XLII
Paula Relates a Story She Has Heard
“None are so desolate but something dear,
Byron
Dearer than self, possesses or possessed.”
In the centre of a long low room not far from the scene of the late disaster, a solitary lamp was burning. It had been lit in haste and cast but a feeble flame, but its light was sufficient to illuminate the sad and silent group that gathered under its rays.
On a bench by the wall, crouched the bowed and stricken form of Roger Holt, his face buried in his hands, his whole attitude expressive of the utmost grief; at his side stood Mr. Sylvester, his tall figure looming sombrely in the dim light; and on the floor at their feet, lay the dead form of the little lame boy.
But it was not upon their faces, sad and striking as they were, that the eyes of the few men and women scattered in the open doorway, rested most intently. It was upon her, the bruised, bleeding, half-dead mother, who kneeling above the little corpse, gazed down upon it with the immobility of despair, moaning in utter heedlessness of her own condition, “My baby, my baby, my own, own baby!”
The fixedness with which she eyed the child, though the blood was streaming from her forehead and bathing with a still deeper red her burned and blistered arms, made Mr. Sylvester’s sympathetic heart beat. Turning to the silent figure of Holt, he touched him on the arm and said with a gesture in her direction:
“You have not deceived the woman? That is really her own child that lies there?”
The man beside him, started, looked up with slowly comprehending eyes, and mechanically bowed his head. “Yes,” assented he, and relapsed into his former heavy silence.
Mr. Sylvester touched him again. “If it is hers, how came she not to know it? How could you manage to deceive such a woman as that?”
Holt started again and muttered, “She was sick and insensible. She never saw the baby; I sent it away, and when she came to herself, told her it was dead. We had become tired of each other long before, and only needed the breaking of this bond to separate us. When she saw me again, it was with another woman at my side and an infant in my arms. The child was weakly and looked younger than he was. She thought it her rival’s and I did not undeceive her.” And the heavy head again fell forward, and nothing disturbed the sombre silence of the room but the low unvarying moan of the wretched mother, “My baby, my baby, my own, own baby!”
Mr. Sylvester moved over to her side. “Jacqueline,” said he, “the child is dead and you yourself are very much hurt. Won’t you let these good women lay you on a bed, and do what they can to bind up your poor blistered arms?”
But she heard him no more than the wind’s blowing. “My baby,” she moaned, “my own, own baby!”
He drew back with a troubled air. Grief like this he could understand but knew not how to alleviate. He was just on the point of beckoning forward one of the many women clustered in the doorway, when there came a sound from without that made him start, and in another moment a young man had stepped hastily into the room, followed by a girl, who no sooner saw Mr. Sylvester, than she bounded forward with a sudden cry of joy and relief.
“Bertram! Paula! What does this mean? What are you doing here?”
A burst of sobs from the agitated girl was her sole reply.
“Such a night! such a place!” he exclaimed, throwing his arm about Paula with a look that made her tremble through her tears. “Were you so anxious about me, little one?” he whispered. “Would not your fears let you rest?”
“No, no; and we have had such a dreadful time since we got here. The house where we expected to find you, is on fire, and we thought of nothing else but that you had perished within it. But finally someone told us to come here, and—” She paused horror-stricken; her eyes had just fallen upon the little dead child and the moaning mother.
“That is Jacqueline Japha,” whispered Mr. Sylvester. “We have found her, only to close her eyes, I fear.”
“Jacqueline Japha!” Paula’s hands unclosed from his arm.
“She was in the large tenement house that burned first; that is her child whose loss she is mourning.”
“Jacqueline Japha!” again fell with an indescribable tone from Paula’s lips. “And who is that?” she asked, turning and indicating the silent figure by the wall.
“That is Roger Holt, the man who should have been her husband.”
“Oh, I remember him,” she cried; “and her, I remember her, and the little child too. But,” she suddenly exclaimed, “she told me then that she was not his mother.”
“And she did not know that she was; the man had deceived her.”
With a quick thrill Paula bounded forward. “Jacqueline Japha,” she cried, falling with outstretched hands beside the poor creature; “thank God you are found at last!”
But the woman was as insensible to this cry as she had been to all others. “My baby,” she wailed, “my baby, my own, own baby!”
Paula recoiled in dismay, and for a moment stood looking down with fear and doubt upon the fearful being before her. But in another instant a heavenly instinct seized her, and ignoring the mother, she stooped over the child and tenderly kissed it. The woman at once woke from her stupor. “My baby!” she cried, snatching the child up in her arms
