"That is a strange fancy, Mona, an awful fancy. Few of us would dare to have secrets if we accepted it."
They were approaching the cottage, and could hear a merry child"s voice singing. "Listen," said Mona, and they stopped. Then the girl"s head dropped. Tears were again in her eyes.
"She"s been sorrow as well as happiness to you, my brave Mona," said Christian. And he put her arms about his neck.
The girl lifted her face to his in the darkness. "That"s true," she said. "Ah, how often in the early days did I gaze into the face of my fatherless little one, and feel a touch of awe in the presence of the mute soul that lay behind the speechless baby face, and wonder if some power above had told it something that its mother must needs hide from it, and if, when it spoke, it would reproach me with its own shame, or pity me for mine."
Christian smoothed her hand tenderly. "If the child suffered," he said, "before her race of life began, let it be mine henceforth to make it up to her with all that love can yet do."
"And when I heard its cry," said Mona, "its strange, pitiful cry as it awoke from that mystery, a baby"s troubled dream, and looked into its red startled eyes and into its little face, all liquid grief, and said, "It"s only a dream, darling," the thought has sometimes stolen up to my heart that perhaps some evil spirit had whispered to it the story of its shame--for what else had it to cry about so bitterly?"
Christian kissed her again, a great gulp in his throat. "Yes," he said, "in the eyes of men we may have wronged the child, but in the eternal world, when these few painful years are as a span, she will be ours indeed, and G.o.d will not ask by right of what symbol we claim her."
They had walked to the gate.
"Wait!" said Mona, and ran toward the door.
Christian thought she had gone to prepare her mother, but returning in an instant, and on tip-toe, with the light of laughter struggling through her tears, she beckoned him to follow her, with stealthy tread.
Creeping up to the window, she took his hand and whispered, "Look!"
They were standing in the darkness and cold, but the house within was bright this winter"s night, with one little human flower in bloom. Ruby had dressed the kitchen in hibbin and hollen and had scattered wheaten flour over the red berries to resemble snow. She was standing near Mrs.
Cregeen"s knee, being undressed for bed. Her heart had leaped all day at the thought of a new hat, which she was to wear for the first time next morning. This treasure had been hung on a peg over the plates above the dresser, and at intervals more or less frequent Ruby twisted about and c.o.c.ked her eye up at it. It took a world of stolen glances to grow familiar with the infinite splendor of its bow and feather. While the threads and the b.u.t.tons were being undone Ruby sang and gossiped. A well-filled water-crock had been set on the table, and touching this, the little one said:
"Do the fairies bathe in winter?"
"So they"re saying, my veen," answered Mrs. Cregeen.
"Can I see the fairies if I lie awake all night? I"m not a bit sleepy.
Can I see them all in their little velvet jackets--can I?"
"No, no; little girls must go to bed."
There was a pretty pretense at disappointment in the downward curve of the lip. The world had no real sorrow for the owner of that marvelous hat. The next instant the child sang:
"I rede ye beware of the Carrasdoo men As ye come up the wold; I rede ye beware of the haunted glen--"
Ruby interrupted her song to wriggle out of Mrs. Cregeen"s hands, pull off her stocking, and hang it on one of the k.n.o.bs of the dresser. "I hope it will be the Phynnodderee that comes to-night," she said.
"Why that one?" said Mrs. Cregeen, smiling.
"Because Danny says that"s the fairy that loves little Manx girls."
"Danny shouldn"t tell you such foolish old stories."
"Are they stories?"
"Yes."
"Oh!"
Another sly glance at the wonderful hat on the peg behind. That was a reality at all events.
"But I"m sure a good fairy will come for me to-night," insisted Ruby.
"Why are sure, Ruby veg?"
"Because--because I _am_."
Christian tightened his grasp of Mona"s hand.
At that moment a gust of wind pa.s.sed round the house. Mona remembered that to-night she was standing with Christian on the spot where last night she had parted with Danny.
"Listen," said Mrs. Cregeen to the child. "Pity the poor sailors at sea."
"Didn"t Mona say Danny was at sea?"
"Yes, she was saying so."
Then the little one sang:
"In Jorby curragh they dwell alone By dark peat bogs, where the willows moan, Down in a gloomy and lonely glen--"
"Mammy, had Danny any father?"
"Everybody had a father, my veen."
"Had Ruby a father?"
"Hush, Ruby veg!"
Mona"s hand unconsciously pressed the hand of Christian. "Oh," she muttered, and crept closer to his breast. Christian"s bowels yearned for the child.
The silvery voice was singing again:
"Who has not heard of Adair, the youth?
Who does not know that his soul was truth?
Woe is me! how smoothly they speak, And Adair was brave, and a man, but weak."
"I am quite sure a good fairy is coming," said Ruby, c.o.c.king her eye aslant at that peg on the dresser.
Christian could bear it no longer. He flung open the door, and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the darling in his arms.
An hour later he and Mona came out again into the night, leaving the little one with laughing, wondering, wakeful eyes in bed, and Mrs.