XLII.
PAULA RELATES A STORY SHE HAS HEARD.
“None are so desolate but something dear,
Dearer than self, possesses or possessed.”—Byron.
In the centre of a long low room not far from the scene of the late disaster, a solitary lamp was burning. It had been lit in haste and cast but a feeble flame, but its light was sufficient to illuminate the sad and silent group that gathered under its rays.
On a bench by the wall, crouched the bowed and stricken form of Roger Holt, his face buried in his hands, his whole attitude expressive of the utmost grief; at his side stood Mr. Sylvester, his tall figure looming sombrely in the dim light; and on the floor at their feet, lay the dead form of the little lame boy.
But it was not upon their faces, sad and striking as they were, that the eyes of the few men and women scattered in the open door-way, rested most intently. It was upon her, the bruised, bleeding, half-dead mother, who kneeling above the little corpse, gazed down upon it with the immobility of despair, moaning in utter heedlessness of her own condition, “My baby, my baby, my own, own baby!”
The fixedness with which she eyed the child, though the blood was streaming from her forehead and bathing with a still deeper red her burned and blistered arms, made Mr. Sylvester’s sympathetic heart beat. Turning to the silent figure of Holt, he touched him on the arm and said with a gesture in her direction:
“You have not deceived the woman? That is really her own child that lies there?”
The man beside him, started, looked up with slowly comprehending eyes, and mechanically bowed his head. “Yes,” assented he, and relapsed into his former heavy silence.