IN WHICH MRS. DILLINGHAM MAKES SOME IMPORTANT DISCOVERIES, BUT FAILS TO
REVEAL THEM TO THE READER.
Mrs. Dillingham was walking back and forth alone through her long
drawing-room. She was revolving in her mind a compliment, breathed into
her ear by her friend Mrs. Talbot that day. Mrs. Talbot had heard from
the mouth of one of Mrs. Dillingham's admirers the statement, confirmed
with a hearty, good-natured oath, that he considered the fascinating
widow "the best groomed woman in New York."
The compliment conveyed a certain intimation which was not pleasant for
her to entertain. She was indebted to her skill in self-"grooming" for
the preservation of her youthful appearance. She had been conscious of
this, but it was not pleasant to have the fact detected by her friends.
Neither was it pleasant to have it bruited in society, and reported to
her by one who rejoiced in the delicacy of the arrow which, feathered by
friendship, she had been able to plant in the widow's breast.
She walked to her mirror and looked at herself. There were the fine,
familiar outlines of face and figure; there were the same splendid eyes;
but a certain charm beyond the power of "grooming" to restore was gone.
An incipient, almost invisible, brood of wrinkles was gathering about
her eyes; there was a loss of freshness of complexion, and an expression
of weariness and age, which, in the repose of reflection and
inquisition, almost startled her.
Her youth was gone, and, with it, the most potent charms of her person.
She was hated and suspected by her own sex, and sought by men for no
reason honorable either to her or to them. She saw that it was all, at
no distant day, to have an end, and that when the end should come, her
life would practically be closed. When the means by which she had held
so many men in her power were exhausted, her power would cease. Into the
blackness of that coming night she could not bear to look. It was full
of hate, and disappointment, and despair. She knew that there was a
taint upon her--the taint that comes to every woman, as certainly as
death, who patently and purposely addresses, through her person, the
sensuous element in men. It was not enough for her to remember that she
despised the passion she excited, and contemned the men whom she
fascinated. She knew it was better to lead even a swine by a golden
chain than by the ears.
She reviewed her relations to Mr. Belcher. That strong, harsh, brutal
man, lost alike to conscience and honor, was in her hands. What should
she do with him? He was becoming troublesome. He was not so easily
managed as the most of her victims. She knew that, in his heart, he was
carrying the hope that some time in the future, in some way, she would
become his; that she had but to lift her finger to make the Palgrave
mansion so horrible a hell that the wife and mother would fly from it in
indignant despair. She had no intention of doing this. She wished for no
more intimate relation with her victim than she had already established.
There was one thing in which Mr. Belcher had offended and humiliated
her. He had treated her as if he had fascinated her. In his stupid
vanity, he had fancied that his own personal attractions had won her
heart and her allegiance, and that she, and not himself, was the victim.
He had tried to use her in the accomplishment of outside purposes; to
make a tool of her in carrying forward his mercenary or knavish ends.
Other men had striven to hide their unlovely affairs from her, but the
new lover had exposed his, and claimed her assistance in carrying them
forward. This was a degradation that she could not submit to. It did
not natter her, or minister to her self-respect.
Again and again had Mr. Belcher urged her to get the little Sevenoaks
pauper into her confidence, and to ascertain whether his father were
still living. She did not doubt that his fear of a man so poor and
powerless as the child's father must be, was based in conscious knavery;
and to be put to the use of deceiving a lad whose smile of affectionate
admiration was one of the sweetest visions of her daily life, disgusted
and angered her. The thought, in any man's mind, that she could be so
base, in consideration of a guilty affection for him, as to betray the
confidence of an innocent child on his behalf, disgraced and degraded
her.
And still she walked back and forth in her drawing-room. Her thoughts
were uneasy and unhappy; there was no love in her life. That life was
leading to no satisfactory consummation. How could it be changed? What
could she do?
She raised her eyes, looked across the street, and there saw, loitering
along and casting furtive glances at her window, the very lad of whom
she had been thinking. He had sought and waited for her recognition, and
instead of receiving it in the usual way, saw a beckoning finger. He
waited a moment, to be sure that he had not misunderstood the sign, and
then, when it was repeated, crossed over, and stood at the door. Mrs.
Dillingham admitted the boy, then called the servant, and told him that,
while the lad remained, she would not be at home to any one. As soon as
the pair were in the drawing-room she stooped and kissed the lad,
warming his heart with a smile so sweet, and a manner so cordial and
gracious, that he could not have told whether his soul was his own or
hers.
She led him to her seat, giving him none, but sitting with her arm
around him, as he stood at her side.
"You are my little lover, aren't you?" she said, with an embrace.
"Not so very little!" responded Harry, with a flush.
"Well, you love me, don't you?"
"Perhaps I do," replied he, looking smilingly into her eyes.
"You are a rogue, sir."
"I'm not a bad rogue."
"Kiss me."
Harry put his arms around Mrs. Dillingham's neck and kissed her, and
received a long, passionate embrace in return, in which her starved
heart expressed the best of its powerful nature.
Nor clouds nor low-born vapors drop the dew. It only gathers under a
pure heaven and the tender eyes of stars. Mrs. Dillingham had always
held a heart that could respond to the touch of a child. It was dark,
its ways were crooked, it was not a happy heart, but for the moment her
whole nature was flooded with a tender passion. A flash of lightning
from heaven makes the darkest night its own, and gilds with glory the
uncouth shapes that grope and crawl beneath its cover.
"And your name is Harry?" she said.
"Yes."
"Do you mind telling me about yourself?"
Harry hesitated. He knew that he ought not to do it. He had received
imperative commands not to tell anybody about himself; but his
temptation to yield to the beautiful lady's wishes was great, for he was
heart-starved like herself. Mrs. Balfour was kind, even affectionate,
but he felt that he had never filled the place in her heart of the boy
she had lost. She did not take him into her embrace, and lavish caresses
upon him. He had hungered for just this, and the impulse to show the
whole of his heart and life to Mrs. Dillingham was irresistible.
"If you'll never tell."
"I will never tell, Harry."
"Never, never tell?"
"Never."
"You are Mr. Belcher's friend, aren't you?"
"I know Mr. Belcher."
"If Mr. Belcher should tell you that he would kill you if you didn't
tell, what would you do?"
"I should call the police," responded Mrs. Dillingham, with a smile.
Then Harry, in a simple, graphic way, told her all about the hard,
wretched life in Sevenoaks, the death of his mother, the insanity of his
father, the life in the poor-house, the escape, the recovery of his
father's health, his present home, and the occasion of his own removal
to New York. The narrative was so wonderful, so full of pathos, so
tragic, so out of all proportion in its revelation of wretchedness to
the little life at her side, that the lady was dumb. Unconsciously to
herself--almost unconsciously to the boy--her arms closed around him,
and she lifted him into her lap. There, with his head against her
breast, he concluded his story; and there were tears upon his hair,
rained from the eyes that bent above him. They sat for a long minute in
silence. Then the lady, to keep herself from bursting into hysterical
tears, kissed Harry again and again, exclaiming:
"My poor, dear boy! My dear, dear child! And Mr. Belcher could have
helped it all! Curse him!"
The lad jumped from her arms as if he had received the thrust of a
dagger, and looked at her with great, startled, wondering eyes. She
recognized in an instant the awful indiscretion into which she had been
betrayed by her fierce and sudden anger, and threw herself upon her
knees before the boy, exclaiming:
"Harry, you must forgive me. I was beside myself with anger. I did not
know what I was saying. Indeed, I did not. Come to my lap again, and
kiss me, or I shall be wretched."
Harry still maintained his attitude and his silence. A furious word from
an angel would not have surprised or pained him more than this
expression of her anger, that had flashed upon him like a fire from
hell.
Still the lady knelt, and pleaded for his forgiveness.
"No one loves me, Harry. If you leave me, and do not forgive me, I shall
wish I were dead. You cannot be so cruel."
"I didn't know that ladies ever said such words," said Harry.
"Ladies who have little boys to love them never do," responded Mrs.
Dillingham.
"If I love you, shall you ever speak so again?" inquired Harry.
"Never, with you and God to help me," she responded.
She rose to her feet, led the boy to her chair, and once more held him
in her embrace.
"You can do me a great deal of good, Harry--a great deal more good than
you know, or can understand. Men and women make me worse. There is
nobody who can protect me like a child that trusts me. You can trust
me."
Then they sat a long time in a silence broken only by Harry's sobs, for
the excitement and the reaction had shaken his nerves as if he had
suffered a terrible fright.
"You have never told me your whole name, Harry," she said tenderly, with
the design of leading him away from the subject of his grief.
"Harry Benedict."
He felt the thrill that ran through her frame, as if it had been a shock
of electricity. The arms that held him trembled, and half relaxed their
hold upon him. Her heart struggled, intermitted its beat, then throbbed
against his reclining head as if it were a hammer. He raised himself,
and looked up at her face. It was pale and ghastly; and her eyes were
dimly looking far off, as if unconscious of anything near.
"Are you ill?"
There was no answer.
"Are you ill?" with a voice of alarm.
The blood mounted to her face again.
"It was a bad turn," she said. "Don't mind it. I'm better now."
"Isn't it better for me to sit in a chair?" he inquired, trying to
rise.
She tightened her grasp upon him.
"No, no. I am better with you here. I wish you were never to leave me."
Again they sat a long time in silence. Then she said:
"Harry, can you write?"
"Yes."
"Well, there is a pencil on the table, and paper. Go and write your
father's name. Then come and give me a kiss, and then go home. I shall
see you again, perhaps to-night. I suppose I ought to apologize to Mrs.
Balfour for keeping you so long."
Harry did her bidding. She did not look at him, but turned her eyes to
the window. There she saw Mr. Belcher, who had just been sent away from
the door. He bowed, and she returned the bow, but the smile she summoned
to her face by force of habit, failed quickly, for her heart had learned
to despise him.
Harry wrote the name, left it upon the table, and then came to get his
kiss. The caress was calmer and tenderer than any she had given him. His
instinct detected the change; and, when he bade her a good night, it
seemed as if she had grown motherly,--as if a new life had been
developed in her that subordinated the old,--as if, in her life, the sun
had set, and the moon had risen.
She had no doubt that as Harry left the door Mr. Belcher would see him,
and seek admission at once on his hateful business, for, strong as his
passion was for Mrs. Dillingham, he never forgot his knavish affairs, in
which he sought to use her as a tool. So when she summoned the servant
to let Harry out, she told him that if Mr. Belcher should call, he was
to be informed that she was too ill to see him.
Mr. Belcher did call within three minutes after the door closed on the
lad. He had a triumphant smile on his face, as if he did not doubt that
Mrs. Dillingham had been engaged in forwarding his own dirty work. His
face blackened as he received her message, and he went wondering home,
with ill-natured curses on his lips that will not bear repeating.
Mrs. Dillingham closed the doors of her drawing-room, took the paper on
which Harry had written, and resumed her seat. For the hour that lay
between her and her dinner, she held the paper in her cold, wet hand.
She knew the name she should find there, and she determined that before
her eye should verify the prophecy of her heart, she would achieve
perfect self-control.
Excited by the interview with the lad, and the prescience of its waiting
_denouement_, her mind went back into his and his father's history. Mr.
Belcher could have alleviated that history; nay, prevented it
altogether. What had been her own responsibility in the case? She could
not have foreseen all the horrors of that history; but she, too, could
have prevented it. The consciousness of this filled her with
self-condemnation; yet she could not acknowledge herself to be on a
level with Mr. Belcher. She was ready and anxious to right all the
wrongs she had inflicted; he was bent on increasing and confirming them.
She cursed him in her heart for his Injustice and cruelty, and almost
cursed herself.
But she dwelt most upon the future which the discoveries of the hour had
rendered possible to herself. She had found a way out of her hateful
life. She had found a lad who admired, loved, and trusted her, upon whom
she could lavish her hungry affections--one, indeed, upon whom she had a
right to lavish them. The life which she had led from girlhood was like
one of those deep canons in the far West, down which her beautiful boat
had been gliding between impassable walls that gave her only here and
there glimpses of the heaven above. The uncertain stream had its
fascinations. There were beautiful shallows over which she had glided
smoothly and safely, rocks and rapids over which she had shot swiftly
amid attractive dangers, crooked courses that led she did not know
whither, landing-places where she could enjoy an hour of the kindly
sun. But all the time she knew she was descending. The song of the
waterfalls was a farewell song to scenes that could never be witnessed
again. Far away perhaps, perhaps near, waited the waters of the gulf
that would drink the sparkling stream into its sullen depths, and steep
it in its own bitterness. It was beautiful all the way, but it was going
down, down, down. It was seeking the level of its death; and the little
boat that rode so buoyantly over the crests which betrayed the hidden
rocks, would be but a chip among the waves of the broad, wild sea that
waited at the end.
Out of the fascinating roar that filled her ears; out of the sparkling
rapids and sheeny reaches, and misty cataracts that enchanted her eyes;
and out of the relentless drift toward the bottomless sea, she could be
lifted! The sun shone overhead. There were rocks to climb where her
hands would bleed; there were weary heights to scale; but she knew that
on the top there were green pastures and broad skies, and the music of
birds--places where she could rest, and from which she could slowly find
her way back, in loving companionship, to the mountains of purity from
which she had come.
She revolved the possibilities of the future; and, provided the little
paper in her hand should verify her expectations, she resolved to
realize them. During the long hour in which she sat thinking, she
discounted the emotion which the little paper in her hand held for her,
so that, when she unfolded it and read it, she only kissed it, and
placed it in her bosom.
After dinner, she ordered her carriage. Then, thinking that it might be
recognized by Mr. Belcher, she changed her order, and sent to a public
stable for one that was not identified with herself; and then, so
disguising her person that in the evening she would not be known, she
ordered the driver to take her to Mr. Balfour's.
Mrs. Dillingham had met Mr. Balfour many times, but she had never,
though on speaking terms with her, cultivated Mrs. Balfour's
acquaintance, and that lady did not fail to show the surprise she felt
when her visitor was announced.
"I have made the acquaintance of your little ward," said Mrs.
Dillingham, "and we have become good friends. I enticed him into my
house to-day, and as I kept him a long time, I thought I would come over
and apologize for his absence."
"I did not know that he had been with you," said Mrs. Balfour, coolly.
"He could do no less than come to me when I asked him to do so," said
Mrs. Dillingham; "and I was entirely to blame for his remaining with me
so long. You ladies who have children cannot know how sweet their
society sometimes is to those who have none."
Mrs. Balfour was surprised. She saw in her visitor's eyes the evidence
of recent tears, and there was a moisture in them then, and a subdued
and tender tone to her voice which did not harmonize at all with her
conception of Mrs. Dillingham's nature and character. Was she trying her
arts upon her? She knew of her intimacy with Mr. Belcher, and naturally
connected the visit with that unscrupulous person's schemes.
Mrs. Balfour was soon relieved by the entrance of her husband, who
greeted Mrs. Dillingham in the old, stereotyped, gallant way in which
gentlemen were accustomed to address her. How did she manage to keep
herself so young? Would she be kind enough to give Mrs. Balfour the name
of her hair-dresser? What waters had she bathed in, what airs had she
breathed, that youth should clothe her in such immortal fashion?
Quite to his surprise, Mrs. Dillingham had nothing to say to this
badinage. She seemed either not to hear it at all, or to hear it with
impatience. She talked in a listless way, and appeared to be thinking of
anything but what was said.
At last, she asked Mr. Balfour if she could have the liberty to obtrude
a matter of business upon him. She did not like to interfere with his
home enjoyments, but he would oblige her much by giving her half an hour
of private conversation. Mr. Balfour looked at his wife, received a
significant glance, and invited the lady into his library.
It was a long interview. Nine o'clock, ten o'clock, eleven o'clock
sounded, and then Mrs. Balfour went upstairs. It was nearly midnight
when Mrs. Dillingham emerged from the door. She handed a bank-note to
the impatient coachman, and ordered him to drive her home. As she passed
Mr. Belcher's corner of the street, she saw Phipps helping his master to
mount the steps. He had had an evening of carousal among some of his new
acquaintances. "Brute!" she said to herself, and withdrew her head from
the window.
Admitted at her door, she went to her room in her unusual wrappings,
threw herself upon her knees, and buried her face in her bed. She did
not pray; she hardly lifted her thoughts. She was excessively weary. Why
she knelt she did not know; but on her knees she thought over the
occurrences of the evening. Her hungry soul was full--full of hopes,
plans, purposes. She had found something to love.
What is that angel's name who, shut away from ten thousand selfish,
sinful lives, stands always ready, when the bearers of those lives are
tired of them, and are longing for something better, to open the door
into a new realm? What patience and persistence are his! Always waiting,
always prepared, cherishing no resentments, willing to lead, anxious to
welcome, who is he, and whence came he? If Mrs. Dillingham did not pray,
she had a vision of this heavenly visitant, and kissed the hem of his
garments.
She rose and walked to her dressing-table. There she found a note in
Mrs. Belcher's handwriting, inviting her to a drive in the Park with her
and Mr. Belcher on the following afternoon. Whether the invitation was
self-moved, or the result of a suggestion from Mr. Belcher, she did not
know. In truth, she did not care. She had wronged Mrs. Belcher in many
ways, and she would go.
Why was it that when the new and magnificent carriage rolled up to her
door the next afternoon, with its wonderful horses and showy equipage,
and appointments calculated to attract attention, her heart was smitten
with disgust? She was to be stared at; and, during all the drive, she
was to sit face to face with a man who believed that he had fascinated
her, and who was trying to use her for all the base purposes in which it
was possible for her to serve his will. What could she do with him? How,
in the new relations of her life to him, should she carry herself?
The drive was a quiet one. Mr. Belcher sat and feasted his greedy,
exultant eyes on the woman before him, and marveled at the adroitness
with which, to use his own coarse phrase, she "pulled the wool" over the
eyes of his wife. In what a lovely way did she hide her passion for him!
How sweetly did she draw out the sympathy of the deceived woman at her
side! Ah! he could trust her! Her changed, amiable, almost pathetic
demeanor was attributed by him to the effect of his power upon her, and
her own subtle ingenuity in shielding from the eyes of Mrs. Belcher a
love that she deemed hopeless. In his own mind it was not hopeless. In
his own determination, it should not be!
As for Mrs. Belcher, she had never so much enjoyed Mrs. Dillingham's
society before. She blamed herself for not having understood her better;
and when she parted with her for the day, she expressed in hearty terms
her wish that she might see more of her in the future.
Mrs. Dillingham, on the return, was dropped at her own door first. Mr.
Belcher alighted, and led her up the steps. Then, in a quiet voice, he
said:
"Did you find out anything of the boy?"
"Yes, some things, but none that it would be of advantage to you to
know."
"Well, stick to him, now that you have got hold of him."
"I intend to."
"Good for you!"
"I imagine that he has been pretty well drilled," said Mrs. Dillingham,
"and told just what he may and must not say to any one."
"You can work it out of him. I'll risk you."
Mrs. Dillingham could hardly restrain her impatience, but said quietly:
"I fancy I have discovered all the secrets I shall ever discover in him.
I like the boy, and shall cultivate his acquaintance; but, really, it
will not pay you to rely upon me for anything. He is under Mr. Balfour's
directions, and very loyal."
Mr. Belcher remembered his own interview with the lad, and recognized
the truth of the statement. Then he bade her good-bye, rejoined his
wife, and rode home.