but in vain maurice lay down by cecile's side and pressed his little cool lips to hers. he had returned to her again, but cecile did not know him. maurice was quite safe once more; the danger for him was over; but to cecile he was still a lost child. she was groping for him, she would never find him again. the child her dying father had given into her tender care; the purse her stepmother had set such store by, both were gone, and gone forever. she had been faithless to her trust, and, cruelest of all, her heavenly guide had not proved true.
poor cecile! she pushed away the soft baby face of her little brother. she cried, and wrung her hands, and turned from side to side. maurice was frightened, and turned tearfully to joe. what had come to cecile? how hot she looked! how red were her cheeks! how strange her words and manner!
joe replied to the frightened little boy that cecile was very ill, and that it was his fault; in truth, joe was right. the blow dealt suddenly, and without any previous warning, was too much for cecile. coming upon a frame already weakened by fatigue and anxiety she succumbed at once, and long before toby had brought maurice home, poor little cecile was in a burning fever.
all day long had joe watched by her side, listening to her piteous wailings, to her bitter and reproachful cries. i think in that long and dreadful day poor joe reaped the wages of his weakness and sin of the night before. alone, with neither toby nor maurice, he dared not leave the sick child. he did not know what to do for her; he could only kneel by her side in a kind of dull pain and despair. again and again he asked for her forgiveness. he could not guess that his passionate words were falling on quite unconscious ears.
in his long misery joe had really forgotten little maurice, but when he saw him enter the hut with toby he felt a kind of relief. ignorant truly of illness, an instinct told him that cecile was very ill. sick people saw doctors, and doctors had made them well. he could therefore now run off to the village, try to find a doctor, get him to come to cecile, and then, when he saw that there was a chance of her wants being attended to rush off himself to do what he had made up his mind to accomplish some time earlier in the day. this was to find anton, and getting back the little piece of paper, then give himself up to his old life of hardship and slavery.
"you set there, maurice," he said, now addressing the bewildered little boy; "cecile is ill; and you must not leave her. you set quite close to her, and when she asks for it, let her have a drink of water; and, toby, you take care on them both."
"but, joe, i'm starving hungry," said maurice; "and why must i stay alone when cecile is so queer, and not a bit glad to see me, though she is calling for me all the time? why are you going away? i think 'tis very nasty of you, joe."
"i must go, maurice; i must find a doctor for cecile; the reason cecile goes on like that is because she is so dreadful ill. ef i don't get a doctor, why she'll die like my little comrade died when his leg wor broke. you set nigh her, maurice, and yere's a bit of bread."
then joe, going up to the sick child and kneeling down by her, took one of the burning hands in his.
"missie, missie, dear," he said, "i know as yer desperate ill, and you can't understand me. but still i'd like fur to say as i give hup my old mother, missie. i wor starving fur my mother, and i thought as i'd see her soon, soon. but it worn't fur to be. i'm goin' back to my master and the old life, and you shall have the purse o' gold. i did bitter, bitter wrong; but i'll do right now. so good-by, my darling darlin' little missie cecile."
as the poor boy spoke he stooped down and kissed the burning hands, and looked longingly at the strangely flushed and altered face; then he went out into the forest. any action was a relief to his oppressed and overstrained heart, and he knew he had not a moment to lose in trying to find a doctor for cecile.
he went straight to the village and inquired if such a person dwelt there.
"yes," an old peasant woman told him; "certainly they had a doctor, but he was out just now; he was with mme. chillon up at a farm a mile away. there was no use in going to the doctor's house, but if the boy would follow him there, to the said farm, he might catch him before he went farther away, for there were to be festivities that night, and their good doctor was always in requisition as the best dancer in the place."
so joe followed the doctor to the farm a mile away, and was so fortunate as to find him just before he was about to ride off to the fete mentioned by the old peasant.
joe, owing to his long residence in england, could only speak broken french, but his agitation, his great earnestness, what little french he could muster, were so far eloquent as to induce the young doctor, instead of postponing his visit to the hut in the forest until the morning, to decide to give up his dance and go with the boy instead.
joe's intention was to direct the doctor to the hut, and then, without returning thither himself, set off at once on his search for anton. this, however, the medical man would not permit. he was not acquainted with the forest; he would not go there at so late an hour on any consideration without a guide, so joe had to change his mind and go with him.
they walked along rapidly, the doctor wondering if there was any chance of his still being in time for his promised dance, the boy too unhappy, too plunged in gloom, to be able to utter a word. it was nearly dark in the forest shade when at last they reached the little tumbledown hut.
but what was the matter? the place joe had left so still, so utterly without any sound except that made by one weak and wandering voice, seemed suddenly alive. when the doctor and the boy entered, voices, more than one, were speaking eagerly. there was life, color, and movement in the deserted little place.
bending over the sick child, and tenderly placing a cool handkerchief dipped in cold water on her brow, was a young woman of noble height and proportions. her face was sunshiny and beautiful, and even in the gathering darkness joe could see that her head was crowned with a great wealth of golden hair. this young woman, having laid the handkerchief on cecile's forehead, raised her then tenderly in her arms. as she did so, she turned to address some words in rather broken french to a tall, dark-eyed old woman who stood at the foot of the bed of pine needles.
both women turned when the boy and the man came in, and at sight of the doctor, whom they evidently knew well, they uttered many exclamations of pleasure.
the young doctor went over at once to his little patient, but joe, suddenly putting his hand to his heart, stood still in the door of the hut.
who was that old woman who held maurice in her arms—that old woman with the upright figure, french from the crown of her head to the sole of her feet? of what did she remind the boy as she stood holding the tired little child in her kind and motherly clasp?
ah! he knew, he knew. almost at the second glance his senses seemed cleared, his memory became vivid, almost too vivid to be borne. he saw those same arms, that same kind, dear, and motherly face, only the arms held another child, and the eyes looked into other eyes, and that child was her own child, and they were in the pretty cottage in the pyrenees, and brother jean was coming in from his day's work of tying up the vines.
yes, joe knew that he was looking at his mother; once again he had seen her. though he must not stay with her, though he must give her up, though he must go back to the old dreadful life, still for this one blessed glimpse he would all the rest of his life acknowledge that god was good.
for a moment he stood still, almost swaying from side to side in the wonderful gladness that came over him, then with a low cry the poor boy rushed forward; he flung his arms round the old woman's neck; he strained her to his heart.
"ah, my mother!" he sobbed, speaking in this sudden excitement in the dear bearnais of his childhood, "i am alphonse. do you not know your little lost son alphonse?"
