II
Mrs. Theddon led the child down the outer hallway into a small room which opened from her own. White and blue was the color scheme in an atmosphere of silken daintiness. Two windows opened upon a wide panorama of the Connecticut Valley and the river, far-flung from north to south below.
Little frocks were laid upon the counterpane. The dressing table was as complete as the boudoir appointments of feminine royalty. Beyond the chamber opened a diminutive, white-tiled bath.
“The workmen finished it yesterday afternoon, dear. I made them rush to complete it in time for you to-day. Now I’m going to bathe and dress you—myself. I want to do it! Marie, your maid, will not arrive until Monday. But that was arranged on purpose. For the first two days—I wanted—to accustom you to it, myself. I want us to get acquainted. You don’t mind, do you, dear?” She asked it anxiously, as though the child were a guest as old as herself.
“Oh, mother—dear—I’m—so happy! It’s a dream come true.”
“A dream come true?” Mrs. Theddon repeated the words dazedly. “And have you ever dreamed of things like these, little girl?”
“Lots and lots of times. Somehow the Orphanage seemed a place where I was staying for just a little while—until somebody I belonged to came after me.”
“I’m so glad you’re not—like—the other Orphanage children, dear. I thought in some ways you might be. But—you don’t know—how pleased—I am!”
“I’m just me,” the princess affirmed. “And it seems like—coming home!”
The mother bathed and dressed the child, calling a servant to carry away the Orphanage clothes. But if Mrs. Theddon had been pleasantly surprised thus far, it was nothing to her overpowering satisfaction when she beheld her little ward clothed in the habilaments better befitting her character.
“You’re wonderful, girlie mine!” the woman whispered, as she surveyed the transformation.
“And I think you’re wonderful, too,” the child answered.
And yet, twenty-four hours later, a gray Sunday twilight, Mrs. Theddon entered her chamber to discover the child huddled in a window-chair, sobbing convulsively.
“What’s the matter, darling?” cried the shocked woman. “Aren’t you happy?”
The princess sought frantically to hide her tears.
“Yes’m—I’m happy—so happy it hurts. Yet—well, I guess I miss the orphans already!”
“Miss them! You mean you’d rather be at the Orphanage than here with me?”
“It isn’t the nice things—it isn’t you—it’s—it’s——”
“Yes, yes! What is it?”
“I guess it’s just the orphans—’specially the babies. I miss havin’ to do things for ’em. For they needed an awful lot done for ’em, and—I was happy because it was me that could do it.”
“But they have some one else to look after them now. They’re no worse off because you’ve gone.”
“No’m. Perhaps not. I wasn’t ‘specially thinking of their side of it. I was thinking of mine. They liked to have things done for ’em. They told me so. Miss Howland got awful cross sometimes. And I felt happy because I was ’preciated. That’s an awful nice word, ’preciated, isn’t it? I so want folks to ’preciate me, Mrs. Thed—mother dear. I guess everybody does, don’t they?—want to be ’preciated?”
Every one wants to be appreciated? Dear God in heaven!
“Child, what does put such mature thoughts into your little head?”
“If you’d wondered and wondered who you were, and never found out, maybe you’d know how sad you could feel, thinking it was because nobody wanted you and you wasn’t ’preciated.”
“You poor, maternal, romantic little lamb! You talk like a woman grown, already.”
“Do grown-up ladies feel like that, Mrs. Thed—mother dear?”
Mrs. Theddon did not answer at once. Her voice was handicapped when she responded:
“Real women do, I fancy, my darling. But maybe there are a lot who have a cruel time showing it. Come, baby! Tell me—did any one ever pick you up and rock you to sleep in their arms? Did any one ever try to sing you a lullaby, child?”
“Not much, Mrs. Thed—mother. I always tried to do it to those littler than me. But I loved to do it!” the princess cried suddenly.
“Let’s sit down in the rocker, child. And don’t weep any more. Because you’ll never know how much you are appreciated here.”
The woman took the distraught, moist-eyed little girl in her arms. She tried to soothe her by singing a lullaby. She had a rich contralto voice, “trained” by a great Parisian master—for this!—to sing a little, parentless girl to sleep. Yet she had to stop half way. She found that her training had gone for naught. Her voice was cracked and jagged and uneven and broken.
In that mellow pause, the child snuggled closer. She whispered in the dusk:
“You’re just like a real mother, Mrs. Theddon. I guess I know now why some of the babies at the Home stopped crying when I began to rock them to sleep.”
The future opened radiantly for Mrs. Gracia Theddon then. And the past dropped away, colorless and shallow and tinseled and wasted.
“Listen, dear,” she said finally. “I’m going to ask if you’ll do something for me.”
“I’ll do anything in the world for you—that I can.”
“When Miss Howland took you into the Home, she called you Allegra. When she partly adopted you, she gave you her own name—Howland. So while you were at the Orphanage your name was Allegra Howland. But now that you’ve left that life behind you, your last name is Theddon, like my own.”
“Yes’m.”
“I don’t like the name Allegra. I want you to let me change that too. I’ve picked out a name I’d planned to call a little girl of my own, if one ever came.”
“What is it, mother dear? I’m sure I’ll like it if you picked it out.”
“It’s—Madelaine!”
“It’s an awful pretty name,” said the child, after a moment’s silence. “It’s so soft-sounding and pleasant, like all the rooms here in your house—and your eyes and your voice—since I’ve been here and you started to love me.”
“God help me!” whispered the rich woman. “Maybe You knew best, dear God. It’s worth the dreary wait, after all!”
And so Madelaine Theddon came into existence. So she too started her journey—a daintier, softer journey—toward Life’s Hilltop and the lambent stars and the Amethyst Moment.