‘Afraid!’ she echoed. ‘When have you ever known me afraid yet? Besides, if this is to be done for Mr Courtney, my life is at his service.’
‘More than your life, Lizzie—your sacred honour. Remember your oath, never to reveal what you may hear, see, or suspect this night.’
‘I have not forgotten it,’ said his daughter briefly, as she threw a mantle over her shoulders, and left the cottage with her burden.
It was with strange feelings that she set out to accomplish her errand. The tropical night could hardly be called dark, for the deep blue firmament was set with myriads of stars, but the dusky glens and leafy coverts were full of shadows, sufficient to mask the unexpected spring of wild cat or panther, or to conceal the poisonous asp wriggling through the grass on which she trod.
Yet she went bravely on, her only means of defence a stout stick with which she stirred the leaves in her path, in order to unearth a hidden enemy.
The covered basket she bore was rather heavy, and she had no knowledge what it contained. Most women would have asked the question before they started—many would have untied and opened it as soon as they were out of sight. Liz did neither. A horrible suspicion had entered her mind, which she was fighting against with all her might, and it left no room for idle curiosity. On the contrary, she dreaded lest some accident should reveal the contents of the basket to her. She did not wish to ascertain them. She felt intuitively that the knowledge would be the cause of fresh unhappiness. So she walked rapidly and without a pause to Shanty Hill, though the five miles seemed very long without the landmarks familiar to her by daylight, and her feet were very weary before she got there.
Mammy Lila was an old negress who had acquired some repute as a herbalist, and was much sought after by the Coolie population to doctor their children. She was the sage-femme of Beauregard, and had helped Liz on many an occasion to usher the poor little dusky mites of humanity into a world which waited to welcome them with stripes and hard work. Mammy Lila was a seer into the bargain, and expectant brides and mothers were wont to go to her to read what fortune lay in the future for them. She was an old woman now, and rather infirm, but Dr Fellows had faith in her good sense and discretion, as he evinced on this occasion. The immediate approach to her hut was up a steep bit of hill, covered with loose stones, and as Lizzie, weary with mental and physical fatigue, toiled up it, she stumbled against an obstacle in her path, and shook the basket in her hand, from which issued in another second the feeble wailing cry of a new-born infant. Liz almost dropped the basket in her surprise. She had feared it, but she had resolved not to believe it, and now her worst suspicions were confirmed. She stood still for a moment, trembling at the discovery she had made, and then recommenced almost to run up the rocky hill, as though she would run from the horror that assailed her. Panting with the exertions she had made, and almost speechless with dismay, she entered the negress’s hut, white, scared, and hardly able to express herself. Mammy Lila was in bed, and had to be roused by repeated attacks upon her door, and when she answered the summons she was scarcely awake enough to understand what was said to her.
‘Missy Liz!’ she exclaimed in her surprise; ‘who bad now? Not little Cora, sure! Dat chile not due for three week yet.’
‘No, no, Mammy! I have not come for that,’ said Lizzie, in a faint voice. ‘The Doctor sent me. He said I was to give you this,’ placing the basket on the floor, ‘and to say his message to you is “Silence and secrecy.”’
‘Ah! good Doctor know he can trust Mammy Lila,’ replied the old negress, as she began to untie the basket lid. ‘And what is this, Missy Liz—a baby?’