Christina

by L. G. Moberly

For many minutes she could only lean back, with closed eyes and ashen face, drawing long painful breaths, each one of which was a sob; but as a sense of safety grew upon her, she roused herself to light her lamp, and to draw off her damp clothing, preparatory to going to bed. Even with the slender supply of blankets Mrs. Jones allowed her lodgers, it would be warmer than sitting up without a fire; and she dared not allow herself the luxury of a fire, especially now that her last hope of raising money had been snatched from her.

"For I shall never dare take the pendant to show to anybody again," she thought, with a shudder. "The next person I went to might send for the police then and there. And perhaps it was horrible of me to think of pawning mother's pendant at all—only—I don't believe she would have minded, if she had known how dreadfully, dreadfully poor her little girl was going to be—and how hard it is for a girl even to get bread enough to keep from starvation. And I know this is worth—oh! a lot of money," she exclaimed pathetically, once more taking the ornament from its box, and holding it before her in the light of the lamp. As the green gleam of the stones flashed out before her eyes, the dreary room in which she sat, her squalid surroundings, even her own misery faded from her mind; she was back in the past—back in her mother's bedroom in the dear Devonshire home—her mother's dying voice sounding in her ears. Through the open window had drifted the song of the sea, mingling with the hum of bees amongst the roses that climbed to the very sill, and made the room fragrant with their sweetness. And a bird had sung—ah! how it had sung, on that last night of her mother's life, when Christina felt that her life too was going down into the dark for ever.

"My little girl"—how faint the gentle voice had been!—"I—can't stay—now father has gone; he—and I—could not ever be apart. He is my world—-all my world." The dim resentment which Christina, the child, had sometimes experienced, because those two beings she loved best had seemed so remote from her, so perfectly able to live their lives without her, had smitten the girl Christina afresh as she listened to her mother's words. Her father and mother had been so wrapped up in one another, always so wholly sufficient for each other's needs, that their child had played a very secondary part in their lives. And the child had dimly resented it.

Through all the sorrow that filled her heart as she stood beside her mother's deathbed, that smouldering resentment would not be wholly stilled. Her mother could barely spare a thought for the girl she was leaving to face the world alone, because her husband filled her whole soul; she could remember only that he had gone before her into the silent land, and that she must hasten to join him again.

"You are so young," the dying voice had murmured on, whilst the fast dimming eyes looked, not at her little daughter, but at the blue sky outside the window, "somebody will want you some day—as—Ronald—wanted me—as—he wants me still."

Christina did not answer, only her eyes followed her mother's glance out to the deep blue sky framed by the nodding roses round the window; and she wondered dully whether anybody would really care for her some day, or whether there was something inherently unlovable in her, seeing that her own father and mother had seemed to find her so little worthy of love.

The bitter thought passed. She bent over her mother, and gently stroked back the damp hair from her forehead.

"I shall—be able—to take care of myself," she said bravely, "and——"

"Be good, my little girl," the murmuring voice broke in, "be good—and come to us some day—Ronald and I will be there—together. I want—to tell you—the pendant—the emerald pendant"—a look of excitement flashed into her eyes; she made a great effort to raise herself in the bed, but such effort was far beyond her feeble strength—"I can't tell—you—now," she gasped; "later—after—sleep—the pendant—take—the—emerald; tell Arthur"—and at that word her strength suddenly failed, her eyes closed, she slipped down among her pillows, in an unconsciousness from which she never again awoke.

All through the fragrant summer night following that sunshiny afternoon, Christina had watched beside her, hoping against hope that some faint knowledge of outward things would return to her, that the strange unfinished sentence might be ended.