Chapter IV.
The new family.
How shall a man describe what passed in the mind of a childless wife,
with a motherless boy in her arms! It is the loveliest provision,
doubtless, that every child should have a mother of his own; but there
is a mother-love--which I had almost called more divine--the love,
namely, that a woman bears to a child because he is a child,
regardless of whether he be her own or another's. It is that they may
learn to love thus, that women have children. Some women love so
without having any. No conceivable treasure of the world could have
once entered into comparison with the burden of richness Mrs. Porson
bore. She told afterward, with voice hushed by fear of irreverence,
how, as they went down one of the hills, she slept for a moment, and
dreamed that she was Mary with the holy thing in her arms, fleeing to
Egypt on the ass, with Joseph, her husband, walking by her side. For
years and years they had been longing for a child--and here lay the
divinest little one, with every mark of the kingdom upon him! His
father and mother lying crushed under the fallen dome of that fearful
church, was it strange he should seem to belong to her?
But there might be some one somewhere in the world with a better
claim; possibly--horrible thought!--with more need of him than she! Up
started a hideous cupidity, a fierce temptation to dishonesty, such as
she had never imagined. We do not know what is in us until the
temptation comes. Then there is the devil to fight. And Mrs. Porson
fought him.
Mr. Porson was, in a milder degree, affected much as his wife. He
could not help wishing, nor was he wrong in wishing, that, since the
child's father and mother were gone, they might take their place, and
love their orphan. They were far from rich, but what was one child!
They might surely manage to give him a good education, and set him
doing for himself! But, alas, there might be others--others with
love-property in the child! The same thoughts were working in each,
but neither dared utter them in the presence of the sleeping treasure.
As they descended the last slope above the town, with the wide
sea-horizon before them, they beheld such a glory of after-sunset as,
even on that coast, was unusual. A chord of colour that might have
been the prostrate fragment of a gigantic rainbow, lay along a large
arc of the horizon. The farther portion of the sea was an indigo blue,
save for a grayish line that parted it from the dusky red of the
sky. This red faded up through orange and dingy yellow to a pale green
and pale blue, above which came the depth of the blue night, in which
rayed resplendent the evening star. Below the star and nearer to the
west, lay, very thin and very long, the sickle of the new moon. If
death be what it looks to the unthinking soul, and if the heavens
declare the glory of God, as they do indeed to the heart that knows
him, then is there discord between heaven and earth such as no
argument can harmonize. But death is not what men think it, for
"Blessed are they that mourn for the dead."
The sight enhanced the wonder and hope of the two honest good souls in
the treasure they carried. Out of the bosom of the skeleton Death
himself, had been given them--into their very arms--a germ of life, a
jewel of heaven! At the thought of what lay up the hill behind them,
they felt their joy in the child almost wicked; but if God had taken
the child's father and mother, might they not be glad in the hope that
he had chosen them to replace them? That he had for the moment at
least, they were bound to believe!
They travelled slowly on, through the dying sunset, and an hour or two
of the star-bright night that followed, adorned rather than lighted by
the quaint boat of the crescent moon. Weary, but lapt in a voiceless
triumph, they came at last, guided by the donkeys, to their hotel.
All were talking of the earthquake. A great part of the English had
fled in a panic terror, like sheep that had no shepherd--hunted by
their own fears, and betrayed by their imagined faith. The steadiest
church-goer fled like the infidel he reviled. The fool said in his
heart, "There is no God," and fled. The Christian said with his mouth,
"Verily there is a God that ruleth in the earth!" and fled--far as he
could from the place which, as he fancied, had shown signs of a
special presence of the father of Jesus Christ.
After the Persons were in the house, there came two or three small
shocks. Every time, out with a cry rushed the inhabitants into the
streets; every time, out into the garden of the hotel swarmed such as
were left in it of Germans and English. But our little couple, who had
that day seen so much more of its terrors than any one else in the
place, and whose chamber was at the top of the house where the swaying
was worst, were too much absorbed in watching and tending their lovely
boy to heed the earthquake. Perhaps their hearts whispered, "Can that
which has given us such a gift be unfriendly?"
"If his father and mother," said Mrs. Person, as they stood regarding
him, "are permitted to see their child, they shall see how we love
him, and be willing he should love us!"
As they went up the stairs with him, the boy woke When he looked and
saw a face that was not his mother's, a cloud swept across the heaven
of his eyes. He closed them again, and did not speak. The first of the
shocks came as they were putting him to bed: he turned very white and
looked up fixedly, as if waiting another fall from above, but sat
motionless on his new mother's lap. The instant the vibration and
rocking ceased, he drank from the cup of milk she offered him, as
quietly as if but a distant thunder had rolled away. When she put him
in the bed, he looked at her with such an indescribable expression of
bewildered loss, that she burst into tears. The child did not cry. He
had not cried since they took him. The woman's heart was like to break
for him, but she managed to say,
"God has taken her, my darling. He is keeping her for you, and I am
going to keep you for her;" and with that she kissed him.
The same moment came the second shock.
Need wakes prophecy: the need of the child made of the parson a
prophet.
"It is God that does the shaking," he said. "It's all right. Nobody
will be the worse--not much, at least!"
"Not at all," rejoined the boy, and turned his face away.
From the lips of such a tiny child, the words seemed almost awful.
He fell fast asleep, and never woke till the morning. Mrs. Porson lay
beside him, yielding him, stout as she was, a good half of the little
Italian bed. She scarcely slept for excitement and fear of smothering
him.
The Persons were honest people, and for all their desire to possess
the child, made no secret of how and where they had found him, or of
as much of his name as he could tell them, which was only _Clare_. But
they never heard of inquiry after him. On the gunboat at Genoa they
knew nothing of their commander's purposes, or where to seek him. Days
passed before they began to be uneasy about him, and when they did
make what search for him they could, it was fruitless.
