Her child had become necessary as a bait—and her child let it be—for, in her hideous creed, nothing was sacred. She was filled towards her victim with fierce yearnings, and, had she possessed the actual entity of soul, would have loved him madly—but no, she hated him, as the slave hates the despotic master to whom he hourly cringes for each favor. In a word, she hated him as a man—or in his double capacity of a spiritual being, rather; and, as even her hate was secondary, her appetites towards him were those of the weir-wolf for mankind. She would devour him body and soul, but she meant to feast alone.
Fearing lest the tenderness of his nature might be too strongly moved towards the child, if not diverted in other directions, she at once set her subtle wits to work to furnish her “Tiger,” as she called him, with sufficient toys of the same kind to keep him quiet, and avert the chances of his leaning more towards one than another. Some letters were hastily despatched to New England, and the result was the appearance of a fair and gentle child, about the age of her own.
Elna and the stranger, Moione, sprang into each other’s arms when they met, as if their very heart were one. They were fast friends, it seemed, and a thousand times had Elna said how dearly she loved the gentle Moione; and so jealous were the children of their first meeting, that Manton saw little of either for several days. A glance at the broad, serene brow, great, clear eyes, and delicate mouth of the new-comer, filled him with a strange, inexplicable sense of confidence, and even relief; which he could not well explain, to be sure, because it was too undefined to himself. He could only wonder how that white-browed creature came in such a place. It seemed as though it were a promise, answering to his prayer for the elfish Elna, that this calm spirit should have descended in their midst.
The vehement and headstrong petulance of her nature promised to find here a balance that would sober it within the bounds of reason; and strangely, although he saw hope for her, and for his own yet undefined purpose in her development, he saw nothing definitely in the stranger, but a good angel sent to aid him. His soul went out to greet her, but was it yet his heart?
These children were both dedicate to art; and Manton found it now by far the most pleasing occupation, to watch and give direction to the rapid unfolding of this instinct for the creative. The newly-aroused intellect of Elna here displayed many impish and brilliant characteristics of the imitative faculty, that might easily have been mistaken, by a less partial observer than Manton, for genius. These peculiarities were strikingly contrasted with the placid, but vigorous style of Moione, to a degree that one formed the exact offset to the other, not alone in art, but in all physical and mental, as well as spiritual idiosyncrasies. As these children grew upon him, there seemed something strangely familiar in them to Manton. He often tried to account for this to himself. Had he seen them before in dreams? Had he known them in some different world, and in a previous stage of being? Why was it that the vehement eccentricities of temper, the elfin wildness of motion, and light, mocking spirit of this child Elna, all seemed to him so familiar? Why was it that the coming of the fair-browed Moione had surprised him so little? There was that in her pure, calm face to startle most observers; yet, from the first, he had looked upon it as a matter of course, and as if he had unconsciously waited for her to arrive. Why was it that he had felt comforted since she came? What was it, in that name of hers, that sounded to him so much like a half-forgotten music-note?
So he had questioned himself a thousand times, becoming each day more puzzled than the last, until accident furnished him with the curious solution of this mystery. One day, in looking over a pile of old manuscripts, he found one, upon which he seized, with an unaccountable thrill. In an instant the whole thing flashed upon him—
“I have it! I have it! Here the mystery is solved at last! Strange, that I should so utterly have forgotten this manuscript! Two years ago, before I ever saw these people, this strange foreshadowing of what seems now a reality in my life, came to me in a summer’s day-dream; and I wrote it off, to be thrown aside and forgotten until this moment. It seems the most wonderful coincidence. I am no believer in miracles, but this appears a marvellous reach of the soul into the future; I was conscious of nothing when I wrote, but the pleasure of embodying in words what seemed to me a beautiful thought; strange, it should have been thus thrown aside and so utterly forgotten, until the increasing coincidences of my present relation have gradually forced me back to find it! What blind instinct, struggling in me, sent me here to look through these old manuscripts, with no definite purpose? What vague struggle of consciousness and memory is this, that has been moving me for weeks to understand why it is those children seem so familiar to me? Strange! strange! strange!”
Manton now proceeded to read this curious manuscript, the contents of which we shall also place before you:—
THE LEGEND OF THE MOCKING-BIRD.
Friend, do you know the Mocking-Bird? I warrant, if he is a familiar of your childhood, you have a thousand times wondered at the strange malignant intelligence which characterises his tyrannical supremacy over all the feathered singers. Not only is he “accepted king of song,” but he is the pest and terror of the groves and meadows. Spiteful and subtle, he conquers in battle, or by manœuvre, all in reach of him; and you may easily detect his favourite haunts, by the incessant din and clatter of wrath and fear he keeps up by his malicious mockery among his neighbors. From my earliest childhood, I can remember having been singularly impressed by the weird and curious humors of this creature. Since those times of innocent wonder, I have been a wide wanderer. The prepossessions of my fancy were irresistibly attracted by the wild legend I give below. It was told me by an old Wako warrior.