"Wer zum ersten Male liebt,
Sei es auch glücklos ist ein Gott."--HEINE.
During the following week, Storm and I, with the aid of the police,
searched New York from one end to the other; but Emily must have
foreseen the event, and covered up her tracks carefully. Our seeking
was all in vain. In the meanwhile the baby was not neglected; my
friend's third room, which had hitherto done service as a sort of
state parlor, was consecrated as a nursery, a stout German nurse was
procured, and much time was devoted to the designing of a cradle (an
odd mixture of the Pompeiian and the Eastlake style), which was well
calculated to stimulate whatever artistic sense our baby may have been
endowed with. If it had been heir to a throne, its wants could not
have been more carefully studied. Storm was as flexible as wax in its
tiny hand. Life had suddenly acquired a very definite meaning to him;
he had discovered that he had a valuable stake in it. Strange as it
may seem, the whole gigantic world, with its manifold and complicated
institutions, began to readjust itself in his mind with sole reference
to its possible influence upon the baby's fate. Political questions
were no longer convenient pegs to hang pessimistic epigrams on, but
became matters of vital interest because they affected the moral
condition of the country in which the baby was to grow up. Socialistic
agitations, which a dispassionate bachelor could afford to regard with
philosophic indifference, now presented themselves as diabolical plots
to undermine the baby's happiness, and deprive her of whatever earthly
goods Providence might see fit to bestow upon her, and so on, _ad
infinitum_. From a radical, with revolutionary sympathies, my friend
in the course of a year blossomed out into a conservative Philistine
with a decided streak of optimism, and all for the sake of the baby.
It was very amusing to listen to his solemn consultations with the
nurse every morning before he betook himself to the office, and to
watch the lively, almost child-like interest with which, on returning
in the evening, he listened to her long-winded report of the baby's
wonderful doings during the day. On Sundays, when he always spent the
whole afternoon at home, I often surprised him in the most undignified
attitudes, creeping about on the floor with the little girl riding on
his back, or stretched out full length with his head in her lap, while
she was gracious enough to interest herself in his hair, and even
laughed and cooed with much inarticulate contentment. At such times,
when, perhaps, through the disordered locks, I caught a glimpse of a
beaming happy face (for my visits were never of sufficient account to
interfere with baby's pleasures), I would pay my respectful tribute to
the baby, acknowledging that she possessed a power, the secret of
which I did not know.
But in spite of all this, I did not fail to detect that Storm's life
was not even now without its sorrow. At our luncheons, I often saw a
sad and thoughtful gloom settling upon his features; it was no longer
the bitter reviling grief of former years, but a deep and mellow
sadness, a regretful dwelling on mental images which were hard to
contemplate and harder still to banish.
"Do you know," he exclaimed once, as he felt that I had divined his
thoughts, "her face haunts me night and day! I feel as if my happiness
in possessing the child were a daily robbery from her. I have
continued my search for her up to this hour, but I have found no trace
of her. Perhaps if you will help me, I shall not always be seeking in
vain."
I gave him my hand silently across the table; he shook it heartily,
and we parted.
It was about a month after this occurrence that I happened to be
sitting on one of the benches near the entrance to Central Park. That
restless spring feeling which always attacks me somewhat prematurely
with the early May sunshine, had beguiled me into taking a holiday,
and with a book, which had been sent me for review, lying open upon
my knees, I was watching the occupants of the baby carriages which
were being wheeled up and down on the pavement in front of me.
Presently I discovered Storm's nurse seated on a bench near by in
eager converse with a male personage of her own nationality. The baby,
who was safely strapped in the carriage at the roadside, was
pleasantly occupied in venting her destructive instincts upon a linen
edition of "Mother Goose." As I arose to get a nearer view of the
child, I saw a slender, simply dressed lady, with a beautiful but
careworn face, evidently approaching with the same intention. At the
sight of me she suddenly paused; a look of recognition seemed to be
vaguely struggling in her features,--she turned around, and walked
rapidly away. The thought immediately flashed through me that it was
the same face I had seen under the gas-lamp on the evening when the
child was found. Moreover, the type, although not glaringly Norse,
corresponded in its general outline to Storm's description. Fearing to
excite her suspicion, I forced my face into the most neutral
expression, stooped down to converse with the baby, and then sauntered
off with a leisurely air toward "Ward's Indian Hunter." I had no doubt
that if the lady were the child's mother, she would soon reappear; and
I need not add that my expectations proved correct. After having
waited some fifteen minutes, I saw her returning with swift, wary
steps and watchful eyes, like some lithe wild thing that scents danger
in the air. As she came up to the nurse, she dropped down into the
seat with a fine affectation of weariness, and began to chat with an
attempt at indifference which was truly pathetic. Her eyes seemed all
the while to be devouring the child with a wild, hungry tenderness.
Suddenly she pounced upon it, hugged it tightly in her arms, and quite
forgetting her _role_, strove no more to smother her sobs. The nurse
was greatly alarmed; I heard her expostulating, but could not
distinguish the words. The child cried. Suddenly the lady rose,
explained briefly, as I afterward heard, that she had herself lately
lost a child, and hurried away. At a safe distance I followed her, and
succeeded in tracking her nearly a mile down Broadway, where she
vanished into what appeared to be a genteel dressmaking establishment.
By the aid of a friend of mine, a dealer in furnishing goods, whom I
thought it prudent to take into my confidence, I ascertained that she
called herself Mrs. Helm (an ineffectual disguise of the Norwegian
Hjelm), that she was a widow of quiet demeanor and most exemplary
habits, and that she had worked as a seamstress in the establishment
during the past four months. My friend elicited these important facts
under the pretence of wishing to employ her himself in the shirtmaking
department of his own business.
Having through the same agency obtained the street and number of her
boarding-place, I visited her landlady, who dispelled my last doubts,
and moreover, informed me (perhaps under the impression that I was a
possible suitor) that Mrs. Helm was as fine a lady as ever trod God's
earth, and a fit wife for any man. The same evening I conveyed to
Storm the result of my investigations.
He sat listening to me with a grave intensity of expression, which at
first I hardly knew how to interpret. Now and then I saw his lips
quivering, and as I described the little scene with the child in the
park, he rose abruptly and began to walk up and down on the floor. As
I had finished, he again dropped down into the chair, raised his eyes
devoutly to the ceiling, and murmured:
"Thank God!"
Thus he sat for a long while, sometimes moving his lips inaudibly, and
seemingly unconscious of my presence. Then suddenly he sprang up and
seized his hat and cane.
"It was number 532?" he said, laying hold of the door-knob.
"Yes," I answered, "but you surely do not intend to see her to-night."
"Yes, I do."
"But it is after nine o'clock, and she may--"
But he was already half way down the stairs.
Through a dense, drizzling rain which made the gas-lights across the
street look like moons set in misty aureoles, Storm hastened on until
he reached the unaristocratic locality of Emily's dwelling. He rang
the door-bell, and after some slight expostulation with the servant
was permitted to enter. Groping his way through a long, dimly-lit
hall, he stumbled upon a staircase, which he mounted, and paused at
the door which had been pointed out to him. A slender ray of light
stole out through the key-hole, piercing the darkness without
dispelling it. Storm hesitated long at the door before making up his
mind to knock; a strange quivering agitation had come upon him, as if
he were about to do something wrong. All sorts of wild imaginings
rushed in upon him, and in his effort to rid himself of them he made
an unconscious gesture, and seized hold of the door-knob. A hasty
fluttering motion was heard from within, and presently the door was
opened. A fair and slender lady with a sweet pale face stood before
him; in one hand she held a needle, and in the other a bright-colored
garment which resembled a baby's jacket. He felt rather than saw that
he was in Emily's presence. His head and his heart seemed equally
turbulent. A hundred memories from the buried past rose dimly into
sight, and he could not chase them away. It was so difficult, too, to
identify this grave and worn, though still young face, with that soft,
dimpled, kitten-like Emily, who had conquered his youth and made his
life hers. Ah! poor little dimpled Emily; yes, he feared she would
never return to him. And he sighed at the thought that she had
probably lost now all that charming naughtiness which he had once
spent so much time in disapproving of. He was suddenly roused from
these reflections by a vague, half-whispered cry; Emily had fled to
the other end of the room, thrown herself on the bed, and pressed her
face hard down among the pillows. It was an act which immediately
recalled the Emily of former days, a childish, and still natural
motion like that of some shy and foolish animal which believes itself
safe when its head is hidden. Storm closed the door, walked up to the
bed, and seated himself on a hard, wooden chair.
"Emily," he said at last.
She raised herself abruptly on her arms, and gazed at him over her
shoulder with large, tearless, frightened eyes.
"Edmund," she whispered doubtfully. "Edmund."
"Yes, Emily," he answered in a soothing voice, as one speaks to a
frightened child. "I have come to see you and to speak with you."
"You have come to see me, Edmund," she repeated mechanically. Then, as
if the situation were gradually dawning upon her, "You have come to
see _me_."
His _role_ had appeared so easy as he had hastily sketched it on the
way,--gratitude on her part, forgiveness on his, and then a speedy
reconciliation. But it was the exquisite delicacy of Storm's nature
which made him shrink from appearing in any way to condescend, to
patronize, to forgive, where perhaps he needed rather to be forgiven.
A strange awkwardness had come over him. He felt himself suddenly to
be beyond his depth. How unpardonably blunt and masculinely obtuse he
had been in dealing with this beautiful and tender thing, which God
had once, for a short time, intrusted to his keeping! How cruel and
wooden that moral code of his by which he had relentlessly judged her,
and often found her wanting! What an effort it must have cost her
finer-grained organism to assimilate his crude youthful maxims, what
suffering to her tiny feet to be plodding wearily in his footsteps
over the thorny moral wastes which he had laid behind him! All this
came to him, as by revelation, as he sat gazing into Emily's face,
which looked very pathetic just then, with its vague bewilderment and
its child-like surrender of any attempt to explain what there was
puzzling in the situation. Storm was deeply touched. He would fain
have spoken to her out of the fulness of his heart; but here again
that awkward morality of his restrained him. There were,
unfortunately, some disagreeable questions to be asked first.
Storm stared for a while with a pondering look at the floor; then he
carefully knocked a speck of dust from the sleeve of his coat.
"Emily," he said at last, solemnly. "Is your husband still alive?"
It was the bluntest way he could possibly have put it, and he bit his
lip angrily at the thought of his awkwardness.
"My husband," answered Emily, suddenly recovering her usual flute-like
voice (and it vibrated through him like an electric shock)--"is he
alive? No, he is dead--was killed in the Danish war."
"And were you very happy with him, Emily? Was he very good to you?"
It was a brutish question to ask, and his ears burned uncomfortably;
but there was no help for it.
"I was not happy," answered she simply, and with an unthinking
directness, as if the answer were nothing but his due; "because I was
not good to him. I did not love him, and I never would have married
him if mother had not died. But then, there was no one left who cared
for me."
A blessed sense of rest stole over him; he lifted his grave eyes to
hers, took her listless hand and held it close in his. She did not
withdraw it, nor did she return his pressure.
"Emily, my darling," he said, while his voice shook with repressed
feeling (the old affectionate names rose as of themselves to his lips,
and it seemed an inconceivable joy to speak them once more); "you
must have suffered much."
"I think I have deserved it, Edmund," she answered with a little pout
and a little quiver of her upper lip. "After all, the worst was that I
had to lose my baby. But you are very good to her, Edmund, are you
not?"
Her eyes now filled with tears, and they began to fall slowly, one by
one, down over her cheeks.
"Yes, darling," he broke forth,--the impulse of tenderness now
overmastering all other thoughts. "And I will be good to you also,
Emily, if you will only let me."
He had risen and drawn her lithe, unresisting form to his bosom. She
wept silently, a little convulsive sob now and then breaking the
stillness.
"You will not leave me again, Edmund, will you?" she queried, with a
sweet, distressed look, as if the very thought of being once more
alone made her shudder.
"No, Emily dear, I will never leave you."
"Can you believe me, Edmund?" she began suddenly, after a long pause.
"I have always been true to you."
He clasped her face between his palms, drew it back to gaze at it, and
then kissed her tenderly.
"God bless you, darling!" he whispered, folding her closely in his
arms, as if he feared that some one might take her away from him.
How he would love and keep and protect her--this poor bruised little
creature, whom he had once so selfishly abandoned at the very first
suspicion of disloyalty! As she stood there, nestling so confidingly
against his bosom, his heart went out to her with a great yearning
pity, and he thanked God even for the long suffering and separation
which had made their love the more abiding and sacred.
The next day Storm and Emily were quietly married, and the baby and I
were present as witnesses. They now live in a charming little cottage
on the Jersey side, which is to me a wonder of taste and comfort. Out
of my friend's miscellaneous assortment of ancient furniture his wife
has succeeded in creating a series of the quaintest, most fascinating
boudoirs and parlors and bedrooms--everything, as Storm assures me,
historically correct and in perfect style and keeping; so that, in
walking through the house, you get a whiff of at least three distinct
centuries. To quote Storm once more, he sleeps in the sober religious
atmosphere of the German Reformation, with its rational wood-tints and
solid oaken carvings, dines amid the pagan splendors of the Italian
Renaissance, and receives company among the florid conventionalities
of the French rococo period.