`They are very nice garments,' said I. `These are to be your free gifts for the Sandwich Islanders and the Flat-Foot Indians, are they not?' said I.
`Yes, we give them in charity,' both answered with a sort of Pharisaic exultation, wishing to give me a high notion of their charity. But I knew them both quite as well as they knew themselves, and I always hated all hypocrisy. So I said,
`Then Heaven has rewarded your charity by bringing the Sandwich Islanders to your door instead of waiting to have the clothes take a long voyage to hunt them up. I will be the dispenser of your charity, good aunt. Here, poor Sandwich Islander,' said I, turning to the woman and handing her the gown, `here is a gown this good lady in spectacles has just finished for you. Take it and give her many thanks for it.'
The poor woman took it, and knelt right down before aunt Keezy and poured out a volume of the most grateful benedictions upon her and her children and her children's children. In the meanwhile I had unrolled the three frocks, and given one to each of the children, saying to them,
`My poor little Flat-Foot Indians whom Providence has sent to my door, here is a frock for each of you this good lady (pointing to couzin Mariah) has made for you. Take them and thank her for thinking of you in your destitution. '
The children took the frocks, (they were ten, eight, and six years old, the boy being the least) and all three imitating their mother dropped on their naked knees down before couzin Mariah. There is no describing the consternation and utter astonishment of both aunt Keezy and couzin Mariah. They first looked at me and then at the poor woman, then at the gown, which the next moment she took forcible possession of, abusing the innocent women as a thief and an imposter; while the latter looked as angry as she dared to be; for she caught my eye and saw that I was not only in earnest but very indignant. But for that she would have rescued her frocks also.
`Give back the gown, aunt,' I said firmly. `It is the woman's. You made it, or profess to have made it for charity. Charity has sent hither her hand-maid to receive it. Restore it to her.
Aunt Keezy sulkily obeyed, and both looked angry and mortified. I continued,
`This is your charity! This is your pious benevolence! Spend your time making up clothing for heathens on the other side of the world who may never be benefitted by them, and letting the naked heathens that God sends to your very feet perish! This kind of charity is not of Heaven! It is not angel's charity! A truly benevolent woman's heart will bleed for the naked Irish woman as freely as for the Sandwich Island woman. `Give while thou hast the poor with thee,' is the language of the Holy Scriptures. Deliver me from that morbid charity which sheds tears because savages go bare-foot, and turns a deaf ear to the prayers of the poor in a Christian land! Tell your sewing-circle they will find Sandwich Island savages and Flat Foot Indians around their own doors. If you had given to this woman but a pocket handkerchief, or offered her food, I would have believed in your Sandwich Island charity! But now I would not give a fig for it. I could put all the true charity you both possess in the eye of a cambric needle and then you couldn't find it with double patent spectacles.'
`You will see I was up,' said good Dame Darwell in recounting this affair, `but if any thing moves me it is meanness and low views in people who pretend to be saints. Aunt Keezy and couzin Mariah wanted the minister (who was a bachelor) to think they were so very charitable; and also to have the merit of it in the world: for every body knew who gave to the Sandwich Islanders and knit stockings for the Flat-Food Indians; but nobody knew who gave to the poor in secret! Well, they looked at me and at one another; and then couzin Mariah burst out a sobbing and aunt Keezy looked as angry as a thunder clould.
`I declare, couzin Hetty,' cried Mariah, `this is cruel and shameful.'
`It is outrageous,' thundered aunt Keezy.
`Very well,' said I very quietly; for I was calm again now I had my say; `who gave you the calico for the dresses, aunt Keezy?'
She didn't answer and I replied, `Wasn't it I? Didn't I give you both material for all—the cotton, yarn, thread, and even the needles? In a word, is there any thing either of you have on your backs that I did not give you. Have you not been fed, lodged and clothed by me, one of you for five years, and your aunt Keezy for seven? What I have given these poor people is my own.'
`You ought to be ashamed to throw up our dependence on you to us,' cried aunt Keezy, now fairly mad.
`It is ungenerous to boast of your charities in this manner,' cried couzin Mariah.
`I did not boast. I spoke of them to humble you, and to show you that you are just as dependent upon me as that poor woman, for lodging, food and clothing to night. What you have on is mine; and it would be just to make you both take it off and clothe this poor woman with it!'
Here both burst out a crying and took on so that I told them they should both go at once if they did not stop, when they made shift to be quiet. I had given them a good lesson and a good lecture, and that was all I wanted; for I would sooner have gone out of my own house than turned out poor aunt Keezy, who though a close, narrow minded woman was too simple to take any care of herself; and couzin Mariah I liked all but for her being over religious. But the lesson I gave them did them both good. It made them more humble, and gave them a better notion of what was true charity.
`Now,' says I, `that you needn't call me unjust and accuse me of being like an Indian in taking back what I have once bestowed, if to-morrow you will price these articles according as the society values them, I will pay you the money for them. Now, good woman,' said I, `come in with your children, and let us try on the dresses, but first they must be well scrubbed.'
`So I took 'em through to the kitchen and first gave them a hearty meal, and it did me good, and the poor mother too, to see the little brats devour the bread and butter. After they had got through I had them all put into a tub and the cook and her girl washed them from head to heel. I then put them all in one bed next the kitchen, meaning to get something ready that night to complete their wardrobe when they got up in the morning; for not a rag they had worn was fit to put on again, and I made Dick burn them in the stable yard. The poor woman I let sleep in the same room with her children, meaning to help out her wardrobe in the morning from mine. The grateful creature! I could hardly get her off to bed for her blessings and prayers. Well, Aunt Keezy and couzin Mariah set to work altering and making up little articles for the children to put on, glad of an opportunity to redeem their credit with me. We sat up till it was quite late, cutting out and sewing together; and the clock had just struck ten, when couzin Mariah, who had uncommonly sharp ears, stopped and listened and said she thought she heard a child crying.
`It is one of the poor woman's,' I said; `I will go and see if the little one has'nt fallen out of the bed.' So I took a light and went out of the little parlor across the kitchen and opened the door of the room. They were all asleep, the poor woman having her little boy fast asleep by her side, no doubt having got up to get him to lay by her. All was still. I went back to the room and had hardly taken up my work, when we all thought we heard the cry of a child. We paused and listened. It was not repeated, and aunt Keezy set down the the sound to the cat.
`It was like a cat,' said I, `but there is the cat on the chair under the window. '
`Then what could it have been?' cried couzin Mariah, looking pale.
`Perhaps some strange cat,' said I.
I had hardly spoken when I heard it again louder than before. It was a sharp, loud cry, but seemed a good way off. We all started and looked in the direction of the sound and listened attentively and with beating hearts.
`It must be the boy,' I said, after waiting a little while. `He has probably cried out in his sleep.'
`It did not sound like a boy's cry,' said aunt Keezy. `It was a baby's, if ever a baby cried in the world.'
`No neighbor has a baby within half a mile of here. It can't be,' I said positively.
`There it is again,' exclaimed Mariah, running to me and catching firm hold of my
shoulder.
Sure enough we heard it now loud and distinct. It was plainly the cry of a good lusty baby. It did not now go like the wail of a cat, but emitted full and clear notes that were not to be mistaken.
`It comes from the further end of the house,' said aunt Keezy, who had now caught hold of couzin Mariah as fast as she had hold upon me.
`From the Court Chamber,' gasped the latter.
I was perplexed and contounded. The child continued to cry, and wholly at a loss to explain it, I took up the light and determined to proceed at once in the direction of the sounds. Aunt Keezy would have dissuaded me, asseverating that it might be a ghost, especially as my husband George had died in that distant room. But I knew George hadn't a cry like a six month's baby and I resolutely resolved to see the matter to the bottom. Afraid to be left alone and yet equally afraid to accompany me, they followed me with trembling steps along the passage from which the cries still came louder and louder.
CHAPTER IV.
How Dame Darwell led the way to the Court Chamber—How all but the good hostess were frightened—What was discooered in the Court Chamber—The Silver Bottle—Dame Darwell's sympathy—The note and package—The ill-will of aunt Keezy and cousin Mariah—The Quart Mug succumbs to `The Silver Bottle.'
`The passage you know,' said Dame Darwell, continuing her narration, from my little sitting room to the Court Chamber is very long; so it took me some time to get to the door of the room, especially as aunt Keesy was holding on by one arm and cousin Mariah by the other. I hadn't been in the room since the strange gentlemen and lady had left it, intendin' to leave it till morning to be cleaned up. Well, the cries as I got to the door were right lusty and strong, and there was now no mistaking it for any thing else but a baby.'
`Don't open the door for the world!' cried aunt Keesy trembling behind me in every limb.
`It may be an evil spirit in the shape of a baby,' said cousin Mariah pulling me back.
`I do not fear it if it is,' I said boldly. `I have a clear conscience. It is a baby and a real one, of that I am positive; but how it ever got into the Court Chamber is a mystery!'
I then tried to open the door and it was locked! This startled me, I confess. The key wasn't in the door, but I saw it lying on the floor at my feet. I picked it up and put it into the lock, resolved at once to see the end of all this.— The child, hearing perhaps the noise of the key, stopped crying.
`It's gone,' said aunt Keezy.
`It's frightened away whatever it was,' echoed cousin Mariah; but neither of them seemed to have gained any more courage with this idea.
`It has only stopped crying to listen,' I said; and then unlocked the door and threw it wide open. I must say I was a little trepidous in my nerves,' continued Dame Darwell, at this crisis of her story, `on opening the door, because it was so odd a baby should be heard crying there at that time of night and no mother in the room that I knew of. So I stood in the door way a minute and looked in before I entered. I held the candle above my head to take a view of the room. All seemed just as it should be. The easy chair stood in its corner; the stuffed rocking chairs sat up one each side of the mantle; the things in the chamber were just as neat as if the gentleman and lady had not been in it. But I could see no baby. The white dimity curtains of the bed were down and drawn close as usual. I could'nt therefore see into it, and so I kept my eyes fixed and listened. I could hear nothing and began really to feel queer about the cry we'd heard coming from the chamber, when all at once we heard it from behind the curtain's of the bed so sudden and so loud and clear that aunt Keezy yelled out louder still with mortal fear, and cousin Mariah screamed `murder' at the top of her lungs and sunk right down on the floor in the door way. I must confess the cry was so sudden and sharp in the silence that was a moment before it, that my heart leaped into my throat. But I was not frightened, only startled. The cry was not only loud but right down angry, as if the baby after stopping and listening a little while and then hearing nothing more had set up afresh. I walked straight to the bed and lifted the curtains with one hand and put the light in with the other, and there sure enough lay a handsome little fat baby about seven months old, right in the middle of the bed with a pillow each side of him to keep him from rolling out. He had kicked the coverlid down and lay there with a silver nursing bottle held tight in one of his dimpled hands. As soon as he saw the light he stopped half way in a vigorous screech and looked right up into my face, the tears glistening like little diamonds of dew on his cheeks.'
`If ever I was surprised at any thing,' said Dame Darwell, `it was when I saw this little fellow lying in the middle of my best bed without my knowing no more how he ever came there than the man in the moon! I didn't scream nor faint, but stood a full minute kind o' petrified, looking down at the dear little innocent. There he lay looking at me a minute and then smiled, and then thrust the tube of the silver bottle into his mouth and began to suck away vigorously for a little, when being reminded that it was empty he set up a pitiful cry and looked at me so imploringly! I couldn't resist stooping right down and kissing the little dear, and I believe I dropped a tear on its little cheek, it looked so innocent and helpless. I then told aunt Keesy, who was looking at the baby with wonder and fear, to hold the light; and took up the little fellow in my arms and held him off to take a good look at him to see it I had ever seen it before. But I had never seen any baby like it, and my curiosity was roused to know how it came there. The little stranger, however was resolved to give me no time for the indulgence of curiosity; for he put up his pretty lip and began to show cry, and then thrust his little silver bottle into its mouth and began to draw at it. I saw at once what the little fellow wanted and sent cousin Mariah, who had got over her fright and was trying to guess who the baby belonged to, to make up a fire in the kitchen and boil it some milk.
I hadn't more than got the words `boiled milk' out of my mouth when the boiled milk the gentleman had ordered flashed on my mind! I then thought how I had found the child in the room they had left, and that the mystery was solved! The boiled milk must have been ordered for this very baby! and they had gone away and forgotten it!
It was queer enough! I couldn't think a mother and father could forget their child and leave it behind at an Inn; but then there was the child in their bed and they had departed. I mentioned my surprise to aunt Keezy.
`It may be their's if they had brought a baby with 'em and went off without taking it again,' said aunt Keezy. `Did they have a baby?'
`Not that I saw or heard,' said I, quite struck aback with this doubt; for sure enough they had not brought any baby with them. This I confessed to aunt Keezy, who said very sensibly,
`Well, if they didn't bring no baby with 'em I don't see how they could have left one.'
`It might have been born here,' called out Cousin Mariah from the passage, she having overheard aunt Keezy's remark. I've read of such things in novels.'
`It couldn't have been born six months old,' said I laughing; `for the child is full that if not more.'
`How can you tell its age, cousin Hetty?' said Mariah, vexed at my laughing. `I am sure all babies looked the same age and have the same looks to me.
I didn't care to argue the matter with cousin Mariah, who would probably never be any wiser about babies than she was then, being such a confirmed old maid as she was: and as the little fellow began to grow very impatient for his bottle to be filled I told her to hurry with the milk, while I sat down in a rocking chair and began to sooth the little fellow, wondering all the while where it had come from, for I had gave up the notion they had left it. While I was thinking and admiring it, for it was so fat and chubby with black eyes and a good deal of silky brown hair, what the gentleman had said to me at supper about Providence sometimes ratifying our wishes in more ways than one, flashed upon my mind; and for a minute or two I began to feel very superstitious, and began to think that the child had come to my roof in a supernatural way. The more I thought upon it, the less superstitious I felt, but th
e more the idea began to take hold of my mind that the babe was his and that he had sounded me with the intention to leave it with me. I mentioned my belief to aunt Keezy, who said, in her way—
`It is all very probable if the gentleman and lady had only brought the child with them.'
Here I was all afloat again. That they brought no child with them I was very well assured. Yet here was a child left in their rooms—here was a sucking bottle in his hand, and boiled milk had been ordered! It all looked very like being their's, but then, as aunt Keezy said, `if they didn't bring a child how should they have left one, at least one six months old? If it had been a new born baby then it would all have been easily accounted for.
By this time couzin Mariah had heated the milk, sweetened it, and brought it in and I filled the silver bottle, and put it to the impatient little rogue's mouth, who could hardly be kept quiet till it came. As soon as he found he could draw something from the tube besides air, he began to pull away with a vigor and zeal that made us all laugh. Now, he was quiet, I had time to talk over the whole matter about him. Aunt Keezy first proposed carefully to examine his blanket and robes, for he was wrapped in a fine merino blanket bound with blue silk ribbon and his dress was very elegantly worked. We made a thorough search but there was no name or initials upon them.
`I will look about the bed and see if those who placed him here havn't left some articles,' said couzin Mariah, beginning the search with commendable curiosity.
The Silver Bottle; or, The Adventures of Little Marlboro in Search of His Father Page 3