Part 8

Colonel Trevethick marvelled. Had he, indeed, succeeded in making this little creature understand; or had some one whom he could not see spoken to her words of sweet mother-wisdom?

He carried her then, and laid her in her little bed, and went back to his own loneliness; but half an hour afterward he heard the small voice calling. “Papa, papa!” and again he went to her, and the little arms came up around his neck, and held him fast.

“Can’t I go too, papa? If you ask God, won’t He let me? Because I do so love my mamma.”

That afternoon Colonel Trevethick had felt as if he had nothing at all left in this world; but now he realized how much emptier still his home might be if he lost out of it this child who was so like her mother.

“Mamma would not want you to come,” he said passionately. “_She_ has all heaven, and _I_ only you,--only you, little Maudie, in all the world. Mamma wants you to stay with me.”

After that she was quite quiet; and when he looked in at her, an hour later, she was sound asleep, with one little hand like a crushed white rose under the red rose of her flushed cheek.

She never asked for her mother after that night; but her father was sure that she never forgot her. She was the strangest, gravest little creature. She never made any noise, even at her play; and she never did any of the things for which her mother had been used to reprove her. The trouble was that she was too perfect; there was something unnatural about it which frightened Colonel Trevethick. He would have been glad if she had been naughty, sometimes, like other children. He longed to have her tease him, to see in her some spirit of naughtiness or contradiction; but he saw none. She grew tall quite fast, but she was very thin,--a little white wraith of a creature, who looked as if she had been made out of snow, and might melt away as soon.

It was a good thing for Colonel Trevethick, no doubt, that he had her to tend, and to be anxious about. It kept him from surrendering himself to his own grief.

Nearly two years went on, and all the time the little girl grew more and more frail; until, at last, when she had just passed her eighth birthday, she was taken very ill. Her illness seemed a sort of low, nervous fever, and she grew daily more feeble. A skilful nurse came to share with Bessie the task of tending her, and her father was seldom far away. Half the day he would be sitting in her room, and half a dozen times in the night he would steal in to watch her breathing.

One afternoon, as he sat by her bed, she looked up at him with a sad, tender look, too old for her years,--but then all her words and ways were too old for her years.

“Papa,” she said, “I would get well if I could, to please you. I _should_ get well, I know, if I had mamma to nurse me. Don’t you know how she used, if my head ached, to put her hand on it and make it stop?”

A sudden mist of tears came between his eyes and the little white face looking up at him. She had not spoken before of her mother for so many months, and yet how well she remembered! Instantly his wife’s words, that last day, came back to his memory. She had said, “I know that when Maudie needs me most, or you most want me, I shall be there beside you.”

_Was_ she there now? Could she breathe upon the little wasting life some merciful dew of healing? or was she, perhaps, by her very love and longing, drawing the child home to herself?

That night Bessie was to sit up until one o’clock, and then to call the nurse. As for Colonel Trevethick, he would be in and out, as usual.

He went to bed, and fell into sleep and a dream. His own Maud was beside him as he saw her first, then as his bride, his wife, then with Baby Maudie on her breast; just as of old he seemed to have her with him again,--his pride, his darling, the one woman he had ever loved.

He woke at last. Had his dream, then, lasted the night through? Was this red ray that touched his face the first hint of the rising sun? He sprang up quickly. The whole night had indeed passed, and he had not seen Maudie. He hurried into a dressing-gown and went to her room. He expected to find the nurse there, but, instead, Bessie sat beside the table just where he had left her the night before, but sound asleep. Evidently she must have been asleep for hours, and had not called the nurse, who had slept in her turn: they were all tired enough, Heaven knows. But, meantime, what of Maudie? What harm had come to her, alone, unattended?

He drew aside the curtain of her little bed and looked in. Surely this was not the Maud he had left the night before, so pale and worn upon her pillows? A face looked up at him bright as the new day. A soft, healthy color was in the cheeks, and the moist lips were crimson.

“I knew I should be well if _she_ tended me,” a voice cried, gayer and gladder than he had heard from her lips in two years.

What _did_ the child mean? Had she gone mad? He controlled himself, and asked,--

“Who tended you, my child? I found Bessie sound asleep.”

“Yes; mamma made her sleep, and you, and nurse. She sent all of you the dreams you like best; and all night long she sat here beside my bed, with her hand on my head, just as she used to put it long ago. She was all in white, and her hair fell about her shoulders, and her eyes were very, very bright, and her lips, when she kissed me, seemed somehow to melt away.”

“So you, too, dreamed about mamma, darling?”

“No, indeed, papa, I did not dream. Mamma sat there all night long, with her hand upon my head. Sometimes I slept, but more often I woke up to look at her; and all the time she sat there, and did not tire, until the first sunshine came in at the windows; and then she kissed me and went away. I did not see her go. Perhaps I shut my eyes a moment. Then I looked and she was gone, and then I heard you coming in. She said she was with me every day, but she couldn’t have come to me like _this_, except because I needed her so very, very much. And she wanted to make me well, because you would grieve for me if I came to her; and I was to be very good, and tend you and make you comfortable; and I must laugh and must make you laugh, for laughter was good, and the reason I got ill was because I had been sorry so long, and had not laughed at all. And I was _not_ to be sorry after _her_ any more, because she was very happy, and nothing grieved her except when she saw you and me mourning for her, and not knowing that she was waiting close beside us.”

“_Was_ it her mother? Can it _be_ it was the child’s mother?” the father cried, uttering his thought aloud unconsciously.

“Of course it was mamma; and she has made me well. See if Dr. Dale does not tell you I am well.”

Two hours afterward Dr. Dale came. He stood for a few moments beside the little bed. He looked in the child’s glad eyes, he counted the throbs of her pulse, he made her put out her healthy little tongue. Then he turned to her father.

“Trevethick,” he said, “can you swear that this is the same little girl I left here last night? If the days of miracles were not gone by, I should say that one had been wrought here. I left, I thought, a very sick little person, about whom I was anxious enough, certainly, to make this my first call this morning; and I find my small patient so well that I shall only keep her in bed a day or two longer, for form’s sake.”

“Perhaps it _is_ a miracle,” Colonel Trevethick said, smiling. But he did not explain. There are some experiences too marvellous for belief and too sacred for doubt or question, and that was one of them.

Two days afterward little Maudie went down to tea. She wore a fresh white gown, with lovely blue ribbons, and looked as much like a little angel in festal attire as a human child can be expected to look. But she did not take her usual seat. She sat down, instead, behind the tea-pot, where Bessie usually stood to pour out the tea.

“Hadn’t Bessie better do that?” papa asked, as he saw the little hand close round the handle of the tea-pot.

But Maud laughed, and shook her head.

“No, I don’t think Bessie is ’sponsible,” she said; “and mamma said I was to live just on purpose to do every thing for papa.”

And again Colonel Trevethick asked, but this time silently,--

“Was it--_could_ it have been the child’s mother?”

THE LADY FROM OVER THE WAY.

It was the twilight of Christmas evening,--that twilight which always seems so early, since nobody is ever quite ready for it. The pale gray of the winter’s sky was scarcely flushed by the low-lying sunset clouds, though sometimes you could catch a gleam of their scant brightness as you turned westward.

The streets of New York were crowded, as usual, but everybody seemed even more than usually in a hurry. The air was intensely cold, and nipped the noses of those who were late with their Christmas shopping; but, in spite of it, men and women still jostled each other upon the sidewalk, or stopped to look at the tempting displays of holiday goods in the shops. Everybody, it seemed, had some small person at home who must be made happy to-morrow.

From the window of a large but rusty-looking house on one of the avenues, two children looked down at the throng below, as they had been looking all day. They were in the fourth story of the house, and they could not see into the street very distinctly, but still the movement and the bustle interested them, and their mother was thankful that they had it to watch.

She herself was sewing, catching the last glint of the sunset light for her work, as she had the first ray of the dawning. She had been a beautiful, high-bred woman; indeed, she was so still, though there was no one to note the unconscious elegance of her gestures or the graceful lines of her curving figure and bent head. She was very thin now, and very poorly clad, but a stranger would have felt that she was a lady, and wondered how she came in the fourth story of this house,--a great house, which had been handsome, too, in its day, but which was now let out to innumerable lodgers, mostly of the decent sort of honest, hard-working, half-starved poor people. Not with such neighbors had Mrs. Vanderheyden’s lot been formerly cast, nor for such uses as this had the old house itself been designed. It had been a stately mansion in its time, belonging to the estate of a good old Knickerbocker family, which was quite run out now. But there was one great comfort in this house: it had been so well built that its thick walls shut out all alien noises effectually, and made solitude possible even in a tenement house. Perhaps Mrs. Vanderheyden had thought of this when she chose her abode there.

There was something in the faded grandeur of the old mansion that harmonized with the lingering grace of her own faded beauty. Its lofty walls were wainscoted with carved oak, almost black with time; and any imaginative person would have been likely to people it with the ghosts of the beautiful girls whose room no doubt this was in the old days. There, between those windows, hung, perhaps, their great, gleaming mirror, and into it they looked, all smiles and blushes and beauty, when they were ready for their first ball. But Mrs. Vanderheyden’s two little girls did not think of the other girls who might have lived there once. They were too young for that, and too hungry. Ethel, the elder, was only ten; and shy little Annie, beside her, scarcely seven. They saw a sight, however, from the window at which they stood, that interested them more than any vision of the past would have done.

The avenue on which they lived was in a transition state. Trade had come into it and lodging-houses had vulgarized it, and yet there were some of the rich old residents who still clung to the houses in which their fathers and mothers had lived and died. There was one such directly opposite; and to look into the parlor over the way, and see there all the warmth and brightness and beauty of which they themselves were deprived, had been one of the chief enjoyments of the little Vanderheydens ever since they had been in the house. They were all that Mrs. Vanderheyden had left, these two girls. Wealth was gone, friends were gone, father and father’s home, husband and husband’s home--hope itself was gone; but she was not quite alone while she had these two for whom to struggle--to live or to die, as Heaven would. It was for their sakes that she had worked from dawning till nightfall, though she had felt all the time what seemed to her a mortal sickness stealing over her. Their breakfast and dinner had been only bread, of which she herself had scarcely tasted; but to-morrow would be Christmas, and it should go hard with her but she would give them better fare then. A dozen times during the day one or the other little voice had asked anxiously,--

“Shall we surely, surely, have dinner to-morrow, because it is Christmas Day?”

And she had answered,--

“Please Heaven, you surely shall. My work is almost done;” and then she had stitched away more resolutely than ever on the child’s frock she was elaborately embroidering. The children meanwhile were feeding upon hope, and watching a scene in the house over the way, where, as they thought, all that any human creature could possibly hope for had already been given. Busy preparations had been made in that other house for Christmas. There was a great Christmas-tree in one corner, all full of little tapers, and a large, fair, gentle-looking woman had been engaged much of the afternoon in arranging gifts upon it. Now, with the twilight, a boy and girl had come in and were watching the lighting up of the Christmas-tree.

“It’s so good of them not to pull the curtains down,” Ethel said, with a sigh of delight. “It’s almost as good as being there--almost.”

“I do suppose that’s the very grandest house in all New York,” little Annie said, in a tone of awe and admiration.

“Nonsense! You only think that because you are so little,” answered Ethel, from the height of her three years more of experience. “_You_ forget, but _I_ can remember. We had a finer house ourselves, before poor papa died. There are plenty of them, only we’re so poor we don’t see them.”

“Oh, it’s good to be that little girl!” cried Annie. “See how pretty her dress is, and how her hair curls; and she’ll have lots of presents off that Christmas-tree.”

“So should we, if we had papa,” Ethel answered gravely. “Mamma, when we get up to heaven, do you think papa will know we’re his little girls?”

“I’m sure he will,” Mrs. Vanderheyden answered; and then she rose wearily. “It’s all done,” she said, as she shook out the lovely little robe into which she had wrought so many patient stitches. “I cannot carry it home just yet, I am so tired; I must lie down first; but you shall have a good dinner to-morrow, my darlings.”

The children had seen her very tired before, and they didn’t think much about it when she groped her way to a bed in the corner and lay down, drawing the scant bed-clothes up over her. They stood at the window still, and watched the merry children opposite, until at last a servant came and pulled down the curtains and shut away from them the Christmas-tree, with all its gleaming lights, and the boy and girl, who were dancing round it to some gay tune which their mother played.

Then Ethel and Annie began to realize that they were cold and hungry and the room was dark. Ethel lit a candle. The fire was nearly out, but she would not make another till morning.

“I won’t wake up mamma,” she said, with the premature thoughtfulness that characterized her; “she’s so tired. We’ll just have supper, and then I’ll hear you say ‘Our Father,’ and we’ll get to bed, and in the morning it will be Christmas.”

Some vague promise of good was in the very word: Ethel did not know what would come, but surely Christmas would not be like other days. “Supper” was the rest of the bread. And then the two little creatures knelt down together and said their well-known prayers, and I think “Our Father” heard, for their sleep was just as sweet as if they had been in the warm, soft nest of the children over the way, tucked in with eider down. Through the long evening hours they slept,--through the solemn midnight, when the clear, cold Christmas stars looked down, just as they had looked centuries ago when the King of Glory, Himself a little child, lay asleep in an humble manger in Judea. Nothing troubled their quiet slumber until the sunshine of the Christmas morning broke through their dingy windows, and the day had begun.

“It must be ever so late,” said Ethel, rubbing her sleepy eyes, “and mamma isn’t awake yet. But she was so tired. You lie still, Annie, and I’ll build the fire, and when she wakes up she’ll find it all done.”

Very patiently the poor little half-frozen fingers struggled with the scant kindlings and the coal that seemed determined never to light; but they succeeded at last, and the room began to grow a little warm. Then she dressed Annie, and then it began to seem very late indeed, and she wondered if mamma would never wake up. She went to the bedside and, bending over, kissed her mother gently, then started back with a sudden alarm.

“Why, Annie, she’s so cold--almost like poor papa--only you can’t remember--just before they took him away.”

“No, she can’t be like papa,” Annie said stoutly, “for he was dead, and mamma is asleep.”

“Yes, she’s asleep,” said the elder sister firmly. “We must wait till she wakes up. We’ll look over the way, and then, maybe, it won’t seem so long.”

But over the way was brighter than ever this Christmas morning. The curtains had been looped back once more, the table glittered with lovely gifts, and presently the little girl who lived there came to the windows. She looked up at them--they were sure of it; but they could not have guessed what she said, as she turned away, and spoke to her mother.

“O mamma,” cried the sweet young voice, “won’t you come and see these two poor little girls? They stood there all day yesterday and last night; and now see how sad they look. I can’t eat my Christmas candies or play with my Christmas things while they look so pale and lonesome. Won’t you go over and see them, mamma dear?”

Mrs. Rosenburgh was a woman of warm and earnest sympathies when once they were aroused. When she was a girl she too had had quick impulses like her child’s; but she had grown selfish, perhaps, as she grew older, or maybe only careless; for the quick sympathies were there still, as you could see, now that her little girl had touched them.

“To be sure I will,” she answered at once. “Poor little things! I wish we could make merry Christmas for all New York; but since we can’t, at least we won’t have faces white with want looking in at our very windows.”

So the watching, wondering children saw the large, fair lady wrap herself in a heavy shawl and tie a hood over her head, and then come out and cross the street and enter their house.

“What if she saw us, and what if she is coming here!” Ethel said breathlessly.

Then they listened as if their hearts were in their ears. They heard feet upon the stairs and then a gentle tap, and the lady from over the way stood in their room.

“I saw you at the window,” she said, “and came over to wish you a merry Christmas. How is this? Are you all alone?”

“No, ma’am, mamma is in the bed there; but she was very tired yesterday, and she hasn’t waked up.”

An awful terror seized Mrs. Rosenburgh. Had this woman died of want and weariness, in sight of her own windows? She stepped to the bedside, and drew away the clothes gently from the face of the sleeper. She looked a moment on that fair, faded face, and then she grew white as death.

“Children,” she asked, “what are your names?”

“I am Ethel Vanderheyden,” the oldest girl answered, “and she is Annie.”

“And your mother--was she Ethel Carlisle once?”

“Yes, ma’am, before she married papa.”

“And your little sister is Annie?”

“Yes; she was named for mamma’s best friend, one she hadn’t seen for a long, long time.”

Meanwhile Mrs. Rosenburgh had knelt by the bedside. She had lifted the low-lying head upon her arm, and drawn a bottle of pungent salts from her pocket, and she was crying as if her heart would break, while the children looked wondering on.

“O Ethel, my own old Ethel, _wake_ up!” And then she dropped her cheek, all wet with tears, against the white, cold cheek, that was so still.

Oh, was it the warm tears, or the voice that sounded from far away out of the past, or only the strong odor that roused the poor soul from that long, heavy sleep of exhaustion that had so nearly been the sleep of death? I do not know, but I know the eyes did open, and beheld the tender face bending above them. And then, like a little child, the children heard their mother cry,--

“O Annie, Annie, have I been dreaming all this time?”

And then there were explanations, and the story of the long years since Annie Bryant and Ethel Carlisle were girls together was told. But the best of it all, the children thought, was when the lady from over the way took them home with her, and told them the boy and girl there should be their brother and sister, and they should live there henceforth; for she, who had found again her best friend, would never more let her struggle with want alone.

And so the children had gifts and dinner, and a merry, merry Christmas in the bright, warm, crimson-hung room, which had seemed to them such a paradise of delights when they looked down into it from their fourth-story window through the falling shadows of Christmas Eve.

HIS MOTHER’S BOY.

The days were growing very dark for George Graham. He had not known at first what it meant that black specks should so dance between him and the page he tried to read, that his eyes should ache so much, that all things should seem so strangely dim about him. It would have been better, no doubt, had he stopped work as soon as he felt these symptoms; but how could he? This was his last term at school, and if he passed his examination creditably, especially if he thoroughly mastered the bookkeeping he was trying so hard to conquer, he was to have a place in Deacon Solomon Grant’s store, with wages that would not only take care of himself, but greatly help his mother.

His mother was a widow, and George’s love for her was a sort of passion of devotion. When he could scarcely talk, the first two words he put together were, “Pretty mamma,” and ever since then she had been the first and fairest of created beings to him. He was very fond of Susie Hale, but Susie was only a nice girl,--a dear, sweet, good girl, such as any fellow would like; but his mother was the elect lady to whom were due his love, his care, his uttermost duty.

Mrs. Graham was the kind of woman for a son to be romantic about. She was only seventeen when George was born; and now, when he was sixteen and she was thirty-three, she was, so he thought, more beautiful than ever. She had been a pretty, rather helpless little creature all her life,--one of those women toward whom every man feels the instinct of protection. George’s father had felt it always, and had never allowed care to come near his dainty darling. His one great agony, as he lay dying, was that he must leave her almost unprovided for. That was when George was thirteen, and the boy would never forget how his father had called him to his bedside, and charged him to take care of his mother.

“You are old enough to be her staff, even now,” the dying man had said, clinging to his boy’s hand. “You can be good to her in a thousand ways, save her a thousand cares, and in a few years more you can work for her, and keep her comfortably, as I have done.”