A Pasteboard Crown Part 31

Again that hysterical laughter shook the girl. "You're surprised, darling!" she said, "but wait till you hear the message."

"_Sybil Let.i.tia and Dorothy Grace have arrived. Mother and both babies well. Look for cable. Leslie._"

John Lawton straightened up suddenly. "W-w-what!" stammered he. "Sybil Let.i.tia? W-w-y? Who on earth--Dorothy Grace? Why, but that's two, Sybil!

Two's twins! Well, I am astonished--at Dorothy!" And then, before she could answer, a pleased look came on his face, as he continued: "Poor Let.i.tia would have thought that so fas.h.i.+onable! I wish she knew, dear!

She so loved to be within the fas.h.i.+on!" He drew Sybil close to him, and she thought with sick longing of that stronger arm that used to circle her about so tenderly. He looked backward as he murmured: "Little Dorrie's babies!" Then, glancing down at the dark, drooping head without reason, a conviction came to him that Dorothy's children would have to be Sybil's children, too.

She raised her woful eyes, and, meeting his pitying glance, answered the look, saying: "Dorothy never failed yet to share her joys with me, dada!"

He turned his eyes again toward the land they were leaving. "Sybil Let.i.tia--that's for you and wife. Dorothy Grace--that's for Dorrie and Leslie's mother. I--didn't he say anything about the color of their eyes, dear? Strange!" he murmured, discontentedly. "He might have said _that_ much!"

"Probably we shall learn all you wish at Liverpool, dear!" she patiently answered, while her heart contracted with a new loneliness. They had fled together from two freshly made graves, but already it was evident that baby hands were tuning the worn old heart-strings anew; that these two creatures, with eyes full of knowledge from the great Beyond, held speechless till they should forget from whence they came, and allowed only wordless cries, were yet summoning him, with almost irresistible power, back, back!

"Do you not think, daughter, that brief trips abroad at frequent intervals are as beneficial as one more prolonged visit?" he navely asked, his pale old eyes looking quite eagerly at her.

"Yes, dear," she answered him, and then she led him away, fearing the effect on him of the cold and the increasing motion. Still he looked backward, and she persuadingly said: "Go, now, dear, and as soon as you are safely in your berth I'll come to you, and we will talk----"

"About Dorothy's babies--our little twins?"

"Yes, dada! All about them--their names and probable color, probable weight, everything we can think of!" And then she went back and looked long out over the vast gray, pathless expanse. "'The sea is His, and He made it!' What inconceivable power! And yet that mighty Creator noted the fall of a sparrow. Oh!" she thought, as she pressed the jewel to her breast till it hurt the tender flesh. "I--who am widowed for all my life--I thank you for your mercy and goodness in bringing safe and happy deliverance to my beloved sister! And humbly I beseech you now, to deliver me my soul! For I am a sinful woman--troubled and heavy, for that we lost our way through love! But now I cannot bear my woe alone!

Help me, O mighty and powerful One, hereafter to live according to Thy will! Purify me in heart and mind, that I may be a fit companion for those little ones you have sent into our lives!"

She, too, began to feel a longing for sight and touch of those precious mysteries--Dorrie's babies. Stewart had been so anxious for Dorothy's welfare. She pressed her locket closer. "Oh!" she thought, "how I will love them! Sybil Let.i.tia--Dorothy Grace! Yes, you are very nice and stately, and will look well upon the records, and, later on, upon marriage cards; but, dear little gifts, you will answer, all your baby years at least, to the tenderly commonplace Sybbie and Dorrie, so familiar to a Lawton nursery, and will doubtless be as hardy, happy, and st.u.r.dy as Lawton-Galt babies ought to be! And oh, if you thrive and are spared to the years of your sweet budding, you shall, by your right divine, be taught frankly and by high authority those great truths that are too often learned only in degrading secrecy from unworthy lips. Do I not know the danger, the cruelty, of sending forth the young in the innocence of utter ignorance! But you, my Dorrie's little daughters, shall be taught to look forward to some proud day in your girlhood when, as a guerdon for patient waiting and unhesitating obedience, you shall receive from reverent lips knowledge of the mysteries of life and love--of the almost divine honor of a perfectly pure womanhood! So shall propinquity be as naught; so no moment of strange, overwhelming weakness, no sudden flaring up of impulse, shall have power to bewilder and confuse you, to your harm! And thus, knowing something of both your weakness and your strength, it will not be in the innocence of ignorance that you will face the world, but with the clear-eyed, pure-hearted innocence of wisdom!"

Just then Sybil's skirts snapped in the wind, and whipped close about her ankles. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Papa! I must go to papa!" She smiled faintly as she thought, "While he has been waiting the babies have grown up into lovely womanhood."

One more long look she gave over the heaving, restless, gray sea, and suddenly a very agony of grief swept over her. She bowed her head. "I can't help it," she breathed; "I repent of my sin, yet I still love and long for him!"

She pressed the locket (with the word) closer. "But I will pray on, all my life; for"--she raised great tear-brimmed eyes to heaven--"to understand is to pardon, and 'Thou knowest'!"

THE END.