CHAPTER VII.THE TWO INFANTS.
Mary Margaret Dillon lay in the sweet sleep which so frequently follows exhausting efforts. Clasped by her right arm she held the strange baby close to her bosom with persevering charity that lived even in her slumber. But her motherly face was turned, with the irresistible instincts of nature, toward the little chubby-faced fellow at her left. He had been nestling closer and closer under her arm without arousing her, and now lay drowsily comforting himself with his little red fist, at which he tussled and worked with persevering philosophy, now and then giving out a loud, relishing smack, as if determined to notify the little interloper how richly he was provided for.
In the energy of his satisfaction, the youngster threw out his feet, and made his tiny elbows play with a vigor that soon aroused Mary Margaret. She gathered up the strange baby to her bosom with a warmer clasp, as if to shield herself from temptation, and then nestled her loving face down to the other baby, and bending back her arm to give him a hug, she began lavishing kisses and blessings upon him.
“Bless the rogue—arrah, bless the crathur! Sure his ginerous Irish blood is up already in consideration of the stranger baby; faix, and isn’t he independent, as an Irish baby born in this blissed land of liberty should be, sure, continting himself intirely with a taste of his own blissed little fist, that by the token’ll yet work for his mother whin she’s feeble and auld. Faix, and wouldn’t the father of him be a proud man, this minit, if he could see the little filler acting in all respects like a gentleman intirely?”
Mary Margaret was interrupted in her pleasant natural talk by a faint shriek that came from the lower end of theward, and starting up from between the two infants, she threw a skirt over her shoulders and ran down the dim room. She paused suddenly with an exclamation of terror, for there upon the cot where we left the pale, young mother, she saw a form so fair, so wild, and yet so spirit-like, standing erect in the smoky light, that all the native superstition of her race rose up to chill her.
“Blessed saints! but it’s a wraith,” she murmured, sinking gently to her knees, “the poor, beautiful crathur has gone sure enough, and this is the shadow she has left, och, hone—och, hone.”
A less fanciful person than good Mary Margaret might have mistaken the vision hovering about the pauper couch for something supernatural. The thin, childish face, so white at the temples and forehead; the burning red of the cheeks; those wild, feverish eyes flashing like stars; the long, thick tresses sweeping down in a golden veil to the coverlet, were full of supernatural loveliness. Mary saw the thin, white hands and arms uplifted in wild grace; the form, slender, waving “like the stalk of some tall flower that threatens to break with the first blast of wind, rising, as it were, into the night.” It was enough to still the blood in the veins of that kind woman, and send her frightened speech in fragments of prayer to her lips.
“Whist—whist! what is it sayin’? for sure it’s words that I hear. Drink, drink! It’s alive! it’s the poor young crathur herself clamoring for the drop of could water, and no one forenent to give it. And I, unnatural heathen that I am, lying there atween the babies, and sleeping as if the whole world belonged to me. Water, drink, sartinly, me poor, white darlint; jest aise yerself down till the pilly and see if I doesn’t bring yees a hull teapot full.”
It was useless making the request. The poor, young thing waved to and fro on the bed, flung out her thin hands, groping in the air for something to lay hold of; then herfragile limbs seemed to wither up; she sunk down through the murky white in a pale heap, covered only from sight by the abundance of her golden hair.
“Hist, hist! what is the matter, darlint?” said Mary Margaret, softly dividing the silken waves from the childish face and attempting to arrange the bed.
The young creature looked up, and a gleam of intelligence shot through the fever in her eyes.
“I am parched, I want drink, my head throbs, my bosom is full of aching fire. My hands—put them in cold water, they are so hot—they will not let me touch it while these hands are so burning hot.”
“There is no drink here!” said Mary Margaret, searching among some cups and bowls that stood upon a chair near the bed, “not a drop of anything.”
Mary ran to her own bed, seized a basin of cold tea that her kindly persuasion had obtained from one of the nurses, and held it to the burning lips of the patient. Then she began to smooth down those long tresses with her hands, and by a thousand gentle movements intuitive to her womanly nature, quieted the delirium that had seized upon the poor girl afresh during the loneliness of night.
As Mary Margaret was performing these kindly offices, she happened to turn her eyes toward a corner of the room. There was nurse Kelly, not asleep, as she had at first supposed, but with her arms folded on a little board table, her chin resting upon them, and her eyes peering angrily through the light shed from a smoky lamp hung behind her on the wall.
Sharp and angry as the notice of a rattlesnake, came that glance through the darkness; and Mary Margaret’s hands shook as she sat down the basin of tea with a sort of nervous terror. Still she was too brave and too earnest for anything like an ignominious retreat, even from the glare of those eyes.
The poor, young patient was relieved by the drink so kindly given, and lay very quietly, unconscious of the malignant influence that had crept even to her pauper couch, unmindful of the gentle care that fell like dew around her. But the noble Irish woman lingered at her post with an instinctive feeling that she was needed to keep watch and ward over that frail life.
But young Ireland in the other cot had at last become heartily dissatisfied with the state of things in that neighborhood. The mouth from which his tiny fist was withdrawn now filled with indignant cries, and Mary Margaret, hastily gathering the skirt around her shoulders, ran back to silence the little rebel before he disturbed every patient in the ward.
She lay down by the child outside the bed, supporting herself on one elbow, for some holy instinct still kept her on the watch. After she had rested a while, and the voice of young Ireland had subsided into satisfied and half-cooing murmurs, she saw the nurse arise cautiously, open a drawer of the table, and steal round to Catharine Lacy’s bed, over which she hovered a moment and disappeared in her corner again. Then came a few moments of silence, broken only by the deep breathing of the sleepers and a restless moan or two from the young woman’s cot.