"Yes—she is very pretty, I think," he said in answer to her last question, "and I am like her, too, just as you are like your mother."
"It's lucky for a man, Mammy says—but it's terribly unlucky for a girl." She sat up suddenly and faced Everett. "Do you believe I'm going to be unhappy because I look like Mamma?"
"Of course you'll not be unhappy. To be as pretty as your mother must have been should make you very lucky, I think."
Natalia smiled contentedly, and the colour rushed into her face, a deep claret colour that glowed subdued beneath her smooth skin and faded away into the exquisite slenderness of her throat.
"Tell me about your mamma, please."
Through her question Everett was again looking far away to a place where he knew the ones he loved were gathered, perhaps at that very moment. He could see it so distinctly, that almost unconsciously, he began to talk about it to the little girl beside him, as if it were all there before him.
"My home, Natalia, was way up on a hill where we could look down upon the town and out into the bay where there are so many little islands—one for each day in the year, they say—and way beyond those islands was the great Atlantic Ocean. In front of our house was an apple orchard; did you ever see one? It is the most beautiful thing in the world. And in the spring and summer my mother used to always make me sit beside her out there, and study my lessons, and when I would get tired, she would close the books and tell me stories of great heroes—making them more real to me by telling me they inhabited those islands before us.... When I was a little fellow of ten I was very ill. The doctor said I was going to die, but my mother said I should not! And one night when there was a terrible storm, and the ships could not come into port, she went out on to the cliff where there was nothing but snow and ice, and where the surf dashed up and froze on everything—she went out all by herself and prayed to God to spare my life, and promised Him if I lived she would rear me into a fine man, who would do good in the world and be a great help to people who had forgotten who God was.... My father came home on his ship that night, and when they told him my mother had gone out into the storm, he went out and found her lying unconscious in the snow. When he brought her back into the room where I lay dying, a great change came over me at once. I got well; all except my leg; it kept shrinking so I can never use it again.... So when my father found he couldn't make a sailor of me, like himself, he got angry with me and called me the little cripple. He didn't know how that hurt me, and once, when my little sister died, and my mother got a letter from him, he thought she said it was I who had died, and he wrote her it was a fortunate thing, as I could never have been an honour to them.... It was then that my mother denied herself that I should go to school and have all the advantages of an education. It was hard on her and on the others—for we were very poor, but she would hear to nothing else but that I should learn all that was in my power.... And the day I left her, Natalia, to come down here, I told her good-bye in the orchard, and as I went down to the ship I could still see her standing there, waving to me. Even when the ship was out to sea, I imagined I could still see her there, and I swore to myself that day that the next time she stood there and looked for me, I should be coming back to her a great man!"
The sun was half gone before the far horizon, the grove of magnolias had grown black in the dusk, and a multitude of birds were fluttering in the protecting foliage, whispering good-nights to each other. A delicious breeze swept up from the bosom of the river, cooling the parched earth, and bringing with it the promise of a refreshing evening.
Finally Everett rose from the bench. "So we should be very good friends, Natalia," he said as she walked beside him, still silent from her sympathetic listening, "for we are both without the one we love best in the world. Will you see now if Mistress Brandon has returned? It is growing late, and I must get back to town to-night."
In the distance the sound of the gate opening and the crunch of hoofs on the driveway made Sargent look toward the house. A woman on horseback was riding up to the door, followed by two men, who rode a little behind her.