“Is it a dream, or death?” he murmured. “Oh! God, spare me! I am haunted by delusions.”
Another little murmur, and a soft low sob, it was the woman this time. Again he opened his eyes and through his dreaming saw the little yellow-headed child laughing around the chair, and inviting the woman to a game of bo-peep.
“Oh! my baby, my own, own baby,” she broke out, stooping to him, “do you know what they say—what they din into my ears, little love, dear baby mine? They say your father is dead, dead, DEAD, dear one. And must you live, grow up, little manikin, without knowing what a man he was?—Sweet, must I sing?—Ah! If you only knew how it hurts!”
The smile flickered back to her face, as she took him on her knee, and she sang a little song he evidently knew well, for he kicked and crowed by way of chorus, then he played with his bare toes for a little—his mother, as she sang, had pulled off his socks to kiss his feet—and as he played she returned to her sad soliloquy.
“You will have to take all from me on trust, little one, and, of course, you will think I exaggerate, my own, when I tell you that your mother had the best man that God yet made or will make, to love her, to love her.—Ah! what love it was!” she repeated gently.
Then her eyes dreamt, and rested for a moment, all the pain fled, and her face shone with radiant triumph and her mouth trembled like a happy child’s.
“Ah! what love!” she said again; but instantly all this was swamped in a mighty wave of pain—she caught her child and kissed him rather wildly, whispering, “Baby, she killed this man who loved her—killed him, baby, because she was unnatural and couldn’t love—she killed her mother too, and oh! baby, when in her loneliness she pleads and prays that God may let her love Him, He hides His face from her, and it is all quite just, baby mine, her mere desert.
“Ah! my own—I can’t sing, I am so tired.”
She put him down gently, and looked before her with sad unseeing eyes.
Strange struggled to break the spell—to speak—to move—but he was impotent—paralyzed. A vague horror—full of sickness and delirium—had him by the throat. He put his hand feebly to his forehead to brush the sweat away.