And just then, Carin, out into that glistening pool swam a coal black swan followed by two white ones. They didn’t seem like real birds but like some sort of a vision.
“It is just beyond the pond that mother used to go to meet your father,” said Aunt Lorena tenderly. I loved her for speaking like that. She was sorry for this old mother’s grief, and sympathized with the memories that haunted her and drove her from her bed. I put my arm right around her neck and kissed her.
“Oh, Aunt Lorena,” I said, “I think you are very sweet.”
“Hush!” she warned, and turning I saw Martha coming back with her arm around poor little madam grandmother. We stepped back in the shrubbery and kept very still while they passed. Grandmother was weeping like a hurt child.
[Picture: We stepped back in the shrubbery and kept very still]
“Your young master wasn’t there, Martha,” she was saying. “He was to meet me there to-night and I was to give him this.” She held up something in her hand that sparkled in the moonlight. “It was my own, Martha,” she went on, “so I had a perfect right to give it away if I wanted. Oh, what do you suppose has happened to your young master?”
“Jes’ nothin’ at all, ole Miss,” Martha said, her voice sounding more like that of a wild dove than anything else I could think of. “He’s sure all right, ole Miss. He’s jes’ doin’ fine. That’s why he didn’t need for to come for yo’ pretties. Yo’ jes’ take heart, ole Miss. That Mass’ Jack, he won’t let no hahm come to him.”
“I pray heaven,” Aunt Lorena whispered to me when they had passed, “that good old Martha will outlive mother, for I have no idea how we should manage without her.”
We stole softly into the house and up a little flight of stairs, and then down the corridor to grandmother’s door. We could hear Martha still crooning to her as if she were a frightened child, and then, little by little, grandmother ceased weeping.
“Come,” whispered Aunt Lorena, and we stole away to my room. She saw me back into my bed, and kissed me good night—not warmly, the way Mother McBirney used, but gently and kindly. I like her better for not pretending to what she does not feel. She will grow fonder of me if I deserve it.
“We’ll say nothing about this to your Uncle David,” she cautioned me. “It makes him wretched for days when he learns that his mother has been ‘wandering.’”