CHAPTER X.ELSPETH.
Eunice and Cricket exchanged frightened glances.
“Where is she now?” repeated Mary Ann, also looking scared.
“In ze water, ’tourse,” returned little Sylvie, impatiently. “Her sailed down ze water all zis way, an’ zen ze bushes taught her, an’ her touldn’t sail any more.”
“Listen! what’s that?” cried Eunice, with white lips.
A distant cry was becoming nearer and louder.
“My bairn! my bairn!” rang a wailing voice.
Around the curve of the brook ran a wild-eyed woman, wringing her hands.
Across the fields, attracted by her cries, two men came hurrying.
“She drowned! my bairn is drowned!” the hapless mother cried, pushing back her falling hair.
“I sawed her fall in!” cried Zaidee.
The questioning men and the half-crazed mother stopped at the child’s words, and gathered around the little ones. They grew frightened and incoherent at the storm of questions that assailed them.
Evidently a tragedy had taken place under the children’s very eyes. They had seen little Elspeth, when they were way up the bank, they said, chasing yellow butterflies. She had run towards the brook, through the tall grass, and she must have plunged straight into the water. This was the main stream of the Kayuna, and the current ran swift and deep there.
The children saw her, and ran to the spot, but they never thought of giving the alarm, for they had no idea what drowning really is. As they said, “the baby kicked in the water, and then it sailed up to the top.” Their chief idea was that they must not poke it with a stick.
They had watched the little creature “sailing” down the brook, and had run along the bank beside it.
“Zere it is,” Sylvie suddenly broke off, pointing to the curve above.
“It’s under the bushes,” Zaidee said, beginning to cry with nervousness and fright. Theexcited group around, all talking and asking questions at once, the frantic mother catching first at one child and then at another, Mary Ann crying and groaning in true Irish fashion, completely bewildered the little ones, who had not the faintest idea of the importance of what they had seen.
As Zaidee pointed, one of the men sprang into the water, knee deep.
“I see it!” he cried, and pressed forward through the water.
The poor mother was plunging after him when the other man forcibly held her back.
“Let me go to my bairn,” she cried, struggling.
“We’ll bring your bairn,” he said, motioning to the two nurses to hold her back, while he tore up the bank.
The brushes grew thick there, and the baby had been caught underneath in such a way that it could not be seen from the steep bank. Excepting that the children had known where it had stopped, it would have been much longer before it was found.
The man on the bank plunged down through the bushes and both men were lost to view.
Five minutes of breathless waiting passed, while even the poor mother only moaned brokenly, and then they reappeared, one of them bearing the little drowned baby.
“Run for your pa, children,” cried Eliza, but Cricket’s swift feet were already flying along to the house.
The group stood in awed silence as the bearer tenderly deposited the dripping little burden on the grass. It looked as if it were asleep. The golden curls clung to its white forehead, and the little face was still rosy.
The poor mother cast herself down beside it in a perfect abandonment of grief, kissing its lips, and clasping the lifeless little form to her breast, as she cried, ceaselessly,—
“Oh, my bairn! my bairn!”
Running at full speed down the lane came Dr. Ward, with blankets, and close behind him followed his wife, with a whiskey-flask. In a moment he was among them, and had caught the child from the mother. He tore off its clothes and put his ear to its heart.
“There is hope, I think,” he said, quickly, and with that, although the baby had been so long under water, there began a desperatefight for the little life. The doctor worked with an intensity that would not yield to despair, rubbing and working the little round, white limbs.
The minutes wore on, and the helpless onlookers could only stand by in breathless silence. The doctor gave brief, quick orders which willing hands executed. He carried the baby into the direct glare of the scorching August sun, which beat down with fierce intensity on his unprotected head. But no one heeded the sickening heat. The poor mother sat by, passively now, like a stone, her hands clasped round her knees, in dull despair. Her long hair, yellow as the baby’s own, rolled in a rough mass down her back, torn and tangled by the bushes, and her wild eyes watched the doctor’s every movement.
The work of rubbing the tiny, white body, and working the little arms up and down, went steadily on, one relieving another, but thus far with no avail.
Half an hour passed. The doctor worked on with set lips.
“Better give it up, sir,” one of the men ventured at last, stopping to wipe his streamingforehead. The doctor’s face was dark purple, and every vein was swelling. At the suggestion of stopping their efforts, the mother uttered a low moan, and stretched out her hands imploringly.
“Work on,” the doctor made answer, briefly. “Work its arms steadily, Johnson. Rub evenly, Emily,” he said, bending again to breathe into the baby’s parted lips. He raised his head suddenly, then bent his ear again to its heart.
“Thank God!” he breathed. A thrill of life ran through the baby’s frame. There was a faint quiver of its eyelashes, a gasp for breath,—another—and the baby stirred. Elspeth was saved.
There was a moment of intense silence, and then the mother threw herself forward and clasped her baby to her bosom with a hungry cry of joy that no one present ever forgot.
Papa’s feelings when he learned that his own little ones had seen the accident may be imagined, and then and there he gave the children a few instructions that even the youngest ones never forgot.
The mother had missed her baby, but shethought nothing of it at first, for the little thing often strayed some distance from the house. At last, growing anxious, she went out again and looked around. Down the bank she saw a little child in a pink dress, which she thought was her little one. It was really a glimpse of Helen in her little pink frock. The mother went back, thinking the child was safe.
After a time she went out to call it home, when, to her horror, she saw her baby’s sunbonnet caught on a low, overhanging branch, with nothing else to be seen; and then knowing the baby must have fallen in, she had rushed, screaming for help, down the bank in search of it.
Little Elspeth, wrapped in blankets, was carried to the doctor’s house to be cared for further, and the next day she was playing about, as round and rosy as ever.