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Page 53
As she touched the infant with a sacred tenderness, her very hands
warmed with the impassioned affection that throbbed through her with
every heart-beat. As she gazed upon the features, faintly suggestive
of its father's, she felt that she could never part from this familiar
and intimate link with the spontaneous and powerful passion of her
girlhood. When she peered into those piteous, blighted eyes, mighty
sobs of pity shook her, but she felt that she must be silent, and she
forced back the tears. Outside, a spring bunting was still singing,
sweetly, ineffably.
As she caressed it, the child's face twisted as if in pain.
"Well do I know, little one, thou dost desire thy
name--_ategarumadlune_," she said. "Thou dost desire it as that which
is as precious as thy shadow. But the _ilisitok_ has gone and never
will she breathe o'er thee the name I know . . . the name I felt
stirring within me since the night . . . when the women addressed the
dead . . . Sweetly didst thou sing within my heart--but thy song came
from the darkness. Yea . . . from the darkness. _Ioh-iooh_!"
Very gently, very softly, she pressed her fingers upon the baby's
sightless eyes.
"I shall call thee little Blind Spring Bunting," she softly murmured,
lifting the baby and pressing its tender face to her own. "Poor Little
Blind Spring Bunting." She soothed its face, infinite pity in her
eyes. "Thou wilt never see _Sukh-eh-nukh_, nor the _ahmingmah_, nor
the birds that fly in the air, Spring Bunting. All thy days shall be
as the long night, and thy whole life shall be without any light of
moon. But thy heart is warm and bright as the sun in the south, whence
Olafaksoah came, and it makes the heart of Annadoah very warm.
Poor . . . Little . . . Blind Spring Bunting!"
Murmuring softly she rocked the little baby gently in her arms. Then
she heard the ominous sound of a native rushing by the igloo and voices
upraised. What were they saying? That Annadoah's child was blind?
A frantic determination to escape filled her. The danger was
immediate--she must act at once. But what should she do? Where should
she go?
She rose and moved bewilderedly about the igloo. She felt weak and
dazed. At any moment they might break into her immaculate new home and
seize the child from her arms. At any instant they might come with
wicked ropes to wrap about the baby's tender neck. That she must flee
she knew--but where? Where? She thought of Ootah. But Ootah was in
the mountains. And not a moment could be lost. In these matters the
natives lose little time. Moreover, she knew the women hated her; and
that they had succeeded in making the men gradually bitter.
"Olafaksoah! Olafaksoah!" she called tragically. Then she recalled
with a start that Olafaksoah had summer headquarters some twenty miles
to the south. It was a boxhouse, built on a promontory of the
Greenland coast. She remembered it, as she had seen it on a journey
south some summers before; the way thither, dangerous at this season of
the year when the ice was breaking, she well knew. Yes, she would seek
refuge there.
"Perchance Olafaksoah hath returned--did he not say he would return in
the spring? When the buntings sing?" She laughed spontaneously.
"Yea, yea! We will go there, Little Blind Spring Bunting."
Quickly she adjusted her own new garments, and then she took the little
golden baby and over its head and shoulders laced a tight-fitting hood
of soft young fox skin. This done she gently placed the child into the
hood on her back. Inside this was lined with the breasts of baby auks
and made downy with fibrous moss. She hurriedly secured the child to
herself by means of a sinew thread which passed about its body as it
reposed in the hood, and which in turn, passing under her arms, she
tied about the upper portion of her waist. The voices outside had
ceased.
Suppressing her very breath, she crept through the long tunnel leading
from the igloo and peeped cautiously from the entrance. She could hear
her heart throb. She feared the natives might detect it.
Five hundred feet to the north a group were engaged in excited
conversation. Annadoah's brain whirled with the fragments of what they
said. She knew the moment had come to depart. She emerged and on all
fours crept to the protecting lee of her igloo where she was hidden
from their view.
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