Just a note to tell you how honoured and tickled I am that you are
going to name your little daughter after me.
I hope to see her sometime soon, and you also. I am so busy now, but
in two or three weeks I could call on my day off, Thursday, if it
could be arranged.
So you love your new place? I’m so glad. We all miss you and--my
pretty little namesake. How proud it makes me.
Sincerely your friend,
MOIRA McCOY.
She had never heard of Ellen’s having a baby, and if she had just been
naming it when this letter was written it should have been about the
same age as herself. How curious it was that she and Ellen’s baby
should have had the same name. Perhaps her mother had liked the name
and borrowed it from Ellen, for Mathilda would take what she wanted;
but it did seem unlikely she would take the name of the cook’s baby
for her own. And what had become of Ellen’s Moira? She would ask Ellen
about it in the morning. Never had her curiosity been so oddly and
intensely aroused.
She cast the letter from her and opened Hugo, but her eyes were heavy
and her mind weary with the thoughts and excitements of that day. In a
few moments she was asleep.
When she awoke in the morning the first thing she thought of was the
letter, and she reread it. The mystery had clearly taken a strong hold
upon her mind. While dressing she decided to postpone seeing Ellen,
and every time she went to her room during the day she read the letter
again and asked herself more and more puzzling questions about it. Why,
for example, had Ellen never spoken of her child, particularly if it
had the same name as herself? Was there something distasteful in the
recollection either to Ellen or to her mistress?
Moira could not get into the Hugo book at all. Instead she took a long
drive in her car and, finding that a bore, she tried riding which
proved no better. She was tempted to hunt up Rob or telephone for
Selden and go somewhere for a cocktail and a dance. Failing to reach
either of them or to decide on anything definite to do, she began to
find Ellen a source of enormous interest. Hardly realizing it, she
spied upon her all afternoon, and searched her smiling, unconcerned
features whenever she appeared. It was hard to think of Ellen ever
having had a baby. She stopped herself from pursuing this obsession a
half a dozen times, but the spell of curiosity lingered. And still she
could not bring herself to speak to the woman. By nightfall she was
scattered and depressed, with the feeling of having spent a wasted day.
She went to bed early and tried again to read Hugo, but instead, she
found herself rereading the McCoy letter. It drew her like a sinister
charm. She threw on a dressing gown and began walking in the room. For
the first time in her whole life her fingers shook as she started to
take a cigarette from her box, and actually muffed it. This made her
angry, and she lit the cigarette swiftly and fiercely and clattered the
box down on the table. Then she was able to laugh and upbraid herself.
“Good Lord!” she cried. “What has the cook and her offspring to do with
me? Why am I so excited?”
But even as the words died on her lips her reassurance departed. She
would never get control of herself until she investigated. Why hadn’t
she talked to Ellen that day and got this foolish curiosity off her
mind? The woman would think it strange if she called on her at this
late hour to return a twenty-year-old letter, even though it contained
sacred memories. Yet why should Ellen think that? She would simply
slip down and hand her the letter with some gay nonsense about it
being better twenty years late than never, and if Ellen wasn’t tired
and seemed talkative she would ask her about the coincidence of names.
It was certainly no new thing in that house for Moira to do whimsical
and unexpected things. She could come back and sleep and dream of her
blessed Hal--poor Hal, he had hardly had a thought from her all day.
The regular servants’ rooms were at the top of the house, but Ellen
lived alone in the little wing off the kitchen. She had chosen this
ground floor room because it was closer to the affairs that directly
concerned her, outside and in, and because she was a privileged person,
the dean of the servants. Moira’s visit then would disturb nobody. She
drew her pretty gown about her and walked boldly downstairs, knocked,
made a laughing request to be admitted and waited for the startled
woman to put something around her and unlock the door.
“Is this your letter, Ellen?” she asked. “I found it last night and
meant to give it to you to-day, but forgot it. I thought you’d be so
glad to get it back, I’d just come down and give it to you before I
went to sleep. You see ... I read it--the date was so near my birthday.”
Ellen opened the letter and read it through with apparent awkwardness
and difficulty.
“Why, Miss Moira, where did you get this? It’s been lost for years. I
didn’t know it was in existence.”
“I found it in a book upstairs.”
“My land! How did it get there, I wonder?”
“It was an old volume of Hugo’s--‘Les Misérables.’”
The girl winced a little as Ellen repeated the name after her and
mispronounced it schoolboy fashion.
“Oh, yes, yes, I remember. That’s so many years ago. To think this
letter has been there all that time!”
“I didn’t know you had ever had a baby, Ellen. Tell me about it. Are
you too sleepy?”
“No, I’m not sleepy, Miss Moira--” Ellen’s politeness prompted the
words, yet the girl caught a hint that she would have liked to end the
conversation. “You--you startled me so,” she went on. “But--there isn’t
anything to tell.”
“Did she die?”
“Yes, Miss Moira.”
The fidgety excitement which seized the grey-haired woman was
understandable on the ground of old memories being suddenly aroused.
Moira’s voice expressed the tenderest sympathy.
“How sad. She would have been such a comfort to you now.”
“Yes. But that’s all so long ago, ma’am. It’s the way things happen in
this world for some of us.”
“And your husband? Is he dead, too?”
The questioning was becoming more and more difficult for Ellen. When
she answered it was with a touch of impatience.
“I don’t know. I don’t know where he is.”
“He deserted you?”
“Yes.”
Moira felt the need of some apology, induced by Ellen’s uneasiness,
but the very fact that the information was unsatisfactory made her
perversely eager to stay, although the little room oppressed her.
“I suppose you think I’m awfully curious, Ellen,” she said, with a
short laugh. “And very inconsiderate to come and talk to you about
these things at this time of night. But it seems so strange that you’ve
been here ever since I can remember, and I’ve never heard about them--I
suppose I thought you didn’t have an early life. You’re so cheerful,
one doesn’t imagine you’ve had sorrows.”
“People forget, ma’am. You can’t stay sad always.”
“Isn’t it funny,” Moira broke in, “that I’ve got the same name your
daughter had?”
“Ye-es--I guess it is.”
Ellen’s forced laugh and strained expression, and the tongue-tied
moment that followed, were as hard for Moira as for the speaker. The
silence lengthened. The older woman twisted in her uncomfortable seat
on the bed. She obviously did not want to be looked at nor to look at
the girl. Why, thought Moira, should she make all this fuss over old
memories? What harm was in them? Ellen was not naturally shy--she could
be voluble enough at times, and quite intelligent.
“And we were just about the same age, weren’t we?”
“No, oh, no,” burst out the other, and stopped suddenly.
“But the letter is dated so near my birthday,” said Moira, a little
brusquely, “and speaks of your baby’s christening. We’d have to be.”
“Bu-but--my little girl was christened very late.”
“She was christened about the time I was, by the same name, and in the
same house? Why, it’s really a romantic idea, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Ellen, “that was how it was. Your--your mother liked the
name too.”
Moira felt a wave of compassion for the lonely old woman. There seemed
to be nothing left to do but to go. She rose as if to do so, and then
that impulse of sympathy caused her to sit down beside the other on the
bed. She spoke very gently.
“Ellen, I’m sorry, I’ve been opening an old wound, haven’t I? I can see
that it hurts you. You understand why I am so interested--because of
the name? That’s natural, isn’t it? But I’m glad to have learned about
it. I shall think of you so differently from now on.”
“Yes, Miss Moira, thank you.” The girl’s closeness to her and sympathy
made Ellen’s voice tremble. She looked down at the letter which she had
been rolling and twisting in her fingers, and following her glance,
Moira realized that her own curiosity was not appeased at all. The
mystery was as much a mystery as ever.
“Why, you’re destroying your letter,” she said with a laugh, and took
it from her and straightened it out. “You must have been fond of Miss
McCoy,” she added gently. “Was she your friend?”
“Yes.”
“Was she sick, in the hospital?”
“No, she--she was a nurse.”
“Oh, of course. She speaks of being so busy and of missing you. And you
had your baby there?”
“Yes.”
“That old hospital is still there, Ellen. I’ve driven by it a dozen
times going to town. It doesn’t look like a very cheerful place to have
a baby, but I guess it was nicer in those days.”
“It was all right,” said Ellen. Moira impulsively reached an arm about
her waist.
“Well, I’m going now. You don’t want to talk any more about it, do you,
dear? I’ll ask mother to tell me the story. Can I--can I keep this
letter, just to show her? I’ll tell her the odd way I came across it.”
Ellen’s hand flew in terror to the crumpled letter.
“No--no, please, Miss Moira. Give it to me,” she begged.
The violence of her action, its commanding tone, brought a flush of
anger to Moira’s face. She relinquished the letter.
“Oh,” she said, in a changed voice. “I suppose I should apologize--that
is, no doubt you are angry that I read it.”
“Yes, you shouldn’t have done that.”
The servant spoke for the first time naturally, sincerely and
vigorously, and by contrast it made all her previous answers seem to
Moira like a patch-work of unreality and embarrassed evasion. Moreover,
the accusing tone of the remark added fuel to her resentment. She arose
and drew her dressing gown about her with a gesture of dignity. This
time she certainly must go. And yet she was hurt and offended. Her only
intent had been one of genuine interest and sympathy, and it had been
badly received. As she stood in the floor in this puzzled, dissatisfied
state, she caught sight of Ellen’s face appealing to her pathetically.
“Please, Miss Moira,” the woman whispered hoarsely, “don’t tell Mrs.
Seymour, don’t tell her about this letter, or that you were here, or
anything.”
The girl answered with an abrupt gesture of impatience.
“Ellen, I don’t understand. What is all this secrecy, this mystery for?
I found your letter, I came to give it back to you and asked a simple
question--and you treat me as though I had done something criminal.
It’s foolish. I don’t see why I shouldn’t ask mother.”
A blank panic seemed to have seized Ellen. She snatched the girl’s hand
and went on in the same hoarse voice:
“I can’t explain, but only don’t, don’t say anything to her. For her
sake, for everybody’s sake, please!”
Moira experienced a momentary insane illumination. It made her heart
stop and then flutter and then stop again. Twice in her life she had
felt herself near death--once in an accident with her car, and once
when her horse had thrown her. She felt now the same sensation she had
felt then. The questions that came to her lips would have seemed to her
idiotic a moment before. Yet they came irresistibly.
“Ellen,” she cried, “what does all this mean? Have I got anything to do
with it?”
“You? Oh, no, no,” cried Ellen. “No, you mustn’t think that!”
“Was that baby me?”
“Oh, Miss Moira, how can you--how can you dream--?”
“Are you my mother, Ellen? Tell me the truth. I’ll never leave here
until I hear the truth. I’ll search this room, every inch of it.”
But she did not need her answer in words. Ellen’s strength was gone.
Her mouth gibbered and her face ran tears. The girl sat down heavily,
as though she were facing a job that had to be got over with. She never
doubted the truth after that first glimpse of it, never tried to find
a loophole. There were simply details to be heard, the future to be
considered. She must get the whole story from Ellen, talk it over, make
some decision. It would be half the night before she was through with
it, and she hated it....
The sun had, in fact, appeared when she emerged from the little room,
with a strange tale in her possession, pieced together from the
incoherent reminiscences of Ellen. She had forgiven Mrs. Seymour,
forgiven her real mother, forgiven all of them for the deception. It
was only herself that she could not forgive, herself, humiliated by the
degrading masquerade of twenty years.
The knowledge that gave her most courage was her illegitimacy--which
was clear from Ellen’s reticence. Better that a thousand times, better
a complete outcast, than a respectable nobody. She would go, of course,
go in secret, that day. She could take the fewest possible things, put
them in her car when no one was looking, and drive to town. What money
she needed to get established elsewhere she would have to take from her
own account at the bank, as a loan. Ellen had been sworn to say nothing
of the discovery.
She stood at her window watching the first sun gild the tops of the
knolls, drive the low-lying mists slowly before it. This great knee of
a hill, this Penthesilea’s knee, had been a mother’s knee to her, more
truly than any human one. There were no relationships in Nature, and
this, the memory of her youth, could not be taken from her.... But it
would be long before she would see the morning rise from that window
again, and she lingered over it; not sentimentally. Why couldn’t she
feel sad? Why was she so hard--why had she been so cruel to Ellen? She
could hear her now pleading that she had given up Moira for her good,
pleading the advantages that had come to them by the sacrifice. Empty
advantages, thought their possessor, immorally got and useless to her
now, just so many more things to bid good-bye to. The only thing that
counted was Hal; if she was bitter it was because she feared yielding
to that. Fate had thrown her to Hal and snatched her away in the moment
of realization....
She turned from the full day flooding the window and went to her desk.
She wanted to write to him now, while she was strongest.
Dear [she wrote]: I know what you would say. You would say that it
made no difference, and it would not now. But some day it would, it
would grow upon us and smother us. It would be ‘my past,’ and the
time would come when your pride might make you hate me, for I would
hate myself. I can face this now. I don’t know whether I could face
it later. I must go away and do something to absolve myself in my
own eyes. And you must not interfere--you cannot. It will be years
before I can see you again. I shall never forget these short days,
too precious to describe. It is almost enough, that memory, without
anything more. Good-bye.
She could write no more, explain no more, though she wanted to.
She suddenly reflected on the injustice of having to carry all the
responsibility herself. She would have to repulse every advance,
however much she might long to accept it.
She laid down her pen--a gold one that matched the other little tools
on her writing table--with a gesture that signified she was laying
down everything else in the room, the thousand things she had used and
loved, the horses, the trees, the long, dear roads, the very air of
Thornhill.