The Golden Key; Or, A Heart's Silent Worship. Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

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      “Nannie, I cannot bear it!”

      “Hush, Alice; you must not give way to such wild grief—the excitement will be very bad for you.”

      “But what will Adam say? It will be a terrible blow; his heart was so set upon the fulfilment of his hopes, and now——”

      A heart-broken wail completed the sentence as the pale, beautiful woman, resting upon the snowy pillows of an old-fashioned canopied bed, covered her face with her delicate hands and fell to sobbing with a wild sorrow which shook her slight frame from head to foot.

      “Alice! Alice! don’t! Adam will come home to find that he has lost both wife and child if you do not try to control yourself.”

      The latter speaker, a tall, muscular woman, with a kindly but resolute face, which bespoke a strong character as well as a tender heart, knelt beside the bed, and laid her cheek against the colorless one upon the pillow with motherly tenderness and sympathy. But her appealing words only seemed to increase the violence of the invalid’s grief, and, with a look of anxiety sweeping over her countenance, the woman arose, after a moment, when, pouring a few drops from a bottle into a spoon, she briefly informed her charge that it was time for her medicine.

      The younger woman meekly swallowed the potion, although her bosom continued to heave with sobs, and tears still rained over her hueless cheeks.

      Her companion sat down near her, an expression of patient endurance on her face, and in the course of fifteen or twenty minutes she was rewarded by seeing the invalid fall into a profound slumber.

      “Thank Heaven!” she muttered at last, with a sigh of relief, “there will be an interval of rest, but I dread the awakening.”

      Miss Nancy Porter was a spinster, upward of forty, and one of those stanch, reliable women who always seem like a bulwark of strength, and equal to any emergency.

      She was, by profession, a trained nurse, having, many years previous, served her time in the Massachusetts General Hospital, of Boston, after which her experience was wide and varied, winning for herself encomiums from both surgeons and physicians, and the unbounded confidence of those who were fortunate enough to secure her services in the sick-room.

      She had her own home in one of the suburban towns of Boston, where she lived with her one trusty maid in a quiet, restful way, when her services were not in demand elsewhere.

      It was into this peaceful home that her only sister had come, about a month previous, to remain until the return of her husband, who had been called abroad upon urgent business.

      Adam Brewster was a wealthy banker of New York City.

      He was several years older than sweet Alice Porter, whom he had met and fallen in love with some two years previous, and who had been his idolized wife for little more than twelve months.

      It had been a great trial that he could not take his dear one to Europe with him; but her physician utterly prohibited such a trip for the young wife, and thus she had gone to spend the interval of her husband’s absence with her sister, in the home of her childhood, and where a tiny little girl was born into the world, only to breathe faintly for a few moments, and them slip away into the great unknown.

      For hours after the birth and death of her little one, Alice Brewster had lain in a state of unconsciousness, which caused the heart of her faithful nurse and sister to quake with fear.

      But, when consciousness returned, and the youthful mother called for her little one, and she was obliged to tell her that she was childless, her heart almost failed her again, in view of the bitter disappointment and violent sorrow which once more threatened to snap the slender thread of life.

      She could only temporarily quell these outbursts of grief by administering powerful narcotics to induce sleep and oblivion, with the hope that calmness and resignation would come with returning strength.

      On the afternoon of the third day the storm, which had prevented the sending of a doctor, cleared, and about five o’clock Miss Porter went down-stairs into the kitchen, where her servant was quietly engaged with her domestic duties.

      “Sarah, I’m going to town to see Doctor Bowman,” she remarked, in grave, subdued tones, an anxious expression in her mild, gray eyes. “Mrs. Brewster is sleeping, but I want you to go up and sit by her until I return, which won’t be very long, and if she wakes, give her two teaspoonfuls of the medicine in the glass that is on the mantel.”

      “Yes, marm,” responded Sarah, as she changed her calico apron for a white one, preparatory to going up-stairs.

      “And—if any one comes in,” pursued Miss Porter thoughtfully, “tell them nothing! you can simply say I am out, and Mrs. Brewster is lying down. I don’t want any gossip started. I’ll tell my own story.”

      “Yes, marm,” said Sarah again, and her mistress hurried away.

      She was just in time to catch the five-twenty express for town, where she arrived just on the stroke of six, when she proceeded directly to the waiting-room to leave her waterproof and umbrella with the woman in charge, while she made a visit to her physician.

      She did not find her in the outer room, and so went on into the ladies’ private siting-room, which she found to be empty, quite an unusual occurrence, although doubtless the recent tempest was the reason why so few people were abroad.

      At least Miss Porter thought the place was empty, until a faint sound greeted her ear, when she started forward and peeped around a corner, to find only an animated bundle wrapped in a gray shawl lying upon the great square table standing there.

      “It’s a baby!” muttered Miss Porter in astonishment, “but where on earth is the mother?”

      Prompted by both curiosity and interest, she went to the child, and, parting the shawl, which was closely wrapped about it, discovered an infant, which her practised eye told her could not be over a week old, if, indeed, it had seen as many days as that.

      Her first thought was that the mother, or whoever had the child in charge, had left it just for the moment sleeping upon the table; then, suddenly, a terrible shock, which set every nerve in her body quivering with a painful thrill, went through her as she caught sight of a note that had been pinned to the fine flannel blanket that was wrapped about the infant under the shawl.

      “Good heavens! it is an abandoned baby!” she breathed, as she mechanically but tenderly gathered it into her strong arms and tried to hush it upon her breast.

      Evidently, the child had been drugged, for it dropped off to sleep almost immediately, and then Miss Porter, with trembling fingers and two scarlet spots upon her cheeks, denoting great mental excitement, detached the note from the blanket, and, opening it, read:

      “Will some kind woman take this child, or see that it finds a good home where it will be well reared? Nothing but direst necessity compels her abandonment. She is well and honorably born, and yet relentless fate makes her an outcast from her own kindred. A peculiar-shaped golden key, in the form of a pin, is fastened to her clothing—it is her only heritage. Will whoever responds to this appeal insert in an early issue of the Boston Transcript under the head of personals, the following: ‘X. Y. Z.—The golden key has unlocked a responsive heart,’ and relieve the writer of this of a heavy burden?”

      “H’m!” СКАЧАТЬ