Bricks Without Straw: A Novel

by Albion Winegar Tourgée

CHAPTER XXXI.

A LIFE FOR A LIFE.

It was a time of struggle at Mulberry Hill. Love and death fought for the life of little Hildreth Le Moyne. The father and the "new grandma" watched over him most assiduously; the servants were untiring in their exertions; the physician's skill was not lacking, but yet none could foresee the result. The invalid below sent frequent inquiries. First one and then the other stole away to ask her some question or bring her tidings in regard to the lad in whose life was bound up the hope of two old families.

One morning, while the child was still very sick, when Miss Ainslie awoke after the brief sleep which had been all the rest she had allowed herself from her self-imposed task, her head seemed strangely light. There was a roaring in her ears as if a cataract were playing about them. Her limbs ached, and every movement seemed unusually difficult—almost painful. She walked across the room and looked dully into the mirror on her dressing-case, resting her hands on the top of the high old-fashioned furniture as she did so. She was only able to note that her eyes looked heavy and her face flushed and swollen, when a sharp pain shot through her frame, her sight grew dim, the room spun round and round. She could only crawl back and clamber with difficulty upon the high-posted bed, where the servant found her fevered and unconscious when she came an hour later to awaken her for breakfast. The struggle that had been waged around the bed of the young child was now renewed by that of his self-constituted nurse. Weeks passed away before it was over, and ere that time the music of little feet had ceased about the ancient mansion, and the stroke to pride and love had rendered the invalid grand-mother still more an invalid.

The child had been her hope and pride as its mother had been her favorite. By a strange contrariety the sunny-faced little mother had set herself to accomplish her son's union with the tall, dark, and haughty cousin, who had expired in giving birth to little Hildreth. There was nothing of spontaneity and no display of conjugal affection on the part of the young husband or his wife; but during the absence of her son, the invalid was well cared for and entertained by the wife, whom she came to love with an intensity second only to that she lavished on her son. In the offspring of these two her heart had been wrapped up from the hour of his birth. She had dreamed out for him a life full of great actualities, and had even reproached Hesden for his apathy in regard to public affairs during the stirring scenes enacting around them, urging him to take part in them for his son's sake.

She was a woman of great ambition. At first this had centered in her son, and she had even rejoiced when he went into the army, though he was earnestly opposed to the war, in the hope that it might bring him rank and fame. When these did not come, and he returned to her a simple private, with a bitterer hate for war and a sturdier dislike for the causes which had culminated in the struggle than he had when it began, she had despaired of her dream ever being realized through him, but had fondly believed that the son of the daughter-in-law she had so admired and loved would unite his father's sterling qualities with his mother's pride and love of praise, and so fulfill her desire that the family name should be made famous by some one descended from herself. This hope was destroyed by the death of the fair, bright child whom she loved so intensely, and she felt a double grief in consequence. In her sorrow, she had entirely secluded herself, seeing no one but her nurse and, once or twice, her son. The sick girl in the room above was somehow unpleasantly connected with her grief, and received no real sympathy in her illness. There was even something of jealousy in the mind of the confirmed invalid, when she remembered the remarkable manner in which the child had been attracted toward the new-comer, as well as the fact that she had nursed him so faithfully that his last words were a moan for his "new grandma," while his real grandmother lay useless and forgotten in her dim-shadowed room below.

Besides, it was with a feeling of envy that she recognized the fact that, for the first time in his life, her son was more absorbed in another's welfare than in her own. The chronic ailment of the mother had no doubt become so much a thing of habit in his life that it failed to impress him as it should, while the illness of the young girl, having, as he believed, been incurred by her voluntary attendance upon his son inspired him with a feeling of responsibility that would not otherwise have existed. Something had occurred, too, which had aroused a feeling upon his part which is often very close akin to a tenderer one. As soon as he had learned of her illness, he had endeavored to induce some of his female relatives to come and attend her, but they had all flatly refused. They would come and care for the child, they said; they would even send the "Yankee school-marm" flowers, and make delicacies to tempt her appetite, but they would not demean themselves by waiting upon a sick "nigger teacher." They did not fear the contagion; indeed they would have come to take care of little Hildreth but that they did not care to meet his Yankee nurse. They even blamed Hesden for allowing her to come beneath his roof, and intimated that she had brought contagion with her.

He was angry at their injustice and prejudice. He had known of its existence, but it never before seemed so hateful. Somehow he could not rid himself of two thoughts: one was of the fairy creature whose song and laughter and bird-like grace and gaiety, as she masqueraded in the quaint dress of olden time, had made the dull old mansion bright as a dream of Paradise for a single night. It had seemed to him, then, that nothing so bright and pure had ever flitted through the somber apartments of the gray old mansion. He remembered the delight of his boy—that boy whom he loved more than he had ever loved any one, unless it were his invalid mother—and he could not forget the same slight form, with serious shadowed face and earnest eyes moving softly about the sick-room of the child, her eyes full of sorrowful anxiety as if the life she sought to save were part of her own being. He wondered that any one could think of her as a stranger. It was true she had come from the North and was engaged in a despised avocation, but even that she had glorified and exalted by her purity and courage until his fastidious lady mother herself had been compelled to utter words of praise. So his heart grew sore and his face flushed hot with wrath when his cousins sneered at this lily which had been blighted by the fevered breath of his son.

They tauntingly advised him to send to Red Wing and get some of her "nigger" pupils to attend upon her. Much to their surprise he did so, and two quiet, gentle, deft-handed watchers came, who by day and by night sat by her bedside, gladly endeavoring to repay the debt they owed to the faithful teacher. But this did not seem to relieve Mr. Le Moyne of anxiety. He came often and watched the flushed face, heard the labored breathing, and listened with pained heart to the unmeaning murmurs which fell from her lips—the echoes of that desert dreamland through which fever drags its unconscious victims. He heard his own name and that of the fast-failing sufferer in the adjoining room linked in sorrowful phrase by the stammering tongue. Even in the midst of his sorrow it brought him a thrill of joy. And when his fear became fact, and he mourned the young life no love could save, his visits to the sick-room of her who had been his co-watcher by his child's bedside became more frequent. He would not be denied the privilege until the crisis came, and reason resumed her sway. Then he came no more, but every day sent some token of remembrance.

Mrs. Le Moyne had noted this solicitude, and with the jealousy of the confirmed invalid grudged the sick girl the slightest of the thoughtful attentions that she alone had been accustomed to receive. She did not dream that her son, Hesden Le Moyne, cared anything for the little Yankee chit except upon broadly humanitarian grounds, or perhaps from gratitude for her kindly attention to his son; but even this fretted her. As time went on, she came more and more to dislike her and to wish that she had never come beneath their roof. So the days flew by, grew into weeks, and Mollie Ainslie was still at Mulberry Hill, while important events weve happening at Red Wing.