came, and he went
in after her, and the house fell over both of them.”
Freckles lay rigidly, with his eyes on the Angel's face, while she
talked rapidly to the ceiling.
“Then the old woman was sick about that poor little baby. She was afraid
to tell them at the Home, because she knew she never should have left
it, but she wrote a letter and sent it to where the beautiful woman,
when she was ill, had said her husband's people lived. She told all
about the little baby that she could remember: when it was born, how it
was named for the man's elder brother, that its hand had been cut off in
the fire, and where she had put it to be doctored and taken care of. She
told them that its mother and father were both burned, and she begged
and implored them to come after it.
“You'd think that would have melted a heart of ice, but that old man
hadn't any heart to melt, for he got that letter and read it. He hid it
away among his papers and never told a soul. A few months ago he died.
When his elder son went to settle his business, he found the letter
almost the first thing. He dropped everything, and came, with his wife,
to hunt that baby, because he always had loved his brother dearly, and
wanted him back. He had hunted for him all he dared all these years, but
when he got here you were gone--I mean the baby was gone, and I had to
tell you, Freckles, for you see, it might have happened to you like that
just as easy as to that other lost boy.”
Freckles reached up and turned the Angel's face until he compelled her
eyes to meet his.
“Angel,” he asked quietly, “why don't you look at me when you are
telling about that lost boy?”
“I--I didn't know I wasn't,” faltered the Angel.
“It seems to me,” said Freckles, his breath beginning to come in sharp
wheezes, “that you got us rather mixed, and it ain't like you to be
mixing things till one can't be knowing. If they were telling you so
much, did they say which hand was for being off that lost boy?”
The Angel's eyes escaped again.
“It--it was the same as yours,” she ventured, barely breathing in her
fear.
Still Freckles lay rigid and whiter than the coverlet.
“Would that boy be as old as me?” he asked.
“Yes,” said the Angel faintly.
“Angel,” said Freckles at last, catching her wrist, “are you trying to
tell me that there is somebody hunting a boy that you're thinking might
be me? Are you belavin' you've found me relations?”
Then the Angel's eyes came home. The time had come. She pinioned
Freckles' arms to his sides and bent above him.
“How strong are you, dear heart?” she breathed. “How brave are you? Can
you bear it? Dare I tell you that?”
“No!” gasped Freckles. “Not if you're sure! I can't bear it! I'll die if
you do!”
The day had been one unremitting strain with the Angel. Nerve tension
was drawn to the finest thread. It snapped suddenly.
“Die!” she flamed. “Die, if I tell you that! You said this morning that
you would die if you DIDN'T know your name, and if your people were
honorable. Now I've gone and found you a name that stands for ages of
honor, a mother who loved you enough to go into the fire and die for
you, and the nicest kind of relatives, and you turn round and say you'll
die over that! YOU JUST TRY DYING AND YOU'LL GET A GOOD SLAP!”
The Angel stood glaring at him. One second Freckles lay paralyzed and
dumb with astonishment. The next the Irish in his soul arose above
everything. A laugh burst from him. The terrified Angel caught him in
her arms and tried to stifle the sound. She implored and commanded. When
he was too worn to utter another sound, his eyes laughed silently.
After a long time, when he was quiet and rested, the Angel commenced
talking to him gently, and this time her big eyes, humid with tenderness
and mellow with happiness, seemed as if they could not leave his face.
“Dear Freckles,” she was saying, “across your knees there is the face of
the mother who went into the fire for you, and I know the name--old and
full of honor--to which you were born. Dear heart, which will you have
first?”
Freckles was very tired; the big drops of perspiration ran together on
his temples; but the watching Angel caught the words his lips formed,
“Me mother!”
She lifted the lovely pictured face and set it in the nook of his arm.
Freckles caught her hand and drew her beside him, and together they
gazed at the picture while the tears slid over their cheeks.
“Me mother! Oh, me mother! Can you ever be forgiving me? Oh, me
beautiful little mother!” chanted Freckles over and over in exalted
wonder, until he was so completely exhausted that his lips refused to
form the question in his weary eyes.
“Wait!” cried the Angel with inborn refinement, for she could no more
answer that question than he could ask. “Wait, I will write it!”
She hurried to the table, caught up the nurse's pencil, and on the back
of a prescription tablet scrawled it: “Terence Maxwell O'More, Dunderry
House, County Clare, Ireland.”
Before she had finished came Freckles' voice: “Angel, are you hurrying?”
“Yes,” said the Angel; “I am. But there is a good deal of it. I have to
put in your house and country, so that you will feel located.”
“Me house?” marveled Freckles.
“Of course,” said the Angel. “Your uncle says your grandmother left your
father her dower house and estate, because she knew his father would cut
him off. You get that, and all your share of your grandfather's property
besides. It is all set off for you and waiting. Lord O'More told me so.
I suspect you are richer than McLean, Freckles.”
She closed his fingers over the slip and straightened his hair.
“Now you are all right, dear Limberlost guard,” she said. “You go to
sleep and don't think of a thing but just pure joy, joy, joy! I'll keep
your people until you wake up. You are too tired to see anyone else just
now!”
Freckles caught her skirt as she turned from him.
“I'll go to sleep in five minutes,” he said, “if you will be doing just
one thing more for me. Send for your father! Oh, Angel, send for him
quick! How will I ever be waiting until he comes?”
One instant the Angel stood looking at him. The next a crimson wave
darkly stained her lovely face. Her chin began a spasmodic quivering and
the tears sprang into her eyes. Her hands caught at her chest as if she
were stifling. Freckles' grasp on her tightened until he drew her beside
him. He slipped his arm around her and drew her face to his pillow.
“Don't, Angel; for the love of mercy don't be doing that,” he implored.
“I can't be bearing it. Tell me. You must tell me.”
The Angel shook her head.
“That ain't fair, Angel,” said Freckles. “You made me tell you when it
was like tearing the heart raw from me breast. And you was for making
everything heaven--just heaven and nothing else for me. If I'm so much
more now than I was an hour ago, maybe I can be thinking of some way to
fix things. You will be telling me?” he coaxed, moving his cheek against
her hair.
The Angel's head moved in negation. Freckles did a moment of intent
thinking.
“Maybe I can be guessing,” he whispered. “Will you be giving me three
chances?”
There was the faintest possible assent.
“You didn't want me to be knowing me name,” guessed Freckles.
The Angel's head sprang from the pillow and her tear-stained face flamed
with outraged indignation.
“Why, I did too!” she cried angrily.
“One gone,” said Freckles calmly. “You didn't want me to have relatives,
a home, and money.”
“I did!” exclaimed the Angel. “Didn't I go myself, all alone, into the
city, and find them when I was afraid as death? I did too!”
“Two gone,” said Freckles. “You didn't want the beautifulest girl in the
world to be telling me.----”
Down went the Angel's face and a heavy sob shook her. Freckles' clasp
tightened around her shoulders, while his face, in its conflicting
emotions, was a study. He was so stunned and bewildered by the miracle
that had been performed in bringing to light his name and relatives that
he had no strength left for elaborate mental processes. Despite all
it meant to him to know his name at last, and that he was of honorable
birth--knowledge without which life was an eternal disgrace and burden
the one thing that was hammering in Freckles' heart and beating in his
brain, past any attempted expression, was the fact that, while nameless
and possibly born in shame, the Angel had told him that she loved him.
He could find no word with which to begin to voice the rapture of his
heart over that. But if she regretted it--if it had been a thing done
out of her pity for his condition, or her feeling of responsibility, if
it killed him after all, there was only one thing left to do. Not for
McLean, not for the Bird Woman, not for the Duncans would Freckles have
done it--but for the Angel--if it would make her happy--he would do
anything.
“Angel,” whispered Freckles, with his lips against her hair, “you
haven't learned your history book very well, or else you've forgotten.”
“Forgotten what?” sobbed the Angel.
“Forgotten about the real knight, Ladybird,” breathed Freckles. “Don't
you know that, if anything happened that made his lady sorry, a real
knight just simply couldn't be remembering it? Angel, darling little
Swamp Angel, you be listening to me. There was one night on the trail,
one solemn, grand, white night, that there wasn't ever any other like
before or since, when the dear Boss put his arm around me and told me
that he loved me; but if you care, Angel, if you don't want it that
way, why, I ain't remembering that anyone else ever did--not in me whole
life.”
The Angel lifted her head and looked into the depths of Freckles' honest
gray eyes, and they met hers unwaveringly; but the pain in them was
pitiful.
“Do you mean,” she demanded, “that you don't remember that a brazen,
forward girl told you, when you hadn't asked her, that she”--the
Angel choked on it a second, but she gave a gulp and brought it out
bravely--“that she loved you?”
“No!” cried Freckles. “No! I don't remember anything of the kind!”
But all the songbirds of his soul burst into melody over that one little
clause: “When you hadn't asked her.”
“But you will,” said the Angel. “You may live to be an old, old man, and
then you will.”
“I will not!” cried Freckles. “How can you think it, Angel?”
“You won't even LOOK as if you remember?”
“I will not!” persisted Freckles. “I'll be swearing to it if you want me
to. If you wasn't too tired to think this thing out straight, you'd be
seeing that I couldn't--that I just simply couldn't! I'd rather give it
all up now and go into eternity alone, without ever seeing a soul of me
same blood, or me home, or hearing another man call me by the name I was
born to, than to remember anything that would be hurting you, Angel. I
should think you'd be understanding that it ain't no ways possible for
me to do it.”
The Angel's tear-stained face flashed into dazzling beauty. A
half-hysterical little laugh broke from her heart and bubbled over her
lips.
“Oh, Freckles, forgive me!” she cried. “I've been through so much that
I'm scarcely myself, or I wouldn't be here bothering you when you should
be sleeping. Of course you couldn't! I knew it all the time! I was just
scared! I was forgetting that you were you! You're too good a knight
to remember a thing like that. Of course you are! And when you don't
remember, why, then it's the same as if it never happened. I was almost
killed because I'd gone and spoiled everything, but now it will be all
right. Now you can go on and do things like other men, and I can have
some flowers, and letters, and my sweetheart coming, and when you are
SURE, why, then YOU can tell ME things, can't you? Oh, Freckles, I'm
so glad! Oh, I'm so happy! It's dear of you not to remember, Freckles;
perfectly dear! It's no wonder I love you so. The wonder would be if
I did not. Oh, I should like to know how I'm ever going to make you
understand how much I love you!”
Pillow and all, she caught him to her breast one long second; then she
was gone.
Freckles lay dazed with astonishment. At last his amazed eyes searched
the room for something approaching the human to which he could appeal,
and falling on his mother's portrait, he set it before him.
“For the love of life! Me little mother,” he panted, “did you hear that?
Did you hear it! Tell me, am I living, or am I dead and all heaven come
true this minute? Did you hear it?”
He shook the frame in his impatience at receiving no answer.
“You are only a pictured face,” he said at last, “and of course you
can't talk; but the soul of you must be somewhere, and surely in this
hour you are close enough to be hearing. Tell me, did you hear that? I
can't ever be telling a living soul; but darling little mother, who
gave your life for mine, I can always be talking of it to you! Every day
we'll talk it over and try to understand the miracle of it. Tell me, are
all women like that? Were you like me Swamp Angel? If you were, then I'm
understanding why me father followed across the ocean and went into the
fire.”