girlhood, fair and lovable.
"She'll be a beauty," reflected Miss Rosetta
complacently. "Jane was a handsome girl. She shall
always be dressed as nice as I can manage it, and I'll
get her an organ, and have her take painting and music
lessons. Parties, too! I'll give her a real coming-out
party when she's eighteen and the very prettiest dress
that's to be had. Dear me, I can hardly wait for her to
grow up, though she's sweet enough now to make one wish
she could stay a baby forever."
When Miss Rosetta returned to the kitchen, her eyes
fell on an empty cradle. Camilla Jane was gone!
Miss Rosetta promptly screamed. She understood at a
glance what had happened. Six months' old babies do not
get out of their cradles and disappear through closed
doors without any assistance.
"Charlotte has been here," gasped Miss Rosetta.
"Charlotte has stolen Camilla Jane! I might have
expected it. I might have known when I heard that story
about her buying muslin and flannel. It's just like
Charlotte to do such an underhand trick. But I'll go
after her! I'll show her! She'll find out she has got
Rosetta Ellis to deal with and no Wheeler!"
Like a frantic creature and wholly forgetting that her
hair was in curl-papers, Miss Rosetta hurried up the
hill and down the shore road to the Wheeler Farm - a
place she had never visited in her life before.
The wind was off-shore and only broke the bay's surface
into long silvery ripples, and sent sheeny shadows
flying out across it from every point and headland,
like transparent wings.
The little gray house, so close to the purring waves
that in storms their spray splashed over its very
doorstep, seemed deserted. Miss Rosetta pounded lustily
on the front door. This producing no result, she
marched around to the back door and knocked. No answer.
Miss Rosetta tried the door. It was locked.
"Guilty conscience," sniffed Miss Rosetta. "Well, I
shall stay here until I see that perfidious Charlotte,
if I have to camp in the yard all night."
Miss Rosetta was quite capable of doing this, but she
was spared the necessity; walking boldly up to the
kitchen window, and peering through it, she felt her
heart swell with anger as she beheld Charlotte sitting
calmly by the table with Camilla Jane on her knee.
Beside her was a befrilled and bemuslined cradle, and
on a chair lay the garments in which Miss Rosetta had
dressed the baby. It was clad in an entirely new
outfit, and seemed quite at home with its new
possessor. It was laughing and cooing, and making
little dabs at her with its dimpled hands.
"Charlotte Wheeler," cried Miss Rosetta, rapping
sharply on the window-pane. "I've come for that child!
Bring her out to me at once - at once, I say! How dare
you come to my house and steal a baby? You're no better
than a common burglar. Give me Camilla Jane, I say!"
Charlotte came over to the window with the baby in her
arms and triumph glittering in her eyes.
"There is no such child as Camilla Jane here," she
said. "This is Barbara Jane. She belongs to me."
With that Mrs. Wheeler pulled down the shade.
Miss Rosetta had to go home. There was nothing else for
her to do. On her way she met Mr. Patterson and told
him in full the story of her wrongs. It was all over
Avonlea by night, and created quite a sensation.
Avonlea had not had such a toothsome bit of gossip for
a long time.
Mrs. Wheeler exulted in the possession of Barbara Jane
for six weeks, during which Miss Rosetta broke her
heart with loneliness and longing, and meditated futile
plots for the recovery of the baby. It was hopeless to
think of stealing it back or she would have tried to.
The hired man at the Wheeler place reported that Mrs.
Wheeler never left it night or day for a single moment.
She even carried it with her when she went to milk the
cows.
"But my turn will come," said Miss Rosetta grimly.
"Camilla Jane is mine, and if she was called Barbara
for a century it wouldn't alter that fact! Barbara,
indeed! Why not have called her Methusaleh and have
done with it?"
One afternoon in October, when Miss Rosetta was picking
her apples and thinking drearily about lost Camilla
Jane, a woman came running breathlessly down the hill
and into the yard. Miss Rosetta gave an exclamation of
amazement and dropped her basket of apples. Of all
incredible things! The woman was Charlotte - Charlotte
who had never set foot on the grounds of the Ellis
cottage since her marriage ten years ago, Charlotte,
bare-headed, wild-eyed, distraught, wringing her hands
and sobbing.
Miss Rosetta flew to meet her.
"You've scalded Camilla Jane to death!" she exclaimed.
"I always knew you would - always expected it!"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, come quick, Rosetta!" gasped
Charlotte. "Barbara Jane is in convulsions and I don't
know what to do. The hired man has gone for the doctor.
You were the nearest, so I came to you. Jenny White was
there when they came on, so I left her and ran. Oh,
Rosetta, come, come, if you have a spark of humanity in
you! You know what to do for convulsions - you saved
the Ellis baby when it had them. Oh, come and save
Barbara Jane!"
"You mean Camilla Jane, I presume?" said Miss Rosetta
firmly, in spite of her agitation.
For a second Charlotte Wheeler hesitated. Then she said
passionately: "Yes, yes, Camilla Jane - any name you
like! Only come."
Miss Rosetta went, and not a moment too soon, either.
The doctor lived eight miles away and the baby was very
bad. The two women and Jenny White worked over her for
hours. It was not until dark, when the baby was
sleeping soundly and the doctor had gone, after telling
Miss Rosetta that she had saved the child's life, that
a realization of the situation came home to them.
"Well," said Miss Rosetta, dropping into an armchair
with a long sigh of weariness, "I guess you'll admit
now, Charlotte Wheeler, that you are hardly a fit
person to have charge of a baby, even if you had to go
and steal it from me. I should think your conscience
would reproach you - that is, if any woman who would
marry Jacob Wheeler in such an underhanded fashion has
a - "
"I - I wanted the baby," sobbed Charlotte, tremulously.
"I was so lonely here. I didn't think it was any harm
to take her, because Jane gave her to me in her letter.
But you have saved her life, Rosetta, and you - you can
have her back, although it will break my heart to give
her up. But, oh, Rosetta, won't you let me come and see
her sometimes? I love her so I can't bea
r to give her
up entirely."
"Charlotte," said Miss Rosetta firmly, "the most
sensible thing for you to do is just to come back with
the baby. You are worried to death trying to run this
farm with the debt Jacob Wheeler left on it for you.
Sell it, and come home with me. And we'll both have the
baby then."
"Oh, Rosetta, I'd love to," faltered Charlotte. "I've -
I've wanted to be good friends with you again so much.
But I thought you were so hard and bitter you'd never
make up."
"Maybe I've talked too much," conceded Miss Rosetta,
"but you ought to know me well enough to know I didn't
mean a word of it. It was your never saying anything,
no matter what I said, that riled me up so bad. Let
bygones be bygones, and come home, Charlotte."
"I will," said Charlotte resolutely, wiping away her
tears. "I'm sick of living here and putting up with
hired men. I'll be real glad to go home, Rosetta, and
that's the truth. I've had a hard enough time. I s'pose
you'll say I deserved it; but I was fond of Jacob, and
- "
"Of course, of course. Why shouldn't you be?" said Miss
Rosetta briskly. "I'm sure Jacob Wheeler was a good
enough soul, if he was a little slack-twisted. I'd like
to hear anybody say a word against him in my presence.
Look at that blessed child, Charlotte. Isn't she the
sweetest thing? I'm desperate glad you are coming back
home, Charlotte. I've never been able to put up a
decent mess of mustard pickles since you went away, and
you were always such a hand with them! We'll be real
snug and cozy again - you and me and little Camilla
Barbara Jane."
Chapter V
The Dream-Child
A MAN'S heart - aye, and a woman's, too - should be
light in the spring. The spirit of resurrection is
abroad, calling the life of the world out of its wintry
grave, knocking with radiant fingers at the gates of
its tomb. It stirs in human hearts, and makes them glad
with the old primal gladness they felt in childhood. It
quickens human souls, and brings them, if so they will,
so close to God that they may clasp hands with Him. It
is a time of wonder and renewed life, and a great
outward and inward rapture, as of a young angel softly
clapping his hands for creation's joy. At least, so it
should be; and so it always had been with me until the
spring when the dream-child first came into our lives.
That year I hated the spring - I, who had always loved
it so. As boy I had loved it, and as man. All the
happiness that had ever been mine, and it was much, had
come to blossom in the springtime. It was in the spring
that Josephine and I had first loved each other, or, at
least, had first come into the full knowledge that we
loved. I think that we must have loved each other all
our lives, and that each succeeding spring was a word
in the revelation of that love, not to be understood
until, in the fullness of time, the whole sentence was
written out in that most beautiful of all beautiful
springs.
How beautiful it was! And how beautiful she was! I
suppose every lover thinks that of his lass; otherwise
he is a poor sort of lover. But it was not only my eyes
of love that made my dear lovely. She was slim and
lithe as a young, white-stemmed birch tree; her hair
was like a soft, dusky cloud; and her eyes were as blue
as Avonlea harbor on a fair twilight, when all the sky
is abloom over it. She had dark lashes, and a little
red mouth that quivered when she was very sad or very
happy, or when she loved very much - quivered like a
crimson rose too rudely shaken by the wind. At such
times what was a man to do save kiss it?
The next spring we were married, and I brought her home
to my gray old homestead on the gray old harbor shore.
A lonely place for a young bride, said Avonlea people.
Nay, it was not so. She was happy here, even in my
absences. She loved the great, restless harbor and the
vast, misty sea beyond; she loved the tides, keeping
their world-old tryst with the shore, and the gulls,
and the croon of the waves, and the call of the winds
in the fir woods at noon and even; she loved the
moonrises and the sunsets, and the clear, calm nights
when the stars seemed to have fallen into the water and
to be a little dizzy from such a fall. She loved these
things, even as I did. No, she was never lonely here
then.
The third spring came, and our boy was born. We thought
we had been happy before; now we knew that we had only
dreamed a pleasant dream of happiness, and had awakened
to this exquisite reality. We thought we had loved each
other before; now, as I looked into my wife's pale
face, blanched with its baptism of pain, and met the
uplifted gaze of her blue eyes, aglow with the holy
passion of motherhood, I knew we had only imagined what
love might be. The imagination had been sweet, as the
thought of the rose is sweet before the bud is open;
but as the rose to the thought, so was love to the
imagination of it.
"All my thoughts are poetry since baby came," my wife
said once, rapturously.
Our boy lived for twenty months. He was a sturdy,
toddling rogue, so full of life and laughter and
mischief that, when he died, one day, after the illness
of an hour, it seemed a most absurd thing that he
should be dead - a thing I could have laughed at, until
belief forced itself into my soul like a burning,
searing iron.
I think I grieved over my little son's death as deeply
and sincerely as ever man did, or could. But the heart
of the father is not as the heart of the mother. Time
brought no healing to Josephine; she fretted and pined;
her cheeks lost their pretty oval, and her red mouth
grew pale and drooping.
I hoped that spring might work its miracle upon her.
When the buds swelled, and the old earth grew green in
the sun, and the gulls came back to the gray harbor,
whose very grayness grew golden and mellow, I thought I
should see her smile again. But, when the spring came,
came the dream-child, and the fear that was to be my
companion, at bed and board, from sunsetting to
sunsetting.
One night I awakened from sleep, realizing in the
moment of awakening that I was alone. I listened to
hear whether my wife were moving about the house. I
heard nothing but the little splash of waves on the
shore below and the low moan of the distant ocean.
I rose and searched the house. She was not in it. I did
not know where to seek her; but, at a venture, I
started along the shore.
It was pale, fainting moonlight. The harbor looked like
a phantom harbor, and the night was as still and cold
and calm as the face of a dead man. At last I saw my
wife coming to me along the shore. When I saw her, I
knew what I had feared and how great my fear had been.
As she drew near, I saw that she had been crying; her
face was stained with tears, and her dark hair hung
loose over her shoulders in little, glossy ringlets
like a child's. She seemed to be very tired, and at
intervals she wrung her small hands together.
She showed no surprise when she met me, but only held
out her hands to me as if glad to see me.
"I followed him - but I could not overtake him," she
said with a sob. "I did my best - I hurried so; but he
was always a little way ahead. And then I lost him -
and so I came back. But I did my best - indeed I did.
And oh, I am so tired!"
"Josie, dearest, what do you mean, and where have you
been?" I said, drawing her close to me. "Why did you go
out so - alone in the night?"
She looked at me wonderingly.
"How could I help it, David? He called me. I had to
go."
"Who called you?"
"The child," she answered in a whisper. "Our child,
David - our pretty boy. I awakened in the darkness and
heard him calling to me down on the shore. Such a sad,
little wailing cry, David, as if he were cold and
lonely and wanted his mother. I hurried out to him, but
I could not find him. I could only hear the call, and I
followed it on and on, far down the shore. Oh, I tried
so hard to overtake it, but I could not. Once I saw a
little white hand beckoning to me far ahead in the
moonlight. But still I could not go fast enough. And
then the cry ceased, and I was there all alone on that
terrible, cold, gray shore. I was so tired and I came
home. But I wish I could have found him. Perhaps he
does not know that I tried to. Perhaps he thinks his
mother never listened to his call. Oh, I would not have
him think that."
"You have had a bad dream, dear," I said. I tried to
say it naturally; but it is hard for a man to speak
naturally when he feels a mortal dread striking into
his very vitals with its deadly chill.
"It was no dream," she answered reproachfully. "I tell
you I heard him calling me - me, his mother. What could
I do but go to him? You cannot understand - you are
only his father. It was not you who gave him birth. It
was not you who paid the price of his dear life in
pain. He would not call to you - he wanted his mother."
I got her back to the house and to her bed, whither she
went obediently enough, and soon fell into the sleep of
exhaustion. But there was no more sleep for me that
night. I kept a grim vigil with dread.
When I had married Josephine, one of those officious
relatives that are apt to buzz about a man's marriage
told me that her grandmother had been insane all the
latter part of her life. She had grieved over the death
of a favorite child until she lost her mind, and, as
the first indication of it, she had sought by nights a
white dream-child which always called her, so she said,
and led her afar with a little, pale, beckoning hand.
I had smiled at the story then. What had that grim old
bygone to do with springtime and love and Josephine?
But it came back to me now, hand in hand with my fear.
Was this fate coming on my dear wife? It was too
horrible for belief. She was so young, so fair, so
sweet, this girl-wife of mine. It had been only a bad
dream, with a frightened, bewildered waking. So I tried
to comfort myself.
When she awakened in the morning she did not speak of
what had happened and I did not dare to. She seemed
more cheerful that day than she had been, and went
about her household duties briskly and skillfully. My
fear lifted. I was sure now that she had only dreamed.
And I was confirmed in my hopeful belief when two
nights had passed away uneventfully.
Then, on the third night, he dream-child called to her
again. I wakened from a troubled doze to find her
dressing herself with feverish haste.
"He is calling me," she cried. "Oh, don't you hear him?