She pointed to the head of her bed, and for the first time Magdalen observed a pretty little rosewood crib, with dainty pillow-cases, ruffled and fluted, and snowy Marseilles quilt, spotlessly white and clean. But there was no infant’s head upon the pillow, no little hands outside the spread, or sound of infant’s breathing.
The crib was empty, and Magdalen glanced inquiringly at Mrs. Jenks, who said:
“You may as well rock it first as last. She will give you no peace till you do. It’s a fancy of hers that there’s a baby there, and she sometimes rocks it day and night. She is always quiet when she is on that tack, but sometimes the baby gets out of the cradle into her head, and then there is no pacifying her. Her tantrum is over now, and, if you are willing, I’ll leave her with you a few moments. I shan’t be out of hearing. My room is across the hall.”
She was evidently anxious to get away; and Magdalen, who would not confess to any fear, was left alone with the crazy woman. She had drawn the crib nearer to her, and with her foot upon the rocker kept it in motion, while Laura commenced a low, cooing sort of lullaby of “Hush, my darling! mother’s near you!”
The novelty of her situation, and the wakefulness of the previous night, began to have a strange effect on Magdalen, and, as she rocked the cradle to the sound of that low, mournful music, it seemed to her as if it were her own self she was rocking, herself far back in that past of which she knew so little. There was a dizzy feeling in her head, a humming in her ears, and for a few moments she felt almost as crazy as the woman at her side. But as she became more accustomed to the room and the situation, she grew calmer and less nervous, and could think what it was better to reply to the strange questions her companion sometimes put to her.
“If a person killed something and didn’t know it, and didn’t mean to, and didn’t know as they had killed it, would God call them a murderer, as He did Cain?”
This was one question, and Magdalen replied at random, that in such a case it was no murder, and God would not so consider it.
“Then why has He branded me here in my head, where it keeps thump, thump! just like the beating of a drum, and where it is so hot and snarled?” Laura asked. Then, before Magdalen could reply, she continued: “I did not mean to kill it, and I don’t think I did. I put it somewhere, or gave it to somebody; but the more I try to think, the more it thumps, and thumps, and I can’t make it out; only I didn’t; didn’t truly mean to kill it. Oh, baby! No, no! I didn’t! I didn’t!”
She was sobbing in a pitiful kind of way, and Magdalen moved her position so that she could take the poor, tired, “twisted” head upon her bosom, while she soothed and comforted the moaning woman, softly smoothing her tangled hair and asking her, at last, if she would not like it brushed and put up out of her way.
“It will look nicer so,” she said; and, as Laura made no objection, she brought the brush and comb from a little basket on the bureau, and then set herself to the task of combing out the matted hair, which had been sorely neglected since Alice went away.