Produced by Charles Aldarondo
CAST ADRIFT
By T. S. Arthur
Author Of “Three Years In A Man-Trap,” “Orange Blossoms,” Etc., Etc.
Philadelphia:
Cincinnati:
New York:
Boston:
Chicago, Ills.:
New Castle, Pa.:
San Francisco, Cal.:
1873
TO THE READER.
IN this romance of real life, in which the truth is stranger than the
fiction, I have lifted only in part the veil that hides the victims of
intemperance and other terrible vices--after they have fallen to the
lower deeps of degradation to be found in our large cities, where the
vile and degraded herd together more like wild beasts than men and
women--and told the story of sorrow, suffering, crime and debasement
as they really exist in Christian America with all the earnestness and
power that in me lies.
Strange and sad and terrible as are some of the scenes from which I hare
drawn this veil, I have not told the half of what exists. My book, apart
from the thread of fiction that runs through its pages, is but a series
of photographs from real life, and is less a work of the imagination
than a record of facts.
If it stirs the hearts of American readers profoundly, and so awakens
the people to a sense of their duty; if it helps to inaugurate more
earnest and radical modes of reform for a state of society of which a
distinguished author has said, “There is not a country throughout the
earth on which it would not bring a curse; there is no religion upon the
earth that it would not deny; there is no people upon the earth it would
not put to shame;”--then will not my work be in vain.
Sitting in our comfortable homes with well-fed, well-clothed and
happy-hearted children about us--children who have our tenderest care,
whose cry of pain from a pin-prick or a fall on the carpeted floor hurts
us like a blow---how few of us know or care anything about the homes
in which some other children dwell, or of the hard and cruel battle for
life they are doomed to fight from the very beginning!
To get out from these comfortable homes and from the midst of tenderly
cared-for little ones, and stand face to face with squalor and hunger,
with suffering, debasement and crime, to look upon the starved faces
of children and hear their helpless cries, is what scarcely one in a
thousand will do. It is too much for our sensibilities. And so we stand
aloof, and the sorrow, and suffering, the debasement, the wrong and
the crime, go on, and because we heed it not we vainly imagine that no
responsibility lies at our door; and yet there is no man or woman who is
not, according to the measure of his or her influence, responsible for
the human debasement and suffering I have portrayed.
The task I set for myself has not been a pleasant one. It has hurt my
sensibilities and sickened my heart many times as I stood face to face
with the sad and awful degradation that exists in certain regions of
our larger cities; and now that my work is done, I take a deep breath
of relief. The result is in your hands, good citizen, Christian reader,
earnest philanthropist! If it stirs your heart in the reading as it
stirred mine in the writing, it will not die fruitless.
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. The unwelcome babe--The defrauded young mother--The struggle
between life and death--“Your baby is in heaven”--A brief retrospect--A
marriage for social position--An ambitious wife and a disappointed
husband--The young daughter--The matrimonial market--The Circassian
slaves of modern society--The highest bidder--Disappearance--The old sad
story--Secret marriage--The letters--Disappointed ambition--Interview
between the parents--The mother's purpose--“Baffled, but not
defeated”--The father's surprise--The returned daughter--Forgiven--“I am
not going away again, father dear”--Insecurity and distrust
CHAPTER II. The hatred of a bad woman--Mrs. Dinneford's plans for the
destruction of Granger--Starting in business--Plots of Mrs. Dinneford
and Freeling--The discounted notes--The trap--Granger's suspicions
aroused--Forgery--Mrs. Dinneford relentless--The arrest--Fresh evidence
of crime upon Granger's person--The shock to Edith--“That night her baby
was born”
CHAPTER III. “It is a splendid boy”--A convenient, non-interfering
family doctor--Cast adrift--Into the world in a basket, unnamed
and disowned--Edith's second struggle back to life--Her mind a
blank--Granger convicted of forgery--Seeks to gain knowledge of his
child--The doctor's evasion and ignorance--An insane asylum instead of
State's prison--Edith's slow return to intelligence--“There's something
I can't understand, mother”--“Where is my baby?”--“What of George?”--No
longer a child, but a broken hearted woman--The divorce
CHAPTER IV. Sympathy between father and daughter--Interest in public
charities--A dreadful sight--A sick babe in the arms of a half-drunken
woman--“Is there no law to meet such cases?”---“The poor baby has no
vote!”--Edith seeks for the grave of her child, but cannot find
it--She questions her mother, who baffles her curiosity--Mrs. Bray's
visit--Interview between Mrs. Dinneford and Mrs. Bray--“The baby
isn't living?”--“Yes; I saw it day before yesterday in the arms of a
beggar-woman”--Edith's suspicions aroused--Determined to discover the
fate of her child--Visits the doctor--“Your baby is in heaven”--“Would
to God it were so, for I saw a baby in hell not long ago!”
CHAPTER V. Mrs. Dinneford visits Mrs. Bray--“The woman to whom you
gave that baby was here yesterday”--The woman must be put out of the
way--Exit Mrs. Dinneford, enter Pinky Swett--“You know your fate--New
Orleans and the yellow fever”--“All I want of you is to keep track of
the baby”--Division of the spoils--Lucky dreams--Consultation of the
dream-book for lucky figures--Sam McFaddon and his backer, who “drives
in the Park and wears a two thousand dollar diamond pin”--The fate of a
baby begged with--The baby must not die--The lottery-policies
CHAPTER VI. Rottenness at the heart of a great city--Pinky Swett's
attempted rescue of a child from cruel beating--The fight--Pinky's
arrest--Appearance of the “queen”--Pinky's release at her command--The
queen's home--The screams of children being beaten--The rescue of
“Flanagan's Nell”--Death the great rescuer--“They don't look after
things in here as they do outside--Everybody's got the screws on, and
things must break sometimes, but it isn't called murder--The coroner
understands it all”
CHAPTER VII. Pinky Swett at the mercy of the crowd in the street--Taken
to the nearest station-house--Mrs. Dinneford visits Mrs. Bray
again--Fresh alarms--“She's got you in her power”---“Money is of no
account”--The knock at the door--Mrs. Dinneford in hiding--The visitor
gone--Mrs. Bray reports the woman insatiable in her demands--Must have
two hundred dollars by sundown--No way of escape except through police
interference--“People who deal with the devil generally have the devil
to pay”--Suspicion--A mistake--Sound of feet upon the stairs--Mrs.
Dinneford again in hiding--Enter Pinky Swett--Pinky disposed of--Mrs.
Dinneford again released--Mrs. Bray's strategy--“Let us be friends
still, Mrs. Bray”--Mrs. Dinneford's deprecation and humiliation--Mrs.
Bray's triumph
CHAPTER VIII. Mrs. Bray receives a package containing two hundred
dollars--“Poor baby! I must see better to its comfort”--Pinky meets a
young girl from the country--The “Ladies' Restaurant”--Fried oysters
and sangaree--The “bindery” girl--“My head feels strangely”--Through
the back alley--The ten-cent lodging house--Robbery--A second robbery--A
veil drawn--A wild prolonged cry of a woman--The policeman listens only
for a moment, and then passes on--Foul play--“In all our large
cities are savages more cruel and brutal in their instincts than the
Comanches”--Who is responsible?
CHAPTER IX. Valuation of the spoils--The receiver--The “policy-shop” and
its customers--A victim of the lottery mania
CHAPTER X. “Policy-drunkards”--A newly-appointed policeman's
blunder--The end of a “policy-drunkard”--Pinky and her friend in
consultation over “a cast-off baby in Dirty alley”--“If you can't get
hush-money out of its mother, you can bleed Fanny Bray”--The way to
starve a baby--Pinky moves her quarters without the use of “a dozen
furniture cars”--A baby's home--The baby's night nurse--The baby's
supper--The baby's bed--How the baby's money is spent--Where the baby's
nurse passes the night--The baby's disappearance
CHAPTER XI. Reserve between mother and daughter--Mrs. Dinneford
disapproves of Edith's charitable visits--Mrs. Dinneford meets Freeling
by appointment at a hotel--“There's trouble brewing”--“A letter from
George Granger”--Accused of conspiracy--Possibility of Granger's pardon
by the governor--An ugly business--In great peril--Freeling's threats of
exposure--A hint of an alternative
CHAPTER XII. Mr. Freeling fails to appear at his place of
business--Examination of his bank accounts--It is discovered that he has
borrowed largely of his friends--Mrs. Dinneford has supplied him $20,000
from her private purse--Mrs. Dinneford falls sick, and temporarily
loses her reason--“I told you her name was Gray--Gray, not Bray”--Half
disclosures--Recovery--Mother and daughter mutually suspicious--The
visitor--Mrs. Dinneford equal to the emergency--Edith thrown off the
track
CHAPTER XIII. Edith is satisfied that her babe is alive--She has a
desire to teach the children of the poor--“My baby may become like one
of these”--She hears of a baby which has been stolen--Resolves to go
and see it, and to apply to Mr. Paulding of the Briar street mission for
assistance in her attempt--Mr. Paulding persuades her that it is best
not to see the child, and promises that he himself will look after
it--Returns home--Her father remonstrates with her, finally promises to
help her
CHAPTER XIV. Mr. Dinneford sets out for the mission-house--An incident
on the way--Encounters Mr. Paulding--Mr. Paulding makes his report--“The
vicious mark their offspring with unmistakable signs of moral depravity;
this baby has signs of a better origin”--A profitable conversation--“I
think you had better act promptly”
CHAPTER XV. Mr. Dinneford with a policeman goes in quest of the
baby--The baby is gone--Inquiries--Mr. Dinneford resolves to
persevere--Cause of the baby's disappearance--Pinky Swett's
curiosity--Change of baby's nurse--Baby's improved condition--Baby's
first experience of motherly tenderness--Baby's first smile--“Such
beautiful eyes”--Pinky Swett visits the St. John mission-school--Edith
is not there
CHAPTER XVI. Mr. Dinneford's return, and Edith's disappointment--“It
is somebody's baby, and it may be mine”--An unsuspected listener--Mrs.
Dinneford acts promptly--Conference between Mrs. Dinneford and Mrs.
Hoyt, _alias_ Bray--The child must be got out of the way--“If it will
not starve, it must drown”--Mrs. Dinneford sees an acquaintance as
she leaves Mrs. Hoyt's, and endeavors to escape his observation--A new
danger and disgrace awaiting her
CHAPTER XVII. Mental conditions of mother and daughter--Mr. Dinneford
aroused to a sense of his moral responsibilities--The heathen in
our midst--The united evil of policy-lotteries and whisky-shops--The
education of the policy-shops
CHAPTER XVIII. News item: “A child drowned”--Another news item: Pinky
Swett sentenced to prison for robbery--Baby's improved
condition--Mrs. Burke's efforts to retain the baby after Pinky Swett's
imprisonment--Baby Andy's rough life in the street--Mrs. Burke's
death--Cast upon the world--Andy's adventures--He finds a home and a
friend
CHAPTER XIX. Mr. Dinneford visits the mission-school--A comparison of
the present with the past--The first mission-school--Reminiscences of
the school in its early days--The zealous scholar--Good effects of
the mission--“Get the burning brands apart, or interpose incombustible
things between them”--An illustration--“Let in light, and the darkness
flees”
CHAPTER XX. “The man awoke and felt the child against his bosom, soft
and warm”--Led by a little child--“God being my helper, I will be a man
again”--A new life--Meeting of an old friend--A friend in need--Food,
clothes, work--A new home--God's strength our only safety
CHAPTER XXI. Intimate relations of physical and moral purity--Blind
Jake--The harvest of the thieves and beggars--Inconsiderate
charity--Beggary a vice--“The deserving poor are never common
beggars”--“To help the evil is to hurt the good” The malignant ulcer
in the body politic of our city--The breeding-places of epidemics and
malignant diseases--Little Italian street musicians--The existence of
slavery in our midst--Facts in regard to it
CHAPTER XXII. Edith's continued interest in the children of the
poor--Christmas dinner at the mission-house--Edith perceives Andy,
and feels a strange attraction toward him--Andy's disappearance after
dinner--Pinky Swett has been seen dragging him away--Lost sight of
CHAPTER XXIII. Christmas dinner at Mr. Dinneford's--The dropped
letter--It is missed--A scene of wild excitement--Mrs. Dinneford's
sudden death--Edith reads the letter--A revelation--“Innocent!”--Edith
is called to her mother--“Dead, and better so!”--Granger's innocence
established--An agony of affection--No longer Granger's wife
CHAPTER XXIV. Edith's sickness--Meeting of Mrs. Bray and Pinky Swett--A
trial of sharpness, in which neither gains the advantage--Mr. Dinneford
receives a call from a lady--The lady, who is Mrs. Bray, offers
information--Mr. Dinneford surprises her into admitting an important
fact--Mrs. Bray offers to produce the child for a price--Mr. Dinneford
consents to pay the price on certain stipulations--Mrs. Bray departs,
promising to come again
CHAPTER XXV. Granger's pardon procured--How he receives his pardon--Mrs.
Bray tries to trace Pinky home--Loses sight of her in the street--Mrs.
Bray interviews a shop-woman--Pinky's destination--The child is gone
CHAPTER XXVI. Mrs. Bray does not call on Mr. Dinneford, as she
promised--Peril to Andrew Hall through loss of the child--Help--Edith
longs to see or write to Granger, but does not--Edith encounters Mrs.
Bray in the street--“Where is my baby?”--Disappointment--How to identify
the child if found
CHAPTER XXVII. No trace of Andy--Account of Andy's abduction--Andy's
prison--An outlook from prison--A loose nail--The escape--The sprained
ankle--The accident
CHAPTER XXVIII. Edith's visit to the children's hospital--“Oh, my baby!
thank God! my baby!”--The identification
CHAPTER XXIX. Meeting of Mr. Dinneford and George Granger--“We want you
to help us find your child”--“Edith's heart is calling out for you”--The
meeting--The marriage benediction
CAST ADRIFT.
CHAPTER I.
_A BABY_ had come, but he was not welcome. Could anything be sadder?
The young mother lay with her white face to the wall, still as death. A
woman opened the chamber door noiselessly and came in, the faint rustle
of her garments disturbing the quiet air.
A quick, eager turning of the head, a look half anxious, half fearful,
and then the almost breathless question,
“Where is my baby?”
“Never mind about the baby,” was answered, almost coldly; “he's well
enough. I'm more concerned about you.”
“Have you sent word to George?”
“George can't see you. I've said that before.”
“Oh, mother! I must see my husband.”
“Husband!” The tone of bitter contempt with which the word was uttered
struck the daughter like a blow. She had partly risen in her excitement,
but now fell back with a low moan, shutting her eyes and turning her
face away. Even as she did so, a young man stepped back from the door of
the elegant house in which she lay with a baffled, disappointed air. He
looked pale and wretched.
“Edith!” Two hours afterward the doctor stood over the young mother,
and called her name. She did not move nor reply. He laid his hand on her
cheek, and almost started, then bent down and looked at her intently for
a moment or two. She had fever. A serious expression came into his face,
and there was cause.
The sweet rest and heavenly joy of maternity had been denied to his
young patient. The new-born babe had not been suffered to lie even for
one blissful moment on her bosom. Hard-hearted family pride and cruel
worldliness had robbed her of the delight with which God ever seeks to
dower young motherhood, and now the overtaxed body and brain had given
way.
For many weeks the frail young creature struggled with
delirium--struggled and overcame.
“Where is my baby?”
The first thought of returning consciousness was of her baby.
A woman who sat in a distant part of the chamber started up and crossed
to the bed. She was past middle life, of medium stature, with small,
clearly cut features and cold blue eyes. Her mouth was full, but very
firm. Self-poise was visible even in her surprised movements. She bent
over the bed and looked into Edith's wistful eyes.
“Where is my baby, mother?” Mrs. Dinneford put her fingers lightly on
Edith's lips.
“You must be very quiet,” she said, in a low, even voice. “The doctor
forbids all excitement. You have been extremely ill.”
“Can't I see my baby, mother? It won't hurt me to see my baby.”
“Not now. The doctor--”
Edith half arose in bed, a look of doubt and fear coming into her face.
“I want my baby, mother,” she said, interrupting her.
A hard, resolute expression came into the cold blue eyes of Mrs.
Dinneford. She put her hand firmly against Edith and pressed her back
upon the pillow.
“You have been very ill for nearly two months,” she said, softening her
voice. “No one thought you could live. Thank God! the crisis is over,
but not the danger.”
“Two months! Oh, mother!”
The slight flush that had come into Edith's wan face faded out, and the
pallor it had hidden for a few moments became deeper. She shut her eyes
and lay very still, but it was plain from the expression of her face
that thought was busy.
“Not two whole months, mother?” she said, at length, in doubtful tones.
“Oh no! it cannot be.”
“It is just as I have said, Edith; and now, my dear child, as you value
your life, keep quiet; all excitement is dangerous.”
But repression was impossible. To Edith's consciousness there was no
lapse of time. It seemed scarcely an hour since the birth of her baby
and its removal from her sight. The inflowing tide of mother-love, the
pressure and yearning sweetness of which she had begun to feel when she
first called for the baby they had not permitted to rest, even for an
instant, on her bosom, was now flooding her heart. Two months! If that
were so, what of the baby? To be submissive was impossible.
Starting up half wildly, a vague terror in her face, she cried,
piteously,
“Oh, mother, bring me my baby. I shall die if you do not!”
“Your baby is in heaven,” said Mrs. Dinneford, softening her voice to a
tone of tender regret.
Edith caught her breath, grew very white, and then, with a low, wailing
cry that sent a shiver through Mrs. Dinneford's heart, fell back, to all
appearance dead.
The mother did not call for help, but sat by the bedside of her
daughter, and waited for the issue of this new struggle between life and
death. There was no visible excitement, but her mouth was closely set
and her cold blue eyes fixed in a kind of vacant stare.
Edith was Mrs. Dinneford's only child, and she had loved her with
the strong, selfish love of a worldly and ambitious woman. In her
own marriage she had not consulted her heart. Mr. Dinneford's social
position and wealth were to her far more than his personal endowments.
She would have rejected him without a quicker pulse-beat if these had
been all he had to offer. He was disappointed, she was not. Strong,
self-asserting, yet politic, Mrs Dinneford managed her good husband
about as she pleased in all external matters, and left him to the free
enjoyment of his personal tastes, preferences and friendships. The
house they lived in, the furniture it contained, the style and equipage
assumed by the family, were all of her choice, Mr. Dinneford giving
merely a half-constrained or half-indifferent consent. He had learned,
by painful and sometimes humiliating experience, that any contest with
Mrs. Helen Dinneford upon which he might enter was sure to end in his
defeat.
He was a man of fine moral and intellectual qualities. His wealth gave
him leisure, and his tastes, feelings and habits of thought drew
him into the society of some of the best men in the city where he
lived--best in the true meaning of that word. In all enlightened social
reform movements you would be sure of finding Mr. Howard Dinneford. He
was an active and efficient member in many boards of public charity, and
highly esteemed in them all for his enlightened philanthropy and sound
judgment. Everywhere but at home he was strong and influential; there he
was weak, submissive and of little account. He had long ago accepted
the situation, making a virtue of necessity. A different man--one of
stronger will and a more imperious spirit--would have held his own, even
though it wrought bitterness and sorrow. But Mr. Dinneford's aversion
to strife, and gentleness toward every one, held him away from conflict,
and so his home was at least tranquil.
Mrs. Dinneford had her own way, and so long as her husband made no
strong opposition to that way all was peaceful.
For Edith, their only child, who was more like her father than her
mother, Mr. Dinneford had the tenderest regard. The well-springs of
love, choked up so soon after his marriage, were opened freely toward
his daughter, and he lived in her a new, sweet and satisfying life. The
mother was often jealous of her husband's demonstrative tenderness for
Edith. A yearning instinct of womanhood, long repressed by worldliness
and a mean social ambition, made her crave at times the love she had
cast away, and then her cup of life was very bitter. But fear of Mr.
Dinneford's influence over Edith was stronger than any jealousy of his
love. She had high views for her daughter. In her own marriage she had
set aside all considerations but those of social rank. She had made it
a stepping-stone to a higher place in society than the one to which she
was born. Still, above them stood many millionaire families, living
in palace-homes, and through her daughter she meant to rise into one
of them. It mattered not for the personal quality of the scion of the
house; he might be as coarse and common as his father before him, or
weak, mean, selfish, and debased by sensual indulgence. This was of
little account. To lift Edith to the higher social level was the all in
all of Mrs. Dinneford's ambition.
But Mr. Dinneford taught Edith a nobler life-lesson than this, gave her
better views of wedlock, pictured for her loving heart the bliss of a
true marriage, sighing often as he did so, but unconsciously, at the
lost fruition of his own sweet hopes. He was careful to do this only
when alone with Edith, guarding his speech when Mrs. Dinneford was
present. He had faith in true principles, and with these he sought to
guard her life. He knew that she would be pushed forward into society,
and knew but too well that one so pure and lovely in mind as well as
person would become a centre of attraction, and that he, standing on the
outside as it were, would have no power to save her from the saddest of
all fates if she were passive and her mother resolute. Her safety must
lie in herself.
Edith was brought out early. Mrs. Dinneford could not wait. At seventeen
she was thrust into society, set up for sale to the highest bidder, her
condition nearer that of a Circassian than a Christian maiden, with her
mother as slave-dealer.
So it was and so, it is. You may see the thing every day. But it did not
come out according to Mrs. Dinneford's programme. There was a highest
bidder; but when he came for his slave, she was not to be found.
Well, the story is trite and brief--the old sad story. Among her suitors
was a young man named Granger, and to him Edith gave her heart. But
the mother rejected him with anger and scorn. He was not rich, though
belonging to a family of high character, and so fell far below her
requirements. Under a pressure that almost drove the girl to despair,
she gave her consent to a marriage that looked more terrible than death.
A month before the time fixed for, its consummation, she barred the
contract by a secret union with Granger.
Edith knew her mother's character too well to hope for any
reconciliation, so far as Mr. Granger was concerned. Coming in as he had
done between her and the consummation of her highest ambition, she could
never feel toward him anything but the most bitter hatred; and so, after
remaining at home for about a week after her secret marriage, she wrote
this brief letter to her mother and went away:
“My DEAR MOTHER: I do not love Spencer Wray, and would rather die than
marry him, and so I have made the marriage to which my heart has never
consented, an impossibility. You have left me no other alternative but
this. I am the wife of George Granger, and go to cast my lot with his.
“Your loving daughter,
“EDITH.”
To her father she wrote:
“My DEAR, DEAR FATHER: If I bring sorrow to your good and loving heart
by what I have done, I know that it will be tempered with joy at my
escape from a union with one from whom my soul has ever turned with
irrepressible dislike. Oh, my father, you can understand, if mother
cannot, into what a desperate strait I have been brought. I am a deer
hunted to the edge of a dizzy chasm, and I leap for life over the dark
abyss, praying for strength to reach the farther edge. If I fail in the
wild effort, I can only meet destruction; and I would rather be bruised
to death on the jagged rocks than trust myself to the hounds and
hunters. I write passionately--you will hardly recognize your quiet
child; but the repressed instincts of my nature are strong, and peril
and despair have broken their bonds. I did not consult you about the
step I have taken, because I dared not trust you with my secret. You
would have tried to hold me back from the perilous leap, fondly hoping
for some other way of escape. I had resolved on putting an impassable
gulf between me and danger, if I died in the attempt. I have taken the
leap, and may God care for me!
“I have laid up in my heart of hearts, dearest of fathers, the precious
life-truths that so often fell from your lips. Not a word that you ever
said about the sacredness of marriage has been forgotten. I believe
with you that it is a little less than crime to marry when no love
exists--that she who does so, sells her heart's birthright for some
mess of pottage, sinks down from the pure level of noble womanhood, and
traffics away her person, is henceforth meaner in quality if not really
vile.
“And so, my father, to save myself from such a depth of degradation and
misery, I take my destiny into my own hands. I have grown very strong in
my convictions and purposes in the last four weeks. My sight has become
suddenly clear. I am older by many years.
“As for George Granger, all I can now say is that I love him, and
believe him to be worthy of my love. I am willing to trust him, and am
ready to share his lot, however humble.
“Still hold me in your heart, my precious father, as I hold you in mine.
“EDITH.”
Mr. Dinneford read this letter twice. It took him some time, his eyes
were so full of tears. In view of her approaching marriage with Spencer
Wray, his heart had felt very heavy. It was something lighter now. Young
Granger was not the man he would have chosen for Edith, but he liked him
far better than he did the other, and felt that his child was safe now.
He went to his wife's room, and found her with Edith's letter crushed in
her hand. She was sitting motionless, her face pale and rigid, her eyes
fixed and stony and her lips tight against her teeth. She did not seem
to notice his presence until he put his hand upon her, which he did
without speaking. At this she started up and looked at him with a kind
of fierce intentness.
“Are you a party to this frightful things?” she demanded.
Mr. Dinneford weakly handed her the letter he had received from Edith.
She read it through in half the time it had taken his tear-dimmed eyes
to make out the touching sentences. After she had done so, she stood for
a few moments as if surprised or baffled. Then she sat down, dropping
her head, and remained for a long time without speaking.
“The bitter fruit, Mr. Dinneford,” she said, at last, in a voice so
strange and hard that it seemed to his ears as if another had spoken.
All passion had died out of it.
He waited, but she added nothing more. After a long silence she waved
her hand slightly, and without looking at her husband, said,
“I would rather be alone.”
Mr. Dinneford took Edith's letter from the floor, where it had dropped
from his wife's hand, and withdrew from her presence. She arose quickly
as he did so, crossed the room and silently turned the key, locking
herself in. Then her manner changed; she moved about the room in a
half-aimless, half-conscious way, as though some purpose was beginning
to take shape in her mind. Her motions had an easy, cat-like grace, in
contrast with their immobility a little while before. Gradually her step
became quicker, while ripples of feeling began to pass over her face,
which was fast losing its pallor. Gleams of light began shooting from
her eyes, that were so dull and stony when her husband found her with
Edith's letter crushed in her grasp. Her hands opened and shut upon
themselves nervously. This went on, the excitement of her forming
purpose, whatever it was, steadily increasing, until she swept about
the room like a fury, talking to herself and gesticulating as one half
insane from the impelling force of an evil passion.
“Baffled, but not defeated.” The excitement had died out. She spoke
these words aloud, and with a bitter satisfaction in her voice, then sat
down, resting her face in her hands, and remaining for a long time in
deep thought.
When she met her husband, an hour afterward, there was a veil over her
face, and he tried in vain to look beneath it. She was greatly changed;
her countenance had a new expression--something he had never seen there
before. For years she had been growing away from him; now she seemed
like one removed to a great distance--to have become almost stranger. He
felt half afraid of her. She did not speak of Edith, but remained cold,
silent and absorbed.
Mrs. Dinneford gave no sign of what was in her heart for many weeks.
The feeling of distance and strangeness perceived by her husband went on
increasing, until a vague feeling of mystery and fear began to oppress
him. Several times he had spoken of Edith, but his wife made no
response, nor could he read in her veiled face the secret purposes she
was hiding from him.
No wonder that Mr. Dinneford was greatly surprised and overjoyed, on
coming home one day, to meet his daughter, to feel her arms about his
neck, and to hold her tearful face on his bosom.
“And I'm not going away again, father dear,” she said as she kissed him
fondly. “Mother has sent for me, and George is to come. Oh, we shall be
so happy, so happy!”
And father and daughter cried together, like two happy children, in very
excess of gladness. They had met alone, but Mrs. Dinneford came in, her
presence falling on them like a cold shadow.
“Two great babies,” she said, a covert sneer in her chilling voice.
The joy went slowly out of their faces, though not out of their
hearts. There it nestled, and warmed the renewing blood. But a vague,
questioning fear began to creep in, a sense of insecurity, a dread of
hidden danger. The daughter did not fully trust her mother, nor the
husband his wife.