Very curiously the sick woman looked first at Fan and then at the child, but the mist of death had gathered too thickly on her brain for her to realize the truth. The baby was a puzzle she could not solve.
“Whose is it? Yours?” she asked, putting her hand upon its head.
“No,” Fan answered very gently. “It is your baby,—little Paul. Don’t you remember?”
There was a struggle between reason and delirium, but the soul was drifting away too far for any real consciousness or memory. Only the name of Paul arrested and held it for a moment.
“Little Paul,” she whispered, with a smile. “Yes, he was a pretty boy when I took him; bigger than this one. Whose did you say it is? And who are you?”
Her hand still lay on the baby’s head, but her eyes were closed. She was going fast and Fan knew it, and in an ecstasy of grief and terror held the baby face close to the white lips and said, “Mother, mother, it is your baby. Kiss him once, that I may tell him. It is little Paul.”
She had never before called Mrs. Hathern mother, and now it came from her involuntarily, born of her pity for the dying woman and helpless child. But it produced a wonderful effect. Quickly the eyes unclosed and were illumined with a strange light as they beamed upon Fan.
“You called me mother,” she said, “and it brings things back to me and makes me glad. Thank you, Fanny. Hold the baby nearer while I kiss him for the first and last time. Little Paul, my little Paul.”
She put her arms around the boy, kissed him twice and never spoke again, although she lived until the early dawn of the next day, and then died as peacefully as if going to sleep.
It was I who went with father on the long, sad journey to Mt. Auburn, where the costly monuments and signs of grandeur everywhere were in striking contrast to the simple cemetery on the hillside where she had expressed a wish not to be buried; but when the ceremony of interment was over and we turned away, leaving our dead there alone, I felt that when my time should come I should far rather lie down under the whispering pines, within sight of the lights of home, than be left in that “beautiful city of the dead.” The family monument was tall and grand, and beside the husband’s name was that of “Paul Haverleigh, who died in Lovering, Va., March, 1863, aged 18 years.” I did not know before that it was there, and when I saw it I was conscious of an added feeling of respect and regret for the woman whose real worth I had, perhaps, not fully appreciated.