CHAPTER VII.

THE DESOLATE MOTHER.

It was three months later. The Selbys' shrubbery had changed from the vigorous greens of summer to russet, paling here into sulphur yellow, there deepening to orange and crimson which outshone the less vivid tints of the early chrysanthemums. The autumn flowers, nipped by early frosts, lay black and ragged on their erewhile brilliant beds. The sun was warm and the air sweet with the breath of leaves falling softly in their brightness, one by one, peaceful, beautiful, fragrant, like the ending of a well-spent life.

In the parlour the windows were open; and a fire burning in the grate to temper the air in shady corners proclaimed the fall of the year.

Stretched on a sofa, thin and wan, with hair pushed back--hair which three months before had been soft and glossy and of the loveliest brown, now dry, rusty, grizzled, banded with locks of grey, and mixed all through with threads of shining white--her fingers shrunk and bloodless, clasping a baby's bells and coral, and her dim eyes wet with silent tears, lay the desolate mother mourning for her child. She had been very ill, and bodily weakness, unable to suffer more, was the one consoler as yet to mitigate her grief, by benumbing the capacity for pain. Her George had mingled tears with hers, tears drawn as much by the sight of what she suffered as by its cause. He had tended and watched her with more than a woman's tenderness, but after all he was a man, with his day's work to perform whatever might befall, and the doing it supported him by bringing distraction and thereby rest. True, it jarred miserably on the overwrought nerves to keep up the routine of music lessons, to watch the "fingering" of inattentive pupils and have his senses pierced by their frequent discords; but it was easier to find endurance for these physical ills than for the heartstrain he had felt at home. The patience and fatigue of the outdoor toil brought the calmness he needed so much in the presence of his stricken wife.

For her there was no break or respite to the rush of black and miserable thought. If the child had died she could have borne it. It would have been grief, but grief of the common kind, and for which there is consolation in the pious certainties of another life. It would have been agony to part with her treasure, but agony with a hope. In time she would have learned to bear the bereavement with sorrowful patience and resignation--to think of her blossom snatched away, rather as one transplanted and someday to be recovered in brighter bloom, growing in immortal gardens; just as she looked on the other--brother of the lost one, born since her loss, and which had never seen the light. Oh, if she could but have thought of the two as with each other! But even the consolations of faith were denied her. The child had vanished utterly, and she was left to wonder and surmise whither it might have been carried. Surely if it had died there would have been found some sign or vestige, and then her mother's heart would have been at rest. She would have wept and there would have been an end. She could have rested her thoughts on the armies of the Holy Innocents, and in her dreams a cherub face would have come to her with shining wings, whispering hope and consolation. But even this saddened peace was not for her. She would not entertain the thought that her baby was dead; it was away somewhere--where, oh where?--and perhaps it needed her, and was crying for her, and she could not come to it; and a restlessness seized her, a low dull fever of impotent longing, and kept her pacing the chamber to and fro, till exhaustion numbed her senses and she fell asleep. But oh, what sleep! It was more miserable than waking. Fancy gave shape to her yearnings, and dreams revived their wretchedness into more tangible shape. The baby's cry, as if in pain, rang through them all, and sometimes she could see the arms stretched out to her, but never the face. A shadow undefined came in between, and bore her darling away into darkness. Sometimes her feet would be heavy as lead, and scarcely could she drag herself after, while the shadow fled out of sight, and the cries came to her fitfully, and far away, borne on the wind. At other times she would be able to pursue, but that brought little comfort. The shadow still fled before her, and ah, by what dreary ways! Sometimes it would be dark, and yet she could see them speeding on before; across a raging river, where the waters tossed and tumbled about her, lifting her from her feet, or overwhelming her in their depths; but still she hurried on and clambered up the slippery rocks on the further shore, and up and up where there was no foothold, and she felt herself falling through depths and catching and clinging with her hands and drawing herself upward and up and up among curling mists to dreary deserts far above the clouds. And still the shadow sped on before, and she pursued across the sandy wastes, where horrid reptiles hissed at her as she went by, and clouds of dust arose and came between, obscuring and impeding the way. And still she would pursue and seem to be overtaking. The child's cry would become quite close, and she would see the very dimples at the finger joints and the streaming hair, and she would stretch her hand to lay it on the form, and her hand would pass through it like a shadow and she would awake. It was all a dream, her darling was gone from her and she was desolate.

On the day of the theft she had driven about the town in search of her husband, sometimes hearing of him but never meeting; and then she had gone to the police station herself, breathless with anxiety and haste, and there they were so mechanical and full of formalities, and heard her story with so aggravating an official calm that it wellnigh drove her mad. The person she addressed on entering was sweltering on two chairs, without coat or collar, and his boots pulled off. Before he would listen to a lady he felt it due to himself to rectify his appearance. The boots were tight and could not be quickly stepped into; the coat was on a nail in another part of the office. Then the book of complaints had to be found, and a pen, and so many flies had drowned themselves in the ink that the stand must be refilled, and Mary stood wringing her hands and swaying back and forth in agonized impatience.

"Calm yourself, madame," he said, while he dipped in the ink his pen, and then removed first a dead fly from the point, and next a hair. "I shall now take down your complaints," and he bent over his book, extending his left elbow and bending his head towards it, with the eyes squinting across the page he was about to illustrate with his caligraphy, while with an expert turn of the wrist he made a preliminary flourish in waiting for this member of the public to begin stating her grievance; "but stay one moment, madame; I believe I have mislaid my glasses;" and he started up and laid his hand upon each of his pockets in turn. "No! I believe I must have lef dem in ze ozer desk beside ze journaux."

"Oh man! man!" cried Mary in desperation, "while you are putting off time my baby is being carried further and further away; and we know not where she may be or what they are doing to her!"

"Be tranquillisée madame! Ze occurrence--is of frequent--how you say?--occurrence. Zere are tree--five!" and he held up his fingers to show the number--"infants vich make disappearance all ze days, and zey all turn zemselves up again before to-morrow. Ze leetle tings march in ze streets voisines, and know not ze retour. Ze police arrest, and bring here; and voilà!--l'enfant perdu ees on return to ze famille." At this point the spectacles were discovered, and the speaker returned to his book.

"My baby _could_ not run away. She cannot walk yet." Mary answered. "My baby has been carried off, and you are wasting precious time in talk."

"Ze publique ees so déraisonnable! And me. Behold me!"--and he spread out all his fingers and shrugged his shoulders in philosophic and forbearing remonstrance--"I attend madame's informations."

The "informations" were given, recorded and commented on, and the slow machinery of justice set in motion at last, and the distracted mother turned away to the grey nunnery where foundlings are received and cared for. There she left a description of her child, and begged that if any one resembling hers were presented, she might at once be informed. Then she went home. What to her was the thunder storm and lashing rain? A wilder tempest of doubt raged in her own aching heart. Her husband had arrived before her, and in tears on his shoulder she found the first momentary easement since her trouble began. The world was so hard and callous, so busy, every one with his own affairs; people accepted her desolation so calmly, told her not to fret, that the child would soon be found. She could not have believed the atrocious selfishness of mankind if she had not seen it. The street children, playing after the rain, were as gleeful as ever, without a thought of her distress; losing their balls across the fence and coming over after them--breaking in on her very inclosure, sacred to miserable anxiety, as if nothing were the matter. Her own servants were no better, they were going on with their cooking and their housework just as usual. There was the dinner bell! Who could think of dinner on a day like this? And yet George--and she could not but own that George had proper feeling, and was as anxious and distressed as a _man_ well could be--even George seemed to have bodily appetite. He was not cannibal enough to dine, but he did eat a slice of beef, and drink a tumbler of wine and water. It seemed incomprehensible to her, somehow, that even the round heavens should revolve as usual. But they