“Your mother is dead. She is buried near my mother, in our own family lot. I do not know her name. I saw her but once in my life. I always feel that I caused her death. This is how it happened.”
Then Eliza recounted the events of that dreadful day when she had asked the mother to ride. She described Beth’s mother, her dress and manner.
“That accounts for the dreams I have—waking dreams, Adee. Do you remember that I told you once that you did not look like you used to. It was some one else I remembered. I can see, as plain as can be, a lady with coils about her head, and flowers stuck in her hair. She wore dresses trailing over the floor. I can see her bending over my crib to kiss me. There was always a man with her.”
“But the woman who had you did not look like a woman who would dress so. She was a respectable person, but poorly dressed and, I am afraid, not very cultivated. Do you remember what they called you? Do any names stay with you?”
“No, except Bena and Baby. I remember that I tried to say those words. Bena must have been a made-up word. Surely no one was ever called so.”
“No, it seems hardly possible,” said Eliza. “We looked over the ground everywhere where the accident occurred, but could find no purse. We thought she might have had her checks or name somewhere in that. I have a dim remembrance that she had such an article in her hand, but we could find nothing. I saved everything that you or the woman wore. You had a little baby pin with E. L. engraved on it. I called you Elizabeth for that reason.”
“Have you them yet, Adee? Will you show them to me?” There was a high-strung, nervous eagerness in Beth’s voice. She was trembling from head to foot. There was a sadness because of the loss of parents she had never known; and an eagerness to see those things which were part of her life somewhere else.
“Would it not be better to put it off until tomorrow?” asked Eliza.
“No, please, Adee, this evening—now.” There was no denying the eager, trembling request. Without another word, Adee arose and, taking up the lamp, made her way upstairs.
“They are packed away in a trunk in the closet in the spare-room,” she said. Beth ran ahead, and in the dark had pulled out the trunk on to the middle of the floor before Eliza appeared.