MARCH.
BY ALICE ESTELLE FRIESE.
It was a fierce, wild March night. One can fancy such scenes quite comfortably in cheerful, well-lighted, close-curtained rooms; but to breast the driving storm of sleet and rain outside, is quite another matter. So thought Mr. Thorpe, a respectable tradesman in the thriving, bustling town of L—— as he hurried on through the darkness, and the ever increasing violence of the gale.
Visions of the cosy parlor, with its tempting tea-table so daintily arranged, and the pretty, charming wife who presides so gracefully, flit across his brain; but even their alluring promises cannot blind him as to the discomforts of the present; and with a gasp of despair he tucks the wreck of an umbrella under his arm, buttons his heavy coat closer around him, and strides on through the gloom. No one is astir tonight; no sign of life meets him in the usually well-filled streets. “Everyone is safely housed, but myself,” he mutters to the unpitying darkness. But even as he is speaking, a form, tall and slight, starts out from the shadows a few paces ahead, and pauses for a flash of time under the uncertain light of the solitary street-lamp, which lamps in our aspiring villages are placed at undeterminable distances from each other, wherever one long straggling street happens to meet another, seeming to say to the night pedestrian, “you have safely traversed the impenetrable darkness thus far, behold I invite you to a continuation of the same.”
As the figure, evidently a woman’s, stands thus for a moment clearly defined against the dark background, Mr. Thorpe is half inclined to fancy that it turns to meet his advancing steps with a gesture of entreaty; then suddenly and swiftly glides on, and is lost from sight.
I say he is inclined to fancy that she appealed to him for aid; but being an extremely practical man, he never allows himself such vagaries; so he banishes the fancy, and hurries on. At last he has reached his own home. The cheery, welcoming light streaming out from the windows, sends a cheerful, happy feeling through his entire being; and with a laugh of defiance at the mad fury of the storm, he springs up the steps to the sheltering porch, when suddenly at his very door his foot touches something soft and yielding, while at the same time, a little troubled cry is heard, mingled with the weird, uncanny voices of the wind. Half in wonder, half in fear he seizes a mysterious bundle at his feet, and presently appears before the astonished gaze of his wife, half drenched with the storm, a hopeless expression of bewilderment and perplexity upon his countenance, while in his arms he holds out for her inspection the same mysterious bundle, from which various small cries issue, from time to time, at irregular intervals. The contents of the aforesaid bundle being duly examined, they prove none other than a round-faced, charmingly beautiful, black eyed baby girl. There is nothing in the “make-up” of the child or its wardrobe that even the most fastidious might criticise; every article of clothing is of the finest texture, and delicately wrought. Evidently this is a waif from the very lap of luxury, and refinement; and yet an outcast and homeless.
Tenderly, lovingly, pretty Mrs. Thorpe touches and caresses the little stranger, saying half hesitatingly, “we will care for her tonight, Charles, and tomorrow we must make an effort to find her parents; or if they cannot be found, perhaps the matron of the orphans’ home would take her; she seems so unusually interesting, that I should like to be sure she is well cared for, if no one is to claim her.”
“Claim her!” impatiently interrupts Mr. Thorpe; “You talk like a woman! As if any one ever claimed what they were glad to be rid of.” “But,”—his voice softening a little as he spoke, for in spite of himself the remembrance of the unknown woman under the street-lamp, and her mute appeal to him for sympathy and help, clings to him; and for once, without arriving at his conclusion by a careful method of reasoning, very unlike his usual self, he in some strange, undefined way, closely associates in his mind the memory of this woman, and the presence of the little stranger in his home—
“But, Mary, you might as well keep the child; she seems as well disposed as such afflictions usually are, and although I don’t approve of babies, and therefore wash my hands of the whole affair, still it might be a good thing for you; the vacant place in the household, you know, will at last be filled.”
Still later, after Mrs. Thorpe had succeeded in coaxing the smiles to chase away the tears, and to play hide and seek among the convenient dimples in the baby’s cheeks and chin, she ventures the question, “What shall we call her?” for of course every baby must have a name.