Sons and Fathers

"He visited me again when the war ended, and we renewed the search. After that came the Franco-Prussian war, the siege of Paris and the commune, destroying all trails. But I sang on and searched on. When I seemed to have exhausted the theaters I tried the prisons. And so the years passed by.

"In the meantime Mr. Morgan had done a generous thing; never for a moment did he doubt me." She paused, struggling with a sudden emotion, and then: "He had heard my statement – it was not like writing, Father, he had heard it from my lips – and when the position of my boys became embarrassing he gave them his own name, formally adopting them while he was in Paris."

"God bless him!" It was the general's voice.

"And after that I felt easier. Every week, in all the long years that have passed, brought me letters; every detail in their lives was known to me; and of yours, Father. I knew all your troubles. Mr. Morgan managed it. And," she continued softly, "I felt your embarrassments when the war ended. Mr. Morgan offered you a loan – "

"Yes, but I could not accept from him – "

"It was from me, Father; it was mine; and it was my money that cared for my boys. Yes," she said, lifting her head proudly, "Mr. Morgan understood; he let me pay back everything, and when he died it was my money, held in private trust by him, that constituted the bulk of the fortune left by him for my boys. I earned it before the footlights, but honestly!

"Well, when poor Gaspard died – "

"He is dead, then?"

"Ah! of course you do not know. To-morrow I will tell you his story. I stood by his body and at his grave, and I knew Edward. I had seen him many times. Poor Gerald! My eyes have never beheld him since I took him in my arms that day, a baby, and kissed him good – " She broke down and wept bitterly. "Oh, it was pitiful, pitiful!"

After awhile she lifted her face.

"My husband had written briefly to his family just before death, the letter to be mailed after; and thus they knew of it. But they did not know the name he was living under. His brother, to inherit the title and property, needed proof of death and advertised in European papers for it. He also advertised for the violin. It was this that suggested to me the hiding place of the missing papers. Before my marriage Gaspard had once shown me the little slide. It had passed from my memory. But Cambia's wits were sharper and the description supplied the link. I went to Silesia and made a trade with the surviving brother, giving up my interest in certain mines for the name of the person who held the violin. Gaspard had described him to me in his letter as a young American named Morgan. The name was nothing to the brother; it was everything to me. I came here determined, first to search for the papers, and, failing in that, to go home to you, my father. God has guided me."

She sat silent, one hand in her father's, the other clasped lovingly in her son's. It was a silence none cared to break. But Edward, from time to time, as his mind reviewed the past, lifted tenderly to his lips the hand of Cambia.

Steadily the ocean greyhound plowed its way through the dark swells of the Atlantic. A heavy bank of clouds covered the eastern sky almost to the zenith, its upper edges paling in the glare of the full moon slowly ascending beyond.

The night was pleasant, the decks crowded. A young man and a young woman sat by an elderly lady, hand in hand. They had been talking of a journey made the year previous upon the same vessel, when the ocean sang a new sweet song. They heard it again this night and were lost in dreams, when the voice of a well-known novelist, who was telling a story to a charmed circle, broke in:

"It was my first journey upon the ocean. We had been greatly interested in the little fellow because he was a waif from the great Parisian world, and although at that time tenderly cared for by the gentle woman who had become his benefactress, somehow he seemed to carry with him another atmosphere, of loneliness – of isolation. Think of it, a motherless babe afloat upon the ocean. It was the pathos of life made visible. He did not realize it, but every heart there beat in sympathy with his, and when it was whispered that the little voyager was dead, I think every eye was wet with tears. Dead, almost consumed by fever. With him had come the picture of a young and beautiful woman. He took it with him beneath the little hands upon his breast. That night he was laid to rest. Never had motherless babe such a burial. Gently, as though there were danger of waking him, we let him sink into the dark waters, there to be rocked in the lap of the ocean until God's day dawns and the seas give up their dead. That was thirty years ago; yet to-night I seem to see that little shrouded form slip down and down and down into the depths. God grant that its mother was dead."

When he ceased the elder woman in the little group had bent her head and was silently weeping.

"It sounds like a page from the early life of Gaspard Levigne," she said to her companions.

And then to the novelist, in a voice brimming over with tenderness: "Grieve not for the child, my friend. God has given wings to love. There is no place in all His universe that can hide a baby from its mother. Love will find a way, be the ocean as wide and deep as eternity itself."

And then, as they sat wondering, the moon rose above the clouds. Light flashed upon the waves around them, and a golden path, stretching out ahead, crossed the far horizon into the misty splendors of the sky.

THE END