Judith Lynn: A Story of the Sea. Donnell Annie Hamilton

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      “But she walked. Your little daughter walked. How can anyone know whose little daughter always walk – ”

      “She never walked.” It was very soft now, and the throb had crept into it that was in the mother-voice and in Judith’s heart. “I only had her a year.”

      They were both mother-voices! Judith could not see, but she felt sure the two sat up a little nearer to each other and their hands touched.

      “Oh! – then you can know,” the first voice said, after a tiny silence. “I will tell you all about it – there have only been a few I have wanted to tell. It has seemed almost too precious and – and – sacred.”

      “I know,” the other said.

      “But you must begin right at the beginning, with me – at the time when my little daughter was a year old, when the time came for her to learn to walk. That is where my story begins.”

      “And mine ends. Go on.”

      “Well, you can see how I must have watched and waited and planned.”

      “Oh, yes, and planned —I planned.”

      “You poor dear!” Another tiny silence-space, while hand crept to hand again, Judith was sure. Then the story went on.

      “You say I ought to have known. Everybody says I ought to have. They knew, they say, and I was the baby’s mother. The baby’s mother ought to have known. But that was just why. I was her mother – I wouldn’t know. I kept putting it off. ‘Wait,’ I kept saying to myself. ‘She isn’t old enough to walk yet; when she is old enough, she will walk. Can’t you wait?’ And I waited. When they did not any of them know, I kept trying to stand her on her poor little legs – I wouldn’t stop trying. When she was fifteen months – sixteen months – seventeen, eighteen – when she was two years old, I tried. I would not let them talk to me. ‘Some children are so late in walking,’ I said. ‘Her legs are such little ones!’ I would catch her up from the floor and hug her fiercely. ‘They sha’n’t hurry you, my darling. You shall take all the time you want. Then, some day, you’ll surprise mother, won’t you? You’ll get up on your two little legs and walk! And we’ll take hold of hands and walk out there to all those bad people that try to say things to us. We’ll show them!’ But we never did. When she was two and a half I began to believe it – perhaps I had believed all along – and when she was three, I gave it up. ‘She will never walk,’ I told them, and they let me alone. There was no more need of talking then.”

      Judith was leaning forward, straining her ears to hear. She had forgotten Mrs. Ben’s tarts – she had forgotten everything but the story that was going on out there, out of her sight. It was so much – oh, how much it was like Blossom’s story! When Blossom was three, Judith had given up, too. But not till then. She had kept on and on trying to teach the helpless little legs to walk. Father and mother and the boys had given up, but Judith had kept on. “She shall walk!” she had said.

      Sometimes she had taken Blossom down to the beach, tugging her all the way in her own childish arms, and selected the hardest, smoothest stretch of sand. “Now we’ll walk!” she had laughed, and Blossom had laughed, too. “Stand up all nice and straight, darling, and walk all beautiful to Judith!” But Blossom had never stood up all nice and straight; she had never walked all beautiful to Judith. And when she was three, Judith had given up.