“I should prefer any suffering rather than the loss of thy love and confidence, my Ralph,” she answered tenderly. “To the young, it is easy to look back, for they have only just left the flowery garden. To the old, it may be so, when there is only a little way to go, and they will then be gathered to their fathers. But half-way through the long journey—with all the graves behind, and the dreary stretch of trackless heath before—Speak thy will, Ralph.”
“Forgive me if I pain you, Mother. I feel as if I must speak, and something has happened to-day which bids me do it now.”
It was evident that these words startled and discomposed the mother. She had been leaning back rather wearily in the corner of the bench, as one resting from bodily strain. Now she sat up, the rich crimson mantling her dark cheek.
“What! Hast thou seen—hast thou heard something?”
“I have seen,” answered Ralph slowly, as if almost unwilling to say it, “a face from the long ago. At any rate, a face which carried my memory thither.”
“Whose?” she said, almost in tones of alarm.
“I cannot tell you. Let me make it as plain as I can. You may be able to piece the disjointed strands together, when I cannot.”
“Go on,” she said, settling herself to listen.
“You know, Mother,” he began, “that I have always known and remembered one thing from my past. I know you are not my real mother. Kindest and truest and dearest of mothers and friends you have been to me; my true mother, whoever and wherever she may be, could have loved and tended me no better than you. That much I know: but as to other matters my recollection is far more uncertain. Some persons and things I recall clearly; others are mixed together, and here and there, as if in a dream, some person, or more frequently some action of such a person, stands out vividly, like a picture, from the general haze. Now, for instance, I can remember that there was somebody called ‘Mother Isel’: but whether she were my mother, or yours, or who she was, that I do not know. Again, I recollect a man, who must have been rather stern to my childish freaks, I suppose, for he brings with him a sense of fear. This man does not come into my life till I was some few years old; there is another whom I remember better, an older friend, a man with light hair and grave, kindly blue eyes. There are some girls, too, but I cannot clearly recall them—they seem mixed together in my memory, though the house in which I and they lived I recollect perfectly. But I do not know how it is—I never see you there. I clearly recall a big book, which the man with the blue eyes seems to be constantly reading: and when he reads, a woman sits by him with a blue check apron, and I sit on her lap. Perhaps such a thing happened only once, but it appears to me as if I can remember it often and often. There is another man whose face I recall—I doubt if he lived in the house; I think he came in now and then: a man with brown hair and a pleasant, lively face, who often laughed and had many a merry saying. I cannot certainly remember any one else connected with that house, except one other—a woman: a woman with a horrible chattering tongue, who often left people in tears or very cross: a woman whom I don’t like at all.”
“And after, Ralph?” suggested the mother in a low voice, when the young man paused.