'My dear Chris,--Don't open the packet enclosed in this until you read my letter. If you do, I'll haunt you, and you shall never have a minute's rest again. You told me once that every person in life has a proper groove. I think it very hard that I should have lived all these years without, until now, falling into my proper groove; I am in it at last, but I am ready to slap all the children's faces to think that so many years have been wasted. I was born to be a grocer, and at last a grocer I am. If you can find me a better one than I am, show him to me, and I'll resign. I've been looking over your uncle's books, and, as true as I'm a living woman, I'm taking more money than ever he took, if his figures are right. Every day I make a new customer. There's Mrs. Simpson, the bricklayer's wife, at No. 9. If she's been in the shop once, she's been in it a dozen times to-day and yesterday: all the years the old gentleman kept the shop she didn't spend two-and-twopence in it--that's the sum she mentioned, and as I'm a woman of figures now, I must be precise. She does so like a gossip, she says, and she don't mind getting short weight, she says, so long as she can have a friendly word with her quarter of a pound of moist, and her two ounces of the best mixture. She tried all she knew to get the old gentleman to gossip with her, and as he wouldn't, she wouldn't deal with him. Mrs. Simpson is not the only one. There's Mrs. Primmins, and Mrs. Sillitoe, the butcher's wife, and Mrs. Macnamara, who takes snuff. They all like a gossip, and they all come to have it, and so long as they buy their groceries of me, I shall encourage them. Why, you'd be surprised to see the old shop sometimes! It's quite an Institution.
'Well, I've got along very well with everything, from the figs to the brickdust; but one thing puzzled me. If you have any love for me, my sweet child, don't betray me, for I'm not at all sure they couldn't hang me for it; but it pays, my sweet child, and it doesn't do any one any harm, and I shall go on doing it, and risk the consequences. Well, it's this. On the first Saturday I was here, the people came in for uncle Bryan's pills and uncle Bryan's mixture. Well, there was a supply in the drawers, and I served the customers. If there was one of them, my dear, there was fifty, and every one spent his penny or twopence, and a few threepence. Well, during the early part of the week I ran short of the pills and the mixture, and I was puzzled about another supply. I knew that the old gentleman made his own medicine, and I looked about for the prescription, but couldn't find it. Now, for all I knew, the success of the business might depend upon these pills and mixtures, which some of the neighbours are ready to swear by as being able to cure asthma, and consumption, and indigestion, and bronchitis, and dysentery, and flushings, and palpitation, and wooden legs, and sprains, and bruises, and pains in the bowels, and headache, and too much brandy, and low fever, and high fever, and jaundice, and warts, and scrofula, and coughs, and colds, and the chills, and I don't know what all besides. And if you knew the trouble I've taken to put all these things together, you'd cry out, "Bless the little woman! What a painstaking creature she is!" But to come back. Well, for all I knew, if the customers couldn't get these wonderful pills at our shop, they might go elsewhere to buy their tea and sugar, and that would never do. I was in a pucker, and Turk came in last Tuesday night, and I told him my trouble. Says Turk, "How many pills and how many bottles of mixture have you got left?" I counted them. Fourteen bottles of mixture, and eleven boxes of pills, large and small. "And what do they cure?" says Turk. I went over all those things that I've written at the top of this sheet. "I don't feel as if anything particular is the matter with me," says Turk; "how do you feel, Josey?" I told him that I felt the same. "Then," says Turk, "it's quite necessary that you and I should take a bottle of that mixture, and six pills, without one moment's delay. Else it might prove fatal." And would you believe it, my dear? Before I knew where I was, Turk had poured one of the bottles of the mixture down my throat, and another down his own, and made me, willy nilly, swallow pill for pill with him until we had each swallowed half a dozen. "And now," said Turk, "if we die, we'll perish in one another's arms; and I'll come to-morrow night and write our epitaphs. We'll be buried in one grave, and all the neighbours will come to the funeral." I didn't like it, I tell you, and I kept awake all night, fancying I had pains; but I ate a very good breakfast the next morning, and everything inside of me went on as usual. Turk came in the evening, and we compared notes, as he said. He said then that it was a very bad case indeed, and we must take another bottle of mixture and six more pills each of us. I said I wouldn't; he said I should, and that he wouldn't die without me; and as I'm a living woman, he held my head and poured the mixture down my throat. After that, I thought I might as well take the pills, especially as Turk said I'd have to. One may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, you know. They didn't have the slightest effect upon us for better or worse (and the sooner that day comes for me, and the man with the ring, the better I shall like it, my sweet child, and that's plain speaking), and Turk said it was the most wonderful cure that ever was known of the most wonderful complication of diseases that ever was heard of. Now if you can guess what Turk did next, you're a clever boy; but as you never would guess, I'll tell you. He set to work making bread pills by the thousand (we found the board your uncle used to make them with), and he made a great basin of mixture, that tasted for all the world like the mixture in your uncle's bottles. You know, there scarcely is any taste at all in it. He coloured the water, and then we filled all the empty bottles and pill-boxes, and had stock enough to last a month. You would have laughed if you had seen us making the medicine. It was done after the shop was shut and all the children were in bed. We locked the doors, and put something over all the windows and keyholes, and every minute or two Turk wriggled to the door, to slow music, to listen if anybody was outside. We were like conspirators. We had a great run on the pills and mixture on Saturday night, and my heart felt as if it was sinking into my shoes every time I served a box or a bottle; but I was obliged to put a brave face on it, and I served them over the counter as if they were the "real grit," as the Yankees say. When I went to bed, I wondered how many murders I had committed, and how many times I could be hanged. I felt worse on Monday morning when I stood behind the counter; but as the day went on, and I didn't hear of any persons in the neighbourhood dying in convulsions, and as I didn't see any undertaker's men about, I began to get a bit relieved in my mind. And when Mrs. Huxley came in--Mr. Huxley is besieged by a regular army of diseases, asthma, and rackets, and "ketches in the side," as his wife calls them--well, when she came in, and told me how ill her poor dear man was on Saturday night before taking the pills and mixture, and how well he was on Sunday after he'd swallowed two big doses, I began to think better of them. I plucked up courage to ask one and another how everybody was who had taken the physic, and would you believe it, my sweet child, none of them were ever better in their lives. And a story has got about that your uncle Bryan has gone to some place to make the pills and mixture in secret, so that no one shall find out what is in them. I say nothing, except "Oh," and "Ah," and "Indeed," very mysteriously, and as if I didn't know anything about it (as how should I?), and the effect of these "Ohs" and "Ahs" and "Indeeds" is so extraordinary, that if I stood in a wagon, and talked by the hour together, with music playing all about me, and all the young ones dancing and posing, the thing couldn't work better. People are beginning to do what they never did before--they are buying the medicine in the middle of the week; and two strangers have already come in from a long distance for two boxes of the wonderful pills, one to cure palpitation and the other for the jaundice.
'Turk is getting along famously. He is a real good fellow, and everybody likes him. He is making heaps of new friends, and is doing a fine business. He sends his love to you, and says he will have plenty to tell you when you come home.
'Gus is going to India and Australia with a company; he plays leading business, and has a three years' engagement at twelve pounds a week, and all his travelling expenses paid. Not so bad for Gus; but then he's a genius, my dear.
'I hope Florry is behaving herself; but I am only joking when I say that. Don't you let her fall in love with you, and then break her heart; I'm joking again. When you come to think or us altogether, master Christopher, don't you think we're a re-markable family? If you don't, I do. You'd find it hard to beat us. You should read the letters Florry writes to us; they are perfect gems. Where we all got our cleverness from is a perfect puzzle; but it runs in some families. I'm glad Florry is with your mother; it will do her good. Ah, my dear, do you know I pray every night that you may bring your dear good mother home to us strong and well? I do, my dear, and it does me good.
'The letters that are in the enclosed packet came to the shop this morning. One of them is very heavy. I know your uncle's writing from the account-books he left behind him, and I see that it is his writing on the envelope. If there's any address inside, let me know, and I'll go and drag him home, although it will be the ruin of a fine business I see looming in the future in bread pills and the famous mixture made of coloured water.
'And now, my dear, I must leave off. This is the longest letter I ever wrote in my life, and if anybody had told me that I could have written it, I shouldn't have believed him. All the children send their love and kisses, and I send mine, and six kisses for your mother. When you give them to her, whisper that they're from a queer little woman in Paradise-row who loves both of you very much. Now don't you run away with the idea that I'm going to break my heart over you.
'Oh, I almost forgot to say that the doctor was here to-day. He hasn't time to write, but he says he has read your letter carefully, and he thinks that your mother is going along well. He expects a change very soon for the better. He gave me another prescription for you, which I send in this.
'I never thought much of it till lately, my dear, but really there are a great many good people in the world--But there! if I don't stop at once, I shall go rambling on all night, and there's some one tapping at the door. Come in! Only think, I've written it instead of saying it--Your affectionate friend,
'Josey.'
I untied the packet which Josey had enclosed, and found two letters in it--one, very bulky, in uncle Bryan's handwriting, the other written by Jessie. How my heart beat as I gazed at the latter! Both were addressed to my mother.
It was a fine clear night, and a sweet soft air was stirring--so sweet and soft that I was sitting at my work-table with the window open. Florry had gone to bed; my mother was asleep. I had always opened my mother's letters, and I reflected whether I was justified in opening these. After a little while I decided to read uncle Bryan's letter, for the reason that it would probably inform me where he was staying; in which case I should be able to rid myself of the responsibility of his business. Jessie's letter I would not read--at least for the present; she may have written in it what she might not wish me to see. I laid it aside, and unfastened the envelope of uncle Bryan's letter. It contained many sheets of manuscript, methodically arranged, some in uncle Bryan's handwriting, some in a writing which was strange to me. I give them in their order. The first was from uncle Bryan to my mother:
'Dear Emma,--I will not speak of my reasons for leaving you. Perhaps you may be able to guess them. I did it for the best. My absence may bring peace and happiness into your home, for it is yours. I relinquish all claim to it. When I tell you that I shall never return, you will know that I shall not set foot inside the shop again. I cannot have many years longer to live, and I shall do well enough, so do not give yourself any anxiety about me. I shall always be able to get my bread, and I shall wait patiently for death, and shall be grateful when it comes, but I shall do nothing to hasten it. Life has been a weary load to me, and I shall be glad to shake it off. This impatience would change to resignation and to gratitude, not for death, but for life, if it were possible for one thing to happen; but it is utterly, utterly impossible, and it is just and right that it should be out of my reach.
'I have a distinct purpose in writing to you, apart from any selfish words which fall from my pen. It is this: In telling you and my nephew the story of my life I threw blame upon my dead wife. I did worse than this--I slandered her memory. That I spoke what I believed is no excuse for me. I created for myself, out of my blindness and fatal imperiousness of self, a delusion and a lie which have embittered my life. I could bear this with calmness if the consequences had fallen only on myself; but I see now, when it is too late, how I have made others suffer. The bitterest punishment that could fall upon me would not serve to expiate my deadly sin. I do suffer bitterly, keenly, and my soul writhes from pain and shame.
'Can I speak more strongly? And yet these words are weak. Too late I see my folly and my crime. Many things that Christopher said to me were true. I humbly ask his forgiveness, and I humbly pray that the happiness he said I did my best to destroy may yet fall to his lot. If he will picture me an old man with a bleeding heart into whose life few rays of sunshine have passed, pleading to him, he may soften towards me. Perhaps he may believe that I loved him; if he does believe it, he will believe the truth.
'The letter I send with this is from my dead wife; it will explain itself. I received it at the same time the letter came to you from Jessie. Merely looking at her name upon paper, now that I have written it, deepens my anguish, my shame, and my remorse. It will never fall to my lot to ask her forgiveness, as I ask yours and your son's. I put myself in her place, and I know what her feelings are.
'Let Christopher read this and my wife's letter.
'Good-bye, Emma. For your unwavering kindness and gentleness to me, who have repaid you so badly, receive the humble heartfelt thanks of Bryan Carey.'
Then followed the letter from his wife.
CHAPTER XLII.
FROM FRANCES TO HER HUSBAND, BRYAN CAREY.
I address you from the grave, and I pray that what I write may never reach your hands. If, unhappily, you are fated to read these words, they will bring their own punishment with them.
Do I hope, then, that you may be dead on the day that this letter shall be opened or destroyed, unread? No. But rather than you should receive it, it would be better that the earth covered you, as it has covered me these many years. You will understand my meaning before you have finished reading. I write in no vindictive spirit. All bitter feeling has left me; although even yourself may acknowledge that I have good cause for feeling bitterly towards you. But I am resolved that you shall not blight another life as you blighted mine. Another life so dear to me! that should be so dear to you! Another life that has been some comfort to me in the midst of my sorrow and affliction; and that I hope may be long spared for happiness.
It is not a giddy girl who is writing to you. It is a woman who has learned to look upon things with fair judgment, notwithstanding that she has suffered deeply from a cruel wrong inflicted upon her.
When you first came to me I was a child almost in years. I had had no opportunity of knowing the world, or of gaining that experience which is necessary to those who move in its busy quarters. I had never known trouble or sorrow, and, until my father fell into misfortune, I had lived very happily with him. He had his faults, I do not doubt, as we all have; but he was a good father to the last, and I loved him to the last. You judged him harshly, I know, and made no excuses for him--but it is in your nature to judge harshly. Weak as he was to some extent, I do not believe that he would have wronged his wife--doubly wronged her--and then have deserted her: as you wronged and deserted me. I have some remembrance of my mother, who died when I was very young, and I know that he was indulgent and good to her.
I fancy I can see a hard look on your face at the word indulgent. But some natures require indulgence, and are the better and the happier for it. You were for a time indulgent to me, and it was for this, as well as for other qualities in you upon which I placed higher value than you deserved, that I loved you.
Yes, I loved you. I scarcely know whether you ever believed I did; for, thinking over matters since our separation, I have arrived--whether rightly or wrongly--at what I believe to be a correct estimate of your character, at what assuredly is a correct estimate if you are destined to read it. I see you, hard and intolerant; doubtful of goodness in others; prone to place the most uncharitable construction on the actions of others. Lightness of heart is in your eyes a sign of levity. Surely the moods which were familiar to me in the first days of our acquaintanceship, and in the first few months of our wedded life, must have been foreign to your nature.
I see something more in you. I see you false to your wife and to your marriage vows. I see you, who prided yourself upon your sense of justice, most unjust and ungenerous to me. Let your heart answer if I am wrong.
Recall the evening on which we met for the first time, and certain words which passed between us. You were at my father's house, advising him upon his business affairs, which had become complicated. You said that my voice reminded you of a friend--a lady friend, very dear to you--and that she was dead. The words did not make much impression upon me at the time; but I had occasion afterwards to remember them. I liked you that evening. Your grave face, your sensible ways, were agreeable to me, frivolous girl as you supposed me to be. We kept but little society; the only regular visitor at my father's house was my cousin Ralph. I loved him; but not in the way you suspected. We had been intimate from early childhood, and I had a sincere affection for him. When I became better acquainted with you, I saw faults in him which I had not hitherto discerned; there was a want of stability in his character; he was indolent and deficient in manliness. Even if you had not entered into my life, and marred it, I think I should never have had any but a cousinly love for him. So far as I was concerned, there were no grounds for jealousy on your part, and no grounds for your base suspicions of me. I do not speak for him; I speak for myself. And when you wrote to me on the day you deserted me, and accused me of loving him as a woman should love the man she wishes to marry, you lied. But you had another purpose to serve, and it suited you to write the lie.
Of our married life I need say but few words. I was very happy for a time. You had behaved nobly and generously to my father; you were most kind and indulgent to me. If, as I afterwards learnt, we were living beyond our means, I had no suspicion of it. You never gave me the slightest hint to that effect, and you encouraged what I now know were extravagances in me. But--believe it or not as you will--I could have been contented and happy without them. You told me you were rich, and you could not fail to know that I had no idea of the value of money. Why could you not have confided in me? Was it honest to keep me, of your own free will, in such absolute ignorance, and then to blame me for not having known? I think, if you had trusted me, that you might have found some good in me--judged even by the light of your own hard judgment; but it is in your nature to accuse and judge in the same breath, and to do both unmercifully.
I remember well the last day you were kind to me. You left me in the morning with smiles; you returned home long after midnight a changed man. I, also, was changed when you returned. I have other cause to remember the day; for in the evening my cousin Ralph came to see me, and stayed with me until nearly eleven o'clock. You had sent me a note saying that you were detained at your office by important business. I read the note to my cousin, and he laughed at it, and said that you had good cause for your absence. His words conveyed a strange meaning to my ears, and I asked for an explanation. He gave it to me; and I learnt, to my horror, that you were in the habit of visiting another woman--a stranger in the town. Before I had recovered from the shock, I received another. My cousin Ralph, in a mad moment, proved himself to be what I had not hitherto suspected--a vile bad man. He told me, in passionate terms, that he loved me, and that he had loved me from boyhood; that it had been the dream of his life that we should be married, and that, but for you and your money, his life might have been a life of happiness. I listened in dismay and astonishment; I knew that he had an affection for me, but I thought it was such an affection as one cousin might innocently have entertained for another. I was so overwhelmed by this discovery, and by his accusations against you, that I had no power to stay his words. He misinterpreted my silence, and proceeded in wilder terms to propose flight to me. I tried to answer him, but my grief, and my terror lest you should return while he was in the house--for he was at my feet and refused to stir--made me weak. I implored him for my sake and for his own to leave me; and presently, when I grew stronger, I addressed him in words which it was impossible for him to misunderstand. It flashed upon me then that he had invented the story he had told me about you, and I taunted him with it. He answered me to the effect that he would prove it true before many days were over, and that then I might possibly listen to him more favourably. He left me; and your own conduct towards me from that day, during the short time we were together, was almost a sufficient proof. You would have judged upon that evidence; I was not content with it. I soon tasted the bitterness that lay in knowledge. A clerk in your office, who had for a purpose of his own made himself acquainted with the history of this woman--probably to use against you in some way--and whom you had employed to convey money and letters to her at different times, told me more than I wanted to know. On the day that you had the public quarrel with my cousin Ralph--I heard of it soon afterwards, for it became matter of common talk--I discovered that this woman came from a town in which you had formerly resided--that you knew her then--and that her history was a shameful one. Then there came to me the words that had passed between us upon your first visit to my father's house, when you said that my voice reminded you of a woman who was dear to you, and who was dead. It was easy to supply the blank spaces in the story to make it complete--shamefully, miserably complete. Your clerk told me that the life you had lived in that town was not a respectable one: I did not ask him how he had gained his knowledge, but I was sure of its truth. You left that town, and came to this place, a complete stranger, knowing no one, known by none. You refused to speak of your past life; not a word had ever passed your lips with reference to it. What other confirmation was needed of the truth of your clerk's statements? You tried to blot out your past career, knowing that it would not bear the light, and that the good name and position you had gained would be sullied and lost if the particulars were made public. You deserted the woman who had been your companion, and when you were inadvertently betrayed into remembrance of her by the sound of my voice, you told me she was dead. You never mentioned her again, nor did I, for I had forgotten her. But see how hard it is to lead a life of hypocrisy, as you have done! Shame never dies, nor can it ever be completely wiped away. After years of sojourn here, when you had gained money, position and a good name--when you had position, a simple, ignorant, and innocently-vain girl to your heart, and had sworn to cherish and protect her--this woman tracks you, finds you, and appeals to you by the remembrance of old times, and perhaps by other arguments more powerful, of which I am ignorant. On the very evening she meets you, you take her to a house in the town, and provide lodgings for her, and from that time your visits are frequent. Is this part of your story complete, and need I add to it by saying that you mentioned not a word concerning the woman to the wife you professed to love? If there was no shame in the relations that existed between you and her, why should you have taken such pains to conceal them? On the day you deserted me, you told me you were ruined, and you adopted the miserable subterfuge of saying that you had discovered all, and that you could no longer live with me. Your meaning was plain enough. You implied that I was false to you and to the vows I had taken on the day we were married. A more wicked lie never poisoned the heart of man or woman. I had brought shame and disgrace upon you, you said, and that it was useless my sending after you. I have read this letter often--it is destroyed now; I burnt it lest one who is dearer to me than my heart's blood should see it--and I have wondered at my folly and credulity in ever, for one moment, believing you to be a good and just man. For I did believe you to be this. There was a time in my life when I set you up as a model of honour and integrity and truth. The last words of your letter are burnt into my heart. Do you remember them? 'If I could make you a free woman, so that you might marry the man you love, I would willingly lay down my life; but it cannot be done. The only and best reparation I can offer is to promise, as I do now most faithfully, to wipe you out of my heart, so that you may be free from me for ever.' How fair those words sound--how self-sacrificing--how manly! What a noble nature do they display! Would it be believed that while this letter was on its way to the wife whom he was about to desert--to the wife whom he had most cruelly wronged, and most shamefully betrayed--the man who wrote it was entering the house where the woman lived who had been his companion in former years? The next morning you left. Two days afterwards, the woman followed you to London.
Is anything more wanted to complete the shameful story? Had I brought disgrace upon you, or had you brought it upon me? A noble reparation, indeed, did you make to me!
You may ask how it was that I discovered your visit to the woman. My father and my cousin saw you coming from the house, where doubtless you had completed all your arrangements, and left your final instructions. My cousin it was who told me. 'Now,' he said, 'do you believe that he is false?' 'Yes,' I answered; 'I am convinced of it' What followed? Remember it is your dead wife who is speaking to you, and do not dare, for your soul's sake, to add to your cruelty by doubting what she says. My cousin Ralph then began to speak again of his own selfish passion, and I bade him never to presume to address me again. From that day I never saw him; some little while afterwards my father told me he had gone abroad, but we never heard from him.
We remained--my father and I--for a few weeks after your departure, and then my father's health suddenly broke down. In one thing you had most completely succeeded; you had blackened my name as well as your own. Innocent as I was, wronged as I was, I think no one in my native place pitied me. Persons who had once respected me avoided me, or slighted me. Day by day the torture of living in this atmosphere of injustice grew until it was unbearable; and when my father broke down, I took him with me into a strange place, where neither of us was known, and where I hoped by carefully husbanding our small means, and by employing some hours of the day in needlework, to be enabled to live quietly, if not in peace. There was another reason why I was anxious to leave--a reason which you will now learn for a certainty for the first time. I was about to become a mother.
I kept this secret from you. Often and often had I listened to the expression of your wishes--the dearest wish of your heart, you said--that our union might be blessed with children. Your wish was that our first child might be a girl, and I used to hang with delight upon your words--believing in them in my credulous faith--when you described how you would educate and rear her into a good woman. I kept the secret, intending to joyfully surprise you later on; but it was fated that you should never learn it from my lips. When my time drew near, I was among strangers. I prayed that I might be blessed with a boy, who would be able to fight against the world's cruelties--with a boy who might one day--if you lived--be able to tell you to your face that you had slandered his mother. I had those thoughts at that time, and I set them down so that you may know exactly the state of my mind towards you. I prayed most fervently that the child might not be a girl, whose fate it might be to be treated by a man as her unhappy mother was treated by you. But my prayers were not heard. The child I clasped to my breast--your child--was a girl.
I hardly dared to look into her face at first, for I feared that it might resemble you, and that I should be compelled to hate her. I thanked God when I saw that there was but little resemblance to you. Think when you read this what my feelings towards you must have been.
My darling's was the sweetest, most beautiful face that I had ever gazed upon. I had never conceived it possible that a human heart could throb with such ineffable delight as mine did even in the midst of my bitter sorrow and shame, when I looked into my darling's face and eyes. I offered up grateful prayers that I lived and was a mother, and I offered up prayers of thankfulness also that it was out of your power to rob me of my treasure. That you would have done it had you known, I entertained no doubt.
The first few months of my child's life I was as happy as it was possible for a wronged and betrayed woman to be. Intending in these lines to hide nothing, I will not disguise from you that I shed many bitter tears because she was deprived of a father's love; but she did not lack love and attention. She was my one comfort and joy; I soon had no one else to love but her.
My father died. The doctor who had attended him in his illness warned me that, unless I was careful of myself, my life might be short. The thought that my darling might be left, helpless and dependent, among strangers, frightened me, and I did not know which way to turn for counsel and advice. I had not a friend in the world capable of helping me by a kindly, sensible word. To this condition you had brought me.
But my cup of sorrow was not yet full. The doctor I have mentioned was an unmarried man. He believed me to be a widow, as I had given out. I had no other resource than to speak this untruth. It was impossible for me to say that I was a helpless, unhappy woman, who had been deserted by her husband. To such a creature strangers show no mercy; they put their own construction on the story and judge accordingly--as you would judge, harshly, unfeelingly. I think I should not have cared so much for myself, but I had my darling to look to.
The doctor flattered me by saying that he saw I was a lady, and, in most respectful terms, he invited my confidence. He was most delicate and considerate, but I could not confide in him or any one; my cruel story and my cruel wrongs must be for ever locked in my breast. He did not press me when he saw that I was pained by his inquiries, but he paid me great attention, and by his kindness lightened my load. I did not place any serious construction upon his intentions, nor indeed did I think of them, for I was entirely wrapt up in my love for my darling child, who was growing every day more beautiful and more engaging. But when he asked me to be his wife, my eyes were opened. If I had been a free woman I would have accepted him, if only for the sake of providing a comfortable home for my child. As I was in chains, I refused him. He said he was a patient man, that he loved me very sincerely, and that he would wait. In the heavy catalogue of my sins that you have against me, place this new one--that this good man loved me. He continued his attentions, and they brought me into fresh disgrace. In the place I was living there were single ladies, and mothers who had daughters to marry, who entertained a hope that the doctor would choose from among them, and they were angry when they saw that I stood in their way. I do not know whom I have to thank for what followed, but gradually rumours got about to my discredit. I was not a widow; I was not a married woman; the name I went by was not my own. Women shrugged their shoulders when they met me; men stared at me insolently and familiarly. What had occurred in my native town when you deserted me was repeated here. I had no alternative but to fly from the place.
At that time my darling was nearly three years old, and the unkind creatures had attempted to drop poison even into her young and innocent mind. One day she asked me, in her pretty way, where her father was. 'You have none, my darling,' I said; 'he is dead.'
In the new place I found refuge in I made friends with a kind family, who grew very fond of my child--as none indeed could help doing. Her bright ways, her innocence, her artlessness, would win any heart not dead to human affection. If anything should happen to me, these friends will take care of my darling as long as they are able. I think it is likely that I shall not live long, and I have thought anxiously over the future of my darling until she arrives at an age when she may be able to protect and provide for herself. I have consulted with my new friends, and I have arranged everything to the best of my ability and judgment. I shall place in their hands a small box, which, in the event of my death and of their being unable to maintain my child (for they are poor people), is to be given to her with plain instructions. These instructions it will be necessary for me here to explain, first saying, however, that should these good friends be able to look after my child until she arrives at womanhood, there will be no necessity to give them to her. In that event, also, the box and its contents will be burnt. They have promised me faithfully, and I know they will keep their word.
If I am gone, and they are too poor to help my child, she will be, as I have been, without a friend. These good people have some idea of emigrating, if they can save sufficient money, and then my darling will be indeed helpless. They might take her with them, it may be said; but they may not have sufficient means. And then, again, it inflicts the most bitter pain upon me to think that my darling child should be taken thousands of miles from the spot where her mother's ashes are laid. She will be helpless, as I have said; but there is one upon whom she has a just claim--yourself. I wished her never to see you; I wished that you might never look upon her beautiful face, nor feel the charm of her presence. But I see no other way to secure a home for her. Should she be left without friends, she will come to you, a stranger, with a letter from me, who will even then be dead, asking you to give a home to a friendless child. She will bear a strange name, and will know you only as a stranger. Neither will you know her; it may be that you will see in her face some slight resemblance to the wife whose happiness you have destroyed, and it may be that you may place that resemblance to your dead wife's discredit. Do so, and bring another shame upon your soul.
How do I know where you live in London? It has been discovered for me, by means of a clue which my father obtained soon after your flight. When a mother is working for her child, she can do much. I have never seen London, but I know your address; and on the day that the friends I have made for my child find they can no longer provide for her, she will present herself at your door. Hard and unfeeling, cruel and unjust, as you are, I think you will not turn her from it.
In the small box which my friends will give to my darling child are three letters, numbered first, second, third. On the first letter is written, 'To be opened first, on your eighteenth birthday, before the other letters are touched. This is the sacred wish of your dead mother.' I copy this letter in this place, so that you may clearly understand what I have done:
'My darling Child,--I wish you to regard these written words as though they are spoken to you with my dying breath, and to obey them. If Mr. Bryan Carey has made your life happy, and if you are in the enjoyment of a happy home, destroy the second letter by fire, and hand him the third. If it is otherwise with you, and your life with him has been in any way unhappy, destroy the third letter by fire, as you would have done the second. Then seek some quiet place and read the second letter, and when you have read it, send it to Mr. Carey, and act as you think best for your welfare and happiness. That God will for ever bless and protect my darling is the prayer of your mother,
'Frances.'
The third letter contains a short account of my life since you left me, and the statement that Jessie is your daughter. It leaves it to your judgment to make the relationship known to her, or to let it remain a secret.
The second letter you are now reading.
If it fall into your hands, Jessie will have read it first, and will know how basely you behaved to me. She will know that your conduct towards me was such that a woman never can forgive, and she will understand that a man had better kill his wife than inflict upon her such shame and misery and humiliation as you inflicted upon me, a guiltless woman, as God is my Judge. She will know that you deserted me for another woman, and left me, a simple inexperienced girl, to battle alone with the pitiless world. Ah, how pitiless it is, how uncharitable, how cruel! How many nights have I passed shedding what might have been tears of blood, for they were wrung from a bruised and bleeding heart! She, who has lived with me many happy years in her childhood's life, will, when she reads this, be able to look back with the eyes of a woman upon the life I led while we were together, and she will know whether it was without stain and without reproach. She will have had experience both of you and myself, and of both our natures and minds, and she will have sense and intelligence enough to judge fairly between us. I repeat here, with all the strength of my soul, what I have declared before--that when you accused me of loving my cousin Ralph and of being false to you, you lied most foully.
I believe that I decided rightly when I decided to write these things. As you have acted towards your daughter, so shall be your reward. Whether it be for good or ill, you have earned it.
Your unhappy wife,
Frances.
After the last sheet of this letter, there were a few words in uncle Bryan's handwriting, evidently intended for my mother: 'If you see her whom I scarcely dare call my daughter for the shame which overwhelms me, tell her but one thing from me--that her mother's suspicions concerning the woman I befriended are unfounded. She will believe this, perhaps; it is the truth.'
CHAPTER XLIII.
A HAPPY RECOVERY.
The perusal of this letter affected me powerfully. There was something solemn in the mere handling of a confession written by a woman long since dead--a woman who had been so cruelly wronged and had so cruelly suffered. It was like a voice from the tomb, and it was impossible to resist the conviction that forced itself upon my mind that it was the solemn, bitter truth.
I had never suspected that Jessie was in any way related to uncle Bryan, but it did not surprise me to learn it. The fact that she was my cousin brought with it no sense of pleasure; it gave me no claim on her affection. Rather would she be inclined to look with feelings of repugnance upon all who were connected with her by blood, for by the nearest of these her mother had been brought to misery and shame, and her own life had been made most unhappy; and it was not to be doubted that all her soul would rise in vindication of her mother's honour.
It was past midnight, and everything about me was very still. My mother was sleeping more peacefully than she had yet done through her illness, and I remarked with thankfulness that the distressed expression on her face was wearing away, and that she was beginning to look something like her old sweet self. Insensibly in her sleep her arm stole round my neck. I let it rest there for many minutes, and when I rose from her side and kissed her fingers, there was a soft smile upon her lips--the first unclouded smile I had seen there for many a day. It gave me hope and gladdened my heart.
I was in no humour for sleep, having had some rest during the day, and I had told Florry that I would sit up with my mother until the morning. I placed the letter I had been reading in my desk, and then, arranging the screen in such a manner that the light by which I worked should not fall upon my mother's face, and also in such a manner that when she opened her eyes they must rest upon me, I sat at my table and worked and thought. My work was noiseless, and I could do it without disturbing the stillness. I was thankful for that. I do not know in what way it came into my mind that there are numberless small things in life which we ought to be grateful for, but the thought came. Presently, while my hand and eyes were busy on delicate manipulations in the wood, my mind reverted to uncle Bryan and Jessie, and the strange, strange letter I had read. Could Jessie ever forgive her father? Never, I thought. The unkindnesses inflicted upon herself she might have been eager to forgive when she made the discovery that she had a father living, but the wrong inflicted upon her mother was past forgiveness. Truly, the dead wife had punished the living husband with a cunning hand. But it was a just blow that she had struck. She had shown no vindictiveness; for had he behaved kindly to the girl to whom he had given the shelter of his home, Jessie would never have been made acquainted with her mother's wrongs. Yes, it was just, but it was terrible.
Terrible indeed. To find a father only to hate him. To find a father, and in the discovery to gain the knowledge that his conduct to her mother might have brought lasting shame and disgrace upon her own good name.
And he? How did he feel it? The words he addressed to me in his letter to my mother were very clear in my mind. Too late I see my folly and my crime. Many things that Christopher said to me were true. I humbly ask his forgiveness, and I humbly pray that the happiness he said I did my best to destroy may yet fall to his lot. If he will picture me, an old man with a bleeding heart, into whose life but few rays of sunshine have passed, pleading to him, he may soften towards me. Perhaps he may believe that I loved him; if he does believe it, he will believe the truth.'
I did believe it; I felt that it was true. I asked myself whether all the fault was his, whether he was entirely to blame because it was not in his nature to show love in its sweetest way. I recalled the words he had used when he described to me and my mother the home in which he spent his childhood's days. I raised up a picture of his mother, a weak-minded woman, ruled as with a rod of iron by her husband, ruled even in her affections by a man whom his own son could not respect, knowing him to be a hypocrite. The son must have learned bad lessons in such a home. Was it not to the son's credit that he refused to be moulded by such influences? But if the son had had such a mother as mine----
Ah, if an influence so sweet had sweetened his life--if an affection so pure had purified his mind--how different it might have been with him! The cobwebs of scepticism and bitter distrust might have been swept from his soul. He might have grown into a good and noble man. For I recognised qualities in uncle Bryan's nature far higher than those with which the men I was acquainted with were gifted. My blind unreasoning anger against him was gone, and I felt only pity for the desolate old man. I pictured him, as he had desired me to do, an old man with a bleeding heart, into whose life but few rays of sunshine had passed--an old man who in his youth had been soured, misdirected, misjudged, his rare qualities and gifts turned against himself; and I pitied him with a full heart, and most freely forgave him.
At this point I recalled everything in his character that spoke in his favour--his love of flowers, his love of justice, which had something heroic in it, his contempt for meanness and roguery, his gentle behaviour towards my mother, by whom alone he was properly understood. He would have been astonished had he known my thoughts.
In this better mood I continued my work. Tick, tick, tick, went the little clock on the mantelpiece, and the sound seemed to add to the stillness instead of disturbing it. Once, upon raising my eyes to my mother's bed, I fancied that she was awake and was observing me. I stole towards the bed, but her eyes were closed; I kissed her softly, and resumed my work. The wood-block I was engaged upon represented a woman standing by a field after the corn had been cut and gathered. It was sunset, and the woman, who was between forty and fifty years of age, was gazing sadly and mournfully at the setting sun and the bare field, with only the stubble left on it. I knew the story which the picture was intended to illustrate. The woman had been parted from her son, who was in a distant land, many thousands of miles across the sea, and the last news she had received from him represented him as being beset by misfortune and sickness. She was standing now, thinking mournfully of the times when she and he were together; and the sun, setting among sad clouds, and the cornfield, shorn of its golden glory, were in fit keeping with her thoughts. Another picture drawn on the wood, and which I had not yet commenced to engrave, lay before me. The scene was the same, and the figure of the woman was there, but the time and circumstances were different from the last. It was morning in the opening of summer; the corn was ripening, and lying on the ground at the mother's feet was the son, restored to her in health. Insensibly, as I proceeded with my work, my thoughts reverted to a certain time in my childhood when my mother toiled during the day and sat up late in the night working for me. How many a night had I seen her sitting at the table in our poorly-furnished one room, stitching until daylight dawned to earn bread for her child! The songs she used to sing softly to herself came to my lips, and I murmured them almost unconsciously, while the tears ran from my eyes. My heart was throbbing with exquisite tenderness towards my mother, and I thought that never in all my reading had I met with a woman so thoroughly good and pure and true. I covered my eyes with my hand to shut out the aching fear that, with the force of a visible presence, was creeping upon me and whispering that the priceless blessing of her love was lost to me for ever; but the action brought a deeper darkness to my soul. It lasted but a moment, thank God! for suddenly my name was uttered in a soft clear tone.
'Chris!'
My heart almost ceased to beat as the sound of my mother's voice, with its old sweet cadence, fell upon my ear; but I remembered the caution which the doctor had given me, and I quietly proceeded with my work.
'Yes, mother.'
'What are you doing, dear child?'
'Working, mother.'
I scarcely dared to raise my eyes, and I waited anxiously for her to speak again.
'It is late, my child.'
'Not very, mother. The night was so beautiful, and I had such a long rest this morning, that I thought I would work for an hour or two upon some pictures I have to get done quickly.' I spoke calmly and softly and cheerfully. 'I thought you were asleep, mother.'
'I have lain for some time watching you, my darling, and wondering whether this was not all a dream.'
'A dream, mother!' I said, and I went to her side, and passed my arm under her neck. 'No, it is not a dream.' She gazed at me long and earnestly.
'Where are we, dear child?'
'In the country, at Hertford. You were not very well, and I brought you down here to nurse you into health again.'
She pondered over these words. 'You were singing my songs, my dearest'
'I hope they did not disturb you, mother.'
'What sweeter music could I hear, dear child? But what made you sing them?'
'I was thinking of the old times, mother, when you and I were together, and when you used to work late in the night for me. There was a prayer in my heart while I was singing.'
'What prayer, my dearest?'
'That I might be able to repay you by my love for the love you have given me all my life. That God would be merciful to me, and would give me the power to show you that I love you with all my heart and soul, and to prove that as no son ever had a more loving mother than you have been to me, so no mother ever had a son who was filled with a deeper love than I have for you.'
'Dear child! darling child!' she said, with deep-drawn sighs of happiness, what can I say to you for your goodness to me? I do not deserve it! I do not deserve it!' She folded me in her arms, and I lay by her side with my face pressed close to hers.
'If you say that, mother, I shall think you do not believe me.'
'No, no, dear child, I do believe it. These are tears of joy that I am shedding. And we two are alone, darling!'
'Yes, mother, and I only want one thing to make me quite happy.'
'Tell it me, child?' she asked, a little anxiously.
'To see you well again, mother, that is all. Then I shall go on with my work, and we shall get along famously together. But you mustn't talk any longer; you must go to sleep. Shall I sing you to sleep as you used to do to me? Do you remember that dear old song? Well, but I must not talk any longer. I am going to lie here; first let me put out the light.' When I returned to the fond prison of her loving arms, I said softly, 'I shall only say two or three words more. First, mother, you must promise me to get quite well. Promise, now, for my sake.'
'I will try to, dear child; I think I shall; I feel strong already.'
'Then you must tell me that you are happy, dear mother.'
'Ah, my darling, there is not a happier mother in the world. Blessed with such a son, I should be ungrateful to God if I were not.'
'And now, mother, not another word----'
'But draw the counterpane round you, darling; you will take cold else.'
'There, it is done; feel: and I'm quite warm. Good-night, mother. One kiss--two--three; and before you can count three more I shall be asleep.'
I pretended to be, but I remained awake, listening to her sighs of happiness. Every now and then she passed her fingers over my face, and over my eyes, to learn if they were closed. After a time she fell asleep herself, and her composed peaceful breathing seemed in itself an assurance of returning health.