“Yes; armes Kerlchen! just now he is,” said the young man.
He was quite young, I saw. In that half light I supposed him even younger than he really was. He looked down at the bundle again and smiled.
“I should like to see him,” said I, politely and gracefully, seized by an impulse of which I felt ashamed, but which I yet could not resist.
With that I stepped forward and came to examine the bundle. He moved the plaid a little aside and showed me a child—a very young, small, helpless child, with closed eyes, immensely long, black, curving lashes, and fine, delicate black brows. The small face was flushed, but even in sleep this child looked melancholy. Yet he was a lovely child—most beautiful and most pathetic to see.
I looked at the small face in silence, and a great desire came upon me to look at it oftener—to see it again, then up at that of the father. How unlike the two faces! Now that I fairly looked at the man I found he was different from what I had thought; older, sparer, with more sharply cut features. I could not tell what the child’s eyes might be—those of the father were piercing as an eagle’s; clear, open, strange. There was sorrow in the face, I saw, as I looked so earnestly into it; and it was worn as if with a keen inner life. This glance was one of those which penetrate deep, not the glance of a moment, but a revelation for life.
“He is very beautiful,” said I.
“Nicht wahr?” said the other, softly.
“Look here,” I added, going to a sofa which was strewn with papers, books, and other paraphernalia; “couldn’t we put him here, and then go and see about the rooms? Such a young, tender child must not be carried about the passages, and the house is full of draughts.”
I do not know what had so suddenly supplied me with this wisdom as to what was good for a “young, tender child,” nor can I account for the sudden deep interest which possessed me. I dashed the things off the sofa, beat the dust from it, desired him to wait one moment while I rushed to my bed to ravish it of its pillow. Then with the sight of the bed (I was buying my experience) I knew that that, and not the sofa, was the place for the child, and said so.
“Put him here, do put him here!” I besought, earnestly. “He will sleep for a time here, won’t he?”