A Modern Madonna

by Caroline Abbot Stanley

"I want Unker Wichard to hold me," he said one day.

"Mama will hold you, darling," Margaret answered with quick jealousy.

"I want Unker Wichard to hold me." And she looked on while Richard settled himself in the big chair and took the child in his arms. She turned away as she saw Philip's look of content.

"It is because Mr. De Jarnette is stronger," the nurse said in a low tone, seeing Margaret's look. "Children love a man's strength. It rests them."

"I want mama to hold my hand," said Philip from the depths of his uncle's arms. And Margaret taking a stool sat close beside the big chair and held the little feverish hand. He dropped asleep at last, and fearing to wake him they sat thus for a long time—a long, long time it seemed to Margaret. But she could not get her hand away without his clutching it and murmuring, "I want mama, Unker Wichard."

Sometimes when the child was restless Richard would take him in his arms and walk with him up and down, up and down, the length of the great chamber. He never seemed to grow weary, Margaret noticed, and he was as gentle in his touch as a woman. Perhaps there was something, as the nurse had said, in the combination of strength and gentleness to quiet overwrought nerves. She began to have a comprehension of a child's need of something to rest upon. She had never supposed that Richard De Jarnette could be gentle. And then, without any special reason, her thoughts drifted back to that trying time when she first found out that she was a deserted wife.... No—she could not say that he had not been gentle then. But since—What a strange man he was! So full of inconsistencies. One day when she had been holding Philip and started to get up with him in her arms, he—this hard, cold man who had not spoken two words to her that day—stopped her with a word, and before she could resist, had taken the child from her, saying almost sternly, "Don't ever do that. No woman is strong enough to get up with a child of his size in her arms." It struck her as a very strange thing that he should thus look out for her—should even think of such a trifling thing. But she gave Philip up to him without comment.

During those days and nights of anxiety they lived in and for the boy. Meals came and went and they ate them together, sometimes in silence, oftener talking of him. Days dawned to be filled with work for him; then darkness fell and covered the earth with its pall and their hearts with its terrors. In the morning they said "Would God it were night"; and in the night, "Would God it were morning."

Of the outer world they heard only through the doctor who brought them daily tidings and messages of encouragement from Mrs. Pennybacker. Rosalie was slowly failing. It did not seem possible for her to leave her now, unless— The sentence was never finished.

Mr. De Jarnette had not been to town since the day he brought Margaret out. He had voluntarily chosen to go into quarantine with her in the sick-room. She had protested at first, but without avail, and later she had come to depend upon him and was glad to have him there. It seemed to divide the responsibility.

"He don't seem to take no intrus in nothin' but that chile," Mammy Cely said one day. "He cert'ny is wropped up in him. And no wonder. Philip's the onlies' one of his fambly left." And for once Margaret forgot to be angry that Philip was thus aligned with the De Jarnettes instead of the Varnums.