[pg 71]
BIRTH-MARKS
CHAPTER I.—“And to Every Seed His Own Body.”
When we speak of birth-marks our mind first pictures a physical impression, probably some bodily characteristic transmitted from an ancestor; though mental habit or mind trait of ancestry is transmitted with more consistent regularity than mere physical resemblance.
In a sense our ancestors in us are immortal; not because there is a human imperishableness, but we are heirs to certain family peculiarities and sometimes are afflicted with a restlessness that causes us to fan pinionless wings to reach heights we never fathom and of which we scarcely dream. My meaning can best be conveyed by example.
On a certain day in May a species of plover appear in great number on the northern plains of British America. There they nest and rear their young. The Indians take these birds when unfledged nestlings and make pets of them; and as they grow pluck their sprouting pinions. By environment they are robbed of all life suggesting the migration; yet when the day of southward flight rolls round, the cripples grow restless and seeking to rise on pinionless wing, end by climbing to a perch, where for several days, unceasingly, they beat the air with stubby, outstretched wings; uttering the while that plaintive whistle, which is never heard, except when the bird is on its migratory flight.
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[pg 72] The fire on the hearth, forgotten and dying, cast a faint glow disclosing a home-like room of good proportions and two men seated at a red deal table facing each other: Donald McDonald, a Scotch Presbyterian preacher, and his son, Archibald Campbell, who though a gentleman farmer, was a kinsman of the Campbells of Argyll. A casual observer would have noted that the men were nervously anxious, watching, waiting, perhaps praying for some one dear to both and ill in the adjoining chamber.
The young farmer, as the silence is broken by a shrill wail of protest from his for-some-time-expected son and heir, starts from his chair in a clumsy effort at noiselessness and moves towards the bedroom door. His companion, rising, lifts his hands as in benediction and prays aloud in a tense, subdued voice, which seems to blend with the now lowered voice of the whimpering babe. The father does not hear the old man; his thoughts are of and for the mother and the babe; and unknown to him, tears channel an unused course down his cheeks. So they stand for some time; until the baby, hastily cared for and placed near his mother’s breast, grows quiet, having discovered there is more in life than a wail; then the fat old mid-wife opening the door tells them that the baby is asleep and they may see the mother for a moment.
They tiptoe into the other room and to her bedside, trying hard not to make a noise, though the thick oak floor boards seem to creak as never before. She holds out a hand to each. Her husband, trembling, bends and kisses her quivering lips. She draws down the covers and he looks upon a little red and wrinkled thing, that might almost sleep in comfort in his hands—his boy! his only son!