Rose O'Paradise. Grace Miller White
in all her young life. It was a most distressing sight. Something within her leaped up and thundered at her brain. It ordered her to venture out and aid the pretty woman if she could. Jinnie was not an eavesdropper! She did not wish to hear any more. But fear kept her crouched in her awkward position.
“I just want to forget if I can,” Molly sobbed. “I don’t know where the baby is. That’s why I want to forget. I can’t find him.”
“Can’t find him? What do you mean by ‘can’t find him’?”
Molly faced about squarely, suddenly.
“I’ve asked you not to talk about it. I’ve been terribly unhappy and so miserable. … It’s only lately I’ve begun to be at all reconciled.”
“Nevertheless, I will hear,” snapped the man angrily. 38 “I will hear! Begin back from the letter you wrote me.”
“Asking you to help me?” questioned the girl.
“Yes, asking me to help you, if you want to be blunt. Molly, it won’t make you any happier to hatch up old scores. I tell you I’ve come to make amends—to take you—if you will––”
“And I repeat, I can’t go with you!”
“We’ll leave that discussion until later. Begin back where I told you to.”
Molly’s face was very white, and her lids drooped wearily. Virginia wanted so much to help her! She made a little uneasy movement under the table, but Molly’s tragic voice was speaking again.
“My father’d kill me if he knew about it, so I never told him or any one.”
“Including me,” cut in the man sarcastically.
“You didn’t care,” said Molly with asperity.
“How do you know I didn’t care? Did you tell me? Did you? Did I know?”
Molly shook her head.
“Then I insist upon knowing now, this moment!”
“My father would have killed me––”
“Well!” His voice rushed in upon her hesitancy.
“When I couldn’t stay home any longer, I went away to visit a cousin of my mother’s. At least, my father thought I’d gone there. I only stayed with Bertha a little while and father never knew the truth of it.”
“And then after that?”
“I didn’t know what to do with my baby. I was afraid people’d say I wasn’t married, and then father––”
“Go on from the time you left your cousin’s.”
Molly thought a minute and proceeded.
“I looked in all the papers to find some one who wanted a baby––” 39
“So you gave him away? Well, that’s easy to overcome. You couldn’t give my baby away, you know.”
“No, no, indeed! I didn’t give him away. … I boarded him out and saved money to pay for him. I even took summer boarders. The woman who had him––”
Molly’s long wait prompted the man once more.
“Well?” he said again. “The woman what?”
“The woman began to love the baby very much, and she wasn’t very poor, and didn’t need the money. Lots of times I went with it to her, and she wouldn’t take it.”
A thought connected with her story made Molly bury her face in her hands. The man touched her.
“Go on,” he said slowly. “Go on. And then?”
“Then once when I went to her she said she was going to take the baby on a little visit to some relatives and would write me as soon as she got back.”
“Yes,” encouraged the low voice.
“She never wrote or came back. I couldn’t find where she’d gone, and father was terribly ill, and I’ve hoped and hoped––”
“How long since you last saw him?”
Molly considered a moment.
“A long time,” she sighed.
“How many years?”
“One!”
“Then he was almost seven years with the woman?”
“Yes,” breathed Molly, and they lapsed into silence.
The man meditated a space and Jinnie heard a low, nervous cough come from his lips.
“Molly,” he said presently, “I’m going to have a lot of money soon. It won’t be long, and then we’ll find him and begin life all over.”
“Oh, I’d love to find him,” moaned Molly, “but I couldn’t begin over with you. It’s all hateful and horrible now.” 40
The man leaned over and touched her, not too tenderly. When Molly’s face was turned to him, he tilted her chin up.
“You care for some one else?” he said abruptly.
The droop of the girl’s head was his answer. He stood up suddenly.
“That’s it! That’s it! What’s his name?”
A shake of her head was all the answer Molly gave him.
“I asked you his name. Get up! Stand up!”
As if to force her to do his will, he took hold of her shoulders sharply and drew her upward.
“What’s his name?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What’s his name?”
Virginia did not catch Molly’s whisper.
A disbelieving grunt fell from the stranger’s lips.
“I remember him as a boy. Weren’t they one summer at the Mottville Hotel? He’s years younger than you.”
Molly gathered courage.
“He doesn’t know how old I am,” she responded, “and his mother loves me, too. They were with me three summers.” Then, remembering the man’s statement, she added, “Ages don’t count nowadays. And I will be happy.”
“You’ll get happiness with me, not with him,” said an angry voice. “Has he ever told you he loved you?”
“No, no, indeed not. But he was here to-day! His mother’s ill and wanted me to come as her companion, but I couldn’t leave father right now.”
“Does he know you love him?”
An emphatic negative ejaculation from Molly brought a sigh of relief from the man.
“Forget him!” said he. “Now I’m going. I shall come back to-night, and remember this. I’ll leave no stone unturned to find that boy. I’ve always longed for one, and I’ll move Heaven and earth to find him.” 41
Virginia saw him whirl about, open the door, and stride out.
Molly Merriweather stood for a few minutes in silence, trembling.
“I didn’t dare to tell him the baby was blind,” she whispered, too low for Jinnie to hear.
Then she slowly glided away, leaving the girl under the table, with her pail full of cats, and the fiddle. Presently Virginia crawled out cautiously, the pail on her arm, and hugging her fiddle, she opened the door swiftly, and disappeared down the road, running under the tall trees.
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