Weeks lengthened into months and the days grew short. Philip was still praying for Mammy Cely and his uncle Richard, but the black woman's skin was not yet white and Uncle Richard's heart was unchanged. The case dragged its slow length along. The law's procrastination is beyond the comprehension of the lay mind. Margaret chafed at it without avail. "We cannot hurry it," Judge Kirtley told her, "and you would gain nothing if you could. It may be six months before it is settled." During this enforced inactivity and its consequent restlessness Margaret had gone one day to the Children's Home to execute an errand for Mrs. Pennybacker. When she returned, that observant lady looked up at her and said, quietly. "What is it, Margaret?" The girl's face was glowing. "Aunt Mary, I have seen the most beautiful child! So like Philip." "At the Home?" "Yes. The matron brought in a lot of little boys for me to try the mittens on, and this one was the very last. His likeness to Philip struck me so that before I had time to control myself I had caught him up in my Mrs. Pennybacker wiped her eyes. "What was his name?" "Louis. Louis Lesseur. I should think he was just about Philip's age. He seemed so sweet and affectionate. I took him to drive." "Are his parents living?" "His mother is. It is a very sad case, the matron says. She is a widow, has no friends, and they think has only a few months to live. And she is so desperately anxious about what will become of this child. Aunt Mary—" "Yes, Margaret,—" "Would it be foolish and Quixotic in me to take him? I have more money than I shall ever need for myself. And Philip has his own. How could I ever use my surplus better than to give this child a chance in life?" "It might be foolish, Margaret, as the world counts wisdom, but it would be a Christ-like folly. 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me.'" Later she said, fearing that she had given undue encouragement, "Margaret, don't do this thing hastily or without sufficient consideration. You would want in the first place to find out all about his antecedents. I should go to see the mother. You don't want a child with bad blood." "He is not responsible for his blood," Margaret said quickly. "No, but you would rather it would be good." "You quoted Christ's words a moment ago. Do you "No, I don't. But—" with a wisdom born of a study of the world, not of the Scriptures—"it will pay you to do it.... Then you ought to find out whether he and Philip like each other. Children have as strong likes and dislikes as grown people." "It is partly on Philip's account that I want to take him. They would be companions. Besides—oh, Aunt Mary, if the next trial should fail—the house is so frightfully still." The following day she took little Louis out to see Philip. The two played beautifully together, but Mammy Cely looked at him askance. Her race is always on the lookout for "poor white trash." "No'm, he don't look lak Philip," she said. "He's got the favor of some chile I've seen, but it ain't Philip." He went with her one day to see his mother. It brought quick tears to Margaret's eyes to witness the meeting. She came back full of pity for the sick girl. "Aunt Mary, I don't believe she is as old as I am. So young to die! And she is so gentle and lady-like. She says she has no relatives at all to leave him to. Her husband died when Louis was a year old. And I think she said that neither her husband nor herself had brother or sister. Poor little tot! He is literally alone in the world. And the world so big!... Aunt Mary, I think I will have to do it." She rather feared opposition from Judge Kirtley, but somewhat to her surprise he acquiesced in the proposed plan without remonstrance. "Your money is your own and so is your life," he told her. "You are a woman now, accountable to nobody." To Mrs. Pennybacker he said afterwards, "I am far The next visit to the Home decided her. A lady from Chevy Chase had been there looking for a little boy. She had her eye on Louis Lesseur. "I told her," reported the matron, "that we had given the refusal of him to another lady." Margaret's brows came together in a quick frown. This seemed like bargaining for flesh and blood. "If you could make your decision soon—" "I will make it now," she said. "I am ready to take him at any time." But when she got home Mrs. Pennybacker objected strongly to the suddenness of her decision. "Go and see the mother, Margaret, and insist upon a history of the family. Don't think of taking him without that." Caution is stronger at sixty than at twenty-six. "I shall take him whatever the family history is!... Yes, I know it is a responsibility. And so is not taking him. He will soon be a motherless child, and my arms are empty. Aunt Mary," she went on thoughtfully, "I never used to think about these things as I do now, but I cannot see a helpless child these days without my whole heart going out to him. Is it because I am older, or is it Philip?" "It is Philip, Margaret. This is the way God takes to enlarge our sympathies. The true mother heart can take in more than her own.... No, I know it, but all women who have borne children are not true mothers, and sometimes the very essence of maternity bubbles up in the heart of one who has never found a mate.... She smiled to herself an hour later as Margaret drove off to the hospital, eager for the interview that would settle the matter. "For taking her out of herself," she said, "this is almost equal to the whirl of society." To a little white bed in the hospital ward Margaret went. Upon it a young girl, beautiful even with death's seal upon her face, half lay, half sat, propped up with pillows, her eyes from the contrast with her white face seeming preternaturally bright. There was a feverish eagerness of speech battling with a shortness of breath as she received Margaret, which told its little tale of the flaring up of life's flame, but back of that was a natural vivacity and profuseness of gesture even in her weakness that hinted at Gallic blood. The ward was a lonely one. Over its portals a practiced eye could read, "All hope abandon, ye who enter here." Its inmates went out sometimes, but they never returned. A few beds away an old woman moaned monotonously. She was near enough to have heard their conversation, but the sands of life were running so low that hearing was dulled and curiosity blotted out. It was a safe place to talk if one had anything to say. Margaret's news that a home had been secured for little Louis was received with manifest relief. "And is it a good woman that has taken him?" the mother asked, clasping her hands, "Will she be good to him? Will she teach him to be good?" "My life?" faltered the girl, her eyes growing frightened. "Why—why does she want to know—about my life?" "Her friends think that she should know something of the little boy's—antecedents." It was Mrs. Pennybacker's word, not hers. "No, do not misunderstand me—" a slight flush had crept into the sick girl's face—"it is not idle curiosity, nor is it that she doubts you. This lady wishes to know enough to satisfy the child when, in after years, he begins to want to know something about his own history. There is—pardon me—I feel that I must ask—there is no blot of any kind upon his name?" Her own face crimsoned as she put the question, but it was one that Mrs. Pennybacker insisted must be asked, and indeed, as she talked to the sick girl now, she felt herself that she must ask it. A child taken from a Home so often had suspicion cast upon its parentage. The greatest kindness she could do him was to have a plain answer to a direct question—cruel though it seemed. The sick girl lay very still. When at last she spoke she looked into Margaret's face and answered, "There is no blot upon his name." Her breath was labored. She put her hand once to her throat. Then summoning her strength she went on rapidly. "He was born in lawful wedlock. His father "I am very glad to know this." said Margaret, filled with contrition at having forced her to say it. "I hope you will not misunderstand my asking about it. The friends of this lady are more importunate about this thing than she is, and—" "Ask me anything you wish," said the woman in a voice strangely quiet and contained. "I was only distressed for breath a moment ago. I can tell you anything now." "Some other time," said Margaret, rising. She could see that the girl's strength had been overtaxed. "I will go now and see about the little boy's being taken to his new home. And—" the thought of what it must be to the girl to feel that another would take her place rushed over her—"let me promise you for his new mother that she will strive to make him all that you would have him—all that you would have made him had you been spared to him—honorable like his father—pure and true as his mother." "Oh, madam!" the sick girl cried, and caught her dress. "Oh, madam!"— But Margaret gently disengaged herself and was gone. At the office she stopped a moment to ask some questions about Mrs. Lesseur. "Ah, yes,—poor Rosalie!" the doctor said. She talked longer with him than she intended. It was just a question of time, he said, and not a very long time either. No, it was not tuberculosis, though it seemed something like it. It was a form of Bright's disease. With that malady people sometimes simply faded away. It was As Margaret was stepping into her carriage an attendant came hastily down the steps and spoke to her. "I beg your pardon, madam, but are you not the lady who has been visiting Mrs. Lesseur in Ward Five?" "I am." "The nurse has just been down to say that her patient is very desirous of seeing you a moment before you go,—upon a matter of some moment, I believe." "Very well. I will go back. Rogers, you may wait." At the door of the ward the nurse said to her, "You had scarcely gone, madam, before she seemed in great distress and bade me call you back. I think there was something she had forgotten to say.... Oh, no, it will not hurt her to talk." And again at the little white bed Margaret sat down. The girl had her eyes closed, and her lips moved as if in prayer or preparation for something she had to say. "Rosalie," said Margaret, gently, with a sudden impulse using the girl's first name, "was there something you wanted to say to me?" The girl wrung her hands. "My poor child, what is it? Talk freely to me as you would to a sister." "Oh, madam, it breaks my heart to have you speak so tenderly. I—I am not worthy of it. I am not fit to touch your hand. I—I told you falsely when I said there was no blot upon my little Louis's name. Oh, madam, do not turn away from him! He is innocent though he is—the child of shame!" |