第49章

"There now--stop that sniffling," said Mrs.Tretherick, extricating her dress from the moist embraces of the child, and feeling exceedingly uncomfortable."Wipe your face now, and run away, and don't bother.Stop," she continued, as Carry moved away."Where's your papa?""He's dorn away too.He's sick.He's been dorn"--she hesitated--"two, free, days."

"Who takes care of you, child?" said Mrs.Tretherick, eying her curiously.

"John, the Chinaman.I tresses myselth.John tooks and makes the beds.""Well, now, run away and behave yourself, and don't bother me any more," said Mrs.Tretherick, remembering the object of her visit.

"Stop--where are you going?" she added, as the child began to ascend the stairs, dragging the long doll after her by one helpless leg.

"Doin up stairs to play and be dood, and no bother mamma.""I ain't your mamma," shouted Mrs.Tretherick, and then she swiftly re-entered her bedroom, and slammed the door.

Once inside, she drew forth a large trunk from the closet, and set to work with querulous and fretful haste to pack her wardrobe.She tore her best dress in taking it from the hook on which it hung:

she scratched her soft hands twice with an ambushed pin.All the while, she kept up an indignant commentary on the events of the past few moments.She said to herself she saw it all.Tretherick had sent for this child of his first wife--this child of whose existence he had never seemed to care--just to insult her, to fill her place.Doubtless the first wife herself would follow soon, or perhaps there would be a third.Red hair, not auburn, but RED,--of course the child, this Caroline, looked like its mother, and, if so, she was any thing but pretty.Or the whole thing had been prepared: this red-haired child, the image of its mother, had been kept at a convenient distance at Sacramento, ready to be sent for when needed.She remembered his occasional visits there on--business, as he said.Perhaps the mother already was there; but no, she had gone East.Nevertheless, Mrs.Tretherick, in her then state of mind, preferred to dwell upon the fact that she might be there.She was dimly conscious, also, of a certain satisfaction in exaggerating her feelings.Surely no woman had ever been so shamefully abused.In fancy, she sketched a picture of herself sitting alone and deserted, at sunset, among the fallen columns of a ruined temple, in a melancholy yet graceful attitude, while her husband drove rapidly away in a luxurious coach-and-four, with a red-haired woman at his side.Sitting upon the trunk she had just packed, she partly composed a lugubrious poem, describing her sufferings, as, wandering alone, and poorly clad, she came upon her husband and "another" flaunting in silks and diamonds.She pictured herself dying of consumption, brought on by sorrow,--a beautiful wreck, yet still fascinating, gazed upon adoringly by the editor of "The Avalanche," and Col.Starbottle.And where was Col.

Starbottle all this while? Why didn't he come? He, at least, understood her.He--she laughed the reckless, light laugh of a few moments before; and then her face suddenly grew grave, as it had not a few moments before.

What was that little red-haired imp doing all this time? Why was she so quiet? She opened the door noiselessly, and listened.She fancied that she heard, above the multitudinous small noises and creakings and warpings of the vacant house, a smaller voice singing on the floor above.This, as she remembered, was only an open attic that had been used as a storeroom.With a half-guilty consciousness, she crept softly up stairs, and, pushing the door partly open, looked within.

Athwart the long, low-studded attic, a slant sunbeam from a single small window lay, filled with dancing motes, and only half illuminating the barren, dreary apartment.In the ray of this sunbeam she saw the child's glowing hair, as if crowned by a red aureola, as she sat upon the floor with her exaggerated doll between her knees.She appeared to be talking to it; and it was not long before Mrs.Tretherick observed that she was rehearsing the interview of a half-hour before.She catechised the doll severely, cross-examining it in regard to the duration of its stay there, and generally on the measure of time.The imitation of Mrs.

Tretherick's manner was exceedingly successful, and the conversation almost a literal reproduction, with a single exception.After she had informed the doll that she was not her mother, at the close of the interview she added pathetically, "that if she was dood, very dood, she might be her mamma, and love her very much."I have already hinted that Mrs.Tretherick was deficient in a sense of humor.Perhaps it was for this reason that this whole scene affected her most unpleasantly; and the conclusion sent the blood tingling to her cheek.There was something, too, inconceivably lonely in the situation.The unfurnished vacant room, the half-lights, the monstrous doll, whose very size seemed to give a pathetic significance to its speechlessness, the smallness of the one animate, self-centred figure,--all these touched more or less deeply the half-poetic sensibilities of the woman.She could not help utilizing the impression as she stood there, and thought what a fine poem might be constructed from this material, if the room were a little darker, the child lonelier,--say, sitting beside a dead mother's bier, and the wind wailing in the turrets.And then she suddenly heard footsteps at the door below, and recognized the tread of the colonel's cane.