Two Prisoners

by Thomas Nelson Page

When it had quite disappeared she looked back at the window. The two little figures were there as still as ever. There was no excitement. Could they have set the bird free on purpose? She gazed at them long and earnestly, then turned and looked back at the sky where the bird had faded from her view. It was deep and fathomless, without a speck. Her thoughts followed the lost bird—away over the housetops into the country, into the past, into the illimitable heavens. Her life was all spread out before her like a panorama. She saw a beautiful country of green fields, where lambs skipped and played; gardens filled with flowers, and orchards with clouds of bloom, where bees hummed all day long and birds sang in the leafy coverts. A little girl was playing there as free as the birds; as joyous as the lambs. In time the little girl grew to be a big girl. And one day a lad came up the country road and stopped at the gate and looked across at her. He was shy, but pleasant looking, and after a moment he opened the gate and came straight up to her and asked for lodging. He was unlike any one else she had ever known. He had come from a State far away. He looked into her eyes, and she felt a sudden fear lest her father would not take him in. He was, however, given lodging, and he stayed on and on, and helped her father on the farm. He knew more than any one she had ever seen, and he bought her books and taught her. The girl's whole life seemed to open up under his influence, and in his presence. She used to wander with him through the pleasant woods; among the blossoms; in the moonlight; reading with him the books he brought her; finding new realms of which she had never dreamed. Then one evening he had leaned over, and put his arm around her and begun to speak as he had never spoken before. Her happiness was almost a pain, and yet it was only such pain as the bud must feel when the warm sun unfolds its petals and with its deep eyes seeks its fragrant heart. The young girl's life suddenly opened as that rose opens; and for a time she seemed to walk in paradise. Then clouds had gathered; talk of war disturbed the peace of her quiet life. Her lover was on one side, her father on the other. One day the storm burst. War came. Her husband felt that he must go. Her father said that if she went with him she could never more come back. Her heart was torn asunder and yet she could not hesitate. Her place was with her husband. So she had parted from her father; she half fainting with sorrow, he white and broken, yet both sustained by the sense of duty. For a time there had been great happiness in a baby girl, who, though feeble, was the light of her eyes. The doctors said if she were taken care of she would outgrow her trouble. Then came a bitterer parting than the first; her husband went off to the war, leaving her a stranger in a strange land, with only her baby. Even this was not the worst. Shortly came the terrible tidings that her husband had been desperately wounded and left in the enemy's hands. She must go to him. She learned at the last moment that she could not take her child with her. Yet it was life or death. She must go. Then Providence had seemed to open the way. Unexpectedly she met an old friend; a woman who had been a servant of her mother's in the old days back at her old home. Though she had one weakness, one fault, she was good and kind, and she had always been devoted to her. She would take care of her child. So she left the little girl with her, together with the few pieces of jewelry she possessed. She herself set off to go through the lines to her husband. It was a long journey. In time she arrived at the place where he had been. But it was too late. He was gone. All that was left was an unmarked mound in a field of mounds. Since that time there had been for her nothing but graves. Just then the lines were closely drawn, and before she could get back through them she had heard from the woman that her child was dead of a pestilence that had broken out, and she herself dying. So she was left. In her loneliness she had turned to her father. She could go to him. He, too, was dead. The war had killed him. His property had melted away. The old home had passed from his hands and he himself had gone, one of the unnamed and unnumbered victims.

When at length the war had closed the widowed and childless woman had gone back to where she had left her child, to find at least its grave. But even this was denied her. There had been a pestilence, and in war so many are falling that a child's death makes no difference except to those who love it. The mother could not find even the grave to put a flower on.

Since that time she had lived alone—always alone except for the memories of the past. Her gift with her needle enabled her to make enough to keep body and soul together. But her heart hungered for that it had lost.

Of late her memories had gone back much to her girlhood; when she had walked among the fruit trees with the lambs frisking and the birds singing about her. She had bought the mocking-bird to sing to her. It bore her back to the time when her lover had walked beside her; and there had been no thought of war, with its blood and its graves. She tried to blot out that dreadful time; to obliterate it from her memory; to bridge it over, except for the memory of her child—with its touch, its voice, its presence. Always that called her, and she prayed—if she only might find its grave.

For this she had come back once more to the place where she had left it, and where she knew its grave was. She had not found it; but had put flowers on many unmarked little mounds; and had blessed with her tender eyes many unknown little crippled children.

The mention of the crippled girl had opened her heart. And now when she lifted her head she was in some sort comforted. She rose and took up her bundle, and once more went down into the street. She determined to go and see the little crippled child who had let her bird go.

She could not go, however, till next day, and when she went she learned that the child had been taken away by a rich lady and sent to a hospital. This was all the people she saw knew. She did not see Mrs. O'Meath.

VIII.

As soon as Molly could be moved she was taken from the hospital out to Mildred's country home. She had pined so to see the country that the doctors said it might start her towards recovery and would certainly do her good. So Mildred's mother had closed her town house earlier than usual and moved out before Easter.