With that Mrs. Wheeler pulled down the shade.
Miss Rosetta had to go home. There was nothing else for her to do. On her way she met Mr. Patterson and told him in full the story of her wrongs. It was all over Avonlea by night, and created quite a sensation. Avonlea had not had such a toothsome bit of gossip for a long time.
Mrs. Wheeler exulted in the possession of Barbara Jane for six weeks, during which Miss Rosetta broke her heart with loneliness and longing, and meditated futile plots for the recovery of the baby. It was hopeless to think of stealing it back or she would have tried to. The hired man at the Wheeler place reported that Mrs. Wheeler never left it night or day for a single moment. She even carried it with her when she went to milk the cows.
"But my turn will come," said Miss Rosetta grimly. "Camilla Jane is mine, and if she was called Barbara for a century it wouldn"t alter that fact! Barbara, indeed! Why not have called her Methusaleh and have done with it?"
One afternoon in October, when Miss Rosetta was picking her apples and thinking drearily about lost Camilla Jane, a woman came running breathlessly down the hill and into the yard. Miss Rosetta gave an exclamation of amazement and dropped her basket of apples. Of all incredible things! The woman was Charlotte--Charlotte who had never set foot on the grounds of the Ellis cottage since her marriage ten years ago, Charlotte, bare-headed, wild-eyed, distraught, wringing her hands and sobbing.
Miss Rosetta flew to meet her.
"You"ve scalded Camilla Jane to death!" she exclaimed. "I always knew you would--always expected it!"
"Oh, for heaven"s sake, come quick, Rosetta!" gasped Charlotte.
"Barbara Jane is in convulsions and I don"t know what to do. The hired man has gone for the doctor. You were the nearest, so I came to you. Jenny White was there when they came on, so I left her and ran. Oh, Rosetta, come, come, if you have a spark of humanity in you! You know what to do for convulsions--you saved the Ellis baby when it had them. Oh, come and save Barbara Jane!"
"You mean Camilla Jane, I presume?" said Miss Rosetta firmly, in spite of her agitation.
For a second Charlotte Wheeler hesitated. Then she said pa.s.sionately: "Yes, yes, Camilla Jane--any name you like! Only come."
Miss Rosetta went, and not a moment too soon, either. The doctor lived eight miles away and the baby was very bad. The two women and Jenny White worked over her for hours. It was not until dark, when the baby was sleeping soundly and the doctor had gone, after telling Miss Rosetta that she had saved the child"s life, that a realization of the situation came home to them.
"Well," said Miss Rosetta, dropping into an armchair with a long sigh of weariness, "I guess you"ll admit now, Charlotte Wheeler, that you are hardly a fit person to have charge of a baby, even if you had to go and steal it from me. I should think your conscience would reproach you--that is, if any woman who would marry Jacob Wheeler in such an underhanded fashion has a--"
"I--I wanted the baby," sobbed Charlotte, tremulously. "I was so lonely here. I didn"t think it was any harm to take her, because Jane gave her to me in her letter. But you have saved her life, Rosetta, and you--you can have her back, although it will break my heart to give her up. But, oh, Rosetta, won"t you let me come and see her sometimes? I love her so I can"t bear to give her up entirely."
"Charlotte," said Miss Rosetta firmly, "the most sensible thing for you to do is just to come back with the baby. You are worried to death trying to run this farm with the debt Jacob Wheeler left on it for you. Sell it, and come home with me. And we"ll both have the baby then."
"Oh, Rosetta, I"d love to," faltered Charlotte. "I"ve--I"ve wanted to be good friends with you again so much. But I thought you were so hard and bitter you"d never make up."
"Maybe I"ve talked too much," conceded Miss Rosetta, "but you ought to know me well enough to know I didn"t mean a word of it.
It was your never saying anything, no matter what I said, that riled me up so bad. Let bygones be bygones, and come home, Charlotte."
"I will," said Charlotte resolutely, wiping away her tears. "I"m sick of living here and putting up with hired men. I"ll be real glad to go home, Rosetta, and that"s the truth. I"ve had a hard enough time. I s"pose you"ll say I deserved it; but I was fond of Jacob, and--"
"Of course, of course. Why shouldn"t you be?" said Miss Rosetta briskly. "I"m sure Jacob Wheeler was a good enough soul, if he was a little slack-twisted. I"d like to hear anybody say a word against him in my presence. Look at that blessed child, Charlotte. Isn"t she the sweetest thing? I"m desperate glad you are coming back home, Charlotte. I"ve never been able to put up a decent mess of mustard pickles since you went away, and you were always such a hand with them! We"ll be real snug and cozy again--you and me and little Camilla Barbara Jane."
V. THE DREAM-CHILD
A man"s heart--aye, and a woman"s, too--should be light in the spring. The spirit of resurrection is abroad, calling the life of the world out of its wintry grave, knocking with radiant fingers at the gates of its tomb. It stirs in human hearts, and makes them glad with the old primal gladness they felt in childhood. It quickens human souls, and brings them, if so they will, so close to G.o.d that they may clasp hands with Him. It is a time of wonder and renewed life, and a great outward and inward rapture, as of a young angel softly clapping his hands for creation"s joy. At least, so it should be; and so it always had been with me until the spring when the dream-child first came into our lives.
That year I hated the spring--I, who had always loved it so. As boy I had loved it, and as man. All the happiness that had ever been mine, and it was much, had come to blossom in the springtime. It was in the spring that Josephine and I had first loved each other, or, at least, had first come into the full knowledge that we loved. I think that we must have loved each other all our lives, and that each succeeding spring was a word in the revelation of that love, not to be understood until, in the fullness of time, the whole sentence was written out in that most beautiful of all beautiful springs.
How beautiful it was! And how beautiful she was! I suppose every lover thinks that of his la.s.s; otherwise he is a poor sort of lover. But it was not only my eyes of love that made my dear lovely. She was slim and lithe as a young, white-stemmed birch tree; her hair was like a soft, dusky cloud; and her eyes were as blue as Avonlea harbor on a fair twilight, when all the sky is abloom over it. She had dark lashes, and a little red mouth that quivered when she was very sad or very happy, or when she loved very much--quivered like a crimson rose too rudely shaken by the wind. At such times what was a man to do save kiss it?
The next spring we were married, and I brought her home to my gray old homestead on the gray old harbor sh.o.r.e. A lonely place for a young bride, said Avonlea people. Nay, it was not so. She was happy here, even in my absences. She loved the great, restless harbor and the vast, misty sea beyond; she loved the tides, keeping their world-old tryst with the sh.o.r.e, and the gulls, and the croon of the waves, and the call of the winds in the fir woods at noon and even; she loved the moonrises and the sunsets, and the clear, calm nights when the stars seemed to have fallen into the water and to be a little dizzy from such a fall.
She loved these things, even as I did. No, she was never lonely here then.
The third spring came, and our boy was born. We thought we had been happy before; now we knew that we had only dreamed a pleasant dream of happiness, and had awakened to this exquisite reality. We thought we had loved each other before; now, as I looked into my wife"s pale face, blanched with its baptism of pain, and met the uplifted gaze of her blue eyes, aglow with the holy pa.s.sion of motherhood, I knew we had only imagined what love might be. The imagination had been sweet, as the thought of the rose is sweet before the bud is open; but as the rose to the thought, so was love to the imagination of it.
"All my thoughts are poetry since baby came," my wife said once, rapturously.
Our boy lived for twenty months. He was a st.u.r.dy, toddling rogue, so full of life and laughter and mischief that, when he died, one day, after the illness of an hour, it seemed a most absurd thing that he should be dead--a thing I could have laughed at, until belief forced itself into my soul like a burning, searing iron.
I think I grieved over my little son"s death as deeply and sincerely as ever man did, or could. But the heart of the father is not as the heart of the mother. Time brought no healing to Josephine; she fretted and pined; her cheeks lost their pretty oval, and her red mouth grew pale and drooping.
I hoped that spring might work its miracle upon her. When the buds swelled, and the old earth grew green in the sun, and the gulls came back to the gray harbor, whose very grayness grew golden and mellow, I thought I should see her smile again. But, when the spring came, came the dream-child, and the fear that was to be my companion, at bed and board, from sunsetting to sunsetting.
One night I awakened from sleep, realizing in the moment of awakening that I was alone. I listened to hear whether my wife were moving about the house. I heard nothing but the little splash of waves on the sh.o.r.e below and the low moan of the distant ocean.
I rose and searched the house. She was not in it. I did not know where to seek her; but, at a venture, I started along the sh.o.r.e.
It was pale, fainting moonlight. The harbor looked like a phantom harbor, and the night was as still and cold and calm as the face of a dead man. At last I saw my wife coming to me along the sh.o.r.e. When I saw her, I knew what I had feared and how great my fear had been.
As she drew near, I saw that she had been crying; her face was stained with tears, and her dark hair hung loose over her shoulders in little, glossy ringlets like a child"s. She seemed to be very tired, and at intervals she wrung her small hands together.
She showed no surprise when she met me, but only held out her hands to me as if glad to see me.
"I followed him--but I could not overtake him," she said with a sob. "I did my best--I hurried so; but he was always a little way ahead. And then I lost him--and so I came back. But I did my best--indeed I did. And oh, I am so tired!"
"Josie, dearest, what do you mean, and where have you been?" I said, drawing her close to me. "Why did you go out so--alone in the night?"
She looked at me wonderingly.
"How could I help it, David? He called me. I had to go."
"WHO called you?"
"The child," she answered in a whisper. "Our child, David--our pretty boy. I awakened in the darkness and heard him calling to me down on the sh.o.r.e. Such a sad, little wailing cry, David, as if he were cold and lonely and wanted his mother. I hurried out to him, but I could not find him. I could only hear the call, and I followed it on and on, far down the sh.o.r.e. Oh, I tried so hard to overtake it, but I could not. Once I saw a little white hand beckoning to me far ahead in the moonlight. But still I could not go fast enough. And then the cry ceased, and I was there all alone on that terrible, cold, gray sh.o.r.e. I was so tired and I came home. But I wish I could have found him.
Perhaps he does not know that I tried to. Perhaps he thinks his mother never listened to his call. Oh, I would not have him think that."
"You have had a bad dream, dear," I said. I tried to say it naturally; but it is hard for a man to speak naturally when he feels a mortal dread striking into his very vitals with its deadly chill.
"It was no dream," she answered reproachfully. "I tell you I heard him calling me--me, his mother. What could I do but go to him? You cannot understand--you are only his father. It was not you who gave him birth. It was not you who paid the price of his dear life in pain. He would not call to you--he wanted his mother."
I got her back to the house and to her bed, whither she went obediently enough, and soon fell into the sleep of exhaustion.
But there was no more sleep for me that night. I kept a grim vigil with dread.
When I had married Josephine, one of those officious relatives that are apt to buzz about a man"s marriage told me that her grandmother had been insane all the latter part of her life. She had grieved over the death of a favorite child until she lost her mind, and, as the first indication of it, she had sought by nights a white dream-child which always called her, so she said, and led her afar with a little, pale, beckoning hand.
I had smiled at the story then. What had that grim old bygone to do with springtime and love and Josephine? But it came back to me now, hand in hand with my fear. Was this fate coming on my dear wife? It was too horrible for belief. She was so young, so fair, so sweet, this girl-wife of mine. It had been only a bad dream, with a frightened, bewildered waking. So I tried to comfort myself.
When she awakened in the morning she did not speak of what had happened and I did not dare to. She seemed more cheerful that day than she had been, and went about her household duties briskly and skillfully. My fear lifted. I was sure now that she had only dreamed. And I was confirmed in my hopeful belief when two nights had pa.s.sed away uneventfully.
Then, on the third night, the dream-child called to her again. I wakened from a troubled doze to find her dressing herself with feverish haste.
"He is calling me," she cried. "Oh, don"t you hear him? Can"t you hear him? Listen--listen--the little, lonely cry! Yes, yes, my precious, mother is coming. Wait for me. Mother is coming to her pretty boy!"