Read Online Cold Pastoral by Margaret Duley - Free Book Online Page B

with heavy clod-hoppering men, eating silently and sleeping the sleep of rest from the sea. This remnant of her child was not survival! Exaltation had not been justified.
    â€œNow, ma’am,”said the sergeant. His voice was kind but firm.
    â€œYes, yes,” said Josephine respectfully, scrunching away on her knees.
    As light as a frozen ghost, Mary Immaculate was carried away. Molly Conway pulled at her shawl, following without a backward glance. Josephine was left with her torment. She had the wish to lie down in the snow and dwindle to the frozen shape of her daughter. For a few minutes she indulged herself in sobbing inertia, until she saw the procession disappearing into the trees.
    â€œBenedict? Dalmatius? Ignatius…”
    Shivering, she rose to her feet and crunched through the snow. The distance between herself and her daughter was widening, and she could not catch up. Hurrying as fast as her legs would permit she could only keep her in sight.
    Mary Immaculate was going to town!

FIVE
    â€œSAILS RIPPED, SEAMS OPENING WIDE AND COMPASS LOST.”
    T he little girl had been found! Mary Immaculate was a story!
    In the throb of a day’s news, she signified an unbelievable survival of folk-lore: a manifestation of its spirit. In dispatches she made colour between armaments and disasters. In longer columns her story was elaborated, and the superstitions of her Cove magnified to fantastic proportions. She was a stir to imagination and a jolt to reason. Everything about her compelled interest: her birth in a skiff; her name; the slice of bread under her feet; and the incredible fact that she could deny her hunger to placate the Little People. Over the cable it went to build up a story. The words she had used when she was found shook the most rational. “The Little People stayed by me. When I was hungry I ate snow. I slept when ’twas dark, and woke when ’twas light.” The stark reduction of three days’ exposure defied classification. It suggested a simplicity past comprehension, or the imperviousness of under-privileged classes. Either from exposure or terror she should have died! The press said she was in hospital, suffering from frostbite. It seemed her one link with normality. In momentary interest the thoughts of countless people were projected to her bedside.
    Pity she should die!
    Better she were dead!
    She was tossed on the imagination and dismissed.
    Some of the repercussions had far-reaching results.
    A New Yark philanthropist read about her over a pile of begging letters.
    Coming from print as youth, colour and adventure, he experienced a resurgence of Celtic feeling. Leprechauns and fairies, charms and talismans, roods and banners had animated the atmosphere of his youth. The little girl must have invaded a “gentle place” and been unable to run home. Convinced that she had been held he abandoned his channels of charity and started an interchange of expensive cables. At the end of a day Philip Fitz Henry found himself the custodian of two thousand dollars towards the preservation of the little lost girl.
    Mary Immaculate was a trust!
    Spectacular gesture died, leaving her restoration to the tenacity of her doctor and interested nurses.
    In the hospital her door held a magnetic attraction. Those of authority were permitted a professional peep. None saw her without a quick regret. In her waxen immobility she was condemned to a narrower bed than the one she occupied. She seemed two-dimensional, except for the neat head and the high planes of the face starvation and exposure had reduced to bones. Nostrils looked insufficient channels for air, and eye-sockets evident through dwindled flesh. Lids were flower thin and closed with a burden of lashes. What remained of her seemed too frail a container for replenishment. Doctors and nurses departed with mute gestures of pity and regret.
    In her world life was as unsubstantial as a white sea-fog.
    It was light and warm, in