Rose O'Paradise Part 83

Then Molly's eyes dropped from Jinnie to the boy, and a cry broke from her. Before her was the child for whom, in spite of the evidence of her smiling lips, she had truly mourned. The wan, blind face was turned upward, the golden hair lying in damp curls on the lovely head.

Spontaneously the woman reached forward and took the little hand in hers. All the mother within her leaped up, like a brilliant flash of lightning.

"My baby!" was all she said; and Bobbie, white, trembling and palpitating, cried in a weird, high voice:

"I've found my mother!"

Then Jordan Morse understood. The hot blood was tearing to his ear drums. The blind boy he had persecuted and tortured, the boy he had made suffer, was his own son. That wonderful quality in the man, the fatherhood within him, rose in surging insistence. Instant remorse attacked him, as an oak is attacked by fierce winter storms. He saw the boy's angelic face grow the color of death; saw Molly the Merry gather him up. Then a stab of jealousy cut his heart like a knife. He bent over with set jaws.

"Give him to me," he cried. "He's mine!"

Molly surrendered the child with reluctance, but terror and fright were depicted upon Bobbie's face.

"Jinnie! Lafe! Peggy!" he screamed. "He'll hurt me! The black man's goin' to kill me! Jinnie, pretty Jinnie----"

The pa.s.sionate voice grew faint and ceased. Then the loving little heart burst in the boyish bosom, and Bobbie's angels bore away his young soul to another world where blindness is not,--where his uplifted being would understand that the stars he'd loved,--the stars he'd gathered in his small, unseeing head,--were but a reflection of those in G.o.d's firmament. With one final quiver he straightened out in his father's arms and was silent. All his loves and sorrows were in the eternal yesterdays, and to-day had delivered him into the charge of Lafe's angels.

Jinnie was crying hysterically, and her father's dying curse upon her uncle leapt into her mind. She was clinging to the cobbler, and both had moved to Peg, where the woman sat as if turned to stone.

Not a person in the courtroom stirred. In consternation the jury sat in their chairs like graven images, taking in the freshly wrought tragedy with tense expressions. The judge, too, leaned forward in his chair, watching.

Jordan Morse faced the room, with its silent, observant crowd, pressing to his breast the dead body of his child. Then he turned to Lafe, white, twitching, and suffering.

"I shot Maudlin Bates," he said, haltingly; then turning to the jury he continued: "The cobbler's an innocent man----"

A menacing groan fell from a hundred lips at his words.

He deliberately took from his hip pocket a revolver, lifted the weapon and finished:

"I'm--I'm sorry, Jinnie, I'm----"

Then came the sharp, short bark of the gun, and the bullet found a path to his brain. He staggered, frantically clutching the slender body of Bobbie closer--and toppled over.

CHAPTER XLVIII

FOR BOBBIE'S SAKE

Lafe's homecoming was one of solemn rejoicing. The only shadow hanging over the happy family was the absence of Blind Bobbie, who now lay by the side of his dead father.

After the first greetings, Lafe took his boy baby and pressed him gratefully to his heart.

"He's beautiful, Peggy dear, ain't he?" he implored, drinking in with affectionate, fatherly eyes the rosy little face. "Wife darlin', make a long story short an' tell me he's beautiful."

Mrs. Grandoken eyed her husband sternly.

"Lafe," she admonished, "you're as full of brag as a egg is of meat, and salt won't save you. All your life you've boasted till I thought the world'd come to an end, an' I ain't never said a word against it.

Now you can't teach me none of your bad habits, because I won't learn 'em, so don't try." She paused, her lips lifting a little at the corners, and went on: "But I'm tellin' you with my own lips there ain't a beautifuller baby in this county'n this little feller, nor one half so beautiful! So there's my mind, sir."

"'Tis so, dear," murmured the cobbler, rejoicing.

About five o'clock in the afternoon, while Peggy was uptown replenis.h.i.+ng the slender larder and Lafe and Jinnie were alone with the baby, there came a timid knock.

Jinnie went to the door and there stood Molly Merriweather. The woman's face was white and drawn, her eyes darkly circled underneath.

One glance at her and Jinnie lost her own color.

"I want to speak with you just a moment," the woman said beseechingly.

"May I come in?"

Without answering, Jinnie backed into the room, which action Molly took as a signal to enter.

She inclined her head haughtily to the cobbler.

"Would you mind if I spoke to Miss Grandoken alone?"

Lafe looked to Jinnie for acquiescence.

"If Jinnie'll help me to the kitchen," he replied, "you can talk here.

I'm a little unsteady on my feet yet, miss!"

It took some time for the tottering legs to bear him away, but the strong, confident girl helped him most patiently.

"You might just slip me the baby, Jinnie," said Lafe, after he was seated in the kitchen. "I could be lookin' at 'im while you're talkin'. You ain't mindin' the woman, honey la.s.s, be you?"

"No, dear," answered Jinnie.

This done, the girl returned to Molly, who stood at the window staring out upon the tracks. She turned quickly, and Jinnie noticed her eyes were full of tears.

"I suppose you won't refuse to tell me something of my--my little boy?" she pleaded.

Tears welled over Jinnie's lids too. Bobbie's presence and adoration were still fresh in her mind.

"He's dead," she mourned. "My little Bobbie! Poor little hurt Bobbie!"

Molly made a pa.s.sionate gesture with her gloved hands.

"Don't, please don't say those things! I'm so miserable I can't think of him. I only wanted to know how you got him."

"I just found him," stated Jinnie. Then, because Molly looked so white, she forgot the anguish the woman had caused her, and rehea.r.s.ed the story of Bobbie's life from the time she had discovered him on the hill.

"I guess he was always unhappy till he came to us."

"And I helped to hurt him," cried Molly, s.h.i.+vering.

"But you didn't know he was yours," soothed Jinnie.