Part 12 (2/2)

”My little son!” my mother said. ”My--little--son!”

”My mother!” I responded, looking up.

She lifted my right hand. ”Dear Jesus, lover of children,” she prayed, ”take, oh, take this little hand!”

And I began to say my prayers, while my mother's fingers wandered tenderly through my curls, but I was a tired child, and fell asleep as I prayed. And when I awoke, my mother's hand lay still and strangely heavy on my head.

Then the child that was I knew that his mother was dead. He leaped from his knees with a broken cry, and stood expectant, but yet in awe, searching the dim, breathless room for a beatified figure, white-robed, winged, radiant, like the angel of the picture by his bed, for he believed that souls thus took their flight; but he saw only shadows.

”Mama,” he whispered, ”where is you?”

There was no answer to the child's question. The risen wind blew wildly in the black night without. But it was still dim and breathless in the room.

”Mama,” said the child, ”is your soul hidin' from me?”

Still the child was left unanswered. He waited, listening--but was not answered.

”Don't hide,” he pleaded. ”Oh, don't hide, for I'm not wantin' to play!

Oh, mother, I'm wantin' you sore!”

And, now, he knew that she would come, for, ”I'm wantin' you, mother!”

he had been used to crying in the night, and she had never failed to answer, but had come swiftly and with comfort. He waited for a voice and for a vision, surely expecting them in answer to his cry; but he saw only shadows, heard only the scream of the wind, and a sudden, angry patter of rain on the roof. Then the child that was I fancied that his mother's soul had fled while yet he slept, and, being persuaded that its course was heavenward, ran out, seeking it. And he forgets what then he did, save that he climbed the broken cliff behind the house, crying, ”Wait, oh, wait!” and that he came, at last, to the summit of the Watchman, where there was a tumult of wind and rain.

”Mama!” he screamed, lifting his hands in appeal to the wide, black sky. ”You forgot t' kiss me good-bye! Oh, come back!”

He flung himself p.r.o.ne on the naked rock, for the soul of his mother did not come, though patiently he had watched for the glory of its returning flight.

”She've forgot me!” he moaned. ”Oh, she've forgot me!”

When, trembling and bedraggled, I came again to the room where my mother's body lay, my sister was kneeling by the bed, and my father was in converse with a stranger, who was not like the men of our coast. ”Not necessarily mortal,” this man was saying. ”An operation--just a simple operation--easily performed with what you have at hand--would have saved the woman.”

”Saved her, Doctor?” said my father pa.s.sionately. ”Is you sayin'

_that_?”

”I have said so. It would have saved her. Had we been wrecked five days ago she would have been alive.”

A torrent of rain beat on the house.

”Alive?” my father muttered, staring at the floor. ”She would have been alive!”

The stranger looked upon my father in pity. ”I'm sorry for you, my man,”

he said.

”'Tis strange,” my father muttered, still staring at the floor. ”'Tis strange--how things--comes about. Five days--just five....”

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