Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/84

76 and understand that there was any good and tender worth beneath that horrid mask with its dewlap of a chin? It seemed to Elisabetta that then, indeed, she had lost her child. She was suffering keener agony than she had known in all those twenty years; her throat ached with the emotion; there were pains in her heart as if a hand were tightening and tightening round it. She had a mistrust, as much more terrible than that of the mother who, having surrendered her little child to the grave, fears lest the shining spirit it becomes under all the influences of heaven shall fail to take her for his own again, when, smirched with earth-soil and travel-stains, she once more stands before it, as the body is grosser than the soul. Oh, all this comfortable love that she had longed for, this support of her decaying years, had suddenly slipped away, and she tottered for some stay. Her eyes fell on the beautiful boy's picture hanging high before her, with the firelight playing over it till it seemed as if curls stirred, lips trembled, eyes sparkled, smiles shifted on the canvas, and then came to her the injustice that she did her child. Had he no remembrance, no faith, could he have failed to learn her loving heart when every week such a transcript of it had always lain before him? If she wore the disguise of a devil, through it all would he not know his mother? Her heart beat up and stifled her with thick, unwonted breathings, thus suddenly she was so sure he would! Could he be any other now than the little child that first learned the meaning of life from her eyes? Ah, what a darling he was! Who had ever such a laugh—how it began with a dimple, and rippled and rippled till the whole face broke up in glee! those eyes—they held Heaven! that fragrant, downy cheek of his—if she could bury her mouth there now with a thousand kisses! Never had mother such a child. Sometimes when he used to dance on her lap she had trembled and caught him to her bosom, fearing and fancying lest he should put forth wings and fly away like an angel. All at once, as the thoughts thronged over her in a fever, she essayed to turn at a noise. Had some one spoken? had the crow moved upon the perch and uttered the sound that she had never dared to teach him? had some one called her—Mother?

At that same moment there fell upon the turmoil and riot of the storm something like a blow commanding it to stillness. A dull, damp thud. A ship among the breakers, her gun bellowing for aid and bursting as it gave mouth. Every form in every house along the old sea-wall had started to its feet—every form but one. The jetty, the causeway, the beach, were lined with men and women struggling against the weather, and shouting to one another, amid the deafening fury of the night, in mighty voices that the mightier wind forced down their throats again. But Elisabetta had not stirred. They could guess the hulk impaled on the goring rocks