He might be inquired for, and traced even, I reflected, and thus my own existence be brought to light. Selfishly, as well as charitably, would I cherish him. Little children had ever been a pa.s.sion with me, but this poor, repulsive thing was the "_dernier ressort_ of desolation."
That very evening I heard the husky and guttural voice of Dr. Englehart in the adjoining chamber, or rather in the closet of Mrs. Clayton, a mere anteroom originally, as it seemed, to the large apartment I occupied.
It was very natural that in her ill condition my dragon should seek medical aid, and I paid no further attention to the propinquity of this unpleasant visitor than I could help--sitting quietly by my shaded lamp, absorbed in the Psalter, in which I found nightly refuge.
He came in at last, after tapping very lightly on the door-panel, unsolicited and unexpected, to my presence--the same inscrutable, hirsute horror I had seen before, with his trudging, sc.r.a.ping walk, his square and stalwart frame, his gloved extremities, his light, blue-gla.s.ses, hat and cane in hand, a being as I felt to chill one"s very marrow.
"Is it true vat I hear," he asked, pausing at some distance, "dat you vant to have dat leetle hompback chilt for a companion, Miss Monfort?"
"It is true, Dr. Englehart."
"And vat can your motif be? Heh? I must study dat for a leetle before I can decide de question, or even trost him as a human being in your hands."
"Lunatics are rarely governed by motives at all," I replied, "only impulses. I want human companionship, however, that is all. I sicken in this solitude--I am dying of mental inanition."
"It is true, you look delicate indeed, I am pained to see." The accent, was forgotten here for a moment, and an expression of real sympathy was perceivable in his low, husky voice. "Command me in any way dat accords wid my duty," he continued, "yes! de boy shall come! To interest, to amuse you, is perhaps--to cure!"
"Thank you; I shall await his advent anxiously; be careful not to disappoint me."
"Oh, not for vorlds!"
"You are very kind; I believe, though, that is all we have to say to one another, Dr. Englehart."
"You are bettair, then?" he said, advancing steadily toward me in spite of this dismissal. "You need no more leetle pill? Are you quite sure of dat?"
"Not now, at least, Dr. Englehart."
"Permit me, then, to feel your pulse vonce more. I shall determine den more perfectly dis vexing subject of your sanity."
"Thank you; I decline your opinion on a matter so little open to difference. Be good enough to retire, Dr. Englehart. Let me at least breathe freely in the solitude to which I am consigned."
"I mean no offence, yonge lady," he said, meekly, falling back to the centre-table on which was burning my shaded astral lamp--for I had left it as he approached, instinctively to seek the protection of an interposing chair, on the back of which I stood leaning as I spoke.
He, too, remained standing, with one hand pressed firmly backward on the top of the table, in front of which he poised himself, gesticulating earnestly yet respectfully.
His position was an error of mistaken confidence in his own make-up, such as we see occur every day among those even long habituated to disguise.
As he stood I distinctly saw a line of light traced between his cheek and one of his bushy side-whiskers.
That line of light let in a flood of evidence. The man was an impostor, a tool, as criminal as his employer--not the footprint on the sand was more suggestive to Robinson Crusoe than that luminous streak to me, nor the cause of wilder conjecture.
Yet I betrayed nothing of my amazement I am convinced, for, after standing silently for a time and almost in a suppliant att.i.tude before me, Dr. Englehart departed, and for many days I saw him not again.
An object that looked not unlike a small, solemn owl, stood in the middle of the floor, regarding me silently when I awoke very early on the following morning.
At a glance I recognized poor little Ernie, and singularly enough, he knew and remembered me at once.
"Ernie good boy now," he said as he came toward me with his tiny claw extended. "Lady got cake in pocket, give Ernie some?" Not only did he recall me, it was plain, but the incident that saved his life, and the rebukes he had received on the raft for his refusal to partake of briny biscuit, which no persuasion, it may be remembered, had availed to make him taste--even when devoured by the pangs of hunger. I tried in vain, however, to recall him to some remembrance of his poor mother. On that point he was invulnerable; the abstract had no charm for him or meaning.
He dealt only in realities and presences.
A new element was infused into my solitude from this time. In this child I lived, breathed, and had my being, until later events startled my individuality once more into its old currents of existence. Not that I merged myself entirely in Ernie, sickly, wayward, fitful, ugly little mite that he was undeniably. Nay, rather did I draw him forcibly into my own sphere of being and find nutrition in this novel element.
So grudgingly had Nature fulfilled her obligations in the case of this poor stunted infant, that, at two and a half years of age, he had not the usual complement of teeth due a child of eighteen months, and was suffering sorely from the pointing up of tardy stomach-teeth through ulcerated gums.
To attend to and heal his bodily ailments occupied me entirely at first, and finally, finding him ill cared for, I made him a little pallet on my sofa and kept him with me by night and day. Surely such devotion as he manifested in return for my scant kindness to him few mothers have received from their offspring. To sit silently at my feet while I talked to him, or do my bidding, seemed his chief pleasures, as they might not, could not have been, had he been strong, and active, and more soundly const.i.tuted. As it was, no more loyal creature existed, nor did the Creator ever enshrine deeper affections or quicker perceptions in any childish frame. Weird, and wise, and witty as aesop was this child, like him deformed; and to draw out his quaint remarks, read him fresh from his Maker"s hand--this warped, and tiny, imperfect volume of humanity--was to me an ever-new puzzle and delight. Severity he had been used to of late, I saw plainly. He shrank with winking eyes from an uplifted hand, even if the gesture were one of mere amazement, or affection, and sat patiently, like a little well-trained dog, when he saw food placed before me, until invited to partake thereof. His manner was wistful and deprecating even to pathos, and I longed for one burst of pa.s.sion, one evidence of self-will, to prove to myself that I, like others he had been recently thrown with, was not the meanest of all created creatures--a baby"s despot!
Oh, better than this the cap and bells, and infant tyranny forever, and the wildest freaks of baby folly. He suffered silently, as I have seen no other child do, uncomplainingly even, and at such times would sink into moods of the blackest gloom, like those of an old, gouty subject.
Hypochondria, baby as he was, seemed already to have fixed his fangs upon him. He had days of profound melancholy, when nothing provoked a smile, and others of bitter, silent fretting, inconceivably distressing; again there were periods of the wildest joy, only restrained by that reticence which had become habitual, from positive boisterousness.
All this I could have compelled into subservience, of course, by subst.i.tuting fear for affection. It is not a difficult matter for the strong and cunning to cow and crush the spirit of a little child; no great achievement, after all, nor proof of power, though many boast of it as such. Strength and hardness of heart are all one requires for this external victory; but human souls are not to be so governed (G.o.d be praised for this!), and love and respect are not to be compelled.
It is the error of all errors to suppose that, because a child has a sickly frame or imperfect animal organization, it is just or profitable to give it over to its own devices, and consign it to indolence and ignorance. Alas! the vacancy that begets fretfulness, and crude, capricious desires, the confusion of images that arises from partial understanding, are far more wearing to the nerves of an intelligent infant than the small labor the brain undertakes, if any, indeed, be needed, in mastering ideas properly presented, and suitable to the condition of the sufferer. One might as well forbid the hand to grasp, the eye to see, nay, more, it will not do to confound the child of genius with the fool, or to suppose that the one needs not a mental aliment of which the other is incapable. Feed well the hungry mind, lest it perish of inanition. It is a sponge in infancy that imbibes ideas without an effort; it is a safety-valve through which fancy and poetry conduct away foul vapors; it is an alembic, retaining only the pure and valuable of all that is poured into it, to be stored for future use. It is a lightning-rod that conducts away from the body all superfluous electricity. It does not harm a sensible child to put it to study early, but it destroys a dull one. Let your poor soil lie fallow, but harvest your rich mould, and you shall be repaid, without harm to its fertility.
Ideas were balm to Ernie, even as regarded his physical suffering. His enthusiasm rose above it and carried him to other spheres.
Some ill.u.s.trated volumes of "Wilson"s Ornithology," which I found in the bookcase, proved to be oil on troubled waters in Ernie"s case; and before long he knew, without an effort, the name of every bird in the two folios of prints, and would come of his own accord to repeat and point them out to me.
I found, to my amazement, that, when a cage of canaries was brought in and hung in the bath-room at my request for his amus.e.m.e.nt, he discriminated and gravely averred that no birds like those were to be found in his big book, though yellow hammers and orioles were there in their native colors, that might have deceived a less observant eye into a delusion as to their ident.i.ty with our pretty importation.
Verses, remarkable for rhyme and rhythm both, when repeated to him a few times with scanning emphasis, took root in that fertile brain which piled his compact forehead so powerfully above his piercing, deep-set eyes, and fell from his infant lips in silvery melody as effortless and spontaneous as the trickling of water or the singing of birds in the trees.
Day by day I saw the little, wistful face relaxing from the hard-knot expression, so to speak, of sour and serious suffering, and a.s.suming something akin to baby joyousness, and the small, warped figure, so low that it walked under my dropped and level hand, acquiring security of step and erectness of bearing. I knew little of the treatment required for spinal disease, but common-sense taught me that, in order to effect a cure, the vertebral column must be relieved as much as possible from pressure, and allowed to rest. So I persuaded him to lie down a great part of the time, and contrived for him a little sustaining brace to relieve him when he walked.
I fed him carefully; I bathed him tenderly, and robbed his weary, aching limbs to rest, so that before many weeks the change was surprising, and the success of my treatment evident to all who saw him--the comprehensive "all" being myself and two attendants.
Dr. Englehart had been suggested in the beginning by Mrs. Clayton, as his medical attendant, but rejected by me with a shudder, that seemed conclusive; yet one evening, unsummoned by me, and as far as I knew by any other, he walked calmly into my apartment, ostensibly to see the little invalid--his charge as well as mine.
For a moment the extravagant idea possessed me that, in spite of appearances, I had done this man injustice, and that he came in reality for humane purposes alone; wore his disguise for these.
This delusion was soon dissipated, as with audacity (no doubt characteristic, though not before evidenced to me), he seated himself complacently and uninvited, and, disposing of his hat and stick, settled himself down for a _tete-a-tete_, an affair which, if medical, usually partakes of the confidential.
"Your little _protege_, Miss Monfort," he said, huskily, "seems to be a serious sufferer," and for a moment dropping his accent while he rubbed his gloved hands together as with an ill-repressed self-gratification; "come, tell me now what you are doing for his benefit," again artistically a.s.suming a foreign accentuation.
In a few words I described my course of treatment and its success.
"All very well," he responded, hoa.r.s.ely, "as far as it goes; but I am convinced that much severer treatment will he necessaire--"
"I think not," I replied, curtly; "and certainly nothing of the kind will be permitted by me while I have charge of this poor infant."
"A few leetle pills, then, for both mother and child;" he suggested, humbly.
"You are mistaken if you imagine any relationship to exist between Ernie and myself," I answered, calmly, never dreaming at the moment of covert or intended insult. "I might as well inform you at once, that I am Miss, not Mrs. Monfort; you should he guarded how you make mistakes of that nature."
And my eye flashed fire, I felt, for I now heard him chuckling low in the shadow, in which he so carefully concealed himself.
"I shall remembair vat you say," he observed, "and try to do bettair next visit; but all dis time I delay in de execution of my mission here.
See, I have brought you von lettair; now vat will you do to reward me?"
Holding it high above my head, in a manner meant, no doubt, to be playful, and to suggest a game of s.n.a.t.c.h, perhaps, such as his peers might have afforded him, he displayed his treasure to my longing eyes, "but I sat with folded arms.