University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.
THE CHILD'S MOTHER—HER DIVORCE.

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 494EAF. Page 080. In-line Illustration. Decorative chapter heading. Image of a swan surrounded by ivy.]

IT vos a man!” sputtered Rikka, meeting
Miss Dimmock at the door.

She had a dish-towel in one hand and
a baker's loaf in the other. She twisted herself
with frantic gestures in her anxiety to prove to
her mistress how no human Rikka could have
held the fortress. “I tells him ven I rings die
pell dot he let's nopoddies into das haus! He
puts foot insides, laughs; den I say I calls
b'leece! But b'leece not round nowhere! He
komm in — big man — cane! He want Miss
Guest. She hears him; she komm down-stairs
all scare. He not stay long w'ile. I hides Mr.
George Guest in closets w'ile man's been here.”

“He is gone?” asked Helen, turning faint at
thought of what her Nina had been enduring
alone.

“Yah!” cried Rikka victoriously. “Oh,
yah! der man ist gone! Den I lock der door
ven der man ist gone!”

“Poor, good soul,” muttered Helen, “after
the thief was gone you put up the bars. But
keeping him out would only have given my little
girl temporary protection.” She leaned against
the balustrade of the stair, feeling tired and
helpless. “Who can protect her? Not even I,
when I would give my blood to do it!”

Rikka went back to her kitchen relieved.
She had not been scolded. The hand of her
father, Gottleib Shuster, had not been called
down upon her, and she felt she could look the
good Lutheran minister in the face next Sunday.
Germans are very severe with their children,
and not less strict in supervision are the
pastors.

She took up her work again and began a guttural,
monotonous humming over it, which signified
her heart's content, when a scream rung
through the house and brought her trembling to
the foot of the stairs. Miss Dimmock cried a
few clear, startling words to her; her heavy
brain whirled, she grasped her straw flat, pressed
it on wrong side up, and clattered down the
street.

Helen knelt beside the little figure she found
lying in the folds of the wrapper. Oh, strange
little heap! How like a sword thrust the sight
of it went through her when she opened the
door and found it lying at her feet.

Nina's hands were clasped above her head,
and a little pool of blood had trickled down

from her mouth. Was life still in her? Helen
undressed her and worked with frantic hands.

In a few minutes the medical man whom Rikka
had called stood beside her, directing and
helping her. His examination was eager, quick,
skilful. George, roused below, labored up the
stairs and cried at the door, for the first time in
his life finding his Toola deaf to him.

“Doesn't her heart beat?” gasped Helen.
“She is warm—feel her arm! Oh, tell me she
will live!”

Without replying the doctor worked on
swiftly. Hope died shade by shade out of his
face. He stood up, holding the white wrist,
and told Helen Dimmock that her sister was
dying. He told her, too, in short swift words,
how some powerful emotion had evidently
overpowered this little body and burst the
reservoir of its blood—as if she did not know
it was a broken heart! He might call it by
scientific names. She knew her little girl had
been in Gethsemane and in the bloody sweat!

After bloody sweats come victories. But
could Helen think of these when she gathered
her darling in her arms and realized that she
should never have her any more?

When they are going—just before they have
left us—when perhaps their eyes open and look
at us before they rise above those windows forever—we
hope in the midst of our helpless
agony.

Oh, sunken little gray face! In an instant it
lay between Helen Dimmock and her life's
blessing. Nina was gone. The mystery was
completed. It was an indifferent unheeding
shape she held in her arms. How could Nina
go? They seem to forget us so quick. They
lie so still; and the arms which used to be so
quick are never moved to comfort us. Oh, our
loves! Are you there? Do you stop and
cling to us with your old-time kisses and give
us some last message? And are you hurt, dear
loves, because we rain our passion on your clay,
and will not see you at all! O God, join our
supplicating hands! O God, you hold us both!

And now there was no hope. While Helen
held her the little shape became It. Ages
seemed to roll between the now and the time
when Nina was alive. It is so soon realized—
this being left alone!

The doctor went away and made arrangements
for every tender rite.

Good kindly souls came below stairs, and
some ventured timidly up the stairs. But no
one was admitted. She herself would get her
little girl ready for the sleep. She could not
bear another to touch her. As long as any
office could be filled for Nina she jealously filled
it. She could not cry. She must work; she
dared not be still.

So this Helen Dimmock bathed and draped
her darling, using the whitest and sweetest of

everything at her command. Often she stopped
in her sacred love-task to rock the little body
passionately in her arms, with hoarse, dry,
heart-breaking sobs. And again she blessed
God that Nina was at peace.

She spread the sofa thick and wide with white,
and put the tiny body on it. She placed
flowers in the bosom, the hands, the hair, at the
feet. They were only red roses with bits of
geranium, which happened to remain in a vase.
These were poor—only her love's constrained
offering. By and by she would get white
flowers, and flowers signifying victory.

When she finished—when there was no longer
one little motion to make for Nina—she fell upon
the floor and writhed. But God was tender
with her and made her hear Georgie sobbing
outside the locked door. She was neglecting
Nina's boy.

“Is mamma 'sreep?” whispered George,
clearing his eyes with his fists, as she lifted him
to look at Nina.

“Yes, she's asleep!” Oh, how good it was
that he had not seen her just after her travail,
with the blood gushing from her mouth! “Let
us sit and watch her.”

She sat on the floor and drew him to her
bosom. He was awed and very still.

Twilight came down. The little face on the
sofa grew very beautiful. It was a marble
Peace. George fell asleep and she laid him in

her lap. Rikka, sobbing on her apron, tiptoed
in and made a dim gas-light.

Without stirring she sat and watched her
dead. Night grew old outside. Lights went
down in the theatres. Solitary wretches skulked
in alleys. Life and sin and change go on. But
time is frozen in us while we sit beside our dead.