The Hidden Children by Robert W. Chambers (books to improve english .TXT) 📗

a snugger one?" she answered gaily. "Here is both warmth and shelter; and a clean bed of husks; and if I am lonely, there be friendly little mice to bear me company o' nights. And here my mice and I lie close and listen to the owls."

"And you were reared in comfort!" I said with sudden bitterness.

She looked up quickly, then, shrugging her shoulders:

"There is still some comfort for those who can remember their brief day of ease—none for those who never knew it. I have had days of comfort."

"What age are you, Lois?"

"Twenty, I think."

"Scarce that!" I insisted.

"Do I not seem so?" she asked, smiling.

"Eighteen at most—save for the—sadness—in your eyes that now and then surprises me—if it be sadness that I read there."

"Perhaps it is the wisdom I have learned—a knowledge that means sadness, Euan. Do my eyes betray it, then, so plainly?"

"Sometimes," I said, A faint sound from below arrested our attention.

Lois whispered:

"It is Mrs. Rannock weeping. She often weeps like that at night. And so would I, Euan, had I beheld the horrors which this poor thing was born to look upon—God comfort her! Have you never heard how the destructives slew her husband, her baby, and her little sister eight years old? The baby lay in its cradle smiling up at its murderers. Even the cruel Senecas turned aside, forbearing to harm it. But one of Walter Butler's painted Tories spies it and bawls out: 'This also will grow to be a rebel!' And with that he speared the little smiling creature on his bayonet, tossed it, and caught it—Oh, Euan—Euan!" Shuddering, she flung her arm across her face as though to shut out the vision.

"That villainy," said I, "was done by Newberry or Chrysler, if I remember. And Newberry we caught and hung before we went to Westchester. I saw him hang with that wretched Lieutenant Hare. God! how we cheered by regiments marching back to camp!"

Through the intense stillness I could still hear the woman sobbing in the dark below.

"Lois—little Lois," I whispered, touching her trembling arm with a hand quite as unsteady.

She dropped her arm from her face, looking up at me with eyes widened still in horror.

I said: "Do you then wonder that the thought of you, roaming these woods alone, is become a living dread to me, so that I think of nothing else?"

She smiled wanly, and sat thinking for a while, her pale face pressed between her hands. Presently she looked up.

"Are we so truly friends then, Euan? At the Spring Waiontha it almost seemed as though it could come true."

"You know it has come true."

"Do I?"

"Do you not know it, little Lois?"

"I seem to know it, somehow.... Tell me, Euan, does a true and deathless friendship with a man—with you—mean that I am to strip my heart of every secret, hiding nothing from you?"

"Dare you do it, Lois?" I said laughingly, yet thrilled with the candour of her words.

"I could not let you think me better than I am. That would be stealing friendship from you. But if you give it when you really know me—that will be dear and wonderful——" She drew a swift breath and smiled.

Surprised, then touched, I met the winning honesty of her gaze in silence.

"Unless you truly know me—unless you know to whom you give your friendship—you can not give it rightly. Can you, Euan? You must learn all that I am and have been, Is not this necessary?"

"I—I ask you nothing," I stammered. "All that I know of you is wonderful enough——" Suddenly the danger of the moment opened out before me, checking my very thoughts.

She laid both hands against her temple, pressing them there till her cheeks cooled. So she pondered for a while, her gaze remote. Then, looking fearlessly at me:

"Euan, I am of that sad company of children born without name. I have lately dared to guess who was my father. Presently I will tell you who he was." Her grey and troubled eyes gazed into space now, dreamily. "He died long since. But my mother is living. And I believe she lives near Catharines-town to-day!"

"What! Why do you think so?" I exclaimed, astounded.

"Is not the Vale Yndaia there, near Catharines-town?"

"Yes. But why——"

"Then listen, Euan. Every year upon a certain day—the twelfth of May—no matter where I chance to be, always outside my door I find two little beaded moccasins. I have had them thirteen times in thirteen years. And every year—save the last two—the moccasins have been made a little larger, as though to fit my growing years. Now, for the last two years, they have remained the same in size, fitting me perfectly. And—I never yet have worn them more than to fit them on and take them off."

"Why?" I asked vaguely.

"I save them for my journey."

"What journey?"

"The long trail through the Long House—straight through it, Euan, to the Western Door. That is the trail I dream of."

"Who leaves these strange moccasins at your threshold every year?"

"I do not know."

"From where do you suppose they come?" I asked, amazed.

"From Catharines-town."

"Do you believe your mother sends them?"

"Oh, Euan, I know it now! Until two years ago I did not understand. But now I know it!"

"Why are you so certain Lois? Is any written message sent with them?"

"Always within one of each pair of moccasins is sewed a strip of silver birch. Always the message written is the same; and this is what is always written:

"Swift moccasins for little feet as swift against the day that the long trail is safe. Then, in the Vale Yndaia, little Lois, seek her who bore you, saved you, lost you, but who love you always.

"Pray every day for him who died in the Regiment de la Reine.

"Pray too for her who waits for you, in far Yndaia."

"What a strange message!" I exclaimed.

"I must heed it," she said under her breath. "The trail is open, and my hour is come."

"But, Lois, that trail means death!"

"Your army makes it safe at last. And now the time is come when I must follow it."

"Is that why you have followed us?"

"Yes, that is why. Until that night in the storm at Poundridge-town I had never learned where the Vale Yndaia lay. Month after month I haunted camps, asking for information concerning Yndaia and the Regiment de la Reine. But of Yndaia I learned nothing, until the Sagamore informed me that Yndaia lay near Catharines-town. And, learning you were of the army, and that the army was bound thither, I followed you."

"Why did you not tell me this at Poundridge? You should have camped with us," I said.

"Because of my fear of men—except red men. And I had already quite enough of your Lieutenant Boyd."

I looked at her seriously; and she comprehended the unasked questions that were troubling me.

"Shall I tell you more? Shall I tell you how I have learned my dread of men—how it has been with me since my foster parents found me lying at their door strapped to a painted cradle-board?"

"You!"

"Aye; that was my shameful beginning, so they told me afterward—long afterward. For I supposed they were my parents—till two years ago. Now shall I tell you all, Euan? And risk losing a friendship you might have given in your ignorance of me?"

Quick, hot, unconsidered words flew to my lips—so sweet and fearless were her eyes. But I only muttered:

"Tell me all."

"From the beginning, then—to scour my heart out for you! So, first and earliest my consciousness awoke to the sound of drums. I am sure of this because when I hear them it seems as though they were the first sounds that I ever heard.... And once, lately, they were like to be the last.... And next I can remember playing with a painted mask of wood, and how the paint tasted, and its odour.... Then, nothing more can I remember until I was a little child with—him I thought to be my father. I may not name him. You will understand presently why I do not."

She looked down, pulling idly at the thrums along her beaded leggins.

"I told you I was near your age—twenty. But I do not really know how old I am, I guess that I am twenty—thereabouts."

"You look sixteen; not more—except the haunting sorrow——"

"I can remember full that length of time.... I must be twenty, Euan. When I was perhaps seven years old—or thereabout—I went to school—first in Schenectady to a Mistress Lydon; where were a dozen children near my age. And pretty Mistress Lydon taught us A—B—C and manners—and nothing else that I remember now. Then for a long while I was at home—which meant a hundred different lodgings—for we were ever moving on from place to place, where his employment led him, from one house to another, staying at one tavern only while his task remained unfinished, then to the road again, north, south, west, or east, wherever his fancy sped before to beckon him.... He was a strange man, Euan."

"Your foster father?"

"Aye. And my foster mother, too, was a strange woman."

"Were they not kind to you?"

"Y-es, after their own fashion. They both were vastly different to other folk. I was fed and clothed when anyone remembered to do it, And when they had been fortunate, they sent me to the nearest school to be rid of me, I think. I have attended many schools, Euan—in Germantown, in Philadelphia, in Boston, in New York. I stayed not long in school at New York because there our affairs went badly. And no one invited us in that city—as often we were asked to stay as guests while the work lasted—not very welcome guests, yet tolerated."

"What was your foster father's business?"

"He painted portraits.... I do not know how well he painted. But he cared for nothing else, except his wife. When he spoke at all it was to her of Raphael, and of Titian, and particularly of our Benjamin West, who had his first three colours of the Indians, they say."

"I have heard so, too."

She nodded absently, fingering her leggin-fringe; then, with a sudden, indrawn breath:

"We were no more than roving gypsies, you see, living from hand to mouth, and moving on, always moving from town to town, remaining in one place while there were portraits to paint—or tavern-signs, or wagons—anything to keep us clothed and fed. Then there came a day in Albany when matters mended over night, and the Patroon most kindly commanded portraits of himself and family. It started our brief prosperity.

"Other and thrifty Dutchmen now began to bargain for their portraits. We took an old house on Pearl Street, and I was sent to school at Mrs. Pardee's Academy for young ladies as a day pupil, returning home at evening. About that time my foster mother became ill. I remember that she lay on a couch all day, watching her husband paint. He and his art were all she cared for. Me she seldom seemed to see—scarcely noticed when she saw me—almost never spake to me, and there were days and weeks, when I saw nobody in that silent house, and sat at meat alone—when, indeed, anyone remembered I was a hungry, growing child, and made provision for me.

"Schoolmates, at first, asked me to their homes. I would not go because I could not ask them to my home in turn. And so grew up to womanhood alone, and shy, and silent among my fellows; alone at home among the shadows of that old Dutch house; ever alone. Always a haunted twilight seemed to veil the living world from me, save when I walked abroad along the river, thinking, thinking.

"Yet, in one sense I was not alone, Euan, for I was fanciful; and roamed accompanied by those bright visions that unawakened souls conjure for company; companioned by all creatures of the mind, from saint to devil. Ai-me! For there were moments when I would have welcomed devils, so that they rid me of my solitude, at hell's own price!"

She drew a long, light breath, smiled at me; then:

"My foster mother died. And when she died the end also began for him. I was taken from my school. So dreadfully was he broken that for months he lay abed never speaking, scarcely eating. And all day long during those dreary months I sat alone in that hushed house of death.

"Debt came first; then sheriffs; then suddenly came this war upon us. But nothing aroused him from his lethargy; and all day long he brooded there in silence, day after day, until our creditors would endure no longer, and the bailiff menaced him. Confused and frightened, I implored him to leave the city—jails seeming to me far more terrible than death—and at last persuaded him to the old life once more.

"So, to avoid a debtor's prison, we took the open