MISS BETHUNE set out accordingly, without saying anything further, to see the invalid. She took nobody into her confidence, not even Gilchrist, who had much offended her mistress by her scepticism. Much as she was interested in every unusual chain of circumstances, and much more still in anything happening to Dora Mannering, there was a still stronger impulse of personal feeling in her present expedition. It had gone to her head like wine; her eyes shone, and there was a nervous energy in every line of her tall figure in its middle-aged boniness and hardness. She walked quickly, pushing her way forward when there was any crowd with an unconscious movement, as of a strong swimmer dividing the waves. Her mind was tracing out every line of the supposed process of events known to herself alone. It was her own story, and such a strange one as occurs seldom in the almost endless variety of strange stories that are about the world—a story of secret marriage, secret birth, and sudden overwhelming calamity. She had as a young woman given herself foolishly and hastily to an adventurer: for she was an heiress, if she continued to please an old uncle who had her fate in his hands. The news of the unexpected approach of this old man brought the sudden crisis. The husband, who had been near her in the profound quiet of the country, fled, taking with him the child, and after that no more. The marriage was altogether unknown, except to Gilchrist, and a couple of old servants in the small secluded country-house where the strange little tragedy had taken place; and the young wife, who had never borne her husband’s name, came to life again after a long illness, to find every trace of her piteous story, and of the fate of the man for whom she had risked so much, and the child whom she had scarcely seen, obliterated. The agony through which she had lived in that first period of dismay and despair, the wild secret inquiries set on foot with so little knowledge of how to do anything of the kind, chiefly by means of the good and devoted Gilchrist, who, however, knew still less even than her mistress the way to do it—the long, monotonous years of living with the old uncle to whom that forlorn young woman in her secret anguish had to be nurse and companion; the dreadful freedom afterwards, when the fortune was hers, and the liberty so long desired—but still no clue, no knowledge whether the child on whom she had set her passionate heart existed or not. The hero, the husband, existed no longer in her imagination. That first year of furtive fatal intercourse had revealed him in his true colours as an adventurer, whose aim had been her fortune. But why had he not revealed himself when that fortune was secure? Why had he not brought back the child who would have secured his hold over her whatever had happened? These questions had been discussed between Miss Bethune and her maid, till there was no longer any contingency, any combination of things or theories possible, which had not been torn to pieces between them, with reasonings sometimes as acute as mother’s wit could make them, sometimes as foolish as ignorance and inexperience suggested.
They had roamed all over the world in an anxious quest after the fugitives who had disappeared so completely into the darkness. What wind drifted them to Bloomsbury it would be too long to inquire. The wife of one furtive and troubled year, the mother of one anxious but heavenly week, had long, long ago settled into the angular, middle-aged unmarried lady of Mrs. Simcox’s first floor. She had dropped all her former friends, all the people who knew about her. And those people who once knew her by her Christian name, and as they thought every incident in her life, in reality knew nothing, not a syllable of the brief romance and tragedy which formed its centre. She had developed, they all thought, into one of those eccentrics who are so often to be found in the loneliness of solitary life, odd as were all the Bethunes, with something added that was especially her own. By intervals an old friend would appear to visit her, marvelling much at the London lodging in which the mistress of more than one old comfortable house had chosen to bury herself. But the Bethunes were all queer, these visitors said; there was a bee in their bonnet, there was a screw loose somewhere. It is astonishing the number of Scotch families of whom this is said to account for everything their descendants may think or do.
This was the woman who marched along the hot July streets with the same vibration of impulse and energy which had on several occasions led her half over the world. She had been disappointed a thousand times, but never given up hope; and each new will-o’-the-wisp which had led her astray had been welcomed with the same strong confidence, the same ever-living hope. Few of them, she acknowledged to herself now, had possessed half the likelihood of this; and every new point of certitude grew and expanded within her as she proceeded on her way. The same age, the same name (more or less), a likeness which Gilchrist, fool that she was, would not see; and then the story, proving everything of the mother who was alive but unknown.
Could anything be more certain? Miss Bethune’s progress through the streets was more like that of a bird on the wing, with that floating movement which is so full at once of strength and of repose, and wings ever ready for a swift coup to increase the impulse and clear the way, than of a pedestrian walking along a hot pavement. A strange coincidence! Yes, it would be a very strange coincidence if her own very unusual story and that of the poor Mannerings should thus be twined together. But why should it not be so? Truth is stranger than fiction. The most marvellous combinations happen every day. The stranger things are, the more likely they are to happen. This was what she kept saying to herself as she hurried upon her way.
She was received in the darkened room, in the hot atmosphere perfumed and damped by the spray of some essence, where at first Miss Bethune felt she could scarcely breathe. When she was brought in, in the gleam of light made by the opened door, there was a little scream of eagerness from the bed at the other end of the long room, and then a cry: “But Dora? Where is Dora? It is Dora, Dora, I want!” in a voice of disappointment and irritation close to tears.
“You must not be vexed that I came first by myself,” Miss Bethune said. “To bring Dora without her father’s knowledge is a strong step.”
“But I have a right—I have a right!” cried the sick woman. “Nobody—not even he—could deny me a sight of her. I’ve hungered for years for a sight of her, and now that I am free I am going to die.”
“No, no! don’t say that,” said Miss Bethune, with the natural instinct of denying that conclusion. “You must not let your heart go down, for that is the worst of all.”
“It is perhaps the best, too,” said the patient. “What could I have done? Always longing for her, never able to have her except by stealth, frightened always that she would find out, or that he should find out. Oh, no, it’s better as it is. Now I can provide for my dear, and nobody to say a word. Now I can show her how I love her. And she will not judge me. A child like that doesn’t judge. She will learn to pity her poor, poor —— Oh, why didn’t you bring me my Dora? I may not live another day.”
In the darkness, to which her eyes gradually became accustomed, Miss Bethune consulted silently with a look the attendant by the bed; and receiving from her the slight, scarcely distinguishable, answer of a shake of the head, took the sufferer’s hand, and pressed it in her own.
“I will bring her,” she said, “to-night, if you wish it, or to-morrow. I give you my word. If you think of yourself like that, whether you are right or not, I am not the one to disappoint you. To-night, if you wish it.”
“Oh, to-night, to-night! I’ll surely live till to-night,” the poor woman cried.
“And many nights more, if you will only keep quite quiet, ma’am. It depends upon yourself,” said the maid.
“They always tell you,” said Mrs. Bristow, “to keep quiet, as if that was the easiest thing to do. I might get up and walk all the long way to see my child; but to be quiet without her—that is what is impossible—and knowing that perhaps I may never see her again!”
“You shall—you shall,” said Miss Bethune soothingly. “But you have a child, and a good child—a son, or as like a son as possible.”
“I a son? Oh, no, no—none but Dora! No one I love but Dora.” The poor lady paused then with a sob, and said in a changed voice: “You mean Harry Gordon? Oh, it is easy to see you are not a mother. He is very good—oh, very good. He was adopted by Mr. Bristow. Oh,” she cried, with a long crying breath, “Mr. Bristow ought to have done something for Harry. He ought to—I always said so. I did not want to have everything left to me.”
She wrung her thin hands, and a convulsive sob came out of the darkness.
“Ma’am,” said the maid, “I must send this lady away, and put a stop to everything, if you get agitated like this.”
“I’ll be quite calm, Miller—quite calm,” the patient cried, putting out her hand and clutching Miss Bethune’s dress.
“To keep her calm I will talk to her of this other subject,” said Miss Bethune, with an injured tone in her voice. She held her head high, elevating her spare figure, as if in disdain. “Let us forget Dora for the moment,” she said, “and speak of this young man that has only been a son to you for the most of his life, only given you his affection and his services and everything a child could do—but is nothing, of course, in comparison with a little girl you know nothing about, who is your niece in blood.”
“Oh, my niece, my niece!” the poor lady murmured under her breath.
“Tell me something about this Harry Gordon; it will let your mind down from the more exciting subject,” said Miss Bethune, still with great dignity, as if of an offended person. “He has lived with you for years. He has shared your secrets.”
“I have talked to him about Dora,” she faltered.
“But yet,” said the stern questioner, more and more severely, “it does not seem you have cared anything about him all these years?”
“Oh, don’t say that! I have always been fond of him, always—always! He will never say I have not been kind to him,” the invalid cried.
“Kind?” cried Miss Bethune, with an indignation and scorn which nothing could exceed. Then she added more gently, but with still the injured tone in her voice: “Will you tell me something about him? It will calm you down. I take an interest in the young man. He is like somebody I once knew, and his name recalls——”
“Perhaps you knew his father?” said Mrs. Bristow.
“Perhaps. I would like to hear more particulars. He tells me his mother is living.”
“The father was very foolish to tell him. Mr. Bristow always said so. It was on his deathbed. I suppose,” cried the poor lady, with a deep sigh, “that on your deathbed you feel that you must tell everything. Oh, I’ve been silent, silent, so long! I feel that too. She is not a mother that it would ever be good for him to find. Mr. Bristow wished him never to come back to England, only for that. He said better be ignorant—better know nothing.”
“And why was the poor mother so easily condemned?”
“You would be shocked—you an unmarried lady—if I told you the story. She left him just after the boy was born. She fell from one degradation to another. He sent her money as long as he could keep any trace of her. Poor, poor man!”
“And his friends took everything for gospel that this man said?”
“He was an honest man. Why should he tell Mr. Bristow a lie? I said it was to be kept from poor Harry. It would only make him miserable. But there was no doubt about the truth of it—oh, none.”
“I tell you,” cried Miss Bethune, “that there is every doubt of it. His mother was a poor deceived girl, that was abandoned, deserted, left to bear her misery as she could.”
“Did you know his mother?” said the patient, showing out of the darkness the gleam of eyes widened by astonishment.
“It does not matter,” cried Miss Bethune. “I know this, that the marriage was in secret, and the boy was born in secret; and while she was ill and weak there came the news of some one coming that might leave her penniless; and for the sake of the money, the wretched money, this man took the child up in his arms out of her very bed, and carried it away.”
The sick woman clutched the arm of the other, who sat by her side, tragic and passionate, the words coming from her lips like sobs. “Oh, my poor lady,” she said, “if that is your story! But it was not that. My husband, Mr. Bristow, knew. He knew all about Gordon from the beginning. It was no secret to him. He did not take the child away till the mother had gone, till he had tried every way to find her, even to bring her back. He was a merciful man. I knew him too. Oh, poor woman, poor woman, my heart breaks for that other you knew. She is like me, she is worse off than me: but the one you know was not Harry’s mother—oh, no, no—Harry’s mother! If she is living it is—it is—in misery, and worse than misery.”
“He said,” uttered a hoarse voice, breathless, out of the dimness, which nobody could have recognised for Miss Bethune’s, “that you said there was no such woman.”
“I did—to comfort him, to make him believe that it was not true.”
“By a lie! And such a lie—a shameful lie, when you knew so different! And how should any one believe now a word you say?”
“Oh, don’t let her say such things to me, Miller, Miller!” cried the patient, with the cry of a sick child.
“Madam,” said the maid, “she’s very bad, as you see, and you’re making her every minute worse. You can see it yourself. It’s my duty to ask you to go away.”
Miss Bethune rose from the side of the bed like a ghost, tall and stern, and towering over the agitated, weeping woman who lay back on the white pillows, holding out supplicating hands and panting for breath. She stood for a moment looking as if she would have taken her by the throat. Then she gave herself a little shake, and turned away.
Once more the invalid clutched at her dress and drew her back. “Oh,” she cried, “have mercy upon me! Don’t go away—don’t go away! I will bear anything. Say what you like, but bring me Dora—bring me Dora—before I die.”
“Why should I bring you Dora? Me to whom nobody brings—— What is it to me if you live or if you die?”
“Oh, bring me Dora—bring me Dora!” the poor woman wailed, holding fast by her visitor’s dress. She flung herself half out of the bed, drawing towards her with all her little force the unwilling, resisting figure. “Oh, for the sake of all you wish for yourself, bring me Dora—Dora—before I die!”
“What have you left me to wish for?” cried the other woman; and she drew her skirts out of the patient’s grasp.
No more different being from her who had entered an hour before by the long passages and staircases of the great hotel could have been than she who now repassed through them, looking neither to the right nor to the left—a woman like a straight line of motion and energy, as strong and stiff as iron, with expression banished from her face, and elasticity from her figure. She went back by the same streets she had come by, making her way straight through the crowd, which seemed to yield before the strength of passion and pain that was in her. There was a singing in her ears, and a buzzing in her head, and her heart was in her breast as if it had been turned to stone. Oh, she was not at her first shock of disappointment and despair. She had experienced it before; but never, she thought, in such terrible sort as now. She had so wrapped herself in this dream, which had been suggested to her by nothing but her own heart, what she thought her instinct, a sudden flash of divination, the voice of nature. She had felt sure of it the first glimpse she had of him, before he had even told her his name. She had been sure that this time it was the voice of nature, that intuition of a mother which could not be deceived. So many likenesses seemed to meet in Harry Gordon’s face, so many circumstances to combine in establishing the likelihood, at least, that this was he. South America, the very ideal place for an adventurer, and the strange fact that he had a mother living whom he did not know. A mother living! These words made a thrill of passion, of opposition, of unmoved and immovable conviction, rush through all her veins. A mother living! Who could that be but she? What would such a man care—a man who had abandoned his wife at the moment of a woman’s greatest weakness, and taken her child from her when she was helpless to resist him—for the ruin of her reputation after, for fixing upon her, among those who knew her not, the character of a profligate? He who had done the first, why should he hesitate to say the last? The one thing cost him trouble, the other none. It was easier to believe that than to give up what she concluded with certainty was her last hope.
Gilchrist, who had seen her coming, rushed downstairs to open the door for her. But Gilchrist, at this moment, was an enemy, the last person in the world in whom her mistress would confide; Gilchrist, who had never believed in it, had refused to see the likeness, or to encourage any delusion. She was blind to the woman’s imploring looks, her breathless “Oh, mem!” which was more than any question, and brushed past her with the same iron rigidity of pose, which had taken all softness from her natural angularity. She walked straight into her bedroom, where she took off her bonnet before the glass, without awaiting Gilchrist’s ministrations, nay, putting them aside with a quick impatient gesture. Then she went to her sitting-room, and drew her chair into her favourite position near the window, and took up the paper and began to read it with every appearance of intense interest. She had read it through every word, as is the practice of lonely ladies, before she went out: and she was profoundly conscious now of Gilchrist following her about, hovering behind her, and more anxious than words can say. Miss Bethune was an hour or more occupied about that newspaper, of which she did not see a single word, and then she rose suddenly to her feet.
“I cannot do it—I cannot do it!” she cried. “The woman has no claim on me. Most likely she’s nothing but a fool, that has spoilt everything for herself, and more. Maybe it will not be good for Dora. But I cannot do it—I cannot do it. It’s too strong for me. Whatever comes of it, she must see her child—she must see her child before she passes away and is no more seen. And oh, I wish—I wish that it was not her, but me!”