‘IT IS NOT NOW AS IT HAS BEEN OF YORE.’
Alexis goes to Dorley Mill a few days after his interview with Mr.
Scrodgers the lawyer, and tells Linda Challice all that the man of
law has said in relation to Trot, and the advisability of that young
gentleman’s being domiciled at the Grange.
‘You see I want to establish the fact of his being my son,’ says
Alexis. ‘People will hardly believe in my paternity while the little
fellow is here. He ought to live with me--he ought to be seen in my
company. A few years hence it won’t so much matter where he may live.
His name and position will be settled.’
‘I understand,’ says Linda, sadly. ‘Yesterday you gave me a promise
which made me very happy; to-day you take it back again.’
‘Linda, forgive me,’ cries Alexis, deeply distressed. ‘If you knew
how it grieves me to rob you of your darling! But it is for his good.
Why cannot we three be happy as we have been together? The sweetest
days of my life were those I spent under this dear roof--with
him--with you. Why cannot those happy days come again, Linda? My
love, my darling, what is the world worth that it should part us?’
His arm is round her, he draws her to his breast, looking down into
those beseeching, agonized eyes, which meet his in silent reproach
that pierces deeper than words. For one passionate moment he has
forgotten the fetters that hold him to another, forgotten everything
except that this girl has grown inexpressibly dear to him.
She releases herself from his arm, and he stands before her with
shame-bowed head, conscience-stricken.
‘Forgive me, Linda,’ he pleads. ‘I was thinking of what might have
been. No, I will not be such a wretch as to rob you of Trot--not
yet awhile, at any rate. What can I give him to replace his adopted
mother’s fond care? You shall keep him, Linda.’
‘Not if it is for his interest to be with you,’ Linda answers
gravely. ‘But you need not be in a hurry to take him from me. A few
days--a few weeks even--can make little difference. Give me time to
get accustomed to the idea of parting with him.’
‘So be it. And you will let me come here very often and see him,
so that he may grow fonder of me, and come to look upon me as his
father?’
‘No,’ she answers, with downcast eyes. ‘Let me have him quite to
myself for this time. He loves you already, you have no need to win
his affection. Let me have him all to myself, and when the day comes
claim him from me, and I will give him to you without a tear.’
Alexis understands the motive of this denial, and feels that he has
merited to be thus denied.
‘You have only to command me, Miss Challice,’ he says, ‘and remember
that this boy will be no son of mine if his affection for you, or his
remembrance of your goodness, is ever lessened.’
‘He is so young,’ replies Linda, with a sigh. ‘He will have so much
time in which to forget.’
And then they part with a friendly shake hands, and a little
commonplace talk about old Mr. Benfield and the mill, and both try to
forget, or seem to forget, that fatal betrayal of feeling on the part
of Alexis; and when he has gone Linda creeps up to her room,--the
pretty girlish chamber, with its white draperies and water-colour
sketches, Linda’s own work, on the paneled walls--and kneels beside
the little white bed, and sobs as if her heart were broken. Happily,
her life of simple duty affords little leisure for the indulgence of
grief, and she is obliged to bathe her swollen eyelids presently and
to go downstairs to see about Trot’s custard pudding, which delicacy,
made with a new-laid egg, and baked in a saucer, no other hands can
be permitted to prepare. Trot’s sharp eyes discover the traces of
tears in those heavy eyelids.
‘What for you cry, mammie?’ he demands. ‘You not been naughty, has
you?’
Tears and naughtiness go together in Trot’s mind.
‘I hope not, love.’
‘And you not tumbled down ’tairs.’
‘No, darling.’
‘Den oo got nosing to cry for,’ says Trot, decisively.
* * * * *
It is with the deepest shame that Alexis remembers that unhappy
outbreak of his. This is how he has pleaded his friend’s cause. This
is his allegiance to Dick Plowden. He can hardly look that faithful
friend in the face without blushing, when he gets back to the Grange.
‘Did you see her?’ asks Dick.
‘Oh yes, I saw her.’
‘And was she looking well?’
‘A little pale and worried, I thought. She doesn’t like parting with
Trot, you see.’
‘No, of course not.’
Alexis goes to London that afternoon and procures a copy of the
entry of his marriage in the register at the little Gothic church in
the Pimlico district, so memorable to Sibyl and to him; the church
they entered so hopefully that bleak March morning, four years ago,
careless of the future, confident of happiness, and knowing little
more of life’s actualities than if they had been the prince and
princess of a fairy tale. In that stony labyrinth of Pimlico Alexis
is within an easy walk of Dixon Street, Chelsea. He goes by ways that
were painfully familiar to him in the days of his poverty. He seems
to know every shop-front in this water-side street, every stone,
every housetop, and chimney-stack, and street corner. He leaves the
prim dwelling-places of middle-class respectability, and enters
poverty’s Bohemia. There flows the river beyond its muddy margin,
rosy in the evening sun. How the scene brings back the bygone time,
the heart-sinking and despair, the dread of to-morrow, the vain
hope, the crushing disappointment! There is little use, perhaps, in
this visit to his old quarters. His will is made, his son’s heritage
is rendered as secure as the law of the land can make it; there is
little fear, one would suppose, of the boy’s parentage being called
into question in the time to come; but Alexis has a fancy for seeing
the house which sheltered his poverty and care, which was home in
the days when he thought himself secure of his wife’s love. Here
is the dingy old street, more dingy and dismal in the warm summer
twilight than in wintry obscurity. How sorely all the doors and
window-sashes want painting! what wisps of dirty straw and ragged
scraps of paper have drifted to this quiet haven from the busier ways
outside. Odd curtains drape the parlour windows, grimy blinds droop
hopelessly on their slackened lines, like sails in a dead calm. Here
and there a few flower-pots testify to the love of the beautiful in
some struggling denizen; in one area there is a family of rabbits, in
another a collection of poultry; in a third a cobbler has built his
wooden workshop. If it were possible for anything already so debased
to sink a little lower, Alexis would think that Dixon Street has gone
down since he last beheld it. But the effect lies doubtless rather in
his own eye, which is a stranger to the place.
Mrs. Bonny has been endowed with an orderly mind, and it has been
her constant struggle to raise her dwelling-place above the Dixon
Street level. She has eschewed rabbits and poultry. Her parlour
windows are shaded by clean though faded chintz, and display the
healthiest geraniums in the street. Her door-steps are hearthstoned
daily, and it grieveth her to the heart when the ruthless feet of her
lodgers or their following sully the purity of the stone. It must
be confessed that this aspiration after the beautiful, this struggle
to maintain cleanliness in a neighbourhood where blacks fall as the
rain from heaven, has exercised a deteriorating influence upon Mrs.
Bonny’s temper. The native sweetness of that overworked woman’s
disposition has been turned to sour by the perpetual falling of
smuts, the frequent passage of muddy soles across newly hearthstoned
steps, the reckless disregard of scrapers and doormats, which is
idiosyncratic of the lodger family. When she opens her door to a
stranger, Mrs. Bonny looks not at his face, but directs a furtive and
angry glance at his boots, and follows his progress into her house
with a smothered murmur of dissatisfaction. Her life is an endless
warfare, which her constancy of spirit would render absolutely noble,
were the enemy wherewith she striveth a trifle more exalted; but
to fret and fume about the soiling of a doorstep, to be miserable
because a dirty boot sullieth one’s stair carpet, hath in it
something of pettishness and folly; and these small and sordid cares
have impressed themselves upon Mrs. Bonny’s visage--they have drawn
down the angles of her mouth, and written a network of wrinkles upon
her brow.
She opens the door to Alexis this evening. The rosy light on the
river is deepening to a crimson glow; the sky grows faint and
opal-tinted; and a young moon, which has been showing pale all the
afternoon, begins to brighten in the eastern gray. Alexis had been
prepared to observe some surprise in his landlady’s countenance
at this sudden reappearance of his, after a lapse of three years
and a half, but to his astonishment she receives him with perfect
tranquillity of countenance, save for an anxious downward glance at
his boots, a look which he remembers of old.
‘I thought as much,’ she mutters. ‘You can walk upstairs, Mr.
Stanmore.’
Stanmore was the adopted name of his poverty.
‘I have called for a little chat with you, Mrs. Bonny, if you can
spare time,’ he begins politely, remembering that his old landlady,
like the Fates, was a goddess who needed a good deal of propitiation.
‘I ain’t got the time now,’ replies Mrs. Bonny, snappishly, ‘for I
was cooking my parlour’s supper when you rang, and I dessay it’ll
have stuck to the bottom of the frying-pan when I get back. You can
walk upstairs, can’t you? You know your way, I should think.’
‘To the front room?’ inquires Alexis.
‘Yes, of course. It happened to be empty when the young woman called
about it--not as I’m ever long empty, thank Providence. It ain’t much
reward to get for slaving from morning till night, gracious knows.
Wipe your boots, if you please, Mr. Stanmore. There’s a mat at the
foot of the stairs.’
The master of Cheswold Grange does not quite understand the drift of
these remarks, but he obeys as meekly as the penniless waiter upon
fortune was wont to do in days gone by. Mrs. Bonny hurries back to
her frying-pan, and Alexis goes up the well-remembered staircase,
with its papered wall representing a bewildering multiplication of
Gothic archways of a dingy brown hue, its narrow window with a gaudy
painted blind of ecclesiastical design, its heavy old balusters, the
remains of better days, when Dixon Street was the abode of polite
society, and fine gentlemen and ladies may have roystered and
gambled in these old rooms after an evening at Ranelagh.
Twilight has thickened, and Mrs. Bonny’s staircase is wrapped
in shadow when Alexis opens the door of that one room which was
once his home--a single chamber which would then have been deemed
all-sufficient as a home could he but have found the wherewithal
to pay the rent thereof. How well he remembers that miserable
home-coming, when, like Byron, he found his hearth deserted and his
household gods shattered. The memory saddens him. He forgets his
newly found son--forgets the business that has brought him to Dixon
Street. The picture of that bitter day comes back, and shuts out
every other image.
The room looks as if not one article of its furniture had been
removed or altered since he saw it last. There stands the scarlet
tea-tray on the table against the wall--there the tea-caddy--there
the leather-bound family Bible. There are the old chintz-covered
arm-chairs, the tent bedstead, the trumpery crockery images--awkward
caricatures of old Chelsea ware--on the high narrow mantelpiece;
and yonder, seated on the well-remembered sofa, in a despondent
attitude, with hands clasped listlessly and drooping head, appears a
figure at sight of which Alexis Secretan recoils as if he had seen a
ghost.
He may well be startled, for this figure is the image of his wife as
he has seen her on many an evening, at his home-coming, when she has
grown weary of waiting for his return, and has sunk into despondency.
For a moment his blood freezes, and he feels as if a spirit were
there; but in the next instant a cry of surprise breaks from his
lips, ‘Sibyl, can it be you?’
She starts up from the sofa, looks at him in bewilderment, and then
throws herself upon his breast.
‘Alex, my best, my dearest, my only protector and comfort,’ she
cries, ‘how did you know--who told you that I was here?’
He puts her away from him gently but firmly. The thought of her
falsehood about his son’s death comes between him and his wife; and
it may be that love for her, as he has often told himself, has died
out of his heart, murdered by her unkindness. There is something
else too, perhaps, in this moment that comes between him and the pale
face lying on his breast. The image of a sweeter and less selfish
woman, whose eyes looked up at him full of grief and pain a few hours
ago.
‘Alex, how unkind you are, and how coldly you look at me! But you
came here in search of me, did you not? You are not living here?’
‘No, Sibyl, I am not living here, and I did not come here to look for
you. How was I to suppose that I should find you here when I left you
at Redcastle in the house of Stephen Trenchard? I did not think you
would come back to such a place as this of your own election.’
‘It was the only place I could think of as a refuge, Alex. I knew
that I should be safe with Mrs. Bonny, and I knew of no other
lodgings in London. Perhaps, too, I had a fancy for coming back here.
It was like returning to the past--to the days when you loved me.’
She says this shyly, standing before her husband with downcast eyes,
like a child who has offended and anticipates reproof. There is all
the old innocence of manner, the almost childlike sweetness which
charmed Alexis when he first saw Sibyl Faunthorpe in Mrs. Hazleton’s
drawing-room, but there is a chilled and deadened feeling at his
heart, as of love that has fallen asleep and can wake no more, or
love that has been stricken dumb, and can find its old familiar
speech never again.
‘Say rather the days in which I thought you worthy to be loved,’ he
replies, gravely. ‘You made your election when you left this room.
You cannot undo it by returning here, whatever may be the caprice
that moves you. When you chose to be your uncle Trenchard’s toady
instead of my wife, you cancelled the bond between you and me. I gave
you the option of renewing that old bond, but, having your sordid
aim in view, and fancying yourself on the threshold of success, you
refused my offer. That made an end of our union for ever. There is no
legal process, no decree of the Divorce Court, which could separate
us more utterly than we are parted now.’
‘Alex,’ she cries piteously, ‘you did once love me. How can you be so
unforgiving?’
‘I’ll tell you how and why. When we last met and parted I asked you
a question, a question that involved the happiness of my manhood and
the hope of my age. You answered me with a deliberate lie.’
‘I don’t remember,’ falters Sibyl, deeply humiliated. She had thought
it so easy a matter to reclaim this faithful heart. In her darkest
hour she had always counted upon her husband’s love as a certainty, a
treasure inalienable, despite her sins against him, thinking of him
somewhat after the manner in which man is apt to think of God’s mercy
and forgiveness, as an inexhaustible fund, upon which he can draw as
largely as he likes, with no fear of having his bills returned.
‘You don’t remember that when I asked for my son you told me he was
dead,--looked me calmly in the face and told me a black and bitter lie.
He had only survived his birth by a few days, you said. All the hopes
I had built upon his existence were baseless and delusive. You made
me believe this, Sibyl.’
She looks at him intently in the twilight, with a look that is half
terror, half wonder.
‘Why should you imagine that I was deceiving you when I told you of
your son’s death?’ she asks.
‘For the best possible reason. I have found my son!’
‘What? You have been to Dorley Mill?’
‘I have been to the place where you left your child, left him, glad
to be released from a tie which most women hold sacred; left him
to play your part at the feet of Stephen Trenchard, to pass for a
spinster, and captivate country gentlemen, and angle for a fortune.
You have won your game, I hope after making such sacrifices,--if
it can be called a sacrifice to have abandoned husband and child.
Stephen Trenchard is dead, I suppose, and you have inherited his
fortune, or you would hardly have deserted your post, even for the
sentimental pleasure of revisiting the scene of your married life.’
‘My uncle Stephen is not dead. I have inherited nothing. I stand
before you a pauper, Alex, bankrupt in everything; even in hope,
since you have ceased to love me.’
‘Your uncle not dead! You have voluntarily abandoned your chance of
being his heiress? You must have changed greatly since that night
when you and I talked together in Mr. Trenchard’s house.’
‘I was surrounded with difficulties, Alexis. I should have held my
ground to the very last;--yes, call me mercenary, despise me if you
will, I will not shrink from the truth;--I would have stopped with my
uncle till the day of his death if he had not made that impossible by
his tyranny.’
She tells Alexis the story of the last few months how she had been
urged to marry Joel Pilgrim, and how when matters grew desperate she
had taken flight.
‘I wrote to that good girl, Jane Dimond, and asked her to find me a
lodging, here if possible. Luckily for me this room was empty, and I
came straight from the railway station here.’
‘A disappointing end to your schemes and hopes,’ says Alexis, still
unpitying. He cannot easily forgive that heartless falsehood about
his boy. His wrongs as a husband he might pardon. The injury done him
as a father rankles deeper.
‘It is a sorry end, Alexis, humiliating, shameful. For upwards of
three years I have been my uncle’s patient companion. I have borne
all his caprices, devoted myself to the task of making his life
pleasant to him. He has been very good to me. I should be wickedly
ungrateful if I were to deny or to forget that. I think, too, that
he loved me, in his undemonstrative manner; and if I was deceived
in believing that he would make me his heiress, everybody else in
Redcastle laboured under the same delusion. But this Mr. Pilgrim’s
influence upon him is stronger than mine. I do not believe that my
uncle really wished me to marry that man, or even that Joel Pilgrim’s
presence in his house made him happy; but there was an influence of
some kind--an influence which I could never understand--exercised by
that East Indian upon my uncle Stephen.’
‘I congratulate you upon having escaped that unholy house,’ says
Alexis. ‘I am glad you did not carry your subservience to your uncle
so far as to marry the East Indian. I am very glad you drew the line
at that.’
‘Had I been as free as my uncle thought me I should have done the
same,’ replies Sibyl.
‘And may I ask what plan of existence you have formed to replace your
blighted hopes?’ says Alexis. ‘I suppose after this rebellious flight
of yours there is no chance of your inheriting your uncle’s fortune.’
‘I gave up every idea of that when I left his house. As for a plan of
life, I have none. The only hope I had has left me. I have a little
ready money, and a few trinkets which I can convert into money. This
will carry me on till I can get a situation as a governess--if that
is to be done without a friend to speak for my character. I have not
neglected my education during the last three years, and I can fall
back upon the old drudgery.’
She says all this despondently. Hope has died within her breast. She
had thought it so easy a thing to cancel the past, and now it seems
to her that she and Alexis Secretan are as far apart as if they had
never loved each other, never sworn life-long fidelity, never spent
their careless honeymoon together under the young leafage in the Bois
de Boulogne, among St. Germain’s forest walks, and on the lamplit
Boulevards, with all the joyous life of Europe’s gayest city drifting
by them like a stream of folly--never suffered poverty’s cark and
care together--never shared hope and despair--never wandered, side by
side, on the chill border-land of famine.
So far Alexis has shown no sign of relenting. His tone has expressed
contempt rather than anger, and has wounded more deeply than the
stormiest reproaches could wound. He now grows thoughtful, and walks
up and down the room in meditative silence, as he has walked many a
time in days gone by when his meditations were of ways and means.
Sibyl watches him as he moves slowly to and fro with bent head. The
twilight hides his face, that summer twilight in which they sat so
often when they first became inmates of this room, and when poverty
was a new thing to them.
‘Why did you tell me that lie about our child?’ he asks, after a long
silence.
‘Shall I tell you why, Alexis? It was because I wanted to have some
hold upon you; to have some treasure to give you when the time came
for me to come back to you, your true and faithful wife as I have
been from first to last. You would scorn my uncle Stephen’s fortune,
you told me--repudiate that as you would repudiate me. But I thought
you could not shut your heart against me if I came to you with our
son. He must have been a link between us, a tie no unkindness of
yours, no sin of mine, could break.’
‘And you thought to make that link the stronger by telling me that my
son, whom you had placidly resigned to the care of a stranger, was
dead.’
‘If I had told you the truth you would have claimed him. He would
have been yours, and not mine.’
‘You are an accomplished schemer, Sibyl, but Fate has a knack of
spoiling your plans. Accident brought me in the way of my boy; an
accident, which put my life in peril for some time, brought me under
the same roof with my son, and I loved him before I knew that he had
any claim to my love.’
‘How did you discover his identity at last?’ asks Sibyl faintly.
‘Oh, in a very simple way. I need not trouble you with details.’
‘And he is well--happy?’
‘How good of you to inquire about him! Yes, he has thriven admirably
with strangers. So well that he naturally rebels against being
transferred to his own flesh and blood.’
‘Alexis,’ falters his wife, piteously, ‘I know I must seem a
heartless mother, a woman without woman’s natural feeling, but
starvation brings humanity very low. When I came to Dorley Mill I
had been keeping fellowship with Hunger for a long time. I had known
what it was to be houseless and ailing, to lie shivering under the
cold unpitying stars. It was vital to me to find a home for my baby,
a home far away from Redcastle. I was obliged to disassociate myself
from my child. It was imperative for me to do that if I wanted to
win my uncle Trenchard’s fortune--and I did want to be rich, Alex,
for your sake, for our child’s sake, as much as for my own. If it
was your duty as a man to try every honest means to conquer fortune,
was it a sin in me to try the only means I knew, to snatch the only
chance Fate ever offered to me? Will you try and think of all this,
Alex, and forgive me, if you can?’
She rises once more from the sofa where she has sat despondingly. She
goes to her husband, and lays her hand lightly on his shoulder--such
a poor little hand--such a feather’s weight, as it seems to him,
lying loosely there. That touch, faltering and tremulous, moves him
more than her arguments.
‘Forgive you? yes, poor child,’ he says, gravely. ‘Perhaps, after
all, it is foolishness rather than sin that I have to pardon--and God
pardons even sin. What am I, weak offending man, that I should be
more unmerciful than Heaven? Yes, I forgive you, Sibyl; but remember,
my dear, that the past is an unalterable quantity. We have to carry
the burden of our past deeds down to the grave. No man ever shifts
that load from his shoulders. You and I can never be again what we
were the day you left this house to go in quest of fortune. You left
something behind you then that you can never reclaim.’
‘You mean that I lost your love?’
‘My affection, my compassion, you shall have to the end of our lives;
but the heart that trusted and loved you is dead and gone.’
‘I have no right to expect that it should be otherwise,’ answers
Sibyl, in a voice broken by sobs; ‘I set too much value on money. I
was blind to all other loss that might befall me. I thought that when
I came to you with my uncle Trenchard’s fortune in my hand you would
forgive me, you would take me back to your heart.’
‘It is because you come to me without fortune that I am able to
forgive you, Sibyl. I thank Providence for the failure of your plans.
No good could ever have come of Stephen Trenchard’s money to me or my
race.’
‘And you will let me see my boy, Alex. I know that I have been a
heartless mother, but I have suffered many a pang of remorse. You
will let me see him before----’
She breaks down here, and sobs upon her husband’s shoulder.
‘Before what, Sibyl?’ he asks, gently. ‘Don’t cry, my dear. There are
quiet days in store for both of us, now that we have got rid of our
evil genius, Stephen Trenchard.’
His tone is kinder than it has been yet. He has felt a touch of
remorse at remembering that he could have given his erring wife a
warmer welcome had she but returned to him before his experience of
womanly tenderness and womanly unselfishness at Dorley Mill. It was
only when he learned to draw comparisons between his wife and another
woman that love had perished.
‘God bless you for those kind words, Alex, the first you have spoken
to me to-night; and you will let me see my child--before I die.’
‘Before you die! Yes, Sibyl, and through many a year to come, if you
will be true to your little one and me, and put Stephen Trenchard’s
money out of your head. Who talks about dying?’
‘I have suffered so much, Alex, and it has been so hard a task to
hide every pang--to be all smiles, and gaiety, and thoughtfulness for
others, with my own hidden sorrow always gnawing at my heart. It has
been a bitter task. I feel as if the burden had been too heavy for
me--I feel quite worn out with the long battle--physically as well as
mentally. Indeed, Alex, I do not think that I have long to live.’
This is a plea for mercy _in formâ pauperis_, and touches Alexis. He
is growing very tender-hearted to this wife, for whom he had told
himself that his old love was dead and gone. The room in which they
had suffered poverty’s chilling apprenticeship together seems to
him to bring them closer to each other than any less familiar place
of meeting could have done. And presently, when Sibyl has struck a
match and lighted a pair of sallow-looking candles, which but dimly
illuminate the scene, Alexis is moved to deeper pity by seeing the
change that the last six months have wrought in his wife’s beauty.
That wan white face, those sunken cheeks and hollow eyes, tell of a
struggle that has been exhausting alike to mind and body.
‘My poor girl, how changed you are!’ he exclaims, drawing her to him
in the dim light, and scrutinizing her altered face.
‘Yes, there is no beauty to be proud of now, Alex. I might sit in my
corner in Mrs. Hazleton’s drawing-room, and even your eye would not
notice me. The faded governess would come and go like a shadow. I
have lost my good looks--all the capital Fortune gave me to start in
life--and I have won nothing--not even uncle Trenchard’s money.’
‘We can do without it, Sibyl. If you had come to me with that
ill-gotten wealth in your hand I would have had nothing to say to
you. I take you back to-night because you come without it.’
‘Back to your heart, Alex?’
‘To my home and my affectionate regard, my dear. Our hearts are not
always to be commanded. Don’t look so sad, Sibyl, our Hampshire
breezes will blow the colour back to your cheeks.’
‘Hampshire? Ah, that is where our boy lives. But what took you to
that part of the country, Alex?’
‘I’ll answer that question when you have told me what took you there,
and how your child came to be born in a Hampshire Union.’
‘I’ll tell you, Alex. I have no need to hide anything now. When
I left you, with those ten pounds which I extorted from you so
cruelly, my only thought was to hide myself somewhere till after
my baby’s birth. I went into a little country village in Surrey--a
quiet little place near Guildford--and hired a room in a cottage, a
tiny whitewashed bedroom which cost me three and sixpence a week,
and there I lived for seven weeks, spending as little as possible,
living on bread and butter and tea, till at last my landlady, who was
only a farm labourer’s wife, would bring me up a little plate of meat
sometimes out of charity. In seven weeks I had spent only four pounds
on myself, but I had spent three more in buying clothes for my baby,
and I had spent almost all my time in making them--those long dull
days when I used to sit for hours together alone in my little room
listening to the ticking of the Dutch clock, and the chirping of the
crickets downstairs. I think I must have gone mad in those monotonous
desolate days, if it had not been for my needlework. I used to go
out into the fields sometimes at dusk, and wander about for an hour
or so, and I felt as if I belonged to nobody, and was quite the
loneliest creature in this wide world.’
‘A sorry prologue to your dignified existence at Lancaster Lodge.’
‘As the time for my baby’s birth drew nearer, I began to think
with dread of his being born in that poor little room among coarse
labouring people. I pined for a friend, any one of my own class who
would be kind to me. I took a horror of that stifling little room
with its one small window, and whitewashed walls, and patchwork
coverlet, and all the piggy and cabbagy smells that used to creep
up from the room below. So I tried to remember any friend who would
be likely to be kind to me if I flung myself upon her benevolence.
I could think of only one person, Maggie Rawlings, a girl who had
been very fond of me at school, almost ridiculously fond, giving me
keepsakes, and insisting on wearing some of my hair in a locket,
and showing her affection in all manner of foolish ways. She was
the daughter of a farmer in Hampshire, and as she had huge hampers
sent her twice in a quarter, and had always plenty of money to
spend, I concluded that her people were rich. I knew that she was an
impulsive, warm-hearted little creature, and generous as the light of
day. So I thought that if I went to her she would find me a shelter
of some sort and be kind to me and my baby. I went to Winchester by
rail, and from Winchester I went on foot to find Hill-side Farm.’
‘Poor child,’ murmurs Alexis, ‘poor foolish child--our worst
fortunes shared together were not so bad as this.’
‘Unfortunately, I had forgotten all but the name of the farm, and
that Winchester was the nearest station, but how far that nearest
station might be from Maggie’s home I had no idea. The consequence
was that I wandered helplessly about from village to village for
three days, led astray by wrong information--sent first to one farm
and then to another--and having to sleep at village inns, where I
paid dear for very poor accommodation. On the fourth day I succeeded
in finding Hill-side Farm, nearly thirty miles from Winchester, and
there a cruel disappointment awaited me. My old schoolfellow was
married, and had gone to live in Lincolnshire. Mrs. Rawlings was
barely civil to me, and gave me her daughter’s address with evident
reluctance. No doubt she thought me a very questionable character.
My shabby clothes denounced me. If I had possessed money enough
or strength enough for the journey, I think I should have gone
down to Lincolnshire in search of Maggie, but I had neither. I was
ill and worn out by the fatigue of the last three days, and this
disappointment at the end of all completely crushed me. Two days
afterwards my baby was born in the workhouse. That was the only
refuge left open to me at the last. If you have been to Dorley Mill
you must know all the rest. I left the workhouse penniless, and but
for Linda Challice’s goodness I could never have made my way to
Redcastle. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me, Alex, now
that you know all the truth?’
‘I forgive you, Sibyl, and pity you with all my heart. You did
yourself a deeper wrong than you did me when you sacrificed all
natural feeling to the worship of your golden calf. You have paid a
heavy price for your mistake; it would be cruel to add my upbraidings
to the sum. And now let us begin life afresh, little woman, and
be happy if we can. Fortune has been kinder to me--who have wooed
her somewhat carelessly--than to you who have sought her with such
mistaken diligence. Poverty need never more afflict us. Your husband
is no longer Mr. Secretan, _alias_ Stanmore, a humble waiter upon
the tide of luck, but Alexis Secretan, Esquire, of Cheswold Grange,
in the county of Hants--able to give his wife her carriage and her
flower-garden, her dairy, poultry-yard, and village school, and to
leave his son the modest heritage of a small landowner.’
‘Alexis! you are laughing at me.’
‘No, Sibyl. When I stood before you at Lancaster Lodge, last
December, I was able to take you to as fair a home as you could care
to inhabit; but I would not tempt you with the gifts of fortune. I
waited for your heart to speak.’
‘And you were absolutely rich at that time? You could have given me
all I had to hope for from my uncle Stephen?’
‘I cannot presume to measure Mr. Trenchard’s possessions. My fortune,
I have told you, is a modest one, but it is large enough to buy all
things needful to real happiness. The man of fabulous wealth can only
live. He cannot eat two dinners in the same day, or ride two horses
at once, or consume more than a given quantity of fresh air, or get
more pleasure out of life than his mental capacity for enjoyment will
let him, be he king or kaiser.’
‘It seems that I have made a sorry mistake,’ says Sibyl, with a sigh.
‘A mistake which we will do our best to mend, poor child,’ replies
Alexis, kindly. ‘And now, Sibyl, I don’t know whether you have dined
to-day, but I am quite sure I have not. So I think the best thing I
can do is to go out to our old haunts and buy a rump-steak, which our
faithful Bonny will cook for our supper. Unless you had rather come
to an hotel and bid the faithful Bonny good-bye.’
‘I had rather stay where I am for a day or two, Alex; I don’t feel
well enough to move.’
‘We must call in a medical man, Sibyl, if you are so ill as that.’
‘I don’t think a doctor would be of any use. I am not so much ill as
tired. I shall soon be better, I dare say, now you are so kind to me.’
‘And doesn’t it cheer you to know that we have done with our old
enemy, poverty; that our future is to be bright and prosperous?’
‘I am glad with all my heart, Alex, for your sake and our boy’s;
but I do not feel as if I had any future to look forward to in this
world.’
‘Nonsense, Sibyl! That is all the effect of debility--a
hypochondriacal view of life altogether. You will see things
differently after half a dozen doses of quinine, and a daily mutton
chop. I shouldn’t wonder if Guinness’s stout were the best antidote
for these dark ideas. And now I’ll go and see if Mrs. Bonny can send
any one for that steak, or if I must go out and forage for myself.’
He goes to the door, opens it, and finds himself face to face with
an unknown individual in a gray coat. Mrs. Bonny stands behind the
stranger with a brass candlestick uplifted, to show him the way that
he should go.
‘Who the deuce are you, sir?’ asks Alexis, rather savagely. ‘This
room is not to be let.’
His nerves have been too completely unstrung by that unexpected
meeting of the last hour to allow of his being civil to an intrusive
stranger.
‘I am not looking for lodgings,’ answers the gray man coolly. ‘I have
come here to look for a young lady. Ah! there she is, I see. I have a
warrant to arrest Miss Sibyl Faunthorpe--on suspicion of murder.’
‘Suspicion of murder!’
‘Yes, on suspicion of having murdered her uncle, Stephen Trenchard,
Esq., of Lancaster Lodge, Redcastle, in the county of York, to be
transferred in my charge to Redcastle gaol, there to remain pending
the issue of the adjourned inquest held to inquire into the death of
the aforesaid Stephen Trenchard, Esq.’
‘The man must be mad,’ cries Sibyl, clinging to Alexis. ‘I left my
uncle alive--in no danger.’
‘Anything you say now will be used against you hereafter, miss,’ says
the man in gray, in a warning voice.
‘Alexis, you don’t believe----’
‘I believe nothing so wildly improbable, my dear. Let me see your
warrant, sir.’
It is shown him; a formal document, issued in Redcastle, Yorkshire,
and endorsed by a Middlesex magistrate. Alexis knows just enough of
the law to know that the warrant is a genuine instrument, and that
resistance is likely to be useless. There is but one loophole.
‘Your warrant seems right enough,’ he says, ‘but it is issued
against Sibyl Faunthorpe; this lady is Mrs. Secretan, my wife.’
‘The lady may have a dozen aliases, sir,’ replies Mr. Judbury, with
undisturbed equanimity; ‘but she’s the lady we want, all the same;
and with your leave I’m going to take her back to Yorkshire by the
mail. There’s just about time to do it, I think, Trivett,’ adds Mr.
Judbury across his shoulder to a man in the background.
‘My wife is not well enough to travel,’ says Alexis.
‘Oh, come, she was well enough to travel to London less than a week
ago; she must be well enough to go back. I’ll take the responsibility
of removing her. You’ve got a cab, Trivett?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Come along, Miss Faunthorpe. If you come quietly I shall say nothing
about the handcuffs, you know, but I’ve got ’em in my pocket.’
‘What am I to do, Alexis?’ Sibyl asks, piteously.
‘If you think you can bear the journey, go, dear. I will go with you.
Whatever hideous mistake has arisen out of your uncle’s death can be
best righted by your presence. Don’t be afraid, Sibyl, I will stand
by you.’
‘And you do not believe----’
‘I believe that you are as innocent as a baby of any wrong against
Stephen Trenchard,’ answers Alexis with conviction.
‘That makes me strong,’ says Sibyl, quietly putting on her hat and
jacket. ‘I will come back to Redcastle.’
‘Well, I think, miss, under existing circumstances you’d better,’
answers the officer, with suppressed satire.
‘When did my uncle die?’
‘The morning you left, miss, strange to say. Found dead in his bed.
You left by the 6.20 train. According to the medical evidence your
departure and Mr. Trenchard’s death must have been pretty nearly
simultaneous.’
‘He died suddenly, then?’
‘Uncommon.’
‘And why do they suppose that he was murdered?’
‘Because about an ounce of prussic acid was found in his inside.
Please to bear in mind, miss, that any remark of yours will be used
against you by-and-bye.’
This warning is unheeded, nay, unheard by Sibyl.
‘Prussic acid!’ she cries, with an awful look. ‘Oh, Alex, how
dreadful! I had some prussic acid in a bottle, enough to put an end
to my life if there had been no other way of escape left me from that
horrid man, and I left the bottle at Lancaster Lodge.’
‘Yes, miss, and it was found there empty.’
They go down to the cab, Sibyl leaning on her husband’s arm, and
drive away from Dixon Street in the summer dusk. Mrs. Bonny watches
the departing chariot with uplifted hands, and eyes that ask the
heavens to witness her astonishment.
‘This beats all my experience of lodgers,’ she exclaims. ‘That I
should live to have my first floor took prisoner for murder, and
to see my door-steps spiled by the muddy boots of a defective
perliceman!’