Читать книгу Signing the Contract, and What It Cost - Finley Martha - Страница 6

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“The web of our life is of a mingled

Yarn, good and all together.”—Shakespeare.

For a few days the little Ethel was quite inconsolable, crying sadly for “Mamma;” but the new parents were very tender, patient, and affectionate, and the old love gradually faded from the baby memory, till at length it was utterly forgotten in the new. So also was the name her true mother had given her, Mrs. Kemper changing it to Florence, which she liked better.

Anxious that the child should believe herself their own by birth, the Kempers considered it fortunate that it was while journeying to a new home in the West, among strangers, in the little town of Cranley, that they obtained possession of her.

They breathed no hint of the little one’s history, and none of their new acquaintances had the least suspicion of the truth, as indeed how should they when to both parents “our little Floy” was evidently as the apple of the eye?

So loved and cared for, and blessed with a sweet, generous, affectionate disposition, hers was a bright, sunny childhood. She was spared even the loneliness of many an only child, finding companion, playmate, and friend in the little son of the nearest neighbor.

The grounds of the Aldens and Kempers adjoined, and immediately upon the arrival of the latter, friendly relations were established between the two families. Mrs. Alden called upon her new neighbors, taking with her her five-year-old Espy, a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed boy, who straightway fell in love with the lustrous, laughing brown orbs and dark curls of baby Floy.

She sat on a cushion by the side of her new mamma, daintily habited in white, a gold chain about her neck, knots of blue ribbon at her shoulders, and a wide sash of the same at her waist. The plump little arms hugged close to her bosom a doll half as large as herself, while the sweet baby voice sang cheerily, “Bye, baby, bye!”

“What’s your name?” asked Espy, regarding her with admiring eyes.

“Florence,” answered Mrs. Kemper quickly, “but we call her Floy for short.”

“That’s a pretty name, and you’re a pretty baby,” he said, giving her a kiss. “Nex’ time I come I’ll bring my kitten. She’s a nice cat, and I love her; but I’ll just give her to you, if you want her.”

“I was never more surprised,” remarked Mrs. Alden in an aside to Mrs. Kemper. “He prizes that kitten above all his other possessions.”

And thus it ever was from that first moment. Nothing could be, in Espy’s esteem, too good, beautiful, or precious to be given to Floy—“his little wife,” as he began to call her before she was three years old, challenging a special proprietorship in her with which no other boy was allowed to interfere.

A day seldom passed in which he did not present some offering at her shrine, though it were no more than a sweet-scented clover-blossom or a brightly-tinted autumn leaf.

They shared each other’s joys and sorrows: all her little griefs were confided to him; to her he recounted all his boyish dreams of future achievement when he should arrive at man’s estate.

He was a born artist, and found in Floy his chief inspiration; for while his parents and older brothers and sisters laughed at and discouraged him, she believed thoroughly in him, and was sure he would some day be a Rubens, a Raphael, a Michael Angelo, or something even greater than any of them or all put together; and her graceful little figure and winsome face furnished him with a model that he was never weary of copying.

Mr. Alden, hoping that this son would embrace one of the learned professions, determined to give him a liberal education; and the first great grief either Floy or Espy had known was the parting when the latter went away to school. Yet there was compensation in a steady correspondence, kept up with the knowledge and approval of their parents, and in the joy of the reunion when vacation brought Espy home again.

Cranley could boast of a good school for girls, and Floy did not go from home for her education. At seventeen she was a very pretty, engaging girl, and as Mr. Kemper had prospered, and was known to be in easy circumstances, she had plenty of admirers; but she remained true to Espy, though theirs was as yet only a tacit engagement.

Floy graduated from school in June of that year, and Mr. Kemper took her and his wife on a summer trip to the East. They spent several weeks at the sea-shore, visited Philadelphia and New York and other places of interest, then turned homeward.

All had gone well with them, and now within a few miles of Cranley they were speaking of this gladly, thankfully.

“Oh, yes, we’ve had a delightful time,” said Floy, “and yet I am eager to be in our own dear home again. There is no place like home when it is as happy a one as ours.”

Mr. Kemper smiled indulgently upon her.

“Quite right, my little girl,” he said, “and our Floy makes half its brightness to us. Is not that so, mamma?” addressing his wife.

“It is indeed,” she answered, half sighing as the thought suggested itself that, some day, another would have a stronger claim than they upon this darling of her heart.

The whistle blew, the train slackened its speed, then came to a stand-still at a little country station.

“Peaches! apples! pears!”

A boy had come in with a basket of fruit on his arm.

Mr. Kemper bought liberally of him; then selecting a gold half-eagle from the contents of his purse, he dropped it into Floy’s hand, saying, “There’s a trifle for you. I wonder how long it will be before you spend it.”

“A good while, papa, if you keep me in greenbacks enough to supply my wants,” she returned gayly, as she deposited it in a dainty portemonnaie. “Thanks for the gift; I’ll be sure to think of you when I look at it.”

“Better put it in bank along with the rest; there’s five hundred dollars there now to your credit.”

“Then I can afford to keep this to look at.”

The smile died on her lips almost before the words left them.

“Something’s wrong with the engine,” a voice was saying behind her. “Nobody knows how long we’ll have to stop here, and we’re not up to time by half an hour. Hark! what’s that? Another train coming! we shall be run into!”

Faces paled with sudden fear; men and women started to their feet in wild affright. There was a shrill whistle, answered by another, a rush and roar, then a crash, many voices blending in an awful cry, and Floy knew no more till, waking as from a deep sleep, she felt herself gently lifted, while a strange voice said:

“She’s only stunned; not much hurt, I hope. But this other woman is horribly mangled, and the man—well, his pains are over for this life at least.”

Instantly restored to perfect consciousness, Floy opened her eyes with a cry, “Mother! father! oh, where are they? Let me go to them!”

The men set her down on a fragment of the wreck, and turned to help those in greater need.

The girl passed her hand over her eyes as if to clear her vision. Oh, was it not all a horrible dream? The heaped-up ruins, the bleeding, mangled forms of the dead and dying, the shrieks, the groans, the cries for help, the running to and fro of those who were trying to give it, the frenzied search for missing loved ones, the wail of anguish over the wounded and the slain!

What was that they were bearing past her? Could that be her mother’s voice asking in quivering, agonized tones for husband and child?

She sprang up and ran after the rude litter on which the crushed and bleeding form was borne along toward a farm-house a few rods distant. She caught sight of the face, white with the pallor of death and convulsed with pain. A gleam of joy shot over it as the eyes fell on the face and figure of Floy. “My darling! safe, thank God!” came from the pale, quivering lips.

“Mother, mother!” cried the girl.

“Be comforted, darling; I can bear it; ’twill not be for long,” gasped the sufferer.

They carried her into the house and laid her on a bed. Floy knelt by her side, grasping the dear hand in hers, laying it to her cheek, pressing it to her lips, passionately weeping with a grief that seemed to rend her heart asunder.

“Floy, dearest, it is all right. God’s will be done. He knows best. He will comfort you.”

The quick ear of the girl scarcely caught the low-breathed words, and with the last Mrs. Kemper fainted.

At the same moment a gentleman came hastily in and stepped to the bedside.

Instinctively Floy comprehended his errand, even ere he laid his finger on the pulse or raised the shawl that half concealed the shattered form.

She rose, outwardly calm and collected.

“Can my mother live?” she asked.

“For some hours,” he said, looking pityingly into the grief-stricken face of his questioner.

“Where is she hurt?”

“Poor child! how shall I tell you? Her lower limbs are completely crushed, and even amputation would not save her life.”

Floy caught at the bedstead for support, a low cry of heart-breaking anguish bursting from her lips. “Oh, mother, mother! And my father!” she gasped, “oh, where is he?”

“The gentleman who occupied the same seat with this lady? Ah, my dear child, he is done with pain.”

The girl sank upon her knees again, hiding her face in her hands and trembling in every fibre. So sudden, so terrible were these successive blows that the very earth seemed slipping from beneath her feet.

“Dear Lord, her heart is overwhelmed; lead her to the Rock that is higher than she.”

The words were spoken by an old woman in homely attire who was assisting the physician in his efforts to restore Mrs. Kemper to consciousness. The tones were very tender and pitiful, and the aged hand rested lightly for an instant upon the bowed head.

“Oh, could not one have been spared to me?” cried Floy in a burst of agony. “Fatherless! motherless! oh, that I too had been taken!”

“Dear child, He will be your Father and your Friend, and life will grow sweet again, and now He knows and feels for all your pain.”

A groan of agonizing pain came from the crushed form on the bed.

Floy rose and bent over her, the hot tears falling like rain upon the pallid, death-like face.

“Mother, mother! how can I bear to see you suffer so?”

The white, quivering lips tried to wreathe themselves into a smile, and the anguished eyes looked tenderly into hers.

“Beloved child, it will—soon—be over, and I—shall be at home—indeed.”

Her eyes sought the doctor’s face. “How long—”

“A very few hours at the most.”

“Then leave me alone with my child,” she said, speaking in a stronger voice than before.

The physician gave Floy some directions in regard to the administering of restoratives, and he and his assistant withdrew.

Left alone together, hand clasped in hand, mother and daughter gazed tenderly, mournfully into each other’s eyes, silent tears trickling down the cheeks of both. Then gathering up all her failing energies for the task, Mrs. Kemper told Floy in a few brief sentences the story of her adoption and all they had heard from her true mother’s lips in the little shanty inn at Clearfield Station.

Some things she said which, though they fell almost unheeded upon Floy’s ears at the time, afterward, when she had come to care for that unknown mother, were a great comfort. It was pleasant to have learned from the dear dying voice that she who gave her being was unmistakably a lady by birth and breeding, whom even a stranger recognized as gentle and lovable.

“I have never been able to remember without a pang of regret and remorse her agony of grief in parting from you,” said Mrs. Kemper. “We have never heard from her, and I think she must have died soon after, for she seemed then in an almost dying condition.”

“Oh, then why tell me of her? why, dearest, darling mother, rob me of the belief that I am your own child—yours and father’s?” sobbed the heart-broken girl.

The dying eyes looked into hers with yearning tenderness.

“Precious one,” she whispered faintly, for her strength was waning, “I would spare you every unneeded pang. But,” she went on with frequent pauses for breath, “the knowledge may some day be of use to you. You may find relatives, my poor, lonely darling. You will find the deed of gift among your father’s papers; your mother’s name is signed to it. There is a will, my husband told me, leaving everything to you and me, all to be yours at my death; so, my—”

“Oh, mother, darling mother, what do I care for that now—now when I have lost my father, and you too are going from me!” cried the girl in an agony of grief.

“Nothing now, I know,” the mother said with pitying tenderness, “but I am glad my darling will not be left penniless; it would be hard for you to earn your own bread. And the dear home, Floy, will be yours.”

Her eyes closed, but the lips still moved, and Floy, bending over her, caught the broken, faintly murmured words, “Home—many mansions—my Father’s house—” Then all was stillness and silence.

“Mother, oh, mother! speak to me once more!” cried the girl, pressing passionate kisses on the pale brow where the dews of death already gathered. “Is it well with you, darling mother? No fear? No doubt, no darkness?”

A beautiful smile played about the dying lips, and again a faint murmur reached the daughter’s intently listening ear: “All is peace—peace—the sweetest peace; I know that my Redeemer liveth. Trust Him, trust Him; He will—never—leave you.”

A gentle sigh, and Floy knew that she was alone. No wail of sorrow broke the deep hush of that death-chamber, no tears fell from the burning eyes of the solitary mourner. They found her with the still form clasped in her arms, her dead mother’s head pillowed upon her bosom, the tearless eyes gazing with mingled love and anguish upon the calm, sweet face on whose unruffled brow Peace had set its signet. The lovely smile yet lingered about the pale lips which to Floy’s ear seemed ever whispering, “All is peace, peace, the sweetest peace.”