“It seems very wonderful,” the cool, interested voice said, a little more interested, if anything.
“It seems glorious!” broke in the mother-voice; and the throb in it beat upon Judith’s heart through the waves of air between them. Judith’s heart was throbbing, too.
“You can’t think how it ‘seems,’—you don’t know anything about it!” the earnest, tremulous voice went on. “How can anyone know who never had a little daughter?”
“I had one once.” The other voice now was soft and earnest.
“But she walked. Your little daughter walked. How can anyone know whose little daughter always walk—”
“She never walked.” It was very soft now, and the throb had crept into it that was in the mother-voice and in Judith’s heart. “I only had her a year.”
They were both mother-voices! Judith could not see, but she felt sure the two sat up a little nearer to each other and their hands touched.
“Oh!—then you can know,” the first voice said, after a tiny silence. “I will tell you all about it—there have only been a few I have wanted to tell. It has seemed almost too precious and—and—sacred.”
“I know,” the other said.
“But you must begin right at the beginning, with me—at the time when my little daughter was a year old, when the time came for her to learn to walk. That is where my story begins.”
“And mine ends. Go on.”
“Well, you can see how I must have watched and waited and planned.”
“Oh, yes, and planned— I planned.”
“You poor dear!” Another tiny silence-space, while hand crept to hand again, Judith was sure. Then the story went on.
“You say I ought to have known. Everybody says I ought to have. They knew, they say, and I was the baby’s mother. The baby’s mother ought to have known. But that was just why. I was her mother—I wouldn’t know. I kept putting it off. ‘Wait,’ I kept saying to myself. ‘She isn’t old enough to walk yet; when she is old enough, she will walk. Can’t you wait? ’ And I waited. When they did not any of them know, I kept trying to stand her on her poor little legs—I wouldn’t stop trying. When she was fifteen months—sixteen months—seventeen, eighteen—when she was two years old, I tried. I would not let them talk to me. ‘Some children are so late in walking,’ I said. ‘Her legs are such little ones!’ I would catch her up from the floor and hug her fiercely. ‘They sha’n’t hurry you, my darling. You shall take all the time you want. Then, some day, you’ll surprise mother, won’t you? You’ll get up on your two little legs and walk! And we’ll take hold of hands and walk out there to all those bad people that try to say things to us. We’ll show them!’ But we never did. When she was two and a half I began to believe it—perhaps I had believed all along—and when she was three, I gave it up. ‘She will never walk,’ I told them, and they let me alone. There was no more need of talking then.”
Judith was leaning forward, straining her ears to hear. She had forgotten Mrs. Ben’s tarts—she had forgotten everything but the story that was going on out there, out of her sight. It was so much—oh, how much it was like Blossom’s story! When Blossom was three, Judith had given up, too. But not till then. She had kept on and on trying to teach the helpless little legs to walk. Father and mother and the boys had given up, but Judith had kept on. “She shall walk!” she had said.
Sometimes she had taken Blossom down to the beach, tugging her all the way in her own childish arms, and selected the hardest, smoothest stretch of sand. “Now we’ll walk!” she had laughed, and Blossom had laughed, too. “Stand up all nice and straight, darling, and walk all beautiful to Judith!” But Blossom had never stood up all nice and straight; she had never walked all beautiful to Judith. And when she was three, Judith had given up.
The story out there was going on: “After that I never tried to make her walk again, poor little sweet! We carried her round in our arms till we got her a little wheel-chair that she could wheel a little herself. She liked that so much—she called it ‘walking.’ It would have broken your heart to hear her say, ‘See me walk, mamma!’”
“Oh, yes—yes, it would have,” the other voice responded gently. It had grown a very gentle voice indeed. Judith wondered in the little flash of thought she could spare from Blossom, if the other mother were not thinking there might be harder things even than laying a little daughter away in a little white casket.
“But when she was five”—sudden animation, joy and a thrill of laughter had taken possession of the voice that was telling the story—“a little more than five—she’s just six now—when she was a little more than five, they told us she could walk! There was a way! It was not a very hard way, they said. A splendid doctor, with a heart big enough to hold all the little crippled children in the universe, would make her walk. And so—this is the end of the story—we took her across the sea to him. Look at her now! Where is she? Oh, there! Marie! Marie! Come here to mother!”
Judith slipped away. She was never quite definite how she got there, but she found herself presently in the old black dory that was drawn up on the beach. It was the best place to think, and Judith wanted to think. She wanted air enough and room enough to think in—this Wonderful Thing took up so much room! It was so big—so wonderful!
She sat a long time with her brown chin in her brown palms, her eyes on the splendid expanse of shining, undulating sea before her. It reached ’way across to him —to that tender doctor who made little children walk! If one were to cross it—she and Blossom in the old black dory—and to find him somewhere over across there and say to him—if one were to hold out little Blossom and say—“Here’s Blossom; oh, please teach her little legs to walk!”—if one were to do that—
Judith sunk her brown chin deeper into the little scoop of her brown, hard palms. Her eyes were beginning to shine. She began to rock herself back and forth and to hum a little song of joy, as if already it had happened. The fancy took her that it had happened—that when she went up the beach, home, she would come on Blossom walking to meet her! “See me!” Blossom would call out gayly.
The fancy faded by and by, as did all Judith’s dreams. And Judith went plodding home alone—no one came walking to meet her. But there was hope in her heart. How it could ever be, she did not know—she had not had time to get to that yet—but somehow it would be. It should be!
“I won’t tell mother—I’ll tell Uncle Jem,” she decided. “Mother must not be worried—she must be surprised!” Judith had decided that. Some day, some way, Blossom must walk in on the worn, weary little mother and surprise her.
“I’ll ask Uncle Jem how,” Judith nodded, as she went. Uncle Jem was the old bed-ridden fisherman that Judith loved and trusted and consulted. She had always consulted Uncle Jem. He lived with Jem Three in a tiny, weather-worn cabin near the Lynns. Jem Three was Judith’s age—Jem Two was dead.
“I’ll go over to-night after supper,” Judith said.
Uncle Jem lay in the cool, salt twilight, listening, as he always did, to the sound of the waves. It was his great comfort. He wouldn’t swop his “pa’r o’ ears,” he said, for a mint o’ money—no, sir! Give him them ears—Uncle Jem had never been to school—an’ he’d make out without legs nor arms nor head! That was Uncle Jem’s favorite joke.
“Judy! I hear ye stompin’ round out there. I’m layin’ low fur ye!” the cheerful voice called, as Judith entered the little cabin.
“Is Jem Three here?” demanded Judith.
“ Here? —Jemmy Three! I guess you’re failin’ in your mind, honey.”
“Well, I’m glad he isn’t. I don’t want anybody but you—Uncle Jem, how can I get Blossom across the sea?” Judith’s eager face followed up this rather astonishing speech. Uncle Jem turned to meet them both.
“Wal, there’s the old dory—or ye mought swim,” he answered gravely. He was used to Judy’s speeches.
“Because there’s a great man over there that makes lame little children walk—he can make Blossom. There’s a little child down at the hotel that he made walk. I’ve got to take her across, Uncle Jem—I mean Blossom. But I don’t know how.”
“No, deary, no; I do’ know’s I much wonder. It would be consid’able great of a job fur ye. An’ I allow it would take a mint o’ money.”
Strange Judith had not thought of the money! Money was so very hard indeed to get, and a mint of it—
“Not a mint—don’t say a mint, Uncle Jem!” she pleaded. She went up close to the bed and took one of the gnarled old hands in hers and beat it with soft impatience up and down on the quilt.
“Not a mint! ” she repeated.
“Wal, deary, wal, we’ll see,” comforted the old man. “You set down in that cheer there an’ out with it, the hull story! Mind ye don’t leave out none o’ the fixin’s! Ye can’t rightly see things without ye have all the fixin’s by ye. Now, then, deary—”
Judith told the thrilling little story with all the details at her command. At its end Uncle Jem’s eyes were shining as hers had shone.
“Judy!” he cried, “Judy, it’s got to be did! Ye’ve got to do it!”
“Of course,” Judy answered, with rapt little brown face. “I’m going to, Uncle Jem. But you must help me find a way.”
“Wal,”—slowly, as Uncle Jem thought with wrinkled brows—“Wal, I guess about the fust thing to do is to go an’ ask that hotel child’s ma how much it cost her to go acrost. Then we’ll have that to go by. We ain’t got nothin’ to go by now, deary.”
“No,” Judith answered, dreamily. She was looking out of the little, many-paned window across the distant water. It looked like a very great way.
“I suppose it’s—pretty far,” she murmured wistfully.
“Oh, consid’able—consid’able,” the old man agreed vaguely. “But ye won’t mind that. It won’t be fur comin’ home! ”
The faith of the old child and the young was good that this beautiful miracle could be brought about. Judith went home with elastic step and lifted, trustful face.
Jem Three, scuffing barefoot through the sandy soil, met this radiant dream-maiden with the exalted mien. Jem Three was not of exalted mien, and he never dreamed. He was brown up to the red rim of his hair, and big and homely. But the freckles in line across the brownness of his face spelled h-o-n-e-s-t-y. At least, they always had before to Judith Lynn and all the world. To-night Judith was to read them differently.
“Hullo, Jude!”
It is hard to come out of a beautiful dream, plump upon a prosaic boy who says, “Hullo!” It is apt to jolt one. It jolted Judith.
“Oh! Oh, it’s you!” she came out enough to say, and then went back. The prosaic boy regarded her in puzzled wonder. Head up, shoulders back, eyes looking right through you—what kind of a Jude was this! Was she walking in her sleep?
“Hullo, I said,” he repeated. “If you’ve left your manners to home—”
“Oh!—oh, hello, Jem! I guess I was busy thinking.”
“Looked like it. Bad habit to get into. Better look out! I never indulge, myself. Well, how’s luck?”
“Luck? Oh, you mean lobsters?” Judith had not been busy thinking of lobsters, but now her grievance came back to her. “Oh, Jem! I never got but three! All my pains for three lobsters! And two of those just long enough not to be short. It means—I suppose it means a bad season, doesn’t it?”
Jem Three pursed his lips into a whistle. Afterward, when Judith’s evil thoughts had invaded her mind, she remembered that Jem Three had avoided looking at her; yes, certainly he had shifted his bare toes about in the sand. And when he spoke, his voice had certainly sounded muttery.
“Guess somethin’ ails your traps,” he had said. “Warn’t nothin’ the matter with mine.”
“Did you get more than three?”
“Got a-plenty.”
“Jemmy Three, how many’s a-plenty?”
“’Bout twenty-four.”
Jemmy Three had got twenty-four! Judith turned away in bitterness and envy, and afterwards suspicion.
There was nothing the matter with her traps. If Jem Three got twenty-four lobsters in his, why did she get only three in hers? Twenty-four and three. What kind of fairness was that! She could set lobster-traps as well as any Jem Three—or Jem Four—or Five—or Six.
There had always been good-natured rivalry between the fisher-boy and the fisher-girl, and Judith had usually held her own jubilantly. There had never been any such difference as this.
Suddenly was born the evil thought in Judith’s brain. It crept in slinkingly, after the way of evil things. “How do you know but he helped himself out o’ your traps?” That was the whisper it whispered to Judith. Then, well started, how it ran on! “When you and he quarreled a while ago, didn’t he say, ‘I’ll pay you back’?—didn’t he? You think if he didn’t.”
“Oh, he did,” groaned Judith.
“Well, isn’t helping himself to your lobsters paying you back?”
“Yes—oh, yes, if he did. But Jemmy Three never—”
“How do you know he never? Is twenty-four to three a fair average? Is it? Is it?”
“No, oh, no! But I don’t believe—”
“Oh, you needn’t believe! Don’t believe. Go right on finding your traps empty and believing Jemmy Three’d never! I thought you were going to save your lobster-money for Blossom.”
“Oh, I was—I am going to! I’m going to save it to take her across the ocean to that doctor. It was going to be a little wheel-chair, but now it’s going to be legs.”
“But supposing there isn’t any lobster-money? You can’t do much with three lobsters a day. If somebody helps himself—”
“Stop!” cried Judith angrily, and the evil thought slunk away. But it came again—it kept coming. One by one, little trivial circumstances built themselves into suspicions, until the little brown freckles on Jemmy Three’s face came to spell “Dishonesty” to Judith Lynn. If it had not been for the terrible need of lobster-money—Judith would have fought harder against the evil thing if it had not been for that.
“I’ve got to have it! There’s got to be lobsters in the traps!” she cried to herself. “The doctor over there might die! If he died before I could carry Blossom to him, do you think I’d ever forgive Jemmy Three?”—which showed that the Evil Thing had done its work. It might slink away now and stay.
It was a hard night for Judith. Joyful thoughts and evil ones conflicted with each other, and among them all she could not sleep. It was nearly morning before she snuggled up against Blossom’s little warm body and shut her eyes. Her plans were made, as far as she could make them. To-morrow she would go down and question the hotel mother, as Uncle Jem said. To-morrow—she must not wait. And after that—after that, heaven and earth and the waters of the sea must help her. There must be no faithlessness or turning back.
“You shall walk, little Blossom,” Judith whispered softly.
How could she know how soon the sea would help?