Chapter 1 The baby

The smoking-car was draughty and ill-smelling; the three commercial travelers, with their cards and whisky, noisy to the point of rudeness, and the view from the windows of the slowly moving train was not interesting to one who had gone over the route to Jacksonville a dozen times before. The rocking motion of the train hindered reading with any comfort, and Norman de Vere flung down his newspaper impatiently and went into the ladies’ car.

“There may be some pretty women in there to look at,” he thought, idly, having an artistic taste that could interest itself for hours in traveling in watching the delicate profile of some beautiful face with a ravishing turn to chin and throat, or round cheek shaded by the curled fringe of a long, dark eyelash.

For the matter of that, any woman might have looked twice at him, too, if she had any feminine penchant for manly beauty.

Tall, broad-shouldered, symmetrically formed, with olive skin, large, flashing, dark eyes, wavy dark hair, clear-cut, handsome features, and a mouth so beautifully shaped that the absence of the conventional mustache from the short, curled upper lip seemed almost an affectation to display its beauty. Norman de Vere at two-and-twenty was a magnificent specimen of young manhood, combining in his fine person all the best elements of strength and beauty. You saw, too, from the cut and quality of his well-chosen traveling garments, and from his very air of easy indifference, that he was Fortune’s favorite—beloved of Plutus as well as Apollo.

He dropped languidly down into a seat some little distance back of the woman and child who were the sole occupants of the ladies’ car.

“Wonder where they got on? They were not in here two hours ago when I went forward to the smoking-car,” he thought, with idle curiosity, having nothing better to attract his attention.

The slight, black-robed figure sitting in front of him had its head and face hidden in a little black poke bonnet and black lace veil. The face, turned steadfastly from him, as if gazing through the window, was propped against a small hand in a trim, black kid glove. Before her, on a seat which the accommodating conductor had turned over to face her, slumbered a lovely child of about four years. By contrast with the somber black garments of the lady and the rich crimson velvet of the cushions on which it was lying, the little creature, in its white dress, its tangle of rich golden curls, its round cheeks warmly flushed with happy slumber, its half-parted, dewy red lips giving glimpses of pearly baby-teeth, looked like a beautiful human flower.

But Norman de Vere’s handsome face had assumed a rather rueful expression when he looked over and saw the pretty sleeper.

“Presently it will wake up and squall. Then I shall beat a retreat into the smoking-car. The drummers could be no worse,” thought he, testily.

But pending the meditated retreat he fell to speculating over these chance companions of his railway ride.

“Some poor little widow who has buried her husband among strangers and is going home to her people with her little child,” he decided from her garb of somber black.

And as men always take a peculiar interest in young and pretty widows, our hero began to wish that she would turn her head and let him see her face. That she was young he felt quite sure from her erect shoulders and slight and delicate shape.

But the young widow remained motionless, with her cheek in her hand and her head turned toward the window, seemingly intent on the flitting landscape, with its dreary dead-level clothed with forests of pine, cedar, and cypress, while here and there the glittering leaves and magnificent white flowers of the magnolia-tree divided admiration with the long, swaying wreaths of funereal-looking moss somberly draping the great live-oaks. Perhaps the tropical growth lying under the soft, velvety drizzle of a steady October rain pleased her fancy or held her interest, or perhaps hot, silent tears were falling under the little black veil, for she never stirred from her statue-like quiet even when the door opened noisily presently, admitting the jolly commercial travelers whose loud talk and laughter immediately startled the smiling baby sleeper from her dreams.

There was a low, startled whimper of fear, and the little darling sat erect, first digging dimpled, chubby fists into her eyes, then staring at the heartless disturbers of her dreams with the brightest, bluest, most reproachful orbs they had ever seen.

“She is going to squall! The widow will have to move at last!” Norman de Vere muttered, with triumphant curiosity.

He was right, and wrong. The baby did not squall, but the lady moved. She leaned forward, patted the child with her little gloved hand, murmured some low, soothing words, and immediately returned to her musing position at the window without any one ever having seen her face.

The travelers were staring with all their might. Every heart went out to the little angel in the white dress.

One of them—rough fellow and hard drinker as his red face showed him to be—had pretty little children of his own at home. He uttered a caressing sound and held out eager arms.

The baby shook her golden head archly and made him a little grimace of disdain that set the other two laughing. She climbed down from her seat and up again upon the lady’s, where she stood erect, the sweetest thing alive, already full of innate, unconscious coquetry. The big, cloudless blue eyes wandered guilelessly over their faces as she clung with her tiny dimpled fists to the back of the seat, scanning each face in turn with pretty, fearless curiosity.

By this time every man in the car was in love with the beautiful, bright little thing, and the drummers began to rummage their pockets for something pretty wherewith to tempt her to come to their arms. Their boisterous mirth had already softened to something more respectful, and when one actually found a paper of peppermint lozenges about him, his eyes gleamed with triumph.

“Come, sit on my knee and you shall have candy,” he called out, persuasively.

The little beauty did not notice him. She was watching the face of Norman de Vere and making eyes at him with the sweetest baby coquetry, so “innocent arch, so cunning simple,” that the gazers were transported with delight. The young man, on his part, was regarding her with a gentle gravity of expression that puzzled her guileless mind. The three drummers she recognized instinctively as being already her slaves. What of this silent man who made no effort to attract her, who returned her inviting, wistful gaze without a smile, unless that sparkle in his large dark eyes could be called one?

Was it his seeming indifference that attracted her, or his wonderful, god-like beauty? There awoke in the young mind something of that pain which we of older growth term the yearning for the unattainable.

She sprung down into the aisle unheeded by her silent female companion, and the drummers each reached out for her. She stopped a minute to look at the unique watch-charm that one dangled before her eyes, laughed gleefully as she eluded the outstretched arm of the second, and promptly accepted the lozenges from the third, turning from him with a polite “Ta-ta,” and going straight to Norman de Vere.

“Wretched little flirt!” ejaculated the giver of the candy, with mock indignation, as he saw her climbing upon Norman de Vere’s lap with the most engaging confidence.

Then:

“Don’t oo want some of my tandy?” she inquired, cooingly, as she offered him the paper.

Norman de Vere’s thoughtful gravity relaxed into a laugh, and he promptly put an arm about the plump form that had enthroned itself on his knee.

“I don’t want any candy, please,” he said, shutting his lips tight against the small thumb and finger that were conveying a pink lozenge to his lips; “but I’ll take a kiss.”

No sooner said than the rosebud mouth was pressed eagerly, softly upon his, sending an odd thrill through his whole frame, then she half whispered:

“I ’ove oo.”

“A case of love at first sight,” haw-hawed one of the irrepressibles across the aisle, and the baby shook her tiny pink-and-white fist at him and cried out, disdainfully:

“Go way! I don’t ’ove oo! Oo ain’t pritty!”

Everybody laughed except that slight, silent form like a statue of black marble in the front seat, and Norman de Vere asked with a smile:

“Won’t you tell me your name, little one?”

She beamed upon him with her sunny blue eyes, and answered:

“Sweet’art.”

There was more laughter from across the aisle. The young man reddened in spite of himself, but persisted:

“Yes, I know you are my sweetheart, but what is your other name? What does your mamma call you?”

“Nuffin, only des Sweet’art,” she replied, amiably, reaching up and patting his cheek with a warm, sticky little palm, with a lozenge glued to it by its own sweetness.

“That is her name for you when you are very good, I suppose, but when you are bad—when you cry and scold your doll, what name does she call you then?” he queried, and she replied, intelligently:

“‘Naughty yittle Sweet’art.’”

“I give it up,” he said, carelessly; and then she asked, in her innocent, confiding manner:

“Don’t oo want me to sing mamma’s yittle song all ’bout me myse’f?”

“Yes, please.”

She threw back her curly golden head, swelled her soft, white throat, opened her rosebud mouth, and sung, with bird-like sweetness, these words:

“Yittle sweet’art, tum an’ tiss me,Des once mo’ before I go;Tell me truly, will you miss meAs I wander to and fro?Yet me feel ’e tender p’essingOf oor wosy lips to mine,Wif oor dimple’ hands cawessing,An’ oor snowy arms intwine.“Yittle sweet’art, tum an’ tiss me,We may ne’er meet adain;We may ne’er woam togedderDown ’e dear ole shady lane.Uvver years may bwing us sowowYat our ’arts but yittle know;But if tare we s’ould not bo’wow,Tum an’ tiss me ’fore I go.“Ah! yittle sweet’art, tum an’ tiss me,Tum an’ whisper sweet an’ low;Tell me yat oor ’art will miss meAs I wander to an’ fro.”

No words could describe fitly the wonderful, wooing sweetness, the bird-like melody of the little one’s voice as it rose soft and clear above the clatter of the moving train—every word, though uttered in broken baby dialect, distinctly audible to the listeners.

The innocent little child, absorbed in the delight of her own performance, appeared as unconscious of them all as some wild-wood bird caroling alone upon its leafy nest, and produced as pure an effect upon her hearers.

When she stopped no one moved or spoke for a minute, then the red-faced drummer chuckled:

“Sweetheart, you’re an out-and-out prima-donna!”

The others were touched and silent.