A week had passed, since the Minister’s wife had left me, when I
received a letter from the Minister himself.
After surprising me, as he innocently supposed, by announcing the birth
of his child, he mentioned some circumstances connected with that event,
which I now heard for the first time.
“Within an easy journey of the populous scene of my present labors,” he
wrote, “there is a secluded country village called Low Lanes. The rector
of the place is my wife’s brother. Before the birth of our infant, he
had asked his sister to stay for a while at his house; and the doctor
thought she might safely be allowed to accept the invitation. Through
some error in the customary calculations, as I suppose, the child
was born unexpectedly at the rectory; and the ceremony of baptism was
performed at the church, under circumstances which I am not able to
relate within the limits of a letter: Let me only say that I allude to
this incident without any sectarian bitterness of feeling--for I am
no enemy to the Church of England. You have no idea what treasures of
virtue and treasures of beauty maternity has revealed in my wife’s sweet
nature. Other mothers, in her proud position, might find their love
cooling toward the poor child whom we have adopted. But my household is
irradiated by the presence of an angel, who gives an equal share in her
affections to the two little ones alike.”
In this semi-hysterical style of writing, the poor man unconsciously
told me how cunningly and how cruelly his wife was deceiving him.
I longed to exhibit that wicked woman in her true character--but what
could I do? She must have been so favored by circumstances as to be able
to account for her absence from home, without exciting the slightest
suspicion of the journey which she had really taken, if I declared in my
reply to the Minister’s letter that I had received her in my rooms,
and if I repeated the conversation that had taken place, what would
the result be? She would find an easy refuge in positive denial of
the truth--and, in that case, which of us would her infatuated husband
believe?
The one part of the letter which I read with some satisfaction was the
end of it.
I was here informed that the Minister’s plans for concealing the
parentage of his adopted daughter had proved to be entirely successful.
The members of the new domestic household believed the two children to
be infant-sisters. Neither was there any danger of the adopted child
being identified (as the oldest child of the two) by consultation of the
registers.
Before he left our town, the Minister had seen for himself that no
baptismal name had been added, after the birth of the daughter of the
murderess had been registered, and that no entry of baptism existed in
the registers kept in places of worship. He drew the inference--in
all probability a true inference, considering the characters of the
parents--that the child had never been baptized; and he performed the
ceremony privately, abstaining, for obvious reasons, from adding her
Christian name to the imperfect register of her birth. “I am not aware,”
he wrote, “whether I have, or have not, committed an offense against the
Law. In any case, I may hope to have made atonement by obedience to the
Gospel.”
Six weeks passed, and I heard from my reverend friend once more.
His second letter presented a marked contrast to the first. It was
written in sorrow and anxiety, to inform me of an alarming change
for the worse in his wife’s health. I showed the letter to my medical
colleague. After reading it he predicted the event that might be
expected, in two words:--Sudden death.
On the next occasion when I heard from the Minister, the Doctor’s grim
reply proved to be a prophecy fulfilled.
When we address expressions of condolence to bereaved friends, the
principles of popular hypocrisy sanction indiscriminate lying as a
duty which we owe to the dead--no matter what their lives may have
been--because they are dead. Within my own little sphere, I have always
been silent, when I could not offer to afflicted persons expressions of
sympathy which I honestly felt. To have condoled with the Minister on
the loss that he had sustained by the death of a woman, self-betrayed to
me as shamelessly deceitful, and pitilessly determined to reach her own
cruel ends, would have been to degrade myself by telling a deliberate
lie. I expressed in my answer all that an honest man naturally feels,
when he is writing to a friend in distress; carefully abstaining from
any allusion to the memory of his wife, or to the place which her
death had left vacant in his household. My letter, I am sorry to say,
disappointed and offended him. He wrote to me no more, until years had
passed, and time had exerted its influence in producing a more indulgent
frame of mind. These letters of a later date have been preserved, and
will probably be used, at the right time, for purposes of explanation
with which I may be connected in the future.
.......
The correspondent whom I had now lost was succeeded by a gentleman
entirely unknown to me.
Those reasons which induced me to conceal the names of persons, while I
was relating events in the prison, do not apply to correspondence with a
stranger writing from another place. I may, therefore, mention that Mr.
Dunboyne, of Fairmount, on the west coast of Ireland, was the writer of
the letter now addressed to me. He proved, to my surprise, to be one of
the relations whom the Prisoner under sentence of death had not cared to
see, when I offered her the opportunity of saying farewell. Mr. Dunboyne
was a brother-in-law of the murderess. He had married her sister.
His wife, he informed me, had died in childbirth, leaving him but one
consolation--a boy, who already recalled all that was brightest and best
in his lost mother. The father was naturally anxious that the son should
never become acquainted with the disgrace that had befallen the family.
The letter then proceeded in these terms:
“I heard yesterday, for the first time, by means of an old
newspaper-cutting sent to me by a friend, that the miserable woman who
suffered the ignominy of public execution has left an infant child. Can
you tell me what has become of the orphan? If this little girl is, as I
fear, not well provided for, I only do what my wife would have done if
she had lived, by offering to make the child’s welfare my especial care.
I am willing to place her in an establishment well known to me, in which
she will be kindly treated, well educated, and fitted to earn her own
living honorably in later life.
“If you feel some surprise at finding that my good intentions toward
this ill-fated niece of mine do not go to the length of receiving her as
a member of my own family, I beg to submit some considerations which may
perhaps weigh with you as they have weighed with me.
“In the first place, there is at least a possibility--however carefully
I might try to conceal it--that the child’s parentage would sooner
or later be discovered. In the second place (and assuming that the
parentage had been successfully concealed), if this girl and my boy
grew up together, there is another possibility to be reckoned with:
they might become attached to each other. Does the father live who would
allow his son ignorantly to marry the daughter of a convicted murderess?
I should have no alternative but to part them cruelly by revealing the
truth.” The letter ended with some complimentary expressions addressed
to myself. And the question was: how ought I to answer it?
My correspondent had strongly impressed me in his favor; I could not
doubt that he was an honorable man. But the interest of the Minister
in keeping his own benevolent action secure from the risk of
discovery--increased as that interest was by the filial relations of the
two children toward him, now publicly established--had, as I could not
doubt, the paramount claim on me. The absolutely safe course to take
was to admit no one, friend or stranger, to our confidence. I replied,
expressing sincere admiration of Mr. Dunboyne’s motives, and merely
informing him that the child was already provided for.
After that, I heard no more of the Irish gentleman.
It is perhaps hardly necessary to add that I kept the Minister in
ignorance of my correspondence with Mr. Dunboyne. I was too well
acquainted with my friend’s sensitive and self-tormenting nature to let
him know that a relative of the murderess was living, and was aware that
she had left a child.
A last event remains to be related, before I close these pages.
During the year of which I am now writing, our Chaplain added one more
to the many examples that I have seen of his generous readiness to serve
his friends. He had arranged to devote his annual leave of absence to a
tour among the English Lakes, when he received a letter from a clergyman
resident in London, whom he had known from the time when they had
been school-fellows. This old friend wrote under circumstances of the
severest domestic distress, which made it absolutely necessary that he
should leave London for a while. Having failed to find a representative
who could relieve him of his clerical duties, he applied to the Chaplain
to recommend a clergyman who might be in a position to help him. My
excellent colleague gave up his holiday-plans without hesitation, and
went to London himself.
On his return, I asked if he had seen anything of some acquaintances
of his and of mine, who were then visitors to the metropolis. He smiled
significantly when he answered me.
“I have a card to deliver from an acquaintance whom you have not
mentioned,” he said; “and I rather think it will astonish you.”
It simply puzzled me. When he gave me the card, this is what I found
printed on it:
“MRS. TENBRUGGEN (OF SOUTH BEVELAND).”
“Well?” said the Chaplain.
“Well,” I answered; “I never even heard of Mrs. Tenbruggen, of South
Beveland. Who is she?”
“I married the lady to a foreign gentleman, only last week, at my
friend’s church,” the Chaplain replied. “Perhaps you may remember her
maiden name?”
He mentioned the name of the dangerous creature who had first presented
herself to me, in charge of the Prisoner’s child--otherwise Miss
Elizabeth Chance. The reappearance of this woman on the scene--although
she was only represented by her card--caused me a feeling of vague
uneasiness, so contemptibly superstitious in its nature that I now
remember it with shame. I asked a stupid question:
“How did it happen?”
“In the ordinary course of such things,” my friend said. “They were
married by license, in their parish church. The bridegroom was a
fine tall man, with a bold eye and a dashing manner. The bride and
I recognized each other directly. When Miss Chance had become Mrs.
Tenbruggen, she took me aside, and gave me her card. ‘Ask the Governor
to accept it,’ she said, ‘in remembrance of the time when he took me for
a nursemaid. Tell him I am married to a Dutch gentleman of high
family. If he ever comes to Holland, we shall be glad to see him in our
residence at South Beveland.’ There is her message to you, repeated word
for word.”
“I am glad she is going to live out of England.”
“Why? Surely you have no reason to fear her?”
“None whatever.”
“You are thinking, perhaps, of somebody else?”
I was thinking of the Minister; but it seemed to be safest not to say
so. ----
My pen is laid aside, and my many pages of writing have been sent
to their destination. What I undertook to do, is now done. To take a
metaphor from the stage--the curtain falls here on the Governor and the
Prison.
Second Period: 1875. THE GIRLS AND THE JOURNALS.