said Polly.
In spite of which reproof, he looked at the child again, intently, as she bent her head over her card-structure, her rich curls shading her face.
"It is impossible," he thought, "that I can ever have seen this pretty baby before. Can I have dreamed of her? In some sorrowful dream?"
He could make nothing of it. So he went into the building trade as a journeyman under Polly, and they built three stories high, four stories high: even five.
"I say. Who do you think is coming?" asked Polly, rubbing her eyes after tea.
He guessed: "The waiter?"
"No," said Polly, "the dustman. I am getting sleepy."
A new embarra.s.sment for Barbox Brothers!
"I don"t think I am going to be fetched to-night," said Polly; "what do you think?"
He thought not, either. After another quarter of an hour, the dustman not merely impending but actually arriving, recourse was had to the Constantinopolitan chambermaid: who cheerily undertook that the child should sleep in a comfortable and wholesome room, which she herself would share.
"And I know you will be careful, won"t you," said Barbox Brothers, as a new fear dawned upon him, "that she don"t fall out of bed."
Polly found this so highly entertaining that she was under the necessity of clutching him round the neck with both arms as he sat on his footstool picking up the cards, and rocking him to and fro, with her dimpled chin on his shoulder.
"O what a coward you are, ain"t you!" said Polly. "Do _you_ fall out of bed?"
"N-not generally, Polly."
"No more do I."
With that, Polly gave him a rea.s.suring hug or two to keep him going, and then giving that confiding mite of a hand of hers to be swallowed up in the hand of the Constantinopolitan chambermaid, trotted off, chattering, without a vestige of anxiety.
He looked after her, had the screen removed and the table and chairs replaced, and still looked after her. He paced the room for half an hour. "A most engaging little creature, but it"s not that. A most winning little voice, but it"s not that. That has much to do with it, but there is something more. How can it be that I seem to know this child? What was it she imperfectly recalled to me when I felt her touch in the street, and, looking down at her, saw her looking up at me?"
"Mr. Jackson!"
With a start he turned towards the sound of the subdued voice, and saw his answer standing at the door.
"O Mr. Jackson, do not be severe with me. Speak a word of encouragement to me, I beseech you."
"You are Polly"s mother."
"Yes."
Yes. Polly herself might come to this, one day. As you see what the rose was, in its faded leaves; as you see what the summer growth of the woods was, in their wintry branches; so Polly might be traced, one day, in a care-worn woman like this, with her hair turned grey. Before him, were the ashes of a dead fire that had once burned bright. This was the woman he had loved. This was the woman he had lost. Such had been the constancy of his imagination to her, so had Time spared her under its withholding, that now, seeing how roughly the inexorable hand had struck her, his soul was filled with pity and amazement.
He led her to a chair, and stood leaning on a corner of the chimney-piece, with his head resting on his hand, and his face half averted.
"Did you see me in the street, and show me to your child?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Is the little creature, then, a party to deceit?"
"I hope there is no deceit. I said to her, "We have lost our way, and I must try to find mine by myself. Go to that gentleman and tell him you are lost. You shall be fetched by-and-by." Perhaps you have not thought how very young she is?"
"She is very self-reliant."
"Perhaps because she is so young?"
He asked, after a short pause, "Why did you do this?"
"O Mr. Jackson, do you ask me? In the hope that you might see something in my innocent child to soften your heart towards me. Not only towards me, but towards my husband."
He suddenly turned about, and walked to the opposite end of the room. He came back again with a slower step, and resumed his former att.i.tude, saying:
"I thought you had emigrated to America?"
"We did. But life went ill with us there, and we came back."
"Do you live in this town?"
"Yes. I am a daily teacher of music here. My husband is a book-keeper."
"Are you-forgive my asking-poor?"
"We earn enough for our wants. That is not our distress. My husband is very, very ill of a lingering disorder. He will never recover-"
"You check yourself. If it is for want of the encouraging word you spoke of, take it from me. I cannot forget the old time, Beatrice."
"G.o.d bless you!" she replied, with a burst of tears, and gave him her trembling hand.
"Compose yourself. I cannot be composed if you are not, for to see you weep distresses me beyond expression. Speak freely to me. Trust me."
She shaded her face with her veil, and after a little while spoke calmly.
Her voice had the ring of Polly"s.
"It is not that my husband"s mind is at all impaired by his bodily suffering, for I a.s.sure you that is not the case. But in his weakness, and in his knowledge that he is incurably ill, he cannot overcome the ascendancy of one idea. It preys upon him, embitters every moment of his painful life, and will shorten it."
She stopping, he said again: "Speak freely to me. Trust me."
"We have had five children before this darling, and they all lie in their little graves. He believes that they have withered away under a curse, and that it will blight this child like the rest."
"Under what curse?"
"Both I and he have it on our conscience that we tried you very heavily, and I do not know but that, if I were as ill as he, I might suffer in my mind as he does. This is the constant burden:-"I believe, Beatrice, I was the only friend that Mr. Jackson ever cared to make, though I was so much his junior. The more influence he acquired in the business, the higher he advanced me, and I was alone in his private confidence. I came between him and you, and I took you from him. We were both secret, and the blow fell when he was wholly unprepared. The anguish it caused a man so compressed, must have been terrible; the wrath it awakened, inappeasable. So, a curse came to be invoked on our poor pretty little flowers, and they fall.""
"And you, Beatrice," he asked, when she had ceased to speak, and there had been a silence afterwards: "how say you?"
"Until within these few weeks I was afraid of you, and I believed that you would never, never, forgive."